Shocks and Change

Funny thing, the Chatham House rule. Introduced by the Chatham House thinktank to enable policy makers to speak more freely at seminars and meetings, people often assume it means you are sworn to complete secrecy about what was said. Not so. The actual rule reads “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”. Read More …

June 29th, 2008 | 1 Comment

The Rights and Wrongs of Food Miles

Professor Tim Lang, who invented the term ‘food miles’, is a gifted campaigner – it’s memorable, immediate and challenges consumers to take action to curb the environmental destruction caused by daft practices like shipping bottled water to markets on the other side of the world. But what if you’re one of the 1.5 million African farmers and labourers who grow flowers and vegetables for export, mainly to the UK? Read More …

June 26th, 2008 | 3 Comments

Publication day

That was a long day. Oxfam launched the book on Monday, so I head off for BBC radio’s Today programme at 6.15 in the morning, and finish with Al Jazeera TV news at past 10pm. The interviews are interspersed with interminable debates with the London media’s wonderfully globalized (and opinionated) cab drivers: the BBC guy is from Ghana, has lived in London for 25 years but sends his kids back to Ghana because the schools are stricter there. He owns 5 acres of pineapple farm, and wants to expand into air freighted pawpaws – inevitably, we get onto food miles. Read More …

June 24th, 2008 | 2 Comments

Can states be built?

Do you read Prospect magazine? If not, why not? I don’t always agree with it, but it gets the intellectual juices flowing. The current (June) issue includes a counterintuitive piece on food prices (high prices do not increase global hunger – I disagree), a brilliant essay arguing that video games foster collaboration, not individualism, (assuaging my parental guilt, as my teenage son is currently glued to Grand Theft Auto instead of exam revision) and, best of all, a great, angry blast on how the wrong kind of aid has failed to build effective states, and has in fact often undermined them. Read More …

June 21st, 2008 | 6 Comments

Has China Kicked Away the Ladder from other Poor Countries?

China’s unique combination of vast workforce, rock-bottom wages, high literacy, good infrastructure and political control over labour makes it able to out-compete its industrial rivals. China has driven down the prices of most manufactured goods, to the benefit of consumers the world over, but undercutting other developing country exporters in the process. Although skill shortages have led to recent wage pressures in some areas, with 150 million unemployed constituting an effectively infinite reserve army of labour, China will probably continue to be the world’s factory without approaching full employment (at which point wages would have to rise and other competitors can enter the market). Read More …

June 19th, 2008 | 2 Comments

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