'Nother Solent

Lancing a boil.

A bunch of eminent scientific johnnies have slagged off the Lancet for "desperate headline-seeking".

They do not appear to have included the famous Iraqi casualty study in their list of complaints. I don't know whether they didn't include it because they agreed with it, or because they had no opinion about it, or because the individual boffins had different views. However even if one agreed with every word there is no doubt that the timing of that article, and the way it was given an accelerated review process so that it would appear days before the US election, was indeed "desperate headline-seeking."

Physician, heal thyself.

Making a trio of booze-related posts here is a BBC article asking, Why do doctors drink so much? They do, you know. In the same way, plenty of lawyers die intestate (they all think that they will get round to making a will sometime when not busy) and a financial adviser told me that the financial affairs of financial advisers are frequently a mess.

Michael Jennings writes, "Management consultancy firms are notorious for being badly managed, too."

The Enablers.

Here is the Make Poverty History manifesto.

Some of it is good: the call for the EU to unilaterally put an end to its damaging agricultural export subsidies, for instance. There is room for doubt in my mind on debt cancellation (peverse incentives and loss of future creditworthiness versus the unfairness of making people suffer for the sins of their thieving leaders). Nor am I always against foreign aid per se; I see it as like opium for an injured person, addictive but sometimes a lifesaver. But when I saw this

... it ["trade justice"] means ensuring poor countries can feed their people by protecting their own farmers and staple crops; it means ensuring governments can effectively regulate water companies by keeping water out of world trade rules and it means ensuring trade rules do not undermine core labour standards.

We need to stop the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) forcing poor countries to open their markets to trade with rich countries, which has proved so disastrous over the past 20 years; the EU must drop its demand that former European colonies open their markets and give more rights to big companies; we need to regulate companies – making them accountable for their social and environmental impact both here and abroad; and we must ensure that countries are able to regulate foreign investment in a way that best suits their own needs.

I thought of the role of MPH as being something like that of the "enabler" in the household of an alcoholic.

An enabler is “a person who unknowingly helps the alcoholic by denying the drinking problem exists and helping the alcoholic to get out of troubles caused by his drinking” (Silverstein, 1990, p.65). The enabler will clean up the alcoholic’s vomit and make excuses to his or her boss, teacher, or friends. The enabler lies for the alcoholic, and thus enables the alcoholic to continue drinking.

For drinking read "ensuring poor countries can feed their people by protecting their own farmers and staple crops." You don't need two separate books to read about the history of agricultural protectionism and the history of famine! Over the last twenty years the countries that have followed (even imperfectly) what MPH calls the "disastrous" policy of opening their markets have suffered... unprecendented rises in prosperity. Those that have kept doing what MPH want them to do have stayed poor. (Added later: "want them to do" might be better phrased as "give them permission to do," in the same sense that an Enabler gives an alcoholic "permission" to carry on drinking.)

I was especially struck by questions two and three in this quiz called Are You an Enabler? But the metaphor resonates for all of them.

1. Have you ever "called in sick" for the alcoholic, lying about his symptoms?

2. Have you accepted part of the blame for his (or her) drinking or behavior?

3. Have you avoided talking about his drinking out of fear of his response?

4. Have you bailed him out of jail or paid for his legal fees?

5. Have you paid bills that he was supposed to have paid himself?

6. Have you loaned him money?

7. Have you tried drinking with him in hopes of strengthening the relationship?

8. Have you given him "one more chance" and then another and another?

9. Have you threatened to leave and didn't?

10. Have you finished a job or project that the alcoholic failed to complete himself?

Sign the pledge

. Renounce the demon drink ID card.

Only Nixon could go to China.

I was aware that Lal Kirshnan Advani, the president of the BJP, was recently sacked and then re-instated for saying nice things about Jinnah on an official trip to Pakistan. What I didn't know was that Advani, the prime mover behind the razing by Hindu zealots of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, now regards that day as "the saddest in his life." Or that for their part the Pakistani authorities are going to restore the Katas Raj temple, a Hindu sacred site in Pakistan.

Archbishop warns against "unpoliced conversation" peril.

Peter Glover of Wires from the Bunker writes:

Dr Williams, who was speaking to an audience of media professionals, politicians and church leaders at his Lambeth Palace, London residence, went on to describe the atmosphere on the worldwide web as "a free for all" which produced something "close to that of unpoliced conversation."

He does not however say why he has come to believe (hardly a Christian or biblically sustainable belief) that "conversation" should be "policed".

Dr Williams' speech is reported in the Times: Archbishop hits out at web-based media 'nonsense'

In a moment of madness I had an unpoliced conversation with my husband only yesterday. It was about strawberries. The horror lives with me yet.

UPDATE: Peter Glover asks me to say that, having now seen the full text of Dr Williams's speech, he thinks that the Times report was not entirely fair, although the fact that Dr Williams did not make his meaning clear did not help. "Wires from the Bunker" does not have permalinks, but go to the main link above for more.

The blood of the Solents runs hot.

I am meant to be attending to more urgent priorities than blogging - but when directly challenged in this post by Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber I had to respond.

Busy time coming up.

So the world may just have to turn without me for a few days.

Before I go, let me recommend this. John Weidner pointed me in the direction of a fair-minded and touching article by David Asman, describing the experience of his wife, who unfortunately suffered a stroke, in both the British and US health care systems. Asman says:

Neither system is without its faults and advantages. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, there are no solutions to modern health care problems, only trade-offs.

That is true, and in an emergency it can be a great blessing that under the British system one does not have to worry, or even think about costs (though one may have to worry rather more about outcomes because one doesn't have to think about costs). However, many of the disadvantages of the US system that Asman mentions are not inherent to private healthcare; rather they are the results of defensive medicine, itself the result of bad tort law. Thomas Sowell has good sense to offer on that subject, too, in The Vision of the Anointed. Excessive, unpredictable and illogical awards of compensation could as easily be associated with a public as with a private system - and the way things are going in Britain they soon will be.

Some of John Weidner's commenters mention the French system. Although it slightly spoils my free-market rant to say so, I must say that when my husband bashed his leg on holiday we were extremely impressed by the kindness and efficiency we saw. The doctor, who came out to the roadside where my husband was sitting unable to walk, refused payment. Not worth his while to do the paperwork, or just a nice guy? I don't know. Actually he was an exceptionally nice guy whatever. The hospital was clean and relatively uncrowded. Waiting time for an X-ray: twenty minutes. (Waiting time in Blighty for an X-ray of my daughter's broken arm: six hours. She had to go without food and water for all that time in case they had to operate.) After our return to England were billed by the French hospital for about £30. To be that low the fee must be heavily subsidised, but I suggest that the fact that there is some fee does great good. I paid it with gratitude.

Britblog roundup

at the usual place. Among the various posts there is a distinct theme of opposition to the Religious Hatred Bill.