This week’s ranter: Ken Owen blogs at Militant Moderate, and his chief interests are cricket, constitutions and controversy. Occasionally he even has something amusing or relevant to say.

Motivations, motivations, motivations

Tony Blair made a big thing of “education, education, education” in 1997, yet his record has been unimpressive. Let’s leave aside that the massive increases in spending haven’t achieved remotely proportional returns. Because the real disgrace behind Blair’s record is his continued manipulation of the educational system to suit his political ends.

Why does he want 50% of young people to go to university? Is it because he thinks that a university education is desirable for all? No, it’s because he knows that, in the UK at least, getting to university is considered an objective standard of a good education. Never mind if the real standard of universities is dropping – if more people are getting into higher education, the government must be doing something right. Right?

The same principle lies behind the means used to ‘encourage’ the top universities to take a higher proportion of state school students – the most notable one being continued threats of withdrawn funding. A simple statistical argument doesn’t hold up; A-Levels are not the ideal form of training for university entrance, and when 20% of students are getting A grades then making arguments on such a basis is perverse. Of course, they wouldn’t want to introduce A+ or A++ grades at A-Level, because then the private schools would come out on top.

Fiddling the system this way is like making up your bank balance – it might make you feel better, but at the end of the day it doesn’t help much. Sure, manipulating the education structures gets you a nice headline (and boy, wouldn’t Blair want one of those today?), but what does it actually achieve? Pupils aren’t better educated; the reputation of our universities flounders; millions of pounds are pumped into educating students who would be better off doing something else. If the education system is to improve, we need to stop fiddling the figures, and actually make state schools work.

I don’t know if he’s doing it just to piss Cameron off, but Basher Davis has started spewing out policies like a man who’s just downed a bucket of Blue Bols. We’ve had the policy to join the Ligue communiste revolutionnaire in sticking it up Brussels, the policy to entrench inherited privilege forever, and the policy to throw weed-smokers into a pit of poisonous snakes. Or something like that. Now, we’ve got another one for the clients. The big one: Bring Back The Grammar Schools. (Or even, create 60 more secondary moderns.)

There’s a lot of it about. The logic of the critique of comprehensives is simple: they’re a sham. Read More

With regard to the rioting in France, there has been much talk in our newspapers about how France might learn from Britain, whose progressive policies have partly satisfied the mob, principally by letting it run riot every weekend. Read More

Israel’s foreign policy is constructed around the framework of its strong relationship with the USA. But recent events where the USA has vetoed Israeli arms exports prompt me to consider that perhaps Israel would be better off in the EU than allied with the USA.

The United States of America supplies Israel with $2 billion of aid every year. This is a significant sum of money, but it’s less than 2% of Israel’s GDP so it isn’t essential to Israel. Far more important, however, is the military and diplomatic assistance the USA provides Israel. The USA provides Israel with the latest weapons, does its best to make sure that states that might be opposed to Israel don’t get good weapons, gives Israel a free pass over its nuclear arsenal, makes sure there are no UN sanctions of Israel over its occupation of Palestine, and generally provides Israel with a guarantee that if ever there is a serious threat to Israel’s security, the USA will do whatever is in its power to stop that threat becoming reality.

In short, the USA does far more for Israel than would be in the USA’s strict interests from a Realpolitik point of view.

So, you might think that Israel gets a good deal from this. However, like everything in life, you don’t get owt for nowt. Because the USA is Israel’s only ally, and is pretty much the only country that Israel can rely on to be on its side, Israel is obliged not do do anything the USA seriously dislikes.
Read More

Ah, television. Sometimes you kill shows while they’re still in their prime, making us wonder what might have been. Sometimes you keep shows alive on life support long after they should have whithered and gone. And very occasionally, you get it just right, ending their lives at the natural and right time.
Read More

Have a look at this:

As someone commented: “It couldn’t happen here. But that’s what we said before they abolished detention without trial, the presumption of innocence, double jeopardy…”

I would also point out that under the We Can Do Anything We Like Act which the government passed last year, they could abolish elections without having to pass further legislation.

The news stories only really broke over here three nights in, and seven days later the British public are remarkably uninterested in what is going on in the suburbs Aulnay sous Bois and Clichy sous Bois to the north east of Paris. News programmes report it one item before ‘and finally’ and the stories are to be found filling a 3 by 6 column space on page 9, next to the happy news that Abigail Witchell is finally going home.

However uninterested we are, we certainly cannot say we are disinterested. As the comments on Jonathan Pearce’s piece at Samizdata highlight, this is, in the minds of many, about disaffected Muslim youths, feeling alienated from the authorities and economy of their native country. That sort of thing would never happen in Britain though. Right?
Read More

Tradition. The glue that holds societies together. That defines the change of the seasons, the ebb and flow of years. And is there a country on earth where tradition holds sway to a greater extent than Britain?

This time of the year sees one of my favourite British traditions. Like most traditions, it is highly ritualised and varies remarkably little from year to year. But small changes are allowed, as the British know instinctively that freezing a tradition will inevitably result in its atrophy and decline. For the benefit of any foreign readers to this site, here is how it works.

This tradition goes under the general title of the ‘Turner Prize’, and functions as follows:

Read More

This week’s ranter: Paul has just joined The Sharpener team — you can find his first ‘proper’ piece, on Sun Tzu and George W. Bush, here.

Tuneless in Islington

Any regular gig-goer can sympathise with the classic ‘support band dilemma’. Do you turn up early, get a few drinks in and endure what is probably going to be about half-an-hour of discordant dribble? Or do you rock up fashionably late and risk missing soon-to-be Rock Gods playing in your local toilet in front of 40 other people, cementing anecdote envy among your friends for years to come?

Being an optimistic chap, I usually opt for the former. I’m often disappointed. I’m sometimes outraged. Never before, however, have I wanted to run out into the streets of Islington on a murderous rampage.

Then I saw the aptly-named and space-less giveamanakick, ‘supporting’ The Undertones; ‘supporting’ in the way that the rest of the Northern Ireland team used to support George Best. Never has the ability to make music been so disastrously confused with the ability simply to make noise.

Whoever was responsible for inflicting this racket on innocent fans of Peel-championed punk either has no ears or is one of those sick delusional altruists that can’t see that their actions, whatever their intentions, are entirely pernicious. Like the muppets behind deferred success and grade inflation.

Sadly, this clueless attitude appeared to have spread to three people in the front row, who baffled the rest of the room with their incessant cheering and clapping. They did look quite young — they might just have got horribly pissed within 30 minutes of turning up. That, or they had ingested the most mind-altering drug known to mankind.

In between pathetic bouts of clamouring for cash (for some reason, this talentless two-piece haven’t had much luck transforming feedback into fistfuls of dollars), I spotted that one of their ‘songs’ was called Gravity. Oh for some of the big G to get to work on their musical aspirations.

Over in the business school here at Berkeley, they talk a lot about brand values.  The MBAs are taught that one of the most important strategic activities of a firm is to invest in building and protecting the value of its brands.

Usually when a firm increases its value, that’s good for the economy.  Inventing a new product, or finding a way to produce using fewer inputs, increases the value of the firm and also increases the wealth of the economy and makes everyone better off.

But some ways of increasing a firm’s value are not good for the economy as a whole – for example, if they merely transfer surplus from consumers to producers, reduce efficiency by reducing competition, or exploit negative externalities.

Does the economy as a whole benefit from an increase in brand value? Or do brands just increase benefits to the producer at the expense of the consumer?  What are the economic benefits of brands?
Read More