August 29, 2010 • 1:39 pm 5
A mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after he was given the controversial MMR vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 compensation.
The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab.
From the Daily Mail. Six facts;
Five questions;
I would suggest “no,” “yes,” “yes,” “yes,” and “because they market themselves to a bunch of moralising fuckwits who use science when it seems to suit them (Wakefield) and insult it when it doesn’t (all subsequent research on MMR and autism).”
Any alternative answers anyone would like to submit, as I readily admit I have not had a chance to read the judgement of look at the medical records?
August 27, 2010 • 7:13 pm 2
Tom Freeman has crunched some numbers and come up with some figures on the voters Labour has lost since 2001.They are broken down by socio-economic group, or class as those dastardly Marxists call it, and they are grim reading for Labour Party members (among whose number I do not count).
He has produced absolute numbers of voters lost, but I think something relative is more useful. Think about it, Labour has always attracted more votes from class DE than from AB, so any general declines will show up as a larger absolute figure even if the trend for each class is identical.
Like Tom, “I’ve assumed a consistent electorate for all three elections of 2010 size and social structure: 44.4 million people, of whom 27% are social group AB, 29% C1, 21% C2 and 23% DE.”
After producing the above graph Tom concludes that “Over the two parliaments, Labour lost about 80,000 ABs, 560,000 C1s, 990,000 C2s and 650,000 DEs.” Quickly crunching some numbers myself, I work it out as the loss of 13% of the AB vote they secured in 2001 relative to now, 26% of C1 votes, 41% of C2 votes and 27% DE. These swings look large tp so I may need to revisit this; however to me they pass the sniff test, 2010 was bad and 2001 was good for Labour.
There has been an across the board decline in pro-Labour sentiment but it has been particularly concentrated towards the middle and bottom of the income scale, particularly C2 voters.
While we shouldn’t give too much weight to these clumsy formations of class, Labour cannot deny that its decline from popularity seems to vindicate those who claim it deserted those who traditionally relied on the Party. No matter who becomes the leader, the Labour Party have a large hill to climb to regain the trust of those who have deserted it, identifying who they are, and why they did it will be important.
However, too much introspection can be a bad thing, especially with a Government in power intent on radical (and largely regressive) change. Labour must work out why people left and what to do about it by the next election if they want reelection, there are no quick fixes and it must be a parliament long process local process. In the mean time inaction is not an option, so they must fight the coalition wherever necessary as continue present their best alternative plans wherever possible.
Filed under: Politics
August 27, 2010 • 5:57 pm 0
Lots of people suggest the climate is not changing. That is why pages like this are necessary. They are becoming less numerous, but people who deny the climate is changing are out there. There is some argument over what is causing climate change, but the overwhelming body of evidence points to many made warming.
1. The actual measuring of temperatures is not consistent, is over-focussed on urban areas and airports, and is seriously incomplete over large areas.
2. Most predictions are models. Science cannot make a firm conclusion based on models, and the older models (i.e. those that have had a chance to be verified) have generally been proven wrong.
3. The mechanisms involved in man-made global warming are not yet fully understood.
4. The paleoclimatological reconstructions have been dominated by reconstructions which are statistically poor, over-reliant on small numbers of proxies and which do not fit with the recorded modern trend, making the claim that current warming is exceptional rather doubtful.
Those are just the arguments available from http://www.skepticalscience.com and they are all peer review journal referenced, so you can go to the primary sources from the links provided.
You say: [You are] making up your definition of sceptic and then trying to say that because I don’t fit in your box I can’t be a sceptic.
I say: “The Western tradition of systematic skepticism goes back at least as far as Pyrrho of Elis (ca. 360 BC – ca. 270 BC). He was troubled by the disputes that could be found within all philosophical schools of his day. According to a later account of his life, he became overwhelmed by his inability to determine rationally which school was correct. Upon admitting this to himself, he finally achieved the inner peace that he had been seeking.”
I say: “In ordinary usage, skepticism (US) or scepticism (UK) (Greek: ‘σκέπτομαι’ skeptomai, to look about, to consider; see also spelling differences) refers to:
In philosophy, skepticism refers more specifically to any one of several propositions. These include propositions about:
I say: That other climate change “sceptics” have attempted to hijack one of the oldest philosophical schools of thought to lend credence to an anti-science campaign.
I say that the climate science is at times unreliable but that we understand the climate better now than we ever have. Climate change “sceptics” have adopted anything but a sceptical attitude, they have become radically detached from any mainstream epistemological position and just declare “the models don’t work” (where there is evidence they do), moaning that “the evidence is corrupted” (where there is evidence it is not), whining “we need more research” (where that is exactly what we are doing.
My problem with the climate change “sceptic” position is that in large part it is not sceptical, it is the opposite. Closed minded people deriding evidence even when it is presented to them.
To conclude, I’d ask again Matt Munro, have you looked at http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php yet? Because you keep making the same mistaken arguments and I keep pointing you towards a site full of contrary evidence. If you were a sceptic, even by your own definition, you would have already looked at this site, and you would be able to tell me why you are unconvinced.
I propose the euthanasia of the epithet “climate change denier”, as someone who has been to Auschwitz any flippant reference to the holocaust has always stuck in my throat. Instead we should call these people climate change “sceptics”, with emphasis on the quotation marks. I’ll finishing by quoting about real climate change scepticism:
“The distinction between scepticism and non-belief is a crucial one. While scepticism is healthy, non-belief in the face of overwhelming evidence is the antipathy of scepticism. Recent climate scepticism has been characterised by a visceral mistrust of science, scientific institutions and scientific governance. Never mind that the case for climate change has been painstakingly pieced together over decades – climate change sceptics are busy writing it off on the basis of a few inconsistencies.
But embarrassingly for climate change sceptics, the people who have thought longest and hardest about what it means to be a truly sceptical thinker seem in a hurry to distance themselves from their fellow sceptics. Michael Marshall, from the Merseyside Skeptics group that organised the homeopathy overdose is clear about the legitimacy of climate change sceptics: “In our view, climate change sceptics are not sceptics. A sceptic looks at the available evidence and makes a decision, and for homeopathy the evidence is that it doesn’t work. But the sceptical position on climate change is that it is happening.”
August 26, 2010 • 12:56 pm 0
via Bad Conscience
Filed under: Politics
August 25, 2010 • 7:37 pm 7
Filed under: Blogging
August 25, 2010 • 9:00 am 5
I am off to a job interview today, so just a little bit of light flaming today:
In [Will Straw's] latest post, I saw the classic doubleplusgoodspeak. People are either disabled or non disabled apparently. Non disabled people are bastards and should provide rose petal strewn wheelchair access to every facility in London. And we should pay for it too. Because it is our fault. Even if we have bought them 8,000 new buses, huge bogs, installed lifts in playgrounds and sheltered bungalows and produced driving licences in braille.
And to cap it all, I have offended some disabled readers by calling myself “able bodied” not “non disabled”.
Thank FUCK this lot are no longer in power. I choose what I call myself and you remain free to be offended. I already know you will be offended that people can climb Everest whilst you can’t. I accept you will be offended that skiing is off limits to you. I sympathise that you are offended that you will never join the Parachute Regiment. But don’t you ever, EVER tell me I cannot call myself “able bodied” because you are not and that “injustice” offends you.
I am off to punch a Lesbian dwarf.
Old Holborn is, unsurprisingly, angry. It appears his spluttering outrage has led him to, unsurprisingly, see a number of things which are not there.
First of all, the post to which he links has been written by Sarah Ismail, not Will Straw. Sarah of course blogs at Same Difference a site with news, views and information for disabled people. So Old Holborn’s outrage is somewhat misdirected.
Secondly, most people said they were not offended by Old Holborn.
sarah says:
I personally don’t mind the phrase ‘able bodied’ but some disabled people do. Wasn’t sure.
Mary says:
I’m not *offended* by ‘able bodied’ but I *prefer* ‘non disabled’, particularly in discussions centred on disability where it isn’t about the ‘able bodied’ perspective.
Next, some people against which OH rails even use the term “able bodied” themselves.
Lisa says:
…I do use the phrase “able-bodied” to specifically mean the opposite of “physically impaired”. Like the time I tweeted about an able-bodied friend of mine changing a light bulb for me. She is disabled, but the fact that she’s also able-bodied is how she was able to change a light bulb for me…
What? Fourth error now? No one was telling Old Holborn how to talk or think, only suggesting that the opposite of being disabled is not actually able bodied.
Yes, many of us ARE offended by the term ‘non-disabled’. There are innumerable disabled people whose bodies are perfectly abled. They are those with learning difficulties and mental health problems. And some of them have extreme difficulties with using inaccessible transport in London, too. It’s polite to avoid creating hierarchies by including ALL disabled people in terminology relating to us.
Apologies. It’s the phrase ABLE-BODIED that I object to. The phrase ‘non-disabled’ is the preferred phrase.
I shouldn’t be commenting on blogs when I’m tired!
People with mental health problems are disabled and face a number of problems, yet they can also become the Heavy Weight Champion of the World. I agree that “non disabled” is a cumbersome term, but if you want to communicate clearly the opposite of disabled is not always “able bodied.”
To top it all off, and this is wonderful, in the end the only person telling people what language to use and how to think is Old Holborn himself!
I await your proposal for the taxpayer to fund an escalator to the top of Ben Nevis.
Also, can you please stop using the doubleplusgood term “non disabled”. It’s “able bodied”
Why oh why don’t people take Libertarians seriously? This is further to past posts and comments mocking Old Holborn.
A Scottish Conservative Strategy Suggestion: In May the Tories quite famously did not manage to unseat Labour nort… http://bit.ly/9o18WB
August 24, 2010 • 10:10 pm 4
Good evening,
I have been a subscriber for many years and enjoy the Newspaper hugely.
I recently received offer GIG59 inside another publication. This offer includes a free copy of The Economist and a one gigabyte Economist Branded Memory Stick (phone 0845 357 8006 or text ECON to 60300).
I was wondering if as a long standing subscriber I could have one of these Memory Sticks posted to me free of charge.
You may as well, I could of course sign up as one of my friends or colleagues and get the Memory Stick that way, but I thought I would send a request in first.
Yours faithfully,
[Censored]
______
Sent tonight via The Economist website.
UPDATE:
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Filed under: Society
August 24, 2010 • 2:58 pm 0
August 24, 2010 • 10:00 am 4
I wrote earlier this month on China’s economic transformation and what it meant for the attractiveness of democracy for a developing country. Contrary to popular belief, popular Democracy, rather than the unpopular iron hand of an authoritarian bastard, is the best method to secure growth.
Dani Rodrik explains in a piece for Project Syndicate that Democracies prove better at providing both long run growth and are also better at providing long run stability and smoothing the ups and downs of an economy. When you are poor that last thing is really important, with the underdeveloped financial systems which are common in poor countries it is very difficult to save for the event of erratic year to year earning.
Institutions matter for development and developing those institutions is not an easy task, as the massive divergence in incomes between the rich world and poor world illustrate. Democracy offers the best meta-institution for developing these institutions. However, Democracy obviously is not the only show in town.
There are two countries which from 1800 of the last 2000 years dominated the world in terms of population and wealth; China and India. At the moment these two countries appear to be running an experiment to see whether Democracy or Authoritarianism is best for reclaiming their former prominence. China’s Authoritarianism seems to be winning and this could prove bad news for freedom lovers the world across.
When it comes to the pre-eminence of Democracy in delivery growth, I think Rodrik overplays his hand [1] when he says that Democracy is clearly the best system for providing growth. An Authoritarian system can remain dynamic so long as it remains decentralised and a large array of political strategies can be tried simultaneously to reduce the impact of a single failure. For example, if only Gansu had attempted the Great Leap Forward it would still have been a tragedy, but it would have been a smaller tragedy. If Gansu had tried it and failed then others would not have followed. When Fengyang introduced the Household Responsibility System it was a success and it was copied.
Therefore, even if undemocratic, there is an asymmetry which favours decentralised systems. China is one such decentralised systems, in fiscal terms perhaps the most decentralised in the world, and its success is largely characterised by “crossing the river by feeling for stones”; making things up as they went along. This partially explains China’s undemocratic success.
India has not grown as dynamically as China has, and the last decade has seen a clear divergence between the successful India and the very successful China. In the medium to long term however, we are likely to see each system stress tested; for a variety of reasons I think it is very likely India will prevail in any contest.
In short, Democratic counties are better at dealing with external shocks and at maintaining stable economies, in the long run this matters more as to who is successful. India has many institutions, like Parliamentary Democracy, a loyal opposition and recourse to the law, which are lacking or underdeveloped in China. If this is added to the fact that China is more vulnerable than India to internal and external shocks then we can see that the fate of the world remains, thankfully, democratic.
First of all, although internally India has a long tradition of insurgency and regional violence, in many cases democratic settlements have been reached. In an authoritarian country like China, the release of tension which democratic negotiation and reconciliation offer are unavailable. Similarly, although the Chinese are often characterised as passive and obedient, they have a long history of rebellion. 1989 saw the outbreak of a movement which actively tried to challenge the ruling class. The militant strike waves seen in China illustrate that internal stability is not guaranteed.
Secondly, India faces less external threats than China does. Although Pakistan has nuclear weapons the chances of it using them are slim. Islamic Terrorism is a problem, but not an insurmountable one by any means. Happily, the collapse of the North Korean State is all but certain, sadly, this will impose a large shock on South Korea and the North East of China with results which an undemocratic China, already scared by ethnic tension may not be able to contain. Likewise, the belligerence which China shows towards its tiny neighbour Taiwan may one day spill over into war, China may well win, but the resulting disruption could easily derail economic growth.
Worryingly, the failure of the Chinese model will have knock on effects around the globe which will make us all poorer and our lives more precarious: anything which threatens such a large part of the world economy would do. When the US sneezes the world catches a cold; if China experiences a major rebellion the world is going to get something much more acute. This makes the establishment of better democratic institutions and the enforcement of human rights in China all the more important; if reform is not incremental it may be catastrophic.
Democracy may not prove to be the best system at all times, but in the long run it remains the least worst system. This should matter to two groups of rather short sighted individuals. Those recommending the “Beijing Model” (I’m looking at you Ken Livingstone) had better think again, there is no silver bullet for raising up the poor and putting the boot into the Capitalist West. Those thinking human rights and democracy are a luxury we can no longer afford better reconsider sharpish, few things matter as much for our long term prosperity and welfare.
______
[1] That is, he overstates and simplifies his argument when writing in Project Syndicate, his “Institutions for high Quality Growth” chapter in One Economics, Many Recipes is far more balanced, and to a certain extent I am using private academic Rodrik to argue with public academic Rodrik.
Filed under: Economics, Foreign Affairs, History
August 24, 2010 • 8:30 am 1
In May the Tories quite famously did not manage to unseat Labour north of the Border. In fact, they are notoriously unpopular with our (presumable smarter and wiser) Scottish cousins.
This weeks visit to number 10 by FA officials has inspired me, perhaps foolishly, to give the Scottish Conservatives a foolproof football based strategy for their next campaign.
I think my poster explains it all, click for full size.
Filed under: Politics
August 23, 2010 • 5:43 pm 2
It looks wanky, a little pretentious and a lot like it will be full of people who I mock here. But I will need a decent job in two years time or I will become a bankrupt.
Management Fast Track 2010
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This exclusive programme will run over two days, 22nd and 23rd September 2010, and applications are open to LSE students from all years and all disciplines. Our sponsors this year include L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble and Centrica.
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We will not accept applications from students only interested in attending certain sessions, as all are mandatory.
To apply, please fill in the MFT 2010 online application form. The closing date for applications is Tuesday 31st August 2010 and candidates will be informed of selection decisions by September 10th.
Click on the company logos below for more information.
Filed under: Blogging
August 23, 2010 • 1:00 pm 0
From here.
The topic of this paper is the massive divergence which has been observed between currently rich countries (European Countries and their offshoots plus Japan) and the other countries. No grouping is really all that accurate, but the theme of divergence in growth rates, productivity and wealth split the world into two fairly distinct groups.
The period discussed is that since 1870s. This if often chosen as a start date for “modern” economic history. First of all, for rich countries decent economic information is available more or less uninterrupted since this date. Also 1870 follows on from a series of major events, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, and Japan’s Meiji Restoration.
The above table is used to illustrate a number of things. First of all, there was some sort of Golden Age for capitalism between the end of the war and the end of the 1970s. There is a strong convergence within this subset of countries; the poorest six countries in 1870 had five of the six fastest national growth rates for the time Period. 1870 to 1960. The five richest in 1870 had the five slowest growth rates.
Secondly, Even with the catch up of the poorest countries growth rates are relatively uniform: the standard deviation of the growth rates is only .33. Evans (1994) formally tested the hypothesis that the growth rates of European countries and their offshoots (not Japan) were equal in the period and could not reject it.
Thirdly, although there has been substantial variation over time there has been no substantial acceleration of growth rates over time. Growth rates have been remarkably stable.
Unfortunately all these observations are drawn from a self selecting group of countries which are now rich; the observation they have grown strongly and consistently over the last 100+ years and that they are now rich is almost tautological. Countries like Japan which did converge are included, but countries which didn’t like Argentina are not.
A Lower Bound for GDP
There is a paucity of data for historically poor for a variety of obvious reasons. However, there is a physical limit on how poor a country can be, “even deprivation has its limits.” Pritchett argues that $250 expressed in 1985 purchasing power equivalents is the lowest GDP per capita could have been in 1870.
No one has ever observed lower living standards in the modern poor world; this level is set well below modern levels of “absolute poverty” and is at the limit of viable nutritional intake; a lower standard of living and the population could not expand.
PPP is very important in measuring living standards in poor countries (see disclaimer here), tradeable goods cost more or less the same everywhere, but haircuts etc are much cheaper in poor countries. $70 in 1985 US market exchange rate dollars = our P$250 minimum GDP per capita level.
Divergence, Big Time
If you accept: a) the current estimates of relative incomes across nations; b) the estimates of the historical growth rates of the now-rich nations; and c) that even in the poorest economies incomes were not below P$250 at any point-then you cannot escape the conclusion that the last 150 years have seen divergence, big time.
If we assume that all countries have grown at roughly the same rate and backcast from now then we come to the conclusion that soem countries had incomes lower than P$100 in 1870, since this is impossible then we must have seen massive divergence.
The magnitude of the divergence is staggering. From 1870 to 1990 the average absolute gap in incomes of all countries from the leader had grown from $1,286 to $12,662, an order of magnitude.(pp 9-12 are well illustrated and should be read in full). Bairoch (1993) argues that developed countries and developing countries were largely economically equal as late as 1800, this implies and even more startling era of divergence since.
Divergence is not a thing of the past
There are a number of countries catching up and growing at historically unprecedented rates (Korea, Taiwan, etc), but manuy continue to stagnate and some have even regressed (i.e. negative growth rates since 1960). Many countries have seen slowdowns and some have seen “meltdowns.”Annual growth rates amongst developing countries from 1960-1990 range from -2.7 percent to 6.9 percent.
There has been no obvious acceleration of growth in most developing countries, either relatively or absolutely, and no reversal in divergence. Almost nothing that is true about the growth rates of developed countries is true of that for developing countries.
Filed under: Economics, Foreign Affairs, History
August 23, 2010 • 8:30 am 2
Das Der Spiegel have an interesting piece up on Germany’s Industrial Revolution and the weakness of copyright and patent law at the time.
Höffner’s diligent research is the first academic work to examine the effects of the copyright over a comparatively long period of time and based on a direct comparison between two countries, and his findings have caused a stir among academics.
Until now, copyright was seen as a great achievement and a guarantee for a flourishing book market. Authors are only motivated to write, runs the conventional belief, if they know their rights will be protected.
Yet a historical comparison, at least, reaches a different conclusion. Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker…
Höffner explains that this “lively scholarly discourse” laid the basis for the Gründerzeit, or foundation period, the term used to describe the rapid industrial expansion in Germany in the late 19th century. The period produced later industrial magnates such as Alfred Krupp and Werner von Siemens.
In my (lengthy) post last year on The Conservative’s Development white paper “One World Conservatism”, I criticised their stance on property rights.
The Conservatives pledge to uphold property rights, however, sometimes violating property rights can lead to positive developmental outcomes. To quote Ha Joon-Chang:
Security of property rights cannot be regarded as something good in itself. There are many examples in history in which the preservation of certain property rights has proved harmful for economic development and where the violation of certain existing property rights (and the creation of new ones) was actually beneficial for economic development…
Hence, what mattes for economic development is not simply the nature of all existing property rights regardless of their nature, but which property rights are protected under which conditions. If there are groups who are able to utilize certain existing properties better than their current owners, it may be better for the society not to protect existing property rights, but to create new ones that transfer the properties concerned to the former groups.
It is nice to see history on the side of the Professor and I. Property rights are useful things for aligning someone’s effort with their reward, but on occasion this relationship breaks down and the abandonment of property rights can lead to greater productive endeavour.
For the time being, I think I will file this under Confirmation Bias, but I will continue to argue that many of the “best practice” methods recommended for developed economies operating at the technological frontier are massively unsuitable for developing economies in “catch-up” mode.
Yet a historical comparison, at least, reaches a different conclusion. Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker.
August 22, 2010 • 8:30 am 2
Further to Liberal Conspiracy‘s post on the need to decriminalise drugs, occasional commenter Richard W directed me towards this graph.
The much shorter War on Terror doesn’t seem to be producing much less human misery.
There are also times when our two unwinnable wars meet, poppy production in Afghanistan for instance.
I declare a meta-War on The War Against Inanimate Objects and Abstract Nouns!
Filed under: Society
August 21, 2010 • 4:46 pm 4
The oldest evidence of a fungus that turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death has been uncovered by scientists.
The gruesome hallmark of the fungus’s handiwork was found on the leaves of plants that grew in Messel, near Darmstadt in Germany, 48m years ago.
The finding shows that parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control the creatures they infect in the distant past, even before the rise of the Himalayas.
The fungus, which is alive and well in forests today, latches on to carpenter ants as they cross the forest floor before returning to their nests high in the canopy.
The fungus grows inside the ants and releases chemicals that affect their behaviour. Some ants leave the colony and wander off to find fresh leaves on their own, while others fall from their tree-top havens on to leaves nearer the ground.
The final stage of the parasitic death sentence is the most macabre. In their last hours, infected ants move towards the underside of the leaf they are on and lock their mandibles in a “death grip” around the central vein, immobilising themselves and locking the fungus in position. [cont]
Filed under: Science
August 21, 2010 • 10:00 am 0
Outsourced to Ryan Avent:
DAVID BECKWORTH directs us to the latest Macroeconomic Advisers estimates of American output, and he publishes this disturbing chart:
Macroeconomic Advisers estimates a monthly GDP figure, and according to their calculations nominal GDP declined in May and June. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a full-on double dip has begun. Monthly GDP is noisy, and Macroeconomic Advisers notes:
Monthly GDP declined 0.4% in June, the second consecutive monthly decline of this magnitude. The May decline was accounted for by inventory investment, while the June decline was more than doubly accounted for by net exports. Over this two-month span, domestic final sales posted moderate gains, largely reflecting growth of consumer spending. The level of monthly GDP in June was 1.5% below the second-quarter average at an annual rate. Our forecast of 2.4% growth of GDP in the third quarter includes a 1.1% increase in monthly GDP in July, mainly reflecting an assumed reversal of the weakness in net exports in June.
They’re still forecasting growth in the third quarter. But this is disconcerting. And the Fed response to a potential decline in NGDP—merely holding the size of its balance sheet steady—is clearly inadequate.
This is, in case you were wondering, very bad. I’m glad everyone’s mind is focussed on what is important.
August 20, 2010 • 6:36 pm 1
After hailing the Coalition’s radicalism, even with caveats, you would think that Conservative Home would remain fairly friendly towards the Liberal Democrats. Judging from the below image, I think somebody needs to inform the admins of Conservative Home’s McCarthyist Left Watch.
In a typically asinine post Jonathan Isaby declares “The Green Party now wants to restrict my freedom of choice and stop me eating meat.” Was this a new manifesto promise? Nope, just a proposition for Meat Free Mondays:
Quite simply, the party’s leader and sole MP, Caroline Lucas, wants to ban me and everyone else working on the parliamentary estate from being able to eat meat on Mondays. She has written to the parliamentary catering authorities asking them to provide, on one day a week, “a totally animal-free menu in order to help tackle the world’s environmental and other problems”.
The attempt to change the menu of a private establishment through writing to someone hardly merits accusations of being “uncuddly, far-left, statist and authoritarian” in my book, but that is Isaby for you.
What caught my eye was the rather fetching “Left Watch” motif running across the top of the page – I’m sure the Tory’s coalition partners will just love it too.
August 20, 2010 • 8:30 am 3
Apparently this has been doing the rounds for some time. I think it is meant to make the blood run hot in any capitalist:
“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”
I was direct towards this by Tyler and FT’s Alphaview, both of whom seem somewhat impressed. My initial reaction, is that people working in Finance sound like dicks. My second reaction was that they sound like idiots.
First of all there is the Lump of Labour Fallacy, there are not a set amount of jobs in an economy and no finance whizz will ever, can ever, steal a job from someone else. I would have thought that Wall Street understood basic econo… actually, nevermind.
Secondly, there is the massive fundamental attribution error. People in finance are not special. They make lots of money because of where they are working, not because they are special. Sure these people are smart, but ~90% of those working in Finance are replaceable.
Next up is the Class War, and it deserves the capitalisation. Describe Fox Hunting as an upper class pursuit and you are hounded for it. Call inheritance tax fair because it equalises opportunities and you are exploiting the politics of envy. On the other hand, call those educating your children, keeping your garden and making your car “lazy cunts” and you are just expressing what every “hard working banker” is thinking.
Finally there is the arrogance: “Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders?” Wall Street ask. “Yeah,” I would reply, “the kids would eat you alive”. You evidently have no social skills (judging from the above) and a room full of gobby 8 year olds would leave you for dead. I’m not sure if there is a cognitive bias to cover this, but it is something along the lines of “I am good at X, therefore I am good at everything.”
The inspirational speech above is a little window into the odd world of the self-appointed Capitalist elite.
Some people support Capitalism because they think it gets results, some because it seems the least bad option, some because they can’t think of a better alternative, some because it is the only morally right system. It seems some on Wall Street support capitalism because they think people are scum; and that only Capitalism ensures the scum can be chastised appropriately.
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.
Something suggests to me that this arrogance is misplaced – this seems like good news to me. I am certainly going to enjoy watching these “more-vicious- than-velociraptor” bankers learn this fact the hard way.
August 19, 2010 • 8:30 am 10
Sometimes you pick up a copy of the Evening Standard and regret it. In fact, often I regret it. It isn’t that the paper is written badly, lots of papers are, it is the angle which it imputes in each story.
With exception of some of the columnists, the gutter press always take the path of least resistance. In most cases this involves appeals to “common sense,” even when this involves backing idiots.
Idiots like Professor Lynne Rosenthal. After ordering a Bagel in a branch of Starbucks, she is asked if she wants butter or cheese with it. Rather than saying no just plain please, this woman takes option b) [1]
b) Throw a fit, saying that if you had wanted butter or cream cheese you would have asked for it, and that the fact that this obvious logic was not understood illustrates the bad grammar of the staff, tout the importance of correct language and, sticking relentlessly by your position, eventually call the staff person an “asshole” until you are thrown out?
What an “asshole!” [2] As The Economist points out, Ms Rosenthal is showing how little she understands language. There are many nuances in asking for a Bagel, and for every one person pedantically asking for one expecting no butter there is one person expecting butter without asking. Being asked to clarify takes no time compared to having to replace an incorrect item.
She subjects a poor service clerk to a barrage of abuse for asking the question which she or he has been trained, nay drilled, to ask. Anyone who has worked behind a counter will be familiar with the easy air of arrogance with which you can be treated. This Professor made a cruel stand against people who could not fight back, people who at best could continue to ask her perfectly reasonable questions.
In the end the police had to be called, three policeofficers ejected her from the premises, that is how unreasonable this woman is. Yet she is lauded because it is an easier story to write than that exploring the abuse those in the service industry endure.
How do the gutter press report on this? The make her a martyr of course! She was only standing up for common sense of course! The phone some rentaquotes called the Plain English Campaign to explain this particular subject “drives people mad” of course!
In short, the writers of the Evening Standard and all the gutter press act in a worse way than even Ms Rosenthal. She can only be an “asshole” to one small group of people at a time (perhaps a 20meter radius delineates the maximum), the Evening Standard pollutes the air it all the way to Newbury, that’s 60 miles away! This is why people don’t buy papers any more and look bored while they read free ones they find in the bin on trains.
Ms Rosenthal is an “asshole,” she went out of her way to ruin someone else’s day. All because she has a messiah complex in which only she can save the English Language. Given the above, the fact that this Professor is a hypocrite too should come as no surprise. Ms Rosenthal is offended by the “language fascism” of Starbucks. For someone who is “a stickler for correct English” I find it amusing that she considers comparing a coffee shop to the world’s greatest monsters appropriate.
Like I said, “asshole.”
UPDATE: Here is the link to the original article, which I did not originally include. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23868473-bunfight-over-a-starbucks-bagel.do
_______
[1] I’m quoting from The Economist because it is excellent (apart from the flippant reference to Asperger’s which seems unnecessary.)
[2] She’s American, so the spelling is correct for her vernacular.
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