Owen abroad

Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

G ran a personal best for 10km on Sunday, in a time of 42:16.  (I think she may well improve on that some time soon).  Here is the report in the ContraCostaTimes

Sarah Slaymaker had the best finish among Berkeley-based runners, taking 31st overall. Sarah Smith carried the banner for Piedmont as the 68th overall finisher. Slaymaker and Smith were first and third among women 35-39 with Berkeley's Grethe Petersen between them in second place.

I had the unusual experience of atttending a race as a spectator rather than a participant, as I was still nursing the bruising and bleeding from crashing my bike on the way to the start of the San Francisco marathon.

Fascinating article by Alan Beattie (registration required) on what he says are five common myths of world trade:

1. "Ghana is allowed to sell raw cocoa beans to the European Union, but if it exports finished chocolate it gets hit by big tariffs."

2. "Each European Union cow gets $2.40 a day in subsidies, more than what 1bn people each have to live on."

3. "The World Trade Organisation is undemocratic and secretive.

4. "No economy ever got rich without using tariffs to industrialise."

5. "Cutting rich countries' farm subsidies and tariffs will be a big boost for the world's poorest."

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the letter Gus O’Donnell did not write:

(And here is the one he did write.)
 

Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek has an excellent debunking of the myth that employing people in manufacturing is important for prosperity.

He shows that while manufacturing employment has fallen, manufacturing output has increased.   

But we aren’t being hollowed out.  We still make lots of stuff.  Not
that that’s the key to our prosperity.  But even if you think it is,
the basic premise is false.  We’re making more stuff.  We’re just doing
it with fewer people than before, which is good.  It means we can have
more of other stuff.  Productivity along with trade is the road to
wealth.

Go read the full thing. 

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill now before Parliament apparently grants ministers the power to make or change legislation by regulation.

"Henry VIII powers" is the Westminster slang for legislation which confers on Ministers the ability to amend Acts of Parliament by regulation. (If anybody knows why, please let us know in the comments.) 

Some Bills contain Henry VIIIth clauses to enable ministers to amend the operation of the new policy in the light of experience.  Parliament has been sceptical of any proposals to grant such powers, unless they are very tightly defined and limited, as they can provide the Executive with powers to amend legislation to implement policies which have not been scrutinized by Parliament. Such Henry VIIIth clauses are often either thrown out, or amended to limit the circumstances in which the powers can be exercised.

Presumably because they had become frustrated at their inability to sneak such powers into each piece of legislation, the government appears to have decided to go for the sledgehammer approach instead, by proposing a general Henry VIIIth power.  I am not a lawyer, but the new bill seems to me to be drawn very widely:

A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes—

(a) reforming legislation;

(b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.

There are some conditions on the use of these powers, but they do not offer much reassurance:

(a) the policy objective intended to be secured by the provision could not be satisfactorily secured by non-legislative means;

(b) the effect of the provision is proportionate to the policy objective;

(c) the provision, taken as a whole, strikes a fair balance between the public interest and the interests of any person adversely affected by it;

(d) the provision does not remove any necessary protection;

(e) the provision does not prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom which that person might reasonably expect to continue to exercise.

To my eye, this seems to be the mother and father of all Henry VIII powers.  I expect we will be told that, like the abolition of local council   elections which has been floated this week, these changes will make the business of government much more efficient and streamlined.  No doubt there is some truth in that; but there are other criteria which are also important in determining the arrangements by which we want to be governed.

See more at The Last Ditch, Bishop Hill and Talk Politics

Interesting article in The Grauniad by Laura Barton who claims that 2005 has seen a decline in the monopoly control of the marketing departments of music companies:

This has been the year fans have increasingly taken music into their own hands, rejecting the over-processed diet served up by many major labels in favour of something a little more homemade. In the process they have notched up numerous high-profile successes, including Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Spinto Band and Nizlopi.

It does seem to me broadly right that it is in the interest of songwriters and performers that people should be able to share music, rather as many of us did with cassette tapes many years ago.

The G7 Finance Ministers met in London this weekend, and agreed to pilot the policy that I have been working on in my day job for the last year.

The idea is simple.  Pharmaceutical companies do not have sufficient incentive to invest in making vaccines for developing countries, against diseases like malaria and HIV, nor to produce large quantities of existing vaccines for diseases such as Hepatitis B, Hib and measles.  The reason is that the markets are too small, even though these vaccines would be a hugely cost-effective way to save lives in developing countries.  To solve this, rich countries could offer a guarantee: if a company can develop a vaccine for a disease like malaria, we will pay for it to be bought in large quantities in developing countries.  This creates strong commercial incentives for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to accelerate the development of vaccines that will save millions of lives a year in developing countries.

This would be a new way of giving aid: focusing on global public goods; linking payment to results; and harnessing the energy and creativity of the private sector.   For developing countries, it offers the prospect of access to medicines that will save lives cost-effectively.  For companies, it offers larger new markets.  And for donors, there is no cost unless the policy succeeds.

The finance ministers considered a report from Italian Finance Minister Guilio Tremonti which recommended that the G-7 adopt a plan that is based on proposals made in April by a Working Group convened by the Center for Global Development (CGD), in our report Making Markets for Vaccines.   (Our work on this is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).  I am proud to say that the finance ministers welcomed the idea, and decided to pilot this approach.

The communiqué from the G7 Finance Ministers says this:

We welcome Minister Tremonti’s report, published today, on Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) for vaccines. Alongside direct funding of research, AMCs could be a powerful, market-based mechanism to support research and development of vaccines for diseases which affect the poorest countries. We agree to work with others on developing a pilot AMC next year, including continued discussions with expert bodies on the diseases to be addressed.

This is a huge step forward.  I am tired, and very proud of what we have achieved so far. Read more in my vaccines for development blog.

Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling has an excellent restropsective look at Margaret Thatcher’s economic legacy. (The title of Mr Dillow’s blog is a total misnomer – it is fluent, well-informed and rarely takes a misstep.)  As ever, don’t neglect the comments.

Chris summarizes Mrs Thatcher’s influence on privatisation, labour markets, and macroeconomic policy. He concludes:

She has given a generation of non-economists the impression that support for free markets is equivalent to support for the vested interests of the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I agree with Chris’s analysis, especially the point quoted above – and I would add a few glosses.

• We tend to take for granted some of the really good reforms and policy changes of that era, such as the abolition of exchange controls and the agreement to the Single Market Act.  Maybe they would have happened anyway; maybe not.
• It is important to distinguish the period when Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor, which was largely disastrous, from Nigel Lawson, who was pretty good (at least from 1983 to 1987).
• Howe’s budget of 1981 was a catastrophic, unforgiveable mistake, clinging to the wreckage of monetarism long after any reasonable person would have abandoned it, leading to one of the deepest (and least necessary) recessions on UK history; as was Lawson’s expansionary budget of 1988 based on the arrogant belief that he had conquered the business cycle.
• Thatcher and Lawson should be commended for persuading the chattering classes that increasing trend economic growth is primarily challenge for microeconomic policy (ie improving the supply side), whereas controlling inflation is primarily a challenge for macroeconomic policy.   This seems obvious today but it was a total reversal of the then prevailing wisdom which saw macroeconomic policy targeting growth (demand management) and microeconomic policy controlling inflation (price controls, wage freezes, hire purchase controls etc).
• Lawson should be commended for his simplification of the tax system (subsequently largely reversed, sadly).
• One of the defining features of Mrs Thatcher’s economic policy was her ambivalent relationship with the exhange rate.  I think – though without much conviction – that we should have joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the EMS sooner than we did; and had we done so we might not have suffered the humiliating ejection that occured under the Major government.  Mrs Thatcher had a largely instinctive set of opinions about the exchange rate – she believed in keeping sterling independent and "strong" – without any very sophisticated underlying analysis.
• The Thatcher Government has not got the opprobrium it deserves for breaking the link between the state pension and the growth of wages.  Allowing our old people to fall behind rising living standards of the rest of the community year after year, creating a generation of retired people living in poverty, was unforgiveable.
• I think Mrs Thatcher did, in some undefinable way, change our attitudes – largely for the better -  to the role of the state in private enterprise.  Before her, there was a widespread assumption, under both Labour and the Conservatives, that the state should step in to prevent the collapse of particular firms or industries.  That was mainly an expensive mistake, and Mrs Thatcher was robust in refusing to come to the aid of many sunset industries.  (She was, however, not entirely consistent on this: her friends in industries such as aerospace continued to receive large public subsidies.)

See also New Economist, who has some good links to further commentary.

Update 17 October: See also BrightonRegencyLabour for 20 reasons why he hates Thatcher.  Also the comments below have a lot of good stuff.

Go read Whiskey Bar’s spoof White House Press Briefing. Here’s a sample.

We want everyone to understand that we’re taking this hurricane very, very seriously, and the federal government has already set the machinery in motion to delivery vital disaster recovery services – including press conferences, focus groups, overnight polls and photo opportunities with selected grateful survivors – to the President just as soon as the storm has passed.