If it turns out that the intelligence services and the police have indeed foiled a plot to commit mass murder on a scale never before seen in the UK – and I have no reason to believe that it won't – then we owe them our thanks and gratitude.
We are quick to criticize when things go wrong, such as the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar in Forest Gate in June. Perhaps I am reading a biased sample blogs, but I have not seen a corresponding flurry of recognition of the success of intelligence gathering, investigation and international cooperation that has prevented the destruction in mid-air of nine passenger aircraft.
Similarly, in today's FT, there is a grudging editorial, complaining about the disruption at the airports and recalling past errors: there is no hint of congratulations for the success that the law enforcement agencies have achieved. Nor does today's Guardian leader offer any thanks.
Well I think that is humbug. Well done, men and women of the law enforcement agencies. We owe you.
SaharaReports.com reports that the Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Okonjo Iweala, who was formerly the Finance Minister, has resigned from the Cabinet, citing “deep personal clashes between her and the president”.
If so, that is very bad news for Nigeria. She earned the confidence of donors and played a crucial role in negotiating the debt relief deal (the world’s largest ever debt relief package).
The Prime Minister, House of Commons Hansard Debates, 18 March 2003
I have never put the justification for action as regime change. We have to act within the terms set out in resolution 1441—that is our legal base.
The Prime Minister, speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, 1 August 2006
The point about these interventions, however, military and otherwise, is that they were not just about changing regimes but changing the values systems governing the nations concerned. The banner was not actually "regime change", it was "values change".
What we have done therefore in intervening in this way, is far more momentous than possibly we appreciated at the time.
Quite so. And perhaps not in a good way.
I wrote here in June about the need for the UK government to work towards decentralized government databases using shared data schemas to allow information exchange between them in a secure, auditable system of information exchange. This would allow us to obtain the benefits of joined-up government systems, while protecting us (at least to some extent) from the risks to civil liberties of allowing the government to build a single 'Big Brother' database which stores all your personal information and to which government employees would have access.
I discovered today that the US government is developing a National Information Exchange Model. This is precisely the sort of XML schema for data exchange betwen government systems that I had in mind.
Such an information exchange schema would need to be accompanied by the other components of the system recommended in my earlier post – particularly a secure message layer, auditing of information exchanged across systems, and the right of all citizens to see all information held about them and a log of all accesses to that information by government systems.
The US effort is, rather chillingly, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. But since they are some way down the road (they have recently released a beta of the standard, including no fewer than nine proposed namespaces) it would make sense for this to form the basis of an international effort to develop a shared information scheme. After all, the information needs of governments cannot vary all that much between countries, and such a shared system would facilitate international cooperation (for example, for cooperation in criminal investigations, tax and immigration).
At risk of upsetting the anti-Tranzi brigade, it seems to me that an international system, agreed transparently and using open standards for information schema and messaging, could in principle be more likely to protect civil liberties and be more efficient than a series of unconnected information sharing systems developed by national governments.
Whales. The whale-hunters might or might not start hunting a species that is not endangered.
Abraham McLaughlin in the Christian Science Monitor has been writing for some time about the growing role of China in Africa.
China is increasingly making its presence felt on the continent – from building roads in Kenya and Rwanda to increasing trade with Uganda and South Africa. … Under the auspices of the UN, the China-Africa
Business Council opened this month, headquartered in China, to boost
trade and development. It has peacekeepers in Liberia and has
contributed to construction projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia,
though critics say it is using these projects to garner goodwill that
it can tap into during prickly issues like Taiwan’s independence or UN
face-offs with the US.
It seems to me that this is an example of China’s capacity to take the long view; seeing Africa not as a problem but as an opportunity and recognising the value for China’s own prosperity (and the security of its energy supplies) of building economic and political partnerships there.
The industrialised countries of Europe and North America have largely abandoned Africa, providing sticking plaster aid while refusing to allow Africa to trade fairly in agricultural and textile products. We have patronized, lectured and bullied; propped up some of the most vile regimes of the 20th century; and allowed (indeed, encouraged) our companies to bribe their way into sweetheart deals for oil, minerals and other natural resources, resources which are happily returned by the corrupt beneficiaries to bank accounts in Europe.
China’s engagement in Africa is in some ways problematic. China is less troubled by the human rights record of some of the countries with which it is building new partnerships, such as Zimbabwe; and in some countries such as Sudan its actions have broken the well-intended donor cartel which has sought to bring pressure to bear. But having neglected Africa for thirty years – despite repeated warnings that it was not in our economic, security or political interests to do so – we in the West can hardly complain now that China is stepping in to fill the vacuum. We should not forget the damage we did to Africa during the cold war, when the Soviet Union sponsored monsters like Mengistu while Europe and America propped up equally repugnant regimes like those of Mobutu and Eyadema.
On the positive side, perhaps this might at last herald a new, more positive scramble for Africa: this time, a scramble for investment and trade. This suggests we need a way to constrain the behaviour of all the economic powers, through transparency and codes of investment, to ensure that Africa benefits from renewed interest in the continent and does not again suffer as board-full of geopolitical pawns.
Ethan Zuckerman asks:
If the Chinese become a dominant investor on the continent, will we see
a shift in African alignment, from the US to China? And will anyone in
the US notice before the oil and other natural resources in Africa are
spoken for?
My Vaccines for Development blog, which I have been maintaining for a year, has morphed into a group blog on global health policy. Go take a look.
The Government has announced new mental health detention plans under which people who are deemed mentally ill with a condition that cannot be treated, and who have committed no crime, can be detained in Lubyanka a mental hospital indefinitely.
The Government has concluded that it will not be able to get its controversial draft Mental Health Bill through Parliament to make these changes, because of criticism of the measures from mental health experts and civil rights groups.
So instead they are going to introduce similar measures by amending the existing Mental Health Act 1983 and Mental Capacity Act 2005. The main difference is that patients who are locked up without their consent will be given a right to appeal. As things stand, Parliament will need to approve the amendments.
How much easier this will be for Ministers when the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill gives the government power to introduce these measures without having to obtain Parliamentary approval. Then it won’t matter whether Parliament agrees or not. Much more efficient, you see?
<geek>
Memo to self – this was how I cleaned up my Lacie 500Gb external backup drive which was giving read/write errors.
umount /dev/sdg1
e2fsck -fyc /dev/sdg1
Then go out for 3 hours …
</geek>
Kristen, Amy, me and Gabor at the track this morning (photo taken by G).
We did 3 sets of 4x400m at 5km race pace, with a very short (40 second) recovery between efforts.
(Click the photo for more photos from this morning.)
The rich countries give approximately $2 billion a year in aid to Vietnam, which is about 4% of Vietnam’s national income. Aid to Vietnam has inreased in recent years as the Government has pursued a successful policy of market liberalisation, which has brought down the number of people living in poverty and expanded incomes. Despite the progress that has been made, average income per head is still below $600 a year, and half of Vietnam’s 82 million people live below the poverty line.
There has been some more good news in the last few years. The abolition of quotas on shoe imports from 1 January 2005 has given Vietnam an opportunity to begin trade its way out of poverty. Vietnam has begun making not only sports shoes but also high quality, leather upper shoes, partly as a result of a bilateral trade agreement with the US in 2001. The shoe industry in Vietnam now employs at least half a million people, four fifths of them women; and their incomes support many more.
The EU is Vietnam’s biggest footwear market, absorbing 75% of Vietnam’s shoe exports.
This is, of course, excellent news if you want to see an end to poverty. It is not such good news if you are an Italian shoe-maker. In July 2005, under pressure from Italy and European shoe manufacturers, the EU Commission launched an investigation into whether shoes with
leather uppers from China and Vietnam were being "dumped" in Europe at
prices below the cost of production. The Commission has until April to decide whether to recommend adding duties to shoes imported from Vietnam and China.
According to the Guardian, the Commission is considering a "tariff rate quota" which would allow a set number of shoes to be
imported, with a levy imposed on any surplus; and the European
Branded Footwear Coalition, which has denounced the Commission’s investigations, is proposing a "minimum import price".
So it looks as if European consumers are going to be asked to spend about $10-20 extra on each pair of shoes, in order to protect an unprofitable industry in Europe, to keep the people of Vietnam poor, so that we can go on giving them aid.
How hard is it for people to understand that it would be in our interests and the interests of the people of Vietnam for us to buy the shoes that they can make more cheaply than we can?
Given the enormous difficulty that the US and its allies have had in establishing a peaceful democratic future for Iraq, it is natural that many people are sceptical of the idea that international intervention in the internal affairs of another country can ever lead to a successful conclusion.
So we should celebrate and learn from a remarkable experience which has just come to a positive conclusion. The United Nations Assistance Mission in
Sierra Leone, UNAMSIL, successfully completed its mandate in December 2005 and the U.N. troops have been withdrawn over the last few weeks. The success of the U.N. mission in Sierra Leone has had very little attention in the media or among the bloggers presumably because failure makes better copy than success.
I have no inside information about this, but I don’t think Gordon Brown will become leader of the Labour Party, or Prime Minister. My reasons are:
- the clear favourite almost never succeeds (think Gaitskell/Bevan, Foot/Healy)
- with David Cameron in charge of the Tories, the Labour Party will want someone of a younger generation
- Brown will be blamed, fairly or not, for slower economic growth and the impact of fiscal constraints in the coming years
- I suspect Blair will pick the moment of his departure to minimise Brown’s chances of succession
Who will it be instead? My guesses would be (in no particular order) David Miliband, Ruth Kelly or Douglas Alexander.
I am back in the UK, at short notice. I came for a a job interview – not because I am keen to leave California, but because this is a very good job, and one that I think I would have been very good at. Unfortunately, the interview panel did not agree, and I heard two days later that I didn’t get it. This is good news, really – as I hope it means I’ll be able to have a month or so travelling in South America with G. when she has finished her MBA and before we leave the US.
My US working visa expired, which means that I have to get a new one before I can get back to Berkeley. That is long process – two weeks at least for an interview at the US Embassy, and another week for them to return my passport. It will be longer over Christmas (or "the Holiday Season" as we say in America.) So for a 40 minute interview for a job I didn’t get, I’m going to have be away from home for about 4 weeks.
I must have been in the US too long, because A4 paper now seems a funny shape.
There are two arguments for a Tobin Tax (i.e. a small tax on foreign exchange transactions):
- it would provide a dedicated source of revenue to pay for increases in aid;
- it would benefit the economy by reducing volatility by reducing the amount of trading in currency markets.
Neither of these arguments stands up to scrutiny.
First, we can increase aid without finding a new source of revenue. UK Overseas Development Assistance is expected to be £4.9 billion this year, about 0.39% of GDP. We would need about another £3.8 billion a year to get up to 0.7% – the internationally agreed aspiration, which Jeff Sachs reckons is more than is needed to reach the Millennium Development Goals. UK public spending (measured as Total Managed Expenditure) is expected to increase by £28 billion in real terms over the next two years – we’d need about a seventh of the total increase to go to aid to reach the 0.7% target in two years. Alternatively, it would need about 1p on the basic rate of income tax, or a 3p increase in the top rate of tax. Linking aid increases to the introduction of a new tax (and one that is likely to be difficult, if not impossible, to get international agreement on) enables us to hide from the truth, which is that we haven’t increased aid because we don’t want to.
Second, I don’t understand why people think that high turnover in foreign exchange markets makes them more volatile. Deep and liquid markets are more, not less, likely to converge quickly on prices that reflect the economic fundamentals. The trends in currency prices that adversely affect poor countries are the inexorable long term depreciation as the terms of trade move against countries dependent on the export of primary commodities and the income gap between rich and poor countries continues to grow. These long term trends won’t be reversed by a Tobin Tax. If the problem was short term volatility, it would be simpler and cheaper to hedge than to try to reduce the volatility.
Norman Geras of Normblog interviews a different blogger each week. I find these a fascinating insight into the many bloggers whose virtual company I enjoy. These are people with whom I debate, listen, learn, laugh, bicker, celebrate and mourn. And yet I know very little about them. Normblog’s profiles fill that gap.
Norm’s profile this week is of Chris Dillow, the author of Stumbling and Mumbling. Chris manages to combine passion and righteous indignation with a sometimes deadpan delivery (today’s entry considering whether suicide bombers are rational is a case in point).
Here is a sample:
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > ‘The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.’ – John Stuart Mill
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > Managerialism.
I am full of admiration for Chris, which is why I am blushing furiously at having been named by him as one of his favourite bloggers. The feeling is mutual.
I am confused about why Martha Kearney chose to ask the two Davids what sort of underwear they wear. If a male interviewer had asked a female politician about her knickers, he would be thrown off the radio. And rightly so.
I have two older sisters, and no brothers. So I obviously learned some of my language from them. When I went to boarding school, at the age of ten, it took several weeks before I realised that referring to my own underwear – Y-fronts, since you ask – as my "knickers" was not likely to make me popular with the other boys. Or not the ones I wanted to be popular with.
An interesting editorial in The Business on Sunday with which I largely agree:
The evidence from across the globe is overwhelming: governments that “protect” their industries hurt their economies and their people. .. Countries that really believe in free trade should simply make a unilateral declaration to scrap their tariffs without condition on the goods and services of developing nations …
But I disagree with their criticism of David Cameron:
David Cameron, soon-to-be 20th leader of the Conservative party, can also be counted out. “The poor are getting poorer,” he claimed on a television debate last week, demonstrating his utter ignorance of the subject. The poor are being lifted out of poverty faster than at any time in world history, thanks largely to free trade. More progress has been made in the last 50 years than in the previous 500 years.
Credit where it is due: David Cameron is the first would-be leader that I can remember to speak about our responsiblity to tackle poverty. Here he is in the Telegraph:
when the Conservative Party talks about international affairs, it can’t just be Gibraltar and Zimbabwe – we’ve got to show as much passion about Darfur and the millions of people living on less than a dollar a day in sub-Saharan Africa who are getting poorer while we are getting richer.
But are The Business and the Adam Smith Institute right, or is David Cameron right? Have the poor got poorer? As ever, it depends who you mean, and over what time period.
Here is GDP per capita, in real terms, over the last 30 years. As you will see, GDP per capita in sub Saharan Africa is 8 percent lower today than 30 years ago; in OECD countries it is 86 percent higher. But if you look only at the last decade, then incomes in sub Saharan Africa have begun to recover, as governance has improved, conflict abated and aid increased. Within the region, some countries have grown faster, and some have continued to stagnate. But broadly speaking, David Cameron’s claim is right: sub Saharan Africa is poorer now than it was 30 years ago.
GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$) Indexed to 1974=100
Source: World Bank national accounts, and OECD National Accounts.
But I think the question of whether the poor have got poorer is largely irrelevant. The more profound point, which I would like to have seen The Business, the Adam Smith Institute, this week’s Economist, and David Cameron all make, is this. Globalization makes the world richer, on average. We should have more of it, not less of it. The way to acclerate globalization is to distribute the gains of globalisation more fairly. In the last thirty years, the gains have largely gone to the richer countries. This is not surprising: the rich and powerful are able to capture more of the benefits than the weak and vulnerable. But this cannot continue. Let us ensure that in the next decade of deeper and faster globalisation, the benefits are mainly enjoyed by the poor.
Perhaps because I started my working life in the Treasury, I take a rather puritanical view about the way civil servants should spend the public’s money.
So I am with Tim in being outraged by this report that DTI officials apparently used public money to pay for expensive hotels, BMW hire cars, and cocktails. (I say ‘apparently’ because I know that these press reports rarely turn out to be completely accurate).
In my view, civil servants should never charge alcohol to expenses, should use the cheapest hotels in which they can efficiently stay and work, and should, where possible, travel by public transport rather than taxi or hire cars.
I have had to travel quite a bit at the taxpayers’ expense, and in my experience, government departments have strict rules. For example, civil servants are not allowed to use Air Miles earned on official journeys for private travel; and we had to stay at pre-determined hotels selected for their value for money.
Sometimes appearances can be deceptive. For example, my department negotiated a sweetheart deal with a particular airline, using bulk buying power to get business class flights at economy rates – which may have given the impression to an outsider that the travellers were lording it at public expense when the deal was in fact rather good for the taxpayer (as well as benefiting the civil servants). And civil servants often stay in well known business hotel chains at government rates which mean that the room rates they pay are no more expensive than a mid-priced hotel which would be less convenient and provides fewer facilities.
So I don’t know if the DTI officials are guilty as charged, but if they are, I hope they will be properly reprimanded. The fact that this is in the newspapers confirms that it is the exception rather than the rule for British public servants to behave this way, and I hope it stays that way.
If there is one thing that annoys me as much as public servants spending my money wastefully, it is private firms spending my money wastefully. All those expensive hotels and business class sections on planes were not built for people spending their own money, you know. They were built for business travellers spending your money. It all comes out of your pocket in the form of higher prices, lower returns on your investments, or lower wages. And the waste of your money by private sector firms is, in total, much higher than the waste of your money by your government.
Right wing trolls across the nation are reaching for their keyboards with their free hand to remind me that the difference is that you have a choice about which private company you buy from, invest in or work for, but government extracts its money from you by force. But the difference in choice is not in fact very great. For a start, you do not have that much choice about private sector firms to buy from or invest in – it is in practice very hard to find one that does not overpay its executives or allow them to waste your money on expensive flights and hotels. Second, you do have a choice about government – if you don’t like the one you have got, you can vote to choose another. The difference in choice, to the extent there is one, is one of degree. And much, much more of your money goes on private sector waste than it does on public sector waste.
That is not intended to justify abuses of taxpayers’ money by public servants or anyone else. But as the only member of the Senior Civil Service with a blog (as far as I know), when Tim expresses scepticism that all civil servants are "Simply selfless devotees of the common good", I feel compelled to say that I am similarly unconvinced that those to whom we hand our money in a free market are any less inclined to waste it.
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