Month: December 2018

The BBC website is carrying a handy guide on how to tell painted wolves apart:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3F4YD5bVS9zgB9m570LLY1K/painted-wolf-id-guide?intc_type=promo&intc_location=news&intc_campaign=dynastieswolfguide_article&intc_linkname=bbcone_em_low_c2

“Faced with a pack of 30 painted wolves coming towards you, you want to know you are pointing the camera at the right animal”. No, that is not what I want to know. What I want to know are my chances of outrunning the wolves, or alternatively of outrunning the cameraman.

There is an excellent economic lesson in the protests about increases in fuel taxes in France, now apparently postponed by the government:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46437904

If you want people to use less of something, put the price up. This is, as far as I can tell, a universal truth. It came up in an opinion piece by Oliver Kamm in the Times yesterday, on the topic of minimum alcohol pricing:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/minimum-pricing-will-help-society-to-deal-with-problem-drinking-djg57dm05 (£)

If you want people to drink less, put the cost up. The thing that really impressed me about Mr Kamm was that he raised the question that always comes up:

“There is a persistent criticism levelled by politicians on both right and left that minimum pricing and levies on demerit goods are regressive: they hit lower-income consumers of alcohol, sugary drinks and tobacco hardest”

And went on to answer it correctly:

“It’s not a strong case. If you’re concerned about social and economic inequality, a better remedy is redistribution through the tax and benefits system”.

Exactly. And that is the answer to fuel pricing in France, as it will be the next time a government here tries to increase fuel duty. Incidentally, this is something that every economist worthy of the name knows. Politicians not so much.

Here we have the touching tale of the woman who took in a concussed squirrel and has nursed it back to health:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-somerset-46404867/woman-takes-in-grey-squirrel-found-injured-in-somerset

I was amused by the description of the woman as a “squirrel carer”: shades of Philomena Cunk there, and I’m wondering if it was intentional.

I like squirrels. They’re lovely to watch in the garden, despite the fact that they strip our hazel tree as soon as the nuts are ripe enough to eat, which is a long while before they are ripe enough for us to eat. Indeed, they planted the hazel tree in the first place, so I supposed they are only harvesting their own crop. We currently have a sunflower that has sprung up in one of the beds and that was their doing too.

Furthermore, I am not put off by the jibe that “they’re only rats”. I like rats too, delightfully intelligent creatures that make excellent pets. Perhaps squirrels do as well, although you need a licence and would have to watch out for them chewing their way into food cupboards and, for that matter, through electrical cabling. Although, come to think of it, that might be a good thing and perhaps it’s the only way of preventing humanity evolving into drooling Kardashian and I’m a Celebrity addicted vegetables.

And please don’t give me any nonsense about invasive species endangering our native red squirrels. Apart from this sounding altogether too UKIP, anyone who says this about squirrels but doesn’t advocate the extermination of domestic cats, another invasive species that kills off wildlife, is a grade A hypocrite.