tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36282312922972785992024-03-06T20:55:37.796+13:00It really is upside downvethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.comBlogger266125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-35979409191896958032021-02-25T14:10:00.000+13:002021-02-25T14:10:06.099+13:00The Price of Power<p>Apparently, Texas lawmakers have no intention of allowing a free market in electricity to work. They thought they did, but having seen it in action, they've realised it's as dumb an idea as you could find in a month of trawling YouTube.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that's not what they're <em>saying</em>.</p>
<p>What they're saying is things like: "Texans who suffered through days of freezing cold without power should not be subjected to skyrocketing energy bills due to a spike in the energy market" (Governor Greg Abbott). Or "This is WRONG. No power company should get a windfall because of a natural disaster, and Texans shouldn't get hammered by ridiculous rate increases for last week's energy debacle" (Senator Ted "plenty of power in Cancun" Cruz).</p>
<p>Price spikes happen in every electricity market. Usually they don't matter to users, because retailers sell power at a fixed price. When they do that, the retailer forms a buffer between the market price and the consumer. That's - part of their function. How the retailer sets its contracts with suppliers, how it insures itself against spikes - those things are, literally, its business.</p>
<p>In a free market like Texas's, there's nothing to stop them selling power at a price that's indexed to the spot price. And most of the time, these deals look good for the consumer. It is possible to offer a contract with a "ceiling" on the spot price, but that's like insurance - it means paying more for the added peace of mind. And if you were the sort of person who believed in insurance, you wouldn't be buying those plans in the first place.</p>
<p>Apparently, a whopping <a href="https://www.galvnews.com/opinion/editorials/free/article_5dd59eeb-189a-5668-98f6-d464b4403988.html">25% of Texans</a> thought they could do without that insurance. Of course, many of them will be right: for them the occasional $5000 bill is a nuisance, but they can handle it. (Although my guess is that many even of those people won't pay it, because why should they? - the bailout is coming.) But others are not so well heeled.</p>
<p>The theory goes, when the price spikes, generators will bring more capacity online. That's what prices are <em>for</em>. However, that assumes the capacity is there. If - for whatever reason - that capacity fails, there is no price that can instantly create more.</p>
<p>It also assumes that the price charged <em>will be paid</em>. If the Texas market is anything like those I know, the retailers will have to settle their accounts promptly at the beginning of next month (i.e. next week), so they have until then to raise the money from <em>somewhere</em>. Since lawmakers have already forbidden them to disconnect people, clearly it's not going to come from deadbeat customers. It'll be coming from taxpayers.</p>
<p>So Texan politicians have already vetoed the "conservative" way of resolving the crisis. Prices, it turns out, can't be allowed to control the market after all. Who or what will?</p>
<p>The answer depends on who foots the bill for the present debacle. It could, of course, be dumped on Texan taxpayers. But that would invite hard debate about the future regulation, and it's hard to see how anything good can come of that in the age of Twitter and Facebook. More likely they'll take <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/21/texas-republicans-federal-funds-energy-bills">federal money</a>, which would sidestep the whole messy business by inviting federal regulators in. Then there'll be a handy scapegoat for all the changes people won't like.</p>
<p>One way or another, regulation is coming</a> to the Texas market. And not a minute before time.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-14435551057689481352020-03-29T11:01:00.001+13:002020-03-29T11:01:38.196+13:00Reality TV claims more victims<p>Today's headline: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-trump/trump-mulls-quarantine-for-new-york-parts-of-new-jersey-and-connecticut-idUSKBN21F0QL">Trump "mulls" quarantining New York</a>.</p>
<p>If you were "mulling" something like that, what exactly would be the point of trailing it in advance?</p>
<p>The history of "quarantine" is long and storied and very, very unhappy. There are some constants that always happen: healthy people and sick people locked up together leads to bad things. And one of those bad things is, when people get <em>warning</em> that they're about to be quarantined, they run for the hills.</p>
<p>Taking the infection with them.</p>
<p>The bigger the area, the more people covered, the worse this effect is. When the rest of the world tried to quarantine "China" at the start of this outbreak, we saw how well that worked. Quarantining New York won't go any better. People who can afford it have either already fled, or are packing up to do it now - and some of them will carry the disease with them.</p>
<p>Is that what Trump wants? Is he just giving a heads-up to his well-heeled friends in the city to make sure they can take care of themselves? Well, partly, perhaps, but mostly I think this is just what he does. He made his name on "reality TV" (an oxymoron if ever there was) by publicly mulling and teasing and trailing what he <em>might</em> be going to do next, so tune in next show to find out - and he's done exactly the same as president. And that's what he's still doing. He doesn't have any other tricks.</p>
<p>The other likely effect, which I'm reasonably sure he <em>has</em> thought about because it plays directly to his strength, is that it will help to stoke fear and resentment - if not outright hatred - between the city and the rest of the country.</p>
<p>And if a few thousand more Americans die from it, well, that's a price he won't even notice. What's a few strangers' lives, compared to his ego?</p>
<p>It's far too late to quarantine a whole city. The disease is already firmly embedded and spreading in <em>every state</em> - where New York is today, it's likely Massachussets, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee will all be there by Easter, quarantine or no. Lock down the city by all means - but as I understand it, the governor has already done that. But quarantine? - at best a desperate attempt by Trump to make himself look like he's trying.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-91420855795622035252020-02-03T15:59:00.000+13:002020-02-03T16:08:08.933+13:00Inevitability (US edition)<p>I think the jury is back in. It's clear that the Democrats have no answer to Trump: he's going to win another term.</p>
<p>I would like to add "assuming he stands", because I've seen it speculated that he'll drop out of his own accord sometime before the Republican convention, but I can't see it. That would expose him to legal jeopardy for all the charges currently being stacked up against him. His best chance of staying out of prison - and I'm pretty sure he's determined to do that, if nothing else - is to remain president.</p>
<p>So with that in mind, and in the hope of coming to terms with the reality of modern America, I'd like to reflect on some of the things I'm thankful for about the Trump administration. After all, he has been the most effective president of this century. (That's faint enough praise, but sincere nonetheless.)</p>
<p>What has he done for us?</p>
<p>Well, first, he's shown us all what the world looks like without American leadership. On issues such as climate change, we used to devote a lot of useless energy to trying to get the Americans on board with this initiative or that. With that distraction removed, now our attention is focused where it should have been all along - on our <em>own</em> governments. In Australia, for instance, the wrath over climate denial is now being (correctly) directed at Scott Morrison - nobody mentions Trump.</p>
<p>In the Middle East, he's shown all parties how foolish it is to rely on American power. (I hope the Israelis, in particular, have taken note. That bastard Netanyahu has taken Trump for a friend, but between the two of them there's a good chance they've doomed Israel: they've politicised American support for it. That's not, in itself, a good thing - but at least the Israelis will have enough warning of the end, they'll have a chance to mend their own relations if they can ever muster the will to do it.)</p>
<p>For the rest of us - well, we've seen the lengths that the likes of Russia and China will go to, and the tactics they may employ in their respective bids for dominance. And we don't yet have an effective answer to either one, but at least we know what they can do.</p>
<p>All of this is ugly, but it's the truth and we needed to know it.</p>
<p>Second, he's stripped away the figleaf of morality that has allowed America to build its empire with a good conscience all these years. When American soldiers are send abroad in future, there'll be no more nonsense about preserving freedom or protecting the homeland: we'll all know that their purpose is to protect the profits of well connected US companies <em>and nothing else</em>. That in turn will help to clarify our (foreign) voters' perceptions toward how our own politicians deal with them. It'll take a while, but we'll get there.</p>
<p>In the USA itself, he has mobilised left-wing factions as never before. There's a publicly-self-identified "socialist" faction in Congress now. Cities and states all over the country have declared their own determination to reach climate goals, ignoring the federal government.</p>
<p>(Paradoxically and sadly, this "mobilisation" of opposition does nothing to weaken Trump. Bringing more and more factions out in protest has the side effect of highlighting how little they really agree on - hence the sorry state of the current Democratic primary, and the growing tension between the traditional and "woke" wings of the party. I'm pretty sure that Trump himself understands this, and is working hard at exploiting it.)</p>
<p>He may have, temporarily at least, cured an affliction that affects British liberals observing their own country, when they are prone to observe that it "needs a written constitution". Trump has shown just how little difference that makes. What you can get away with has much more to do with who is enforcing the rules, than with whether or not such rules are written down.</p>
<p>As for the USA itself - I'm sorry, but there's not much we can do for you. If you can't settle on a candidate capable of beating Trump, or at the very least elect a senate that will stop him from packing the judiciary as well as the executive with his toadies - all we can offer you, at best, is somewhere to run to. Of course running won't solve your country's problems, but it just might solve yours.</p>
vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-83881371824246511102019-12-18T15:05:00.002+13:002019-12-18T15:08:47.236+13:00The tragedy of inevitability<p>Some of those who know my views on Brexit were commiserating with me about last week's election result.</p>
<p>In truth, I had given up hope of reversing the referendum decision. I still think that, economically, politically and strategically, Brexit is a blunder, wrapped in a fiasco, inside a catastrophe; but the rift has gone too deep already. Between the EU's disastrous governance - which has grown even worse since the (genuinely) moderating hand of the UK was withdrawn from its deliberations - and the UK's own schizophrenic posturing, the two have already drifted too far apart to simply reglue them and pretend nothing happened.</p>
<p>No, Brexit has to happen now, in the same way as Corbyn had to be given his shot at leading Labour, and - so David Cameron argues, at least - the Brexiters had to be given their referendum in the first place. There's simply no other way to finish it.</p>
<p>One of the stupider takes I've seen on the election - basically from Americans who, I presume, are plugging for someone from the Warren/Sanders wing of their own party - is that "moderation doesn't pay". True, the traditionally-moderate Lib Dem party was crushed - but it was crushed by a Tory party that frankly ate their lunch. The vast distraction of Brexit seems to have blinded a lot of people to it, but on social and economic policy - Johnson's Tories were, by far, the most moderate party on the ballot.</p>
<p>Which brings us to Labour.</p>
<p>Tony Blair tried to tell them - and Blair, for all the hate, remains one of only four leaders in Labour's history who have ever won a general election. But maybe this is something that every generation has to learn for itself. Now it looks very much as if Labour's next leader - or at least, its next <em>serious</em> leader - will have to fight very much the same punishing internal war against Momentum as Neil Kinnock did against Militant in the 80s. Which will probably cost the party at least one more election, very likely two - it depends on the calibre of the new leader.</p>
<p>The thing is - success in British politics is inversely correlated to ideology. The more convinced you are of your own rightness, the less likely you are to win. (Before you hold up Thatcher as a counter-example, consider who she ran against.) The most damaging word you can throw at a British politician, if you can make it stick, is "dogmatic".</p>
<p>Johnson is a brash, lying, cynical, self-serving, manipulative, entitled bully. Supporters of Trump, and detractors of Johnson, like to compare the two - but any fair comparison shows up more difference than likeness. Johnson has none of Trump's "aggrieved" schtick, none of his "outsider" baggage, nor his petty vindictiveness, nor his boundless and groundless self-confidence. Johnson is a man who seeks expert advice and listens to it. He habitually follows up rows with charm offensives, and even apologies. His opponents' efforts to paint him as a xenophobe and bigot fell flat, as they deserved to - those are not labels you can credibly slap on a two-term mayor of London with a long record of supporting socially-liberal causes.</p>
<p>Most of all, Johnson has what Trump never had - a plan to govern. I wish him luck.</p>
vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-77281828233301252562019-10-15T16:44:00.000+13:002019-10-15T16:44:23.733+13:00#MAGA<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/14/trump-troops-syria-leave-iraq-afghanistan-us">Simon Jenkins</a> gets it.</p>
<p>There's no real way to stab allies in the back and come out looking like anything but scum. And Trump, to his credit, hasn't bothered to try. He <em>is</em> utter scum and he doesn't care who knows it.</p>
<p>But - with the Kurdish withdrawal - he's achieved something that Obama could only aspire to. He's tied the hands of every US administration to come for the next generation. At a stroke, he's made it vastly harder for the US to intervene in future wars anywhere in the world - because only the very foolish or the very desperate would ally with them. Nobody trusts a traitor.</p>
<p>This may be the Suez moment of the American empire - the moment when everyone, even Americans, are forced to accept that they just don't matter that much any more - because it doesn't matter how invincible your army is, if the taxpayers back home have lost the will to use it. If so, Trump deserves a deal of credit for getting there so quickly. Obama may have hunted bin Laden down, but it takes a Trump to surrender to him <em>and get away with it</em>. #MAGA - Make America Go Away.</p>
<p>Just to be clear - I personally think this is a horrible thing. I think the world was a better place for American intervention. I am aghast at the despicable treatment of the Kurds, and I think this treachery will haunt America. But given a choice between fighting until they were beaten, and simply giving up and going home - it's hard to fault the USA for choosing the second option. Generations of brave, decent and honourable US presidents, trying desperately to do the right thing - "to lead the cause of freedom", as George W Bush once put it - have led the US into seemingly endless wars. Now Trump, who combines in one man the personal courage of a diseased rat, the integrity of Pontius Pilate and the morals of a Bangkok pimp, has shown how to end them.</p>
<p>I hope people elsewhere who are placing their hope in US support - such as in Hong Kong, and Israel, and even some poor fools in Britain - are taking note.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-43566397861252514102019-10-09T16:10:00.002+13:002019-10-09T16:11:02.120+13:00Demotivated reasoning<p>So, a lot of normally calm people are crowing that Trump is going down.</p>
<p>Like them, I really want it to be true - but based on a lifetime of being disappointed in politics, I don't believe it. And since I have a solid track record of incorrect predictions, I'm hoping this one will prove to be wrong as well (but to bring that about, I have to publish it): "impeachment" is making him stronger.</p>
<p>Now, I'm not claiming he knows exactly what he's doing. He's not some supra-genius level grandmaster who's playing twenty moves ahead of us all. But this isn't chess. What he is, is a past master at <em>opportunism</em>. Let him so much as sniff a lifeline, and he will not only haul himself to safety, but also lash it around his opponents' necks and do his redoubtable damnedest to haul them into the soup in his place. He doesn't yet know what form that lifeline will take (although he has a few contingency plans, obviously) - but he has faith, based on a lifetime of avoiding consequences, that it will come along in time.</p>
<p>To deny him such a lifeline? - would take a laser-focused prosecutorial intellect, a party of unwavering discipline, media who can maintain an attention span of months while retaining detachment and perspective, and two parties that are still committed to pluralistic republican democracy and the rule of law. How many of those ingredients are present in Washington right now?</p>
<p>Failing all that, it would take a more convincing case than that phone call. Because I read the published "transcript", and while it is appalling, it still contains enough plausible deniability to give talking points to Trump himself and his highly-motivated allies in the media and elsewhere. And talking points is all they need. They don't need to be convincing, they just need to <em>keep talking</em>, and Trump's followers will keep listening.</p>
<p>Impeachment will fail, Biden is sunk, and Warren will lose to Trump next year because (I don't pretend to know why this is, but the polling data is clear) working-class blacks won't vote for her, just as they didn't for HRC. It's time to resign ourselves to a second term of Trump.</p>
vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-16342834721805171092019-09-26T16:50:00.002+12:002019-09-26T16:50:38.616+12:00An open letter to Greta ThunbergMy son asked me the other week: "who starts wars?"<br />
<br />
The sheer anger in his question was palpable. At eight years old, he knows enough to hate and fear the idea of war. <i>Why would anyone do such a thing? What kind of villain would condemn so many people to so much pain?</i> I tried to tell him that people don't, usually, <i>mean</i> to start wars - it's something that happens when things go wrong, and the leaders lose control. They misjudge their enemies - or their friends - and do something that provokes a much stronger reaction than they wanted.<br />
<br />
Like everything we tell children, that's only partly true. Of course lots of wars <i>have</i> been started on purpose, sometimes by people who were every bit as evil as the cartoon villains of young Tilly's imagination. But even they were reacting to pressures - trying to solve problems of their own, although these may not have had anything to do with the enemy they chose to fight.<br />
<br />
It is our nature to see problems as like obstacles - things to be overcome one at a time, each one letting us make a little more progress to reach the next problem. We seldom give much thought to the issues behind us, that our ancestors overcame to get us this far - they don't seem relevant any more. Nor, when a problem seems very pressing, do we think that much about the legacy our "solution" will leave to the next generation. It's not easy to foresee what the next generation will see as their most critical problem, so there's not much we can do to help them with it - but if we can clear <i>this</i> one out of the way first, they'll be that much better placed to handle - whatever they decide to.<br />
<br />
Thus from 1945 to 1991, the first priority for every decent European - politician or not - was to prevent another major European war. Some of those politicians did great things, others - less so, but one thing they all had in common was a cold determination that World War Three should not break out on their watch. Everything they did, they did with one eye on keeping the peace. It was to that end that they made "economic growth" the yardstick of progress: if you can create "more" (of everything), that means less fighting about how to share it.<br />
<br />
Now there's another danger: climate change. Which, if we don't figure out what to do about it, threatens to bring about WW3 anyway, despite all our efforts to avoid it through other routes.<br />
<br />
Greta Thunberg and her followers are right to be scared.
But whether they are right to be angry, that's another question; anger may not produce the reaction they are looking for. Because although climate change is a huge threat to us all, it's not the <i>only</i> such threat. And in demanding that leaders focus solely on <i>this</i> - Ms Thunberg is every bit as guilty of tunnel vision as those same leaders she is hectoring.<br />
<br />
What evades everyone so far - and Thunberg doesn't pretend to have an answer to this - is <i>how</i> to fix it. If we just halt all new emission-generating activity now (or, say, phase them out over the next ten years), that means crippling developing economies - leading directly to World War Three. If the elites try to impose restraint from the top down - we will get revolutions all over, leading to WW3. If we make some countries take the lead (on the grounds that they're richer and better placed to do so), then the peoples of those countries will protest because (as they see it) the rest of the world isn't sharing their sacrifice - and you get leaders elected like Trump, and Bolsonaro, who appeal to voters by promising to protect them from this injustice. This <i>may</i> allow us to stave off WW3 for a few more years, but only at the cost of increasing emissions. <br />
<br />
None of these options looks particularly good. <br />
<br />
Dear Ms Thunberg: I am sorry to break this to you, but that "67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise" is not going to happen. Nor is the 50% version. <i>Those</i> are the real fairy tales, concocted by scientists who have never stopped for a moment to think about politics. If you have a key to untie this knot, then please do share it - but don't imagine you can cut it with a sword, because <i>that</i> we really would not survive. <br />
<br />
What you <i>can</i> do, and I think you may have already started this, is to help reconcile the public in the rich world to that poorer future that they will have to face. By speaking so bluntly to their leaders, you have also spoken to their voters. For that I thank you, although I fear what may come of it.<br />
<br />
Leaders of the generation of Eisenhower and Adenauer did not foresee climate change - their goal was to overcome the problems of their time, while building as strong a system, with as many tools, as they could think of, to help your generation to overcome the challenges of its time, whatever they may prove to be.<br />
<br />
In the same way, <i>you </i>don't know what will be the biggest problems of the 2070s; and if the policies you promote today tie the hands of future generations to deal with those, then it will be your turn to be unforgiven. <br />
<br />
To return to Tilly's question, who starts wars? All kinds of people. Some wars are started by rich, strong, evil men who want to get richer and stronger. But others may be started by good, honest, innocent schoolchildren who want nothing more than "a future". There are many roads to hell.vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-8437671843194465422019-05-27T14:15:00.003+12:002019-05-27T14:15:28.724+12:00Bad politics and bad journalism<p>Based on votes counted so far: the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/27/eu-elections-tories-and-labour-savaged-as-voters-take-brexit-revenge">great</a> <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/26/european-elections-results-live-news-latest-brexit-party/">British</a> <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/european-election-results-conservatives-labour-brexit-party-a8931406.html">press</a> has decided that Nigel Farage has thoroughly trounced the Tories, and Labour has ceded ground to the Lib Dems by its vacillation.</p>
<p>This is stupid. Look at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/may/26/european-election-latest-results-2019-uk-england-scotland-wales-ni-eu-parliament">the numbers</a> (for all of England and Wales - Scotland and Northern Ireland still to report, at time of writing), as compared with 2014. (All numbers below are expressed as a share of the total vote.)</p>
<p>The great "triumph" of the Brexit party, taking the plurality, has come overwhelmingly <em>not</em> from the Tories, but from the utter collapse of UKIP. That 33.3% of voters for Brexit needs to be balanced against 25.6% of voters <em>deserting</em> UKIP. The <em>net</em> gain to (Brexit plus UKIP combined) is a rather more modest 7.7%.</p>
<p>(As a bonus, the separation of the two parties has allowed the respectable Brexiters to distance themselves from the swivel-eyed bigots of UKIP, and a full 90% of their voters have taken the opportunity to do just that. Good for them.)</p>
<p>Now, granted 7.7% isn't nothing. But it's hardly a tsunami.</p>
<p>So of the 15.8% of voters deserting the Tories, we can say with confidence that <em>less than half</em> have switched to pro-Brexit parties. Which implies that what's disaffecting them is <em>not</em> the "failure to deliver Brexit".</p>
<p>Similarly, Labour's vote declined by 10.8% (of the electorate), but the Lib Dems' increased by 14%. Which implies that even if every single one of those Labour voters turned LD (and they didn't), there must still be a substantial number of defectors from other parties. In fact, those Labour defectors must be reckoned to include at least 2.5% going to Change UK, and probably at least half of the 4.6% swing toward the Greens - call it 2.3%. So the "Labour to Lib Dem" shift accounts for <em>less than half</em> of the Lib Dem's gain. The rest - fully 8% of the total electorate - must have come from the Tories.</p>
<p>I would go on to some regional analysis, but a quick glance makes me very doubtful that anything in those figures would change my mind.</p>
<p>Now, the Tories seem to think that if only they can deliver Brexit, all those Brexit and UKIP voters will return to the fold. But again, the numbers tell a different story. During UKIP's rise, it gained voters from both Labour and Tory ranks; there is no reason to imagine that if Brexit happened, and those parties evaporated together with their supposed <i>raison d'etre</i>, they would all flock back one way.</p>
<p>No, the real danger for them is that they will <em>permanently</em> lose the 20%-or-so of their party who have (provably) defected to the Lib Dems. If they press on with a hard Brexit, the Remainers will not forgive or forget that. It hurts to have your country sold out from under you.</p>
<p>For Labour, the message is clearer. If Corbyn can deliver a second referendum, the coalition of voters waiting to swing behind that is overwhelming - and even better, he'll frustrate the Tory plan to draw a line under the Brexit/UKIP insurgency. The Tories are suffering because they are torn apart by this issue. Labour doesn't have to be the same.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-47034548023338911712018-08-28T14:39:00.000+12:002018-08-28T14:39:59.267+12:00"Declare victory and move on"<p>That headline was the most sagacious political advice I got from my mentor in quality management. When I can't make headway on anything I've set my hand to - most probably, because of a complete lack of give-a-damnedness from above - the correct procedure is to announce that I've succeeded in my aim, and find something else to do. (I can rationalise this as "well, if management don't want any changes, clearly that means they're happy with what I've already achieved. Ergo, I've done my job. QED.")</p>
<p>It works in other contexts, too. No matter how disastrously a project has failed to reach its stated goals, there's always something you can take away from it - experience, if nothing else. So take that, and treasure it as your spoils. Tomorrow is another day.</p>
<p>Sadly, I've never been very good at it. It smacks of denial, of refusing to face the truth. But in a corporate context, "the truth" is, probably, that no-one really cares very much - "what you do next" will always matter more than "what you did last". You are judged on activity, not results - because no-one really knows how to measure those.</p>
<p>I'm not surprised Donald Trump follows the same philosophy. You can see him practising it today over trade talks with Mexico. If anyone knows how to define <i>any</i> outcome as "success", he does. And perhaps it explains his promise to make Americans "sick of winning".</p>
<p>It also explains why he gets mad when other people won't let him "move on". That's why he sacked Comey, and why he spends ever more time on his comical bawling about Mueller's "witch hunt". When people insist on <i>examining</i> the past, they're apt to find things that cast doubt on the brilliance of his victories. Why can't they just take his word for it?</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-91265699393861295602018-07-27T10:58:00.000+12:002018-07-27T10:58:13.054+12:00Surrender, again<p>It's a curious thing, but whenever I think I've finally resolved my doubts about whether Britain should remain in the EU, the Europeans invariably hit upon some new way to disappoint me.</p>
<p>This week it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/26/jean-claude-juncker-donald-trump-trade-deal-washington-talks-analysis">Jean-Claude Juncker</a> throwing a lifeline to Trump by, basically, capitulating to his trade war. So much for the EU's vaunted "bloc strength" in negotiations. What exactly is the point?</p>
<p>EU-US tariffs are already very low, or at least they were until Trump started his evil little trade war. So "working toward zero" - even if "zero" is eventually attained - will have very slight impact anyway. But handing Trump a PR victory? - that's just fucking stupid. It's like giving a toddler an ice cream to stop them from throwing a tantrum.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-64750183224686135482018-06-13T09:27:00.001+12:002018-06-13T09:28:40.519+12:00Worst. Negotiation. Ever.<p>Wow.</p>
<p>I expected the US-NK talks to be thin on detail. I didn't expect Trump to capitulate unreservedly to all of Kim's demands, in exchange for a boatload of bones. But that's basically what he's promised.</p>
<p>Of course, we've seen before that what he promises and what he does are two quite orthogonal things. Just ask Mr Trudeau.</p>
<p>But at this point, he's shaken the hand of another despot, and pronounced the South Korean and Japanese alliances dead. Not for the first time, he's signalled that the USA has no real interest in what goes on around the Pacific Rim. South Korea and Japan now have two options: to apply to the Chinese for protection, with whatever foreign policy shifts that might entail; or to develop their own nukes, because clearly that's the only thing America respects.</p>
<p>But not to worry. There are very, very few countries in the world with <em>less</em> resources than North Korea - which suggests that if they can build a nuclear capability to hit the US mainland, anyone can. We'll see how Mr Trump feels about countries taking responsibility for their defence when <em>Venezuela</em> gets the bomb.</p>
<p>Don't it just make you feel safe?</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-39912713036992801592018-06-12T14:57:00.000+12:002018-06-12T14:57:23.344+12:00Crystal ball says<p>So, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44435035">at this moment</a>, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un are having their historic meeting. The world holds its breath.</p>
<p>Spoiler: it's going to be a big success. DJT will emerge and tweet triumphantly about his "HISTORIC agreement that NO OTHER PRESIDENT managed, Kim is a very reasonable guy who just wants to be left alone." Because why wouldn't he? We already know he (consistently) gets along far better with despots than with elected politicians.</p>
<p>And, importantly, he hasn't taken any advisors to this talk - no-one who actually knows what a nuclear weapon or rocket looks like, much less how to inspect them. So they <em>can't</em> even discuss any actual inspection/enforcement regime. They both have nothing to lose by emerging and trumpeting their respective victories.</p>
<p>It won't be until after the midterms that it becomes obvious that the "agreement" had no actual content, it was nothing more than a handshake. Short-term effect: poll bump for Trump, quite possibly long-lived enough to see his party through the midterms. All the people who might have tried to pour cold water on the HISTORIC AGREEMENT are conveniently cowed (other Republicans who know what they're talking about), replaced with Trump toadies (the CIA), discredited (Democrats, the press), or simply silenced (McCain). Long-term effect: nil.</p>
<p>Enjoy the spectacle. Here's the president of the richest and most powerful country on earth, sucking up to a dictator who makes Charlie Chaplin look statesmanlike. He's eliminating a supposed threat to the mightiest military the world has ever seen, posed by a country with the GDP of Wiltshire. All it really needs is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared_(film)">Peter Sellers</a>, and the world would recognise it for the comedy it is.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-69881639563357058512018-04-13T16:26:00.000+12:002018-04-13T16:26:02.916+12:00Farcebook<p>I'm pretty sure the Facebook hysteria now qualifies as a moral panic. We've named a problem ("loss of privacy"), identified it with a public enemy (Facebook is obviously tailor-made for this role; Google might be an even better fit, but - well, they drew a long straw this time), abused tens of thousands of innocent words on describing and discussing and distancing ourselves from The Problem. Now we're at the stage where lawmakers have got in on the act, and Congress is grandstanding at Mark Zuckerberg.</p>
<p>That's worrying, because moral panics generally end in new laws to crack down on some pastime that had, up to now, been classed as - if not exactly virtuous, then at least <em>not harmful enough</em> to be worth the loss of freedom entailed by passing laws about it. Think legal highs, dangerous dogs, alcopops, motorcycle gangs. And the pastimes at stake here - communicating with friends and family, networking, personal publishing - are, basically, everything that is best about the internet. If politicians come to see "social media" as something that needs to be clamped down on, then it's hard to imagine any result that would leave blogs like this one untouched. (The British government is already going this way: its recent changes to press regulation are clearly designed to stifle independent comment, while keeping the press barons onside. It's not, in itself, fascism - but it's one of its building blocks.)</p>
<p>I imagine, by now, just about every country with any kind of commercially-driven media sector has had its say on the Facebook panic. <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12030424">Here</a> is what someone who passes for a media commentator in New Zealand has to say. And I think it's an instructive study in how moral panics - as well as their direct dangers - are also susceptible to hijacking by special interests.</p>
<p>Look at the headline: "Govt needs to protect Kiwis from Facebook's power". Explicitly calling for government action (i.e. new laws), explicitly aimed at Facebook. The writer criticises Facebook - not for collecting data, nor for slinging "targeted" ads, but for doing all this <em>from abroad</em>. "Fundamentally", he says, "we need to have a voice with these overseas organisations who are increasingly playing such an important role in the daily life of New Zealanders". On the other hand, you can "trust local retailers and organisations who have no agenda apart from being useful and understanding you".</p>
<p>Yeah right.</p>
<p>The author, one Ben Goodale, is a frequent contributor to the New Zealand Herald. More germanely he's described, in an easily missable footnote, as "the managing director of justONE". I didn't know what "justONE" is any more than you do, but its website describes it as "New Zealand's pre-eminent data-driven marketing, CRM and loyalty agency".</p>
<p>So no, the stench of self-interest that rises from this drivel is not just our imagination.</p>
<p>Note to every legislator: Facebook is a publisher. (Zuckerberg denies this, on the grounds that Facebook doesn't create the content, and it's "a technology company". In other words, he doesn't know what a publisher is.)</p>
<p>You know how to regulate publishing. You've been doing it for hundreds of years. Don't let the new technology and associated gobbledegook blind you to that simple fact: Facebook needs to be treated exactly like every other publisher. How would you react to <em>a publisher</em> that surreptitiously gathered data on people, then carelessly shared that data with third parties?</p>
<p>NZ already has a perfectly good privacy law that covers that scenario, but for some reason nobody has ever thought to apply it to Facebook. We don't need new laws, and we don't . We just need to enforce the laws we've got.</p>
vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-52566904927377521512018-03-19T15:25:00.000+13:002018-03-19T15:25:06.890+13:00More in sorrow<p>Dear Mozilla,</p>
<p>I've been using Firefox, loyally, since before it existed. I used it when it was called Firebird, and Phoenix, and before that I was using the Mozilla browser. Occasionally - maybe once a month or so - I'll fire up some other browser for a specific task, but Firefox has always been my standard, everyday, all-purpose browser. The interface is clean and simple, the extensions are beautiful, I like the focus on privacy and putting the user in control. It just - works the way a browser should.</p>
<p>Until now.</p>
<p>The Quantum leap was, for me, not a good thing. True, pages rendered faster. But that performance came at a price: pages sometimes crashed, or slowed the whole system to treacle (Trello was particularly badly affected, presumably because of something in their Javascript - but whatever it was, it didn't affect other browsers). Nevertheless, I persisted. I told myself that Quantum had been a huge change, and teething problems were only to be expected. The next major update, I thought, would cure some of these ills.</p>
<p>Sadly, the opposite has happened. The "next major update" has landed, and while it has cured whatever ailed Trello, it has reduced several other sites to "completely unusable". As in, it simply no longer renders the page content at all. It will load a frame, or maybe a background image, but not display the content; or the content will disappear when I scroll. This happens across multiple sites and multiple computers, with and without extensions enabled; so I'm picking Firefox as the culprit.</p>
<p>(The content is loaded, it's still "there". It's sometimes possible to select it, by clicking and dragging with a mouse, and sometimes when this is done it will remain visible after deselecting. But sometimes not. At any rate, this is not an acceptable workaround.)</p>
<p>It is therefore with a heavy heart that I have decided, I can no longer wait for Firefox to get this excrement back together. Right now I have little choice but to adopt Chrome at work; for home use, I will probably prefer Vivaldi. A lot of people speak highly of Palemoon and Waterfox; I may give one or both of them a try within the next month. But Firefox, most sadly, is a broken vessel.</p>
<p>Goodbye. I wish you nothing but the very best of luck in the future; but from today, I'm no longer a user. I just don't have the time to deal with this level of crap.</p>
vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-43983981615068688282017-04-08T15:11:00.001+12:002017-04-08T15:12:04.086+12:00Dumb meters and dumber journalism
<p>This post was inspired by a bunch of press coverage last month of a Dutch research paper, which found big differences between the measurement of certain "smart" meters and a regular (old-style) electromechanical meter. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/06/smart-energy-meters-giving-readings-seven-times-high-study-finds/">Here</a> is one of the more sober reports. Choice quotes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Smart meters are giving readings up to six times higher than the energy consumed by households when connected to energy-saving light bulbs, according to scientists.[...]</p>
<p>It is the first ever proof that smart meters, which the Government wants in every household by 2020 to improve the accuracy of people's energy bills, are producing readings which are too high.[...]</p>
<p>So called "green" devices such as energy saving light bulbs, heaters, LED bulbs and dimmers change the shape of electric currents which can result in a distorted reading, it said. </p></blockquote>
<p>The whole article illustrated by a picture of a pensioner's hands, clutching on to the last of their meagre savings in front of a log fire. Heartrending stuff, obviously. But nothing on the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4288180/Smart-meters-readings-SEVEN-times-high.html">really hysterical coverage</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Smart meters can give readings almost seven times higher than the actual electricity consumed – particularly in homes when energy-saving bulbs are used, a study found.</p>
<p>Modern devices including dimmer switches and LED bulbs can confuse some smart meters, leading to massively inflated readings and higher bills.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All this is based on a paper published in the <cite>IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine</cite>, from research conducted in the Netherlands. The University of Twente's press release is <a href="https://www.utwente.nl/en/news/!/2017/3/313543/electronic-energy-meters-false-readings-almost-six-times-higher-than-actual-energy-consumption">here</a>, and the abstract is <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7866234/">here</a>. (In theory you can buy a PDF of the full paper for the modest donation of US$33, but the IEEE's portal defeated my best efforts to give them money. I eventually managed to read the paper from my local academic library.)</p>
<p>Now, the first thing to note about the above coverage is the heavy emphasis on <em>household</em> bills. The <cite>Telegraph</cite> article mentions the word "household" twice in the first three paragraphs, and backs it up with that scary picture. The <cite>Mail</cite> unabashedly talks about "homes" and "massively inflated readings and bills". But as even the paper abstract makes clear, it's not about <em>household</em> meters. Your average household has a single-phase electricity supply and a single-phase meter to go with it. Here is what the paper has to say about single-phase meters:</p>
<blockquote>Several single-phase static energy meters were measured in various setups. [...] The results can be summarized in one sentence: no deviation beyond the specification could be observed; no influence of interference due to interfering or distorted voltage, and no influence caused by interfering currents were observed.</blockquote>
<p>No, all the headline-grabbing results concern <em>three-phase</em> meters, generally used in large commercial and industrial premises. That poor old pensioner with the fire? Not affected. "Homes where energy-saving bulbs are used"? Not affected. (Well, to be completely accurate, it's not unheard-of for a home to have a three-phase supply. But unless you've got a welding station in your garage or something, it's pretty unlikely.) The <em>household</em> meters? - those took everything the researchers could throw at them, and ticked along like clockwork.</p>
<p>So, about those three-phase results. The Torygraph makes the connection to "So-called "green" devices such as energy saving light bulbs, heaters, LED bulbs and dimmers". In fact, to get the big anomalies, you need to be using <em>both</em> a dimmer switch, <em>and</em> energy saving (CFL/LED) bulbs - and not just a handful of them either, you need dozens of the things, <em>all</em> connected to the same dimmer switch. And then you need to turn the dimmer switch to 135°. If you leave the dimmer switch alone, or turn it to a mere 90°, you actually <em>save</em> money. Here is the, pardon the pun, money chart from the paper:</p>
<table border="1">
<thead>
<tr><th style="padding: 2px 9px">Dimmer</th><th style="padding: 2px 9px">Meter</th style="padding: 2px 9px"><th style="padding: 2px 9px">Resistive</th><th style="padding: 2px 9px">CFL</th><th style="padding: 2px 9px">CFL+LED</th><th style="padding: 2px 9px">CFL+LED+Resistive</th></tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td rowspan="4">0°</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">SM1</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-2%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-4%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-4%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px">SM2</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-9%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-11%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px">SM3</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-7%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-6%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM4</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-7%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-6%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-4%</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="4">45°</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">SM1</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-14%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">0%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-4%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-16%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM2</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-14%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">6%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-5%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-16%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM3</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">7%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-8%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM4</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-4%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">7%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-6%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="4">90°</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">SM1</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">5%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-46%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-52%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-40%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM2</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">5%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-46%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-53%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-40%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM3</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-1%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">3%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">1%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-6%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM4</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-2%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-26%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-28%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-20%</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="4">135°</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">SM1</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">122%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">253%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">169%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">265%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM2</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">105%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">268%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">180%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">276%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM3</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-1%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-10%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-3%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-4%</td></tr>
<tr><td style="padding:2px 8px"> SM4</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">2%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-46%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-36%</td><td style="padding:2px 8px">-39%</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>So you need a three-phase meter and a whole lot of low-energy bulbs that are connected, in series, to a single dimmer switch that for some reason is permanently melted into position at 135°. And then you'll get inflated readings?</p>
<p>Well, maybe. It's still far from a sure thing, because only <em>some</em> three-phase meters show this effect - and the researchers, bizarrely, decline to name them. They do say that the offending meters use Rogowski coils (a century-old technology) for measurement. But no-one seems to know, and the researchers aren't telling, <em>which</em> meters those are.</p>
<p>Which brings me neatly to my topic for part 3 of this series: what really <em>is</em> wrong with smart meters. For now, what I can tell you for sure is that if your bill has gone up since you got a smart meter installed? - there is no reputable evidence to support the idea that it's the meter's fault.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-21659031533056663942017-03-30T15:00:00.000+13:002017-03-31T19:28:38.482+13:00Data is good, 'mkay?<blockquote><cite><p>Early this month, the story broke of a study in the Netherlands that had found large inaccuracies in the measurement of "smart" electricity meters. I started writing this post in response to that story, but it's far too long, so I've broken it into parts. Part One is why 98% of the bad things people say about smart meters are wrong. Part Two will be about the Dutch story specifically. Part Three, if I get that far, will be about what <strong>is</strong> wrong with smart meters.</cite></p>
<p><cite>Even so, it's a wall of text. Sorry about that.</cite></p></blockquote>
<p>I like "smart" meters.</p>
<p>Like most houses in New Zealand, my home is already fitted with one - has been since 2013. But more pertinently: as the billing and reconciliation manager of a small electricity retailer, I handle about a million smart meter reads every month. And I am, perforce, actively involved in working to get the things deployed "everywhere". (The scare quotes are there because we all know they'll never be <em>everywhere</em>. Hey, there are people out there who are still running Windows 98. But for statistical values of "everywhere", it is possible.)</p>
<p>And so I am more than averagely aware, both of the uses of these things, and of the popular resistance to them. This resistance is well organised. It looks like a genuine grassroots movement, but at the same time I would guess it's quietly egged on by interested parties, such as electricity retailers, meter manufacturers and meter readers, as well as the usual troublemakers (journalists and self-styled activists).</p>
<p>Sample website <a href="https://smartmeterharm.org">here</a>. (I am indebted to smartmeterharm.org, for providing a central repository of the more plausible arguments. It beats heck out of such amateurish efforts as stopsmartmeters.org, which earnestly argues that all wireless technology is evil because <em>RADIATION!!!</em>) Marginally more rational arguments are:</p>
<ol><li>remote disconnection</li>
<li>data privacy/security</li>
<li>incompatibility between meter types and readers</li>
<li>lack of benefit to customers</li>
<li>inherent unreliability in the meters themselves.</li>
</ol>
<p>The last of these is pretty technical, and it's really the theme of part two of this series. For now, let me consider the less geeky objections. To deal with the weakest point first:</p>
<h3>Radiation</h3>
<p>If your smart meter is located <em>under your pillow</em>, then it's just possible that you might absorb as much radiation from the smart meter, during the night, as you would during a two-minute conversation on a mobile phone. If it's located a few feet away from your bed, then the dosage will be less than 2% of that. If it's, like mine, on the far side of the house - then in terms of radiation strength, you would have a hard time even detecting it above the background radiation of terrestrial broadcasts, phone signals, alarms, car keys, baby monitors, garage door openers and all the other hum of 21st-century technology going on all around you. And don't even <em>think</em> about getting a wifi router, smart TV, or IOT-enabled device of any sort.</p>
<p>Of course there's no such thing as "totally harmless radiation", in the same way as there's no such thing as "totally harmless sunlight" - but most of us have long ago decided that the undoubted benefits outweigh the hypothetical risk. If you want to dissent from that opinion, then... I'm sorry, but I see no reason why the rest of us should have to pay for your hyper-caution. (It's not a <em>huge</em> cost, yet. At present, you're probably costing us something in the ballpark of $5-7 per month. But that figure will rise sharply as the number of legacy meters declines, because the economies of scale in handling them will fade away, so be ready for a substantial surcharge in a few years' time.)</p>
<h3>Remote disconnection</h3>
<p>Really, there are three separate fears under this heading. Remote disconnection may be done by your power company, by the police/government/similar, or by criminals (terrorists or other hackers). So let's take them in turn.</p>
<p>The procedure for <em>your power company</em> to disconnect you is closely regulated. We have to make certain efforts to warn you before we do it. There are laws prescribing the methods, wording, and timing of those communications. And - this is the key point - those laws are exactly the same, regardless of what type of meter you have. The big difference is that the whole process is a lot quicker (and easier to reverse), and cheaper, with a smart meter. This alone is a big win for customers. And if we do it wrong, either way, you can sue us.</p>
<p>At this point, I once had the rejoinder "for now, maybe, but what happens when the capacity is getting slim and the grid is desperate to shed load?" The answer to that is a thing called a ripple relay, which disconnects <em>some</em> loads in your house that are both heavy, and unlikely to be time-critical. (Generally, that means "an immersion heater".) The worst that happens is you have to go without hot water for a few hours, while the rest of your house continues to work as normal. Of course having no hot water is bad - but only until you compare it to the alternative, which is <em>uncontrolled brownouts affecting your entire supply</em>.</p>
<p>If you're worried about the police/government taking the time to disconnect your power supply - get your priorities straight. I've never heard of them doing that, and can only imagine that if a SWAT team is about to bash in your door, the power supply to your house is not going to affect things much either way. <em>(Okay, so you may have some half-baked fantasy about standing them off with a homemade Gauss rifle or something. I recommend buying a battery. And life insurance.)</em></p>
<p>As for evil hackers/terrorists doing it: well, terrorists already have much simpler, low-tech ways of doing much greater damage (Google "northeast blackout 2003" to see what I mean). If it does happen to you - well, congratulations on being the world's first ever victim of an entirely new type of crime. Now call your power company and tell them what's happened, and your lights will be back on in a jiffy.</p>
<h3>Data privacy/security</h3>
<p>Probably the most overblown of all concerns. The issue here is the granularity of data.</p>
<p>When I look at a set of smart meter reads, I see usage per half-hour for the previous month. (Note, the <em>previous</em> month. We don't get the data in anything like "real time". Not even the meter owner knows how much you're burning <em>right now</em>. There are companies that get the data only one day late, but that's a significant amount of extra work for them.) I may be able to see, for instance, that your usage was around 0.2-0.3kW overnight, then started to ramp up at 5 a.m., peaking at 2kW at 7 a.m. and then dropping off to a steady daytime rate... </p>
<p>And that's all very interesting. It gives me an idea of what time your household gets up, showers and has breakfast. But - that's about all it tells me. It doesn't tell me <em>what</em> you have for breakfast, or whether you watch TV while you eat it, or whether you shower in the morning. There's no way of distinguishing between "a TV turned on for the whole half hour" and "a toaster turned on for a few minutes". I might guess that the 5 a.m. ramp-up is a timed dishwasher - but that's only a wild guess, it might just as easily be an immersion heater, or even an early riser getting in some quality screen time before the rest of the household gets up. There are dozens of possible explanations for any given pattern, and <em>without more data</em> there's no way of picking one.</p>
<p>And that is how I know that companies like <a href="https://smartmeterharm.org/2017/03/15/companies-decode-smart-meter-data-for-energy-utilities-and-make-highly-personalized-profiles-of-each-and-every-customer">ONZO</a> are full of shit. In order to do what they claim to do, they would need more - much more - than your smart meter reads. I would guess that when they demo their technology, they do it on households that have a lot of interconnected and/or spying stuff in the house (an IOT-enabled toaster, or an XBox, or a smart TV, or a cable box, or Alexa, for instance - any of these would provide some serious quality spy data to supplement the meter reads). If you have any of those things in your house, then you're giving away far more data than your meter can gather.</p>
<h3>Incompatibilities</h3>
<p>This is a real problem in the UK. It is not, however, a problem in New Zealand, even though our technology is not all that exciting. Because it's not a technological problem at all - it's a <em>structural or organisational</em> problem.</p>
<p>There are two big companies that provide metering in Auckland. (Actually there are about eight, but only two major players controlling well over 90% of the market - Metrix and AMS.) These companies fit and maintain the smart meters, <em>and collect read data from them</em>. They pass that data to us retailers in (reasonably) well defined file types. If you want to be a retailer in New Zealand, you learn those file types and love them - and that's all you have to do. Dealing with the fine detail of extracting raw data from the meter and translating it into this standard format - that's the meter owner's problem (and we, the retailer, pay them for the service). If you switch retailer, the same meter continues recording the same data and it's collected by the same company - the only thing that changes is who they send it to for billing.</p>
<p>From what I gather, in the UK, power companies are supposed to read their own meters. That's... well, let's just say that it looks very much like a racket got up by the big, established retailers to raise barriers to entry for competition. It needs to be fixed with a clawhammer.</p>
<h3>Lack of benefit to customers</h3>
<p>This is probably the hardest case to argue, because it means engaging with a counterfactual: how different would the consumer's experience be, if there were no smart meters? And that, of course, drags us into a whole briar patch of assumptions.</p>
<p>There are some solid numbers we can point to. First, and most obviously, the cost - of all things related to meter reads and changes - drops dramatically with a smart meter. You want to get a read because you're moving in or out? That drops from $15 to zero. You've been disconnected and want to be reconnected? Price drops from $150 (hey, disconnection/reconnection is <em>two</em> site visits) to $40. You've paid your overdue bill and want to be reconnected immediately? The average time to accomplish that task drops from 2-3 hours to about 15 minutes. All of these are real, tangible gains for the customer.</p>
<p>Then there's timeliness and accuracy of billing. You may not think it's a great benefit to have an accurate bill. But when your immersion heater is playing up, or your kid has taken to leaving the heater on all night, or someone has switched your spa pool on and left it - often the first you'll know about it is when you see your power bill. If some of your bills are estimated, you may not know anything about it until two, three months after the problem has started, at which point you're already several hundred bucks out of pocket. With a smart meter, you'll at least get a <em>chance</em> to notice it much sooner (because every bill is based on a real read). If you ask your retailer for more data (as is your right), then you can even figure out exactly when it started, and hence who's likely to blame.</p>
<p>And finally, there's the competitive effect. I don't know the UK industry in much detail; but here in New Zealand, I know of at least three retailers (out of a total of about 18) who would never even have entered the market, if they hadn't seen Opportunities in the data afforded by smart meters. (One company makes a big advertising feature of "an hour of free power" every day. Can't do that without a smart meter.) So without them, there'd be at least that much less competition.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>It's not hard to come up with superficially plausible objections to any new technology. And we live in an age when tens of thousands of wannabe activists are just itching to find a cause, preferably a conspiracy, to latch onto and tear down, to make their names and claim their place in celebrity culture. We reward people in our society for being loud, rather than coherent. Heck, look at Donald Trump.</p>
<p>But we shouldn't judge arguments on the shrillness of their proponents. An awful lot of what gets argued, online, is just plain bollocks, no matter how fervently the true believers cling to it. And the whole "smart meter conspiracy" story is firmly in that category.
<p>Next instalment: the dodginess of the meters themselves. How bad are they, really? (Spoiler: far from perfect, but not nearly as bad as the press would have you believe.)</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-50168591072480209562016-12-15T22:38:00.000+13:002016-12-15T22:43:38.106+13:00It's beginning to look a lot like Fascism...<p>What do you call it when your political opponents are <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/15/megyn-kelly-memoir-donald-trump-roger-ailes-president-fox-news/93813154/">repeatedly</a>
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/10/22/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-gettysburg-speech-closing-arguments/92579858/">threatened</a>,
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/07/donald-trump-retaliated-against-a-union-leader-on-twitter-then-his-phone-started-to-ring/?utm_term=.e5e61961e923">harrassed</a>,
<a href= "http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-energy-department-balks-at-trump-request-for-names-on-climate-change-2016-12?IR=T">persecuted</a>,
<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/220451e2-c020-11e6-81c2-f57d90f6741a">marginalised</a> and
<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-twitter-emoji-crooked-hillary-232647">smeared</a>?</p>
<p>Don't misunderstand me: I know the Democrats are far from guiltless, they've done similar things themselves. But never, so far as I know, so blatantly, so <em>proudly</em>. It's like Bush and torture: Trump is, to use the buzzword <em>du jour</em>, "normalising" these things.</p>
<p>It's still possible for Trump to prove me wrong. He could stand up to Putin, he could divest his businesses (or at least put them in a blind trust, like Bush and every other millionaire president before him), he could announce his conversion on climate change... The man is so inconsistent that all of this is possible. But the signs are not there.</p>
<p>In other news, I got an email from Yahoo! telling me that my account had been compromised and I should be sure to update my login details.</p>
<p>But: I'm pretty sure I've never had a Yahoo! account. I can't think of any reason why I would create one. I searched through my email history for evidence of having done so, and came up blank.</p>
<p>If I were of a paranoid disposition, I'd think someone was trying to trick me into typing my passwords into a system that they've owned.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-4012686755969508972016-11-17T18:16:00.002+13:002016-11-17T18:16:21.002+13:00Not a good year<p>So, for the second time this year I sat glued to my computer, watching with growing incredulity as a country I thought I knew placed its vote for "democracy is too hard".</p>
<p>Because what else can you call it, when the demagogue who pretends everything is simple trounces the professional politician who's spent her life learning how the system really works? Rejecting her, in great part, <i>because</i> she's had the temerity to learn these things.</p>
<p>So long, democracy. It was a noble experiment.</p>
<p>If you should find yourself a little way north of Los Angeles, take a moment to stand and listen. That rhythmic rumbling you hear is Ronald Reagan spinning in his grave, as his party - the Republican party - hands control of the Whitehouse to a Russian stooge.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-30255591580298508192016-10-31T16:17:00.001+13:002016-10-31T16:17:07.036+13:00The American nightmare<p>Dear USA,</p>
<p>Snap out of it.</p>
<p>Putting up Donald Trump as a primary candidate was funny. I must admit, I thought he'd burn out long ago. In particular, I couldn't see how the religious wing of the GOP could ever support such a transparently debauched man, one who - unlike, say, George W Bush before him - does not even pay lip service to repentance and redemption, his own or anyone else's. (Note, I'm not accusing GWB of lip service - I think he was quite sincere, for whatever that's worth. But Trump doesn't even <i>pretend</i> to be anything but a satyr.)</p>
<p>But that joke stopped being funny roundabout the time of the Republican convention.</p>
<p>This man has vowed to repeal the 16th amendment, to turn the US army into a mercenary corps, to sharply raise the national debt (including, he makes no attempt to conceal, taking as much money as he can stuff into his pockets for himself), to start a trade war that looks set to make people nostalgic for the Great Depression, to introduce a religious test for would-be immigrants (and even tourists, for that matter), and to look the other way while Russia rebuilds the Soviet empire - thus, incidentally, throwing away Ronald Reagan's greatest achievement.</p>
<p>People make excuses for all this. They say things like "the media is out to get him" - ignoring the fact that <i>everything they know about Trump</i> comes from "media", the only choice being between "media controlled more or less directly by Trump" (which says nice things about him), and "media that isn't" (which, for the most part, doesn't) - yet a large number of Americans have somehow persuaded themselves that the former are <i>more trustworthy</i> than the latter. Or they say "he always takes an extreme position to open negotiations, so he can make concessions" - which, apart from sounding like something that could have been said of Hitler, also implies that you <i>know</i> the man's lying but you give him a pass, because of course what he <i>really</i> means is whatever you happen to want him to mean. He's projected himself as, effectively, a blank canvas onto which people paint their own ideas, and delude themselves that he shares them.</p>
<p>I'm sorry the Democrats couldn't find anyone better than Hillary to run against Trump. Yes, she's uninspiring. Unlike her husband, she's never been a good orator. She's too old, too unprincipled, and has too many skeletons in her closet. Yet on all three counts, she's still somewhere between "much" and "infinitely" better than Trump.</p>
<p>But if you want to know <i>why</i> the Democrats couldn't find anyone better, look in a mirror. Hillary's route to power, unlike Donald's, has been one that's open to any middle-class American. If you want to make that kind of change, 30 years down the line - start now.</p>
<p>I know there's a popular idea that the country is run by and for powerful, corrupt elites. But that's bullshit. It's very popular bullshit, because it gives everyone in America an alibi for <i>why</i> their life hasn't worked out the way they wanted - but still purest, weapons-grade bullshit, peddled by people like Trump and his friend Mr Putin, because both of them have put a lot of effort into disempowering ordinary, middle-class Americans.</p>
<p>And if you were even thinking of voting for Trump, be ashamed. The man is the opposite of everything that made America worthwhile:</p>
<blockquote>that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement [...] [A] dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.</blockquote>
<p>If Trump has his way, then "the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" will become the <i>only</i> thing that matters.</p>
<p>What's horrifying to me is that it looks like almost 50% of the country - including, if the polls are to be believed, a clear majority of the men - are in favour of this programme.</p>
<p>I don't know if America can ever recover from this fiasco. If Hillary could (contrary to the polls) score a landslide victory on the scale of Reagan in 1980, that would go a long way to repairing the damage. But if the election is close, or if (God forbid) Trump wins - that will mark a step in US decline comparable to the reign of the Emperor Commodus.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-35751999073626097262016-08-30T11:58:00.000+12:002016-08-30T11:58:22.966+12:00In his own words?<p>I'm curious about this "Corbyn" phenomenon.</p>
<p>As an outsider to Britain now, I'm exposed to even-more-than-usually selective news about what goes on there. I know I have an impression of Jeremy Corbyn. But it's quite different from my wife's impression. How can I get some real information?</p>
<p>Let's start from the premise that all the press is biased. The Grauniad is mostly pro-Corbyn, the other broadsheets are virulently anti-him; wherever I see any discussion about him, it's couched directly in these adversarial terms, which makes it impossible for me to form any opinion of my own. That's - pretty worrying in itself, actually. A personality that provokes such strong reactions will find it hard to foster helpful and constructive debate. Corbyn will have to bend over backward to encourage free expression and exchange of ideas to compensate.</p>
<p>But I want to base my assessment on the man himself, not his supporters or detractors. What face does he choose to present to the world?</p>
<p>That's - actually, quite hard to find. His record at <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/people/detail/jeremy-corbyn">labour.org.uk</a> was last updated in September 2015. Googling his name turns up '<a href="http://www.jeremycorbyn.org.uk/">jeremycorbyn.org.uk</a>' - apparently all politicians nowadays have their own vanity domains - but he seems to have got bored with that back in April, it hasn't been updated since then. Besides, most of the material there is just transcribed from Hansard, which is pretty dumb because if I wanted to read Hansard I could <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/search?searchTerm=corbyn">read Hansard</a>. (Actually that might not be the worst idea, and I may yet try it. But let's hold it in reserve for now, because it'd take a long time to piece together a position on a given topic from that record.)</p>
<p>One of the nice things about Mr Corbyn is that his name is distinctive - it turns up very few false positive search results. And so it's with some irritation that I discover his most current campaign has dropped it, and is just running as "<a href="http://www.jeremyforlabour.com">Jeremy for Labour</a>". (At a ".com" address, no less - none of your parochial ".uk" for the Jez.) This site <em>appears</em> to be up to date, but it's hard to tell because its own updates <em>are undated</em>.</p>
<p>(Contrast with Theresa May. Say what you like about her, at least <a href="http://www.tmay.co.uk/">her website</a> is visibly maintained.)</p>
<p>Not impressed with Mr Corbyn's ephemeral online presence. It seems to me that "repeatedly switching between platforms" is pretty suspect behaviour in a party leader. If there is no continuity of platform, what does that tell us about the policies? Only that someone is, either intentionally or naïvely, making it gratuitously hard to check for continuity there.</p>
<p>Putting that aside, let's look at his current incarnation. Under '<a href="http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/respect_unity">Respect & Unity</a>':</p>
<blockquote style="font-style:italic"><p>There should be no personal hostility and nobody should feel intimidated at any time. So no foul or abusive language will be tolerated and all candidates should be listened to with courtesy and respect at hustings, meetings and events.</p>
<p>In particular, there should be no demonstrations or protests targeting any individual candidate or outside any MP's office or surgery - and no personal heckling of any candidate at any hustings, meeting or event. [...]</p>
<p>There will be no tolerance of abuse on social media. All candidates should ensure that anyone who acts in an abusive way on social media is referred to the Party for investigation.</p></blockquote>
<p>No heckling at hustings? What the heck is a hustings <i>for</i>, if not to heckle? No demonstrations or protests outside any office or surgery? "No tolerance of abuse" - without any definition of either "tolerance" or "abuse", this is basically a blank cheque for censorship. This is the very opposite of "encouraging free exchange of ideas". Indeed, it probably goes a long way to <em>explaining</em> some of the very strong adverse reactions.</p>
<p>But let's be generous, let's concede that the rules have changed and the idea of candidates being required to stand up for themselves and face down their enemies is... Well, actually on second thoughts let's not. Isn't that a pretty reasonable requirement for a politician ("someone who chooses to take a public part in the political process")? After all, if you can't stand up to hecklers within your own party, what chance are you going to have against a Putin or a Trump?</p>
<p>Enough of "respect". Let's move on to actual "pledges".</p>
<blockquote style="font-style:italic"><p>We will [...] guarantee a decent job for all</p></blockquote>
<p>It doesn't say exactly how "we" will do this. There's the usual guff about investment and innovation and "new industries", but it seems to me that the only way to <em>"guarantee"</em> jobs for all is for the state to employ them directly. Jeremy: whether that's what you mean or not, please say so, so that we can talk about the idea on its merits.</p>
<blockquote style="font-style:italic">We will end insecurity for private renters by introducing rent controls, secure tenancies</blockquote>
<p>Oh gosh, where to start... This may be the only housing policy that's actually <i>worse</i> than the current "rent subsidies". One of the very, very few things on which <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-affair.html">Paul Krugman</a> and <a href="https://iea.org.uk/publications/research/verdict-on-rent-control">Milton Friedman</a> unequivocally agree is, <em>rent controls are a bad idea</em>.</p>
<blockquote style="font-style:italic">We will give people stronger employment rights from day one in a job</blockquote>
<p>I've seen this one from both sides, as an applicant and managing my employer's recruitment process. And I'm here to tell you, a probationary period makes the whole thing <i>much</i> easier. Do away with it, and employers will work around the law by giving people short-term contracts before offering them a real job. That's the same end result, but with more paperwork and less employee benefits. Don't do it.</p>
<p>NHS, education - I don't feel qualified to comment on those. Environment, though - this is my language:</p>
<blockquote style="font-style:italic">We will deliver clean energy and curb energy bill rises for households - energy for the 60 million, not the big 6 energy companies.</blockquote>
<p>Look, this isn't hard. The cleanest energy of all is what's <em>never used</em>. Give people heat pumps, low-energy lightbulbs and insulation, encourage them to trade in their old fridges and TVs and washing machines, and you'll do more to cut their power bills <em>and</em> improve their living conditions <em>and</em> cut their carbon footprint than any plausible amount of changing the mix of generation. But whatever you do, <em>you'll need the energy companies' help to do it</em>. Start off by casting them as The Enemy, and you're screwed before you begin.</p>
<p>I could go on, but it's as disheartening to do as it is, probably, tedious to read. I can see three possibilities, none of them good.</p>
<p>One, and I think this is probably the correct answer, is that he is so - <em>disassociated</em> from reality, from his own memories and life experience, and from the advice of anyone who's not a card-carrying, certified-ideologically-pure Old Labour apparatchik, that he really believes all of this is a good idea. No word of dissent is ever allowed to reach his ears, and his own memories have been effectively scrubbed by decades of brainwashing.</p>
<p>Two is that Corbyn is self-consciously (and clumsily) trying to drag the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window">Overton window</a> to the left. I could sympathise with that as an aim, but not with his way of doing it - which, instead of progressive socialist policies, self-consciously harks back to an imagined "golden age" of pre-Thatcherite Britain. Worst of all, if that <em>is</em> his aim, it comes at the cost of reducing the British Labour party to irrelevancy. That's bad for - well, everyone. I remember Neil Kinnock's battles with Militant in the mid-80s; at this rate, after Corbyn, the next sane leader - if one ever emerges - will have all that to do again.</p>
<p>Or three, that he's another Donald Trump: an incredibly vain man, who doesn't much mind <em>what</em> people say, just so long as they're talking about him.</p>
<p>A tool, a fool or a troll. I'm not sure which is worst.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-62097255982398381952016-06-30T11:16:00.000+12:002016-06-30T16:00:22.289+12:00Don't let a good disaster go to waste<p><em>(Edit: <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/brexit-the-morning-after/?module=BlogPost-ReadMore&version=Blog%20Main&action=Click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body#more-39816">This</a> is easily the most thoughtful analysis I've seen of Brexit. Summary: yes it's bad, but not nearly as bad as it's made out.)</em></p>
<p>Last week, as you may have heard, my country got voted out from under me. ("My country" in this context being, of course, Europe.) I wonder if this is how the Serbs felt, all those years ago.</p>
<p>I wasn't present to witness the campaign on either side, but nothing I have seen of it leads me to believe that any sort of rational thought went into that vote - on either side. Neither Leavers nor Remainers made the slightest attempt to explain the issues soberly, they both went straight for the id. It was pure - instinct. The instinct of people who have spent their whole lives being protected from their own instincts, because that's what modern civilisation does.</p>
<p>But second-guessing the result is a mug's game. Lots of things could have been changed. If the Greeks had been forced out of the euro, if the French had been a bit more competent at policing (and protecting) their own immigrants, if the Germans had been just a little less high-handed in their treatment of everyone else in the HRE - sorry, I mean EU - if the Irish had managed their own banks better, if the Labour Party hadn't adopted its insane "democratic" leadership election process, if Nick Clegg hadn't made that stupid pledge about tuition fees in the first place...</p>
<p>But they did. And there's no point guessing what might be going on in a thousand parallel universes where history was a little different, because there's only one that we get to live in. There was a vote, and it went the way it did. Everything else is so much applesauce.</p>
<p>So let's at least try to be constructive. What <em>should</em> happen now?</p>
<p>Well, first of all, there's the position of the 3 million-odd non-UK EU nationals currently living in the UK. They should be guaranteed a place for life. Every single one of them, without exceptions, right up to and including the mass murderers among them, should be allowed to remain in the UK just as long as they want to, and to come and go as they please, forever. Anything else would be so unjust, it would bring lasting shame and well-deserved vitriol on the whole country.</p>
<p>Then there's the however-many <em>non</em>-EU immigrants. It would be odd if, having just voted out of the EU, the country's first independent act was to discriminate in favour of EU citizens at the expense of other potential partners and allies. So they'll be staying, too.</p>
<p>There's all the EU red tape about consumer products. This is, of course, already built into UK law, and I heartily recommend that the UK adopts the same policy as New Zealand does toward Australia - viz, if something meets Australian product standards, it can also be sold in NZ with no further paperwork required. (The Australians, in turn, also accept EU or US certification and testing.) However, this doesn't have to be reciprocal. That would mean you could sell things in the UK that would not be legal in the EU.</p>
<p>This could, of course, be a very bad thing. But it's just as likely to be beneficial. A lot depends on the next government's attitude to consumer protection.</p>
<p>Manufacturing that's required to be inside the EU will move. Let's make no bones about it - that will be a disaster for many areas, e.g. Sunderland, whose early declaration was so foreboding on the night. There will be a huge temptation for the next government to move heaven and earth (i.e. pay out ungodly sums of money) to prevent this, but it would be a catastrophic mistake to give in to that pressure. Instead, they should pay out some of that money to people who are willing to set up new enterprises to employ people <em>outside</em> the EU. (And not just "manufacturing", either. Don't be dogmatic about what sort of industry it should be. A job is a job.)</p>
<p>Presumably, EU R&D programmes will no longer be portioned out to the UK. I'm pretty sure most UK researchers will see this as an unmitigated disaster. It's natural to see "disaster" when the assumptions that you've based your career on are changed. Natural - but not rational. In those areas where British researchers and departments are among the best, the Europeans would be fools to exclude them. Where they're not, they're fools now to <em>include</em> them, and I think that might go some way to explain the glacial pace of EU R&D over the past 40 years. Academically and intellectually, I think Britain could be better off out than in - <em>IF</em>, and it's a honking big <strong><em>"IF"</em></strong>, the best minds don't get swept away in the current tide of anti-intellectualism and ideological hysteria.</p>
<p>And the City of London will lose much of its current business. Again, what can't be cured must be endured. Worst case, this might result in a massive recession in the British banking sector. Or to look at it another way - the beginning of the much-longed-for redistribution of wealth away from the top 0.1%, and the long overdue decline of house prices in southeast England.</p>
<p>So cheer up, Remainers. Whatever you did to win the vote it wasn't enough, so now you've got a lot more work to do in the aftermath. One thing I'm sure of - that if you spend your energy now on denial, recriminations and fantasies of fleeing the country, the UK is screwed. Because those same people who voted it out will be running it.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-36658949917538549982016-06-27T16:27:00.002+12:002016-06-27T16:28:31.302+12:00Shock and ow<p>Exchange of texts between me and my sister-in-law, on Friday:</p>
<p><strong>Sarah:</strong> What's your thoughts on England leaving EU? And do you think the other countries will allow it? (hope you're not impacted by the currency fall)</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> I am quite a lot affected by the currency fall, but that's life. It's a scary thing, leaving the EU. The bright side is that the shock might just possibly be enough to inspire the EU to reform itself a little. The downside is World War 3. Some of the Brexit leaders have been saying some very stupid things about doing deals with Russia, and if anything could provoke a full-scale European war, that's it. It worked a treat the last time we tried it.</p>
<p><strong>Sarah:</strong> Do you think England will become stronger for exiting?</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Hell no. Well, not economically or politically. Maybe culturally, because chaos is always creative.</p>
<p><strong>Sarah:</strong> Strange turn of events then. Why do they want to leave?</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Because - apparently - there's only so long you can go on treating people as idiots. Even if they clearly *are* idiots. Even idiots have their pride.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-54637926736519187752016-06-21T09:12:00.002+12:002016-06-21T09:12:54.315+12:00Shake it all about<p>At one point last week, my <a href="https://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/betting/politics/british/eu-referendum/uk-european-referendum/220800266/">favourite referendum pollster</a> was projecting a 48.5% Leave vote. That is, as the Duke of Wellington might have put it, a damned nice thing.</p>
<p>Today the odds have slipped back to 46.5%. Which is still closer than it was last month.</p>
<p>Now, we know there is tendency for polling margins to narrow, as major votes approach. I don't know how well studied or documented this is, but I'm reasonably sure it always happens. Landslides are no fun, and more importantly, they don't make for good copy. As a vote approaches, journalists will do whatever is necessary - including commissioning as many spurious polls as necessary - to make both sides believe the margin is much closer than it is. (Which is why both of Obama's elections were billed in advance as "too close to call", even though, by electoral college rules, they were never in much doubt.)</p>
<p>Even politically, it makes sense. A side that thinks it's losing will keep changing its strategy, finding new avenues, until it finds something that improves its standing. Whereas the top dogs will just keep doing what they "know" works - until they feel threatened, at which point they'll get a bit bolder, and the gap will likely widen again slightly.</p>
<p>(There must be some way to make a profit from this rule. If only Ladbrokes had a mechanism for placing a bet, then 'trading it in' later when the odds change - but I doubt if they do, because it'd be too open to abuse and corruption. You need to be a banker to get away with that sort of thing, bookies are too closely watched. But if anyone knows a practicable way to do it, please do tell.)</p>
<p>I must confess - if I had a vote at all, I'd be increasingly tempted to vote 'leave'.</p>
<p>Not because I think the UK or its people would be "better off", for any material definition of "better". Anyone who thinks the UK would be richer, or freer, or better run outside the EU is someone who simply hasn't been paying attention, this past quarter-century. No, the only sane and rational reason to vote "leave" is if you believe it would lead to the breakup of the European Union itself.</p>
<p>Why would you want that?</p>
<p>Much as <a href="https://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/carry-on-up-the-union/">Niq argued</a> about Scotland leaving the UK - the EU is broken. The UK actually does pretty well out of it - those really suffering are the Mediterranean countries. The Greeks, Italians, Spanish and Cypriots are looking at youth unemployment rates well over 30%, and the Germans have made it very clear that they're not taking any nonsense about "democracy" from those countries - they are governed by bankers, until such time as <em>German</em> voters decide to let them go.</p>
<p>And they've made it just as clear to Britain - that even without the financial stranglehold they have over the Med, they won't put up with any wandering from their prescribed policy. "Stay in the EU", their message has been, "and you will play by our rules. Leave, and we will do everything in our power to punish you. Moreover, we regard your 'democratic process' as a pistol to our head, and we will not negotiate under such terms." (Working out the terms under which they <em>would</em> be willing to negotiate is an exercise for - who, exactly?)</p>
<p>This cavalier attitude to democracy is bad enough within Europe, but outside its borders it becomes positively dangerous. We've all seen the disastrous consequences of EU meddling in Ukraine and Georgia; and if the Baltic States survive, it will be thanks to a sterner stance by NATO, nothing to do with the EU. (In fact, here's a prediction: if Trump wins the US presidency, at least one of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania will be overrun by the Russians within four years.)</p>
<p>Game theory teaches us that "playing nice" is a good strategy, only as long as the other players hold to it too. If you carry on being nice when they play dirty, you get screwed. Of course there is a price to be paid for breaking the tacit agreement, even if the other side has already broken it first; but if you show you're not willing to pay that price, you can expect to go on being screwed until you are. I have <a href="http://itreallyisupsidedown.blogspot.com/2011/08/mugged.html">personal</a> <a href="http://itreallyisupsidedown.blogspot.com/2011/07/financial-analysis.html">experience</a> of this dilemma. I voted "out" then.</p>
<p>If you're in Britain this week: voting "out" will certainly cost you. Probably, a lot. (There will be people who will come out of it better off - but believe me, those are people who've laid their plans and invested their money and made their friends accordingly. In short, they're Not You.) But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the wrong thing to do.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-51753569646098191712016-05-26T16:34:00.000+12:002016-05-26T16:34:00.825+12:00Shoot the Moon<p>I see Ladbrokes is projecting the UK to remain in the EU by a very similar margin to the Scots' vote to remain in the UK. Currently, they're offering evens on the 'Leave' vote being over 44.5%. Which sounds about right to me, but of course there's still a month to go.</p>
<p>One marked difference between the Scotland/UK and UK/EU votes, though, is the attitude of the larger partner. The UK pathetically begged the Scots to stay with them; but the EU is, notably, doing no such thing to the UK. Cameron has been begging for concessions, and the EU has, apparently, been laughing at him, which goes to show they're not as silly as the Leave campaign would have you believe. Compare and contrast how Salmond treated the English during his campaign.</p>
<p>Which goes to show, I guess, how useless a negotiator Cameron really is. Both times, he's given ground like snow in springtime, and his opponents haven't budged.</p>
<p>He should take tips from Donald Trump. Ask for the Moon. I mean, literally - Britain's demand should be "we leave, and we take the Moon with us. We're going to build a giant space shield over Europe that will stop it from seeing the Moon. (Except Ireland, of course, because that would be impractical.)"</p>
<p>Because every news outlet in the EU would run that story. EU politicians would queue up to explain why the idea was impractical, impossible, illegal and immoral. Engineers would explain how it might be done, what it would cost, and what the impact would be. Everyone in Europe would be talking about it for weeks, even though every single person concerned knows that it's total bullshit.</p>
<p>And that, as Donald Trump knows, is the way to get concessions.</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628231292297278599.post-82858179847216932982015-07-02T17:09:00.001+12:002015-07-02T17:10:09.836+12:00An open letter to Angela Merkel<p>I know you're probably fed up with Alexis Tsipras. You know, that irritating Greek demagogue who can't afford a tie? I can quite see why you want rid of him.</p>
<p>But I urge you - I beg you - please stop pandering to your own voters. Yes, I know you have to bring them along too. I know you can't keep giving their money to the Greeks. That's not what I'm asking for.</p>
<p>First, let's consider Mr Tsipras's position. As you know, the job of a head of government isn't easy at the best of times, and Mr Tsipras was catapulted from relative obscurity into his current role at a moment when the difficulty slider was already pegged at '11'. He has no friends, no substantive supporters, and no resources.</p>
<p>Yes, it was dishonest of him to call his referendum when he did, instead of a week earlier, before the IMF default. And it is obviously dishonest of him to offer concessions at precisely the moment when he knows you (and your friends at the ECB) can't accept them. But - setting that aside for a moment, because it's no more than you'd expect from a politician of his questionable training - would you not agree with me that the referendum itself is not only the right thing to do, but the <em>only</em> thing he can do?</p>
<p>His voters hate austerity. That's his party's entire <em>raison d'etre</em>; for him to cave on that would be political suicide. And yet his voters love the euro. For a long time now, it's been obvious that Greece can't preserve the euro without sharp austerity; but for almost as long, it's been equally obvious that austerity is not, contrary to what certain technocrats on your own side would argue, "expansionary". Quite the reverse. If it were, Greece would be doing fine by now.</p>
<p>Calling a referendum was the only way to square that circle. This is a decision that absolutely should be made by Greek voters - not by their government, or by the ECB or the IMF, or even by you. The European Union is supposed to be fiscally sound, honest and transparent, but above all it's supposed to be <em>democratic</em>. That means, nobody is fitter than the Greek people to make a decision about their future. And that is why the rhetoric of some Eurocrats who have described the proceeding as "irresponsible" or "in bad faith" is both unfair and unhelpful.</p>
<p>Making Mr Tsipras an offer he couldn't accept - accept precisely the same terms that he'd just won an election on the basis of rejecting - was also cackhanded. If you want to finish him off - and as I said up front, I completely understand that impulse - you need to be a lot more subtle about it. It's not your job to pressure him - leave that to his own voters.</p>
<p>The jackbooted approach you're currently pursuing is profoundly damaging not just to the euro, but to the EU itself. If the EU <em>isn't</em> democratic - to the very core of its being, overruling <em>every other</em> consideration - then it's basically just a rebranding of the Holy Roman Empire. And it will die the same way, with blood and iron.</p>
<p>And that death may come quickly. Britain's referendum is only two years away. Press the Greeks too hard, and the British will take notice. The euro can, probably, survive Grexit; but can the EU survive Brexit?</p>
<p>If it comes down to a choice between saving the euro and saving the EU itself, which would you pick?</p>vethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13376500106064052491noreply@blogger.com0