Ross\'s Author Archive
Ross • 19th Aug 2010 • Living • clothes, dress, fashion, Friends, london, styles
Winston, a long-standing friend and one-time flatmate, is a uniquely stylish dresser. He wears bow ties with shorts; bright checked trousers with modified buttons; and women’s knitwear to better fit his slim frame. His blog, Le Vrai Winston, and his writing for other fashion sites, has led to a shortlisting in Esquire‘s Best Dressed Man awards, and to mentions in BA’s Highlife Magazine. I find it reassuring to think that in some cases, people do get recognised for their enthusiasm and passion. I am also glad that there remain a small supply of wonderfully colourful people like Winston who spurn every attempt of society to make them conform.
Ross • 15th Aug 2010 • Learning, Thinking • commodities, eating, fish, food, lobster
Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats.
From Gourmet magazine. It’s notable that gin and oysters were also once proletarian fare. Will Turkey Twizzlers and Ginster’s pies be tomorrow’s delicacies? Less flippantly, there probably is hope for oats, alfalfa and various grains we once fed animals but are no eating ourselves.
Ross • 5th Aug 2010 • Living • africa, book, culture, diplomacy, novel
I have just finished John Le Carré’s Mission Song. It is an thriller, set in the shadier realms of British international relations. The details of the book are well-researched, the plot gripping. However, my enjoyment was marred by the mental stretch necessary to imagine that the protagonist could be so monumentally naive. Typically, the novel ends in a le Carréan anticlimax. If you’ve read The Constant Gardener (or seen the film) you’ll have some idea where the plot is going. Ultimately, nowhere much. The novel is an interesting context piece, but it won’t change your life or outlook.
Ross • 4th Aug 2010 • Living • carmarthen, eating, food, restaurant, wales
Because this place deserves all the publicity and custom it can manage, here’s my user review from Wales in Style:
I live in London and regularly eat at Michelin-starred places in the City, West End and throughout the South East. The food at Y Polyn is easily on a par with these restaurants, but the startling thing is that it manages to deliver this with a wonderful informality and easiness that is quite extraordinary. No fanciness here, just excellent food, in very pleasant surroundings, cooked by people who care about what their guests eat, not what they are wearing.
If you are within 50 miles, eat there. Book ahead.
Ross • 29th Jul 2010 • Thinking • business, economics, free market, health, heart, medicine, microeconomics, NHS, profit
The next time a zealot headbanger doorsteps you to tell you how bringing proft motives into the NHS is evil, kindly point them to this BBC article:
With its varnished wooden floors and plush sofas the European Scanning Centre looks more like a boutique hotel than somewhere to scan your heart. But it is the first in the country to have a CT scanner that can produce a three-dimensional picture of a patient’s heart with a very low radiation dose….
…Having a CT scan is much safer than an angiogram, where one in every 500 patients suffers a heart attack or stroke….
…The scan is also cheaper, says Dr Kostas Manis, a GP in Bexley. “The angiogram is £1,300, and the private clinic scanner is £900 and we’re negotiating to bring the figure down to £600.”
A better medical service, in nicer surroundings, with less risk, and at less cost. This is why I love competitive markets.
Ross • 26th Jul 2010 • Learning • banking, business, economics, finance
…private sector balance sheets will always fail at internalizing systemic risk. The official sector will always have to step in to help.
This is one of the conclusions of a New York Fed paper (PDF) on the shadow banking system, which provides a good overview and definition of the sector.
Ross • 21st Jul 2010 • Living, Thinking • britain, economics, finance, government, inflation, investments, macroeconomy, personal finance, savings, uk
The Economist‘s Buttonwood notes that NS&I have just withdrawn their index-linked savings certificates. Like Buttonwood, my wife and I hold these products. Buttonwood thinks that “the government is preparing the ground for a round of debt-eroding inflation.” It’s hard to disagree – NS&I product offers can be treated as revealed preferences, and they now look as if they prefer paying (much) larger nominal rates than (much) smaller real rates. I can think of no other reason why this should be the case, other than inflation expectations. This is likely to be good for the dollar, good for gold and good for UK exporters. But my 2011 ski season may need to be scaled back – perhaps I should have bought slightly more of the certificates.
Ross • 20th Jul 2010 • Learning • ethics, god, religion
Comte’s thinking on religion had as its starting point a characteristically blunt observation that, in the modern world, thanks to the discoveries of science, it would no longer be possible for anyone intelligent or robust to believe in God. Faith would henceforth be limited to the uneducated, the fanatical, women, children and those in the final months of incurable diseases. At the same time Comte recognised, as many of his more rational contemporaries did not, that a secular society devoted solely to financial accumulation and romantic love and devoid of any sources of consolation, transcendent awe or solidarity would be prey to untenable social and emotional ills.
This piece from the New Statesman is worth reading in full.
Ross • 15th Jul 2010 • Learning, Thinking • bonds, business, crime, finance, green, justice, offender, policy, prison, social
During the Peterborough Prison pilot, experienced social sector organisations, such as St Giles Trust, will provide intensive support to 3,000 short-term prisoners over a six year period, both inside prison and after release, to help them resettle into the community. If this initiative reduces re-offending by 7.5%, or more, investors will receive from Government a share of the long term savings. If the SiB delivers a drop in re-offending beyond the threshold, investors will receive an increasing return the greater the success at achieving the social outcome, up to a maximum of 13%.
A colleague told me about these bonds (pdf) this afternoon. They are designed by Social Finance. Bonds with coupons linked to policy outcomes appear to be experiencing a surge in interest at the moment – note also the World Bank’s 2009 Green Bonds and US’s Qualified Green Building and Sustainable Design Project Bonds.
I like the idea of green financial products, but why stop at bonds? Going further in this direction could get us all the way to a Hansonian Policy Analysis Market.
Ross • 10th Jun 2010 • Thinking • apple, design, google, internet, tech, technology, web
Fear of Google’s knowledge about our every purchase, every web click, every move in the physical world was trumped by the public’s craving for information about anything, anywhere. It was an uneasy truce with the devil: give them your innermost secrets, and you can find anything your heart desires.
That’s from a great essay comparing Google to Apple.
