From a review of Paul Collier’s latest book (Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places) in the New Statesman
Were this not infuriating enough, Collier describes the devastation wrought by the Treasury’s preference for economic theory over accounting reality. The department’s “hermetic paranoia against expertise” allowed it to be easily outmatched by multinational oil companies, for example, which have for decades paid about three times as much tax on Norway’s oil as they do on the same resource taken from beneath Britain’s part of the North Sea. Norway’s finance ministry is far smaller, but it was prepared to hire 40 accountants rather than thousands of PPE graduates. In administering taxes on Norway’s oil properly, these accountants have helped to build the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
It would be nice to think things might change after Starmer’s landslide. There is infinite hope, but is any of it for us?
Robert Badinter persuaded France to abolish the guillotine
Hatred was never so frightening as when it wore the mask of justice. Badinter had seen enough of hatred to know that; all men of his generation had. And he always mistrusted the mob. As a teenager, he had watched two armed men drag a shorn, half-naked girl through the streets because she was a “fille à Boches”—“a girl of the Germans”.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths: ‘The war in Gaza isn’t halfway through’
At least 136 UN workers have been killed; staff bring their children to work, so they might survive or at least die together.
And what to do?
We have to get much better at pitching into people’s souls.”
Just a suggestion after looking at newspaper headlines at a news stand. That feeling of despair at the world and those who pour dirt upon it.
Could we limit the font size of headlines to no more than size 14 on an A4 page. So, small, but readable. More whitespace can surround the letter above and below. This might make the context come into where it belongs: dead centre.
Feels about right. (From today’s FT)
Zuckerberg also said the company will not be changing its policies that allow lying in paid political advertisements.
Another telling figure from Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology. The stiking thing about much of this book is how predicable and widespread so many social trends are.
Feel in need of a “mental health day” right now (or what we used to call “a break”)? We certainly do.
FT Moral money 8 April 2020