It’s possible – just- to read Oxfam’s wealth report and agree, yes, every thing is going to the Canes canes.
It’s also possible to read that report and understand what the real problem being addressed is:
… See MoreBut enough of the details – what, really, is happening here? The sensei we need to turn to is C Northcote Parkinson. His great insight was that the real aim of any organisation is to perpetuate its own existence.
As we all recall, Mariana Mazzucato wants us all to know that government invents everything and thus should get a slice of the cash from everything that’s invented. As we all should know she’s wrong about this. For government doesn’t invent everything. It does some things, sure, and it funds quite a lot of basic research too.
One comment there being well, we give 35% of everything to government each year, nice of them to produce the occasional useful thing as a result.…
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A complaint that the universities have two different workforces. There are those with lovely plush jobs, decent pay, the best working conditions in the world – shit, who wouldn’t like a job where you’re paid to think about anything you want to – and then those doing the piecework and treated as scum. Sure, those in the grievance studies departments should be treated that way but still.
The reason we have this is worker control.…
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Treating the workers like scum doesn’t work. Treating them as the adult humans they are does. Good, so, we’ve solved that problem then:
… See MoreBut it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it shouldn’t be this way. The software is easy to program to treat employees like human beings. Some companies already have programmed software to be humane. And they’ve found that when they do, it isn’t just employee health and well-being that improve.
We are seeing a modest amount of coverage of the latest of the grooming scandals. Sadly, the two important lessons are not being taken from it.
… See MoreIt’s also about the power of society to prioritise one set of vulnerable women over another. Feminism is meant to be about defending all women and girls, especially those in a situation where they have no agency and who find themselves on the back foot, humiliated and discredited. That powerlessness is infinitely magnified if you’re a child in care.
We can all look back and remind ourselves of what we were told was going to happen if we had the temerity to vote to leave the European Union. The economy would be devastated, there would be rains of blood and cats would lie down with dogs. This has not happened and according to the predictions it should have done already. The process of freezing spines in this manner is known as Project Fear – shiver everyones’ goolies and the peasantry will vote to remain the villeins of Brussels.…
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The school lunch rules in the United States might be a good idea, might not be. They might be good on nutritional grounds, might be ludicrous given that no one eats the damn things. Perhaps it’s a case of Federal over reach – what snotdribblers consume at noon is not one of those enumerated powers I’ve seen in the Constitution – and maybe just plain good sense from the people who know everything.
There is an interesting question to be asked about this headline though:
The Trump administration proposed scrapping Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch policy on her birthday
When did Michelle Obama get elected to what position?…
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Chris Dillow tells us that there’s a good case for nationalising pensions:
… See MoreThe state, however, is much better placed than the private sector to bear these risks. It can obviously pool longevity risk. And tax revenues are more stable than investment returns: in the financial crisis they fell only 3.4 per cent peak-to trough whereas MSCI’s world index in sterling terms fell eight times as much*. In particular, there is one source of risk to equity returns that the state can pool whereas retirees cannot – distribution risk, the danger of a shift in incomes from profits to wages.
Despite this being North London we’re not talking about common people here and the tragedy of their entering the precincts of the progressives. Rather, the tragedy of common resources.
One fact about those bathing ponds on the Heath:
Honesty boxes for bathers to pay to swim were introduced in 2005. There were plans for a compulsory charge in 2012, but they came to nothing.
We have open access to a resource, Marxian access. We also have one other fact:
… See MoreIt was once a well-kept secret.
Well, as I read the judge here this wasn’t in fact homophobia:
A man has been found guilty of aggravated assault against the Guardian columnist Owen Jones because of hostility to his leftwing political views and homophobia, following a two-day trial at Snaresbrook crown court.
No, not quite.
… See MoreAnne Studd QC, the presiding judge, concluded at the end of the hearing that Jones was the victim of a “wholly unprovoked assault” outside a central London pub last August because of “his LGBT and his leftwing beliefs”.