The Economist
I’m a content subscriber to The Economist.
However, every three years I have to renew my subscription, which can be very entertaining.
Three years ago, I renewed fairly early, only to receive an offer of an increased rebate the day after I sent back my renewal letter. I wrote back to complain, and they refunded me the difference.
This time, I’ve been postponing renewing just in case they’d improve their offer again.
After receiving two letters, I thought at first it had worked, since it looked like the rebate had increased from 59% to 62%, or from £328.50 to £374.85.
However, the actual price is still £225. Given that the normal cover price for one year according to both letters is £194.95, I really don’t see how they can explain the difference.
I guess economists just can’t do their sums.
Open Skies
The Open Skies agreement that the EU negotiated with the US to replace the old agreements that individual EU states had with the US came into force today.
The effects at the moment is basically that lots of US airlines will start flying into London Heathrow (which they weren’t allowed to before), while Air France will fly across the Atlantic from Heathrow and British Airlines will do the same from Paris and Brussels.
However, many more changes are possible. For instance, Ryanair are planning to open an Atlantic operation, presumably flying from small European airports to small American ones.
I do wonder whether this long-term will be the demise of the big hub airports, given that we’re likely to get many more point-to-point connexions.
Beautiful Phyllis
I’m quite proud of this photo I took of Phyllis recently. 
Terminal 5
It’s been quite amusing reading about the disastrous opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5, in a Schadenfreude kind of way.
Fundamentally, I don’t understand why they started out with so many flights on the first day if they hadn’t performed extensive testing. I mean, you either test and test and test till you’re certain everything will work out perfectly, or you start out with very few flights and then gradually add more. Just jumping into the deep end without finding out first whether you can swim is just unprofessional. Check out this blog posting, too.
Apart from the shambolic opening, I also don’t understand why they didn’t separate domestic and international travel into two terminals. The recent stories about fingerprinting all passengers are all due to the fact that they’re mixing up the two groups after check-in and need to be able to separate them later. That’s just bad design. Heathrow has several terminals – why not use one for domestic flights and the others for international ones, rather than dividing them by airlines?
Internet Archive
I haven’t used the Internet Archive for a while, but today I tried it again.
For instance, here is a link to what this blog address pointed to in October of 2003.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to contain my earliest home pages any more – all the links on this page seem to point to the same (fairly recent) page.
It’s a shame I didn’t keep all the old versions myself – after all, I had a home page years before most people had even heard about the Internet.
A disappointing griddle
Phyllis gave me a griddle for my birthday, and it was beautiful.
Unfortunately, it needed to be seasoned in an oven before the first use, and given that we don’t have an oven here, it got delayed for a while.
Yesterday we were invited for lunch at Derek and Amanda’s place, and we brought it. Unfortunately, the seasoning covered their kitchen in smoke – I hope it’s not the last time they invite us round! 
Today I then finally got round to trying it out. I decided to make American pancakes for breakfast – finally I’d be able to make enough for all of us quickly, I thought.
But no, it was a pain: It got too hot over the burners, and not hot enough elsewhere. I guess it’s not thick enough to distribute the heat evenly. How annoying!
Wee sooky girrel
Anna loves to suck, and given that her mum won’t let her have a dummy, she has to use her thumb instead, just like her paternal grandmother (who was also not allowed dummies).
It is very cute, no?
The British Parliament
Although I’d prefer Scottish independence, if I can’t have that, I’d prefer a fully federal system in the UK. That would mean that the federal parliament should only deal with foreign affairs, macroeconomics, defense and a few other things.
Such a parliament should give ample representation to the smaller nations. The only reason that the English are allowed to dominate Westminster so heavily is that it is also their national parliament. As soon as the English had their own parliament to deal with schools, hospitals, traffic and so on, there would be no basis for this any more.
I think the fairest solution would be using the square-root of population figures.
I also think this would be a good opportunity to enfranchise the areas under the British Crown that are not part of the UK.
Given the current population figures, the new British Federal Parliament would look as follows:
| Nation | Population | Seats |
|---|---|---|
| England | 50,762,900 | 71 |
| Scotland | 5,116,900 | 23 |
| Wales | 2,958,600 | 17 |
| Northern Ireland | 1,710,300 | 13 |
| Jersey | 89,300 | 3 |
| Isle of Man | 80,058 | 3 |
| Guernsey | 65,573 | 3 |
| Bermuda | 64,482 | 3 |
| Cayman Islands | 46,600 | 2 |
| Gibraltar | 28,875 | 2 |
| Virgin Islands | 21,730 | 1 |
| Turks and Caicos | 21,500 | 1 |
| Anguilla | 12,800 | 1 |
| St Helena | 6,563 | 1 |
| Pitcairn | 67 | 0 |
| 61,013,215 | 147 |
Det rene, det store og det borgerlige
Pittelkow skriver i dag: “Engang var SF partiet, der stod for den rene vare. Socialdemokratiet var det store parti. Og de radikale var partiet, der rakte over til de borgerlige.”
Han fortsætter så med en analyse, jeg ikke er enig i.
Så vidt jeg kan se, er udviklingen, at DrV er ved at blive partiet, der står for den rene vare, især efter introduktionen af Søvndals nye retorik. Socialdemokraterne er ved at blive partiet, der rækker over til de borgerlige – de er i hvert fald meget ofte ukritisk enige med regeringen. Og SF bliver måske nu til det store parti.
Hvis den analyse er korrekt, vil det lede til nye regeringskonstellationer. Man få forvente mange SF-ledede regeringer i koalition med Socialdemokraterne (og måske Ny Alliance, hvis de overlever), men med DrV som støtteparti uden megen indflydelse. Og man vil måske nogle gange se S i koalition med V og C, på samme måde som VKR i gamle dage.
Teaching children to drink
There was an article in The Herald yesterday about a proposal made by an SNP MSP to increase the age at which people can legally buy alcohol to 21.
I can see quite a few reasons why this is a silly idea.
First of all, it would mean that lots of people would have left home by the time they started started drinking, thus making it impossible for their parents to supervise their drinking habit and teaching them responsible drinking.
Second, it would mean that most people would have been driving for several years by the time they started to drink, which could make them quite unprepared for the effect of alcohol on the ability to drive.
Third, it would just make it more attractive to go binge-drinking in places where drinking would still be legal at a younger age, whether Ireland, England or France.
Fourth, it would mean that drugs such as ecstasy wouldn’t just be cheaper than beer in many establishments, but both would be illegal for young people, so it would be even harder to prevent youngsters from taking up drugs.
Instead of raising the legal age for buying alcohol, I think it should be lowered to 13 when the young person is accompanied by much older people (such as their parents), so long as only moderate amounts are ordered. In that way, young people could learn to drink responsibly by being served a pint or a glass of wine with their food, so that the novelty effect would have worn off by the time they could drink on their own.
Furthermore, there should be a clampdown on serving visibly drunk customers alcohol in pubs and elsewhere, again to encourage responsible drinking.