David Cameron is the new Tory leader. So we have a ‘choice’ between two Blairites.
I cannot tell you how excited I am about this development 
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December 6th, 2005 | Comments are closed
 One of our team brought this bit of aviation humour to my attention. It is guaranteed to give you a bit of a smile. December 6th, 2005 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The biblical notion of ‘an eye for an eye’ is still taken seriously in Saudi Arabia. Literally. December 6th, 2005 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The only people who object to ID cards and CCTV are ‘bad people’, right? I mean after all, everyone knows that the people who work for the State are of a more incorruptable and moral nature than us mere private people. Yeah, right. The State is not your friend. December 6th, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have this unusual mp3 file (mp3 file now removed to save on bandwidth) on my hard drive and I have no frikking idea where the hell I downloaded it from, what it is called or who the artist is. Does anyone out there have an idea? Please let me know if you have any clues. It has quite a low bit-rate so I would guess it is a sampler track dumped on-line to promote a CD (so you would think the information tags would be filled in but nooooo). Update: I have removed the mp3 file to save on bandwidth now that the question has been answered by the commentariat. December 6th, 2005 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just did some live blogging over on PajamasMedia on the subject of who should control the internet. I must confess that I was not wearing my pajamas however. December 5th, 2005 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Those smart fellows at the Marginal Revolution economics blog like to track all manner of strange and innovative ways in which Man engages in the age-old routine of truck and barter. Sport has spawned all manner of new business enterprises in recent years and now it is possible for investors to build assets by investing in the future market value of footballers. Makes sense, really. These days football players, even quite mediocre ones – never mind great talents like Pele or George Best (RIP) – are paid enormous amounts of money in their careers. Rather like the bloodstock trade, I think. The idea of getting a financial stake in a player is also likely to bring investor pressure on players to be monitored off the field as well as on it (do we really want a potentially lucrative asset to be carousing down the pub?) Personally, I am sticking to equities, bonds, cash and a bit of brick and mortar. December 5th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
In an emerging democracy like Indonesia, progress towards an open society is rarely easy and often has many setbacks. To make things worse in Indonesia’s case, this polyglot island nation is one of the main theatres of the war on terrorism. Though the main Islamic terrorist group in the region, Jemiah Islamiah, is small considering the size of Indonesia, it has been able to launch powerful and deadly attacks in Indonesia. Under pressure from its public to crack down on Jemiah Islamiah, the Indonesian government is reverting back to the old ways of the one-party state. This story details a plan to fingerprint students at Islamic schools, thought to affect over 3 million pupils. This move has caused outrage in Indonesia, although sadly this opposition is mostly from conservative muslim groups rather from people concerned about civil liberties. Also reflecting bad old habits is the revival of the ‘Ministry of Information’, which played a sinister role of controlling the media in the ‘New Order” regime of President Suharto. The Ministry has come out with regulations that clearly breaches Indonesian broadcasting law, but in a cynical move it has made sure that the regulations will remain in place while the regulations are challenged in the creaky and slow moving court system. The regulations are quite cynical.
For Indonesia, the path towards liberty and accountable government is clearly a long and windy road, with many detours along the way. December 5th, 2005 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a school of thought, that, within 10 years communities will have replaced the orthodoxies of government, management, business and marketing as the primary medium by which these organisations will successfully engage with their audiences. Further, enabling or capturing peer-to-peer information flows will transform these organisations and how they engage with their stakeholders, simply for the better. And, that those organisations that ignore the newly empowered and connected customer/voter/stakeholder will simply struggle to survive. This is the unsung, un-remarked media and cultural revolution. That the great explosion is in peer-to-peer communication – something many organisations up until now have overlooked. December 5th, 2005 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The US Constitution begins, famously, “We the People…”. The European Constitution begins, “His Majesty the King of the Belgians…”. That gives you a fair idea of the different spirit of each document. (Hat tip to Taylor Dinerman for pointing out this gem) December 5th, 2005 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The British Government can solve its pensions crisis. But it doesn’t want to. Having spent all their lives trying to persuade everybody that they can offer something for nothing because somebody else is paying, all policians find themselves unable to break the habit. Having quietly seized exorbitant benefits at the general taxpayer’s expense (on the excuse that they are poorly paid, which isn’t true now, if it ever was), public sector employees are not letting go.
An unfunded national pension scheme avaialable to the majority of the population is much like a Ponzi scheme: a pyramid ‘investment’ trick that is illegal everywhere–except when operated by governments. It depends on ever more suckers paying over ever more money (in this case, compelled by taxation) to finance the unfeasible returns promised to those entering earlier. The trimming of the Turner Commission just beds the con in deeper. We can expect a trivial postponement to distract attention from more pensions, more taxation, and a bigger future squeeze. The simple (and only) solution is to follow the example of Bismarck when he invented the national pension. Convert an unsustainable Ponzi into a Tontine: a survivor benefit scheme. The pensionable age must be raised above the expectation of life, so that most people do not live to receive it. How much above depends on the benefits one wants to grant. The corollary is even more unpalatable to politicans. The much more generous unfunded pensions for public sector workers, including themselves–unless they are to take an ever greater and ever more resented share of national income–must begin at *older* ages than the open national scheme. Until civil servants retire at 80+, and unfunded pensions for the general public start at 75, we will know the government (with both sizes of G) only cares about looking after its own, and that the vapourings about “crisis” are a just a smokescreen for more control over private income and savings. December 5th, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
An unfunded pension is like a university education. If everyone has one, you can’t expect it to be worth anything. December 4th, 2005 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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