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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Chile is in one of its recurrent paroxysms of proto-revolutionary unrest. This sums up the trouble with Latin America from day one. (And all non-protestant developing economies.) In order to be successful economically -- as Chile has been for the last twenty years -- it is necessary to have a very reactionary economic model. Chile has its five families just like Japan and South Korea had their zaibatsu and chaebols. Give it time and you grow out of it. But unlike Japanese and Koreans, Latin Americans are very excitable and insist on a left wing experiment every twenty years that sets the whole model back twenty years.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What has Protestantism got to do with it? I think it has something to do with its basically egalitarianist structure which means everybody gets just enough of the cake to keep quiet. But that is true of Islam as well, so it only works when you have got rid of clericalism too. Mmm ... needs work.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It is my contention that re Covid the big decisions have been either broadly correct or understandably wrong. That's ministers, that is. Tory ministers. Not so the implementation of these policies, which has been consistently disastrous. That's the civil service, that is. An example of how dire they are and how long they have been so, is this
| G4S is fined £44m but avoids prosecution in tagging scandal |
You will recall that back in 2013 both G4S and Serco were making pots of money by omitting to inform their client, the Ministry of Justice, that prisoners they were being paid to tag and monitor had in fact died, gone abroad or were back in prison. I won't bother with how the ministry could preside over a system that takes seven years to mete out punishment when the miscreants have pleaded guilty on all charges. Instead, imagine the state of civil service oversight if the board members of two giant companies could argue thusly
"Let's charge for prisoners that go abroad."
"Surely that's the number one concern, fleeing justice and all that."
"Nah, the MoJ won't care. They'll say 'Well rid' if they ever find out."
"What about ones that have died?"
"That's not possible. Every agency under the sun will know about that."
"MoJ won't."
"There's one other possibility. No, hear me out on this one. Prisoners that have gone back to prison."
"No, come on, that's taking the piss."
"Trust me, they won't even notice."
Compare and contrast attitudes towards the 'one that got away'...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Ofcom fines Royal Mail £1.5m for late deliveries |
Royal Mail are required to deliver 93% of first-class post within a day. They only managed 91.5%. Clang! Guilty! But, your honour, it was because of roadworks being carried out by Highways England. Not listening!
| Royal Mail fined £100,000 for overcharging on second-class stamps |
Bastards. I say let 'em swing. Except it was a penny, for one week, and because of a misunderstanding of an Ofcom price cap. Since it was impractical to repay the customers, Royal Mail donated the extra revenue, £60,000, to Action for Children. Hanging's too good for them.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In AE lore we have something called Mayor Daley Syndrome which argues that an energetic, corrupt governor may be better than an ordinary, honest one. So it was with something approaching excitement that I read this
| Is corruption efficiency-enhancing? A case study of nine Central and Eastern European countries |
What is stopping me reading the whole paper is that after reading the abstract, I still can't tell the answer to the question. Help is solicited. Full paper here https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/154383/1/ecbwp1950.pdf
We investigate the role of corruption in the business environment in explaining the efficiency of within sector production factor allocation across firms in nine Central and Eastern European countries in the period 2003-2012.
Using a conditional convergence model, we find evidence of a positive relationship between corruption growth and both labour and capital misallocation dynamics, once country framework conditions are controlled for: the link between corruption and input misallocation dynamics is larger the smaller the country, the lower the degree of political stability and of civil liberties, and the weaker the quality of its regulations.
As input misallocation is one of the determinants of productivity growth, we further show that the relationship between changes in corruption and TFP growth is indeed negative. Our results hold when we tackle a possible omitted variable bias by instrumenting corruption with two instrumental variables (the percentage of women in Parliament and freedom of the press).
Keywords: bribes, capital misallocation, labour misallocation, total factor productivity JEL codes: D24, D73, O47 | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Okay, it's make your mind up time. Whose side are you on?
Durrell v Developers
Corfu campaigners and billionaires fight for 'jewel of nature' |
You're not sure, I can tell. You're confused about the billionaires. Relax, they're on the side of the angels on this one
| Anger is in the air and battle lines have been drawn, none more so than in the minds of those determined to protect the island’s last piece of virgin territory – a place of unique biodiversity – from being developed into an “ultra luxury†resort. |
But are the stakes high enough for you to want to get involved?
| The stakes couldn’t be higher. On the one side are campaigners, most visibly Lee Durrell, widow of the British naturalist Gerald, whose portrayal of Corfu in My Family and Other Animals played no small part in evoking the Ionian isle’s charms and beauty – and ultimately bringing tourism to its shores. On the other are a business-friendly Greek government and the private equity fund NCH Capital, which acquired the natural paradise in north-eastern Corfu when Athens’ cash-strapped state was selling off assets at the height of the country’s debt crisis. |
You're still not sure. You think one false step and Mick is going to kick you in the bollocks. Kee-rect!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Does this help?
| Erimitis is not only home to otters, seals, raptors and reptiles but, she enthuses, lakes, marshes and bright pebble beaches, orchids and strawberry trees, in an area that remains one of the least developed in the Mediterranean. |
Or this
| As the rhetoric has intensified, billionaires with villas on the island have also weighed in on the side of the eclectic group of resident conservationists, anti-capitalists, leftists and environmentalists bent on stopping the development. |
Well, that's where the AE angle comes in. There's a reason why billionaires are not normally found lined up with tree-huggers. It's because tree-huggers don't get a choice in the matter. Trees are trees to them. Billionaires do get a choice -- they've got their own trees. Whenever an Unholy Alliance is gathered together it always deserves our attention because something new may be happening....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Both eco-warriors and billionaires are running out of space. (Cue jokes about Elon Musk and Richard Branston). In the good old days, simply being an eco-warrior or a billionaire was enough in itself but now there are so many of each they are all fighting amongst themselves for the best pool loungers. This current imbroglio is a perfect example. We are talking about five hundred hectares of scrubby rubbish. Anywhere else it wouldn't be given the time of day. But it is on the Island of Corfu where billionaires happen to live and eco-warriors happened to have heard of.
Now the bankrupt Greek government would dearly love to give gainful employment to thousands of Corfiotes, can't, so have done a deal with feelthy capitalists to build a luxury complex on Corfu. But no. The billionaires don't want the people walking past their estates and the eco-warriors don't want the gorse bushes cut down. Me, I like luxury complexes better than I like scrubby rubbish but thank you, Durrells, for creating the problem in the first place.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Everyone in Euroland is calling on those rich Germans to help more in the recession that follows the pandemic. The good news is they grudgingly will. Which is bad news for the 50% of germans who own just 1% of German wealth, as they are, in the main, going to be the ones that pay, to help protect better paid jobs, business and bureaucrats in the poorer countries.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Do not get too carried away by the usual western media cavortings whenever some dictator is in trouble. Lukashenko almost certainly won the election though probably not by the margin he announced. Dictators do not last long if it is revealed that forty-five per cent of the people want him out. The Belorussians, like the Russians and belatedly the Poles and the Hungarians, know their countries are not ready for the high octane life of the west just yet. They just want a reasonably benign dictator. Which they have found, over the last thirty years, they’ve got.
Which is not to say they will have him much longer. Once the metropolitan rowdies get their act together and once the western democracies have decided your time’s up and once Putin decides not to throw good money after bad, Alex will be off to his dacha just outside Moscow. I can assure Belorussians it will get a lot worse after he’s gone before it gradually gets better.
Of course the western media caravanserai won't be around to report any of this. Boring and off-message.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Mali will be the next example of Western silliness in action. (It is itself the direct product of Western silliness in the 1960's.) The current government, impeccably democratically chosen, has completely lost control of the country to insurgencies despite the presence of three different outside forces -- from Ecowas, France and the UN. The country has been rioting in protest for months but the government (for reasons, see above) refused to budge.
So, at last, the sensible step has been taken and the army has staged a successful, bloodless and popular coup. It is completely obvious that the only hope for Mali is a long period of military rule, with the national resources channelled into the army, and the defeat of the various counter-forces assailing Mali from all sides. (And for all reasons.)
Nope. Everyone and his chien is demanding the army relinquishes power as soon as possible and stages credible elections. This is what it did last time, in 2012, producing the present situation. Hold fast, mes colonels et généraux, put your fingers in your ears and your guns at the ready. Yes, the aid will be cut off; the foreign troops and NGO's will go home, the Security Council will huff and it will puff, but Mali and the Malians will at least be given a fighting chance. It is the least they are entitled to. I do not predict success but I do predict breaking out of the endlessly recycled western straitjacket.
Je vous souhaite bonne chance.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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My instinct tells me that the Steven Bannon fraud charges will turn out to be a question of interpretation rather than an old-fashioned looting. I hope so anyway since I quite like the chap. It will be interesting to see whether Donald Trump will give him a pardon. He owes everything to Bannon but badmouthing the President in a book usually requires at least a five-stretch to reflect on one's crime.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Why Black People Don’t Go Camping
The easy answer for this, often from the Black community has been “Black people don’t go camping, that’s a white people thing.†However, I find this answer unsatisfactory. Black people do plenty of things that White people enjoy. Historically, the only reason we do not do things often perceived as White is because we were banned from participating in that space. Camping is no exception. The racist policies that aimed to bar Black people from participating in this national past time established camping, and the great outdoors, as White spaces. In short, s’mores and campfires weren’t meant for us. https://medium.com/an-injustice/why-black-people-dont-go-camping-a564dd47e5a8 |
Since this is today complete hokum, we must ponder why camping is a white thing. It reminds me about all the stories (there was one last week) about Asians getting into difficulties when swimming. I think the very idea of discrete leisure time is a white thing. We invented the pointless excursion back in the days of pilgrimages, and is quite distinct from everyone else's idea of time off viz a) sabbaths and b) communal holidays.
Why these pointless excursions have to embrace the idea that they have to be arduous like pilgrimages or merely irksome -- like the traditional British seaside holiday -- is presumably guilt. As the rest of the world knows, we shouldn't be indulging ourselves in such frivolities, but that is the white man's gift to the world: learn to enjoy guilt!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| A whole generation of black people lost to the television industry that didn't know how to nurture them (etc etc) David Olusoga Annual Edinburgh Media Bash |
Freakin Ada, but how every minority thinks it's the first. In my lifetime alone we've had generations of northerners, non-public school educated, the working class, the youth, women, gays (there must be others) -- all lost because someone or other was ignoring them. You wait, Dave, until things settle down and we find out -- like we did with that little lot -- just how little black talent there was in the first place. Or a lot. It varies.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Time for my weekly Marina Hyde gripe. Remember, still more in sorrow than in anger.
| Like me, you will have been transfixed to discover that failed former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is being lined up for a senior role on the UK’s new Board of Trade. What a worthy exchange of assets between our two great nations |
Yes, dear, highly trenchant, but do please bear in mind that just getting to be a failed prime minster of Australia takes a modicum of talent.
| Interesting that we should look beyond our own talent pool for such a crucial role. |
Well, actually it is. We're talking the Board of Trade here. The one thing our own talent pool lacks is someone who's actually traded with Britain. Surely there's room for one such round the table?
| In the meantime, how are you enjoying the edifying spectacle of ministers putting the frighteners on their own people? A major government push to herd office workers back to city centres was trailed today in Johnsonian jazz mag the Daily Telegraph, beneath the thoughtful headline “Go back to work or risk losing your jobâ€. |
It may be news to Ms "I write columns for a living" Hyde but most of her fellow citizens hate going to work. Have done since Ug son of Og took convincing to leave the cave. The basic deal is "Work, eat, your choice." Unless we put off the evil day until the whole population has been compulsorily vaccinated against Covid-19 there will be a small additional risk going to work. Are you going to pay for your fellow citizens to chortle away at home until then, Marina?
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