The Filter^

Rural Creative Destruction

I am currently at my parents home, and since they're both away I'm in charge of the dogs, Tommy (English) and Digger (Australian). I took them for a walk through Tiptoe - the New Forest village that I grew up in - so that I would return via a Post Office where I could buy a newspaper. The entire walk was planned so that I could arrive home for a late lunch with The Independent.
I haven't been into Tiptoe Post Office for ages, and I'd bought my after school sweets there for many years so I was looking forward to seeing how much it had "shrunk". Alas, it was closed for lunch.

When I read the uproar about village Post Offices being shut down I insitinctively sympathise with the villagers that need them. But if they can't be arsed to serve their customers on our terms, then no wonder they're losing money and should be closed.

On Bank Holiday Monday my Dad and I went into New Milton to buy some lunch, and were disappointed to see that the bakers and butchers were both closed. Instead we drove to Safeway, which was open. Ideally, I'd do all my shopping at local, family owned specialists. But if they're closed when I need them, then it's no wonder that the supermarkets are winning. It's tempting to use the experience to justify the emergence of supermarkets, but I have a slight niggle. Does anyone know if the local, small establishments are allowed to open on a Bank Holiday? I suspect that larger chains with access to more capital and legal representation are able to side step regulations that snare smaller businesses. In other words, I think that Safeway finds it easier/cheaper to open on a Bank Holiday than "Nick's Meats". If that is indeed so, those of you - like me - that prefer shopping in a local organic butchers rather than the meat section of a supermarket, should advocate a free and fair playing level of low regulations.

Unethical Wristbands

It appears that some of the silicone used to create the white “Make Poverty History” wristbands have been made (in their own words) unethically. (This Is London). I find the Church-led campaigns to end poverty as being wrong-headed and potentially counter productive, but I shall try to resist the temptation to smugly gloat.
Instead, I shall make a point that explains just why I’m not surprised by this revelation. This episode highlights the difficulty in a command and control system of economic allocation.
The officials at CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, etc will now travel out to the implicated factories and engage in a collaborative effort to raise the working conditions. Needless to say their attention to sorting out this issue will neglect potential problems that emerge elsewhere – you can’t control all aspects of a complex production process. If these charities are serious about changing working conditions, surely a far bigger incentive for Chinese factory managers is the threat of cancellation? Without having to step foot onto the factory floor, Oxfam can simply tear up their contract and find a new supplier – and that would have a far more powerful effect at ensuring “ethical standards” than simply a pat on the back and a “must try harder”.

It is important to note that a free market system does not hold a monopoly over sweatshop conditions. As this wristband case has demonstrated, they can arise even when their elimination is the central objective of the charity! Consequently the solution is not better monitoring, better management and more central control by the UK parties. Rather, a system that swiftly eliminates bad firms, and one that rewards good ones. Only then will the incentives of those pursuing prosperity, be aligned to those pursuing ethical fairness.

An alternative to managed trade is Free Trade – allowing the human rights of individuals to cross national borders. To support the more economically literate approach to development, buy an Orange wristband from the Orange Path Shop.

Back in my day...

Reading through the sunday papers confirms that Britain has become obsessed (perhaps crazily so) with the youth of today. So called "anti-social behaviour" is everywhere, and evidently "hoodies" are to blame. This NotW article shows how "mums are fighting back" - it's as if a new breed of delinquant anarchists are taking over the country. Are things really getting worse, or is it just media hype? I'm not sure, but there has always been concern that television and video games have corrupted the innocence of childhood. Over a BBQ last night my mother shared the following (I was about 4):

MUM: Anthony, we've got some very bad news. Last night your Great Grandmother died.
ANT: Who shot her?

The "Guardian"

Last weekend I was in Bath, and the whole family went out for a pub lunch. I forget the name of the establishment, but it looked exquisite: serene views, warm decor, inviting menu, etc..
I ordered the wild boar sausages and mash, but they were out. I then ordered the mackeral, but they'd run out of that. Finally, I settled on the sirloin steak. When it arrived 45 minutes later it was beautiful, but the whole place was clearly too popular for the staff to deal with.
I took a sip of Fosters and all became clear. According to my pint glass "Great minds think alike. You are in one of our favourite gastro pubs. The Guardian". I thought the clientel looked the distinctly middle class wankety pretentious type.

I was offended that The Guardian should assume I'd be complemented to hear that I share their taste. As if my sole activity in life is trying to act more like The Guardian, as if Julie Birchall is some model to which I aspire to be. Fuck off Guardian - you should try to think like me.

Stop Voyeur

You know that feeling when the girl across the street starts to take her bra off at her bedroom window, and you watch intently because it's the nearest you'll get to flesh... but after she's turned away you reflect tinged with guilt, ashamed at being such a pathetic lonely squid?
I don't, but I imagine it feels somewhat like I do now, having read an article on Harper Lee in The Independent, and a piece on Lucien Freud in The Sunday Times Magazine. Last week I visited my god-daughter, and brought her a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. I also gave her a Children's version of the New Testament, and will enjoy seeing which she prefers. Even though it was on my school curriculum I managed to enjoy it, and quite rightly it's considered to be one of the classic American novels. Of course Lee never wrote another novel, as is her right.

In contrast to Lee, Lucien Freud is an engine of creativity very much in the cobweb of contemporary culture. Yet like Lee he shuns the exclusive interviews, leading a rich and veiled life of mystery. This is his right.

Neither creator owes us anything. And I feel very uneasy writing my own speculative mumblings now. If you are the sort who can't resist an ogle through the curtains then I'm sure you can track down the links. But as best as I can, I hope to convey the irrespectability of trampling through the allure of greatness.

Liverpool vs AC Milan

So the shite managed to do it, and they managed it with the greatest come back of all time. It's why we love football.
I watched the match in the Sandpiper, Christchurch, with Faith and Pete - someone who I've probably been to over 200 Bashley games with. Needless to say the pub was full of red shirts and mongs with southern accents thinking they were born down Scottie Road (*Ahem*).
As an Evertonian with a fiancee that supports the shite, it was always going to prove thorny. I asked Faith to stick a few quid on her team for me so that I now had an emotional and financial incentive to sideline my Everton instincts.
Before the game I thought that AC Milan would trounce them - on paper there was no contest - but increasingly before kick off I thought it would be tight, and come down to penalties. I was half right. When Maldini scored I expected Milan to shut up shop and tighten things up, but they didn't and demolished the shite with 45 minutes of sublime football. At half time it looked all over. But ever since Everton came from 3-0 down at half time to level things at 3-3 (ultimately Van Nistelrooy would snatch an injury time winner) against the Mancs, no lead seems unbounceabackable. I said to Pete that precisely because Milan had been so rampant in the first half, the momentum from the shite pulling one back would be massive. Faith brought up the recent Arsenal game where the shite were thumped in the first half, but came back in the second. But none of us really thought it would happen.

Of course the only reason I'd began to think that the shite had a sniff was because of the infantile bandwagon created by the gutter press. It was telling to read the match reports all hail the team as heroes. I must have watched a different game, because I can't for the life of me see how man-for-man the shite were better. For a 20 minute spell Benitez had switched to three at the back, and managed to finally control the midfield. After the three goals in 6 minutes, Ancelotti finally reacted and started playing with wingers - exploiting the shites lack of full backs - and dominated the game. For the last 20 minutes of the second half, and throughout extra time there was only one team in it. There can be no doubt that AC Milan tore them to shreds, or that if Ancelotti had reacted quicker to Benitez's change in formation it would have been a formality. A wonder double-save by Dudek kept them in it, and then won them the trophy with two crucial penalty saves that were illegal. I haven't seen any of the faux-Scouse pinkie press point this out, but the penalties that Milan missed should have been re-taken.

The fact that the game ended in that manner amused me greatly, since I used to coach Jerzy Dudek's son. In fact, I believe I've told him to get up quickly following a save, and suspect he passed that on to his dad.... Indeed Dudek himself came to a Hills Soccer event as a special guest, and agreed to take part in our penalty shoot out. (At this point I must confess that this was perhaps the only day in two years that I wasn't coaching!). I can only imagine what it would have felt like for the kids that supported Liverpool - who scored past him in our shootout - to then watch him in the Chmapions League final! Indeed since Benitez claims that they don't practice penalties, I guess it was at Hills Soccer that Dudek learnt to save them!

Still, that little part of me that wanted Benitez's contempt for penalties to backfire as his contempt for the FA Cup did against Burnley, was perhaps overshadowed by the magnitude of the victory. (By the way, does anyone think that Jonny Wilkinson practices field goals even though he can't recreate the atmosphere? Of course he does - to say that the atmosphere makes practicing redundant denies that there's any technique involved in taking a penalty. And there is) Having the phone going off with friends up in Liverpool was pretty special, and whilst bitterly envious and jealous, well in.

So I've been to the bookies to pick up my winnings (£22 from predicting that the shite would win on pens) and when asked by a mate if I thought it would come to penalties replied "Yes. I did". He didn't believe that I had, since hindsight is a useful tool at improving your reputation, but having put my money where my mouth was I could prove that I did, in fact, think that the shite would win on penalties. If only political commentators would bet on their claims, and we could puncture this vast bubble of cheap opinion that dickheads in the press know will never come back to haunt them. If you don't risk incurring a cost from being wrong, then you'll gladly spout all kinds of ideas. Linking such opinion to a betting market seperates the wise from the noise.

REVIEW^ x2

Andrew Mellor has posted two new essays on The Filter^ REVIEW (which can now be accesable via the logo above right).

-->> Jeptha:

"Nicholas Kraemer in the pit approached this work with his typical desire to shape the music in his image; clean and forthright, but without some of the thrusting tempi which have become fashionable in music of the period."

-->> Lulu:

"Whilst many intellectualise about the irrepressible force of desire and love, Jones reminded us here that it manifests itself down many a backstreet,"

Andrew Mellor is a Filter^ REVIEW columnist, and the Musical Director of the Liverpool Schola Cantorum

Man Not Machine

Q; Why do tall buildings have revolving doors?

Clue: Why do lifts in tall buildings go upwards quicker than they come down?

Reversing Album Sleeves

Here's a tip: take a CD album and reverse the sleeve.

I've done this for years, and feel that it improves the aesthetic balance of the cover - for some reason the secondary image is more enticing than the primary. Perhaps it's purely because it's new, but I do feel that the dictated cover is more impartial and less visual than what lurkes beneath.
Penguin Books has been nominated as Designer of the Year proving quite sensibly that you should judge a book by it's cover. In the 'Great Ideas' series the cover incorporates text from the book, and feels as if the cover has been replaced by a page from inside - just as is the case with the "album sleeve reverse". The result is that the cover image and the written pages appear in harmony - the visual aesthetic is a creative interaction with the novel itself.

So reverse the sleeve of your CDs, nominate Penguin Books as the Design of the Year, and introduce some playful creativity to little treasures.

Subjectivist Economics and Quantum Physics

A nice article in The Independent on the documentary What The Bleep Do We Know? and quantum physics:

Subatomic particles can be in two places at the same time. They can exist in two times and places simulatenously yet remain intimately connected, even if they are at different ends of the universe ("non-locality"). They can also pop in and out of existence at random, and can travel effortlessly from the future to the present - which suggests that matter is as much influenced by its future as by its past...
..it is alien, illogicl, bizarre and completely counter to Newtonian physics or classical mechanics.

I am a subjectivist economist  - a position that is associated with the Austrian school.

Subjectivism is a cognitive frame of reference, and pervades our values, our expectations and our knowledge. Since economic science is the application of value-free analysis to a means/ends framework, and means/ends are expectations within the mind of the individual – subjectivism is a crucial tenet. Furthermore, because utility and costs can only be valued subjectively (and those valuations are likely to differ between individuals), the economic system will be complex. It will also be a system of learning, as the individual actors themselves generate institutions to benefit their endeavours.

Because of this I find the influence of Newtonian physisc in economics as disturbing. The macro economy is a series of variables (such as interest rates, inflation, GDP, investment, etc...) and macroeconomics is the manipulation of some variables to affect others. Imagine a great mechanical pump - house prices are rising, lets increase interest rates to slow them down. Simple.

Personally, I think such economists' are kidding themselves, and the public should be weary and skeptical when we hear economists and politicians refer to the economy as if it's a machine that can be sped up, or slowed down, at will. It's far more complicated than it's in the interests of those guys to admit, and invariably attention to one variable (say stock prices) will mean distraction from anothers (perhaps housing prices). The reason that economists suffer from this affliction is the rise of modern physics, and the desire to portray economic science as a natural science. In the c20th Physics was where all the money was, and so economist's went after funding by dressing up their subject in as much scientific terminology as possible.

This was a mistake, and modern economics is becoming increasingly interested by cognitive factors such as expectations, culture and religion. So now that the Newtonian system is no longer the definitive consensus in Physics, it certainly shouldn't be so in economics. Viva subjectivism!