One for Phil

https://x.com/Dodders75/status/1823069730951020798

tomo,

I think Constable Savage stands up pretty well as-is. The key point is how arbitrary the charges are — in essence: "I don't like the cut of your jib" — the humour is how open/artless the charges are (I think police long used "creating a disturbance" for the same purpose).

What might be different today is that the prejudices come from the higher-ups. There's no way a thickhead like Const. Savage would dream up non-crime hate incident!

It's a disgrace that we have ended up with that on the books. It's pure Orwell. Winston's thoughts when starting his diary: it wasn't illegal — nothing was illegal — but you could be pretty sure of a death sentence if you were found out. We're getting there... alarmingly quickly.

Jo's today is on some psychology research that repetition makes a thing more credible. Hardly profound, but they use "climate denial" as their case in point. Joanne has some fun pointing out how repetition is used far more by the alarmists.

It's simple really, all Durkin has to do is ensure his movies are based on solid evidence and facts.

They'd be a lot shorter, natch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=HhAX42dT09w

tomo,
Mike Rowe talk was enjoyable. It's equal parts comforting and alarming that these smart people see the situation as mad. Nice to have smart people agree with you. Alarming that they are having no effect.

I see Rowan Atkinson has spoken up for free speech, and even describes a Not the Nine O'Clock News skit that has gone from parody to reality in forty years.

On CPI again, this article outlines the US approach in much clearer language than the Australian stats people. Both seem similar. The thing I'm complaining about is what they term substitution effects.

Obviously this needs to be dealt with. Horseshoes aren't a big item anymore, and ISP fees wouldn't have figured highly until recent decades. That doesn't justify the vast and complicated modelling exercise they carry out. The modelling sifts out changes in "consumer preferences", but a huge factor in those preferences is the *price itself*. Talk about a confounder.

E.g. I'm sure Sydney's latest figures would show a reduced use of restaurants. That's because high prices of food, rent and electricity have forced restaurants to raise prices on the menu. That puts people off eating out: a "consumer preference" change *due* to inflation, yet the modelling won't count this as having any bearing on inflation.

Why not work with a plain basket of consumables, and review its contents every half-dozen years or so? When it's changing, calculate figures based on old and new baskets and report them side-by-side.

Might be scope for some staff reductions at the Bureau of Statistics too.

DaveS, Mailman,

There are black holes and there are rabbit holes. A brief discussion about inflation at Jo Nova's has led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Just how is the CPI calculated?

Turns out the "fixed basket of goods" has gone by the wayside — certainly in Australia, but one of the follow-up comments says so of the USA, and I bet it's the case in the UK too. Here's a pertinent quote:

It is also important to note that the items within the CPI samples (what is actually priced) are regularly updated to reflect changes to consumer preferences. The term 'fixed basket' is used as an analogy to help users understand the concept of measuring pure price change.

I'm pretty sure that their tracking of changes to consumer preferences is quite oblivious to whether those changes are due to belt-tighterning. So *I* feel inflation, because I buy the same groceries and pay about 30% more than last year. But the CPI doesn't see the 30% increase because other people have (let's hope metaphorically) opted to change over to eating cat food. And they've also opted to use less electricity — so nice to sit cold in the dark. It's a consumer preference!

And don't you love how they brazenly say the 'fixed basket' is used as an analogy. No. It is used to deceive. They're just a bunch of mendacious shits, the lot of them.

Supposedly there is this billions of pounds black hole that is going to cause taxation to rise.

Wonder when the media will get around to asking them how they then intend to cover the cost of 100,000 migrants a year coming in to the UK if this black hole is so massive?