Important data on the meaning of curves and wiggles.
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The UK authorities issued warnings of a freak rise in water levels in the North Sea yesterday, caused by a combination of tidal/atmospheric forces. There was a fear that flooding along the east coast of the UK – in places like the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts that are familiar to me – could be as bad as in 1953. Fortunately, some of those fears have abated, but not disappeared. The Thames Barrier flood defence has been put up. The warning was made in good time, so hopefully no lives are at risk. The report linked to here makes little mention of what the situation is on the other side of the North Sea, such as in the Netherlands. Odd. November 9th, 2007 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Every investor/economic commentator will have their own pet theories of when or if a market is going to hit the wall and the economy slow down. You would have to have been living in the upper reaches of the Amazon not to have realised that the global economic situation is looking dicier than for many months, at least as far as the West is concerned (emerging markets like India are a different story). Well, I wonder whether this story, about a disappointing art auction, is a harbinger. In the late 1980s, art fetched incredible prices: Van Goghs and Monets went for previously unheard of prices. But in the early 1990s the market sank before recovering as the dotcom boom took hold. November 8th, 2007 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable. – Sam Harris, rebutting the daft charge that a denial of belief in the afterlife or a supreme being must open the doors to hell on earth. November 7th, 2007 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is hard sometimes for someone who lives in what might be called the “Westminster village” to understand how monumentally boring are all the commentaries in the political press about Which Cabinet Minister is In and Who is the Favoured One of Gordon, etc. In the Daily Telegraph today, Rachel Sylvester ponders the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alisdair Darling, is a puppet of Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. Oh, the horror. To be honest though, much that I despise this government, it seems to show a lack of historical perspective to complain about the sheer dominance of a Prime Minister over Treasury affairs. I have been reading Douglas Hurd’s rather good biography of Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister of the mid-19th Century. As premier, Peel delivered budgets himself rather than get his Chancellor to do so. The budgets, which overthrew the Corn Laws – a system of trade tariffs – split the Tories at the time between the old landed gentry (who wanted tariffs) and the ‘Peelites’ (who wanted laissez faire). But Peel was using his old prerogative as ‘First Lord of the Treasury’ as the Prime Minister is known, to take the lead in economic and financial affairs. In the late 1980s, the same happened when Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the time, tried and failed to persuade Mrs Thatcher to accede to his demand that Britain join the European exchange rate mechanism (we did eventually join it, and a right disaster that turned out to be). Gordon Brown is guilty of many sins, but leading economic policy is not one of them. The problem is not the personnel, but the policies themselves. None of the major figures in the current government favour a more modest role for the state; everything else, my dears, is pure detail. November 6th, 2007 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Good luck, Mr Dodge. Andrew’s recent diagnosis has reminded me – I am 41 – to get a health check done once a year and catch these gremlins early (I have been remarkably lucky with my health, but no point in taking it for granted). What a way to mark Guy Fawke’s night. November 5th, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I started off wanting to cheer this article – an angry denunciation of the rich folk who often back Green causes – but I then began to wonder whether I was falling for what amounts to an ad hominem argument, and felt rather ashamed of myself. To be sure, it is true that many greenies are extremely well off, or comfortable members of a middle class that feels guilty about material wealth – the legacy of all kinds of crap cultural and political ideas – but is it really a killer argument that a cause X or Y is backed by rich folk like Zac Goldsmith or Peter Melchett? What counts in the end is are their ideas right or wrong? For instance, Bjorn Lomborg is a sharp debunker of eco-cant and I think his take on the more extreme forms of greenery is accurate, but what does it matter whether Lomborg is a middle class Danish academic, heir to a massive fortune, or a humble shop worker? There is a broader point here. At the Libertarian Alliance conference last weekend, I could not help reflecting on the many posh, incredibly rich folk who were old fashioned liberals (or Whigs, as they used to be called). The walls of the National Liberal Club – a fine institution – are adorned with wonderful portraits of gentlemen in frock coats and women in elegant dresses, or stern-looking 19th century businessmen and industrialists. One of the benefits of having an independent income is that it gives a group of people time to think about certain issues that cannot be done by someone working long hours for a salary and who has to please a boss; independence of means also can encourage independence of mind. So Brendan O’Neil is wrong on this occasion, although I share his skepticism on green scares 100%. I do not give a monkey’s whether Jonathan Porritt is posh or not; it is his reactionary ideas to roll back the glories of modern industrial civilisation that bother me very much. November 2nd, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whatever happened to getting your head down and doing the damn job? Whatever happened to going bowling in your own time? You want to take some of the crew from work? Well, that’s nice, too. And if a more fruitful professional relationship between a close-knit group of employees is the result, well isn’t that peachy? But really, if we are all big about this, shouldn’t we be able to interact productively without the panacea of fake camaraderie or a day throwing up in a corporate box at the races? Some of the 7/7 bombers went white-water rafting before the event, you know; and what great team players they turned out to be. – Martin Samuel. I have never suffered a “team building” trip away from the office, thank god (my boss has better things to do). November 2nd, 2007 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was trying to think of something profound to say but in the end, what the heck……… November 1st, 2007 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The campaign to become Mayor of London must be taking its toll. Boris Johnson writes today that the interests of the US and the rest of the world would be best served if Hillary Clinton reaches the White House. His reasoning is thin at best. Perhaps the real problem is that America, even though it is such a vast nation, has only been able to produce Presidential candidates of such dreadful quality as this lot (I am afraid that applies partly even to Ron Paul, for whom I have a lot of sympathy). November 1st, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
At the recent Libertarian Alliance conference in London, one of my favourite speakers, Leon Louw, mocked the idea that water on earth is scarce. Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with the wet stuff, in fact. What people mean when they say that water is scarce is not that there is a lack of H20, rather, there is a lack of drinkable, clean water. But the idea that water is scarce is, in and of itself, bonkers. As Leon said, if an alien from outer space talked to some ecological doomsters and heard their moans about water shortages, he would probably fly off in search of more intelligent life elsewhere. Heaven knows what an intelligent alien would make of George Monbiot. October 30th, 2007 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
You know the feeling. A market rises like a rocket; there is lots of gushing news items about how market X or Y is the hottest thing since the iPod; but there is a lot of muttering about the inevitable fall, the decline, or even the monster crackup. Well, it has sort of happened with the US credit market this year and the collapse of sub-prime mortgages (in plain English, the business of lending money to people who are often bad repayers). I have this sort of queasy feeling now about China. Do not get me wrong: I am delighted that China is a poster child for how things improve if you ditch certain aspects of collectivism, but it is still a long, long way from what a free society could or should be. And some of the economic data that comes out of that vast country gives economists cause for concern. October 29th, 2007 | 88 comments - (Comments are closed)
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