This ain't multiculturalism either

In multicultural Britain, the meaning of the [OS map] symbols has shifted slightly. A filled circle with a cross is now a place of worship with spire, minaret or dome. (BBC Magazine)

Yep, the OS is using a cross to represent a mosque. *slaps head* *slaps it again*

The story tells itself

Just read it.

The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Angela Eagle): The Liberal Democrat motion has been much commented on, possibly because it reads like the storyboard for “Apocalypse Now”, or perhaps even “Bleak House”. According to the motion, we are facing an “extreme bubble in the housing market” and the “risk of recession”, and we must “act to prevent mass home repossessions”.

(Commons, 2 April 2008 3:45pm, Hansard)

With due credit to Liberal England.

(I really must get back to theo-blogging, but I'm not quite done with A Better Way yet. I'm sure that when I am, there'll be some thoughts fizzing around which need dealing with.)

Pulling a fast one

Tower Hamlets council, according to thisislondon and the Telegraph, has sent round an e-mail to its staff asking them not to eat during the Muslim fast of Ramadan. This is the council which, a couple of years ago, banned Christmas lights in case council workers hurt themselves putting them up. (I can't believe I just posted a link to the Sun. I feel so… ugh.) And the Telegraph lists some more of their glorious achievements:

Tower Hamlets Council has previously insisted that staff call their Christmas meal the "festive lunch", replaced Bonfire Night celebrations with a show based on a Bengali folk tale and taken hot cross buns off school menus.

Honestly. You try and argue for local democracy, you try and argue that councils need to be trusted with more powers and what happens? They expunge Christmas and make all their staff observe Ramadan, both of which are done on the grounds that "it may cause offence"—something which would be shown to be untrue by means of a simple conversation with any British Muslim. Multi-culturalism is a good thing, as it means a respect and tolerance for other people's cultural preferences and mores, provided those mores do not conflict with the common rules of society; this, on the other hand, is pure insanity designed to play straight into the hands of racists and loons.

Until the pips squeak?

Today's front-page headline in the Times is, Gordon Brown faces high-level revolt over windfall tax. Apparently, there are some seventy Labour MPs who want the Government to impose a 'windfall tax' on the 'excessive profits' made by energy companies. Three junior ministers are making rumblings about resignation if it doesn't happen.

So let's lay out nine reasons why this is a bad idea. Firstly, the real profit here isn't being made by the energy companies, but by the primaries: the oil and gas production companies.

Secondly, the profits aren't being made by the companies but by their shareholders: people like you and me, holding shares either directly or through pension schemes.

Thirdly, as M Collins of Leeds put it in the comment thread,

Impose a 'windfall tax'? Surely this has already happened in the form of additional tax revenue from the rise in oil company profits? Or, is it simply that these political airheads are demanding a 'punitive tax' on oil companies?

Fourthly, any additional tax will work its way into the pricing structure, ensuring that at least some of the additional cost is borne by the customers.

Fifthly, investment in the extraction and distribution industries will not be encouraged by cries of 'windfall!' whenever the market bounces upwards.

Sixthly, some 200,000 Scottish jobs and 250,000 English ones (industry figures) rely on a well-functioning oil-and-gas industry.

Seventhly, the current tax rate is already a blistering 50-75%, and the oil industry is saying, quite credibly, that further exploration is already becoming uneconomic in the current tax regime.

Eighthly, increased taxes during a recession do not make for a happy outcome.

Ninthly, 'windfall taxes' are meant to be applied to one-off profits and not to normal profits made in a time of scarcity or uncertainty.

Now it's spread to the States

If I see much more of this, "BBC journalists demonstrating their appalling lack of general knowledge" will have to become a regular feature. The News 24 correspondent Jonathan Beale, talking about the US Vice-Presidency in the context of the current election, pointed out that while the Vice-President is "only a heartbeat away" from the Presidency, it's ultimately the candidate for President who wins or loses the election. He closed his report by observing,

After all, who remembers Dan Quayle?

Bad example, you prize potatoe.

Truth is certainly funnier than fiction

On the one hand, the Gaurdina supposed that the Leader of the Free World might have got a little confused. On the other hand, it would appear that there really was at least one person who was genuinely puzzled.

Pushing back the frontiers of knowledge

Yet another surprise result from the world of academic research. The Daily Wail has a story [1]—being the Wail, it naturally comes with illustrative examples—explaining why Scarlett Johanssen and Marilyn Monroe (among others) are popular among about 50% of the population. Quoth the Wail,

Petite, leggy women with big busts are the most sexually attractive, study reveals

I know, it was news to me, too.

But I managed to muster two responses to the thought that someone got paid to do this research. Firstly, he could've just gone down the pub one Friday night. But secondly, and more importantly, why am I mucking about with quantum fields?

[1] I, um, spotted it while reading an entirely un-related article about abortion. Honest, squire.

It's a statis— fact

The BBC Magazine has been running an interesting little series by one of the authors of The Tiger That Isn't, a book which tries to cut through some of the spin and hype surrounding statistics, often used to fool a mathematically-challenged public into acting in ways which do not exactly accord with reality. The latest is on the use and abuse of percentages, with the previous two having covered "unmeasurable statistics" and poorly-produced surveys.

Coming from a mathematical background, a lot of the theory isn't quite news, although many of the examples are, but it's good to see that someone, somewhere, is pulling back the veil on the shady business that is journalistic statistics.

In which I am not pro-Tory, but anti-Labour

The Wife of the Man Who Would Be Chancellor (but isn't next in line, because he doesn't wear a blue tie) laid into David Cameron in this morning's Grauniad; the paper covers the story in its usual balanced style.

In her article, Cooper wrote,

Faced with calls to make the sums stack up, Cameron reverts to slogans - "sharing the proceeds of growth", or "living within our means".

Well, sloganeering is bad, as any fule kno. Of course, that cuts both ways: she's just carting out the empty accusation of sloganeering to avoid tackling the substantive issue.

Firstly, "sharing the proceeds of growth." Yvette Cooper is Chief Secretary to the Treasury, wife of the former Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Has she really never heard about the Laffer Curve? As I'll probably have to say every time I bring it up, there's a very simple defence from a Labour perspective which doesn't involve denying the concept's existence ("yes it exists; no, it's more complicated than that; we're still on the up-slope"). Not only is it dead easy, it would demonstrate (to anyone who was interested) that she's had a bit of an economic education. Instead, she sounds like the economic version of a flat-earther.

Secondly, "living within our means". Frankly, the idea that anyone in charge of the Treasury thinks this is merely a slogan is downright terrifying. "Tax and spend", while politically controversial, is at least economically reasonable; "Don't tax but spend" is downright ludicrous. Would that we could say that governments of all political hue had avoided the latter, eh?

To bring out the Bernard Woolley in me

Seen on today's BBC News front page:

Robert Peston
Are there rocky
skies ahead for
BAA?

"Um, Prime Minister, you couldn't have rocky skies because all the rocks would, um." Bernard made a descending motion with his hands and a low whistle with his lips.

Moral dilemma?

(Click to see full-size version.)

As plain as the nose on your face?

A thought, definitely un-original, occasioned by the claim sometimes found among young universe (not simply "young Earth"!) creationists that we can't trust, for instance, the evidence of distant stars because the effects of sin mean that we could be mistaken in our reading of nature. Isn't it the case that the noetic effects of the Fall in fact affect our ability to deal with things of God (e.g., Scripture) rather more strikingly than things of nature?

Of course, unambiguous teachings of Scripture must trump "science"; but as Blocher demonstrates so ably, it's not that simple in the early chapters of Genesis. And thus, if Genesis 1 isn't about the date of creation, the issue will fade into insignificance.

The garden and the Temple

One of the main things I learnt while reading Beale's The Temple and the Church's Mission was that there is a very strong link between the Temple and Eden. Of course, the fact that certain parts of the Temple symbolised the whole of creation—such as the veil of the Temple, with 'stars' woven into the fabric—was not news to me, but Beale's survey was striking in how much he was able to link the Temple and the priestly garments to Eden. You'd need to read the book for the arguments, but he demonstrates that there are implications of this all over Scripture, even in places one mightn't expect.

So to start with, Eden as a Temple makes Adam a priest, and Beale links the language used of priests, who watch and keep the Temple, with Adam who was to watch and keep the garden. Just as Adam's role was not merely to preserve the garden and leave the untamed lands outside alone, though, the priestly order was to minister beyond the confines of the Temple, expanding regard for Yahweh and his word among the people of Israel, just as Israel was to minister beyond her own borders, expanding regard for Yahweh and his word in the world at large.

Moreover, the creation mandate, Go forth and multiply, is echoed in the mandate and design for the Temple, with its imagery reflecting fruitfulness and so on. So far from being a pagan fertility cult, though, the fruitfulness of the Temple is the fruitfulness of the word of Yahweh. This is carried forth away from the Temple in the construction of Ebenezers, tabernacles and so on. This perspective provides a natural continuity to the command throughout the Old Testament, and gives force to the view that the creation mandate is not to be thought of as being separate from the Great Commission, since we can see how the Great Commission is, as it were, an evolution of the original creation mandate.

Moving into the New Testament, Paul has two favoured images of the church: building and agriculture. We are the house of God , and we are also a kind of plant, rooted and grounded in love. In Colossians 2:7, we are even "rooted" and "built up" in Christ. As Beale says, it may not be that Paul has the Temple directly in mind here, but the linking of the imagery of building and agriculture (particularly striking in 1 Cor. 3:9, "You are God's field, God's building.") becomes far less disjointed when we see that the Temple—of the antitype of which we are living stones—is the common link between the two.

Finally, we can see how Adam as the first priest will help us understand Christ as the great high priest: the grace Adam lost and the prize he forfeited are won for us by Christ, born as one under the law that we may be freed from the law. We are all born as members of sin's twisted Temple to Self, and reap the pain of Adam's failed service; but we who are being built into the Temple of which Christ is the high priest enjoy the blessings of his priestly duty, dying to self and to sin, but living to God.

Zopa

Introduction
Kiva
MyC4

Last, but by no means least, is Zopa, a company which started in the UK and which allows individuals to lend money to British borrowers. The underlying mechanism, a market-based approach where lenders offer differing amounts of capital at differently-priced rates for borrowers with differing risk profiles, is similar to MyC4; the main difference is that MyC4's drawbacks do not exist. The website is secure, with encryption as soon as you click on "Lend Now", and there's no currency risk as the medium of exchange is sterling. The site itself is far better laid-out, easier to navigate and look at, and generally feels a lot 'cleaner'. Also, getting money into and out of the Zopa account is far simpler than the MyC4 approach, even accepting that getting money to a Danish company would be difficult.

There are a couple of differences between Zopa's main markets and MyC4: firstly, the time-scales are more varied in MyC4 than in Zopa; and secondly, as I understand it, the Zopa system matches lenders with borrowers automatically, whereas in MyC4 lenders have to bid for borrowers directly. Zopa is offering a "Listings" service, however, where lenders and borrowers do get to see each other and ask questions.

The downsides, comparing Zopa with MyC4, are that MyC4's average return out-performs Zopa's by 400 basis points, and MyC4 does not charge lenders a fee: Zopa charges 1.0% per annum on all monies lent.

If and when I am in the position of needing a savings product to form a part of my long-term investment plan, Zopa will probably be my first choice. Of course, the current credit difficulties do raise the question of whether Zopa's excellent default rate (well under 0.1%) will continue, but as an investment/savings product for the long-term, Zopa looks hard to beat.

MyC4

Introduction
Kiva

Secondly, there's MyC4, a Danish outfit through which investors can lend to businesses in Africa. Countries covered include Uganda and Cote d'Ivoire. Again, the idea is that lenders lend small amounts of money on many different loans, while borrowers will borrow from many different lenders. This time, however, interest is chargeable on the loans, and command extremely respectable rates. Looking at some recently completed loans, I see Ugandans paying rates between 15% and 23%, while the advertised average rate is somewhat lower, at 12.4%. It's been running for only a year, and in that time they've had one borrower default; however, taking into account late payments, their "perfect success" rate is 92.1%.

There are, however, serious drawbacks with MyC4, too. The major one that I can see is the lack of site security: the sign-up form has no encryption, yet asks for passwords to be created, e-mail addresses to be sent and so on. I would be deeply unwilling to commit bank or PayPal details to an operation with so little regard for basic security.

The other major question mark is common to all overseas lending operations—indeed, I find myself wondering how Kiva works around this—which is to say, currency risk. MyC4 operates in Euros, which is an immediate currency risk, and while it currently takes on the risk for all loans below 2000 EUR, which is the majority, it is looking at ways of passing the currency risk on. This would mean that investors would be exposed to the less stable local currencies, as well as the more stable Euro.

The last question mark I have is simply about how geared up for international investors they are. There's a note warning North American investors that there are legal issues surrounding the withdrawals process which mean their money cannot yet be accessed, and I'm not too convinced about the funding options for British lenders.

For an investor who is happy taking risks—with personal data as well as money!—MyC4 is reasonable. For anyone else, I would wait until the site is more secure, and the systems more apparently robust. I have sent them an e-mail, out-lining my security concerns. A suitable response may get itself published and linked. However, MyC4 does look like it has a very good idea behind it, and that idea is, on its own merits, one in which I would be happy to invest some spare capital.

Kiva

Introduction

First up is Kiva, an American charity which specialises in lending money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Lenders can combine their money, so that someone looking for £100 may get £25 from four separate sources. The money is passed to the entrepreneurs through field agents, who charge interest—up to an eye-watering 21%. Or rather, it would be eye-watering in a more stable economic situation; when I was in Sri Lanka last year, I saw bank accounts paying 16%, so 21% on a loan isn't all that implausible.

However, there's a major drawback for anyone planning to use Kiva as part of their investment portfolio: the lender doesn't see a penny of the interest charged. Given that Kiva's own estimate is that they experience a 1.6% failure rate on loans, an interest rate of 1.6% would help lenders to maintain the amount of money on offer. Effectively, you're making an annual donation of 1.6% + the best interest rate you could achieve with the money.

Kiva is clearly no good for investors looking for a return. Perhaps it's of some use for those who wish to have warm fuzzies about helping businesses in developing countries, but it seems an Unfair Trade for local agents to charge exceptionally high interest rates and yet not to pass anything back to the lenders who have put their capital at risk in this way.

Peer-to-peer lending

The rise of peer-to-peer networks for activities such as music sharing, television downloads and so on has been one of the more surprising aspects of the development of the Internet. But perhaps what is more surprising still is the rise of services which aim to apply the peer-to-peer model to financial transactions. For instance, Betfair allows the market to determine the odds by matching betting and laying punters' bids. On a more ethical note, there is social lending, a personalised version of the credit union, allowing lenders greater control over those who receive their money. I'm going to publish some posts in rapid succession, looking at three separate organisations open, at least in principle, to British residents.

Disclaimer: I have no link with any of these organisations. I have looked into all three as potential places to put money, but have not yet decided whether to go for it.

News round-up

House prices are down 11% year-on-year, according to the Financial Times. Hot on the heels of news that repossessions (BBC) for the first half of the year are up 48% year-on-year, this does not look too good for a housing market which has been given an incentive to plunge (BBC).

And presumably this (FT) is the kind of reason why the Minister for Equality has acquired the nickname 'Harperson'. Of course, legislation of this sort could back-fire: make doing business with the Government onerous, and people may well stop doing it. With preparations for the Olympics moving ahead, it would be a Bad Idea all round to try and put business off from dealing with the Government.

Site review: Around the World in 80 Ideas

I stumbled across an interesting sub-site of the Adam Smith Institute, called Around the World in 80 Ideas. The site covers eighty different policy initiatives taken in different countries across the globe, looking at how an innovative approach enhanced choice, competition and freedom. As you'd expect from the ASI, the vast majority cover economic issues and do so from a free-market perspective, but not all are: term limits for US politicians, for instance, is not a traditional laissez-faire concern.

The stories are very interesting to read to see the things which have been tried and the effects they had: perhaps the most interesting for me was the privatisation of the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica, which was carefully managed to encourage small investors to participate. The result captured the public imagination and saw even people from the lowest income families bringing out their nest eggs to invest in the bank. It was taken 75% private in 2002, and the remaining shares now trade at $23.50, up rather a lot from $1.00 in 1983.

The other thing to point out is that the stories aren't simple right-wing fairy tales designed to tell the British political class where they're going wrong. A large number of the stories are drawn from recent British political history, even post-1997. Moreover, the policies are not given automatically clean bills of health: frequently, the moral is "must try harder", and some are even given only cautious approval.

Perhaps my main criticism would be one of style: the quality of the writing is not very high. Typos abound and fragmentary sentences intrude upon the reader's attention. In terms of the content itself, there are occasions on which one feels that there may be more than meets the eye.

Nonetheless it's well worth a browse: you'll see Soviet nations emerge from the cold, German left-wingers engage constructively with capital markets, Latin American military governments encourage private saving for retirement, Ghanaian bureaucrats cut bloated regulators, and people across the world encouraged in various ways to be more involved in the economies in which they live and work.

This never happened in Reith's day

A BBC hack, reporting for Today on Michael Gove's comments on education inequalities, described Gove's comment that "of those to whom much is given, much will be required" as "echoes of John Kennedy's 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.'" [1] That's his source: JFK?

And a couple of weeks ago, the BBC Magazine claimed that "last week we didn't know that outer space has a temperature of -270C." Actually, I've known that for about a decade, and I'm only 25. (EDIT: although I plainly haven't learnt to proof-read yet.)

I'd like to propose that all BBC journalists get themselves what we common folks like to call some General Knowledge. Who's with me?

[1] UPDATE: the exact quote is far worse.

On the role of the citizen, Mr Gove says this: "of those to whom much is given, much is expected". Although he doesn't credit him, this is almost an exact lift from John F Kennedy: "of those to whom much is given, much is required". Or to quote another line of JFK's: "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". Source.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel

Guess. Just guess.

Watch out for the following upcoming title: Bam! Your blow-by-blow guide to beating cancer.

Explain to me how…

A government which imposes a windfall tax on energy companies (MPs seek windfall tax on energy profits, FT) will manage to convince foreign energy companies to invest in Britain (EDF bid for British Energy in tatters, FT)? Martin Waller of the Times sets out very cogently why the Government must not listen to the Business and Enterprise Committee, and must reject any idea of imposing a "windfall tax" on energy companies.

A critical look at a conservative dating technique

No, nothing to do with Josh Harris. I quote a film-maker from a BBC article about his work covering the famed crossing by Philippe Petit in 1974 between the Twin Towers of New York.

"Everyone knows what happened to those buildings," continues the film-maker, who has lived in New York for 14 years and was in the city when the Towers were attacked.

"The film has a poignancy for that reason, but not one that needs to be overstated."

What interests me is that if, in two thousand years' time, an archaeologist dug up a copy of this film, with no supporting documentation and nothing other than the content itself to tell him how old it is, what date would this archaeologist assign?

In all likelihood, he'd say, "The Destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001 isn't mentioned, and such an important event would need to be mentioned in any film of this nature. Therefore, it must pre-date Sept. 11, 2001." But he'd be wrong, as this proves.

So what, then, of a far greater destruction: that of the Temple in AD70? It's common for conservative scholars to date texts early on the basis that the destruction of the Temple isn't mentioned. But why would the New Testament authors need to mention it? Perhaps everyone already knew about the destruction of the Temple, and hardly needed reminding. Of course, this doesn't prove anything about the age of any New Testament documentation [1], but it should show us that the fact that the Temple isn't mentioned anywhere in no way proves that the documents must pre-date the Great Jewish Revolt.

[1] To take one example, one could argue that the present tense in Hebrews suggests that the sacrificial system was still running at the time. On the other hand, Hebrews doesn't really mention the Temple itself at all, preferring to talk about the Tabernacle, which hadn't existed for thousands of year.

Theological news from the academic bubble

A calling to engage with the God hypothesis (THE, 31-Jul)

An encouraging article focussing on the work of a minister in the Church of Scotland to set up an academic Department of Theology within the University of the Highlands and Islands which is specified as an institution with an "evangelical and reformed ethos". The normal procedure is that specifically "evangelical" theological institutions are set up independently and then gain accreditation from a university. The BA course they offer looks really very good.

Wales spurns QAA advice to link up with unaccredited US Bible college (THE, 17-Jul)

The "normal procedure" is the way these things proceed in the States, too, and the American Trinity Theological Seminary has recently gained full accreditation from the University of Wales, which also accredits WEST (or ETCW, as I knew it). However, the American seminary, whose faculty—according to the all-knowing Wikipedia—once boasted John Warwick Montgomery (a regular on Issues, Etc.), is not formally recognised by any Federal or State educational organisation, bringing Wales in for no little criticism from academics whose idea of academic respectability is evidently, "Government-accredited". With the faculty composition including some LCMS and PCA ministers, I'm not so sure that the criticism is warranted, although of course, no-one this side of the pond (apart, one hopes, from the folk at Wales) really knows the quality of the degrees offered.

Leaps of faith and the gospel truth (THE, 17-Jul)

Kathy Ehrensperger, a senior lecturer in New Testament at the aforementioned University of Wales (one wonders what she thinks of some of the institutions they accredit?), reviews a new book flogging the old Christ -v- Christians delusion. And here's her second point of criticism—remember, she's a senior lecturer in New Testament, not just some random theology academic:

To present the Gospels as evidence, suggesting that this is "historical", is not sound scholarship.

Yikes.