Delicious LiveJournal Links for 10-23-2010

[andrewducker]

• Johann Hari's article on the cuts is complete rubbish.
  (tags: johannhari economics)
• The source of the disagreement between the government and the IFS over the regressiveness of the budget changes.
  (tags: tax benefits government uk)
• 10 awesome minimalist Doctor Who posters
  (tags: DrWho)
• Oct. 22, 4004 B.C.: Universe Usshered In
  (tags: religion history)
• Sky launches Anytime+ Video-on-Demand service. I hope this prompts Virgin to improve theirs.
  (tags: video tv VoD)
• US presidential nuclear codes were lost for months
  (tags: nuclear nuclearweapons usa EpicFail)
• Every Japanese Role Playing Game Ever
  (tags: roleplaying computer_games rpg japan)

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Poor Hari. He really ought to remember sometimes that everyone is watching him now, and he needs to be a little more careful when he goes off on one of his liberal rants. I love him, I do, but really...

[andrewducker]

Yup. He frequently has very good points, but he really should fact check more - I bump into someone pointing out mistakes he's made on a semi-regular basis.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

It's like someone gave me a column in the Indie/Grauniad for my random post-Dispatches/Newsnight/Panorama FB status outbursts.

[andrewducker]

Dammit, I've only seen one of those. I guess I should check FB more.

How come they never appear on LJ? Avoiding certain commenters?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

No, just 'cause they tend to be short-n-sweet "things wot occur while watching online at lunch" so I don't really feel the need to have a well-formed rant about 'em.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, you're by no means the first person to feel that they can't post on LJ without something bullet-proof. Which is a shame in some ways, but I entirely understand.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't read him regularly, only occasionally, and I've never read any analysis of the facts in his articles, but after reading this fact check -- is there good reason to believe that he does any fact checking in his other articles?

Another thing that concerns me is that this response to his article seems to indicate that his article was entirely driven by pre-existing beliefs / ideology, rather than being driven (at least to some degree) by the evidence / facts. Of course everyone views the world through the filter / prism of their pre-existing world view (be it political, religious, etc) but the sort of people I usually try to read at least attempt to start with the evidence they have researched and write about that, rather than (as it seems here) to start from the conclusion you want and work backwards trying to find 'facts' that will make your conclusion look compelling to others.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I looked into one Hari article in depth (just before the election). Whilst he wasn't outright wrong in that article his choice of sources and information was incredibly selective to paint a highly misleading picture.

He'd focussed on a council that had gone Tory and as a result of changes some homeless people had been moved to a shelter somewhere else and homeless provision had got worse. He conveniently ignored the lowered council tax, decreased crime rate, improved school results, improved childcare, decreased anti-social behaviour, decreased graffiti etc. etc. that had occurred since the Tories had taken over which I suspect may have been responsible for the council being quite so popular.

I currently have him pigeon-holed as about as honest as the Tobacco industry 'scientists'.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I should have read a bit further before making my above comment :-)

I bump into someone pointing out mistakes he's made on a semi-regular basis.
Given that on a semi-regular basis you discover he's made mistakes (presumably significant mistakes), and that there will be a lot of occasions when you don't find out about mistakes he's made (that are there). For me this sort of puts him in the "never read" category.

[andrewducker]

I posted this because people were forwarding that article around the place.

When it comes to his pieces on civil rights he's generally right in his intentions - i.e. in favour of tolerance and happy to point out evil things people are up to. I don't trust his economics though.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Reading Johann Hari's article makes me want to wash out my brain with bleach.

Having read the orginal article in the Independent, I was struck by the similarities with that fine bastion of logic and unbiased reporting, The Daily Mail. Not the conclusions of course, but I'm sure I've seen trumpeting rhetoric backed by a mishmash of scary statistics and heart-wrenching 'real life' references somewhere before...

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I have fallen head over heels in love with that last link. Excuse me while I go make icons.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Okay, that clears some things up. I did not have the knowledge to debunk any of that myself though.

Here is the economy: money goes in, money goes out. But sometimes it sticks around for a bit. Sometimes we borrow, sometimes we lend. Inflation means the value of money changes constantly, sometimes inflation is hidden by factors like housing prices. Some things we count, some things we don't. People's behaviour influences this flow, but is in turn influenced by it. That's a heck of a complex model.

Not too keen on the Dr Who posters, I think they're rather dull. Now if they had Tom Baker or Patrick Troughton on them, then they'd definitely go on my wall.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, economics gives me a headache. I've eventually got a grasp of the basics, or at least I like to think so. Each of the individual bits isn't that hard, it's when you put it all together that suddenly there's something incredibly complex that does things you wouldn't expect.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

I've not studied economics or financial maths, so maybe this stuff isn't as difficult as I imagine. However, I'm a mathematical biologist, so I work with models quite a bit; as soon as you start adding in multiple variables, feedback loops and stochasticity etc. it can get very complex and unpredictable.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Johann Hari's article on the cuts is complete rubbish.

I'm obviously less familiar with UK politics and economics than a UK resident, but his argument actually looks pretty good to me, and the attempt at demolishing it looks suspiciously like some of the "economics" being used here to defend banks, (IMHO at least) dangerously free markets, and reductions in government services. The fact remains that in the middle of what is at best a very serious recession, worrying about governmental budget deficits and cutting government services is both foolish and utterly inhumane. Economist Paul Krugman has some excellent things to say about problems with the UK government's current policies. The more I learn about the policies of the UK coalition government the worse the lib-dems look to me.

[andrewducker]

Every major party is saying we have to cut. We have the highest deficit of any developed country by some margin (it's currently at 13%), and we're going to have to cut, because we have been spending significantly more money than we have for quite some time.

I don't think we have to cut by the amount we are, but we've been put at risk of losing our credit rating if we don't bring our spending under control.

[andrewducker]

Also, even after the cuts we'll be spending 42% of our budget via the government, which is more than the US government was by a fair chunk until last year (when there was a 6% jump, not sure why). And we spend a lot less than the US does on the military, which leaves a lot more for other things.

If I could refer you back to my post here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2206307.html
you can see that the cuts really are not that bad.

What _does_ look bad is the cuts in welfare, which I disapprove of.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

BTW, you might enjoy reading [Bad username or site: philmophlegm' / @ livejournal.com]'s recent posts about economics.

[andrewducker]

Cheers. Good stuff, am adding them now.