July 02, 2009Today's Web Grab
The Republican 2012 problem
The Republicans have a 2012 problem. The conventional wisdom is that it is the adultery of Nevada's Senator John Ensign and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford that has left them in a mess. But that - as Michael Barone points out - is overdone. These were possible candidates but hardly likely winners. No, what leaves Republicans with a problem is not lack of a candidate it is lack of a platform. It is hard to see a position with which a candidate could win the nomination and then win the country. This point is made most forcefully by studying Mitt Romney's campaign in 2008. This is worth it for two reasons. First, because it is instructive about the difficulty of reconciling audiences and second, because Romney seems a very likely compromise in 2012. Barone makes the following points:
Romney's fiscal conservatism may make him ideal in 2012 because it is one of the few issues on which the Republicans can agree with each other and still get traction. He will, however, have a difficult decision. Should he reflip on social issues to be more like his real position or stick with his new stance and take a hit with voters. And if he does reflip, when should he do it? "Free Madoff" says Alec Baldwin
What happens if his advice on how to prevent this happening again is to threaten people with 150 year prison sentences? Magazine Rack - Issue 450
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Kidnapped by your toaster?"Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it." (Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams) Sure, I'll admit it. I couldn’t build a toaster. I’m not talking about a bread-on-skewer-over-a-bonfire toaster (though, thinking about it, I’d probably struggle with the bonfire bit too). I mean a proper, modern, bread-browning electrical appliance. Because through all the sweat and all the effort, he knows he won't be able do it. In the end, he'll have to use modern appliances - like the microwave (ironically) he uses to smelt iron ore. Which makes him despair of himself and his task - a a symbol of the “helplessness” of the modern consumer. Pointing to the earlier ‘I, Pencil’ experiment by Leonard Reid, Balko points out that division of labor is what makes the making of pencils, microwaves “and, for that matter, all of the conveniences of modern life” possible. ...and every participant is in the game for his own self interest—to make a living, and to make a contribution that's really only a tiny part of the end result of a product, even one as insignificant as the humble pencil. Pan back until you've framed the entire world economy, and it's hard not to marvel at the wonder and miracle of capitalism's invisible hand. It's a peculiar kind of "helplessness" that enables us to benefit from the shared labor of millions of workers and the collected knowledge of millions of people accumulated over hundreds of years by merely traveling to the nearest Wal-Mart or appliance store, or, better yet, by merely clicking the mouse on a computer a few times and having the toaster (or, for that matter, groceries, or clothing, or medicine) brought directly to our homes.
The Tories and tax
There are two possible attacks on Gordon Brown's delusional "Cuts versus Investment" dividing line. The first is that it is a lie, because Labour would have to cut and its figures show that it would. The second is that if it really decides not to cut then it would have to impose massive tax rises. The Conservatives have opted for the first of these attacks. It has obvious advantages. Not the least is that it protects the Tories from serious Labour attack, since Brown's assault seems more bonkers than lethal. Yet there is obvious juice in the tax attack, too. There are, of course, two dangers to a tax attack. The first is that it exposes the Tories on spending, suddenly making Labour look coherent rather than delusional and making the dividing line real. The second is that opens the Tories to difficult questions about their own tax plans. So there are risks. But Brown has now so surrendered his grip on fiscal reality, I think he would find it hard to exploit these problems for the Tories. A tax attack is a very real possibility. Thursday's comment from the papers in...
Today in Times comment And from the rest of the papers: And from the rest of the world… July 01, 2009Today's Web Grab
Former CIA analyst hopes for an al-Qaeda attackNo, really. This is Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Osama bin Laden unit at the CIA, explaining why "the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States." James Bond's secret wife
And here’s another - a bonus round if you will… What’s the connection between the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Dr Who? Answer: Dawkins’ wife, Lalla Ward, played the Doctor’s assistant, Time Lady Romana, in Seasons 17 and 18. Dawkins later had a cameo role himself. We’re been wracking our brains trying to think of other ‘bet you never linked the two of them’ couples. If you’ve got any up your sleeve, please let us know. Getting a rise with a 0% riseFraser Nelson has produced a fantastic analysis of the budgetary acrobatics behind this latest statement over on Coffee House, beginning with this helpful graph:
Magazine Rack - Issue 479
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Jeff Goldblum is dead... long live Jeff GoldblumFollowing on from yesterday's reports on a wave of phoney celebrity deaths... No one is more saddened by the loss of Jeff Goldblum than Jeff Goldblum.
Bacon flavoured donuts - the most disgusting meal ever?
It’s early. You’ve arrived at your desk, yawned, switched on the computer, yawned, flicked through the paper, yawned. What do you reach for? Well, if you’re one of a growing number of Americans, there can only be one answer. A steaming mug of bacon-flavoured coffee. “It's a beautiful marriage of two culinary powerhouses: De La Paz espresso beans and organic Prather Ranch bacon—providing an extra kick that'll help you sail into the weekend” one blogger enthuses over a San Franciscan café’s Maple Bacon Latte. You can almost see (and smell) him licking the smoky-bacon-foam from his lips. But symptoms of “America’s Bacon Addiction” by no means end there. Chocolate covered bacon, bacon-flavoured vodka, bacon flavoured donuts and bacon lolly pops have all popped up on grocery store shelves, pointing towards an insatiable appetite for all things pig. But still I couldn't quite believe what I was witnessing. Until, that is, I came across the ominously named ‘Bacon Explosion’. If you haven't already been exposed to this, you might want to look away now. Ahem: according to The New York Times it's: a “massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce.” Oh sure, I know what you're thinking. 5,000 calories of unadulerated pig goodness. Bliss, but, at 500 grams of fat, possibly not the best romantic aid. Fear not. Yesbutnobut has produced a list of ‘top 10 bacon-flavoured gifts for Valentines’. I challange you, sincerely, to come up with a more disgusting meal than this: A bacon explosion, washed down with bacon-flavoured-vokda, and topped off with a bacon-cheese-burger-flavoured-donut and a steaming maple-bacon-latte. Make that a large one. Wednesday's comment from the papers in...
Today in Times comment And from the rest of the papers: And from the rest of the world… June 30, 2009Today's Web Grab
A manifesto for blogging?
Now, quite apart from the fact that our law enshrines the right of journalists to hold and publish opinions, Nelson’s defence, posted this afternoon, contains a powerful raison d’etre for blogging itself (or, at the very least, political blogging): If you're reading this, Ed (and I suspect you will be) then we have a serious point to make. Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs - as we did - to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying - no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed - by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you're in for a rude awakening. I know who I'm putting my money on in this fight. And it's not the Schools Secretary.
Ian Austin, comedy geniusThis is the best ever Ministerial reply. Pressed on the few people taking up the Government's mortgage assistance scheme, the BBC reports that:
Mr Austin's comic impact was increased by the fact that he wasn't intending to make a joke, thus ensuring that deadpan delivery. Magazine Rack - Issue 478
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Exchange: Building Britain's Future
There are lots of ways of reading Building Britain’s Future. A cobbled together mish-mash of old policies, a surrender by the Brownites to the Blair policies they resisted, an ambitious agenda, an ambitious agenda built on a gigantic lie about public spending. How was it for you, Phil? From: Philip Collins Well, all of those are true. There are some good things in it but it is dripping with unintended irony. I'm sure, in the last days of Major, you found yourself writing sentences like "and in 2002 we will ensure that the potential of every child is realised...." Well, there is plenty of that. But, look past that and what is there of enduring value? There is an interesting case that government should take an active role in ensuring that new industries emerge - that may be wrong but at least it's a thesis. And the public services chapter tries to shift the argument from targets to entitlements. It is weaker on how such entitlements should be enforced. In the end that will lead you back to the sort of policies that the Brownites resisted for so long. Assuming that Labour is not about to win a new majority, what is the likely fate of these ideas? Is it likely that they will form the base for future Labour thinking, or that they will be identified as the sort of thing that led Labour to defeat? Who really feels ownership of these ideas? Is it correct to think of them as coming from Mandelson and Byrne? Or have they come up higgledy-piggeldy from Departmental waste paper bins? The entitlement idea actually comes from Tony Wright. I think the Labour party likes the idea of granting rights which are better described as phrases with the form of "it would be nice to have x..." It doesn't like what you have to do to enforce those rights. So, you can offer a right to treatment within a certain period. But will the Labour party stomach the corollary - that you can then go private if the NHS fails you? Some of these ideas might end up as Tory policy once Andrew "Dobson" Lansley has got out of the way. Why Brown wanted Balls to be Chancellor
Ed Balls's desire to be Chancellor may have been personal, but Gordon Brown's desire to accede to this request wasn't. He needed Balls as Chancellor if he was to pursue, with any chance of success, his chosen cuts v investment campaign. As Chancellor Balls would have acted entirely politically. He would have done anything to provide the figures that could sustain the campaign. His only financial objective would have been to put pressure on the Tories. He would have used his authority and Treasury support to make cuts v investment seem real. So Brown needed to make this move. When he failed he didn't just disappoint his chum. He badly damaged his campaign. At least until the PBR in the autumn, if not beyond, Alistair Darling will try to be a real Chancellor. And a real Chancellor can't possibly subscribe, at least not without many large caveats, to the fraudulent campaign Brown is trying to run. Do women make worse voters?
Can you stand firm in the face of a candidate with a sparkle in his eyes and two tidy rows of pearly whites? Not, according to a new Eurobarometer poll, if you’re a woman in Lithuana, where 52% of the fairer sex are influenced by the candidate’s charisma when it comes to voting. The report - called, rather sternly, Women and European Parliamentary Elections - aims to examine 'womens’ attitudes and behaviour towards elections in general and their opinions about the European elections and activities of the European Parliament in particular.' Across Europe, it finds, 41% of men vote on the issues compared to only 37% of women. Twenty-five per cent of women, on the other hand, cast their vote under the spell of a candidate's personality compared to only 21% of men. This conclusion was reached by asking respondents the question “In general when you participate in elections, how do you decide whom to vote for?” It's pretty obvious, of course, which response makes you look the cleverest. Could it just be that the women were less inclined to lie? Tuesday's comment from the papers in...
Today in Times comment And from the rest of the papers: And from the rest of the world… June 29, 2009Today's Web Grab
What, really, is the IEA anyway?Iain Dale breaks the news that John Blundell is leaving the IEA, prompting Guido to speculate on the succession. Before the IEA can choose a new Director, though, it has to decide a prior question. What is it? This may seem odd, since the IEA has an almost rigid view of its own ideological position. It is absolutely not a Tory think tank, it is a free market libertarian organisation. The question over its identity is different. Is it a body that wants to influence policy, or is it primarily concerned with educating people about free markets? If the latter it can afford to keep repeating the same points over and over again. Indeed it probably has to. But something different is required if it wants to influence the political agenda. The IEA needs much more political dexterity, and the ability to capture attention with practical schemes that recommend themselves to politicians. There is an advantage to the educational model, but if that is the decision the IEA cannot expect to retain quite the same public influence and profile. If the public policy model is followed then the organisation has got to be willing to compromise with political reality at least a little. The key thing is not the choice of the next Director of the IEA, it is the choice of their terms of reference. The greatest era in our history?
In this morning’s paper, he tasks himself with identifying the greatest era in this nation’s history: "Invite someone on a Regency weekend and you would expect some twirling of moustaches, the odd heaving bosom and a general air of foppery" “Dangle a visit to an Edwardian resort in front of a friend and they would expect bandstands, cream teas and gentle bathing…" "But suggest to someone they might like to spend some time in a Victorian institution, or recommend a friend on the basis of their Victorian manners, or even, Heaven forfend, suggest there’s something worth learning from Victorian values, and you might as well ask if they’d like their sushi well done. "It’s such a cosmic betrayal of contemporary mores as to make you an instant laughing stock." "Which is why it falls to this column to speak up for the Victorians. I don’t think there has been a better time in our history. Better leaders than Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli and Salisbury? Braver thinkers than Mill, Ruskin, Faraday and the mighty Darwin?" "And, crucially, when was English literature ever more richly endowed with talent? From Hardy to Dickens, George Eliot to Mrs Gaskell, Tennyson to Browning, Arnold to Wilde, English poetry and prose was never so well served. " Times writers respond to his challenge below. But what about you? Would you prefer to commemorate the decline of feudalism and the rise, in Geoffrey Chaucer, of English literature? Or to celebrate Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe and the building of a new theatre of the same name? David Aaronovitch: A complete no-brainer. In any almost other era but this – save possibly for Bronze Age Sweden (source Wikipedia) - I would most likely be dead by now. Dead for 7 years in Elizabethan England, dead for over twenty years in ancient Rome or Greece, dead for 28 years if I had been Liverpool born in the mid-Victorian era, but looking forward to another three years if I’d been born in Okehampton. And dead is no quality of life at all.
The 1950s are hugely underrated: the decade in which modern Britain was formed, after which the more famous 1960s were just a giggle. This was the post-War, post-Depression era in which mass car-ownership, mass-TV-ownership; mass telephone ownership, and modern commercial aviation began. Drudgery left women's lives; a shopkeeper's daughter could study Chemistry at Oxford, marry a divorcee and as a working mother go on to a parliamentary career that would end in Downing Street. Wolfenden could recommend the decriminalisation of homosexuality; and everyone got richer, smarter, cooler and more free. The 60 years from 1890 to 1950 saw life change out of recognition, but in the decade that followed a Britain emerged that, 60 years later, is still our world. Graham Stewart: I'd agree with Michael, actually. We condemn the Victorian age for its poverty and social ills as if Victorians created rather than inherited these problems. Workhouses for the poor, debtors prisons, child labour - none of these were instituted during Victoria’s reign. Rather, it was during the Victorian age that these and countless other cruelties were reformed, made less harsh or abolished. A time of humbug and excessive moral self-certainty? Perhaps. But the Victorians practiced far greater religious toleration than had existed in Georgian Britain and demonstrated a level of engagement in high-minded debate that we struggle to emulate today.
The greatest age in our history is obviously the 17th century. The mid-century is known for its bloody upheavals over religion, Commonwealth and politics, but more significant was what was happening outside. Michael asks when was English literature so richly endowed with talent as under Queen Victoria. The answer is obvious when you consider Donne, Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and Pepys. The great economic shift in English society took place as workers left agriculture and mined coal, without which the Industrial Revolution would not have started. Daniel Finkelstein: I don't find this hard. The answer is right now, right here. We're healthier, wealthier and wiser. We're much more tolerant. We're still sadly prone to tribal welfare, but less than at any time in the history of civilisation. This is the golden age of mankind, for all the terrible tragedies and flaws. Could the Washington Post have got it wrong?
Magazine Rack - Issue 477
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The Queen's pocket money
Think of it sort of like royal pocket-money, doled out indulgently by each of us. Sky News is reporting that the total cost of keeping the monarchy has risen, in the 2008-09 financial year, by £1.5 million. That’s 3p more from each of us, or a total 69p per person a year. Or, as I'm willing myself to imagine her measuring it, about thirty-five and a half fizzy cola bottle sweets or one drumstick lolly. Would you steal a 50p bagel?I’m fascinated by a proposition made by Alasdair Palmer this morning. He tells the story of the adventurous economist Paul Feldman, who launched his own bagel-delivery company in the interests of fiscal experiment. The bagels were left in city offices, with a sign beside them stating their price and a box into which to deposit the money. Feldman trusted people to cough up the few cents for a bagel as a matter of conscience. But was he right to?
Palmer writes: “comparing the rates at which people took his bagels without paying for them, he came to the conclusion that those higher up the corporate ladder stole bagels more often than those at the bottom… “Mr Feldman thinks that senior executives have a tendency to steal bagels more often than run-of-the-mill employees because they're so used to taking things without paying for them that an overdeveloped sense of personal entitlement leads them to assume they always can. Perhaps that's what happened to the 27 BBC executives earning more than the Prime Minister, and to our MPs struggling on their salaries of "only" £63,000.” I can’t help but doubt Palmer’s direct comparison with MP’s allowances. After all, there was, for a long time, a culture of encouraging MPs to claim the bulk of their allowance, while Feldman’s executives were confronted daily with a sign, pinned to the bagels, pointing out that taking one without payment was theft. But the results of the experiment must surely ring true to anyone who has spent any time on the bottom rung of an office. And I'm sold on Feldman's explanation of why executives are more likely blithely to help themselves to something cheap without examining their consciences. Those lower down the hierarchy, accustomed to counting the pennies, are surely more likely instinctively to understand the importance of sticking to their side of the contract and handing over the 50p (or 50 cents) for the bagel that someone else has made and offered for sale… No? Monday's comment from the papers in...
Today in Times comment And from the rest of the papers: And from the rest of the world… June 27, 2009The blame for Michael Jackson's death
I read in the papers that Michael Jackson's death is being blamed on the doctors. Personally, I blame it on the boogie.
June 26, 2009Today's Web Grab
"John Kerry... Why the long face?"Sarah Palin talks to troops in Kosovo... Magazine Rack - Issue 476
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Do pop stars really die young?Here is my theory about the price of fame:
Well, ok, perhaps not quite my theory. That of a group of academics at Liverpool John Moores University. Although it may seem as if rock stars die atypically young, this may just be the availability heuristic at work. In other words, we remember rock star deaths because the people are memorable. Take Brian Jones. He did die young, but six other Stones are still alive. That might be quite a normal rate of attrition. But then, perhaps you need to count the late Ian Stewart, who played keyboards in the first line-up. And does their PR genius Andrew Loog Oldham count? So it is hard to say if the old rock stars die young thing is true. You need a proper method of comparison. So the Liverpool academics took 1,000 individuals performing on any album in the all-time Top 1000 albums and studied them. They compared survival rates to that of the general population. They found both geographical and cohort effects. As a North American star who first came to fame well before 1980, Michael Jackson belonged to two high risk groups. And he didn't emerge from the risk group after all his years of fame. As a North American, his group chance of survival continued to diverge from the general population as time went on. Rock stars do live fast(er) and die young(er). Expense claims - you do the mathsComment Central readers will be familiar with our fondness for the statistician’s art. So it’s with great joy that I note that my colleague Hannah Devlin, over on Science Central, has written about ‘how to spot an MP’s dodgy expense claims using maths’. Applying Benford’s Law no less. Happy Friday. Friday's comment from the papers in...
Today in Times comment And from the rest of the papers: And from the rest of the world… June 25, 2009Obama - too good for his own good?
Oh, and he manages to juggle that with wildly romantic gestures – he never forgets a promise made to his wife, while you... well... let’s not even go there… Now he’s settled into the new home, he’s a better father than you. He’s fitter than you. He’s got the reflexes of a ninja. He eats well, reads well, he’s even got a really great dog. Don’t you just love him? Huh? You want to… hit him?! Could it be, asks Eamon Javers at Politico, that Obama’s perfection is becoming less inspiring and more, well, infuriating? “President Obama and his team should be careful about trying to be perfect” Javers quotes Republican media strategist Mark McKinnon as saying. “Voters are suspicious of perfect. They actually prefer someone who is human. And has flaws. Like them.” And yet, in the polls, the President continues to soar in the likeability stakes, Michelle to score even higher. Perhaps people don't want someone just like them to be running the country. They want a cleverer, less stroppy, more motivated version of themselves. Could you sleep soundly knowing someone exactly like you was on the end of the red phone? My instinct is that people are like dogs,” Javers quotes Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. “They want a leader they think is better than them... People naturally defer to others they think are superior.” Could it be that we only think that we love to hate the know-it-all? That when push really comes to shove, we might even, whisper it, admire them? Obama, at least, is taking no chances. Remember his vocal regrets, on the campaign trail, about how little time he got to spend with his daughters? And the news that he struggled giving up the cigarettes? I'm with Javers in guessing he knew exactly what he was doing. Perfect, even in his imperfections. Today's Web Grab
Tehran-next-the-sea
Answer: The former baulked at banning Twitter. Plymouth, on the other hand, has no such qualms. Council staff have barred from using the site after the city's Labour group leader Tudor Evans called a member of the BNP a “Nazi” while on the site. Erm... That's right Plymouth, show them how it's done. Labour MPs to make radical pledge...
The pledge: The Labour Party is a great movement for change, made up of people determined to serve the public interest and not their own. I seek elected office for the honour of serving the public and our democracy; I will subscribe to high standards of integrity, transparency, accountability and prudence with public money; I will publish online my full salary and parliamentary allowances; I believe it a duty to hold regular meetings, engagement events and surgeries with my community and constituents and will do so; I will communicate regularly with my electorate and will be available through email, telephone and other means to my constituents; I will regularly report back to my constituency party as well as to my constituents Magazine Rack - Issue 475
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Beware, beware the Obama curse?
His apparent ‘lone hike’ in the Appalchian wilderness was heralded as heroic, all-American, a maveric adventure. McKinnon ushered him up his list of 2012 Republican presidential contenders, leaving him trailing only Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and John Thune. And then it happened. Because it turned out Sanford wasn’t “making like St. Francis of Assisi communing with the birds, the beasts, and the flowers in God’s southern mountain garden” as Jonathan Tobin puts it. Instead, as the world now knows, Sanford spent the last few days “crying in Argentina” over the tangled mess of his affair with a “dear, dear friend” Maria. That McKinnon ranking has yet to be revised, but it’s a safe bet that he's taken quite a tumble. “Marital infidelity squelched the slim possibilities of a John Ensign 2012 run just a week ago — but before that there was Senator David Vitter and Larry Craig, and before that Bob Livingston and Bill Owens (who never admitted an affair, but who divorced his wife of 28 years amidst a long litany of rumors), and before that — well, the list is a long one.” If things carry on this way, the only man left standing for potential candidature by 2012 will be Mitt Romney “a happily married Mormon with a family of perfect hair and tans”. How does Obama do it? Why is it, as Marbury asks, “that so many of Obama’s potential opponents in 2012 are dropping like flies?” To the ominous list of misadventures, Marbury adds: Jindal’s goofy speech, Hunstman’s jump-ship, and the near-daily episodes of the Sarah Palin soap opera (I can't begin to decide which story to link to here...). Beware, Mitt, the Obama curse. So powerful, even the perma-tan might fail to shield you from it. How much has Boris spent on taxis since taking office?Answer: £4,698 And much of this was incurred in waiting fees, making the meter climb to what is surely a record height of £237.50 for an eight-mile trip from an N7 postcode in London to N9. What became of the bicycle, Boris? (Hat tip to Paul Waugh for the image)
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