Brexit links

I have not read the withdrawal agreement and I don't have any well-developed opinion on it. But here are some links from people who appear to know something about the issue but have different views of it.

1. Bruno Maçães says that "With this deal the UK gets to have its cake and eat it too, just what everyone said was impossible", and links to this piece by Wolfgang Münchau in the FT. Maçães also pointed me to this, again in the FT but this time by Gideon Rachman. The FT is an organ of Remainer-dom, but these pieces struck me as well-balanced. They are generally pro-the agreement.

2. On the other hand, the exemplar of sane but very keen pro-Leave thought is Daniel Hannan. Here he makes this point "when the clever and amiable David Lidington urges us to back the withdrawal deal on grounds that “the 52 per cent get control of laws, money, borders + out of CFP; the 48 per cent get closer trade partnership with EU than Canada or any advanced economy + cooperation on police & security,” I really want to agree. // Liders, after all, is more or less taking the line I have been taking over the past two years. A 52-48 vote, as I kept telling anyone who’d listen, was not a mandate for a radical break, but for a phased and partial recovery of powers. When critics complained that we’d be left “half in, half out”, I’d retort that that was pretty much the way the nation had voted, and that there was no dishonour looking for a middle way." This is indeed what Hannan has been saying right from the moment the result came out, and it broadly similar to the view Rachman and Lidington take of the matter. But Hannan comes out against the deal, and he talks more directly to the details of the agreement than Rachman or Münchau. I think it is fair to say that it is the kind of agreement that a Remainer who thought immigration was a big issue in the referendum would reach, rather than the kind of agreement that Hannan and the best kinds of Leaver would reach. On the other hand, I'm sure that if Cameron had achieved what this deal is accused of being, i.e. Remain but with no freedom of movement, he would still be the Prime Minister. Take that as praise or criticism as you think fit.

3. On another note entirely, here is an article in the Irish Times explaining how a no-deal Brexit with WTO rules could work out very nicely for British-Irish border cooperation.

4. Not a short link, but the Government's assessment of the economic impact of Brexit is here. The only point I want to make is that it does not say that Brexit, no matter how hard or no-dealish, will make Britain or British people worse off. This is made clear right at the outset, on page 9: "It is expected that in all scenarios considered in this publication, the economy will continue to grow in the long run. The estimates show the relative impacts of different trading arrangements." The figures that are given in the report are the modelled differences between how much richer we will be in 2035-2036 depending on different assumptions as to trade and migration patterns. This is not a big distinction to homo economicus, who considers losses and foregone gains equably, but it matters to real people. Imagine saying "not working on Saturdays could make you X% poorer!" when you really just meant that someone could be X% richer if they worked on Saturdays. Or think of it more like this: how much money do I have to offer you, to be paid in 2036, to accept a political structure that you either do or do not want now? If you want the structure then I don't need to offer you anything. If you don't want it - if you regard it as akin to a servitude that condemns your grandchildren to the prospect of being conscripted to fight Russia in a war that does not concern you - it's going to take a bit more than a small percentage pay rise in 2036. And bear in mind that I am not promising you that money in 2036, I'm just telling you that it might happen if my assumptions are correct - and, by the way, you know that I favour the outcome I am trying to persuade you to accept. It would be very disappointing if this kind of analysis changes anyone's mind about Brexit.

Links you should read

1. Spaceships are now older than aeroplanes were when we flew our first spaceships.

2. There are lots of fake miniatures showing Islamic science that never existed. "The irony is that these fake miniatures and objects are the product of a well-intentioned desire: a desire to integrate Muslims into a global political community through the universal narrative of science." Quite. But are these miniatures showing Muslims the history they wish they had, or showing unbelievers the history they wish Muslims had had?

3. John McCain and the POW cover-up.

4. Bruno Maçães on China. When China is top dog, "It will be a world where moral relations will be more important than they are now, where China will feel that it deserves gratitude from other countries, that other countries have to respect the power that China has. It will be very moralized. And finally, it will be very opaque. The ideas of the alignment of transparency, of public reason, public accountability — those won’t be central anymore. This will be a world very similar to the security-clearance levels of the Department of Defense in the United States. Some people will know everything that is happening; others will know only a bit; others will know nothing. It will not be talked about openly in the newspapers. That’s already true, by the way: Someone researching and writing on the Belt and Road has a hard time getting the information we need, and it will only get worse from that point of view." The United States has, by most comparative standards I can think of, a remarkably open political culture. Think of the stimulus that was passed in response to the global financial crisis. This was a huge domestic policy decision. And it was taken in public. You will recall quite how much of the argument about what to do was played out publicly at the time, and how many memoirs and retrospective accounts have been published since. The equivalent Chinese decisions will be far more opaque to the idle observer.

5. This is an unsympathetic review of The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. "Her personal anecdotes take place in settings like Whole Foods and prenatal yoga class. Even more incriminating is her tendency to lapse into credulous catalogue-speak when describing the brands under analysis. For example, she claims that Marc by Marc Jacobs, the high-end designer’s more affordable diffusion line, “may not be made with the same tailoring or quality of materials as the flagship brand,” but it does “capture the bohemianism and subversiveness that has made the designer so celebrated and revered.” No one would use the word “revered” about a fashion designer who was not speaking for herself."

6. Lucy Kellaway bought a very silly house. But there is an endearingly romantic streak to the story: "When I rang the surveyor to remonstrate, she could not have been clearer: Do. Not. Buy. This. House." It's a nice contrast to her love of excessive tidiness.

7. Where lawyering and film-making intersect.

8. If you haven't been following the 'grievance studies' fake academic papers story, here is a good way in.

9. Why has the elite not adapted to Brexit? Part of the answer is this. Remain is a descendant of the open and outward-looking Britain that built the Empire. Remain is still where you find the people keenest on foreign military intervention. Indeed, I would suggest this as a good acid test for distinguishing among both left-wingers and right-wingers: find the ones who are willing to send in the troops (in a good cause of course, always in a good cause) and you'll find the Remainers. It is not the Leavers who want to go back to the Empire - they tend to want the country to stick to its knitting and sit quietly at home, leaving everyone else quietly in their homes too. It is the Remainers who want to keep a 'seat at the top table' or 'punching above our weight'. If you hear that Acheson quote about Great Britain having lost an empire and not yet having found a role, and it strikes you as profound, then you will be feeling the emotional pull of Remain for the British governing classes. But if it strikes you as a glib piece of nonsense that could apply to Romans, Athenians, Macedonians, Japanese, Khmer, Austrians ...

10. No progress in philosophy? Here is Agnes Callard: "We don’t demand progress in the fields of fashion or literature, because these things please us. Philosophy, by contrast, is bitter, and we want to know what good it will do us, and when, finally, it will be over. It is not pleasant to be told that maybe you don’t know who you are, or how to treat your friends, or how to be happy. It’s not pleasant to have it pointed out to you that maybe nothing you have ever done matters, or that, for all you know, there is nothing out there at all." Is it an empirical question whether it would be better not to do philosophy at all? Philosophers of psychology and psychologists of philosophers will have quite different takes on the matter.

11. Placebos. It is obvious once you think of it, but "virtually every clinical trial is a study of the placebo effect". "The placebo effect has been plaguing [the pharmaceutical] business for more than a half-century — since the placebo-controlled study became the clinical-trial gold standard, requiring a new drug to demonstrate a significant therapeutic benefit over placebo to gain F.D.A. approval. // That’s a bar that is becoming ever more difficult to surmount, because the placebo effect seems to be becoming stronger as time goes on. A 2015 study published in the journal Pain analyzed 84 clinical trials of pain medication conducted between 1990 and 2013 and found that in some cases the efficacy of placebo had grown sharply, narrowing the gap with the drugs’ effect from 27 percent on average to just 9 percent."

12. An article which - in the wokest way possible - argues that women and gay people are gullible idiots. "Gullible idiot"? Or "more likely to benefit from the placebo effect and less likely to suffer the unpleasantness of philosophy"?

South Korea

I have recently spent some time in Korea and feel, as everyone who briefly visits a foreign country feels, that I have a number of penetrating insights into the people and culture. I will however spare you these insights and instead share with you some details of my Facebook feed.

Since going to Korea, all the adverts in my Facebook feed are in Korean, which means that people’s birthday good wishes and ever so fascinating musings on the true meaning of Brexit are interspersed with videos about completely different things. And very interesting they are too.

There are adverts for Seoul, washing machines and televisions, but you can imagine these. More strikingly, I have seen a few adverts for paternity leave in Korea. Following up on one charming video showing fathers delighting in looking after babies and small children, I found out that the Korean Ministry of Employment and Labour runs the papanet4you.kr website, which pushes paternal involvement in child care and child-rearing. So, for example, here you can see that Korea is comparing its take-up of paternity leave with Nordic countries, asking the question “Why hesitate to leave” and answering it with information on what holds fathers back from taking paternity leave – and what the state is doing to change that, e.g. “Through the gender equality corporate culture campaign, it announced that it plans to positively solve the social gaze which obstructs the paternity leave of men!”. Not that long ago I would have guessed that Korea had similar social mores to China, but having been there I am now not at all surprised to find that paternity leave is being promoted.

I have also had adverts for a product that removes smells from clothes. The smells it mentions are pets, cigarettes, sweat and pork belly. The woman in the advert is wearing a lot of clothes so I can imagine that the product is very useful for her.

I have had also seen an advert in which a woman finds a spot on her face and responds by putting on one of these:

The odd thing is that the spot was on her forehead.

There is also this vibrating thing, which does not need to be on the wrist and, it seems, can be placed in many different positions on the body.

I am relying on Google Translate for the finer details. This is not quite foolproof. For example, in the “Father psychological support” section of the papanet4you website I saw this:

I decided not to watch that video.

Three diverting things

1. 

2. Gore Vidal on E Nesbit: "E. Nesbit’s failure in the United States is not entirely mysterious. We have always preferred how-to-do to let’s-imagine-that. In the last fifty years, considering our power and wealth, we have contributed relatively little in the way of new ideas of any sort. From radar to rocketry, we have had to rely on other societies for theory and invention. Our great contribution has been, characteristically, the assembly line." It's a good line, but it's not true. On the other hand, Vidal's fondness for Nesbit is a surprising point in his favour.

3. You can stay in a real chocolate house.