Club Troppo

Well it may not impress many of you, but I've just been heading North from London to Edinburgh and the train has wifi (though like most things in the UK it doesn't work very well). In any event, on line I found Ken Parish burning the midnight oil and have been gasbagging to hi...

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Earlier in the week, I raised the question of what might happen to Turnbulls argument if we did a counter-factual calculation - and in particular what might happen to debt levels over the next few years if the Government chose to do nothing (in response to the budget). Nigel R...

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New Page 1 I finally got around to seeing The Reader , and for once I'd read the book first (it helps that it's short). The film was well made. The acting was impressive, especially by young David Kross -- I was confirmed in my hypothesis that Kate Winslett deserved her Oscar...

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Costello went through all the documents relating to the summit, to see if there was anything at all on the global financial institutions. He said he looked hard and found nothing . He failed to look hard. This is my submission .

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Club 1: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka. Club 2: Bolivia, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, In...

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Here's a piece of blatant and unashamed recycling. I run a discussion board for my Intro to Public Law students where they're welcome to post and discuss news items with a public law angle. Over the weekend one of them posted a link to the current stoush between Defence Minist...

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"The hallmark of economics," writes Geoffrey Luck , "is not its ability to forecast the future but to explain things." So when economists or others offer advice about the future of the housing market, is it best to ignore them? In 1995 economists Steven Bourassa and Patric Hen...

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I've always thought that autism is the doozy of mental illnesses. Many others come in 'episodes', and disabilities don't get in the way of human bonding. But autism, being related precisely to human bonding, does. And parents of autistic children (so it seems to me) must despa...

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Andrew Norton has asked me to post a link to a survey he's running on the policy views of those willing to identify with political labels such as classical liberal, conservative, social democrat. Looks interesting.

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Brad Delong's (re)pos t provides a nice example of how capriciously the media create by analysing the 'spin' they keep telling us it's their job to cut through. In this no-man's land primeval biases can run wild. One such bias is that the right are 'sound', that it would be so...

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Here is a blog post devoted to what you Londonophiles have always wanted to do - share with Troppodillians your deep knowledge of London. Ill be in London from the 31st of March to the 2nd or 3rd of April and wondered if any Troppodillians can suggest a place to stay. Im tryin...

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The above is the title of an op-ed piece by Roger Cohen in today's New York Times . In it, he examines a bipartisan statement containing recommendations for settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It's been presented to President Obama and the signatories are not only well-k...

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I'm in Bejing at present - ironic when I read of the British Government's latest plans . The Government has announced plans to monitor people's communications on social-networking sites. The new proposals will see sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo compelled to retain in...

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A few weeks ago, Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article ("A Bank Bailout That Works") for The Nation . He was highly critical of the policy decisions taken to date by both administrations. Even though he didn't at the time have the details of Geithner's latest plan, its core princip...

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Regarding last night's Four Corners about Marcus Einfeld's disgrace , there are exactly two things to be said. The first is that it's a complete mystery why he approached the interview, made with Sarah Ferguson just before sentencing, in the way that he did. It would have been...

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Black to play L De Veauce vs Keene 6. ...? See game for solution. A seven move game. Not hard to see the answer, but kind of humorous nevertheless, especially given that this was a near grandmaster standard game.

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