Prog Gold

London’s killer app

January 31st, 2012, No Comments

In the comments at Blood & Treasure, Dsquared explains why banks threatening to leave London don’t have to be taken too seriously:

In actual fact, the thing that keeps everyone bolted down to the UK with little hope of escape, is that amazingly important national intangible asset called “the commercial common law of England & Wales”. [...]

Welfare “reform” kills

December 6th, 2011, 4 Comments

Just some of the people who committed suicide after their (disability) benefits were stopped:

Richard Sanderson, 44, an unemployed helicopter pilot of Southfields in London, who stabbed himself twice in the heart in May. He had been informed that his family faced a £30 a week cut in housing benefit and he feared this would leave [...]

Victory to the public sector workers

November 30th, 2011, No Comments

Today public sector workers in the UK are on strike. According to a BBC poll,
the majority of the British public supports them:

An opinion poll commissioned by BBC News suggests 61% of people believe public sector workers are justified in going on strike over pension changes.

[...]

Younger people, it also suggests, are considerably more supportive of the [...]

A nudge is as good as a wink to a poor man

November 22nd, 2011, No Comments

At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell makes fun of poorly thought out social psychology and in the process manages to crystalise for me what I find wrong with “nudging”:

Similarly, fans of “nudge” tend to complain that poor people make bad decisions about money, typically by prizing cash up front above everything. To put it [...]

Your Happening World (21)

November 18th, 2011, No Comments

The work experience programme set up by the ConDem government is a scam where large companies get free employees at the taxpayer’s expense it turns out, to the surprise of absolutely no-one. Meanwhile the people suckered into it get no experience, take the place of people who’d actually be paid to stack shelves and are [...]

Student labourers lured under false pretences? Just Hershey

August 18th, 2011, No Comments

So you’re a foreign student wanting to come to the United States through a summer visa programme, to both work and travel, get a bit of cultural exchange going? Sounds perfect doesn’t it, until you realise it means you spent your summer packing chocolates in boxes, for less money than it cost you to get [...]

Manchester not quite mad for it

August 12th, 2011, No Comments

Jamie on what urban regeneration really meant for Manchester:

That really changed with the IRA bomb in 1996, when it was decided to build a new Manchester within the shell of the old and populate it with new people: not necessarily non Mancunians, but ate any rate people reborn to fit in with a municipal vision [...]

Bankers steal, politicians cheat, the police is corrupt — why not loot?

August 9th, 2011, 2 Comments

Phil hits the nail on the head when looking for the reasons behind the London riots:

What people are saying (self included) is that politics doesn’t stop when crime starts. There are reasons why people steal and smash windows; more importantly, there are reasons why most people don’t steal and smash windows, most of the time. [...]

the Greek revolution will not be televised

June 17th, 2011, No Comments

Paul Mason is in Athens, doing some great reporting on the Greek crisis:

And I will repeat the point about hostility to the media: it’s not a problem for me and my colleagues to be hounded off demos as “representatives of big capital”, “Zionists”, “scum and police informers” etc. But to get this reaction from almost [...]

S&P overreaches itself

April 21st, 2011, No Comments

Over at Crooked Timber, Dsquared put up a post laughing at the pathetic attempt of S&P to grab some publicity by downgrading America’s credit rating. Deep down in the ensuing comment thread he explains again why this is such a dumb move:

It needs to be emphasised, by the way, that the USA credit rating is [...]