According to the ever-reliable Samizdata, Ukip is extraordinarily well-endowed with money because – even though the people who run big companies are keen on the EU – small businessmen with cash to flash hate it. And people who run big companies can’t donate money as easily as small businessmen, because it’s not their money to give.

This makes some intuitive sense. The stereotypical successful small businessman and sterotypical Ukipper are the same person: big house in suburbia, possibly a mason, definitely a golfer, not too keen on immigrants (except the ones he employs below the minimum wage), planning to retire to Spain but avoid the locals and local food… you get the idea.

If the post is right (a big if), this could be worrying.

The comments thread is also entertaining: a well-meaning pro-EU small businessman points out obvious and true things (eg that the ‘EU auditors not signing the accounts for 10 years’ meme is only true because all farmers everywhere, ever, are crooked, and therefore it’s impossible to adequately account for the CAP), and dozens of tinfoil loons all-but accuse him of eating babies.

The Adam Smith Institute appear to have banned me from their comments section, for the heinous sin of calling them out on some mistakes and inconsistencies.

My crimes:

* suggesting that they weren’t very ‘classically liberal’ for wanting to ban political demonstrations

* suggesting that they were mistakenly referencing a rigged opinion poll (the You-Kip You-Gov one, where a majority of respondents said they were ‘for’ EU withdrawal after being asked five loaded questions about whether the EU was a threat).

There are two reasons I can think of for not publishing the second comment; one is vanity (not-wanting-to-look-silly), and the other is worse (being-perfectly-aware-they-were-lying-to-start-with).

Far be it from me to decide which one is right…

I always believed Scotland was refreshingly devoid of crackpot Europhobics, because the Scots were all too busy with their endearing love/hate relationship with the English.

But apparently not.

I’m running out of English-speaking places where you can smoke in pubs and which aren’t full of petty-minded bigots to flee to when things go horribly wrong in England…

Europhobics? Bloody perverts, the lot of them.

It’s those English public schools, see?

It would be a serious mistake (and one that many commentators are making) to view the swivel-eyed loon vote at the Euro elections as showing that Britain is becoming seriously anti-EU.

Less than 10% of the ‘likely to vote in a general election’ electorate view Ukip as the party “closest to their own views on Europe”. It’s safe to assume that no more than 1% of the remaining 91% disapprove of Ukip because it’s too *moderate*… so how could Ukip get 16% of the vote?

The most intuitively appealing possibility is that pretty much everyone who agreed with Ukip’s European stance bothered to turn out in the elections, whereas many pro-Europeans didn’t. This works, as long as we also assume that everyone who agreed with Ukip’s views on Europe voted Ukip: overall turnout was two-thirds that of a general election (making the explanation statistically possible), but was also higher than in Euro elections before the Ukip started ‘seriously’ campaigning (adding credibility too).

In other words, a higher proportion of swivel-eyed-loon acolytes hate Europe enough to have bothered voting, whereas a higher proportion of sane people are aware that the elections don’t really have that much impact and therefore didn’t vote. This is good news, in that it implies the forces of sanity and reason would win any EU referendum with serious consequences.

As any good Orientalist/ebonicist knows, the Afghan central bank is known as “Da Afghanistan Bank“.

Unfortunately, I hear they’re somewhat short of benjamins.

(via OxBlog)

Spotted in the “inside this newspaper” section on the front page of last Friday’s FT, some surprising and often covered-up news on the late Ray Charles.

Ray Charles, writer of songs including “Hit the road Jack, I can’t stop loving you” and “I Got A Woman”, has died.

The Euro election results are in, and the UK results can be summarised as “everybody got shagged, except the swivel-eyed loons“.

The Tories and Labour each got their lowest share of the vote since the modern 2.5 party system was established. The Lib Dems only gained 2% on last time, coming in behind the swivel-eyed loons on 15% of the vote (the loons got 16%).

There are various explanations for the result. A major one is the EU’s unpopularity… which itself has come about partly because pro-Europeans have been utterly, appallingly rubbish at explaining to the public why the EU is good; partly because that everyone of whatever political hue always blames Europe for their own failings; and partly because a small proportion of the British population are xenophobic wankers.

We can’t do much about the last of these – culling isn’t really an option these days. But hopefully the Ukip result will encourage pro-Europeans to actually make the Europe case (and more importantly, to explain why EU withdrawal would suck).

Was there any logic whatsoever in replacing Wayne Rooney with that twat Heskey, or has Sven just been placing large bets on the French?

Shell has published a fairly scathing report about its activities in Nigeria, and the corruption and civil unrest that the oil has brought.

So… is this is a cynical piece of window-dressing, or a genuine attempt to avoid making the same mistakes in the future?