2010/08/30 22:03
I sometimes wonder whether the collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster in the West.Don't get me wrong, I think communism as practised in the USSR was a hideous construct, and I think the World as a whole is better off without it.However, when I blogged recently that salaries for ordinary people in the US have not risen in...
2010/08/24 22:46
If I haven't blogged very much about the new UK government, it's mainly because it's so hard to blog about from a Scottish perspective.Most of the interesting things they do don't apply to Scotland, and you can only blog so much about their deficit reduction plan.I've found two good articles about this.The first one is by Iain Macwhirter:[F]rom a Scottish...
2010/08/31 11:42
When I spent a summer holiday in Russia in the early '90s, and especially when I lived in Tbilisi in Georgia for a year (1996-97), private initiative was everywhere. People might have been dirt poor after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the upheaval also meant there were very few regulations, so ordinary people set up language schools in their living rooms, bakeries in their cellars, they sold fuel in their backyards or apples in the open-air market.
However, because it’s only the economy that has collapsed here, not the state, we still live under boom-time regulations.
Until recently, it was reasonable to assume that I could get a big loan from a bank to start my own business, either by presenting them with a business plan or by releasing equity in my house. Now most people would be turned down if they tried that.
But how do you start a business without money?
If I started selling home-baked treats to the high-school kids passing our house during their lunch break, I’m sure I’d get a nasty visit from some government official. The same would happen if I started brewing beer and selling it online, or if Phyllis set up a photo studio in our garage.
Of course some regulations need to stay in place, but I’m sure many more businesses would appear from nowhere if 90 percent of regulations were suspended for the next five years.
2010/08/29 23:52
I've made banoffee pie several times, and it always seems to go down well, so here's the recipe. It's based on a recipe from Good Housekeeping: Step-by-step Cookbook285 ml whipping creamPut the biscuits in a food processor and whiz to a crumb. Add the melted butter and ginger, and process for one minute to combine.Line a cake tin with greaseproof paper. Press the biscuit mixture into it. Pour the toffee sauce on top. Peel and slice the bananas, toss them...
2010/08/27 16:34
There's a brilliant (and scary) article in Der Spiegel's English edition.It's describing how the middle class in the US is getting poorer and poorer, with the effect that the country will soon have only two groups of people – rich and poor – if the development continues. (The lack of a middle class is, of course, a common trait of...
2010/08/23 23:00
Léon er nu begyndt på anden skoleuge, og han har fået lektier med hjem for første gang i dag.For det første skal han synge nogle talsange, som jeg sikkert ikke kender. :-(For det andet skal de øve ord, der kan...
2010/08/19 19:59
The A level results for England are here, and about 8% got an A*, while a plain A was awarded to 27% of pupils.As far as I can tell, this means that when mapping English grades to the ECTS grading...
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