Margaret Thatcher – She Left the World A Better Place For Having Left It.

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Anthony
Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

 

Occasionally, yes it’s true, ole Bill the Bard got it wrong.

Take when he had Mark Antony, bemoaning Caesar’s passing,  say, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

As we are seeing with Thatcher’s passing, often the opposite is true.

Our media pundits, particularly those of the Right persuasion, picking over the bones of history, come up with stuff like this line from  Lionel Shriver in today’s The Age, “She fought for what she believed in.”

Yeah, well, so did Osama Bin Laden.

Fighting for what you believe in without ever questioning those beliefs and without a shred of empathy for those whose lives are being ruined by the insistence on fighting, is hardly something to shout about.

The truth about Margaret Thatcher is that she was – not to put too fine a point on it – sucked in by a flim flam man.

The one good thing that Thatcher did was to forcefully administer medicine to an ailing UK.

But let’s face it when she took over, the UK was one sick puppy. Practically any medicine forcefully administered would have done the trick.

Unfortunately, the medicine Thatcher chose was the particularly reprehensible set of economic nonsense so beloved of the far Right peddled by an economics shyster named Milton Friedman.

friedman

Milton Friedman

Here in Australia, btw, Friedman, with his insane belief in the infinite goodness and wisdom of the ‘market’, is a stand in for God at the Institute of Public Affairs, a bunch of Thatcher wannabes with delusions of intellectual and economic adequacy whose sole reason for existence is to turn Australia into a kind of mini me exhibiting the worst aspects of American corporate despotism. Little wonder then that Tony Abbott, Cardinal Pell, Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch are all acolytes of the unholy church of the IPA.

Now let us turn our attention to Thatcher’s unwavering support and defense of General Pinochet, the serial mass murderer who led Chile and who, in his effort to implement the same economic nonsense as Thatcher endorsed, had hundreds if not thousands of his own people executed.

Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet

Thatcher couldn’t have cared less. He was a fellow economic traveler  and for Thatcher, that made him an okay guy.

A great irony is that Thatcher went to war with the Argentina, the only place other than the UK and Chile where Friedmanism has been tried – it was just as great a disaster there as it was in the UK and Chile – but of course her war was not over economic theory.

No, Thatcher confected a war for domestic consumption to help her re-election.

However, if it were so that Mark Antony’s phrase has not been reversed and the good that Thatcher did will be interred with her bones, then it will add precious little to the weight of her coffin.

I shall not mourn her passing.

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The Greatest Story Ever Told

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Anthony

Bet you thought I was going to say The Bible, right? Or maybe Lord of the Rings, or The Cat in the Hat?

All worthy contenders, I admit, but no.

For me the greatest story is The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Why? Because it’s life. It’s going on all around us. We see it every day.
Continue reading →

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The Sad and Sorry Face of Addiction

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Anthony

She rose to her feet uncertainly and looked arround the assembled group.
She was silent for a moment, as though she was dragging the words from deep inside her.
Finally, she spoke.
“I,” she said, “am an addict.”
The others in the room released a collective sigh.
An admission; a start.
“It began as the easy way out. It cost me nothing and it let me get on with other things I needed to do.”
She shivered, perhaps considering the possibility of going cold turkey.
Continue reading →

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An Open Letter To Kim Williams

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Anthony

Dear Kim,

Not a bad effort yesterday morning. I thought the soviet reference a shade hyperbolic, but then, if you run an organisation that includes the Daily Telegraph, I suppose that subtlety isn’t going to be your long suite.

In fact, your speech was a perfect example of why the media does need just a tad, no more than a soupcon,  of restraint imposed on it.

You intentionally exaggerated the facts; no, not exaggerated, you willfully distorted the facts.

And here’s the thing, Kim; we should tell it how it is. So, let’s be honest with each other. Intentional distortion to misrepresent is a form of lying.

Now you obviously felt morally comfortable standing in front of Australians and lying by gross exaggeration.

And that is exactly what much of the media does on a daily basis; lies by exaggeration, or by editing to misrepresent, or by burying facts contrary to the thrust of the story, in the second last paragraph.

You talked a blue streak about freedom of speech.

However, as a wordsmith yourself, I’m sure you know what a synonym is. It’s when two different words mean the same thing.

Well, maybe you didn’t know that ‘freedom’ and ‘responsibility’ are synonyms. Any time we use the word ‘freedom’, we could replace it with the word ‘responsibility’ and not change the meaning.

When we take away a person’s freedom, they are no longer responsible for themselves. Society is responsible for what a prisoner wears, eats, does, and so on, not the prisoner.

You get my point.

So, where in your incendiary call to the masses, was any mention of media responsibility?

Sadly not a scrap to be seen. Not a sausage.

You and and quite a few of your media colleagues want the freedom, but you steadfastly refuse to accept the responsibility.

But of course, you can’t do that in the long run. They’re the same thing. They’re the two ends of the same stick.

You might have heard of the philosophical technique called ‘reductio ad absurdum’; the notion that if we take an idea to its logical extreme and it doesn’t make sense, then it probably doesn’t make sense period.

So, let’s take the little distortions, misrepresentations; the ignoring of contrary facts, occasionally, the downright lies, and extend the idea that this sort of thing is okay – quite harmless in fact – in the media, to its logical conclusion.

And what do we find at the end of that innocent trajectory?

Well, you might like to ask your one time colleagues, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulsen what you get.

Because  what you get – is arrested.

It’s a slippery slope, Kim.

And it begins with people just like you; people who demand all the freedom but refuse to accept that responsibility is firmly glued to it.

Look at it this way Kim, somebody has to be responsible. Surely you’d agree with that.

And it’s clear that the media itself has done an appalling job of exercising responsibility for journalistic standards, both here and overseas.

So, we the people, via our elected government are going to accept the responsibility that you reject.

Of course, we get the freedom too.

That’s not Soviet style. Exact opposite, in fact.

Cheers,

Anthony

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Media Regulation…Maybe Not Such a Bad Idea

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Anthony

That sound you can hear, the one that’s pitched slightly higher than a tree load of startled cockatoos but is marginally less harmonious, that’s the sound of the media howling with fury at the suggestion that some sort of industry regulation might be appropriate.

The very idea of any kind of regulation leaves many media types reaching for garlic and a crucifix.

The libertarian in me say, “Let me pass you the holy water.”

But the pragmatist, the part of me that knows just a bit about the world we live in, says, “Come on, boys and girls. Time for a bex and a good lie down. Just for a few minutes.”

There are two reasons why a wee dose of regulation might be good for those of a journalistic persuasion.

The media talk a blue streak about how freedom of speech must be protected. Yet there are many who are terrified of prerecorded interviews because they know damned well  that their comments will be edited to suit some editorial goal. The final result may well be the opposite of what was said.

Speech can’t be terribly free if many are too frightened to speak.

To hear Kim Williams – CEO of News Limited, the Australian arm of a media organisation that has a whiff of seriously naughty behavior reaching the very top – screeching in this morning’s Telegraph about an assault on democracy…

Well, suffice to say that my flabber was utterly gastered. The bench mark for hypocrisy is now officially a risk to satellites.

The second reason why some form of regulation is worth considering  is that in what universe can any organisation be trusted to regulate itself?

Especially a commercial organisation.

Let’s see now, who could we trust?

We’ve got the food industry that  fought to avoid telling consumers what they’re ingesting?   Mmm, maybe not.

Banking? Er, GFC… derivatives… I don’t think so.

Drug companies? Burying studies that show their products are dangerous? Oh, what a good idea.

Advertising industry and the sexualization of children? Not a great look.

Governments? Right, that’s why democracies have Oppositions.

And of course, the media. Phone hacking… bribing public officials… We already have clear evidence that they’re at the back of the field in the integrity stakes.

And finally, we have Piers Akerman still successfully passing himself off as a journalist.

I would’ve thought that that alone would have made the case for regulation.

But, in all fairness, journalists and editors are only human.

And that, right there, dear reader, that’s the problem.

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On the Merits of Meritocracies – Not All Their Cracked Up To Be?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Anthony

I sat with my friend Harvey – I’ve told you about him in other columns, Vietnam vet, thousand yard stare, graying ponytail, expanding er, middle section, fanatical Grateful Dead fan and DIY philosopher, you remember.

He climbed to his feet, went to the fridge, rescued a can of Fosters, ripped the ring pull off and stood at the entrance to his garage, peering out.

A storm was brewing. Heavy, bruised clouds hung over us. On the horizon, the setting sun was momentarily trapped between earth and clouds, giving our suburb an unnatural glow.

It was the most amazing sight.

After all, Harvey has drunk Tooheys as long as I’ve known him.

He lowered the power plant’s, er, stereo’s volume knob, quietening Gerry Garcia’s solo down to a long, passionate plea for insanity. Oh, and the paint on the garage wall slowly stopped bubbling.

“You know,” he said. “Everybody who’s anybody in the worlds of politics and business, which, by the way, are almost the same thing, as the two appear to have vertically merged with business on the top, is talking about meritocracies. ‘Specially the bloody pollies. They’re all over it.”

He took a long, thoughtful slug. “Supposed to be the duck’s guts as a way of organizing ourselves.”

“Blood oath,” I replied. “Makes sense. The best, most talented people rise to the top. Effort, brains and talent get rewarded. That’s fair. Just the way it should be.”

Harvey scratched his capacious stomach. “That’s all very well, mate, if you’re at the top. But what about the other end? If the people at the top are there because they deserve to be, then isn’t it equally true that the people at the bottom are also there because they deserve to be.”

I digested this. “I suppose so.”

“So,” said Harvey, “they must all be a bunch of losers.”

“Well…” I paused to think about where Harvey and I might appear on that spectrum. “I… ah, don’t know about being losers.”

“It must be their own fault they’re down there,” Harvey said, as he scrunched up his empty tinnie and casually tossed it into the bin in the corner. “The rules’ve got to be be consistent across the spectrum. Basic physics.”

I felt vaguely annoyed by his irrefutable logic. “But,” I said, “some people have bad luck, or an accident, or maybe have to look after the oldies and can’t put everything into the job. Doesn’t make them losers.”

Harvey belched expansively. “So,” he said, “you reckon some poor sods just can’t help being at the bottom.”

“Yeah.”

“So, therefore,” Harvey opined, ” some sods just can’t help being at the top. If you’re going to be consistent.”

“I suppose so. ”

“Not much of a meritocracy then.”

I thought a bit more. “No,”I said. “In fact, now that I think about it, a meritocracy is impossible.”

Harvey smiled as he cracked another Tooheys.

“There,” he said, “That wasn’t so hard, was it.”

 

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A – Fortunately – Rare Species Makes a Come Back

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Anthony

Conservation groups across Australia are aroused at the news that the once considered endangered species, Queenslandicus Moronicus, has seen a sudden and entirely unexpected revival.

With the death of Joe Bjelke Petersen and his sidekick Fat Albert, it was widely – not as widely as Fat Albert – but widely nevertheless, believed that this unique and strange breed had gone into terminal decline.

But, thanks to the efforts of Campbell Newman and his inept but ideologically enthused team of hedge beaters, Queenslandicus Moronicus is again being seen at its favourite haunt, regional council meetings.

As with many species, the female of this genus is generally a drab creature whose main claim to fame usually involves large quantities of tea and a curious kind of air filled brick known as the lamington.

The male, often a rotund, red faced specimen, makes little sound, leaving it to the female to  establish the cry of the day.

And the cry of this particular day is, apparently, “No fluoride in our water.”

Which, on reflection, does make a certain kind of sense, as Queenslandicus Moronicus generally lose their teeth at an early age, due in no small part to the species’ ingestion of large quantities of what they mistakenly think of as food.

The fact that not fluoridating water would seriously harm the teeth of juveniles of other species with whom QMs shares the ecosphere matters not a jot to Queenslandicus Moronicus, because this species has, over generations, evolved an unshakable faith in its ability to figure out what’s what, while at the same time, having learned to immediately spot members of the genus, Scientisticus Academicus, as being a natural enemy under no circumstances to be trusted.

Preferably not even to be spoken to.

When confronted with facts not in agreement with Queenslandicus Moronicus’s belief system each gender has evolved a specific response ritual.

The male will tap the side of his red nose and favour his victim with what is usually referred to as a knowing look.

This is in itself a brilliant piece of natural camouflage, because, in fact, the exact opposite is invariably true.

The female meanwhile, will roll her eyes, her voice will rise in pitch and will be emitted via the nostril in the form of an endless stream of meaningless babble.

As with many other superficially annoying creatures, like mosquitoes,  the ecological niche for which Queenslandicus Moronicus has evolved to occupy is difficult to discern.

Fortunately, their appearance seems to be in some way linked to the political cycle as their emergence usually coincides with incidences, fortunately rare, of Coalition governments in Queensland.

The only known method of dealing with an influx of Queenslandicus Moronicus is to ignore them.

Unfortunately, nobody has thought to tell this to Campbell  and his hedge beaters.

So the rest of us simply have to be patient and to talk slowly.

 

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Time to Quit Doing what Ain’t Working?

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Anthony

 

Politicians – for the most part, anyway – aren’t stupid.

But, like the rest of we mere mortals, they’re apt to do stupid things.

And they’re at their stupidest when when their reason for doing something is based on ideology and not evidence.

Which brings me to this morning’s news that Britain’s credit rating has been downgraded from AAA to AA+.

Which does what? Riiiight, increases the cost of debt servicing.

Which does what? Right again, makes it harder to bring down the national debt.

And what led to the credit rating downgrade? Bingo! three out of three. Britain’s difficulty in bringing down its national debt.

And why is Britain having difficulty bringing down its national debt?

Because the ideology of the Right is that what’s needed is austerity.

But, the Conservative party’s austerity push is stopping the economy from growing. And if the economy isn’t growing, then what happens?

Right again! if the economy isn’t growing then the country can’t pay its current bills and bring down past debt.

So, Britain’s credit rating downgrade is a direct result of the Conservative government’s policy aimed at fixing the economy.

Faced with this evidence, what do you suppose, is the likelihood that Cameron will revisit his strategy? Answer: Zero!

Because it’s not a strategy, it’s an ideology.

Nobel Laureate economists Joseph Stigleitz and Paul Krugman both recognize that the time for austerity isn’t when the economy is struggling; it’s when the economy is doing well.

Think of it this way. Going on a diet can be a good thing. But is it always a good thing?

Well, no. Not if you’re sick. When you’re unwell, it’s chicken soup and a lot of what you fancy. Save the diet for when you’re living the high life and packing on the kgs.

Same with economies.

When Mariano Rajoy, a man of truly gob smacking intellectual mediocrity, came to power in Spain, the first thing his right wing government did was to impose… you guessed it, austerity. Two teaspoons three times a day.

At that time, Spain’s unemployement was 25%. Now, after a huge dose of austerity – the good oil for whatever ails ya – Spain’s unemployment is at 27%.

How’s it working  out for you, Mariano, me old mate? Yeah, thought so.

But will he change tack? Of course not.

Because facts always lose out to ideology.

Same with Greece. After years of such austerity that pensioner suicide is climbing because these poor folks are killing themselves rather than be a burden to their poverty stricken children, how’s it all going?

What was a bad economic situation is now a social tragedy.

All over the world, right wing governments, their little hearts filled with the heady mix of Ayn Rand nonsense and Milton Friedman’s pseudo economics, (Okay, Friedman was a Nobel Laureate too, but that just proves that the Norwegians aren’t infallible), are ramming austerity down the necks of the poor, all the while panting, “trust us, it’ll make you feel better”.

And in every case, the patient is heading towards total organ failure.

“But what the hay,” cry politicians everywhere. “If it ain’t working, well just do it harder.”

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Lies, Damn Lies and Tricky Words

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Anthony

 

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a short story of six words:

For sale,
baby shoes,
never worn.

Now, be honest, you felt something as you read those six words, right?

Aside from showing Hemingway’s brilliance, they teach us about the power of words; words put together in just such a way.

One could tell the same story thus: A woman had a late term miscarriage.

Or: A new baby died.

Neither gets a reaction the way Ernest’s version does.

That power, of language composed so as to generate a reaction, can can lift us up, inspire us to greatness, win wars and elections.

But it can also make us want to poke our eye out with the handiest sharp object; an entirely normal response to what often passes for contemporary news reporting.

Example. At least once a day one hears a breathless young thing report that somebody giving a press conference denied something or other.

But to be forced to deny is to first be accused and who the accuser was and on what basis said accusation was at least implied, we’re never told.

Why?

Because it usually came from another equally breathless young thing, often an arts graduate working for slightly more than he/she could earn at Maccas, (but probably worth slightly less), standing at the back of the media scrum, smartphone in hand.

Sans research – it’s so Nineties – our trusty reporter simply threw out an accusatory question based on whatever version of, “When did you stop beating your wife”, happens to currently be top of tiny mind.

Denial of said ‘wife beating’ was then reported as a serious story; the kind of seven o’clock  news piece that displaces war and famine – as long as they aren’t happening here.

See, ‘Deny’ is a power word. It carries a meme of nefarious doings concealed.

The fact that there were probably no nefarious doings to conceal counts for nought. After all, there was indeed a denial, you can’t deny that.

So, the next time you hear that someone denied something, take a sniff.

That smell you can almost certainly smell is the malodorous aroma of smoke without fire.

And think of our poor reporter, who probably believes that Hemingway is a designer label, has never heard of old Ernest, but who knows exactly how modern media works.

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The Magic of Modelling

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Anthony

 

Those of you who read Observation Point regularly will know that I have little regard for economists, and even less for the confidence trick  called economics; an activity that has no hope of being an art and has failed dismally as a science.

Now, that less than illustrious body known as the International Monetary Fund, has finally admitted that its economic predictive ability is somewhere south of hopeless.

In response to the financial crisis, the IMF advised that European nations undertake austerity measures.

Regular readers will recall that for the last two years I’ve been posing a simple question; in what cosmoverse does it make sense that you can shrink your way to growth?

Well, it turns out, not in this one.

The IMF’s modelling had showed that for every dollar taken out of the economy by said austerity measures, the economy would shrink by only fifty cents. (I know, I know, don’t laugh, but people with PHDs actually went along with this crock; and were paid handsomely for doing so.)

Anyway, the reality turned out to be that for every dollar taken out of European economies, they shrank by a dollar fifty.

To OP followers, blessed as you all are with both a brain and a sense of humour, this will come as no surprise. Five minutes of ceiling staring would have led you to anticipate something like it.

The IMFs excuse comes in two parts, a) but our models said so; and b) everybody else’s models said so too.

Oh well, that makes it all right then. Never mind that hungry Greek pensioners are  killing themselves so as not to be a burden to their struggling children. If the model said it was true…

Economic modelling has a long history of fallibility, which began with the reading of chicken entrails to predict crop harvests, and it’s been mostly down hill from there.

Thing is that back then, chickens were valuable, and it took time to make a… ‘prediction’, so   overall, not too much damage was done.

But come the computer age. Now we can have squillions of  idiotic predictions at the press of a button.

So, how is it that science can give us fake buttocks, but can’t predict economic outcomes worth a damn?

Well, there are two basic types of models.

The first is the type where we input things we know for sure and the model does a calculation that will almost always give a spot on answer.

Let’s say we want to know how much wind shear a bridge design could withstand. All the inputs: surface areas, material strengths, strut efficiencies and so on are precisely known.

So, the predicted result will be correct.

But economic modelling relies on a bunch of assumptions, or, more accurately, occasionally educated guesses, that can be influenced by the guesser’s state of mind, philosophical views, education and whether or not he/she scored last night.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Back in the 90′s the Australian Productivity Commission announced that according to its modelling, our economy would be better off if we did away with our car industry.

The government of the day wisely ignored the pronouncement, although the rabid Right leapt upon it.

It turned out the Commission’s clever little economists had made two key assumptions.

The first was that all those who lost their job in the car industry would quickly find other jobs. No reason for assuming that, but hey, you have to put the anchor down somewhere.

The second assumption was a doozy. Back in the 90′s, the IT industry was going like Flash Gordon, so they used IT salaries as the basis for assuming the average salaries said ex-car workers would earn in their new jobs.

How a factory worker would overnight morph into an IT professional was never considered. After all, the model didn’t need to know that.

So there, boys and girls is why economic modelling is so unreliable. Studies show that they often do worse than the dartboard approach.

And, lo, here we are today, with European economies disappearing down the gurgler because of  nonsensical predictions based largely on prejudices and orthodoxies.

Personally, I prefer the chicken entrails approach. At least you got  a roast dinner out of the exercise.

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