Tax credits not fit for purpose. IDS. Here.

Inside an Amazon warehouse. Here.

Impact of austerity & price inflation on food buying habits. Pretty big. Here.

... oh, and another blog that seems worth looking at - fullfact.org. Haven't got time now - will try later.

Great new blog. Here.

See my post here.

The Economist had a leader article on this very point in last Friday's edition. Here. Another Economist leader here.

I still don't quite understand. Should government be seeking to set-up as many quangos as possible? Might 'good government' be the setting-up, creating good mandates for, and the overseeing of quangos? Maybe it's the case already. Aren't the army, police, judicial system, NHS etc. all quangos?

Teach evolution or lose funding. Here.

Very, very, very sad. Ann Clwyd. A veteran labour MP's husband dies of 'cold & neglect' in an NHS hospital  Here.

Hitler's neighbour. Here.

Mark Carney appointed new BoE governor. Here.

Decisions of The Governor of The Bank of England have material effects on our lives - sometimes substantially. Why can an unelected official make such decisions independently of our elected representatives? Shouldn't the BoE Governor be in the cabinet, answerable to Parliament and the electorate? What would we say if (important) tax decisions (the fiscal side of the coin) was made by an independent body - if we made the ‘taxing’ bit of HM Treasury independent of government?

In fact, parts of HM Treasury - the monetary policy parts - was made ‘independent of government’. Gordon Brown in 1997 took this bit of Treasury powers and gave it away to the BoE. It wasn't always thus and is by no means fully accepted that such powers should be independent.

Arguments for independence are pretty clear. Instead of monetary policy being held hostage by the election cycle, we remove policy making from the laps of fickle politicians and give it to independent experts who are able to take ‘objective’ decisions.

But isn't the above an argument to get rid of a whole host of powers from government (‘the executive’) and give them to ‘objective experts’? Why democracy at all - why not ‘enlightened dictatorship’?

Bill Grimsey, veteran retailer & former CEO at Wickes, Iceland and more writes here about the 'vanishing' High Street. He has written a book on the subject. He blogs here.

Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign-secretary writes an article in Haaretz -Time for Israel to take risks for peace.

Ironic Economist covers re French. Here.

Entrepreneurs 'are not gamblers'. Here.

Kim Han-sol, grandson of late Kim Jong-il and nephew of Kim Jong-un in an interview. Here.

Eric Hobsbawm. Here.

Chelsea Clinton interview. Here.

Michael Fish interview. Here.

Hilary Mantel senses in a very real way the 'emotional fraught atmosphere' of Henry VIII' s court while writing the second book of her (intended) trilogy. Here. Then she remembers that it's past, and while she certainly has an impact on our view of that past she changes nothing of it.

Today program speaks to voters regarding their views of the Lib-Dems. Here. Pretty mature perspectives. I think come the election things will look a lot better for the Lib-Dems. People will begin to understand coalition politics and the role of a minor party in it.

Marriage, yes. Weddings no. I don't disagree with anything in this article.

Pleb. Yes, I mean you.

Romeny: Telling it as it is.

Astronomy Photography of the Year 2012. Awesome. Here.

Lord Adonis. He looks and behaves like aristocracy. But isn't. Wikipedia here.

Discussing his new book, here.

Middle-age. Let's all argue about when it begins. Here.

Recently launched. Brainfacts.org.

Ryan lies. Why am I not surprised?

See couple of posts back. Now these great stories of chronic procrastination.

A graphic I stole from this article on the BBC. Does it make sense that the top 50% pay 89% of tax? Is that fair?

Quote: "Don't wait. The time will never be just right" - Napoleon Hill

I should have put this link up yesterday. Procrastination. Here.

http://www.republic.org.uk/

http://www.britishmonarchistsociety.org.uk/

The Prince Harry photos (nude).

I don't agree with The Sun. These are photos of somebody's private holiday. I agree with Boris:

"I think it'd be disgraceful if a chap wasn't allowed to have a bit of fun in Las Vegas. The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way."

See more here.

The Olympics ends. French sour grapes. Germans love it. Here.

Privilege at the Olympics:

• Dominated by 'privately educated'. Here.
• Empty seats. Here.

Ian Pannell of the BBC in Aleppo. He is a brave journalist. Amazing footage. Here.

How does Bradley Wiggins manage it? Here.

I am sure this research still needs refining. But. Diet is key to weight-loss. We use similar amounts of calories whether we are active or couch-potatoes. Here. 

Paying tradesmen in cash. Of course it's wrong if the purpose is to avoid tax. Here. I think trade in cash should be eliminated as far as possible. New payment systems allow mobile card base transactions. Payments can be done via the internet etc.

So that's what their called - 'chuggers'. Here. I agree with the anti-chugger.

Lady Steel - a tattoo  at seventy.  Here (and lots of other places). Maybe I'll get one at seventy.

David Jackman talks about ethics in banking - here. The website of his consultancy 'The Ethical Space' is here.

Terry acquitted. Here. Judgement here.

Loansharking. £250 becomes £90,000. Here. Makes me cry.

Boring (banks) is good. Here.

Banks mis-selling another product. Here.

Lord Skidelsky and his son Edward.  Here. I've got his last book which I liked and was thinking about getting his new one, but I'm not sure if I'm quite getting them in this interview. Greed 'invented' in the last thirty years - I don't think so!

The Jimmy Carr tax debate.

Asking a tax expert: is morality part of your business? Here.

I absolutely agree with this opinion piece in The Mirror.

Smartphone users 'risking health' with overuse of devices. Here.

European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso: telling it how it is. Here. Summit here.

Some guy, here (Greg Wallace), has found a sure-safe way to teach children how to read. It's 100% successful. Phonics. The statistic alone makes me want to run a mile (how does it it magically deal with dyslexia?). Even if he doesn't sound like a nutter, and he does, my instincts would be with Dr Mary Bousted.

From the BBC. In graphics: Eurozone crisis. Here.

Nick Robinson describes Gordon Brown's appearance at Leveson. Here.

Paul Krugman (blog here) speaks at the LSE yesterday evening. Today he his interviewed on Today. Here. And Nigel Ferguson responds from the right, here.

David Cameron calls Ed-Balls a 'muttering idiot'. (Ed Balls sits there repeating again and again '...what about the recession'?) Here. Naughty-step David.

A free-marketeer debates a Keynesian. Here. They don't agree at all. They can't both be right. how is it possible that they come to such opposing conclusions?

Why did the Queen get wet? Because, she had a lunch in a room full of reigning monarchs. Report here. And a glimpse of the toffs here.

That's why I'm so funny. Sacha Barron Cohen explains here.

Discobolus. Here.

A conversation about Facebook's impending floatation, between two people who don't seem to get it. Here.  Rory Cellan-Jones - well he never gets it, but Sir Martin Sorell? The way Sit Martin explains it, Facebook doesn't seem to have a business, - so how are they going to generate a profit? And how can they be worth $1000,000,000?

National pay-cut (circa 2.0%  a year). People are becoming poorer. And is it Britain that's  'pulling down the Euro-area'. All this and more cheery stuff - here. Enjoy.

Cable-cars across the Thames. I like it. Here. Well, not here - there - and I'm becoming increasingly jealous. Why am I not living in London?

Is 'capitalism' ethical? Here. Henry Jackson Initiative. Here.

Surviving the Khmer Rouge Here.  The book here. About Comrade Duch - here.

Ahmed Rashid writes in Haaretz. Here.

Lyse Doucet in Homs, Syria. Here.

In this (brilliant) documentary, a young  fashion model (seems pretty successful), Samira Hashi, visits the capital of war-torn Somalia, Mogadishu, where she was born.  Her website - here. No Hirsi Ali, but she is (relatively) very young. What will she be (thinking and) saying in ten years from now?

Culture committee's report on phone-hacking here.

I agree with South Korea. Here. I enjoy watching Gaga gyrate in time to her music and lyrics -  (unfortunately) I'm well over eighteen.

Murdoch v Brown - video here. Article here.

Nadine Dorries cuts off her nose to spite her face. Must see clip on the BBC - here. Her article on Conservative Home - here (and some reaction here).

Yom Hashoah 2012

Football  in Theresienstadt. Here.

This story is blown out of all proportion. And here. Watch the video. I can't see anybody terrified. I actually think these (young) boys (mainly - a few girls) are behaving pretty well. Recorded sound can be very unreliable - it probably sounded very different on location. Let's see how the story pans out - I think it will just be forgotten because there just isn't a story here.

Broken Britain. Here.

How (some) (very) rich people use their money. Here. You too, can get a roll from here. Not sure how  efficient the product in question is though - I would have thought that white works best.

Photos of men an woman, born into slavery. Here.

The owners of one of Britain's influential newspapers, 'The Telegraph', decline to be interviewed (about the Island of Spark). Here. So they can investigate and write about others but stop others investigating and writing about themselves.

Salty pizza. Here.

The list of invitees to 'dinner' at Downing Street. Hosted by the Camerons in this story.

I don't think donors to political parties should be hosted at government venues. Cameron should be able to distinguish between government and party. He studied political science at Oxford, and I would have thought that this distinction is a pretty basic one. (Lord Levy agrees here.) Yes, meet donors for breakfasts, dinners, suppers, canapés, receptions - whatever - but, at party (as in political-party not party-party) locations not at HM Government locations.

Cameron has got himself in rather a lot of 'trouble' with 'friend' related stories: Coulson, Wade, Liam Fox now this. Is this just bad luck?

And, the guy that got this story rolling. His blog here.

Has Britain got talent? Maybe. Maybe not. Some of these erstwhile contestants definitely do have. It's good to see that some of these are making money. And that's definitely a talent worth having. Here.

Do we think about the past in colour? Definitely not with a vividness of colour. Aided by the black-&-white photos of the past we imagine the past as grey. That people lived their lives in a world that was somehow more muted than ours. That somehow life in the modern world is more 'real'. Nonsense of course. People lived their lives in the same world of colour as we do.

These colour pictures are extraordinary, in that they add colour to a world, which to the extent that we have photographs of the period, are all black-&-white. (See this blog for example). In some ways it shocks. They really were like people of today, not somehow of dimmed sensations, which allowed them to live through some of the tragedies of twentieth century Russia.

Real-life Rapunzel. Here.

Some crime stories today:

• What a perfect casting this was.
• The perfect crime, they thought. Sadly not.
• Is it beyond the wit of man to screen such types out? 

Discussing the relevance of the 'established church' in modern Britain. A cleric (Bishop of Leicester) and a lawyer (Lord Falconer). Here.

Interview with Harry Windsor. Here. Quite articulate. Interesting.

The Assads like to use email. Now we can all read them. Here.

Households facing a debt tide. Here.

Shisha Pipes.

Not only in the Middle East - here.

Listen to this. Literally.

Kate Middleton's brother attributes his success to his hard graft. Here.

I don't think so. I mean, for example, is it simply a correlation that his businesses are all party-related or is it because his family is in that line of  business anyway?

He is making the following argument: I work hard so I'm successful. No, not necessarily. It could just as well be I'm successful so I work hard. And that's what it undoubtedly is in this case. Most people would work hard if they had a reasonable chance of success. The reason why so many people don't  is because, for many, hard work will not bring success that is proportional to the work undertaken. James Middleton's education, connections, etc make it almost impossible to fail if he decides to 'work hard'.

James Middleton is lucky. He refuses to admit it. He is is a snob and a braggart.

Super Tuesday 2012.

James Naughtie (of Today) writes here.

The Greek Sustainability Report - here. And some FT comment here.

I like this comment (to this blog-post). 

And see this post from The Economist commenting on the above exchange. And here is my comment.

Steven Major, head of fixed income at HSBC, tells the Today programme that he is optimistic about the future of the eurozone. Here.

Wow. Optimism about the Eurozone. That's a change. I wonder how he was allowed onto the radio.

There's a lot of wishful thinking among the (British) doomsayers (just listen to the disappointment in Sarah Montague's voice when reacting to the interviewees optimism). They have a not-so-secret wish for the Euro to collapse. Except, it isn't a wish but an elaborate dance of 'we told you so'. There isn't really any doubt at all that the Euro's going to collapse -  is collapsing. Of course it's collapsing - it can do nothing but collapse - as it was always going to do.

But the Euro is very unlikely to collapse, and Greece is less than likely to exit the Euro. A year from now things could look very different. Britain will still have high sovereign debt levels, as their gigantic economic neighbour, the Euro area, continues to consolidate and create an economic bloc, suited to take on the Chinas, Brazils and Indias - preparing for a future that (awkwardly) is already here.

At the moment, finding a politician arguing for British adoption of the Euro, is like finding a dieter in MacDonald's. It won't take too long for that to start changing.

"Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. The rest is commentary."

David Sloan Wilson - here.

"Kate's (Duchess of Cambridge) not my type". Hilarious. Encapsulates the absurdity of (mere commoners) being 'represented' by a royal family in the 21st century. Here.

A Christian nation? Maybe not. Dawkins in conversation here. The press release here.

The CIPD report, 'Work Audit: Britain at work in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II'.  Here.

On the Today program - here.

Are government grants to businesses in poor areas, intended to help create jobs, worth the money spent? I'm not convinced. Here.

Goodwin loses knighthood. Here.

3100 vocational exams cut from tables - here.

The Wolf report here.

Professor Alison Wolf on Today - here. And here a correction from  & Mr Blunkett.

Department of Education announcement and list of 'included' qualifications here.

Gove discussing it. Here

Lagging pupils don't catch-up. Here.

The power of the USA. Wow. Wow Wow. Watch this.

USA primary election map - here.

The building of new skyscrapers correlates with financial crashes. Here.

Teaching teens conflict-resolution. Allow them to argue for their case. Here. Obvious really.

The military balance. Here.

How to be a dictator. Scary stuff. Read, only, if feeling mentally strong. Here.