Wednesday, 6th February 2008
4:44pm
Here's a perfect example of the mindset which has to be overcome if we are ever to have good schools, a first class health system and welfare which works:
Overseas aid charities have dismissed an academic's suggestion that donors should be able to bypass third sector groups and give money directly to the Department for International Development.
Meg Russell, a political researcher at UCL, made the suggestion in an article in Fabian Review, a left-wing think tank publication."I would rather trust DfID with my money," Russell wrote. "Because DfID doesn't operate in the same competitive environment, there is less danger of waste." Amazing. Competition equals waste. As opposed to the efficiency of monopoly bureaucratic provision.
(via Centre Right)
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4:17pm
There was one heartening aspect to Super Tuesday.
Ann Coulter vowed:
I will campaign against John McCain until Inauguration Day, which, God willing, will not be his.
Rush Limbaugh called McCain:
[Dishonest...insecure...resorting to the same kind of politics as Hillary Clinton.
This is how successful their efforts have been:
John McCain close to Republican nomination
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1:53pm
Oh dear. This looks fun, I thought: [W]hat’s your birth opera? Or, in other words, which opera (and cast, if applicable) was the Met performing on the day you were born? (You get this information, of course, from the Met Archives Database.)
I was hoping it would be Figaro, Don Giovanni, Rosenkavlier, Carmen or some Verdi. Something good, anyway.
It turns out to quite the most boring, overrated opera in the repertory (well, the second most boring, overrated opera - Pelleas is the run away winner of that accolade):
Metropolitan Opera House
December 18, 1964
LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN
Offenbach-Barbier/Carré
Hoffmann................Nicolai Gedda
Olympia.................Jeanette Scovotti
Giulietta...............Biserka Cvejic
Antonia.................Lucine Amara
Stella..................Sally Brayley
Lindorf.................William Dooley
Coppélius...............William Dooley
Dappertutto.............William Dooley
Dr. Miracle.............William Dooley
Nicklausse..............Janis Martin
Andrès..................Andrea Velis
Cochenille..............Andrea Velis
Pitichinaccio...........Andrea Velis
Frantz..................Andrea Velis
Luther..................Louis Sgarro
Nathanael...............Arthur Graham
Hermann.................Russell Christopher
Spalanzani..............Paul Franke
Schlemil................Clifford Harvuot
Crespel.................John Macurdy
Mother's Voice..........Gladys Kriese
Conductor...............Silvio Varviso
Production..............Cyril Ritchard
Designer................Rolf Gérard
Choreographer...........Cyril Ritchard [Debut]
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11:30am
Human Rights Watch's 2008 World Report has just been published. HRW is hardly a reliable source and has an agenda, but even if one takes their figures at face value, Brett at Harry's Place reaches some interesting conclusions based on their report:
According to the Human Rights Watch report:
Between January and October 2007, 245 Palestinians, about half of whom were not participating in hostilities, were killed by Israeli security forces.
Okay, so that's roughly 120 Palestinians caught in the crossfire, so-called "collateral damage" (that terrible concept) from air-strikes, or otherwise killed while not in active armed combat.
But in that same period, according to HRW: Palestinian armed groups, rival security forces, and powerful clans continue armed attacks on one another. At this writing, 318 Palestinians, including many civilians, had died in such fighting in 2007, most of them in Gaza. By far the worst round of fighting broke out in June 2007 and left 161 Palestinians dead, including 41 civilians.
In other words, as I pointed out, if you are a Palestinian not engaged in armed conflict with Israel but are fated to be a casualty of violent conflict, you are almost 3 times more likely to be killed by another Palestinian.
But, of course, everything is Israel's fault,
n'est-ce pas?
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9:07am
If you want to know why Karl Rove is so highly regarded as a strategist, watch this - his debut as a Fox News analyst. Rove explains the Republican battle, and adds real insight into Obama's votes.
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Tuesday, 5th February 2008
10:47am
The headline says it all.
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9:23am
Credit where it's due. Rowan Williams, who previously I had thought at best a waste of space and, sometimes, a lot worse in his attitiude towards Israel, has made a remarkably strong attack on antisemites and the elision of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Last week he delivered the Wiener Lecture in the House of Lords. The topic was blasphemy, but his focus was also on how societies should be judged by how they treat 'the other', and especially their Jews:
Yet again, we should remember some of the history of anti-Semitism. Some of the passionate polemic against Jewish people in the New Testament reflects a situation in which Christian groups were still small and vulnerable over against an entrenched religio-political establishment; but the language is repeated and intensified when the Church is no longer a minority and when Jews have become more vulnerable than ever.
It is part of the pathology of anti-Semitism (as of other irrational group prejudices) that it needs to work with a myth of an apparent minority which is in fact secretly powerful and omnipresent. It is the pattern we see in the workings of the Spanish Inquisition, searching everywhere for Jewish converts who might be backsliding; it is the myth of the Elders of Zion and comparable fantasies of plots for world domination; it is the indiscriminate attribution (not only by certain Muslims) of all the evils of the Western world to an indeterminate 'Zionism'.
A rhetoric shaped by particular circumstances has become so embedded that the actualities of power relations in the real world cannot touch it. There are many instances where the habit of imagining oneself in terms of victimhood has become so entrenched that even one’s own power, felt and exercised, does not alter the mythology.
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9:09am
It seems that the Don Giovanni plot was wrong, and Don Giovanni ends up settling down with Donna Anna after all. And they have a family,
I was at the ROH's Don Giovanni last year with the wonderful Erwin Schrott (who really looked the part, as you can see!) as the Don and Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna. The chemistry, we now know, was not just on stage.
UPDATE: Mrs P points out that the picture is not in fact of Anna Netrebko. Oops. Wrist duly slapped.
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Monday, 4th February 2008
1:40pm
You have to hand it to the BMA. They are, by quite a long way, the most effective trades union in the land. I've written about this before (here); as I put it then:[T]here is no interest group that comes close to the British Medical Association. When trade union officials speak, we know what they are up to. They are trying to increase their influence and power. And we judge the sense of what they say accordingly.
The BMA is, except in one crucial respect, no different. It is like any other trade union, with the same overriding motivation: to increase its influence and power. The crucial difference, however, is that when the prefix “Doctor” is attached to a name, we lose our critical faculties. We assume that anything emanating from the BMA is disinterested and motivated only by the desire to increase the sum of human good.
They're at it again, resisting the Health Secretary's request for GPs to open at times that might be convenient for their patients with spurious arguments about their dedication to the public good and claims (not backed by any evidence) that the average GP works non stop from 8.30 to 6.30.
GPs are the single most striking example of how not to run a public service.
They are - thanks to a clever piece of stitching up the government over the GPs' contract - over-paid and without any incentive to serve the very people who enable them to earn that money. Instead of being paid in response to the satisfaction of patient need, they are effectively handed over vast sums of taxpayers' money and then left free to offer what services they see fit to offer. Yes, most of them are technically independent contractors rather than NHS employees, but that has little bearing on how they operate.
It's one thing - and quite right - to blame the government for its inept handling of the contract negotiations. But that's dealing with the symptom of the problem, not its real cause. The only real
answer is to put the patient in control so that doctors have to respond to their clients, rather than their clients being at the mercy of doctors (which is, of course, the larger NHS problem writ small).
Charging patients for GP visits has long been bandied around, but mainly for the wrong reason. It's usually acdvocated to cut patient no-shows. But the real reason is to give the patient power.
I have a private GP. I pay £45 a visit. In return, he is available when I want him, and has to respond to my needs. If NHS patients paid their GP, they too would be in control and the GP would seek to attract that custom through, for example, opening at times which suit the patient rather than when the doctor fancies opening.
This could be done in two ways: either straighforwardly having a fee to visit the doctor (which might be means tested, so the poor would not actually have to hand over money); or preferably as part of a more general reconstruction of the NHS which would deal with the wider problem of patients being at the mercy of a giant government institution, and would give patients overall control of their budget, through some form of Medical Savings Account.
The one thing we shouldn't do is listen to the BMA's claims of over work and customer service. Any more than we should fall for any other union's claims that its members are outstanding servants of the public's good.
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11:11am
Somewhat ironically, given my post about Oliver Kamm's comments, it seems there has been a problem with comments here since the end of last week. I had assumed that none of you had left any, since none were being published, but it turns out that they are being accepted by the software but not appearing on the site.
It's being looked into, and hopefully all will be well imminently.
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