Can we, can we, can we have better thinktanks already? I’m not so sure whether the worst bit is the fact they got the number wrong by a factor of four, or that they didn’t know that the National Rivers Authority doesn’t exist and hasn’t for 14 years, or just that it’s so obvious that…
Read More a decline into local navel-gazingStumbling Chris notes that, unusually, productivity has fallen sharply in the UK during the recession, and works through various possible explanations without really hitting on anything. He wonders if real-business-cycle theorists might have a point, and the recession be triggered by a real underlying fall in productivity. In the comments, I suggested that if there…
Read More in which we accidentally rediscover KondratievThis has done the rounds and been roundly done for all the right reasons. There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists…
Read More Authoritarianism Does Its ThingSo mainline British political blogging is a horrible reality TV show, a eurobox estate crammed with CCTV cameras everyone welcomes and plays up to for the amusement of a tiny audience of media wankers and professional partisans. How about a bit of Viktorfeed data visualisation? Last weekend I wrote a little program to generate statistics…
Read More fun with statisticsJamie Kenny complains that nobody reads his Chinese blogosphere roundups and, more seriously, that nobody else in the British blogosphere writes about anything Chinese. He has a good point (and I’d strongly recommend them to anyone who reads this who doesn’t read them). Come to think of it, a hell of a lot of British…
Read More looking over the edge of the teacupThis Monday, the Guardian ran this story as the front page lead. Here’s the headline and the standfirst: Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws Exclusive: Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures• How the location of weather stations in China undermines data• How the ‘climategate’ scandal is…
Read More The Guardian’s Great Mann HuntThere is something pleasantly surreal about this story. London Reconnections reports on the appearance of the heads of Tube Lines, the Underground, and Mr. Chris Bolt before the London Assembly’s transport committee. It doesn’t sound obviously hilarious, but then, who is Chris Bolt? You may vaguely remember him as the Rail Regulator, the chap who…
Read More Magic and the decline of railway privatisation