I Received a No2AV Leaflet Today

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Buck 65

Hampsted Heath

It's lovely to be here for the spring/summer term.

Organic Can Feed Us All

– New Data Confirms It’s Just As Productive, More Drought Resistant, Better For Soil

Organic Can Feed Us All – New Data Confirms It's Just As Productive, More Drought Resistant, Better For Soil

via TreeHugger on 30/03/11

photo: Rodale Institute If you’ve got any doubts that organic agriculture can be just as productive as farming with synthetic chemicals, hopefully this will stop those doubts: Rodale Institute has been running side-by-side comparisons of conventional and organic farm plots growing corn and soybeans for nearly three decades and the latest data is in. The result i…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Internet Culture Reclamation Situation: Robot Apocalypse Edition

Seeing as it's Sunday I feel it's time for a little light relief (before "The Big Questions" comes on and I want to strangle everyone, starting with Nicky Campbell).

So here is a few kids doing the robot, I'm sure you've all seen this before (as is kind of the point with this project), but be sure to wait for the guy in the orange shirt at around 35 seconds in.

Speaking of robots, if you like both our future overlords and unicorns (and who wouldn't), here's something to pass the time after you've finished with Mr Campbell.

Logical Fallacy or Not…

Pete's sensible response to my query over the true cause of the 0.5% (estimated) contraction in the UK economy has left me in a position where I feel I have to flesh out my suggestion a little more, or at least respond to Pete. 

Pete writes:

Chronology as causation, if you will. It is a tempting piece of logic, but is generally considered a logical fallacy

True, but the same could be said about the relationship between the downturn and the weather. Both can be reasonably argued  (see below) as having had an effect and both happened before these numbers were released. 

Further:

Secondly, the cuts don't actually start until April of this year

The cuts themselves may not have begun, but anticipation certainly has. I don't know of any statistics, but I can tell you anecdotally that there has certainly been cases of people not having contracts renewed (or being informed that this will be the case), and of departments cutting back now because they know they will have smaller budgets in the near future. 

Plus consumer spending will surely decrease if people worry about the safety of their jobs. If consumer spending goes down private sector spending goes down. Thus the worry about the dreaded double dip (the extra-sour version of the popular sweet), and the foolishness of cutting public spending before we are safely out of the recession.  

Stop! Contraction Time

The UK economy has contracted 0.5% in the last quarter. 

The Office for National Statistics suggests that 

even if the weather impact had been excluded, activity would have been "flattish"

Really? Or are the cuts beginning to bite already? 

Let's hope this isn't the first sign of a "double dip".

Transparent Pay

This article in today's Guardian got me thinking.

The chancellor, George Osborne, will continue to seek an EU-wide deal on disclosure of pay bands above £1m, along the lines proposed by the City grandee Sir David Walker. He had initially proposed a UK-only deal before arguing international competition in banking required an EU-wide deal. It is possible Cable will get a more limited UK deal in the next fortnight, but there are concerns in parts of government that full-pay disclosure requirements will lead to inflationary pay pressures in banking as bankers realise how much their colleagues are being paid.

Why don't we make all pay in this country transparent? Make some repository where you can go and see how much anyone gets paid? This would highlight the disparity between people working in different sectors and give people a sense of how society views different jobs. It could even go so far as to show how much tax people have paid.

I know some (/many) people will be resistant to such a change, but I can't think of a good reason why. Any valid arguments against?

The Beginning?

In this current government we have seen the Lib Dems approval rating dropping so fast the papers can barely keep up. This, clearly, has been due to the perception that the Lib Dems (and Nick Clegg in particular) have become nothing more than a party to green light Conservative policy, and have given up on their own political ambitions beyond being in power. However, with a referendum on the Alternative Vote in the spring, and now Nick Clegg talking about changing British libel law, are we going to see some real Lib Dem policies this year? Thoughts?

On Fees, Cuts, and Protests

Rather than reply directly to Pete's last post on the student protests I settled down to write a long form post myself. However, between writing my first thoughts down and feeling ready to publish something I came across this article over at Crooked Timber. This sets out a great deal of what I was thinking in a far more eloquent manner than I could myself achieve. 

For example:

The proposals are being sold to the public on two grounds: 1. that they are part of a cuts package that is needed to reduce the UK’s deficit, 2. that it is unfair to expect the less well-off, whose children do not attend university, to subsidise the children of the better-off who do. The first of these claims ought not to persuade anyone who buys the Krugman/Stiglitz line on defecit reduction, the second claim (a) ought to be false if general taxation is sufficiently progressive and (b) appears to rest on some principle that only the direct beneficiaries of a public scheme ought to pay for it, a claim with frightening implications elsewhere (why not introduce a charge-and-loan scheme for all post-16 education?)

And on the effect of higher education on social mobility: 

This self-persuasion may also be easier for people who have bought into a “social mobility” interpretation of what social justice requires, promoted by NuLab and now enthusiastically endorsed by Nick Clegg. If you see universities overwhelmingly through the optic of access to labour-market advantage and you think that social justice is about opportunities for this, then a scheme that loads the costs onto the direct beneficiaries can start to look plausible. In my view, a conception of social justice that confines itself to equalizing opportunties to get a better position in a system of radically unequal outcome is a radically deficient conception. A scheme where higher educatation conferred fewer differential benefits because fewer such benefits existed would be a superior one. In any case, intergenerational equity clearly also matters for justice, and the current proposals have the further downside that they shift the costs of higher education from those who themselves enjoyed free education (such as most current higher-rate income tax payers) to the coming generations.

Please read the whole article, it will be well worth the five minutes.