Quotulatiousness

July 1, 2011

Duleep Allirajah: “The Most Pointless Sporting Argument Ever”

Filed under: Britain, Soccer — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:32

He’s quite right: this has to be the nadir of international sporting debates:

Where do you stand on the controversial issue of a Great Britain football team? Disgusted that the British Olympic Association is threatening the independence and proud traditions of the home football nations? Angered that the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish associations are trying to thwart the Olympic dreams of their young players? Or, like me, do you want to be woken up when The Most Pointless Sporting Argument Ever is over?

If you’re wondering why the proposal for a unified British football team has caused such controversy, let me explain. There has never been a single UK football association. Instead, all four countries — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — have their own football associations. Each country is recognised by FIFA as a separate entity even though they are not sovereign nations. It’s one of the residual privileges enjoyed by the nation that invented the game. Although the Brits have minimal influence within FIFA, as the 2018 World Cup bid and the farcical presidential election demonstrated, all four UK nations are represented on the eight-member International Football Association Board (IFAB), which is the sport’s law-making body. The home nations also retain the right to appoint a FIFA vice-president. Although the English FA is keen on fielding a British team in the 2012 Games, the other national associations fear that their independence and FIFA privileges will be jeopardised as a result.

The debate took a farcical twist this week when the British Olympic Association (BOA) announced that an ‘historic agreement’ had been reached with all the home nations to field a Great Britain team at the Olympics. However, no sooner had the BOA made its announcement than the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland football associations angrily denied that any agreement had been reached. Oops!

June 29, 2011

The real reason for the Greek bailout

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:03

Eric S. Raymond explains why all the politicians and apparatchiks of the world’s bureaucracies are lining up to pump for a Greek bailout:

Lost in the eye-glazing babble about maturity extensions, haircuts, and which acronymic organization is going to funnel the money into place is the real magnitude of the stakes here. It’s not just the Greeks’ opera-bouffé parody of the modern redistributionist state that is circling the structural-insolvency drain; what really terrifies our political class is the prospect that, very soon, the investors simply won’t buy government bonds anymore — and massive borrowing through bond issues is the only thing keeping the redistributionist state afloat.

As I have documented many times on this blog, the entitlement-spending commitments of the U.S. Federal government, most U.S. state governments, most European governments, and indeed most national governments everywhere exceed the capacity of their economies to generate wealth. And demographic trends are making the imbalance worse over time, not better.

This is why raising taxes won’t help. The amount of private wealth available to be taxed is insufficient, even if taxation could be raised to 100% without suppressing all economic activity. In practice, raising taxes leads to increases in spending which more than consume the increased revenue (by a ratio of 1.17:1 in the U.S. since the 1940s).

[. . .]

That is the assumption that is now under threat. Greece must be bailed out in order to preserve the illusion that the borrowing can continue indefinitely, that the bill will somehow never come due. When the political class speaks of “contagion”, what they’re really worried about isn’t the solvency of German banks holding Greek paper, it’s a general flight of investors from the sovereign-debt markets.

Canada’s Cormorant fleet to stay airborne thanks to former “Marine One” helicopters

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Italy, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:29

The Cormorant is not quite the success story we hoped for when we bought the helicopters for our search and rescue operations. Part of the problem is that spare parts for the choppers are in very short supply. An unexpected source of spare parts just happened to come our way recently:

The helicopters sold to Canada are the so-called US101 version of the EH101 aircraft developed during the 1980s and 1990s in the UK and Italy by companies which are now grouped as AgustaWestland. The UK forces, after massive delays and cost overruns, eventually received two versions, both known as “Merlin” — a naval submarine-hunting variant and a cargo or troop-carrying one for the RAF. Both types finally reached frontline useability around 2004-2005, but their availability rates have been poor: perhaps due to the fact that the Merlin didn’t sell well worldwide and thus parts were at a premium.

However the Merlin did sell to the Bush administration, which was seeking to replace its ageing VH-3 Sea King presidential helicopters operated by the US Marines (the president’s chopper becomes “Marine One” when he is aboard, just as his airforce-operated plane becomes “Air Force One”). But the US101 project, managed by Lockheed on behalf of AgustaWestland, soon became mired in cost and time overruns every bit as bad as those which had hit the Royal Navy’s HM1.

The plan might well have been doomed from the outset, with requirements calling for 14 VIP seats, hardening against electromagnetic pulse, an executive washroom and communications equivalent to “a flying Oval Office” — a pretty big ask for an aircraft which can only lift four tonnes in its RAF cargo-carrying incarnation.

The US101 problems became bad enough that each new Marine One copter was projected to cost as much as an Air Force One jumbo jet, and the costs became an issue in the presidential election — with both Mr Obama and his opponent John McCain vying to issue the strongest condemnation of the aircraft. Obama in particular described it as “procurement amok”, and unsurprisingly it was axed as soon as he took office.

Now the Canadians, who also operate the EH101 under the name “Cormorant”, have snapped up the former presidential fleet of nine aircraft for $164m.

Corruption as a catalyst for rebellion?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Germany, Government, Politics, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:26

Austin Bay points out that better communications have been important elements in the “Arab Spring” and other populist protests in the world right now, but there’s another element joining them together:

What links the Arab Spring rebellions with political agitation in China and at least another five dozen simmering or emerging crises?

If your answer is “the Internet,” you have identified one of the key information technologies that spread the flames. However, the common human fire in these disparate struggles is intense disgust with embedded corruption.

Tyrants maintain control by isolating and intimidating their subjects. However, since the advent of the printing press and increasing public literacy, preserving tyrannical isolation has become a bit more difficult.

Over time, subjects become aware of social, cultural, economic and political alternatives to the despot’s rule, despite the despot’s propaganda. Just how deeply West German television influenced East German resistance to communism is debatable, but the Iron Curtain could not hide the overwhelming evidence of Western affluence and the West’s ability to occasionally remove corrupt leaders.

Communist elite corruption amidst systemic economic failure certainly influenced resistance throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The special stores and vacation homes enjoyed by Communist Party favorites infuriated workers denied similar access. East European workers knew that they were industrialized serfs in handcuffed societies falling further and further behind Western European nations. In 1989, when the Russians concluded the Eastern European security forces could not — or would not — shoot everyone, the Berlin Wall cracked.

June 28, 2011

The Daily Mail tries to drum up moral outrage (again)

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

Patrick Hayes views with disdain the latest Freedom of Information trolling exercise performed by the Daily Mail in an attempt to spice up their “news” coverage:

Is Britain in the grip of a hidden crimewave? Are thousands of crimes being committed each year by feral youths, which the police know about but are powerless to prevent? Is Britain being stalked by troublemaking toddlers, committing vandalism with no comeuppance for their ‘crimes’ because of their tender age?

In a word, no. Though you’d never know that by reading yesterday’s hysterical news reports. ‘As many as 3,000 criminals, including rapists, robbers and burglars, escaped punishment last year because they were too young to be prosecuted’, declared the Daily Mail. The paper published the results of a pretty shameless trawling exercise, having placed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to police forces around Britain about underage crime. It managed to dredge up various accounts of childish ‘criminal’ activity, including a ‘rape’ in Levenmouth committed by two eight-year-old boys, a ‘kidnapping’ in Rochdale also carried out by an eight-year-old, and a ‘spate of vandalism’ conducted by a three-year-old boy and four-year-old girl.

The Mail received responses to its FOI request from 30 out of 52 police forces, discovering that ‘1,605 crimes were blamed on someone aged under 10 in the last financial year’. Guestimating how many crimes might have been committed by kids in those parts of Britain policed by the 22 forces that did not respond to its requests, it came up with a total of 3,000 offences. And rather than caution its readers that these figures only cover accusations of a crime, rather than guilt having been proven, the Mail implies its findings could be the tip of the iceberg: ‘Many police forces do not even record crimes where they believe youngsters under 10 have been responsible.’

June 27, 2011

The Economist calls for Greek debt restructuring

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

A Greek default. It’s stopped being a possibility, moved into being a probability, and it’s starting to look inevitable:

There is an alternative, for which this newspaper has long argued: an orderly restructuring of Greece’s debts, halving their value to around 80% of GDP. It would hardly be a shock to the markets, which have long expected a default (an important difference from Lehman). The banks that still hold a big chunk of the bonds are in better shape to absorb losses today than they were last year. Even if Greece’s debts were cut in half, the net loss would still represent an absorbable proportion of most European banks’ capital.

An orderly restructuring would be risky. Doing it now would crystallise losses for banks and taxpayers across Europe. Nor would it, by itself, right Greece. The country’s economy is in deep recession and it is running a primary budget deficit (ie, before interest payments). Even if Greece restructures its debt and embraces the reforms demanded by the EU and IMF, it will need outside support for some years. That is bound to bring more fiscal-policy control from Brussels, turning the euro zone into a more politically integrated club. Even if that need not mean a superstate with its own finance ministry, the EU’s leaders have not started to explain the likely ramifications of all this to voters. But at least Greece and the markets would have a plan with a chance of working.

No matter what fictions they concoct this week, the euro zone’s leaders will sooner or later face a choice between three options: massive transfers to Greece that would infuriate other Europeans; a disorderly default that destabilises markets and threatens the European project; or an orderly debt restructuring. This last option would entail a long period of external support for Greece, greater political union and a debate about the institutions Europe would then need. But it is the best way out for Greece and the euro. That option will not be available for much longer. Europe’s leaders must grab it while they can.

June 25, 2011

Tim Harford analyzes the ECB’s real problem

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Tim Harford puts the head of the ECB (Essex Community Business association) on the couch:

“With all due respect, doctor, I don’t think it’s me who needs to see a shrink.”

“Don’t worry. A lot of people feel a bit awkward when they first lie on this couch. This is a safe, non-judgmental space.”

“I wish the Essex Community Business association was as relaxed.”

“But you’re the chairman of the ECB association. Tell me why you feel that way.”

“Look, I always felt that the ECB association was supposed to be an informal talking shop, a way for people with shared interests to make new friends and perhaps even launch joint projects. Everyone was really happy when Georgios, the new owner of the Plaka Taverna, wanted to join — the more the merrier.”

[. . .]

“So if I understand the situation, you’re lending money to Georgios that you know he can never pay back, and demanding that his staff make sacrifices they are transparently unwilling to make, in order to protect Mr Saville’s bank, in order to protect José, who in some unspecified way is connected to Georgios’s fate.”

“It does sound a bit strange when you put it like that. I think the theory is that if we don’t throw money and yell impractical and unwelcome management advice at a transparently bankrupt business, then maybe a perfectly viable business will be damaged. Especially since there won’t be any money left, because we’ll have given it all to Georgios, who will have given it all to his waiters. Does that make sense?”

June 24, 2011

Newspapers still trying to adapt to a vastly changed world

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

In a blog post at the Guardian, Roy Greenslade puts the financial changes into a bit of perspective:

So prepare — if you’re of a certain age — for a warm nostalgic bath. In 1950, with TV sets in only 9% of homes, a British street of 100 houses could be relied on to buy 140 newspapers a day and 220 on Sunday.

In 2010, with each of those houses containing an average of 2.6 TVs, the same street bought just 40 papers a day, Monday to Sunday.

Some advertising revenues fled to TV as it developed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, but not in such great numbers as to ruin newspapers, which could still rely on huge circulation sales income.

In 1966, the Daily Mirror sold 5.1m copies a day, the Daily Express 4m and the Daily Telegraph 1.4m. Last month, those titles had circulations of 1.2m, 631,000 and 635,000 respectively.

It was one of the things that struck me on my first trip back to England in 1979 — although not as badly as the bone-chilling damp — was the profusion of newspapers available. I was used to Toronto, where you could get the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the horrible little upstart pleb rag, the Toronto Sun. Seeing all the different papers was quite an eye-opener.

No wonder why he chose to title the post “Those were the days, my friends, we’d thought they’d never end…”

June 23, 2011

Shock, horror! Dutch court clears Geert Wilders of hate charges

Filed under: Europe, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

Perhaps there is still a faint bit of hope for freedom of speech in Europe after all:

A Dutch court has acquitted rightwing politician Geert Wilders of hate charges, saying his anti-Islam statements, while offensive to many Muslims, fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate.

Judge Marcel van Oosten said Wilders’ claims that Islam is violent by nature, and his calls for a ban on Muslim immigration and the Qur’an, must be viewed in a wider context of debate over immigration policy.

The judge added that the remarks could not be directly linked to increased discrimination against Dutch Muslims.

Wilders unmoved as the verdict was read, but his supporters in the public gallery hugged one another and clapped after the acquittal.

Wilders, one of the most powerful and popular politicians in the Netherlands, was accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims through numerous public statements, and with insulting them by comparing Islam with Naziism.

“I’m incredibly happy with this acquittal on all counts,” Wilders said outside the courtroom. “It’s not only an acquittal for me, but a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands.

June 21, 2011

The Athens protests as a theatre for projection

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

Whatever may really be behind the protests, reporters are having a wonderful time using it as a blank canvas to project their own notions:

Some seriously overblown claims are being made about the anti-government, anti-EU, anti-IMF protests in Athens. ‘Syntagma Square has become the frontline of the battle against European austerity’, said one giddy British reporter, referring to the square where for the past three weeks Greek citizens, calling themselves ‘indignados’, have been protesting against the IMF/EU demand for further austerity measures before Greece can receive more aid. In truth, the most striking thing about the protests is their incoherence, even their childishness. Far from being the frontline of any kind of solid movement, the Syntagma camp-in is a confused, depoliticised, borderline petulant response to the economic crisis.

Some European journalists and activists have become so enamoured by the physicality of the protests that they seem not to have noticed the gaping political hole at the heart of them. BBC reporters, who normally spend most of their time in stuffy, smokeless offices, have written with undisguised glee of their sweaty experiences in Athens, where the ‘teargas hits us without warning’ and ‘we crush together, shoulder to shoulder’. A Guardian reporter describes being ‘jammed up against the railings’ in a ‘raucous’ atmosphere that is like ‘an open-air concert’. Hacks more used to writing about Vince Cable’s latest pronouncement on business law have leapt upon the opportunity to get stuck into a seemingly more thrilling economic story, in the process presenting the Syntagma stand-off as way more profound than it actually is.

Likewise, many amongst the European left are busily projecting their aspirations on to Athens. This is the ‘start of the European workers’ fightback’, they claim, describing the protests as the ‘beginning’ of an uprising against austerity that they knew would come. It is a feeling of profound disarray and disconnection amongst European left groups, their sensitivity to the political stasis that has largely greeted the economic crisis, which leads them to make excitable claims about Greece. Motivated by a determination to avoid having hard debates at home about the crisis, far less try to come up with any strategies for resolving it, they content themselves instead with celebrating the rowdy ‘indignation’ of Greek protesters and imagining that it represents the first stirrings of the return of traditional class politics.

June 19, 2011

“It is clear they are running out of options”

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe, Greece — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:29

It looks as though the British banks are starting to get very nervous about Eurozone bank defaults:

Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.

Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.

Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

June 17, 2011

Argentina: British PM “stupid” about the Falkland Islands

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Remember when the Royal Navy got gutted, reducing their ability to project force outside European waters? It appears that Argentina has drawn the obvious conclusion that the Falkland Islands are now back in play:

The Argentinian president has criticised David Cameron for insisting the Falkland Islands should remain a British territory.

Cristina Kirchner described the prime minister as “arrogant” and said his comments were an “expression of mediocrity and almost of stupidity”.

Cameron had been prompted by Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell during prime minister’s questions to remind Barack Obama that the British government would not accept any kind of negotiations over the south Atlantic islands, over which Argentina and Britain fought a 10-week war in 1982.

Cameron told the Commons: “I would say this: as long as the Falkland Islands want to be sovereign British territory, they should remain sovereign British territory — full stop, end of story.”

In her criticism of his comments, Kirchner said Britain “continues to be a crude colonial power in decline”.

Well, Mr. Cameron, you’ve given Argentina a ten-year window of opportunity here between your (in my opinion stupid) scrapping your last carriers and getting rid of their Harrier aircraft and the time that your next carrier comes into service. By the time you have HMS Queen Elizabeth in commission and with a full complement of aircraft, the Falkland Islands will likely be under Argentinian control.

If the government of Ronald Reagan had to be pushed into supporting Britain in 1982, there’s absolutely no chance that Barack Obama will lift a finger to help Britain in 2012 — in fact, it’s much more likely that Obama will decide that Argentina is more deserving of American help anyway.

June 14, 2011

Random links

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

A few links which don’t lend themselves to becoming full blog posts:

June 13, 2011

AC Grayling’s “embryo London humanities university … has induced apoplexy in the old left”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Education — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:35

Simon Jenkins marvels at the over-the-top response to the announcement of a new private university in London:

This has been a purple week for red rage. The hirsute philosopher, AC Grayling, may call himself a “pinko” but his embryo London humanities university in Bedford Square has induced apoplexy in the old left. He and 13 high-octane scholars are having their lectures “targeted”. The Guardian is in ideological meltdown. Foyles has been hit by a smoke bomb. The Kropotkin of our age, Terry Eagleton, claims to be fit to vomit. Bloomsbury has not been so excited since semen was spotted on Vanessa Bell’s dress.

Britain’s professors, lecturers and student trade unionists appear to be united in arms against what they most hate and fear: academic celebrity, student fees, profit and loss, one-to-one tutorials and America. Grayling’s New College of the Humanities may be no more than an egotists’ lecture agency, better located at Heathrow Terminal 5, but the rage it has evoked is fascinating.

What Grayling has done is caricature the British university. He has cartooned it as no longer an academic community but a high-end luxury consumable for the middle classes, operating roughly half a year, with dons coming and going at will, handing down wisdom in between television and book tours. Just when state universities have been freed by the coalition to triple their income per student (initially at public expense) to £9,000, Grayling has mischievously doubled that to £18,000.

British carbon tax may spark de-industrialization

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:51

The current British government’s global warming/climate change programs, combined with the European Union’s policies, may have triggered a race to the exits by British industry:

Now, the CBI and Britain’s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed “carbon floor” tax (also unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the policy is changed, it will lead inevitably to mass plant closures and job losses. Similarly, the European Metals Association warned last week that the EU’s various “anti-carbon” policies are becoming so costly that they are already forcing steel, aluminium and other producers in their energy-intensive industry to relocate outside Europe, losing hundreds of thousands more jobs.

At one end of the scale, then, whole industries are protesting that the soaring costs of “climate change” measures will amount, in effect, to a colossal economic suicide note. At the other, we begin to see how the obsession with “climate change” will push our own household energy bills through the roof, driving millions more people into “fuel poverty”. Apart from anything else, by 2020 our Government expects us to pay £100 billion for a further 10,000 useless, subsidised windmills, plus £40 billion to connect them to the National Grid. These costs alone would almost double our present electricity bills.

Furthermore, we are all unwittingly having to pay billions for the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Reduction scheme, higher airline taxes, higher vehicle duties, highly paid “low-carbon officers” in our council offices, and heaven knows what else besides. With the new carbon floor tax soon due to raise our energy bills by further billions, we can see why the Government’s own forecast — that the Climate Change Act will cost us up to £18 billion annually until 2050 — might well be an underestimate.

Most terrifying of all, however, is the extent to which our politicians remain firmly locked in their little green bubble, oblivious to the practical implications of the measures they have set in train. As for what purpose it all serves, we may note last week’s report that China, already the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, is now also the world’s largest energy user. Each year it increases the world’s CO2 emissions by more than the total that Britain emits annually.

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