Fluent Radical

According to the BBC:

Network Rail, which runs Britain’s railway tracks and signals, is expected to announce it has made a profit for the first time in its history.

There is no sense in which we can call the excess subsidy that has been showered on this body a ‘profit’. Profit refers to your value added, to the amount by which you have made your customers’ lives better. Profit is not: compare your costs to the made up number which is what the government thinks it can get away with giving you, and if costs are smaller you win!

The very fact that subsidies are given to Network Rail means that it is NOT in profit. It would be in profit if it could fund itself by voluntary payments for services rendered to its customers. It CANT, so I have no idea where they get the cheek to say they are profitable.

Civitas has released a new set of ‘balanced’ student worksheets on the EU. Great idea, but what about this line in worksheet 4, paragraph 1:

The EU represents one of the greatest experiments in political history.For the first time nations have chosen to surrender aspects of their national sovereignty to a central body that has a responsibility to ensure that they act for the good not only of themselves but of other nations as well.

Aside from the tranzi sentiments (this is the pro-EU worksheet), is the EU really the first time that independent nations have pooled sovereignty to a central body? Seems like it might have happened before.

UPDATE: In a similar vein, Tim Worstall has problems with the same worksheet.