London is a global city, yet compared to other cities of its standing the cost of living in London is high. Londoners on average salaries spend 49% of their pay on rent, compared with 26% for those on average salaries outside the capital. The average extra costs for householders who are renting and using childcare is £6,000. Would-be homeowners in London need to earn £77,000 a year to get on the housing ladder[1]. Across the UK, a first-time buyer needs a minimum income of £41,000.
The London Fairness Commission’s recommendations include: Continue reading
Author Archives: Lin
Bernie, William Jennings Bryan and Progressivism
Since Sanders uttered these words, last May, his message hasn’t changed. Day after day, he has spoken in terms that haven’t been heard from a serious major-party candidate since William Jennings Bryan, the great prairie populist, who famously accused his opponent, William McKinley, and the moneyed interests who supported McKinley, of trying to “crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” (Bryan was referring to the gold standard, which he opposed.) In much the same way that Trump has labelled Sanders a Communist, the Republicans of Bryan’s day called him a fanatic who would wreck the American economy. Even some Democrats depicted Bryan as a dangerous radical with impractical policy proposals.
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How Civilian Control of the Military Has Become a Fantasy
Important piece.
The essence of the situation begins, but doesn’t end, with civilian control of the military, where direction, oversight, and final decision-making authority reside with duly elected and appointed civil officials. That’s a minimalist precondition for democracy. A more ideal version of the relationship would be civilian supremacy, where there is civically engaged public oversight of strategically competent legislative oversight of strategically competent executive oversight of a willingly accountable, self-policing military.
What we have today, instead, is the polar opposite: not civilian supremacy over, nor even civilian control of the military, but what could be characterized as civilian subjugation to the military, where civilian officials are largely militarily illiterate, more militaristic than the military itself, advocates for — rather than overseers of — the institution, and running scared politically (lest they be labeled weak on defense and security). Continue reading
How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Lightning Jet
The F-35 won’t be ready for combat until 2022
The Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) recently released a scathing assessment of the F-35 program as part of his annual report. Buried inside 48 pages of highly technical language is a gripping story of mismanagement, delayed tests, serious safety issues, a software nightmare, and maintenance problems crippling half the fleet at any given time.
The report makes clear just how far the F-35 program still has to go in the development process. Some of the technical challenges facing the program will take years to correct, and as a result, the F-35’s operationally demonstrated suitability for combat will not be known until 2022 at the earliest. While rumors that the program office would ask for a block buy of nearly 500 aircraft in the FY 2017 budget proposal did not pan out, officials have indicated they may make such a request next year. The DOT&E report clearly shows any such block commitments before 2022 are premature. Continue reading
Australia: dump F-35s or carry on sinking AU$?
I’m going to sell you a plane which can do things you can’t even fully describe. In fact, no one can, because it’s just an untested idea on paper. 14 years later, and you still don’t have a plane, but the price tag has more than doubled. And in fact the cost could keep rising. At the end of the day, you’ll pay whatever I ask.
Finally, this unfinished plane overheats on the tarmac. To cool it down, you have to open some of its doors every ten minutes, even when you’re flying. It’s not faster than other planes, and it doesn’t handle well. Chinese hackers could hack your plane out of the sky. And if you weigh less than 75 kilos and you need to eject, its helmet could actually kill you. Continue reading
Another software problem for F-35
The much maligned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has yet another problem with its software: the radar stops working requiring the pilot to turn it off and on again. Continue reading
Hair-trigger alert
Google Pentagon
Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google, will head a new Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing Silicon Valley innovation and best practices to the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.
Carter unveiled the new Defense Innovation Advisory Board with Schmidt during the annual RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco, saying it would give the Pentagon access to “the brightest technical minds focused on innovation.”
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Map of 4,500 Years of Global Conflict
Evidence-Based Policies
My main problem with RCTs is that they make us think about interventions, policies, and organizations in the wrong way. As opposed to the two or three designs that get tested slowly by RCTs (like putting tablets or flipcharts in schools), most social interventions have millions of design possibilities and outcomes depend on complex combinations between them. This leads to what the complexity scientist Stuart Kauffman calls a “rugged fitness landscape.” Continue reading
China: Who is militarising the South China Sea
China’s view.
It is the U.S. that has been enhancing military deployment in neighboring regions of theSouth China Sea.
The U.S. not only acquired access to eight military bases in the Philippines, thesuperpower has also continued increasing its military presence in Singapore and sentwarships and aircraft to the South China Sea.
What’s more, it has repeatedly pressured its allies and partners to conduct targetedmilitary drills and patrols to play up regional tension.
Besides selling weaponry to the Philippines, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries,the U.S. also repeatedly sent missile destroyers, strategic bombers and anti-submarinepatrol aircraft to approach or even enter relevant reefs and islands, as well as the adjacentwaters and air space of China’s Nansha and Xisha Islands. Such acts betray ambition toprovoke China.
NHS underfunded
In 2000 the UK spent 6.3% of its GDP on health once public and private spending is added together (this is done to take into account the social insurance schemes that exist in some countries). Under Labour this rose and by 2009 it had hit 8.8%, which was above the EU average in 2000.
But the boom years had also prompted other nations to increase their spending so that by 2009 the EU average (for the 14 other members compared in 2000) was now 10.1%.
Of course since then the global economy has had to cope with turbulent times and so spending on health has stopped rising. In the rest of the EU it has remained pretty constant, while in Britain it has fallen Continue reading
European Parliament voted for a ban on arms export to Saudi Arabia
The European Parliament has voted in favour of an EU-wide embargo on selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
A resolution calling for a ban on all weapons sales to the country was passed by 359 votes to 212, with 31 MEPs abstaining.
The non-binding motion calls on member states to stop selling weapons to the country, which is currently conducting a widely-criticised military operation in neighbouring Yemen marked by high civilian casualties.
Green investment bank loses its green purpose
What a joke!
The bank set up by the government to to fund green infrastructure and cited frequently by David Cameron as evidence of the UK’s leadership on climate change will no longer be required by law to invest in green schemes, under moves put forward by ministers.
Campaigners said that changes proposed on Tuesday by small business minister Anna Soubry effectively delete the clause enshrined in legislation that gives the green investment bank its green purpose.
SIPRI: International arms trade on the rise
The majority went to Asia and to the crisis region of the Middle East. Between the Persian Gulf and the Bosphorus, imports of heavy weapons – the SIPRI report is concerned only with these – rose by 61 percent. Between 2011 and 2015, India was the only country to import more weapons that Saudi Arabia – a land with just 30 million inhabitants. Compared with 2006–2010, the oil sheikhdom’s arms purchases have almost trebled. Number four in the list of the biggest importers of arms is the United Arab Emirates, with a population of barely five million. Turkey is number six.
SIPRI: Dramatic increase in arms imports in the Middle East
The international transfer of weapons to the Middle East has risen dramatically over the past five years, with Saudi Arabia’s imports for 2011-15 increasing by 275% compared with 2006–10, according to an authoritative report.
Overall, imports by states in the Middle East increased by 61%; imports by European states decreased by 41% over the same period. Britain sold more weapons to Saudi Arabia than to any other country. Saudi Arabia is also the biggest US arms market and buys more American arms than British, the report shows. Continue reading
“Universities as a service station for neocapitalism”
Across the globe, [the] critical distance [between universities and society at large] is now being diminished almost to nothing, as the institutions that produced Erasmus and John Milton, Einstein and Monty Python, capitulate to the hard-faced priorities of global capitalism.
Education should indeed be responsive to the needs of society. But this is not the same as regarding yourself as a service station for neocapitalism. In fact, you would tackle society’s needs a great deal more effectively were you to challenge this whole alienated model of learning.
According to the British state, all publicly funded academic research must now regard itself as part of the so-called knowledge economy, with a measurable impact on society.
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Americans do not think their miltiary is the most powerful in the world, even though it is
“I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Paul Selva stated during a Pentagon press briefing in early February. “I stand here today a person that’s worn this uniform for 35 years. At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet.” The American public, it seems, would beg to differ. According to a to a Gallup pollconducted the same week as Selva’s testimony, just 49 percent of Americans “think the United States is number one in the world militarily,” the fewest since the question was first asked in 1993. An equal number of Americans (49 percent) believed that the United States was “only one of several leading military powers.”
Researchers who receive government grants will be banned from using their results to lobby for changes to laws or regulations
The proposal – announced by the Cabinet Office earlier this month – would block researchers who receive government grants from using their results to lobby for changes to laws or regulations.
For example, an academic whose government-funded research showed that new regulations were proving particularly harmful to the homeless would not be able to call for policy change.
Tipping Point North South 