The 80/20 Rule

Foodie hell.

Having just had a close call with a food 'experience' I find myself becoming almost obsessed with the way in which modern food is beginning to mimic the trajectory of modern art.

Like Hurst, Emin and Co, it's almost as if chefs (or 'cooks' as we used to call them before they all got their own TV programmes) have tired of the effort needed to prepare traditional 'real' food correctly and decided instead to turn customer confusion into a competitive sport.

With the brazenness and slight of hand of a music hall magicians, restaurants compete to offer the weirdest and most unlikely combination of foods in the safe knowledge that the stranger the dish, the less likely the customer is to have had any previous experience against which to judge it. After all, if you've never tried pickled sheep's eyes on a bed of frog-snot ice cream garnished with venezualan goat-hoof scrapings how are you to know if the dish you're presented with has been carefully crafted by a team of professionals toiling away on the cutting edge of culinary technology or thrown together by a couple of art school drops outs in silly hats, laughing themselves stupid in the kitchen at the gullibility of their customers?

Let's face it, no matter how much you gush to your friends about your extraordinary foodie adventures, it's unlikely that you're ever going to spend that much money again on that particular ridiculous dish at that particular absurd restaurant, so even the narrowest of comparisons within the same establishment is ruled out. After all, what true explorer wants to re-visit previous conquests, when there are new vistas of artfully arranged unlikely food combinations to explore?

And if the dish is 'unique' (in our mass produced age unique is the new black) you'll never be able to compare it with another chef's 'interpretation', particularly if it has been copyrighted.

I'm in the middle of a personal backlash against this tripe, I wonder if a wider backlash is in the offing? Who cares? I certainly don't, I'm off home for bangers and mash.

Muddled 'green' thinking

writing in the normally excellent Reason magazine, Steve Chapman questions the recent drive (pun intended) by elements in the US Congress to mandate better fuel efficiency in new cars, arguing that car's returning a higher mileage will leads to more congestion, accidents, etc. and that:

"If you want less of something, such as pollution from cars, the surest way is to charge people more for it.

A carbon tax or a higher gasoline tax would encourage every motorist, not just those with new vehicles, to burn less fuel—by taking the bus, carpooling, telecommuting, resorting to that free mode of transit known as walking, or buying a Prius."

I don't really want to get started on the appalling Prius (yet) but Mr Chapman makes the mistake of assuming, with regards to driving, that a majority (or even a large minority) of car journeys can easily be taken using a non-car substitutes. I doubt that is the case.

Commuting is a prime example, the car and high property prices in urban areas have encouraged people to live further and further from their place of work and commute by car where a non-car alternative is unavailable (which is most of the time).

As successive governments here in the UK have discovered, demand for petrol is very inelastic because there is simply no alternative for the majority of normal people. This inelasticity allows governments to raise the tax on petrol at will, confident that revenue will also increase, whilst at the same time claiming that their tax raising measures are somehow motivated by a 'green' agenda. Petrol here is the equivalent of $8.70 per gallon, yet there's been no decrease in car usage.

In the UK, now we've discovered that raising petrol prices has no beneficial environmental effect (unless you work in The Treasury), there's been a recent fashion for thinking that road pricing would both decrease congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, again by 'forcing' people to commute at peak times using public transport or commute at non-peak times when congestion (and traffic-jam-generated greenhouse gas emissions) would be less of a problem.

This is however yet another solution that really hasn't been thought through. Road pricing would be great for me and people like me, I can arrange flexible hours at work and avoid the queues if I have to (and a higher price on road travel would encourage me to do that), yet I am hardly typical. Most people have to work fixed hours and the model of the business they work for (think of shops or factories) simply do not allow for the kind of flexibility that 'knowledge workers' enjoy.

It seems that a large number of these so-called green measures currently being touted by politicians and lapped up by the media are either tremendously elitist (like the road pricing models thought up by people living in a bubble that excludes any real understanding of how normal people live and work) or narrowly focused on immediate benefits (like the appalling Prius, a car with environmental downsides that far outweigh its fuel efficiencies).

I'm not of course advocating any government regulation mandating fuel efficiency standards, I prefer governments that do nothing and let market solutions emerge. After all ,solutions based on markets are the only ones likely to last in the very-long term - and very-long term is how you have to think if you believe that global warming is a problem that needs to be corrected instead of adapted to (I don't).

Individuals are smart enough to realise that better fuel efficiencies are in their interests and demand vehicles that match those demands. Industry is smart enough to realise that providing those vehicles is a commercial winner. And I hope everyone is smart enough to realise that if you really are concerned about the environment, the best holistic approach is to hang on to the car you have as long as it runs rather than dashing out to buy (and cause to be built) a new vehicle, no matter how great it's MPG or how many hypocritical pop stars pretend to drive it.

Andrew Sullivan adds 1 and 1, arrives at 3

There was a post over at Samizdata earlier today which lamented the decline in the quality of posts on Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish.

UPDATE: ...and I decided to illustrate the point by referencing a post that appeared on that blog today. Unfortunately due to distractions of work , incorrect settings on my rss feed reader sheer damn laziness, I didn't check who wrote the post. Andrew Sullivan is on holiday and the post was actually written by David Weigal, guest author at the blog and Assistant Editor of Reason Magazine. Thankyou to markc and David Weigal for pointing this out (bastards). Now, I could edit this post to reflect this inconvenient truth (ha ha) but, as we already know, I damn lazy, so I'm just going to assume that David Weigal is channelling Andrew Sullivan and leave it as it is. Read on...

Quick as a flash, Andrew obliges by illustrating the point in his post about a recent ICM poll in the Guardian ... "Bucolic Brits Blame Blair for Busted Bombing" in which he states:

"The mostly unimpressive UK Conservative party has raced to a 9-point lead over Tony Blair's Labour government..."

Hooray, though it'd be nicer if the Tories actually stood for anything.

"...and the busted bomb plot is fingered as the reason."

No it isn't. The Guardian 'fingers' UK Government policy in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the reason (hedging their bets even here by saying that the findings 'may explain' Labour's overall poll decline) but don't finger the bomb plot at all, only Andrew Sullivan does that, and both he and the Guardian conduct their fingering with no evidence whatsoever.

Both are guilty of assuming a connection between the questions asked in this short poll when the questions themselves do not attempt to establish a connection.

The poll contains only 4 questions, the first looks at voting intentions and is accurately reported.

The second asks:

"In light of the recent alleged terrorist plot to crash a number of planes that would have taken off from British airports, are you now more or less likely to fly or has the plot made no difference one way or the other?"

Niether the Guardian or Andrew Sullivan reference the answer to this question, which is a pity as an encouraging 81% say it'll make no difference at all.

The third question asks:

"Generally speaking, do you think that government policies such as backing for action in Iraq and Afghanistan have made this country more of a target for terrorists, less of a target, or have they made no difference one way or the other?"

The followup question which doesn't exist but which the Guardian assumes it knows the answer to is "Have your views on UK foreign policy made you more/less/no_more_or_less likely to vote Labour".

The fourth and final question asks (responses in brackets):

"When it comes to potential terrorist threats against this country, do you think that the government........

Exaggerates the threat (21%)
Tells the truth about the threat (20%)
Tells less than it knows about the threat (51%)
Don't know (9%)"

It is from the responses to this question that Andrew Sullivan draws the conclusion that the bomb plot has been "fingered for the [Labour poll decline]". But the fact that the poll indicates that 51% of people say the government tells less than it knows should not be taken as an indication that the public disapproves of the government telling us less than it knows.

Personally I damn well hope that the government knows a hell of a lot more than it speaks publicly about and I fervently hope that, in the interests of developing intelligence on this and other plots, it continues to refrain from blurting out its knowledge like a schoolboy trying to impress teacher.

But I suspect that Andrew Sullivan's post isn't really about the poll at all, that the poll is only mentioned so that AS can obliquely reference his 'Bush is a alcoholic' meme with a comparison to US polls on similar subjects:

"But in the last year or so, news of foiled terrorist attacks have given Republicans weaker and weaker bursts of support, like diluted drugs hitting a long time junkie's bloodstream".

Sloppy.

But I'm still keeping the guy's feed in my RSS reader if only for items like this brilliant foray into alternate history and his nice line in alliteration.

(dead)Swan Hunter

One shipyard builds two ships on time for £176m, another fails to complete two identical ships after spending £309m of taxpayer's money.

In the US this is known as pork barrel politics, pumping taxpayer's money into an incompetent local business purely to keep the constituents of nearby labour MPs (Tony Blair, Nick Brown, Stephen Byers, Hilary Armstrong and David Miliband) sweet.

Swan Hunter (and the MoD) can't even use the  normal BAE Systems defense project get out clause ("the project was underpriced and the price you'll eventually end up paying is a more realistic one for the work done") as the two sister ships to these RFA vessels were built on time and on budget at the Govan yard. Now the taxpayer will pick up the tab for Govan completing the final vessel in the class.

To cap off the whole sorry saga, there are rumours that two of these ships will be sold off within the next 18 months as part of the £1bn defence cuts that Gordon Brown is planning to introduce as soon as he ascends to the throne. Cuts that are intended to help fund 'homeland security' - more cctv cameras, more databases, more intrusion - a classic item close to the heart of an old-style-state-control-freak-socialist like Brown.

Blogged with Flock

Bristol, Fair Trade City.

As a couple of good, sociable friends live there I spend a reasonable amount of time in Bristol. It's a great place, but then again I've always loved university towns, packed as they are with lovely young ladies doing bar and coffee shop work to alleviate their student debt. But one downside of Bristol (and I suspect other right-on university towns) is the tendency to embrace any passing social fad. Bristol's current obsession is Fair Trade.

The city is simply drowning in Fair Trade signs (goodness only knows at what environmental cost) which try to convince us that Fair Trade "guarantees a fair deal for third world producers". So keen is Bristol to position itself as the centre of white middle-class guilt that the city is branding itself as 'Fair Trade City'.

Trade is an emotive issue and 'Fair Trade' just sounds so lovely and funky that it's hard to argue against without seeming like a total shit, but here goes using Coffee as an example.

Coffee supplies exceed worldwide demand and market prices for coffee (and the incomes of coffee growers) are falling as a result. Despite the efforts of Starbucks, Café Nero etc. there are only so many lattes one can stomach, demand has peaked and consumers are becoming more discerning in their coffee choices.

The free market's mechanism for encouraging lower production is forcing out of business higher-cost producers who, if they are able, diversify into other crops. As higher cost producers tend to be from relatively developed countries (like Mexico) their chances of diversifying successfully or finding another, admittedly crappy, job in a factory or in the service sector is better than that of their counterparts in less developed countries (like Ethiopia).

Fair Trade has a different solution. Distort the market by paying subsidies to supposed third-world producers, disencentivising them from diversification and market the result to guilty middle class liberals in western countries. Fair enough, you might say, no-one suffers except us westerners who pay a bit extra in a good cause, supporting a destitute coffee grower.

Well, no.

Fair Trade coffee isn't increasing global consumption of coffee and in the zero-sum consumption game that results the purchasers of Fair Trade coffee are buying it at the expense of other brands. No doubt the consumers of Fair Trade coffee console themselves with the thought that 'their' coffee is produced by small scale honest farmers with no alternative means of earning a living, whereas the non-Fair Trade alternative is the product of a large (read 'evil') corporation. Unfortunately for Mr and Mrs Guilt, the facts don't support that assumption.

25% of Fair Trade coffee is Mexican and whilst a Mexican coffee grower is undoubtedly poor by the standards of anyone reading this, he is not poor compared with his Ethiopian counterpart. For the Ethiopian coffee grower farming really is his only choice and, if the market were operating freely, a sensible one as he enjoys a cost advantage. He also incidentally enjoys a quality advantage as most Mexican coffee is Robusta, the crap that's normally used to make instant granules. If it were marketed as ground coffee without the Fair Trade label, it would not sell.

So why aren't there more Ethiopian Fair Traders? A glance at the Fair Trade Foundation website (complete with its personal stories of Fair Trade coffee growers, all of whom are from South or Central America) gives a few hints. We are told that:

"The certification process begins with a written application to FLO from the producer organisation, often with the support of a trading partner. If the application is accepted, the organisation will be physically inspected against Fairtrade standards by a regionally-based FLO inspector. The inspector’s report is then considered by an independent Certification Committee which takes the final decision on whether or not to certify."

Bureaucracy is a pain anywhere but for your average Ethiopian farmer, navigating through a certification process is a non-starter. The barriers between first and third worlds aren't just of the traditional economic kind, information flow and administrative blocks also play a part. Your average Ethiopian coffee grower simply doesn't have access to the time, skills or administrative resources needed to complete a certification process - even assuming he knows that such a process exists, his access to knowledge of that kind is immeasurably inferior to that of his Mexican counterpart.

Don't for one moment think that I'm advocating a simplification of a market distorting process as a way of introducing 'equality' into the Fair Trade jamboree. Opening people's eyes to the unfairness of Fair Trade is a better, lower cost alternative for both the farmer and consumer.

The more I think about so-called Fair Trade, the more I begin to believe that it, like the massive 'organic' movement, is simply a non-tariff barrier promoted by western producers in order to protect their markets from competition in the event that the grossly unfair farming subsidies paid to western farmers get tackled.

The only Fair Trade is Free Trade.

Coming to a University near you soon.

Picked up via the UKfuture blog is this excellent documentary from the people at academicbias.com (available for viewing free online) highlighting the extent to which the creed of political correctness is being used to stiffle opinions which do not fit in with those of the hypocritical liberals running many of America's campuses.

How long is it before such attitudes are imported into the UK, or are they are already here?

I want my licence fee back.

What an interesting day on the BBC website. As well as the usual Iraq coverage (written in the 'implied disaster/the west is guilty' style in which BBC correspondents, or at least their editors, specialise) the 'Talking Point' comment board was opened up to comments on the current Sadr/Najaf situation.

Within an hour the comments had adopted the usual pattern - most of the those from westerners criticised the US and the UK whilst ALL of the comments from Iraqis living in Iraq (posted via the BBC's Arabic Service) denounced Al Sadr and expressed support for the interim government and coalition forces.

In my own Talking Point submission I commented on this division and wondered if our news media were loosing site of their implied obligation to report on events as viewed by the local population rather than just through their usual western liberal guilt spectacles.

Imagine my surprise when my comments were posted - unedited! Had the BBC turned over a new leaf? Were they belatedly showing a commitment to balanced reporting in Iraq?

No such luck.

Checking back on the same board only an hour later revealed that my post had been removed, obviously its original inclusion was the result of control of the board passing to a trainee, giddy with off-message concepts of balanced journalism, whilst the boss was taking a licence-payer subsidised lunch.

And what was in its place? Why, several pro-Sadr comments from Iraqis that the BBC had mysteriously 'found' since the appearance of my comments.

Amazing.

Political Luvvies

Being from the proper side of the Atlantic, and being right-of-centre politically, I find it hard to understand the absolute venom directed at President Bush. Political disagreements I understand but the left's habit of hate for all those who oppose it, I've always found a little sad.

This month's Empire film magazine contains 2 pages on the luvvie reaction to Michael Moore and his documentary, Farenheit 9/11. Naturally, having spotted a bandwagon none of these vacuous idiots can avoid jumping on it. Samual L. Jackson (isn't it sad to find that actors are so much less perceptive than the characters they portray) is quoted as saying "If Saddam Hussein had to be removed from office, fine. But going to war with the Iraqi people? Nah". Whilst convicted thief Winona Ryder adds "I'm worred for Michael Moore, I'm worried about what could happen."

Mr. Jackson seems to imagine that Iraqi's, who clearly hated their former dictator, we're capable of rising up against his vast internal security apparatus - presumably he's been watching too many of those dumb American action movies where all it needs is a few good people to overthrow a bunch of unshaven Arabs who can never shoot straight. Poor Ms. Ryder has clearly been watching too many Oliver Stone movies.

But what gets to me the most is Spike Lee, who thinks that Bush's hesitation and confusion when hearing of the 9/11 attacks whilst reading to school children is somehow a mark of guilt or deep incompetance. As if being told that thousands were dying in a previously unthinkable attack is something a President should take in his stride. Personally I'd have been more disturbed if the President wasn't.

Change

Blogs are so much more fun than TV, a fact re-enforced last night after a mysterious fault caused mine to refuse to stay on for more than 5 seconds at a time and I retired upstairs to surf.

Interesting ideas, nutty ideas, great ideas - all just a few clicks away and one interesting one found last night via a blog I happened on I don't know how is Change This.

Read the site and you'll either get it or you won't - it's a pity that the authors of the site don't seem to get their own idea.

This thing we're using, you're using right now, is called the World Wide Web, Change This however belongs to that parallel structure, the American Wide Web. It's such a shame that a site who'se existance is rooted in the exchange of ideas seems unable to lift its gaze from domestic American viewpoints. Their own manifesto talks about a political spectrum that ranges from Democrats to Republicans, talks to Americans, about American issues, from an American Perspective.

Perhaps its another part of that mental disease that aflicts even the most sophisitcated of my American friends. The conviction that everyone who doesn't actually hold an American passport is just a proto-american, quivering with a respressed desire to become the full thing. People with ideas and persectives that, because they are just incomplete versions of an American 'truth', aren't worthy of in-depth consideration and certainly cannot be learned from.

Change This will change little in our world unless one re-defines the world as America.

Personally I blame Hollywood :-) What can you expect when a population is brought up on a diet of film that re-writes history for box office success, casually insulting the heros and countries who's stories are stolen, and presents even the closest of their allies as bumbling fools (albeit well meaning ones). If I were brought up on that, I guess I'd be tempted to see my country as the shining city on the hill.

Perhaps I should keep track of Change This, write my own manifesto, drop it in and see what the riples are like.

False Profits

I think I've unpicked the mechanics of the best money/career making scam yet.

1. Spot a trend that's in progress already but isn't well known or consumerised.
2. Write an article or a book claiming that society/the world/an industry is on the verge of collapse unless said trend (which you imply you've invented) is adopted.
3. Wait 2 years (or 6 months if your trend is internet/technology related) and then take credit for the non-collapse of society/the world/an industry as a result of far-sighted leaders of society/the world/an industry adopting the trend you set out in your book or article.
4. Attain 'guru' status
5. Rake it in on the talks circuit, write endless articles re-hashing your original article or book in order to demonstrate how, with the benefit of hindsight, only you spotted for forthcoming 'tipping point'.