India « Quotulatiousness

March 16, 2012

One symptom, but lots of different causes

Filed under: Britain, Economics, History, India — Tags: CentralPlanning, Culture, Korea, Poverty, Socialism — Nicholas @ 08:41

Tim Worstall responds to a simplistic definition of poverty:

What we then want to know is why do some individuals have a shortage of money? At which point we enter a forest of different explanations.

By far the largest cause of poverty is that people live in societies ruled by people variously ignorant, stupid or evil. N Korean poverty I would ascribe to that last. The early Soviets, I am sure along with Socialists of the time, really did think that planning would be more efficient, create more wealth. The evil came later, it was ignorance at first.

[. . .]

And, yes, really, there is also that culture of poverty that Ms. Ehrenreich wants to insist does not exist. Choices over drugs, booze, delayed gratification, marriage, children, education, all have their effects on poverty or not poverty.

Sure, poverty is indeed the lack of money. But there are different reasons for different people at different times about why they lack money. Given these different reasons therefore different solutions have to be applied. Our Down’s Syndrome lad does simply need a transfer of resources, of wealth, from others in the society to him.

But that is not to say that the cure for all poverty is such a transfer: poverty in India is going to be better alleviated by the continuing destruction of Nehru’s extentions of the Licence Raj, poverty among some others in the UK is going to be best addressed by a change in the behaviour of those individuals.

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February 28, 2012

February 21, 2012

Death on the railways

Filed under: Economics, Government, India, Railways — Tags: Criticism — Nicholas @ 11:37

I didn’t realize the extent of the problem in India, as reported in the Guardian:

About 15,000 people are killed each year while crossing the tracks on India’s mammoth railway network, according to a government safety panel that recommended more bridges and overpasses should be built as a matter of urgency.

Most of the deaths occur at unmanned railroad crossings, the panel said in a report. About 6,000 people die on Mumbai’s crowded suburban rail network alone, it said.

Another 1,000 people die when they fall from crowded coaches, when trains collide or coaches derail.

[. . .]

The committee blamed railway authorities for the “grim picture”, saying there were lax safety standards and poor management.

It said local managers were not given adequate power to make crucial decisions and that safety regulations were also breached because of severe manpower shortages.

It does seem odd that one of the world’s most populous countries — once known for chronic over-staffing of government and government-owned organizations — has “manpower shortages” in this critical area.

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February 14, 2012

The surreal world of international aid

Filed under: Britain, India, Politics — Tags: Absurd, Charity, Diplomacy, ForeignAid, NGOs, PR — Nicholas @ 10:16

Brendan O’Neill on the ludicrous display of a donor literally begging the intended recipient to continue accepting the offering:

The debate about whether Britain should continue giving aid to India will surely rank as one of 2012’s most ‘Alice in Wonderland’ political moments. An outsider to the world of international aid probably imagines that it is cash-strapped countries in the South who do the pleading, sometimes having to humiliate themselves by asking Western nations for financial assistance. Yet in the surreal affray over aid to India, it was the well-off giver — Britain — which was on its knees, begging, beseeching the Indians to continue accepting our largesse because if they didn’t, it would cause the Lib-Con government ‘great embarrassment’.

This unseemly spat sums up the problem with modern aid: it’s all about Us, not Them. The reason British ministers were prostrating themselves before India, effectively begging the Indians to remain as beggars, is because aid is now more about generating a moral rush in the big heads of politicians and activists over here than it is about filling the tummies of under-privileged people over there. It is designed to flatter and satisfy the giver rather than address the needs of the receiver, which means ‘aid to India’ is way more important to Britain than it is to India. And for that reason, because aid has been so thoroughly corrupted by the narrow needs of its distributors, it would indeed be a good thing to stop foisting it upon India and other nations.

There was something almost Pythonesque (and I never use that word) in the sight of British politicians saying ‘We must continue giving aid to India’ while Indian politicians were saying ‘We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development spending.’ Those were the words of India’s finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who told his parliament that the nation should ‘voluntarily’ give up the £280million it receives from Britain each year. Cue outraged — and panicked — ministers and do-gooders in London kickstarting a PR campaign to show that the Indians are wrong — they do need British aid, because otherwise, according to Britain’s minister for international development Alan Duncan, in an article illustrated with a photograph of him accepting flowers from grateful little Indians, ‘millions could die’.

[. . .]

British historian William Hutton once said, ‘The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation’. That is pretty much all that remains in the world of aid: pride and ostentation. Indeed, it is striking that, in 2010, when DFID announced cuts to spending on the publicity side of ‘fighting global poverty’, various NGOs went ballistic, slamming the focus on ‘output-based aid’ over important things such as ‘increas[ing] public understanding of the causes of global poverty’ — that is, who cares about providing on-the-ground stuff, when there’s so much awareness-raising about the wonderfulness of NGOs to be done? Britain’s aid budget should be slashed, not because it costs the taxpayer too much money, as Daily Mail moaners argue, but because it costs too much in terms of the self-respect of nations in the South. Britain should have an emergency aid budget, of course, so that, like all civilised nations, it can assist quickly and generously when people are immediately threatened by starvation or disease, such as after the Haiti earthquake or the Pakistani floods. But the rest of the time, even sometimes struggling peoples don’t need the massive side orders of moralism and fatalism that come with Britain’s ‘peanuts’.

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January 27, 2012

Popehat‘s Censorious Asshat round-up

Filed under: Cancon, India, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: Censorship, Libel, NewBrunswick, Police, Sikhism — Nicholas @ 09:14

If you’re not already following the adventures of Ken at Popehat, you’re really missing some entertainment. Here are a couple of items from this week’s round-up of the folks who want to shut you up when you say things they don’t like using the legal system as a large club:

First up, we have Dr. Randeep Dhillon! Dr. Dhillon is suing Jay Leno. Is he suing Jay Leno for being a trite, phone-it-in placeholder? NO! There’s no California cause of action for that! SAG would never allow it! No, Randeep Dhillon is suing Jay Leno for a lame joke about Mitt Romney suggesting that his vacation home was the Golden Temple of Amritsar, a holy site for Sikhs! [. . .]

Congrats, Dr. Dhillon! You win a date with California’s robust anti-SLAPP statute! You’re going to pay Jay Leno’s attorney fees in this case, which I will estimate to be $50,000! And because some people will generalize about Sikhs based on the act of one asshole — you — you’ve just done more to expose Sikhs to hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy than that threadbare hack Leno ever could! Way to go!

And from closer to home (and, I note, the very first time I’ve needed to use the New Brunswick tag):

Next, ladies and gentlemen, we travel North, to Canada, and the Fredericton, New Brunswick Police Department! The Fredericton Police just staged a eight-officer raid of the apartment of Charles LeBlanc! Is Charles LeBlanc breaking bad with a meth lab? Does he have children in cages? Is he a gun-runner? No! He’s a blogger, and he’s being raided for criminal libel for criticizing the Fredericton Police! That’s right! The Fredericton Police Department not only thinks it is appropriate to serve search warrants on bloggers who say mean things to them, they think that they should execute the search warrants themselves, even though they are the alleged victims of the criminal libel! That’s the New Professionalism in action, ladies and gents! Stand and be amazed!

Update, 4 May, 2012: The charges against Charles LeBlanc have been dropped after the New Brunswick Attorney General determined that Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador have all found Section 301 to be unconstitutional and that no New Brunswick court would be likely to disagree with those decisions. More information at the CBC website.

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January 20, 2012

The anti-Top Gear crowd: “In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime”

Filed under: Britain, Humour, India, Media — Tags: Cars, GordonBrown, JeremyClarkson, Offensensitivity, TopGear, TV — Nicholas @ 09:28

Patrick Hayes on the tut-tutting, disapproving folks who only watch Top Gear to generate more outrage at Jeremy Clarkson’s antics:

I wonder what proportion of the five million viewers of the Top Gear India Special over Christmas were desperate-to-be-offended members of the chattering classes? Skipping the second instalment of Great Expectations, they no doubt sat through the show solely to tweet about how awful Jeremy Clarkson and Co’s monkeying about on the road to the Indian Himalayas was.

In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime. He was chastised for offending blind people when he called former UK prime minister Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’, censured for driving while sipping a gin and tonic en route to the North Pole, and generated fury when a couple of years ago he called for the Welsh language to be abolished. But never has he generated so much controversy as the Twitch-hunt that took place against him at the end of last year, after he made a quip that public sector strikers ‘should all be shot’.

This was so evidently a joke, although a crap one, that you had to wonder whether the tens of thousands of ‘offended’ people who took to their keyboards to campaign to get him sacked were for real. Is it humanly possible to be that po-faced? Evidently so. Irony-phobic Labour leader Ed Miliband led the way, calling the comments ‘absolutely disgraceful and disgusting’. A sour-mouthed trade union rep even compared his comments to the atrocities carried out by former Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi.

[. . .]

For these petty censors, it’s not enough simply to change the channel. The danger, so the argument goes, is that Clarkson could become a red-blooded role model to millions of impressionable viewers who will mimic his expressions and share his juvenile, PC-averse passions. Attempts to tame Jezza are invariably attempts to try to reform the viewing public, too. If not stopped now, it would seem, Top Gear could generate an army of misogynistic, environment-despoiling racists-in-the-making.

The danger doesn’t come from Clarkson, however. It comes from these Clarkson-bashing killjoys who are intolerant of informal banter, suspicious of anything ‘fun’, taking every word said in jest literally and moaning to the authorities because Clarkson sets a bad example. These are the ones who, to steal a phrase from the man himself, ‘should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite’.

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January 12, 2012

This time it’s India that gets the Top Gear treatment

Filed under: Humour, India, Media — Tags: Cars, Diplomacy, JeremyClarkson, Offensensitivity, TopGear, TV — Nicholas @ 12:12

I haven’t seen the Top Gear special in question, but from the complaints, it sounds like a pretty typical outing for the boys:

In the letter, published in the Daily Telegraph, the HCI criticised a lack of cultural sensitivity and called on the BBC to take action to pacify those offended.

One Indian diplomat told the BBC News website: “People are very upset because you cannot run down a whole society, history, culture and sensitivities.

“India is a developing country, we have very many issues to address, all that is fine but it is not fine to broadcast this toilet humour.”

He added: “There are many parts of the programme that people have complained about.

“It’s not only Indians, it’s also our British friends — it goes much beyond.”

The diplomat cited an “offensive” banner placed on the side of a train — reading “the United Kingdom promotes British IT for your company” — which read quite differently when the carriages were parted.

And he also criticised a scene in the programme which showed Clarkson taking off his trousers at a party to demonstrate how to use a trouser press.

Showing off the customised Jaguar, complete with toilet roll on its aerial, presenter Jeremy Clarkson said on the programme: “This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.”

Update: Jeremy Clarkson strikes again, this time agitating the folks on the Isle of Sheppey and recent immigrants:

Clarkson wrote: “Mostly, the Isle of Sheppey is a caravan site.

“There are thousands of thousands of mobile homes, all of which I suspect belong to former London cabbies, the only people on Earth with the knowledge to get there before it’s time to turn round and come home again.”

“And what of the locals? Well, they tend to be the sort of people who arrived in England in the back of a refrigerated truck or clinging to the underside of a Eurostar train.”

“And that reinforces my point rather well.

“Mboto has somehow evaded the gunmen and the army recruiters in his remote Nigerian village. He walked north, avoiding death and disease, and then somehow made it right across the Sahara desert to Algeria.

“Here, he managed to overwhelm the security men with their AK-47s and get on a boat to Italy, where he sneaked past the guards.”

The article in Top Gear mag adds: “He made it all the way across Europe to Sangatte, from which he escaped one night and swam to Kent.

“But that stumped him. Getting out of there was impossible, so he decided to make a new life in Maidstone.”

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November 12, 2011

Still no charges in the Gibson Guitar case

Filed under: Bureaucracy, India, Law, Media, USA, Woodworking — Tags: Absurd, Music, Protectionism, Regulation, VictimlessCrime — Nicholas @ 11:00

An update in the Wall Street Journal just recaps the background to the case, and has an interview with Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO.

On Aug. 24, federal agents descended on three factories and the Nashville corporate headquarters of the Gibson Guitar Corp. Accompanied by armored SWAT teams with automatic weapons, agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service swarmed the factories, threatening bewildered luthiers, or guitar craftsman, and other frightened employees. A smaller horde invaded the office of CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, pawing through it all day while an armed man stood in the door to block his way.

“I was pretty upset,” Mr. Juszkiewicz says now, sitting outside that same office. “But you can only do so much when there’s a gun in your face and it’s the federal government.” When the chaos subsided, the feds (with a warrant issued under a conservation law called the Lacey Act) had stripped Gibson of almost all of its imported Indian rosewood and some other materials crucial to guitar making.

The incident attracted national attention and outrage. Like Boeing — whose plans to locate new production in South Carolina are opposed by the National Labor Relations Board — here was an iconic American brand under seemingly senseless federal fire.

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October 21, 2011

Pakistan’s conspiracy theories inhibit real world action

Filed under: Asia, Government, India, Military — Tags: Diplomacy, Espionage, Pakistan, Terrorism — Nicholas @ 08:34

Strategy Page looks at one of the big problems in getting Pakistan’s co-operation on security issues:

American leaders are dismayed as they keep encountering Pakistani politicians and military officials who believe all their troubles are caused by Indian, American and Israeli conspiracies. Pakistan is full of this stuff, and those who believe it are not eager to consider alternatives. While the Pakistani fears are largely based on fiction, the growing number of Indians killed by Pakistani sponsored (and based) terrorism is very real. There are Pakistanis who understand the reality of all this and some of them are diplomats. But as long as most Pakistani leaders, and most of the Pakistani media, embrace the conspiracy theories, real peace is not likely. But at least the diplomats from each nation can discuss possibilities.

The U.S. constantly points to the continuing presence of Islamic terror groups in Pakistani sanctuaries. That is difficult for the Pakistanis to deny. The major danger here is that if a big attack is made in the United States, and tracked back to a Pakistani sanctuary, this could trigger a public call for war with Pakistan. Even many senior Pakistanis recognize this danger and try to control the terrorists they host. This precarious situation won’t go away as long as the terrorist sanctuaries (mainly North Waziristan and Quetta) are openly protected by Pakistani leaders. But without admitting anything to the Americans, Pakistan has apparently ordered some Haqqani personnel and bases out of North Waziristan. This might just be Haqqani fleeing an area that American intelligence knew too well, and that might have been under the advice of Pakistani intelligence. The movement of Haqqani personnel, to Afghanistan or elsewhere in the tribal territories, is making life difficult for the many foreign terrorists who find sanctuary (and work) with Haqqani. The desire to impose greater security on the new Haqqani bases means foreign recruits will take a lot longer to be led in.

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October 5, 2011

The tight spot Pakistan finds itself in

Filed under: Asia, India, Military, USA — Tags: Afghanistan, Espionage, Pakistan, Terrorism — Nicholas @ 10:41

More on the Pakistani situation from Strategy Page:

In Pakistan, decades of anti-American and anti-Indian propaganda, and support for Islamic radicalism, has brought the country to the brink of disaster. The U.S. has stopped being discreet and secretive about Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) attacks on Americans during the last decade. These attacks were played down in the hope that Pakistan could be persuaded to eliminate the pro-terrorist people in the army and ISI. This didn’t happen. The army and the ISI needed the Islamic radicals, to keep tensions with India high (via Pakistani-backed terror attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.) The army/ISI leaders fear loss of their large share of the national economy if the Indian “threat” is viewed more realistically. The political parties, which are corrupt, and often allies of the military, have backed the generals in their opposition to American demands to crack down on Islamic terrorism. Most Pakistanis believe that the United States cannot possibly operate in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan. This despite vigorous NATO efforts to shift their supply lines from Pakistan to Central Asia. Pakistan believes that possession of nuclear weapons will keep the United States from doing anything drastic, like more raids into Pakistan to destroy terrorists. The May raid to kill Osama bin Laden shows that the U.S. could, and would, do this. Now Pakistan has said it will not shut down Islamic terrorist sanctuaries in North Waziristan (in the northeast) and Quetta (in the southwest). The U.S. says that if the Pakistanis won’t the U.S. will. Pakistan says that if America tries that, it will mean war. It’s no secret that the U.S. has made plans to seize Pakistani nuclear weapons, and India has just signed a cooperation treaty with Afghanistan. Pakistanis like to believe that they have America in a corner, but it’s becoming more likely that it is Pakistan that has painted itself into a corner. Pakistan has long complained of being surrounded by conspiracies and enemies. Now, because of Pakistani support for Islamic terrorism, those fears are about to become true. Pakistan denies any responsibility for this, insisting that it is the victim. That will make no difference in the end, other than to provide some incredulous footnotes in the histories of the late, great, Pakistan.

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September 8, 2011

Play it again, Gibson

Filed under: Bureaucracy, India, Law, USA, Woodworking — Tags: Absurd, Jobs, Music, Protectionism, Regulation — Nicholas @ 08:59

Allahpundit posted the video clip above, saying:

If I’m understanding the applicable law correctly, Gibson is as much a victim of Indian protectionism as they are federal meddling. Watch the quickie John Roberts segment for the gist of it. The wood they use to make guitar keyboards is sufficiently rare/endangered that it can’t be exported legally from India unless it’s already been finished by Indian workers, and under U.S. law, if the export is illegal under Indian law, then it’s illegal here too. The governing statute, the Lacey Act, was passed in 1900, but only in 2008 was it expanded to include plants as well as animals, which is why Gibson’s now being hassled about the wood. All of which is jim dandy — except for the question of why Gibson seems to be getting so much federal attention vis-a-vis other firms. Roberts touches on that.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who commented “I like the way he pulls the finished guitar fret out of his ass.”

Update: Speaking of Jon, he’s all over this issue with another link and extra commentary:

CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?

HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.

[. . .]

He’s even warned clients to be wary of traveling abroad with old guitars, because the law says owners can be asked to account for every wooden part of their guitars when re-entering the U.S. The law also covers the trade in vintage instruments.

As Jon points out, this is more than just an issue for the musical instrument makers and musicians:

It’s only a matter of time until this is applied to tools and furniture.

I wonder where [hand tool maker] Lie Nielsen’s politics lie — but he should be safe, using domestic cherry for his totes and knobs.

Lee Valley might have a problem exporting to the US, what with bubinga and rosewood components and being based in Ottawa, which is now a hotbed of hard-right conservative political thought. (A co-worker is wondering why I’m giggling to myself here).

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September 7, 2011

A bit more on the Lacey Act

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, India, Law, USA, Woodworking — Tags: Absurd, Music, Regulation — Nicholas @ 08:53

The Economist has a brief mention of the Gibson raid:

Agents barged in and shut down production. They were hunting for ebony and rosewood which the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) alleges was imported from India in violation of the Lacey Act, a 1900 law originally designed to protect fauna from poachers. This law has metastasised: it now requires Americans, in essence, to abide by every plant and wildlife regulation set by any country on Earth. Not having heard of an obscure foreign rule is no defence. Violators face fines or even jail. FWS claims the ebony sent from India was mislabelled, and that Indian law forbids the export of unfinished ebony and rosewood.

[. . .]

Guitarists now worry that every time they cross a state border with their instrument, they will have to carry sheaves of documents proving that every part of it was legally sourced. Edward Grace, the deputy chief of the FWS’s office of law enforcement, says this fear is misplaced: “As a matter of longstanding practice,” he says, “investigators focus not on unknowing end consumers but on knowing actors transacting in larger volumes of product.” But Americans have been jailed for such things as importing lobsters in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran rule that Honduras no longer enforces. Small wonder pluckers are nervous.

Original report on the Gibson guitar raid here. Rules like the Lacey Act are tailor-made for petty bureaucrats to exercise immense amounts of judicially unsupervised power. It’s hard to believe that this kind of rule is being enforced evenhandedly, and rather easier to believe that it is being used selectively as a way of paying off scores, providing a “service” to certain firms at the expense of others, and creating lots of opportunities for bribes, “protection money”, and the like.

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August 10, 2011

English in India

Filed under: History, India — Tags: Language — Nicholas @ 08:55

An interesting post at The Economist‘s Johnson blog looks at the evolution of “Hinglish”:

Once the British left India, Anglo-Indian died a natural death. In its place came a chutnified Indian English that mixes American and British versions of the language with vernacular words and syntax and direct translations of phrases.

A glimpse of the breadth of influences in contemporary Indian English can be found at the delightfully-named Samosapedia. A cross between Hobson-Jobson and Urban Dictionary, the website modestly describes itself as “the definitive guide to South Asian lingo” and invites users to “catalog and celebrate the rich, diverse and ever-evolving landscape of this region’s shared vernacular”. Over 2,500 words and phrases have been added since Samosapedia was launched at the end of June.

Samosapedia is a lot of fun. It is also fascinating. Many phrases it lists are common across India: A “chaddi buddy” (lit: underwear friend) is someone you’ve known since childhood; “kabab mein haddi” (lit: a bone in the kebab) is a third wheel with better imagery; an “enthu cutlet” (lit: an enthusiastic mincemeat croquette) is an overly earnest soul. But then there are those that come from regions, sub-cultures and even neighbourhoods. “Talking-shalking” highlights the Punjabi fondness for rhyme. “Sandra from Bandra” is a stereotype from a predominantly Catholic suburb of Mumbai. “Send it” refers to smoking pot.

The entries at Samosapedia also offer an insight into how Indian culture is changing. “Traditional with modern outlook”, often found in matrimonial ads, encapsulates the evolving nature of arrange marriage—or “love-cum-arranged marriage”—where the prospective bride and groom have far greater say in their partners than earlier generations did. “Behenji-turned-mod” is a condescending term for a traditional woman transitioning from fusty and oily-haired to a more urban, socially acceptable version of herself. It is telling that these undoubtedly modern but widely-used phrases exist in Hinglish, a portmanteau of Hindi and English.

Lots of links in the original post to various entries in Samosapedia.

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June 5, 2011

India as seen by “a cool Bangalorean”

Filed under: Humour, India — Tags: Criticism, Interesting — Nicholas @ 11:32

India as seen by a cool Bangalorean

H/T to Gerard Vanderleun who posted it on his Tumblr site.

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April 6, 2011

India’s educational triumphs and hidden flaws

Filed under: Economics, Education, India — Tags: Criticism, Privatization — Nicholas @ 11:00

India has vastly increased the numbers of students who go on to post-secondary education, and strives to keep tuition low and entry open to as many prospective students as possible. This great success in enrollment hides some pretty nasty deficiencies in the actual quality of education being offered:

Call-center company 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd. is desperate to find new recruits who can answer questions by phone and email. It wants to hire 3,000 people this year. Yet in this country of 1.2 billion people, that is beginning to look like an impossible goal.

So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants.

[. . .]

Business executives say schools are hampered by overbearing bureaucracy and a focus on rote learning rather than critical thinking and comprehension. Government keeps tuition low, which makes schools accessible to more students, but also keeps teacher salaries and budgets low. What’s more, say educators and business leaders, the curriculum in most places is outdated and disconnected from the real world.

[. . .]

Muddying the picture is that on the surface, India appears to have met the demand for more educated workers with a quantum leap in graduates. Engineering colleges in India now have seats for 1.5 million students, nearly four times the 390,000 available in 2000, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, a trade group.

But 75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general graduates are unemployable by India’s high-growth global industries, including information technology and call centers, according to results from assessment tests administered by the group.

There’s no easy solution to this problem: by lowering educational standards, you reduce the employability of your existing graduates. If you raise standards, you increase the cost of education, both to students and to the government. Privatization may be the answer, but it won’t come cheap, and therefore will be politically dangerous to implement.

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