David Craig, on November 18th, 2024Monday-Tuesday blog
Check mate Rachel?
In her Wikipedia pages we read about how Rachel Reeves was a junior chess champion: “In February 1993, in a FIDE officiated Britih Womens Chess Association (BWCA) tournament consisting of 112 competitors between the ages of 12 and 21 Rachel Reeves finished in joint 1st place among the under-14s”
But I’ve gone back to what I believe are the actual results of the 1993 British under-14 chess championship. Here are the original results:
1993 BRITISH UNDER-14 CHAMPIONSHIP
1 Brian KELLY(Belfast) 6�/7; 2 J SAHA (India) 6; 3 A GIBB (Dundee) 5; 4 = Christopher J Beckett, Rohan Churm, Ian A Debbage, M Inglis, Nicholas S Lee, Aiden M Leech 4�; 10= Nathan Alfred, Paul Carpenter, P Hopper, J Lewis, J McMunn, A Mills 4; 16= Philip E Goldstein, Emily Howard, J Mills, R Morgan, John Weatherlake 3�; 21= Simon Armour, Ruth Bates, N Foster, Matthew P George, J Roe 3; 26= Henry A Orna, Rachel J Reeves 2�; 28= P Burke, L Burrows, L Collins, K Ewen, R Lockhart, I Petrie 2; 34 Lucy J Broomfield 1.
According to these, our Rachel actually came in 26th equal. Good heavens. What a shock. Not!
Surprisingly, this story doesn’t seem to have been picked up by the BBC or the rest of the mainstream media. Imagine the maelstrom of abuse from the media if a Tory or, even worse, someone from Reform had been guilty of this ‘minor’ misinformation.
Never let (someone else’s) good ideas be wasted
In October 2023, Reeves’ book�The Women Who Made Modern Economics�was published.[177]�The Guardian�said the book contained “something much more like the outlines of a coherent political project … than Labour is sometimes credited with“.[178]�But the�Financial Times�seemed to be less enthusiastic than the always impeccably-accurate Guardian. The Financial Times reported that the book “lifted” content from Wikipedia,�The Guardian�and other sources, identifying over twenty examples of apparent plagiarism in the book, including entire paragraphs.[179]�Reeves told�BBC News�that some sentences “were not properly referenced” and this would be corrected in future reprints.[180]
Having had a few non-fiction books published and seen how difficult it is to get sales of hopefully serious books, I would politely suggest that Reeves’s book has not exactly been a rip-roaring bestseller and so there are unlikely to be any “future reprints“.
Category: 
That woman could give Walter Mitty a run for his money. She won�t be called to task though as she�s one of the �let them eat cake� elite now and therefore unaccountable.
Luckily the chancellor doesn�t need to be an economist – they�re just MPs who are �in� with the prime minister and the politician who gets to read out the budget produced by the treasury snivel serpents.
Since Covid I have really begun to see how worthless our politicians really are. If you�re not in the government you are nobody, if you are in government it�s because you�re a chum of the PM – the ministerial posts he doles out are rarely based on your skill set (if you have one!) and in any case can be changed at the next cabinet reshuffle. The secretaries of state are just figureheads in their departments while the blob carry on with their own agenda as usual. Yes Minister was a fly in the wall documentary!
I love the �non-political� part of this description of government:
HM Government consists of the Prime Minister, their Cabinet and junior ministers, supported by the teams of non-political civil servants that work in government departments.
Trust her? Not after reading that. Did you read the reviews on Amazon?
I recommend this book – John Howard, The Nature of Evil: Centuries of Parasitic Philosophy. The author made some comments on TCW. I don�t recall seeing his name before or since. He mentioned the title in a comment but didn�t say he was the author.
It brings philosophy to the problems of today and might offend a lot of people. He says the same as Ayn Rand and the Austrian School of Economics. We need to keep the politicians out of our lives. They are just thieves who have legalised theft. We need free trade with the markets being left to function and this also means that money will also adjust its value. Of course, the politicians will never allow this or the majority of people and it is because of the uncertainty it would create. The politicians believe they can control everything and propaganda has convinced the voters that they can, and none more than those who cannot live without the welfare state, now a majority.
The author makes proposals for change and seems optimistic that many people are leaking the woke period behind. I wasn�t convinced about that but the rest of the book was spot on.
I’ve just seen Thomas Sowell interviewed about mistakes he has made. He said he was an intern in economics and when he saw the government from the inside it was enough to turn anybody away. Perhaps it explains why politicians haven’t a clue about economics.