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Allow me to be entirely cynical here

\”I certainly have seen the benefits that can come from [oil] royalties. Schools are better. There are swimming pools, gymnasium, cars – and jobs – all the result of billions of dollars.\”

Patricia Cochran, a former chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council from Alaska, expresses the view of many indigenous people on industrial development in the Arctic. Vast oil and mineral wealth have brought huge benefits to some communities.

But her own conflicted feelings about development neatly sum up the dilemma that indigenous leaders in the region face. In Barrow – Alaska\’s oil capital – there are also high rates of suicide and depression, while offshore drilling is a threat to subsistence whaling and the hunting of seals and walrus, she points out. So despite the benefits, Cochran is personally quite negative about industrial development and questions the wider benefit to society.

…..

But even there, local leaders of indigenous people have mixed views about who is really benefiting. And overall the \”community\” representing indigenous people is split down the middle over the issue.

As I say, entirely cynical.

Traditional leaders are going to be against any change. When you\’re at the top of a society you know damn well that change might topple you from that position. And yes, there are those who would rather be top than to be middle or bottom in a much richer society.

Yer average Guardian reader would understand this instinctively about the British aristocracy or the Bullingdon Boys. But they never seem to make the connection with the same thing happening in other societies.

Greece, S&P and default

Much outrage from the usual quarters at this statement:

The credit rating agency said on Monday that allowing a debt rollover would amount to a \”selective default\” by Greece, undermining eurozone politicians\’ efforts to avoid such an outcome.

How dare a private company undo the hard work of so many politicians etc.

Thing is though, what do the contracts that were written before we thought there was going to be a default say about this? What is actually the law about this?

No, I don\’t know either, but I would assume that there\’s some listing of what \”default\”, \”selective default\” and so on actually mean with reference to these specific bonds. There are hundreds of pages of bumpf that accompany each issue after all.

Now, maybe it is silly that a voluntary extension of maturities is described as a selective default, with all the implications that has for whether the bonds (perhaps all Greek bonds?) can be used as collateral at the ECB etc. Maybe it isn\’t, again, I just don\’t know.

But I do know that I want whatever is in those contracts to be the criteria by which the issue is decided. For that is the rule of law. No, I don\’t want politicians and or bureaucrats to be able to just decide upon what is convenient at any time, I want the law to be written own, perhaps in a contract, perhaps in legislation, and then everyone has to act according to what has been agreed everyone has to act up to.

To do otherwise is to take us into the appalling miasma of rule by whoever gets to issue the dictats: not a notably democratic procedure nor, if truth be told, one that leads to a flourishing of freedom and liberty.

I\’ve no problem with people arguing, heck, even the law being changed, or the contracts being written, that future bond issues should not be in default if maturities are voluntarily extended. But currently extant bonds have to be treated under whatever rules the currently issued bonds were issued.

The whining about S&P seems to be coming from pretty much the same quarters as those who hail the \”legally binding carbon commitments\”. And I\’m sorry to have to tell you this folks but if you insist upon the law being followed in one area then you\’re duty bound to insist on it being followed in all.

No problems at all with attempts to change it for the future: but if you want to ignore the law on bonds now then what\’s to stop us ignoring the law on carbon later?

Don\’t send food to Africa

Finally, people are getting what should be done when there\’s a looming famine:

In Kenya, Save The Children is giving people vouchers to buy food in local markets. Several other aid groups are piloting similar schemes, some of them simply handing out cash to people who need food, or transferring it to their mobile phones using the country\’s wildly popular Mpesa mobile money system. At a stroke, this boosts businesses and cuts out the sometimes months-long lag between food aid being bought, shipped and distributed by the big international agencies.

\”If you had people needing extra food in the West, you wouldn\’t give them food parcels, you\’d pay money into their bank accounts,\” says a veteran British aid worker in Nairobi. \”The US gives food stamps. Why has it taken so long to come around to the same thinking in Africa?\”

It isn\’t that there\’s a general shortage of food. It\’s that some people don\’t have the money to buy the food that is there.

So, give them money, not wait 6 months to ship food from wherever.

Oh, and the reason this isn\’t done more generally?

Politics. The EU would prefer to send the food mountains, the US to send Mid-West food on US owned ships.

Would you believe it was actually George Bush the younger who tried to change this system and was rebuffed by Congress?

How interesting from Ritchie

That’s what the American right want:  have no doubt that their aim is to undermine the effectiveness of democratic government by destroying its capacity to operate.  That’s exactly what they’re doing in the US right now.

And that is precisely why all democrats the world over should be opposing them.

Democracy means people not part of the demos opposing those elected by the demos.

It means, for example, the Tea Party being righteous in opposing something Caroline Lucas proposes in the UK Parliament.

Certainly an interesting definition of democracy.

What a very good question

How many people today – especially professional pundits, professors, and politicians – believe simultaneously in both of the following propositions: (1) raising taxes on imports reduces the amount of importing activity significantly enough to cause noticeable increases in activities that are substitutes for importing (such as producing more of the high-tariffed goods domestically); and (2) raising taxes on incomes does not reduce the amount of income-earning activity significantly enough to cause noticeable increases in activities that are substitutes for income-earning activity (such as taking more leisure)?

In the English context we might ask this of Caroline Lucas. She who desires \”protection\” for local products and also higher taxes on \”the rich\”.

If it works for one then why not for the other? If tariffs reduce trade, why does income tax not reduce incomes?

Our only problem might be that Caroline\’s economic advisor is R. Murphy, retired accountant extraordinaire from Wandsworth. Who, when musing on this specific question, the influence of higher taxation on people substituting for leisure, managed to purport that married women would re-enter the labour force as a result of higher taxation. That is, that for married women in the income effect was greater than the substitution effect.

In direct opposition to every piece of empirical research which has been done on the subject. All of which shows that married women are more sensitive to the tax wedge than single women and all men. That they are more likley to choose leisure (or more likely, household production) as tax rates rise.

This was actually in a submission he made to The Treasury, which must have caused the odd giggle there.

So if we did in fact ask Ms. Lucas we\’d just get some entirely nonsensical gibberish from her economic advisor.

As usual.

Umm, no Boris

Nice idea but wholly wrong.

Now let us imagine that each of these players had won the £1.1 million prize money and dutifully carried it home for the inspection of the local taxman in his own country. It is a stunning fact that Britain’s Andy Murray would have faced a more vicious fiscal clobbering than virtually anyone else at Wimbledon.

Spain had three players in the last 16, including Rafael Nadal. In spite of his country’s enormous budgetary problems, Rafa would have paid less than Andy – 47 per cent; and the Spanish got rid of their patrimonio, or wealth tax, two years ago. Moving down the tax rates, we come next to Australia’s Bernard Tomic, who faced a bill of 45 per cent. The three French players were going to be hit for 40 per cent tax – mais oui. We used to think of France as a much higher tax economy than our own, where people were bled white to pay for their trains to go at tres grande vitesse; now their top rate is fully 10 points lower than our own. The American Mardy Fish and the Argentinian Juan Martin del Potro were facing bills of only 35 per cent.

For, you see, foreigners doin\’ sportin\’ stuff in the UK pay UK tax in the UK:

Foreign athletes and entertainers performing in the UK are subject to UK tax on tournament prize winnings, appearance fees, and other sports-related income earned in the UK. They are also taxed on the UK proportion of their worldwide endorsement income.

My word, wasn\’t making nursing an all graduate profession a good idea?

Bedsores kill almost as many patients as the MRSA superbug and health chiefs warn the cost of treating sufferers uses four per cent of the entire NHS budget.

The sores – also known as pressure ulcers – cause hundreds of deaths a year, taking hold when bed-bound patients are not regularly turned over or given special mattresses by nurses.

We\’ve known how to prevent bedsores for a long time now.

Chief Executive Peter Walsh said: \”Its down poor nursing care and there should be zero tolerance of bed sores. But sadly they are accepted and it leads to a lot of misery and suffering for patients and their relatives.

\”These are highly preventable. Stopping them is not rocket science. But in many hospitals they happen too easily.\”

So, now that nurses are all professionals, dispensing drugs and doing important stuff, who is doing the nursing?

Poor show by the bookie

Fred Done, whose Betfred bookie won the race for the Tote with a £265m bid, is continuing to resist paying five punters who placed bets showing profits of £823,000 with its Gibraltar-based online wing, Betfred.com.

It has declared the bets void – even though it has paid out on wagers placed by UK punters in its 840 betting shops.

Four of the five individuals are related to Mr Curley, 70, who has a long track record in stinging the bookies with gambles on horses trained at his small Newmarket yard.

Although it has to be said, not as bad as one bookmaker past.

Or at least so it is rumoured, when a punter won big back in the 60s the shop which contained the betting slip burned down overnight, before he could get there to claim his winnings.

A quite remarkable coincidence that.

The EU is not democratic

Democracy is, in the end, the ability to kick the bastards out.

If there is merit in our western system of government, it lies surely in the intense scrutiny of our leaders and the ability to turn out ineffective or blatantly venal ones after a short interval.

Yet both of these qualities are lacking at the EU level, where unelected officials wield enormous power and the elected representatives of the people are cosseted and remote.

We can\’t ergo the EU is not democratic.

The £41,000 Comment is Free article

Anthony Giddens was paid to promote Ghaddafi.

The broadcaster was among a number of influential people in the west recruited by the US based Monitor Group to help enhance the profile of Libya between 2006 and 2009 when Muammar Gaddafi was attempting to improve international relations.

In addition to Sir David Frost, documents released by the Monitor Group, reveal that Anthony Giddens, a former director of the London School of Economics (LSE), who was ennobled by Tony Blair, was also on the payroll.

Lord Giddens was paid £41,500 after making two visits to Tripoli during which he took part in a public discussion alongside an American academic, chaired by Sir David.

Anthony Giddens wrote this piece for Comment is Free.

Will real progress be possible only when Gadafy leaves the scene? I tend to think the opposite. If he is sincere in wanting change, as I think he is, he could play a role in muting conflict that might otherwise arise as modernisation takes hold. My ideal future for Libya in two or three decades\’ time would be a Norway of North Africa: prosperous, egalitarian and forward-looking. Not easy to achieve, but not impossible.

Hard hitting, fearless, reporting as I\’m sure you will agree.

£41,500 is a bit steep to pay for it though: the normal fee for CiF is £85.00.

Lies about trafficking *again*

Over in the Observer. My comment there:

Umm, you\’ve got confused here over the definition of \”trafficked\”. Bit like Julie Bindel which isn\’t company that any self-respecting journalist wants to keep (as a polemicist she\’s fine, factual journalism not so much).

1) Those forced, against their will, into sex slavery.

2) Those transported illegally but with their consent into the sex trade.

Definition 1) is the correct one: it\’s what the Palermo Protocol calls it for example. It\’s also a vile, vile crime and very much illegal. It\’s also extremely rare: recall Operation Pentameter in which every police force in the country went looking for victims and found enough evidence to prosecute precisely zero people of the crime.

Definition 2), well, sure, lot of people are upset about it. But since it is legal to be a prostitute (which in the UK it is) and there\’s lots of poor women out there happy enough to be one compared to the meagre rewards on offer at home: well, fine and dandy to be upset about it but it is an entirely different problem, isn\’t it?

Unless you want to equate fiddling visas with the repeated rape of a sex slave?

Yes Willy

But in a submission that the Work Foundation, supported by National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, is preparing for the banking commission, Paul Nightingale and myself argue that it could also transform the risks and rewards from lending to high-growth small- and medium-sized companies

 

Sounds like a blindingly good idea to me. We should, no, really, we should, be taking advice on the entire structure of British industry from those who managed to drive their own organisation, the Work Foundation, into bankruptcy.

What could possibly go wrong?

This is a surprise, isn\’t it?

Patients with life-threatening illnesses are struggling to get vital drugs from their pharmacies more than a year after ministers promised to tackle the problem, the Observer has established.

The shortages are so acute that patients are reporting problems finding ibandronic acid pills – known by the name Bonviva – used to fight bone cancer. The Observer reported last year that breast cancer sufferers were struggling to obtain the drug Femara.

The Labour government held a meeting with drugs companies, pharmacists and medical experts and promised action to tackle the problem. The trade body Pharmacy Voice said the shortages of crucial drugs were widespread.

\”There are supply problems with about 50 medicines, including drugs to treat cancer, Parkinson\’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, kidney disease, high blood pressure and epilepsy.\”

Hmm. Shortage of manufactured goods. I wonder what could be the problem? In 2007:

The soaring cost of the NHS drugs bill will fall sharply if ministers agree to the biggest shake-up in pricing policy in more than half a century.

Uhnh Hunh

Drug companies, who make billions of pounds in profits each year, will for the first time be forced to link the price they charge the National Health Service to the value the medicine offers to patients.

The proposed change is being made by the Office of Fair Trading, which has been conducting an investigation into the prices of medicines since September 2005.

Price controls, I see.

Really, no one could see that one coming, could they? Never been known at all that if you set prices lower than the market clearing price then shortages develop?

I dunno, maybe someone could set up some specialised branch of knowlege to study such things.

An American question about the English

\”Oh man,\” says Guarisco. \”There are so many different levels of excitement.\” And then suddenly, a thought strikes him. In a rare moment of something approaching concern he asks: \”Do people dance where you\’re from?\”

Err, yes, but in a slightly whitebread drunken uncle at the wedding disco sort of way.

The native dance is the Morris which doesn\’t really lend itself to the complex cross rhythms of zydeco…..

There is also the manner in which Judaism is a popular religion* in nightclubs what with the same sex dancing in circles: for the women the pile of handbags forming the focus.

 

 

 

* Yes, alright, it\’s a variation on the PJ O\’Rourke joke about the Polish. So sue me.

CO2 and backup plants

What I\’d be interested to know is whether this is in fact true?

Centrica and other energy companies last week told DECC that, if Britain is to spend £100 billion on building thousands of wind turbines, it will require the building of 17 new gas-fired power stations simply to provide back-up for all those times when the wind drops and the windmills produce even less power than usual.

We will thus be landed in the ludicrous position of having to spend an additional £10 billion on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept running on \”spinning reserve\”, 24 hours a day, just to make up for the fundamental problem of wind turbines. This is that their power continually fluctuates anywhere between full capacity to zero (where it often stood last winter, when national electricity demand was at a peak). So unless back-up power is instantly available to match any shortfall, the lights will go out.

Two things make this even more absurd. One, as the energy companies pointed out to DECC, is that it will be amazingly costly and wildly uneconomical, since the dedicated power plants will often have to run at a low rate of efficiency, burning gas but not producing electricity. This will add billions more to our fuel bills for no practical purpose. The other absurdity, as recent detailed studies have confirmed, is that gas-fired power stations running on \”spinning reserve\” chuck out much more CO2 than when they are running at full efficiency – thus negating any savings in CO2 emissions supposedly achieved by the windmills themselves.

That we need to have backup gas stations, yes, agreed that that is obviously true. There\’s no other energy production (or, rather, energy conversion system into \’leccie) that is sufficiently responsive to be able to act as back up.

But is it actually true that the CO2 emissions from such back up are going to be greater than the emissions saved by having the windmills?

Yes, I know, there\’s a number of people saying it will be. And from the other side, well, I\’ve not really seen a discussion of this from the pro-windmill side.

So, can anyone point me to a reasoned and reasonable discussion of this point: what are the emissions from the required back up?

No, people telling us that a smart grid will do it all are not good enough. Yes, I know that Greenpeace et al start their calculations by saying we\’ll be using less energy in 40 years than we do now. And that energy will be intermittent at the discretion of the grid (that\’s what those smart meters allowing power to be cut to houses at times of peak demand are all about). That\’s not what I mean at all.

What are the emissions from gas fired back up as against emissions not made by having windmills?

If only…..

As a result, the Government says that it can\’t wait for the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling: it wants to legislate immediately. The trouble is, when governments legislate in haste, they usually end up with something that has worse consequences than the problem they meant to correct. From dangerous dogs to the prevention of terrorism, the record of emergency legislation is dismal: Acts passed at high speed are usually dismantled just as quickly.

It\’s not so much that bad laws do get passed when laws get passed quickly.

It\’s that they don\’t get unpassed when we realise that they\’re bad laws.

Take, say, the European Arrest Warrant. Even Chris Bleedin\’ Huhne realises that he and his Lib Dem mukkers voted for an appallingly bad law.

Still got that law though, don\’t we?

And yes, this does go to the heart of the whole government/market thing as well. What markets are merciless at is persecuting fuckups. Governments and politics not so much.

Advertising abortion clinics

The plans have sparked controversy, with pro-life campaigners accusing advertising authorities of \”trivialising\” human life by treating terminations as a consumer choice like cars or washing powder.

They emerged as a report accused clinics of using \”hard sell\” marketing to push pregnant women seeking counselling into having terminations, in order to make more money.

Under the draft recommendations, drawn up by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, which regulates TV and radio commercials, dozens of independent hospitals carrying out abortions will be able to advertise their services to consumers.

Until now, restrictions have meant abortion clinics can only advertise their services if they are not run for profit.

This is amusing, isn\’t it?

All those screaming that private companies must not be allowed to cherry pick from the NHS, must not be allowed to profit from health care. So, you are all up in arms about private for profit companies being able to make money out of killing babies women controlling their fertility then?

If not, why not?

But to the specific point of advertising on TV: if it\’s legal to do the act, which it is, legal to perform the service or produce the good, then I\’d say it\’s legal for you to advertise it. Simple freedom of speech would seem to require that. Why is the producer of one legal good allowed to tell people about their production and the producer of another not?

This does rather run into the problem that my view would therefore allow the advertising of booze, fags, dildoes and all the rest on TV. Which, of course, it would. And I have a sneaky feeling that those most likely to say that \”Of course!\” abortion clinics should be allowed to advertise would be those most against allowing baccy to be advertised. Which is an odd position to hold really: both kill people but one incidentally, the other the death is the very purpose. Odd to argue that only the one that intends to kill is the one allowed to advertise.

Still, the fact that there are restrictions on what can be avertised, on whatever grounds, makes their case for allowing the advertising of abortion clinics a little harder. For once the \”it\’s legal, go ahead\” line has been breached, then what are the dividing lines between what can and cannot be advertised?

\”What I like or approve of\” isn\’t a justification for such restrictions upon free speech really, is it?

So on what basis can we distinguish between \”Come kill your baby with us, we really care\” and \”Have a gin M\’Dear\”?

Or even, why can\’t the gin companies advertise a bottle and a hot bath in competition with the abortion clinics?

 

Yes, I know my views on abortion are well out of the mainstream. No, that\’s not the point of this piece at all.