Month: January 2005

Tsunami appeal afterthoughts

John Quiggin5 Comments

Once again, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the tsunami appeal, especially cosponsors. Most of the pledges have already been redeemed, and the remainder are flowing in as people get some free time (I got notification of one more just as I was typing these words). In this post, I want to answer a few questions that were raised in the course of the appeal. In fact, part of the idea was to get people thinking about such questions.
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Autonomy (crossposted at CT)

John Quiggin17 Comments

Following a lead from Bill Gardner I’ve been reading >The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects our Health and Longeivityby Michael Marmot[1]. The core of Marmot’s book, which is fascinating in itself is his empirical work showing that, as you move up any kind of hierarchy (Marmot looked at British civil servants) your health status improves. I’ve done a little bit of work myself relating to the links between health, education and life expectancy at the national level, and Marmot’s micro findings fit very neatly with mine.

What’s even more interesting though (to me and to Bill, I think) is the general idea of autonomy as a source of good health[2]. He debunks, for example, the long-discredited, but still widely-believed notion of executive stress and shows that the more control you have over your work environment and your life in general, the less likely you are to suffer the classic stress-related illnesses, such as heart disease.

It seems to me that autonomy, or something like it, is at the root of many of the concerns commonly seen as part of notions like freedom, security and democratic participation. I’m still struggling with this, but reading Marmot has crystallised some thoughts I’ve had for a long time. I’ve put some thoughts over the page – comments appreciated.
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Good things about John Howard, part 1

John Quiggin

As part of the fundraising appeal for the tsunami, I offered to write sincere praise for John Howard, at a rate of 100 words for each $50 pledge. The offer was taken up by commenter 2dogs, who generously gave $50. As I plan to try this shameless stunt again, I’m going to do the easiest 100 words first, focusing on the last few weeks. If you want to see praise for Howard on some other topics, wait for the next fundraiser when the offer will be reopened (or until he does something I regard as praiseworthy enough for a post). In the non-adversarial spirit of the exercise, I’ve closed this post to comments, but if you have something to say on the topic, you can comment here. With those preliminaries out of the way, here’s my 100 words.

Howard’s response to the tragic tsunami disaster has been virtually faultless. He was the first national leader to offer significant financial assistance and the size of the offer, coming from a small country like Australia, helped to shame bigger countries into offering more. The decision to focus our aid efforts on Indonesia was the right one, both in terms of need, and of our national interest. At times like this, we see John Howard at his best. His reactions to such disasters are pretty much those of the average Australian and, nine times out of ten, that’s a good thing.

Tsunami offer

John Quiggin1 Comment

I mentioned, but didn’t spell out, Nicholas Gruen’s tsunami offer, which you can access at Peach Home Loans

Welcome all from John Quiggin’s great blog! If you’ve made a comment on his blog, the tsunami victims have already got $1 from us – we’re matching John’s contributions dollar for dollar. Here’s our additional offer to you. If you have a loan of over $200,000 contact us, and if we can’t save you at least $10,000 in repayments over the life of your loan (assuming a 30 year term starting from now) we’ll pay $50 to you or to a tsunami charity at your choice. If you refinance through us, we’ll pay $2 to the tsunami charity for every $1 of rebate you forsake – up to a charity payment of $200.

I haven’t looked into the service Nicholas is offering, but he is a very able economist, reliable person and generally a good bloke, so I think it’s worth a look.

A quick report on the tsunami appeal

John Quiggin3 Comments

Thanks to everyone who helped the tsunami appeal by commenting, linking and especially by cosponsoring. I’ve sent my money off, and emailed all the donors to advise them how much they’ve promised. I’m really impressed at the way many of the regular commenters here, including some who are regular sparring partners, dug deep to help this appeal. Quite a few have given more than their already generous commitment Here’s my preliminary list[1] of donations.

Andrew Norton 47
anon 235
anon 70.5
Harry Clarke 94
Jack Strocchi and Claire Rodda 47
Mark Bahnisch 47
Nicholas Gruen 470
paul2 47
Peter Fuller 94
quiggin 500
rdb 500
saint 100
wbb 60
wmmbb 94

The total is over $2400, or more than twice what I originally anticipated giving. I plan to give my leftover $500 to another good cause, and I hope to run another appeal like this before too long. I’ll make a longer post about the whole event, and some of the issues raised, soon.

fn1. My administrative skills are not what they might be, so if I’ve omitted anyone, or made any other errors, please advise me.

fn2. In return for 100 words of praise for John Howard, which will be coming soon.

Creative giving part 3

John Quiggin470 Comments

Aus-Halfmoon-Wattle-2

I haven’t managed to come up with a creative new idea for helping the tsunami aid appeals, so I’m going to copy Michele Agnew. From now until midnight Sunday, I’ll give one $A to the Australian Red Cross tsunami appeal for each comment[1] I receive on this post, up to a maximum of 1000.

To add a tiny element of novelty, I’m inviting others to join the effort by sponsoring this offer at whatever rate they can afford. You can work out your maximum exposure from the limit, for example, if you offer 5 cents a comment, you’re promising to give up to $50.

If you’re interested, please send me an email at j dot quiggin at uq dot edu dot au. I’ll record it in the updates with your name, pseudonym or anonymously as you prefer. When the appeal is over, I’ll write and tell you how much you’ve promised. Feel free to nominate a charity of your choice.

Update The Eudora mail server is running hot, with the first contributor to join the effort already coming through:
“William Burroughs’ Baboon” says pls put me down for 10c per comment
Update 10:12 pm An anonymous regular reader offers 50 cents per comment, nominating World Vision
rdb offers 50 cents per comment
Nicholas Gruen offers to match me dollar for dollar, in return for an ad. Accepted!
That’s $4.10 $3.10 per comment! (sorry for late-night arithmetic errors)

Update 6am
An anonymous regular reader offers 15c per comment
“Saint Straightjacket” offers 20c per comment, up to $300

So we’re up to $3.45 per comment, and the total amount raised is nearly $500, with most of the day still left to come.

It’s particularly good to see lots of visitors from Tim Blair’s blog – a reminder that, whatever our disagreements, we can all work together at a time like this.

In the comments, Tim has offered $100 if I shave my beard off. That’s nowhere near enough, but I’m eager to secure Tim’s money for the cause so I’m making a counteroffer in the spirit of national unity and cash for comment. If Tim will give $100, I’ll write a 200 word post saying exclusively good things about John Howard. I’m willing to increase the amount proportionally for further pledges from Tim’s (or my) readers, until I run out of good things to say.

Update 10:30am We’re well over 200 comments now, and thanks to the generosity of cosponsors, within sight of the original target of $1000, with the capacity to raise a lot more

wmmbb has offered 20c a comment, up to a total of 500
Mark Bahnisch has offered 10c a comment

I’m really impressed by all of this. Quite a few cosponsors have offered more, in relation to their means, than my starting offer. This is one area where I’m unreservedly in favour of competition, and I’m already thinking about my next move.

I’d also like to thank everyone who’s linked to the post. In particular, I now have a full set of Tims, at least among the blogs I read regularly: Tim Blair, Tim Dunlop, Tim Lambert and Tim T have all sent visitors this way. For any other Tims or non-Tims who want to link, there’s still more than 12 hours to go.

Update 1:34pm
Crossing the ideological divide, Andrew Norton offers 10c a comment
Paul2 also offers 10c
wmmbb offers 10c more
Harry Clarke offers 20c up to 500 comments

That puts us over $4 a comment, and with well over 300 comments, we’ve easily passed the original goal of $1000. But there’s still plenty of money on the table, so keep the comments coming in.

I forgot to mention it when I put this post up, and I’m not going to worry too much about it today, but this is a PG blog, so no more coarse language, please. Double entendres and dirty jokes are fine, as long as they’re funny.

I’ve had the first taker on the Howard challenge. “2dogs” has sent in his $50 to the Red Cross, and emailed me the receipt, earning 100 words of sincere praise from me for John Howard, to be published as soon as I’ve tallied up the donations and tied myself to the keyboard. Come on Howard-lovers, and set me a real challenge. I could write that much defending Don Rumsfeld, and have done so. 1000 words in praise of Howard might give me some trouble.

And here’s the ad I promised Nicholas Gruen, who’s agreed to match my donations. If you click here you can see a further generous offer from him.

<img src="wordpress/wp-content/images/Peachanimatedgifbanner.gif" href="http://www.peachhomeloans.com.au/quiggin.htm&quot;

Update 6pm We’ve passed 400 comments and raised more than $1500. Looking at the current pace, there should be more than 500 comments by the time the appeal ends, but probably not many more than 600. A number of cosponsors have limited their contributions to an upper bound of 500 comments, thereby giving themselves a fair bit of certainty. Now I’m appealing for some risk-tolerant types to cosponsor the remaining comments, starting at number 501. Why don’t you put in, say, 50 cents a comment. There’s a small risk that you might be hit for $250, but in the absence of a last-minute surge, it’s more likely to be around $50.

Update 10:30pm

Jack Strocchi and Claire Rodda have promised 10c per comment up to 500

Down and Out in Sài Gòn has promised 50c for each comment over 500. At this stage, it looks as if he(?) will get off cheaply, so let’s have a flood of last-minute comments.

Final Midnight has come to Queensland, and we ended up with 470 comments. I’m off to bed now, but in the morning I’ll send my own contribution, rounded up to $500, and advise commenters how much they’ve promised to pay.

fn1. At my absolute discretion, I’ll delete bots, spammers, repetitive commenters etc. If you don’t trust me to act fairly in this respect, don’t participate.

Please, not Beazley

John Quiggin31 Comments

It’s back to another round of Labor leadership speculation, and, inevitably, the first name pulled out of the bag is that of Kim Beazley. I’ve made all the usual arguments against him too often to repeat them, but there’s a new one that I think is relevant.

On current indications (these could change of course, but they’re what we have to go on), Labor is unlikely to win in 2007, so a successful appointment as leader would need to serve two terms in Opposition before becoming PM. Presumably, the party would want at least the option of two full terms from their leader in these circumstances. So, we’re looking at electing someone who (if successful) might still be leading the party past 2015. Beazley is 56 now, and not, at least in my perception, a young 56. Leaving aside the fact that (IIRC) Labor still has compulsory retirement at 65, can anyone see him as a credible leader for the next ten years and beyond?

Of course, that’s his whole attraction for quite a few of his backers. He’s a safe choice, meaning that he’s pretty much guaranteed to lose and go quietly after the next election, allowing a comfortable ride for [insert preferred name here].

It might be objected that John Howard was the same age when the Libs elected him leader, and that turned out well for them. But the electoral position was much more favorable and, after the demise of Hewson and the failure of the Downer-Costello dream team, there was no real alternative. In any case, Howard is, and always has been, a much more substantial figure than Beazley in all but the most literal of senses.

Labor isn’t short of options. I favored Rudd last time around, and I think he’s probably the right choice this time. But I’d also be happy with Gillard, and there are a string of reasonably able candidates who might turn out well, either in the long-term or to hold things together while the party recovers from the last election. Finally, although it’s looking unlikely that Latham can hang on, I don’t think he’s done a bad job in the circumstances, and if he does manage to recover in both health and political terms, I’d be glad of it.