Our settling in period is finally complete with the purchase of household items that we took for granted at home, e.g., clothesdrying rack -- no Hills hoist in our garden-less flat! and moreover
we want to avoid using the dryer in the nearby laundromat as much as possible. So last weekend we walked around the city looking atsights for the first time. I will soon give an illustrated accountof the things we saw, and will see; but for the moment I want toeport two interesting ideas being floated in the UK, an admissionby the Tories of a dreadful mistake, and an observation about honors degrees.
There is a serious proposal to introduce a "carbon expenditure"card that one has to present to buy airline tickets, petrol, etc.-- anything that will contribute to CO2 emissions which cause global
warming. One your annual allocation is exceeded, you have to buy carbon credits from someone who still has a positive balance. This is a great idea. Another proposal is off-shore wind farms. It has
been calculated that wind energy could provide 20% of needs in thefuture. There is also anincreasing realization that fruit flown from remote countries (e.g., South Africa, New Zealand), so that people here can eat them out-of-season, comes at a carbon cost. Yours truly feels guilty enough to reduce such consumption, makingan exception for bananas which will never be in season in the UK.
The Tories have now admitted that their privatization of the railways (more than a decade ago under Thatcher) was a huge mistake. The system is now more expensively run and less safe, customers are being badly served, insufficient investment is being made for infrastructure improvement, etc. This outcome would have beenobvious to anyone who understands the economic peculiarity of
"natural monopolies" -- really Econ 101 stuff -- that you do NOT privatise them but instead you regulate them. However, when ideology gets in the way, well .... Technology sometimes vitiates natural monopolies, e.g., in telecommunications the advent of optic fibres, frequency division multiplex on copper, etc. made it possible for different services to be provided by different companies on the same "wire" to your house. So Telstra stopped being a natural monopoly, and nowhere is this clearer than in mobile telephony where the copper to your house is irrelevant. But NOBODY will build a rail track parallel to the existing one just so another company can use it. Likewise, NOBODY has yet invented a way to separate the water molecules from Sydney Water and an alternative (say) Macquarie Water. Hence, it would be an irrational act of ideology to privatise Cityrail or Sydney Water. But don't bet they won't do it -- they are ideologues.
At afternoon tea Prof John Fitch of the CSD here told me that itis now the case that nationally the average proportion of Hons Class I and Hons Class II/I among all graduates (including Pass) is over
50%. I wonder what the figure is in Australia?
we want to avoid using the dryer in the nearby laundromat as much as possible. So last weekend we walked around the city looking atsights for the first time. I will soon give an illustrated accountof the things we saw, and will see; but for the moment I want toeport two interesting ideas being floated in the UK, an admissionby the Tories of a dreadful mistake, and an observation about honors degrees.
There is a serious proposal to introduce a "carbon expenditure"card that one has to present to buy airline tickets, petrol, etc.-- anything that will contribute to CO2 emissions which cause global
warming. One your annual allocation is exceeded, you have to buy carbon credits from someone who still has a positive balance. This is a great idea. Another proposal is off-shore wind farms. It has
been calculated that wind energy could provide 20% of needs in thefuture. There is also anincreasing realization that fruit flown from remote countries (e.g., South Africa, New Zealand), so that people here can eat them out-of-season, comes at a carbon cost. Yours truly feels guilty enough to reduce such consumption, makingan exception for bananas which will never be in season in the UK.
The Tories have now admitted that their privatization of the railways (more than a decade ago under Thatcher) was a huge mistake. The system is now more expensively run and less safe, customers are being badly served, insufficient investment is being made for infrastructure improvement, etc. This outcome would have beenobvious to anyone who understands the economic peculiarity of
"natural monopolies" -- really Econ 101 stuff -- that you do NOT privatise them but instead you regulate them. However, when ideology gets in the way, well .... Technology sometimes vitiates natural monopolies, e.g., in telecommunications the advent of optic fibres, frequency division multiplex on copper, etc. made it possible for different services to be provided by different companies on the same "wire" to your house. So Telstra stopped being a natural monopoly, and nowhere is this clearer than in mobile telephony where the copper to your house is irrelevant. But NOBODY will build a rail track parallel to the existing one just so another company can use it. Likewise, NOBODY has yet invented a way to separate the water molecules from Sydney Water and an alternative (say) Macquarie Water. Hence, it would be an irrational act of ideology to privatise Cityrail or Sydney Water. But don't bet they won't do it -- they are ideologues.
At afternoon tea Prof John Fitch of the CSD here told me that itis now the case that nationally the average proportion of Hons Class I and Hons Class II/I among all graduates (including Pass) is over
50%. I wonder what the figure is in Australia?
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