Month: June 2006

Derbyshire’s war

John Quiggin84 Comments

Quite a few people have commented in John Derbyshire’s apology for supporting the war in Iraq.

I haven’t seen anyone deny Derbyshire’s suggestion regarding his National Review colleagues who still publicly support the war that

If wired up to a polygraph and asked the question: “Supposing you could wind the movie back to early 2003, would you still attack Iraq?� any affirmative answers would have those old needles a-jumping and a-skipping all over the graph paper.

but then I haven’t looked hard. I’d be interested if anyone can point to any examples [1].

My main interest, like that of many others is in Derbyshire’s reason for recanting his support. While he wanted a war with Iraq, his idea was that the US should drop a lot of bombs, demonstrate that it’s a power to be feared and then leave, without wasting time on futile projects like nation-building. As lots of commenters have pointed out, Derbyshire’s position is worse, in moral terms, than that of most of those who continue to support the war.

It does however, raise some important issues that go to the heart of the debate between supporters and opponents of the Iraq war and the debate over war and peace in general.

In the leadup to the Iraq war, many different arguments were presented for and against going to war, and many different predictions were made about the likely consequences of war. People supported war for a range of reasons, some of which were logically inconsistent, and the same was true of people who opposed war. Many people made many predictions, many of which turned out to be wrong. However, there is a fundamental asymmetry here.
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Plinth for Plinth’s sake

John Quiggin3 Comments

When I was first told by my wife about this story, I expected it would turn out to be an Internet factoid, probably much-circulated, melding the old stories of paintings hung upside down, works painted by ducks and hailed as masterpieces and so on. But the Independent’s account gives chapter and verse. The Royal Academy, having received a sculpture by one David Hensel with the plinth packed separately, decided to reject the sculpture and exhibit the plinth.

Weekend reflections

John Quiggin24 Comments

Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.

Soccer or Football

John Quiggin73 Comments

Over at Crooked Timber, Kieran Healy raises the vexed question of “Soccer or Football”. I’m firmly in the camp of soccer, or, if you want to get prissy about it, “Association Football”. The various football codes are roughly contemporaneous, and the term football has always been used generically (also to refer to particular codes when there is no great danger of confusion).

If the argument is based on majority usage, the relevant majority for me is among English-speakers in some community of which I am a member. Whether I define this as narrowly as possible (say, people I personally speak to) or as broadly as possible (all English speakers in the world) I don’t get a majority of people using the term “football” to mean “soccer”. I think a claim of this kind is about as justifiable as if the martial arts renamed themselves as just plain “arts” and demanded that the term “art” be used consistently with this.

Quibbles about how much different codes use the feet don’t seem to me to valid, and in any case would not particularly privilege soccer (where the head and hands are used a lot), compared to say, Australian Rules. And the fact that people in non-English speaking countries mainly play soccer and therefore use terms meaning or sounding like football to refer to it cut no ice at all.

Golden Toilet Brush

John Quiggin35 Comments

The new IR laws take us back in many ways to the conditions of the 19th century. In some ways this is good for trade unions, since they need to campaign actively, rather than relying on industrial courts and awards. The LHMU which covers cleaners is taking the lead with its Clean Start: Fair Deal for Cleaners. Many employers have agreed with the broad principles of the campaign, described here. Others have not and the first Golden Toilet Brush has been awarded to property company Allco which has declined repeated invitations to meet cleaners’ representatives.

Queenslander!

John Quiggin20 Comments

Having grown up in AFL territory, I don’t follow rugby league really closely, but in Brisbane it’s impossible to avoid being caught up in the State of Origin which was, after all, essentially a Queensland creation.

I couldn’t really understand all the doom and gloom that followed the first-round loss. It was only one point after all, and if it had happened that Queensland scored the last minute field goal all the rhetoric would have gone the other way. Anyway, there won’t be anything like that after last night. NSW played pretty well, but only a consolation try in the final minutes saved them from what would have been the most crushing defeat in Origin history. A great game to watch, too, with lots of open play and daring moves.

Should be good for the wool Industry

John Quiggin6 Comments

Today’s Fin runs the headline “Investors bale as market mood darkens”.

I assumed this was a subeditor’s error, but a check around the internets suggests that “bale out” is common usage in British English, even though the only suggested etymology (from bailing out a boat) clearly requires “bail” (= bucket).

In other news, the Fin is cutting back its free online presence even further, replacing it with AFR Access, described as

a flexible investment research application that combines our news and analysis with a range of renowned information and data sources and adds rich tools and unprecedented search technology.

This is interesting, given that WSJ and (I think) FT seem, if anything, to be opening up a bit. It’s clear though, contrary to Guy Rundle’s suggestion a while back, that charging for content is going to remain a very minor part of the Internet economy.

Back to full employment?

John Quiggin125 Comments

I’ve been arguing for some time that the government should use the current period of strong demand to make a really strong push to reduce unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment. This piece in the Australian looks promising, though on reading closely it’s hard to see whether there is actually a serious commitment of funds and effort or just another rearrangement of the existing programs. If the government was willing to put the kind of money it’s repeatedly splashed around in tax cuts into a program aimed at driving the unemployment rate down to 2 or 3 per cent (by putting people into jobs, not by pushing them out of the labour force), they would win my support.