You know, it gets to a point where you just know what’s going to be in the papers today - we have Blair and Murdoch whining because the Big Nasty BBC have been so horrible to their diligent and hard-working pal, George. David Blunkett’s been accused of abusing his position, the Lib Dems are still totally unsure which wing they occupy, and Alan Milburn comes up with a load of ineffective “forward not back” rubbish. Meanwhile, in the world of showbiz, it turns out a top model takes lots of cocaine - the only thing less surprising is the media’s surprised reaction.

A year ago I might have written about any of the above, but it just gets so damn boring doing it for the umpteenth time. Why can’t something interesting and novel happen for once? I’m not talking about, say, attacks by winged monkeys from space, or anything that extravagant, but just something worth talking about for once, rather than raking over the same stuff again and again?

Well, some new stuff has happened, I suppose - I could talk about Katrina, but so has everyone else; I could talk about the Ashes, but I’m not terribly qualified on the topic; the only other story around that’s been yanking my plank is the penguins and evolutionary theory, but even that’s a well-raked topic on this blog. I might just go and read some books, and then get back to you.

Had a hectic week moving, saying an unhappy ‘goodbye’ to Edinburgh and a grudging ‘hello’ to London. Still sorting things out like my possessions, broadband connection, as well as fixing my parents’ computer (and discovering they bought, for some reason, a ridiculously short USB extension cable, pictured right). By the time the weekend’s over I should be back on track.

By the way, can anyone give me a job? :-)

Ooh, it’s a real battle of the dumb out there. Who is the dumbest party in this week’s hot story?

The fuel protesters, for their spectacular impression of a highly mechanised King Canute? Oil prices are high because of reduced production post-Katrina, and the ongoing rise in demand from China and India; meanwhile the percentage of fuel costs as tax has been steadily falling and is comparable to that of France and Germany. Their angle on this complex problem? Bitch, whine and blockade the UK’s refineries.

The Great British Public, who have once again resorted to mob idiocy? With the threat of panic-buying emptying the UK’s petrol reserves, they’ve decided to confront this fear by panic-buying and empty the UK’s petrol reserves. Spineless, predictable fuckers, the lot of them.

Or, the British government? By mooting the use of draconian anti-terror laws and the army as an effective response, they’ve descended once again to a dundering war mentality. To them, being “tough” doesn’t mean pursuing a harder line on the difficult and resilient problems - reducing carbon emissions, promoting renewable technologies or profligate waste of energy, but sitting back, waiting for a problem to manifest itself first, before throwing policemen and soldiers at it.

So, there we have it. Knuckleheads on one side, a ham-fisted government on the other, and a public willing to dance to whatever tune they play. The only good that will come out of this is that maybe this time round, we’ll start questioning the status quo, even though we failed to do so when the same thing happened five years ago. Our transnationally-scaled, supply chain-oriented economy is too dependent on centralised production and mass haulage - we’re facing the threat of a few hundred disgruntled lorry drivers bringing the country to its knees. This is one weakness.

The other weakness is that we’re spoiled, energy-wise: we take our cars when we should walk and we fly when we should drive (or more ideally, take the train or coach). Our reliance on just a single energy source, oil, makes our fate far too contingent on events we have no control over (such as Katrina). Combine it with our few, fragile points of attack and it adds up to a frightening lack of security; and as any security expert will tell you, prevention is better than cure.

In the five years since the last fuel protests, the government has done bugger-all in this respect. Jailing stupid truckers or forcing the army through blockades will not make us any more resilient to future oil price shocks or other disasters; taking steps to move us to a more distributed, locally-oriented, sustainable and energy-efficient economy will. Maybe this time, instead of panicking and autmoatically heading to suck the nearest petrol pump dry, some people will start considering the merits of an alternative.

Some (very brief) thoughts on the Guardian’s new redesign…

• The masthead sucks - all-lower case and no space between the words make it look like something that is trying desperately to be “hip”.
• I don’t like the white-on-blue either - it doesn’t look like a quality newspaper’s masthead.
• The weighty versions of the font (e.g. the sport masthead) looks bloated and ungainly, rather than bold.
• But the font, in its lighter versions, looks very nice and elegant.
• Despite being all-colour, there still aren’t very many decent photos that take advantage of it, except in the sports section, but I suspect that will improve.
• The strange “continued on page n” symbols (e.g.) look weird not being in the bottom-right corner of the article; still, they are a good idea.
• G2 looks quite nifty in its new mini format.
• The crossword is now forever relegated to the inside pages. Shame.
• The use of hyperlink-style formatting for footnotes (e.g.) looks nasty - it’s the wrong colour and also slightly misleading. The sentiment is nice but I think they should drop it for paper.
• Generally, the layouting is quite nice. I’d prefer more space at the top of headlines, but it’s still quite pleasing and not too cramped.

The early verdict then? It’s all right. Content-wise, not too much has changed on the first issue - no doubt once they’ve had a few weeks to get it out right, they will start thinking more about how to fully exploit the new format. Colour on every page means not only the opportunity for better photos, but also diagrams, infographics etc. This could mean the rise of overbearing, Independent-style pages, with lots of different text sizes, containing hyperbole over the useful content of the story on inside-page stories, but I really hope they don’t go that way.

The latest fad amongst the British blogosphere seems to be talking about the “flat tax” - i.e. just one rate of tax which we all pay.

Aside - I never chipped in on the fad that was bouncing round a couple of weeks ago, namely “what does it mean to be British?”, post-July 7. The predominant opinion was that being British consisted purely of virtuous values, which is a fallacy. A national character, just like any other character, has its flaws. A debate on what being British means is meaningless, unless we consider binge drinking, snobbery, mild xenophobia, imperalistic tendencies etc. as well as all the good things.

Right, back on track. First things first, it isn’t really a totally flat tax. By setting a higher personal allowance (A) it effectively is a dual tax rate system - 0% (for incomes below £A)and n% (for incomes above). The problem is, we can’t agree what A and n should be.

This Adam Smith institute paper (PDF) suggests an allowance of £12,000 and a rate of 22% - but this would also severely slash initial revenues (between £42bn and £63bn, according to the ASI’s own figures). Even if, as the ASI suggest, removing most forms of tax relief (including the blind person’s allowance, but not those for businesses), there’s still a shortfall - the only way the government could possibly maintain revenue levels would be to trust in every supply-side economist’s favourite friend - the Laffer curve - namely that the increased economic activity will produce a higher tax intake overall (as expounded on in another ASI pamphlet, that really lays on a selective interpretation of statistics, particular the ones on the Reagan tax cuts). Whether the Laffer curve works is a topic of some debate (pro, anti) and in any case, is its shape or form really constant and unaffected by structural changes, especially for a system as complex as an economy? There is no guarantee that it is a simple mechanism that works - to do so would be to naively believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.

Meanwhile, a more progressive take, such as this one, which states a £10,400 allowance and rate of 55% - it’s slightly revenue-positive while remaining highly progressive. But, the rate is two and a half times what the ASI propose, which would probably make them choke on their port and cigars*. To try and claim that there are a group of people in favour of a flat tax, when they have vastly differing ideas of how it should be levied and for what ends, vastly over-represents one’s claim to having support.

The right’s argument for flat taxes depends on two things. The first is that as our tax system is currently highly complicated and full of allowances and loopholes, which makes it easier for tax avoidance, especially amongst the super-rich. Quite true in a number of cases, but this does not mean that a flat tax is the only way of plugging those holes - we can still reform the collection and exemption system without adopting different levels of rates and allowances.

The other is the constant assertion that this is not merely a way of reducing the tax burden on the rich. According to this line, the very wealthy avoid tax so much because of high rates and opportunities for (legal) avoidance - by getting rid of both, not only will they stop avoidance, but actually pay more in tax, in absolute terms. This, of course, is bollocks - rich people avoid paying tax because they hate paying tax, like the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us, they are rich enough to employ accountants who help them avoid it. Slashing their tax rate by nearly half is not going to turn them magically into happy, wilful taxpayers overnight. It’s just going to make them richer, at the expense of middle-income earners. And I can’t see how the exchequer will get its money back - the super rich’s gross income would have to nearly double in order to produce the necessary returns.

If the flat taxers really cared about reducing the tax burden on the poor, or reducing the cost of tax administration, then they’d have their knives out for VAT, which is both regressive and a bureaucrat’s wet dream. As for those on the left, looking at it in terms of redistribution: forget about it. The bigger problem in the country is not inequality of income (which, remarkably, has remained pretty constant these past few years), but inequality of wealth (which is shooting up) - something that income tax alone cannot tackle.

* Sorry, I couldn’t come up with a modern right-wing equivalent of lentil/muesli/bruschetta, or whatever foodstuff Guardian readers supposedly eat. Any suggestions?

Having noticed that a sequel to A Brief History of Time has come out (via Kottke), I’ve only just remembered - I have never bothered to read the original. Meant to, occasionally, but never got round to it. But then again, should I? The only point of the original was, it seems, for non-scientists (or indeed, anyone who wasn’t a theoretical physicist) to parade on their bookshelves while secretly going “what was that all about?” (e.g.). And yet it’s one of the books of the century (apparently). So, do I dare pick it up, and hope that one year of a physics degree is enough to carry me through it, or do I not need to prove myself, physics-wise?

One of the most puzzling things I have ever considered is how our university admissions system works - or rather doesn’t work. Both students and institutions have to engage in a system of (educated) guesswork, anticipating the applicant’s A-level grades and planning accordingly, which becomes a matter of teacher’s own prejudices and judgement, rather than the grades themselves. Of course, often it doesn’t, and the poor student is subject to the hurried and nightmarish process of clearing - having to decide in a matter of days the path they will be taking for the next three or four years of their life. From my own experience, trying to prove yourself to universities when you’re unsure of your own grade yourself is a nightmare, and I don’t for one second regret dropping out of the process and reapplying in my gap year, after I got my results and could be a whole lot more confident.

This barmy system has been in place for years, which is why proposals to reform it are welcome - especially given that applicants whose grades are overestimated are more likely to come from privileged socioeconomic groups. The best option would be to have all applications done after one’s grades are known (and if this means making A-level time earlier, or freshers week later, then so be it), although in that great British way, a compromise has emerged, namely that some applicants will be allowed in on predicted grades, with a reserve of places at all institutions mandated for post-qualifying applicants. Unfortunately, this could well lead to a “land grab” by those students who get correctly-predicted grades, while those with less clairvoyant teachers and who outdo (or underdo) expectations are left to scrabble for the few remaining places - the same old nightmare of clearing looms its ugly head.

Ideally they should stick to a pure post-qualification system. Have exams earlier (given that A-levels are becoming more and more modular, this is less of a problem than it used to be), devote as much of summer as possible to the application process so that there’s no mad scramble. Even if we have a hybrid system, the above should still apply, along with a generous (or, if anything, over-generous) proportion of places reserved for post-qualification applicants. But no doubt there’ll be some bitching and whining (no doubt mostly from Oxbridge, who would hate to cram all that interviewing into the summer), so this ideal method will probably remain just that, an ideal…

A couple of months ago I spent an evening making a Greasemonkey app that turns postcodes into links to maps. However, I’ve been told that it doesn’t capture every single postcode - it turns out the regular expression I used for postcodes isn’t quite right (it doesn’t catch, for example, W1U 2BF). Fortunately, I managed to find this standard specification, and so I’ve been able to fix it so that it does work. Hurrah! For anyone needing a regular expression for UK postcodes in any sort of application, the following actually works properly:

/\b[A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y0-9][A-HJKSTUW0-9]?[ABEHMNPRVWXY0-9]? {1,2}[0-9][ABD-HJLN-UW-Z]{2}\b/g

(NB: This does not include the special case of the Gibraltar Girobank postcode, GIR 0AA)

The latest version is now 0.12 - those that already have the linkifier installed should reinstall it from here.