A bit more #defenduss blogging. Imperial College, that most monopoly-minded of schools, has come out against the USS valuation and the EPF proposals. And it’s come out swinging, too – check out the statement here. We are disappointed that you appear to be focused on trying to fit your current proposed benefit solution to the…
Read More Imperial turns on the EPF – #defenduss newsReader Simon Hinrichsen’s MSc thesis on the Bank of England in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is here. He argues that the UK paid for the war by borrowing as much as France, but on better terms, and by printing much more money, but it also succeeded in keeping inflation lower and more stable. Inflation…
Read More How transparency met total corruption and they beat NapoleonIf you’ve got 104 spare minutes, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Eric “Winkle” Brown, legendary test pilot, gives a lecture to the Yeovilton branch of the RAeS. There are encounters with Winston Churchill, Frank Whittle, Wernher von Braun, Hermann Göring, Hanna Reitsch, and Heinrich Himmler. There are aircraft as wonderful as the Spitfire IX,…
Read More 104 great minutesVia Mike Otsuka on Facebook, here is a very important document for the future of USS and for UK pensions more broadly. A group of eminent statisticians, mathematicians, and economists have prepared a detailed critique of the USS valuation methodology, highlighting the points made here, as a letter to the USS Trustee. They argue that…
Read More #defenduss document alert: action this dayRemember this post? I never got around to making any more maps, but Duncan Stott’s map of English identity is suddenly relevant. Interesting map of Census data showing how many people identify as 'English': pic.twitter.com/lX3mKE32Ph — Duncan Stott (@DuncanStott) September 24, 2014 I had been planning to mock Daniel Davies for being an expert on…
Read More In which data visualisation solves a practical problemThis piece about Catalan #indyref crystallises everything I hate about what I call Euro-nationalism. It’s wonderful that they’re all so engaged: Kilted men wearing saltire capes and foam fingers on both hands danced in the aisles as “The Red Hot Chilli Pipers” played a bagpipe version of Don’t Stop Believing. Sorry. That was the other…
Read More Progressive as in “progressively reducing benefits for the poorest”A technology thing. I am getting increasingly annoyed with the process of getting notes I take on a Kindle back out of the device and into posts on this blog. The problems are numerous, but: Notes aren’t returned with any context Notes aren’t available in a sensible format The web page they show up on…
Read More #lazyweb: my notes are trapped in a Kindle.So, I’ve been remiss with the book blogging. Here goes. Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley is a group biography of the phone phreaks, possibly the original geek culture, exploiting the in-band signalling that phone companies relied on up to the late 70s for fun and if not profit, at least free calls. I liked…
Read More Books: Exploding the PhoneThere’s a lot that could be said about this weekend’s political entertainment, but the bit that stays with me is that I fear we’re losing the best thing about Ed Miliband, which was calm, sitzfleisch, and the ability to wait out stupid media bullshit. This really is something you want in a leader, and we…
Read More A bad signSo we’re waiting to know if the UCU’s higher education committee has decided to call off the action or not. It’s been a tense couple of weeks – the “EPF” came out with its super-extreme and deeply dodgy plans, the UCU rolled out, the universities threatened a variety of draconian punishments, and then they began…
Read More Waiting for #defenduss…