Madsen Pirie

Teenage codes were originally designed for brevity because they took fewer keystrokes.  BRB takes much less work to type than “be right back.”  When texting became popular in the days when each number key had to serve for several letters, depending on how many times you pressed it, brevity came at a premium.  When messaging moved onto computer screens as well as mobile phones, teenage code became a useful way to conceal conversations from intrusive parents, so be careful buying some of the best laptop for a teenager, if you are a parent yourself.  PIR signifies “parent in room” and POS warns the friend of a “parent over shoulder.”  A great many of teenage codes are simply initials, some used to express feelings quickly, and some to look cool.  LOL does not mean “lots of love” but “laughing out loud.”

It is reported in research by Pew that teenage codes are now presenting a problem for Facebook’s targeted advertising, since they do not tell the would-be advertisers what the teenagers are really talking about, and therefore make it difficult to send them appropriate ads.  The report suggests that teenagers are using codes to protect their on line privacy.  There are dictionaries of teenage code such as Noslang.com, and they show that quite a few of the codes are used to convey swearing, with the F word featuring regularly.  LMFAO expresses the fact that someone is “laughing my f—ing a– off.”

I find the story quite amusing, in that teenagers are quite inventive in keeping outsiders from taking too much interest in what they say and do.  They want to share things with their peer group, and use slang words and codes to assert their membership of that group and to keep others out.  If that makes life difficult for advertisers, they should see what it does for parents.

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 It is reported that Chancellor George Osborne raised an extra £1.3bn in the first month since the top rate was lowered from 50 to 45 percent.  In April he took £11.5bn, a 10 percent increase on last year.  There could be many reasons behind this.  There are more people in work than there were a year ago, and the economy is a little stronger.  As we revise the figures it looks as if the double dip recession never happened.  Some of the increase might be down to income deferred by people who had the option to hold it back until the lower rate clicked in.

When income tax was raised to 50 percent by the last Labour government, reneging on an election pledge not to do so, receipts were only a third of the £3bn they predicted, and the loss to the economy far exceeded the £1bn it raised.  I personally knew several high fliers who had paid tax at 40 percent but took avoidance measures when it rose to 50 percent.  There seems to be a general acceptance of 40 percent.  People grumble, but it is regarded as an endemic discomfort like bad weather or the Guardian newspaper.  When it rises above that level they change their behaviour to escape it.  HM Revenue and Customs predict that lowering the rate from 50 to 45 percent will ‘cost’ them only about £100m.  They are wrong; it will increase revenue.  When more figures are in and the Chancellor sees that, he might be emboldened to drop the top rate to the 40 percent he should have gone for the first time.  And after that he should be brave enough to go for the one thing that we all know will bring both growth and extra revenue.  He should go for a flat tax, and a low one at that, and clear out most of the 12,000 pages of exemptions, deductions and conditions that currently describe the tax code.

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Sometimes you see a new product that you just know you have to have because it will make life a little easier.  Yesterday it was the lemon spray.  It’s a small piece of plastic that sells for £7.99 and sprays juice from a lemon or a lime.  You stick it into the fruit and pump the top to spray out a fine mist of juice.  When the lemon or lime is all used up, a quick rinse leaves the atomizer clean and ready for the next one.  The designer was apparently tired of all the mess involved in chopping up fruit.  I’d add to that the stream of juice when you squeeze that sometimes goes in your eye, the totally superfluous pips, and the annoying fact that you often find yourself wasting half the fruit as it dries out.  The uses of this that spring to mind immediately include adding a citrus tang to salads with a fine spray of juice, and giving your gin and tonic that acidic tang without having a slice of lime or lemon floating in it.  I use lemon juice every day, putting a few drops into black tea. I find that pieces of lemon overpower the tea, as well as being messy against the lips.  A spray of lemon juice might well be a good alternative to the small lemon juice bottle.

Stem was designed by U.S. entrepreneur Tim Houle and developed by American company Quirky. The New York firm was launched in 2009 to help inventors see their ideas come to light. After ideas are submitted, Quirky asks its online community to help develop the products before manufacturing and marketing them. Jaime Yandolino, spokeswoman for Quirky, said: ‘Stem is an clever little kitchen gadget that means you no longer have to cut open lemons and limes and squeeze them to get their juices out.”

Ah, but isn’t human ingenuity wonderful.  My kitchen drawer which is packed with useful devices for coring apples and stoning avocados is about to acquire another one.

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The story was that Apple has been accused by a US senate committee of being “the biggest tax avoiders in the US.”  Apple point out in response that they are actually one of the biggest taxpayers in the US.  Much of their profit is made abroad, and they tend to leave it abroad rather than bring it into the US and incur the 35% corporation tax it then becomes liable to.  This is sensible, as is their decision that borrowing investment money in bonds is cheaper than bringing their own money back and incurring the tax.

The BBC Today programme featured an interview with someone they gave an easy ride to, with powder puff questions that allowed him to develop his theme, rather than their usual critical barrage designed to make someone justify their position.  This person was not only wrong on everything, but came with a mindset that felt like that of an alien observer.  I eventually learned this was Robert Reich who was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton from 1993-97, and author of “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.”  It was a surreal experience.  He had no concept of the value that companies such as Apple and Amazon provide for people, or of what they add to our lives and to the economy.  He occupied a strange world in which businesses were bad and governments were good.  Businesses sought only their self-interest, whereas governments were benign and pursued the public good.  The problem for him was that businesses sought out tax-friendly jurisdictions, so that politicians could not spend their money.

It never seemed to occur to him that shareholders and employees might spend money more wisely and obtain better value than if governments took it instead to spend “on their behalf” (meaning on the priorities of politicians).  To him the value of a company seemed to be measured by how much money it gave to government, rather than by the goods and services it offered that people would willingly pay for.  His ‘remedy’ was rather frightening.  It was world tax governance by agreement so that all countries could set the same high tax rates from which there would be no escape.  As I have said before, tax competition is one of the few restraints on the rapacity of politicians, and on their ability to use ever more of our money to buy votes with.  Given a choice, I’d rather have companies like Apple offering me choices than have advisors like Robert Reich denying them to me.

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No, the other kind of rape.  Until the 1970s rapeseed oil was deemed unfit for human consumption because of its levels of erucic acid, but then the Canadians bred a low acid version that could be cold-pressed into an oil high in omega-3 fatty acids instead.  It was called Canola (Canadian Oil Low Acid), and it rehabilitated rapeseed. Rapeseed spread rapidly across Britain, colouring the fields an unfamiliar bright yellow that was the bane of many hay fever sufferers.  But it was not the intrinsic qualities of the crop that made it popular with farmers, but the huge EU subsidy paid to them by the EU.  The EU grant was to support (and exceed) the costs of buying seeds and planting, rather than for the end product.  In practice it amounted to a huge subsidy for large landowners.  Even though British consumers seem to prefer better-tasting alternatives such as olive oil and sunflower oil, rapeseed oil remains a popular crop because it now qualifies for EU subsidies to make bio-diesel, a renewable energy source.  It calls to mind Adam Smith’s observation (from The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter V):

“The bounty to the white-herring fishery is a tonnage bounty; and is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success in the fishery; and it has, I am afraid, been too common for vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of catching, not the fish, but the bounty.”

The subsidy paid to rapeseed planters is proportioned to the planting of the crop, and it has become common for landowners to plant it not for its intrinsic or attractive qualities, but for the purpose of harvesting not the crop but the subsidy.

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 Popper talks about what scientists should do, which is to abandon or modify their theories in the light of conflicting evidence.  Kuhn talks about what they do do, which is to keep the existing paradigm as long as they can because their promotion prospects and the respect of their peers are often bound up in it.  The new theory often comes in only when they retire and younger, more independent minded people take their place.

Margaret Thatcher faced bitter and entrenched hostility from those on the Tory left because they had spent their political lives on the basis that their purpose was to manage decline and concede just enough socialism to buy off revolution.  They hated her for replacing their paradigm by one that stressed enterprise and opportunity, and showing that their political capital had been wasted.

The euro has visibly failed, but those who spent 15 years of their political lives setting it up and maintaining it will not let it go.  That would be to admit failure, and they have too much political capital invested in it to abandon the failed paradigm.  They would rather see Europe face decades of recession, sluggish economies and astronomical unemployment than give up what they have committed their lives to.

Enthusiastic pro-Europeans in the UK have committed their lives and their future to ever closer political union.  They see nation states as an anachronism, a brake on their clean vision of a smoother world.  The Europe they dreamed about is long gone, and they refuse to look at the reality of what the EU is now.  The EU which the UK joined, and the one it wished Europe to become, is also gone, replaced by a bureaucratic and undemocratic organization in which the wishes of its peoples have to be at best circumvented, and at worst overridden.  Fortunately the younger people who have taken their places do not view the paradigm through the same rose-tinted spectacles.  The mounting evidence suggests we are at one of those points where the old paradigm is replaced by a new one that better fits the evidence.  The old guard will fight to justify their past, but they will lose.

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On the National Geographic Channel has been a series of programmes giving us a nostalgic look at the 1980s, much of it through they eyes of sport and popular entertainment, but also featuring some of the national and international events of the era.  I remember the 80s as the decade that changed everything.  In the UK it was the decade that brought Britain back from what seemed inevitable decline into vigorous recovery.  The ailing state industries were privatized, the unions brought under law, while taxes were lowered and success was admired.  Similar things happened in the US, as Ronald Reagan led America to a new confidence and prosperity after the angst-ridden 70s.

Fashion changed, too, and the naff 70s were finally laid to rest as youngsters adopted sportier styles in place of the fake tinsel glam of the previous decade.  We were no longer held prisoner by TV schedules, as the video recorder made its debut.  The first series of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” had kept everyone in on Monday nights in 1979.  By the time its successor, “Smiley’s People,” was aired, hardly any of my friends watched it in real time.  In a similar way the Sony Walkman freed people from their home music centres, and no less importantly, freed the rest of us from the street boom boxes that preceded it.  The desktop computer made its appearance, as did the first Mackintosh versions to make it simple.  CNN finally broke the stranglehold of the big three US networks, and the rediscovered self-confidence of the decade reflected itself in movies like “Top Gun” and “Back to the Future.”

For seven of the decade’s ten years I trained Tae Kwon-Do, the first sport I’d ever taken up.  With two or three evening sessions per week, it occupied quite a slice of my time.  It was also the decade which saw several of my books published, some on economics, some on logic, and some more popular ones on intelligence (I was secretary of Mensa at the time).  Towards the end of the decade I discovered the Florida Keys and eventually had a house there.  The ability to escape parts of a depressing British winter was a great discovery.

The decade was marked by controversy.  The Falklands War, the Miners’ Strike, cruise missiles and the Strategic Defence Initiative played their part, but the decade saved its best till last as the Soviet Empire crumbled and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.  Millions of people were freed from oppression, and those who were already free were freed from the daily fear of nuclear annihilation.  Oh yes, the 1980s changed everything.

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I went on Adam Boulton’s programme on Sky News on Thursday alongside Richard Brooks of Private eye.  The morning had just seen a new Witches-of-Salem trial by Margaret Hodge’s Public Accounts Committee, and the charge was that firms such as Amazon and Google were manipulating the system to pay as little tax as possible.  I made the point that this is what the law allows.  Indeed, in the case of the European Single Market, it is what the law intends.  Anyone setting up in one EU country can trade equally with them all, and nations are not permitted to tax them again once they have paid in their host country.

A more important point I made as that the value of a company is not determined by the tax it pays, but by the goods and services that it makes available.  My life is enriched every day by Google, and every week by Amazon, and not because the government gets to spend a little of the money they make.  The value to me, and to my fellow citizens, lies in the goods and services that firms like these make available.

I made the point in passing that when firms do have to pay more tax, many studies have shown this comes mostly out of wages.  Richard Brooks described this as ‘contentious,’ but it is well backed up by academic studies.  I also suggested that instead of trying to end low tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg, a better strategy would be to copy what they are doing and make ourselves more attractive.  This whole discussion is a red herring laid by politicians to divert hounds from the real scent: governments are spending too much and taxing too much, and are preventing us from growing richer by doing so.

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Shale gas has changed the game for the world’s energy future, giving us many decades (even centuries) of reserves of a fuel that is cleaner than coal and oil, and at prices that will not inhibit economic development.  Furthermore, much of it is located in regions that are less susceptible to political turmoil than many current oil producers.  Now shale oil from the US has made its appearance as a major factor in future supply.  It is estimated that the US will produce a third of the world’s new oil supplies over the next few years, becoming a net exporter rather than an importer.  It will be self-sufficient in energy by 2035, some analysts think even sooner.

An obvious question is “Where does this leave the Middle East?”  The answer is that it leaves them with their economies dependent on a product that is declining in importance.  The extra supply of US shale oil will put downward pressure on prices, and the switch from oil to gas will do the same for demand.  This is a recipe that points to political upheaval.  Some Middle East regimes have used the wealth from oil revenues to keep popular discontent at bay.  If that wealth begins to dry up, uprisings might follow.  On a geopolitical level, the advanced economies, especially the US, will be less concerned with developments in the Middle East, and will have less inclination to be deeply involved in them.  Put bluntly, the Middle East is going to matter far less than it has done.  It may not be a bad thing to see Western economies relatively indifferent to what happens there.

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Dr Alice Roberts, professor of public engagement at Birmingham University, has made a public plea against the recreation of extinct species.  The point of her remarks is her recognition that scientists are on the brink of being able to do this.  Japanese researchers have extracted the DNA of a hairy mammoth from the bone marrow of a specimen preserved in the permafrost, and will soon set about cloning an animal from it, probably bringing the embryo to term using an elephant as a surrogate mother.  Her objection is based in the fact that their habitat is gone, and they were herd-living animals, so it would be cruel to recreate a single individual for a zoo.  Yes, but once we have one we can recreate a herd, and we can recreate a habitat for them just as we have game reserves for elephants.  Dr Roberts will present a forthcoming BBC2 series, “Ice Giants,” about creatures that became extinct 20,000 years ago.

Our ancestors almost certainly played a large part in the extinction of these creatures, and I have no doubt that we will restore some of them.  I saw the baby mammoth, partly crushed by the pressure of mud, that the Russians displayed in an exhibition some years ago.  It was mind-blowing to see a creature that died so long ago, still with skin and hair.  It looked incomparably cute, and my guess is that mammoths, especially baby ones, will become the megastars of the animal kingdom when we bring them back.  They are a link with our lost past.  And dinosaurs?  Will we do a Jurassic Park?  I think the odds overwhelmingly favour it.  We are unlikely to find viable DNA from blood-sucking mosquitoes preserved in amber, as Michael Crichton imagined, but we don’t need to.  Lurking within the junk DNA of flightless birds is probably everything it would take to make a dinosaur.  We need analysis to identify it all and incredibly complex computer programs to sift through it all and establish the function of each section.  Then we turn on the parts that recreate the jaws with teeth that preceded beaks, the limbs that became wings, and the spiny tails.  We’ll probably have some clues from such DNA strands as can be identified.  Once we have one, we can recreate variations from it that give us others.  Oh yes, they’ll be back, and the world will be richer for it.

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