Alas one of our redoubtable Samzdatistas is marooned at Newark Airport as all flights into the UK have been delayed due to the volcano eruption in Iceland.
I am still pondering some way to blame David Cameron for this…
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According to the Telegraph…
According to Samizdata…
Nothing to see here, move along, move along. April 14th, 2010 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Incoming email from fellow Samizdatista Michael, just received:
The horror, the horror.
“Markt”? Is that proper spelling, or just email spelling?
Well, here are some ideas. They are snobs who only want good stuff to be available to richer people such as themselves? They are anti-capitalist scum who hate humans and want humans to die out, but only after they have died first? They oppose international free trade in food (or in anything) and blame Tesco for it? They used to run inefficient food shops that sold stale and overpriced food, until Tesco drove them out of business? I’m sure commenters can suggest further motivations for Tescophobia. April 13th, 2010 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
Allister Heath, over at CityAM, the free daily newspaper with a strong financial twist, seems at times to be about the only journalist in London making a robust case for free market capitalism, limited government and low taxes. Given how such a message is almost deemed off limits these days in the Conservative Party, and even City types seem shy about doing so, Allister’s editorials are a rare blast of good sense. He’s on good form today with this:
Exactly. With a lot of economic arguments, such as law of comparative advantage, the insight is not immediately obvious. That is why, for example, protectionist politicians can win votes by claiming that those evil foreigners are “taking our jobs” – it takes a bit of understanding to see the fallacy in this. And the tax incidence issue that is highlighted here is a good one. There is not just a tax incidence effect where a tax on a sector, such as banks, hits everyone. There is also regulatory incidence too. I don’t know exact numbers, but all the various health, safety, equality, and other rules that are imposed on firms add greatly to the total cost of buying a product. Consider how much of the regulatory burden, for example, translates into the actual price you pay for a car, fridge, or even step-ladder. So the Tories, in their bid for power, want to impose a tax on banks, and imagine that most voters will cheer and say, “good on yer iDave, give the banks a hard time!” and then fail to join the dots when they wonder why the interest on their accounts is so poor, or why it seems a bit harder to get a loan these days or why buying foreign exchange appears to be a rip-off. April 12th, 2010 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Recently I’ve been suffering from shingles, hence my silence here in recent weeks. Shingles has been no fun, but it would have been even less fun had it not been for Indian Premier League cricket on the television to take my mind off my discomforts. For the last forty and more days, there’s been at least one twenty-overs-each-way slogfest every day, and often, as yesterday, two. The last Brian Micklethwait posting here, written originally for here but then featured here (which cheered me up a bit just when I most needed that – thank you JP), was about the IPL, and about one of the things I most like about the IPL, namely the fact that it involves lots of Indians getting rich and being happy. I know what people mean when they claim that IPL-type cricket – slam bang, slog slog, all over in three and a half hours – is very unsubtle compared to proper day-after-day first class and test match cricket. I know what they mean when they say it’s not real cricket. But for me it’s real enough, and I like it, just as I like pop music and classical music. I also like very much that ITV4’s IPL coverage is free. I have never subscribed to Sky Sports, because that would mean wasting forty quid a month on a very few sporting events that I care about (mostly test match cricket in my case), and then, even worse, being tempted to waste the rest of my life watching a lot of other sporting nonsense, just so as not to waste all that money. If only I could spend a tenner a month and get all the best cricket, but nothing else. But there is still a price to be paid for IPL watching, in the form of adverts between overs, advertising logos all over the players’ shirts, and constant commercial self-interruptions by the numerous, obviously very well paid and hence thoroughly compliant commentators. Nothing exciting ever happens in IPL without it being described as a “City moment of success”, whoever or whatever “City” (“Citi”?) might be. All catches are described as being “carbon” Kemaal (sp?). Actually it’s Karbonn – a mobile phone enterprise, I think. And there is a big blimp that hovers above the grounds with “MRF” on it, which is something to do with a fast bowling scheme paid for by a rubber company, that the commentators talk about incessantly for no reason except that they have been commanded to. But I don’t care. For me this is all part of the Indians making money angle. And if all the Karbonn City Moment of Success DLF Maximum (a six) Maxx Mobile Time Out (a bigger than usual advertising break) crap gets too annoying, then I wait an hour or two and instead watch my recording of it all, fast forwarding through all the commerce. Which is also a way to waste less of my life. This didn’t matter when I was ill. Wasting my life watching cricket games all day long was all I was capable of, other than sleeping and being depressed. But now, as I improve, that’s an important consideration. → Continue reading: IPL and the changing culture of cricket April 12th, 2010 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Nobody on this blog has yet commented on the terrible events near Smolensk in Russia yesterday morning, so I will take a brief moment to do so myself. President Lech KaczyŠ„ski of Poland was probably best described as a conservative rather than a liberal, and was not someone who the people on this blog would agree with on everything. However, he was someone who lived under tyranny, and when faced with the question of whether you give in to such a tyranny or stand up to it, he stood up to it, and he spent a considerable time in prison as a consequence. Most of us are fortunate not to be tested in such a way, but here was a man who was tested and passed the test. For that he deserves immense respect. He was also about as pro-American and pro-Western as possible. For that also, he has my thanks. I am shaken, I suspect with much of the population of Poland, by the horrible historical irony. 88 members of the Polish elite, including pretty much the entire top brass of the Polish armed forces, died near Katyn forest yesterday morning. This is terrible. My sympathy to the friends and family of all these good people. April 11th, 2010 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the interesting exhibits in the pantheon of attempted explanations for the current financial crisis is the Kingdom of Spain. Spain had a massive real estate driven asset bubble, which has since collapsed. There is high unemployment, horrible public sector budget deficits, and lots of abandoned, half built housing projects around the coast. (In January, I struck up a conversation with some Australian engineers at the next table in a restaurant at lunchtime in the business district of Hanoi. Upon asking them how business was, they told me that there are lots of construction projects going on, but they were being undercut on price by Spanish and Italian companies. When domestic demand collapses, you look elsewhere). And yet, Spain has not had a financial crisis. Spain’s banks are generally solvent and in good shape. One explanation of this is that financial crises in other economies are more a symptom of the economic crisis rather than its cause. Asset bubbles end badly. Government overspending has consequences. One of Spain’s banks, Grupo Santander, has been expanding steadily throughout the world for a little over a decade. Unlike certain other banks of an expansionary nature (Royal Bank of Scotland, cough), Santander did not combine the acquisition of foreign banks with stupid lending, and so when the global banking sector fell in a heap a couple of years ago, Santander did what sound companies often do, and went looking for cheap assets. These included the small UK bank Alliance and Leicester, and the branch network and savings business of Bradford and Bingley (after its toxic assets had been nationalised by the UK government). Santander was an attractive buyer from the perspective of the UK government, as its expansionary frame of mind meant that it was unlikely to close branches and shed lots of employees. My general inclination here is to compliment the management on running a good business. However, there is something disturbing, just the same. I have felt this for a while. Spanish financial institutions (and in truth Spanish organisations of all kinds) have a thing for building office complexes in the suburbs of Madrid that look like something out of a James Bond movie. It would be mean to say something about lingering residues of fascism here, so I will not do this. However, the new headquarters (er, sorry, I mean the Ciudad Grupo Santander) shown in the above video really does appear to be a doosey. Professor Parkinson would no doubt have something to say here, but I feel oddly positive. However much I sometimes think that people who make corporate videos of this kind are best when placed on the B-Ark, being driven around by bright red Spanish banko-robots is certainly going to make marketing visits to foreign financial institutions a lot more fun. (Do they bring in Lewis Hamilton to race them on AGM day? Jokes about “augmented reality” in banking could go on and on, too). It’s a shame that they have to build this sort of thing in Madrid, though. Building it (perhaps on an artificial island?) next to the private zoo in King Alfonso XIII’s weird coastal folly in the actual Ciudad (non-Grupo) Santander would be fitting, in some unexplainable way. Link via Bruce Sterling. April 10th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
A quick link from me today to a recent talk given by Dr Stephen Davies at the Oxford Libertarian Society. Excellent piece, well worth your time. He absolutely nails the silly idea, put about both by communitarians of the left and right, that individualism is the same as lack of interest in a strong civil society. Quite the reverse. Here’s an interesting paper he wrote about crime and morality many years ago for the Libertarian Alliance. Also recommended. And he is giving the annual Chris R Tame memorial lecture for the Libertarian Alliance on 10 May in London. I’ll be there and hopefully, put up a review on what he has to say. April 9th, 2010 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
According to “Messenger”, a guest poster at Bishop Hill blog, they – in the form of the Climate Change Schools Project – are “bringing climate change to the heart of the national curriculum.” So far the the Climate Change Lead Schools network only consists of 80 schools from across the North East. But fear not, says the Project’s website, “They are helping to pave the way for what is hoped will become a national programme of positive climate change education and action, led by our young people.” I have a feeling that the words “led by our young people” are strictly conditional on said leadership being in one particular direction. The “Climate Cops” activity that so angered Messenger, in which children “book” their friends or parents for crimes against climate, has already reached beyond the area of the North East in which the “Lead Schools” were situated. I saw a leaflet about it in my local library. Creepy website here. It is sponsored by nPower, the gas and electricity company – another example of how big energy corporations, far from opposing climate change activism, frequently pay for it. April 8th, 2010 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
This headline caught my eye:
Shame he was not grilled a bit more about the Fed’s free-money policy that fuelled much of the credit crisis back in the days leading up to the housing bubble. Goodness knows what his old mentor would have made of this charade. April 7th, 2010 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
When David Cameron spoke to activists on the Embankment yesterday morning, one was at once splashed in the face by the cold water of the obsession with image: almost everyone in sight was young, several of them (including a man Mr Cameron ostentatiously embraced with that warm insincerity that is his trademark) from ethnic minorities, a correct proportion of them women. His approach has always been about ticking the boxes of militant superficiality. His main argument is that he is not the Labour Party. Well, not in name, at any rate. April 7th, 2010 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Prime Minister has announced the date of the UK general election between the Party of Big Government Regulatory Statism and, er, the Other Party of Big Government Regulatory Statism. Of course the media and quite a few bloggers will spend the time between now and then obsessing over the 3% margin in the purview of the state which differentiates them as if they were comparing chalk and cheese, whereas in fact they are arguing which is preferable for the terminally ill patient: pneumonic plague or bubonic plague. But nevertheless we will see an endless stream of Tories harrumphing that Dave Cameron’s brand of regulatory statism is in fact both the Small Government Society Friendly Ideal, The Saviour of the National Health Service, Market Friendly, Eco-Regulation Friendly and indeed all things to all people. And as a result, I urge people who feel the overwhelming urge to vote for anyone to put their X down for Britain’s only conservative party… and of course that means do not even consider voting Tory, unless a more inept version of Tony Blair (i.e. Tory Blair) is actually what you want. But please be clear on one thing: if you fear not voting Tory will give Labour more time to wreck the country, that is simply not the choice on offer…nothing meaningful will change in Britain as long as the two main parties are essentially as one on the size and scope of the state, which at the moment they most certainly are… …and if you vote to endorse that fact just because you (quite rightly) loath Gordon Brown, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. April 6th, 2010 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
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