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Michael Totten, who has clearly been having some interesting times in Lebanon, has a fascinating article in LA Weekly about his first hand experiences attending a Hezbollah event as the ‘Party of God’ is trying to improve its image in the West. He does a good job of giving a sense of what these people are like and what their ideal vision of the future would be. December 15th, 2005 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Protectionism does not aid development. Developing countries with open economies are catching up with rich ones; those with closed economies are falling further behind. – Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Development December 15th, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
This from Your Guide to Oyster Daily Price Capping {pdf}
In other words: “Even if your travel is fully paid for, we still want to know where you are.” Is it just me, or is the Oyster logo half a pair of handcuffs? December 15th, 2005 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
I keep banging on about this subject since it is, in my eyes, a prime example of how the state is not pulling its share of the deal in coercing the citizenry to pay for schooling and for coercing children to spend the ages of 5 to 16 or more in school. Latest official data suggest that standards of literacy and numeracy among schoolchildren are not up to scratch.
Tony Blair is locked in conflict with his Labour backbench MPs over his education reforms. From a superficial reading, one would get the impression that Blair wanted to drastically open up the amount of choice available to parents as to where their offspring are educated. In practice, nothing so drastic seems to be on the cards and yet the slightest hint of increased choice seems to send socialists into a frenzy. The other night, the Institute of Economic Affairs held an evening to honour the late, great Arthur Seldon, who among other reforms made the idea of school vouchers one of his pet issues. It is fair to say that we are as yet a million miles from achieving the kind of choice in education that Arthur wanted to bring about. December 14th, 2005 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
As Christmas is almost upon us, it is a pleasure to read a nice article by a doughty basher of nanny-state puritanism, Jacob Sullum. Sullum states what many of us probably instinctively know to be true – a bit of what you fancy is good for you. Dark chocolate (yeh!), red wine (yeh again!) and even red meat (thrice yeh!). So in the interests of good health, I am now eyeing a bottle of fine Rhone red wine sitting on the rack in the kitchen. December 14th, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is good to see opposition to the absurdly named ‘Patriot Act’ but as expected, there are many who want to see this monstrous legislation extended. Looks like the best chance here is for moves to extend the provisions of the act falling to a filibuster and therefore allowing many of the more egregious aspects to expire. Much was made much of ‘sunsetting’ aspects of the Patriot Act when it was initially passed so one would have hoped Congress would be happy to see those parts of this draconian and intrusive law wither away. However the eternal trouble with giving the state more power is that ’emergency’ provisions inevitably become the norm from that point onwards as those in power are loath to ever accept a reduction in their ability to exert control over people. December 14th, 2005 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who’d put a tray of tea in front of her. – Clive Davis commenting on this. December 14th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
When the answer is bloody obvious, that is when! There is a public investigation by the US Congress underway into a string of disappearances aboard cruise ships. So let me get his straight, a cruise liner, which is in effect a floating pub in which people regularly drink to excess, has people disappear from it and that is… mysterious? How about this: they unwisely drink too much, they fall overboard when no one is looking and as a consequence they drown. And it takes a Congressional investigation to solve that ‘mystery’? December 14th, 2005 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an interesting post on Bjørn Stærk’s blog on his changing views of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. December 14th, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
In search of things to write about for the Globalisation Institute blog, I came across this report, itself about a report issued by the International Labour Organisation.
As a summary of what follows in this report of the report, this turns out to be severely misleading. Globalisation, according to what follows, is cranking out new jobs, and it is cranking out better jobs. True, it is not cranking out “new and better” jobs, all in one go, if by that is meant people in dirt poor countries now being able to leap in their thousands from having no jobs to having nice jobs, but that is hardly surprising.
There is still a lot of poverty in the world, in other words. So?
This is, at best, thoughtless bluster, and probably a flat lie. If he thought at all about this claim, Juan Somavia would realise that it is false, but he makes it anyway. I believe that he assumes that only the spending of tax money in explicitly labelled better job creation schemes would count as the intention to create better jobs. But I support globalisation, and write regular contributions for the Globalisation Institute blog, because I believe that globalisation is creating and will continue to create “better jobs and income for people” all over the world. This is a big part of why I do this. And I am definitely not the only one who thinks thus. Does Juan Somavia sincerely believe that all of us who enthusiastically support globalisation are indifferent to “better jobs and income for people”? Maybe he really is that ignorant, but I doubt it.
Once again, bad policies to achieve “decent work” – making indecent work illegal, and making it obligatory to perpetuate all decent work (“sustainable”) indefinitely, I assume – are confused with wanting lots of decent work. I do want lots of decent work for people, but believe that making indecent work illegal, and all firing of people from decent work illegal, is the absolute worst possible way to achieve that outcome. Making indecent work illegal hurts the very poorest people in a downright lethal way, by taking away even the crap jobs that they do now have and can now get, and it kicks away a vital rung in the ladder from no work to indecent work to decent work, which guarantees that the lethality will continue indefinitely. Charming. Demanding that all decent work be “sustainable” is to demand the impossible, and to guarantee idleness for all. The other thing to say about that weasely paragraph is that all that it really says is that poverty is not being got rid of as fast as it might be, and as fast as would be nice. My interpretation of that truism being that globalisation is not working as fast as it might to make all that decent work (some of it perhaps even somewhat sustainable), all that “better jobs and income for people”, and my conclusion is that globalisation should be intensified, and that Juan Somavia and his ilk should get out the way and let that happen. → Continue reading: Juan Somavia and the ILO lose the globalisation argument December 13th, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has announced that there will be no public inquiry into the London bombings of July 7th; instead the Home Office will publish what was described on the BBC 10 o’clock news as a “narrative of events”. Will this be formally known as the “official story”, I wonder? December 13th, 2005 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is nice to see that a compatriot of mine is presently making the case for free trade at the WTO summit in Hong Kong, at which the usual bunch of vested interest and anti-globalisation protestors have shown up. Seriously, that anyone can go to Hong Kong and then attempt to argue that free trade is against the interests of the poor just boggles the mind. But they do. (link once again via Tim Blair). December 13th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
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