Much-discussed article; American goes to Holland, finds welfare state actually quite OK really! I was amused by the pleasantly clueless quote below: I asked a management consultant and a longtime American expat, Buford Alexander, former director of McKinsey & Company in the Netherlands, for his thoughts on this. “If you tell a Dutch person you’re…
Read More no ponyReader “Ajay” has a theory that aviators are uniquely unfitted for government. There are a considerable number of data points in his favour. However, here’s a possible counter-example. Ernest Millington has died; he was one of three MPs for the brief Common Wealth Party, a radical leftist group that emerged during the second world war,…
Read More party of oneA lot of other countries who are small economies compared to the USA or China, industrialised, and heavily dependent on foreign trade have a government policy of keeping a substantial local ownership stake in important businesses or important technologies. This may or may not be held by the State. Examples of such so-called “core investor…
Read More the Harrowell optionIs neurogenesis perhaps the most interesting scientific discovery of the times? I rather think it is. The government minister’s version: until quite recently, we thought that once you passed a certain early age, that was it for your supply of neurons, and you would only lose them. Paradoxically, that wasn’t incompatible with learning, as ones…
Read More insane in the membrane, insane in the brain!Ruth Sunderland of The Observer (aka Decent Pravda) is on a campaign for more women on the boards of big companies. It’s a worthy aim in itself, but I don’t believe for a moment it will address any of the things she thinks. In fact, the problem is that it’s nowhere near radical enough. For…
Read More meet the new boss…25 years; the strike was the first political event, indeed one of the first events, I actually remember. At least I remember power cuts and TV news broadcasts with the number of weeks the miners had been out counting up. After that, I recall Chernobyl – they set up a radiation monitor in the car…
Read More alternative YorkshireAnd then I was fool enough to look at another newspaper. So, with Labour you can at least hope they’ll look after us in the recession, right? No, they want to give bailiffs the right to restrain people, and to charge interest on social fund loans. And they’re blowing hot and cold on the Jaguar-Land…
Read More anger is an energyVery experienced soldiers don’t like robots. I suppose you could ascribe this to conservatism, but then, the last eight years have been a global crash course in how people who tell you that this war will be different to what the old sergeants think are wrong. Meanwhile, at Canon’s main factory in Japan, the workers…
Read More here, robot!George Osborne is not getting any better. His latest shaft of brilliance is to threaten everyone with a sterling crisis – Chris Dillow has details and more. The problem here is that for a start, he is deliberately beating the water to drive sharks away from his vulnerable ideological underbelly. The Conservatives’ “economic plan” currently…
Read More George Osborne: A National EmbarrassmentI’m not so sure about this; arsewit wingnut blogger runs out of money, goes bankrupt, various people who should know better jeer. The whole point of everything from some way to the right of centre – Bismarck or thereabouts – leftwards is that IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good…
Read More a cheap holiday in other people’s misery