Badger-tastic

My Supposed Hubris

2011-09-21T06:19:00.001-07:00

I do macroeconometrics, if pushed to define one of my research areas. This is a classic area for criticism by those towards the right of the political spectrum, not least Arnold Kling. Kling has an essay entitled Science of Hubris, in which he carries out his usual attack on what he calls scientism, i.e. any attempt to put really precise numbers on things that we can't be precise about. In Kling's mind, we just can't be precise about any kind of economic aggregate, notably GDP, or investment, because there's just too much going into them, and these aggregates are made up of very different things too.

So essentially, he dismisses the entire field of applied macroeconomics because statistical agencies aren't able to add things up particularly well, and because, well, economists shouldn't be thinking in such broad terms; they should only be thinking at the microeconomic level. Those who practice is, apparently, are the very epitome of hubris; that is, to have "excessive pride or self confidence" as my Mac's Dashboard dictionary tells me.

Of course, anyone who puts their head up above the parapet is liable to accusations of hypocrisy, but folk like Kling at EconLog, and Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek are remarkable examples of precisely this. Kling and Boudreax (and others on their respective blogs) have remarkable confidence in one thing, and one thing only: The price mechanism in a fully free market. They are scornful and incredibly bitingly sarcastic (esp. Boudreaux) of those who dare to suggest anything otherwise, who dare to imagine that government intervention could possibly be a useful thing. To be that requires a heck of a lot of hubris, from what I can see.

And it's not limited to that; Russ Roberts and David Henderson at EconLog had a number of posts about Ideological Turing Tests, and how those on each side of a debate characterise the other, declaring (of course), that those on the right, those nearer to the libertarian school of thinking, were much better than those anywhere else on the spectrum at accurately describing the position of their opponents. Then just today, a post about confidence, where the application is not to Austrians with their remarkable over-confidence in the price mechanism in many inappropriate contexts but, yes, you guessed it, Keynesians (or at least, their crude caricature of them). Utterly stunning the amount of times I think about pot calling kettle when I read Hayekian/Austrians on their blogs.

But back to macroeconometric models. What I struggle to understand is this. If an econometric model is built that happens to include all the relevant explanatory variables for an aggregate variable (e.g. inflation) such that the residuals are white noise, then to all intents and purposes, that aggregate variable has been explained. A humble presentation of such a model would not make bold predictions about the future (forecasting is entirely different to macroeconometrics), but would instead make suggestions at what had been learnt from this exercise. But Kling and those in his camp would disregard it entirely.

Kling et al suggest that one of the most dangerous things about Keynes and his teaching was that he let loose governments and convinced the common man that there was intellectual rigour behind their own whims and desires. Equivalently though, via their scepticism of absolutely everything other than what they previously believed in, Kling et al promote an unhelpful atmosphere of scepticism through which genuine academic progress is hindered - all because of their ideology rather than any desire to be scientific in their pursuit of knowledge.

What is the point of Libertarian Economists?

2011-09-19T05:15:00.001-07:00

What useful function to they perform? Economics is a practical discipline, studying the allocation of resources by (semi) rational agents in the context of conflicting interests. On of the agents that will always exist is the government - it's fair to say few examples of anarchy have succeeding, for whatever reason (man's desire for power and to control, probably mostly).

The mere existence of that government will mean that there will be an incentive for some to lobby it to further their interests - creating laws, tariffs, imposing taxes, whatever it may be.

So, what is more useful: Libertarians, who spend their entire time talking about how corrupt, inefficient and a pure waste of space government is, or other economists who attempt to study the nature of the beast for what is it, and try to devise the best possible solution given that government will always exist and hence incentives to manipulate government will always be there?

Libertarians, who essentially just sit on the side bleating on about how terrible things are, or other economists who actually try and understand the nature of these interactions in order that they may, in the future, reduce the problems of crony capitalism? In response to what I think the latter group of economists do, libertarians would provide some pithy quote from Hayek about how because of information constraints, it is silly of us to think we can design things better. How lame is that? This essentially lumps libertarians in with folk like Creationists who try to get in the way of learning more about the world around us.

I think you know where I stand. I think this is the aspect of libertarians that irritates me most of all - their lack of a constructive alternative that could constitute a stable equilibrium.

I should really stop....

2011-09-09T12:10:00.001-07:00

...however, I do keep reading blogs by libertarians. Here's one, where Arnold Kling describes another economist as using the "stupidest argument for stimulus". Apparently, that argument is that teachers are being laid off, and it's stupid because schools could instead be reducing salaries for teachers instead, if they valued these teachers so highly.

Now, of course Kling is averse to just about any argument in favour of fiscal stimulus because he is averse to just about any argument for government intervention it would seem (because the market always performs better - despite unending amounts of economic theory and empirical evidence to the contrary).

However, I think most of all it's just inconsistent of him. He says it's stupid because in economics there's always another way. Yet I suspect that when faced with the assertion "the deficit needs cutting", he wouldn't describe statements like "we must cut spending if we're going to cut the deficit" as stupid, even though perfectly equally, we could raise taxes to cut the deficit.

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I don't see what the difference is, and why Kling is also not advocating the stupidest of arguments, just because there is another perfectly reasonable way to do the same thing.

The Beveridge Curve

2011-03-15T00:56:00.001-07:00

Inspired by a few things, I had a little look into the Beveridge Curve recently. As the links will show, in the US something curious has happened to the Beveridge Curve since around the middle of 2008. It appears to have shifted right dramatically:

Some of the commentators in the links have asserted that the change happened after the US government extended the duration of unemployment benefits, although others have noted that even taking into account the theoretically most generous impact of this duration change would not explain all of the movement.

David Andolfatto appears to be on to something, comparing this shift in the Beveridge Curve to previous shifts in Beveridge Curves towards the end of recessions.

I've done a couple of things. First I've looked into the data. If one wants to spin an unemployment benefits story, one can. Simply put in dummy variables into a simple Beveridge curve regression; we get something like:

Here, Y is the vacancy rate, X is the unemployment rate. Standard errors are in parentheses. Clearly, if one wants to sell a structural break story, one can: Both the impact on the intercept (via dummy D_t) and the slopt (via the interaction of D and X) are strongly significant. The resulting regression lines look like:

Hence the intercept falls in size dramatically, as does the slop of the curve. Had this happened, it would be really scary stuff: Much higher unemployment rates would be able to coexist with very small declines in the vacancy rate.

However, a regression such as that just run suffers from many, many econometric problems. Not least both the unemployment rate and the vacancy rate bear all the hallmarks of non-stationary, unit-root time series, and hence a static regression of one on the other, as just carried out, could well be spurious. Additionally, there are many recognised factors that might shift the Beveridge Curve relationship, without affecting its slope. Economically plausibly, things other than the duration of benefits may have contributed to the scatter plots observed for the Beveridge Curve.

To investigate these possibilities we must specify a model that includes a number of lags of the relevant variables, and also extends the set of relevant variables from just the unemployment rate to other variables capturing the efficiency of the matching process (the current hiring rate for example could be a proxy), the level of long-term unemployed (proxy by those unemployed over 27 weeks), the level of frictional unemployment (those unemployed less than 5 weeks), and the level of labour mobility as well as simply the level/duration of benefits and the level of productivity and labour costs. This means a very large regression model.

However, one can employ an automatic model selection procedure called Autometrics (in OxMetrics 6) to help. This software is based on the General-to-specific methodology of Sir David F. Hendry and seeks to select the simplest possible model from an initially large model with many candidate explanatory variables. Such a procedure of model selection would actually find that the 2008 US legislation change to extend unemployment benefits was entirely uninformative for explaining the evolution of the Beveridge Curve, and would actually find a curve with a slope somewhere in-between the two found above, but a curve that is shifting left and right with labour mobility, with long-term unemployment and other factors. I'll save you the details, but I'm writing it up currently, and just plot you the following to give you some idea what was found:

The black line is the Beveridge Curve found after the more detailed econometric investigation allowing for factors that shift the Beveridge Curve. Hence one can see that without these additional variables we have not necessarily identified the Beveridge Curve just by eye-balling the scatter plot. We need to do serious econometric analysis based on economic theory, helpfully augmented by Autometrics, if we are to understand more of what is going on.

However, if you are simply informed by plots and not complicated econometric analysis, an alternative consideration of a scatter plot of the vacancy level and unemployment level in the UK over roughly the same time period may be more persuasive of the idea that it is not unemployment benefits causing what we've seen recently (since there has been no similar increase in the duration of benefits):

All in all, I'm going for the "it's not a structural break caused by the duration of benefits" story, along the lines of that proposed by David Andolfatto.

Surprising and unsurprising

2011-02-28T09:04:00.001-08:00

John B. Taylor has long been associated with monetary policy after his contributions to the field, most obviously encapsulated in the Taylor Rule. However, it would sound like he's heading in the direction that Paul Krugman took of getting so mired in politics that one seriously has to call into question his academic integrity. In this defence of a package to cut government spending, he says on the idea that cutting government spending might cause the economy to contract: "Nothing could be more contrary to basic economics, experience and facts"

Really? The basic economics that people tend to make use of when making suggestions that cutting government spending might just have a negative effect on the economy is national accounting identities which say that part of aggregate spending is government spending. The experience? Well, most economies that have tried it when they haven't had some positive external shock to help them (so we're talking currently of the UK and Ireland at the minimum, and many more could be found I'm sure). Facts? Well we've just noted a basic economic model, and given a few experiences to counter Taylor.

But of course, according to Taylor, we're just wrong, plain wrong. That's because he's basing what he says on some model that assumes immediate crowding in when governments reduce spending (in the absence of any evidence for such an effect - but Taylor says these models are more modern so that means they must be right!). Well how about that. A model which assumes that a fiscal contraction will be expansionary finds just that. Mindblowing. And to think people get disillusioned with economists. So in the US, this bill will pass, and sure enough growth won't follow, just like we're seeing in the UK currently. No wonder people like Krugman despair so much...

What Did They Expect?!

2011-02-22T17:50:00.001-08:00

It seems both Nick Clegg and David Willetts are surprised and disappointed that universities are thinking about charging the full £9000 they are allowed to charge students for an education under the Coalition's reforms.

Duh! You cut off university funding, and allow them to make it up by charging fees and then you're surprised they do that?!

Willetts's comments are bizarre - these universities may get caught out? Well duh! Of course they might, you're making it a marketplace! Then they'll change when they realise, instead of being told what to do by government...

Nick Clegg's comments though take the biscuit - it's not up to the universities what fees they set?! I thought that was the entire point of the reform? Seems like a very confused man these days Nick Clegg...

Blog Resurrection

2011-02-13T21:15:00.001-08:00

So it turns out that the link in the previous post no longer works. I left Oxford University and now I am employed by the University of Birmingham - although they don't give me webspace so I have to buy my own. Running a blog on my website though has turned out to be cumbersome, whereas these web based things are much more flexible and easy. And now I have a nice app from the Google Chrome Store to cumulate all my blogs into one window, well it's never been easier.

I probably have too many blogs, but I don't have one where I can simply write about anything, so that's what I think I'll resurrect this one for. I'm an avid reader of many blogs via Google Reader, and hence I often feel the need to comment, but don't know whether I really have an appropriate blog on which to do that commenting, so here goes...

New blog address

2008-09-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

I'm moving my blog to: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/students/james.reade/J_James_Reades_Website/Blog/Blog.html, hope you can head there instead of here, as I don't intend on writing any more stuff on here (at least until I change my mind again).

The role of economic theory

2008-06-27T06:29:00.000-07:00

I'm nearing the end of three conferences in various parts of Europe (it's a hard life being an academic at times), and the mix of papers at these conferences has meant that I've listened to a lot of papers that are purely theoretic, and a lot of papers that are purely empirical, and some others that are somewhere in between.

Being an applied person myself, my initial reaction to purely theoretical papers is: what's the point? For a paper to be of any use, my first thought goes, it must be empirically validated.

Of course, the problem here is, can a theory be empirically validated? And the answer is, a lot cannot. I listened to a paper this morning by Gerhard Illing on 'dancing banks', asking about the effect of bailing banks out that are failing in times of financial turmoil. This kind of people, theoretical in nature, cannot really be empirically validated, unless it so happened that some country already operated the kind of regime that Illing proposes, and another didn't.

Perhaps he could get hold of data for different countries, and try to measure how likely each country was to bail out its failing banks, and then get data on the amount of liquidity at various points in inter-bank financial markets, and try to come to some conclusions. However, measuring how likely a country is to bail out its banks is very hard indeed: it doesn't happen too often, and the actions of countries usually differs from words, as no government will say it's prepared to bail out failing banks, as this would encourage reckless behaviour.

So, there's clearly a number of papers for which empirical validation is impossible, particularly papers proposing reforms in governance, and other prescriptive papers.

This doesn't excuse papers like this one on the effect of financial markets being imperfect. These Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models make great predictions about the economy, about policy, and wider, yet rely on very flimsy relevance for the real world.

Such models claim to have "structure", and this is their great claim in the light of the Lucas critique of 1976, which pointed out that simple regression models may be undone in structural change because underlying parameters, such as those of personal preferences of individuals, change.

But what if these models have the wrong structure? Then they are no better than what came before, and no more illuminating than a simple regression model. And do they? For one thing, they assume a representative agent: i.e. everyone is the same and has the same preferences.

Yet in microeconomics, regression models are perfectly acceptable if they claim to explain less than 30% of the observed variance in a given data series; the reason? Unobserved heterogeneity between individuals. So if so much heterogeneity exists, precisely in the kinds of studies that the above DSGE models use to choose the important parameters for their models, how can these same DSGE models assume a representative agent?

The simple fact is, these models make far too great claims on far too important things given their total lack of empirical validation. Theory is by no means useless, it is vitally important, but when empirical validation is possible, it should be carried out.

God and politics

2008-06-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

According to this chap in the New York Times, the presidential campaign should be godless.

However, I'm very much with the writers of the first two comments (Bob S and Peter Kerry Powers). Why should religion be a private thing?

Certainly secularism, and in particular materialism, are anything but private: you deserve this, go on, treat yourself, etc., abound in the adverts. Why do the gods of democracy, and consumerism, get preference over God himself?

And why, if you've got good news, or a severe warning for others that you believe is based on firm evidence, should you not tell others about it? The government in the UK has told us that using our mobile phones while driving is dangerous, is that somehow immoral of them? On what "evidence" did they make that decision to implement a law and fund numerous advertising campaigns?

On another note, it's good to see Rick Warren inviting homosexuals into his church, thankfully showing God's love to people that are still loved by God just as much as anyone else. Far better to see than the abhorrent comments from Pat Robertson and John Hagee that are cited there.

Ian McEwan and Revelation

2008-06-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

Bit late, but last Sunday Ian McEwan, the novelist, wrote a very long article in the Guardian on prophets of doom, those who predict the end of the world.

Naturally, I had a lot of issues with the article! Not least, that it associates Christianity with people that regularly predict the end of the world. Now at first sight, that might seem a little obvious: of course that's what Christians do, isn't it? Well, just the week before, I listened to this sermon given by Julian Bidgood at St Ebbes church, and if you listen, you'll actually hear him mocking those that make such predictions, notably a chap called Michael Drosnin, who has apparently made numerous predictions about when the end will happen.

The issue is that Jesus explicitly tells Christians not to bother predicting. In Matthew 24 and 25 Jesus goes into great lengths on this, with a number of parables, not least that of the Ten Virgins, where the punchline is (25:13): "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour". So Christians, at least those following the teachings of Jesus (which is a fairly good description of a Christian really), should not be going about making apocalyptic predictions.

Another thing that bugged me about McEwan's article is the description of the God of Old Testament in the following way: "slave-owning, ethnic cleansing, infanticide, and genocide urged at various times by the jealous God of the Old Testament". I suspect infanticide comes from the bit about Isaac in Genesis 22, which is undoubtedly quite shocking, but the point is that the infanticide doesn't actually happen, and that God was testing Abraham. Slave-owning? There's little doubt that happened in the Old Testament, as it did in the New Testament (see the search here for all references in the Bible to slavery). Yet does that mean God urged it?

The other issue is that of the God of the Old Testament somehow being the angry vengeful God, but the New Testament God being one of love, peace, happiness etc. But that just doesn't stack up. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament, and in fact, one wouldn't make sense without the other. Jesus' death and resurrection can only be made sense of by looking at the Old Testament and reading that Jesus was long predicted, to be the savour of God's people. I've heard people say that basically the Bible is the Old Testament with the answers in the back.

But enough for now, I'm not a bible scholar, and in fact I need to get on with preparing a bible study right now....

Fuel prices

2008-05-31T08:41:00.000-07:00

So in that barometer of public opinion, a number of Facebook groups have appeared moaning about fuel prices.

They all seem to fail to notice that the rising price of fuel has little or nothing to do with the government - oil prices are rising, duh! Fuel prices have rocketed from about 80 or 90p only a few months ago to around £1.15. Now in that time, yes the government has raised fuel duty, but if I'm not mistaken, the rise was by 2p. So that leaves another 20+ pence contributed by the rising price of oil.

And really, why should the government lower the tax it puts on fuel? Why should the government encourage car usage? The answer, simply, is it shouldn't. We already use our cars far too much as it is, with everyone having a car each - the levels of congestion on the roads show that really, we don't need to use our cars any more than we already do. It's simply laziness and selfishness driving the current desire for lower fuel duties. Do we really care about the environment when it comes to the crunch? Clearly not...

And the haulage companies? All I can say is, stop moaning. I have no sympathy. There just isn't enough oil in the world to go round, and it usually works in the world that if something becomes too expensive, you adapt - you stop buying, or you move away from it. If a business isn't profitable, you move out of it. At least, that should be the response. But as Ronald Reagan once said: "The government's stance on taxation can be summed up as: if it moves, tax it, if it continues to move, regulate it, and if it stops moving, subsidise it". The government will probably end up subsidising nauseating truck drivers...

More bad news from FIFA HQ...

2008-05-31T02:58:00.001-07:00

It seems the plan to promote mediocrity was passed "overwhelmingly" by FIFA delegates. The plan is 6+5, limit the number of foreign players in your football team to 5. One of the reasons why apparently this was a good thing was that it would help national teams do better, because now their players won't be part of big squads at the best Premiership teams.

But instead, their players will be playing against bit-part players in crummy local leagues, or lower down the English footballing pyramid, if they like the money and the English countryside. How does this help national teams around Europe and the world?

And how do we square the English representative being against it? England is purported to be the team suffering most from foreign influence, having failed to qualify for Euro 2008. Yet it's only a couple of short years since England were touted as one of the favourites (wrongly!) for the World Cup in 2006. How fickle footballing commentators are, and how good it is that (apparently) the English footballing bodies understand a bit of economics.

Economists are overwhelmingly free-trade, as Greg Mankiw points out, for a number of reasons, not just that it gives a country a share of a bigger pie, but also philosophically. And it's pretty implausible that football is somehow immune from this kind of economic analysis. The overall output of English footballers will be greater with foreign competition, in terms of goals/quality football/silverware etc., because they have to produce it to survive. And this will rub off on the national team.

Football is notoriously unpredictable (part of its appeal), and fortunes can change quickly, particularly if badly managed (by an English manager in England's case!), which has more explanatory power for England's current malaise than foreign dominance: England failed to qualify for TWO World Cups in the 1970s, when the number of foreign players in England was minuscule.

As a final aside. The economics department in Oxford is foreign dominated. My masters class had at most 10% of students being English, and the ratio doesn't improve at Ph.D or postdoc (although perhaps slightly when you get to tenured staff). Is that a cause to introduce some idiotic 6+5 rule? Supervisors must have at least 50% of their students being English/domestic?

The quality would fall drastically as the best students from around the world then could not enter Oxford, and supervisors would be forced to take on poorer quality English students. I've benefitted massively from rubbing shoulders with students from all around the world of a very high quality, something that might not otherwise have been the case had UK academia had someone like Sepp Blatter as its figurehead.

Not more...

2008-05-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

So the BBC's done some research, and there aren't too many English players playing in the Premiership. The number has "alarmingly" dropped away this year, to 170 players. It might be worth noting this is 9 players less than 2002-03 season, something not mentioned at all in the report.

So, naturally, people talk about how we need quotas, and Sepp Blatter talks about his protectionist plan to have 5 domestic players in each team, and 6 overseas, as being the big solution. How exactly will that help? Basic economics says if you protect, you promote mediocrity. If we have quotas, yes it will mean English players will play, but will it make them any better?

The answer has to be: no. They'll play against lesser opposition. Fabio Capello's point is not really emphasised: the quantity of English players is down, but the quality is high. If we have quotas, soon we'll have the quantity, without the quality, because the players won't be tested in their domestic leagues against the best players in the world. English players will become complacent with their positions in teams because they can't be threatened by foreign competition.

Another very good point is also not picked up on, made this time by the Premier League itself. England failed to qualify for TWO World Cups in the 1970s, when the English league was filled with English players. The poor showing in the Euro Qualifiers has nothing at all to do with the number of foreign players in England. 10 were on the field in the Champions League Final last week, just to give an example.

However, FIFA appears to be pressing ahead with its protectionist plan, and disappointingly, the only argument against it that is cited is European regulations. Thank God for European competition regulations...

The infuriatingness of political correctness

2008-05-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

Read an article on the BBC website this morning: finally someone in the Church of England is remembering that the Church believes in Christianity!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7418957.stm

I find it astonishing that the Church isn't currently proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the only way to God - the Bible says that after all, and is very clear indeed on it. But it's a sad sign of the times that this message is seen as "offensive" to some and hence withdrawn. It is offensive, there's no doubt about that. But is that a reason to withdraw it, if it is correct?

Telling people to always wear seatbelts offends some, telling them to drive at 30mph not 40 offends some, but is it therefore wrong to say it?

There's a clear danger to of death if some of these guidelines are not upheld. If someone (say, the Church!) believes in the Bible, then they believe there's a clear danger of (spiritual) death if certain things are not said - so the Church should say that - if it believes in the Bible...

And the BBC Religious Affairs editor says how the move of this Christian in the Church of England will alienate Muslims at this delicate time. What Muslims is he talking about, and talking to? Does he regularly check how Muslims feel about Christians actually believing something?

Somehow I doubt it. I am not offended by a Muslim believing something different to me, nor threatened. I'm convinced in my belief in the Bible. I seriously wonder whether those who trumpet the politically correct line about not offending people are slightly insecure in their beliefs. Why shouldn't people be challenged by the beliefs of others? I'm more than happy to be challenged by anyone who wants to challenge me, and I'm sure that would be true of many Muslims too, and a good few atheists and agnostics.

That's one big moan off my chest for the time being...

Oxonomics Blog Article

2008-04-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

I made my debut yesterday: http://oxonomics.typepad.com/oxonomics/2008/04/does-beer-decre.html#comments

Greed, Westernisation and the Church

2008-03-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

I've just read a piece on the new Oxonomics blog about Modernisation and Westernisation, asking whether one can be "modern", or develop the "technology, customs and institutions which might herald their own intensive growth", without also developing Western morals.

I doubt I'll be able to coherently write my thoughts out, but I am sceptical that one can have the Western pursuit of more more more without Western lax morals, because these countries have looked enviously in the first place at the living standards in the West, and decided that they like them and want them, and this is surely only a hop, skip and a jump from greed, which dictates Western morals.

The desire to grow, grow, grow can surely only come from greed for more? Otherwise why wouldn't we be satisfied carrying doing just as well as before?

At least, the most abhorrent displays of "Western morals" anyway - showing off flash cars etc., but these are far removed from "Christian morals" anyway, morals which are based, incidentally, on gratitude, not guilt. Gratitude for the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ in the place of the Christian, motivating a response.

Not particularly related, Jean-Paul Carvalho, the author, makes a suggestion which rankles with me, as a Christian and an economist, hence something like a scientist. The "scientific and Darwinian revolutions undermined belief in a Christian God", Carvalho claims. Science explains the "how" about the universe, how it works, while Christianity gives a motivation, a "why" for it all, why are we here at all in the first place?

There is nothing undermining about finding out more of the world that God has created, if one is a Christian - about finding the rules and regulations God set in place. Additionally, there is nothing contradictory in God using evolution as a force in the world he created.

88%?

2008-03-02T05:04:00.000-08:00

Here's another bit of virulent anti-Europe talk from the UK. Apparently 88% of us want a referendum on some treaty or other, some watered down bit of paper which affects us in about zero ways.

That's 88% of a 36% turn out in a poll in some marginal Labour and Lib Dem constituencies. So that's not really 88% is it? And half the people in these areas didn't recieve ballot papers...

But who to listen to on this? Some say it's watered down so much it's not worth making a fuss about, others claim it's a disastrous encroachment of our national sovereignty. Both sides are probably tweaking things a little to back up their prior positions: either very pro-Europe, or anti-Europe.

Some sensible politics from the States

2008-03-02T04:57:00.000-08:00

So I have to admit I'm quite impressed with this Obama chap, and part of me would like to see him President. My preferences on US political parties are pretty limited by the fact I'll never vote for one or the other given I'm not American. But the kind of talk coming out of the Democrats that is anti-free trade is concerning, to put it mildly.

However, John McCain appears to be talking a lot more sense on this issue, saying it's crazy for the US to start threatening to renegotiate NAFTA or pull out.

It's certainly the case the US doesn't really practice what it preaches with regard free trade; the whole furore over steel a few years ago made that abundantly clear. And the recent fuss about Airbus being given a contract to build something for the US military has had a number of US politicians talking as if Europeans are barbarians or something. Wasn't the big criticism of Airbus that it was too protected by European governments?

Port Vale 0-3 Oldham Athletic

2008-03-02T02:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, I realised that Oldham were playing away, but were only playing down in Stoke, which is about an hour's drive from my parents' place in North East Manchester. So, having not yet been to an Oldham match the entire season (not since I was about 10 years old have I been able to say that), I decided I would head out and take in my first match of the season!

An hour's drive later, I arrived in Burslem, some suburb of Stoke, slightly delapidated and displaying the effects of what some would say is post-industrial Britain. I paid my £4 parking, deciding it was better to do that than find some chav breaking into my car when I returned to it (as has happened before when leaving my car near Oldham's ground for a home match!).

The chap on the turnstile relieved me of £19 for the joy of watching Port Vale, marooned at the bottom of the League One table with 5 wins from 33 matches so far, against Oldham, the epitome of mediocreness - played 33, won 11, drawn 11, lost 11.

I've been to Port Vale to watch Oldham play on at least two previous occasions: one Oldham won, and another Oldham lost. Oldham's usual trait at Port Vale is to lose: Port Vale are Oldham's bogey side, as the lingo goes. In fact, in my lifetime, Oldham had won just once at Port Vale, 12 years previously (and to my distress I had been there, making me feel old).

The first thing that hit me was the lack of people in the ground to watch the game. Numbers on the internet later told me Oldham took 785 supporters there, and "swelled" the attendance to 3,700. But if I looked around stadium, it was simply a mass of empty seats. Clearly being adrift at the bottom of the table has taken its toll on Port Vale.

Then the game began, and quickly I found that Oldham supporters haven't changed too much. They still sing about how much they hate other teams, rather than how much they like Oldham. They still sing about how they hate Man United, as if it matters! We were last in the same division at Man United 14 years ago now, and the chances of it happening again in the near future are slim to zero. But still, we do really hate them, apparently.

The game was played in windy conditions, on a pretty poor pitch, making it hardly the greatest spectacle ever. But not long in, on 21 minutes, a floated ball into the area found Oldham loanee Jordan Roberton, who hit a superb volley into the net. Sadly this was at the far end of the pitch, so it was hard to see its full glory. Nonetheless, 1-0 to Oldham!

Port Vale then came into the match, and almost certainly should have levelled the scores, first when a complete mix-up between an Oldham defender and keeper Crossley left the ball rolling across goal. Thankfully another defender ran in to hoof the ball away. Secondly, another defensive melee minutes later saw the ball fall to a Vale player about 3 yards out, but his shot cannoned off a defender and on to the cross bar. Another let off.

In fact, if I ever saw a match which confirmed that when you're near the bottom, it all goes against you, this was it. Oldham's keeper pulled off a great save to deny another attempt by Vale, but the second half was almost entirely one-way traffic. Port Vale hit the post, a player of theirs twice rounded the Oldham keeper, only in one case to miss the open goal, and in another case to be crowded out by defenders. Oldham's keeper also made a number of good saves.

But to add gross insult to injury, with 13 minutes left and Oldham still hanging on to their 1-0 lead by some miracle, a long ball forward hit a Vale defender, and almost rebounded past their goalkeeper for a spectacular own goal. The keeper though responded well, and saved the unfortunate ricochet. However, in a most bizarre decision, the referee decided this was a deliberate pass back to the goalkeeper, and awarded Oldham a free kick right in front of goal!

Few people, even the Oldham fans, could quite believe it, and understandably the Port Vale fans and players were livid. I'm not sure I ever want to condone intimidation of the referee, but I could certainly understand their frustrations, having worked so hard, been so close to getting a goal and a win finally, to be undone by a seriously bad mistake by the referee must have been a hard pill to swallow.

The pill became even harder to swallow when Oldham dispatched the free kick into the bottom of the goal, via Neal Eardley, their Welsh International full back. At 2-0, the game was almost up, though still there was time for a superb double save by Oldham's keeper to deny another almost certain goal.

Into injury time at the end of the game, a long ball forward saw an Oldham substitute Wolfrenden race on to it, and delightfully loft the ball over the goalkeeper to score Oldham's third. This gave the scoreline an even harsher look for Port Vale. I've certainly never been to watch a more unfair 3-0 scoreline before, but it was pleasing for me that Oldham were on the end of some good fortune...

More fun at Newcastle...

2008-03-02T02:50:00.000-08:00

Well, they've appointed two managers since the Summer, one's been sacked already, and that great bastion of unsettlement, the media, are trying to spread rumours the next one's on the way:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7273517.stm

Not only that, but we also get, thanks to the BBC's lay-out, an insightful comment from some Newcastle fan or other, saying how everyone now must be able to see that Keegan was the wrong choice.

I'd love to have his explanation. Keegan's come in, and been forced to deal with someone else's squad, a squad more geared towards defensive grit than attacking flair, and Keegan's management career has hardly been filled with defensively strong sides. He's also come into a team low on confidence, and been asked to turn it around - oh and in his first six or seven games he's had to face Arsenal twice and Manchester United.

So what the hell's he been playing at? How come he hasn't got Newcastle up to the top of the table?

Mind you, I am forgetting this is Newcastle, and they will always be a good source of entertaining news, not too dissimilar to Manchester City...

Hertford 0-3 Wolfson

2008-02-24T06:38:00.001-08:00

On a dull and overcast Saturday morning, the mighty Yellow and Reds of Wolfson-St. Cross made the short trip to Hertford College Sports Ground to take on the purple-clad Hertford College. In turning up, in Kevin Keegan’s famous words, Wolfson-St Cross “had three options; either they could win or they could lose”. Furthermore, in his pre-match analysis, Keegan had been heard to say “You can't do better than go away from home and get a draw,” yet in what turned out to be a pulsating, end-to-end, rip-roarer of a match, Wolfson-St Cross went one better and emerged as worthy winners by three goals to nil.

Keen to put their League and Cuppers seasons behind them, Wolfson-St Cross were nonetheless hoping that the form book would not go out of the window in this feisty encounter. In what was certainly a game of two halves the stronger team on paper, Wolfson-St Cross, took the ball by the horns and ran out victors.

Many have commented how Wolfson-St Cross were, of course, too good to go down last season, and additionally they were looking to display their bouncebackability following the disappointing Cuppers exit only days before. On a true jumpers-for-goalposts occasion (although there was netting on the goalposts), each team had to provide a referee for a half of this match.

Captain Saunders, once described by Ron Atkinson as “the rock that the team has grown from”, whom should you cut in half would bleed red and yellow, selected his strongest team, and sent them out to pit their wits against Hertford, in a game which could have been described as a six-pointer, but in reality it was a friendly and so points were not at stake.

David McCabe, Wolfson-St Cross’s defensive stalwart, boldly led the defensive line, with Chris Morris, that great servant to the Yellow and Red cause over the years, Thomas “the Bee” Bee, defensive workhorse and ever-present aerial threat, and Nick Ferriera, who always gives it 110%, joining him at the back. Behind this strong rearguard was Jonathan the keeper, his towering presence between the sticks and his ability to cope with everything thrown (and even kicked) at him, especially these modern footballs that move around a lot, has never failed to embolden the mighty Gold and Salmon Pinks. Jonathan also shows a great deal of experience, which is perhaps unsurprising, because as Kevin Keegan once remarked “goalkeepers aren’t born today until they are in their late twenties or thirties”.

In the centre of the park the elite footballing machines that are Christophe, Mustafa, Ed Mezzeti and Aban took position, ready to do battle and give their all, 110%, in the name of Wolfson-St Cross. These mighty four are known for their cool footballing heads, and their ability to make the football do the talking. Mezzetti is particularly renowned for his ability to find that vital, defensive-splitting cross in all situations. Mustafa, making his debut for the Red and Yellows, was keen to impress, and in the early stages was stroking the ball around the park with exquisite skill, and showing many a Purple defender a clean set of heels. Christophe’s silky skills on the ball, and imposing physical presence left the Hertford players visibly trembling in their boots; as all connected with Wolfson know, Christophe has great touch for a big man. Last but not least, Wolfson-St Cross were clearly benefitted by the presence of Aban, a true footballer’s footballer if ever there was one.

Up front, Rhodri Saunders and David Howells led the line. There wasn’t a blade of grass that these two dynamic and athletic footballing maestros did not cover in pursuit of glory for the Salmon Pink and Gold of Wolfson-St Cross. Both are honest and hard-working players and neither of them makes mistakes on purpose.

With a swirling wind, the early exchanges produced little. With neither side in the ascendancy, action was end-to-end, nip and tuck, and any lapse in concentration seemed likely to be costly. Both sides had set their stalls out, and had Wolfson-St Cross expected to cruise to victory, this match was proving once again that in football, there are no easy games. Nonetheless, Wolfson appeared to be winning many of those priceless second balls, and one felt that if they could get the ball down and play, they could take their opponents to the cleaners.

Early doors, a Wolfson corner from set-piece specialist Christophe found Saunders lurking on the edge of the penalty area. His shot rifled through the nearby defenders before taking a deflection. In the resulting defensive melee, and with the Hertford defence at sixes and sevens, Wolfson debutant Mustafa turned on a sixpence piece and hammered home the first goal of the morning with a cool, crisp finish. The deadlock was broken, and if ever there was a good time to score, this was it. The travelling supporters went wild.

At this stage, Hertford could have had few complaints about the scoreline, and furthermore their penalty claims were dismissed by the unscrupulous referee after a robust challenge from Chris “the chopper” Morris. That decision though, for Big Kev, “was almost certainly definitely wrong”. Nonetheless, Wolfson-St Cross survived this wake-up call with their lead intact. One of the few other causes for the blowing of the referee’s whistle during the first half was for a scything challenge from Ed “the razor” Mezzetti, a mistimed intervention which bore all the hallmarks of a classic striker’s challenge.

Hertford did respond well to this setback however, and penned Wolfson-St Cross back on numerous occasions, yet some dogged, full-blooded defensive challenges came to Wolfson-St Cross’s rescue on a number of occasions. On one particular occasion a heroic goal-line clearance came to Wolfson’s rescue; without that save, and with the rest of the Wolfson-St Cross defence all at sea, it would have almost certainly been a goal for Hertford. Each and every man in the Gold and Red shirts was playing with his heart on his sleeve, and it showed.

But Wolfson-St Cross stuck to their game plan, and arguably looked like they had a couple more gears left in the locker. With the seconds to go before the half-time break, Dave Howells missed a golden opportunity to double Wolfson St Cross’s lead. Having done all the hard work, he blazed high and wide with only the goalkeeper to beat. Ron Atkinson, when asked to comment on this moment in the game summed it up by saying: “He sliced the ball when he had it on a plate”. As the ball returned to earth from the stratosphere, the Hertford defenders were seen to be wiping snow from the ball as they recovered it and restarted the game with a goal kick. The ashen-faced striker promptly left the field, and in shame beat a hasty retreat to Heathrow airport, where he was rumoured to have paid cash for the first available flight to Seattle.

Nonetheless, unaffected by this turmoil, the referee blew the whistle for half-time, and Wolfson-St Cross enjoyed their feast of oranges and jaffa cakes, looking to recharge their batteries for what they anticipated would be a fiery response from the home side, a goal behind at the break. Changes were made at half time, with the enforced absence of Howells, and the availability of fresh legs in Ali and Jimmy. After a lengthly lay-off following surgery, Reade was making his much anticipated return to action for the Red and Yellows, and sure enough, within ten minutes of action, he was seen to be wheezing and reaching for the oxygen.

The anticipated second-half response from Hertford was met and rebutted by a sterling rearguard action; Wolfson-St Cross were making the bread and butter challenges that are a mainstay and a necessity of football at this high level, and while Hertford huffed and puffed, there was little sign of a breakthrough. The bobbly pitch meant that there was little hope that balls through might pick up pace off the surface, and with the defence and midfield working their socks off, Wolfson weathered the storm.

However, it was fair to say that if the Purples of Hertford were going to have a purple patch, this was it, but they were unable to turn their possession into goals. It might be a little harsh, but perhaps fair, to say that had they played on for the rest of the weekend, they wouldn’t have scored. As such, it came down to one incisive attacking move by the mighty Gold and Salmon Pinks to settle this scrappy affair. Chris Morris sent over a dangerous looking ball, and although it appeared that the Purple goalkeeper had dealt with the threat, Mustafa hustled the goalkeeper, who promptly spilled the ball at the feet of the erstwhile Wolfson-St Cross frontman. Mustafa retained his composure to slot the ball home, making no mistake and doubling the visiting side’s advantage.

Following their second goal, Wolfson-St Cross seemed home and dry, and Hertford didn’t seem to pose quite so much of a threat after this. Proving the old adage that “football's always easier when you've got the ball”, it was not long before Wolfson-St Cross notched a third goal. Another finely floated corner this time was met with a rasping volley by the Bee, and the Wolfson utility man, which looked dangerous as it was both rising and dipping at the same time. The Bee’s shot had the keeper beaten all ends up, and Wolfson had surely moved into an unassailable lead with their third goal, much to the delight of all connected with Wolfson-St Cross.

It was a shame that one team had to lose such a keenly fought contest, but the Wolfson-St Cross players had little time for mourning the misfortunes of their Hertford compatriots. It’s fair to say, again quoting that great source of wisdom that is Kevin Keegan, “there’ll be no siestas in Hertford tonight”.

What we learned in 2007...

2008-01-15T21:44:00.000-08:00

...and interesting article at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13view.html?_r=1&ex=1357966800&en=dbd1d26f9a2c3cb9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Thing that interested me most was the bit about risky, or predatory borrowing, i.e. that much of the debt problem isn't through pushy lenders, but people so desperate to borrow they'll fraudulently report their income as higher than it is. This is kind of neglected in the hysteria surrounding the current debt problems in the major industrialised countries, particularly the UK. Is it because it's easier to blame faceless multinational companies? Or is it just because we all want to point the finger at someone else other than ourselves?

Such behaviour simply reveals what people will do to sustain the kind of lifestyles we want, and is motivated by greed on the personal level, not just the corporate level. Not all that often commented on though in the tabloids it seems...

Oh and the other bit that interested me was the effect of cold - 700 people die in the US for each very cold day - a day with an average temperature of -30 or below. This coming Sunday the forecast here in Edmonton is -24...

Unsure...

2007-12-22T11:03:00.001-08:00

I can't work out what I think about this article on the religious right in Kansas in the US.

Is the article applauding the Christians in Kansas for stopping holding to what the Bible says? On the other hand, the kind of things that have come out of Kansas (God hates gays for example), are pretty dispicable and un-biblical in the extreme. God hates sin, that's for sure, but anyone homosexual is no different to anyone else in that we're all sinners, and God loves everyone enough to have sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross to take that sin upon himself so we can know God.

However, it seems the undertone of the article in the BBC is rather like most articles that come in the Economist - Christians are ok so long as they believe what everyone else believes - so long as they take evolution as the only plausible way we have got to where we have got, so long as they admit that, really, abortion's absolutely fine, so long as they don't have "outdated" views on sex, etc.

Yet what makes Christians distinct if they do that? Nothing. And what is a Christian, if it is not someone who follows Christ, hence believes in the Bible, hence takes his lead from the Bible? Now if that Bible states God created the world, and everything in it (like life - who are we to decide when to end it?), and states that sex is an amazing thing - but for marriage alone, then shouldn't Christians believe and argue in these things?

Beaten to it!

2007-12-21T06:33:00.000-08:00

It was my intention at some point to look into the effect of playing soccer at altitude after FIFA slapped a ban on playing football above 2,500 metres (8,125 feet) last year (and subsequently revoked it after protests). However, Patrick McSharry, another Oxford scholar, has beaten me to it!

Never mind...

Original Sin

2007-12-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

I've just returned from a conference on international economic development, an area which I'm not a huge expert by any stretch of the imagination - but a recent paper I've written with someone else happens to fall into this area of economics.

I was surprised that a number of people talked about original sin quite frequently - naturally this was the name some economists have given to some practice carried out in the financial sectors of economies - if a country can only borrow money denominated in foreign currency, then it is guily of original sin.

Naturally, once these countries begin to be able to borrow in their own currency, they can get around original sin. Now if the name wasn't already a bit of a misnomer, it certainly becomes it here. Sin is, as Wikipedia describes it, a Christian doctrine, and it can be defined simply as rejecting God. Sin cannot be got around by different practices, or by any human action, the Bible teaches. The only way around it is through trusting in the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross 2,000 odd years ago, something I'll be celebrating on Tuesday...

Deutschland ist rad!

2007-12-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is about Germany, but I love the place! Everything is so orderly and neat and tidy, things work, the people are usually very helpful indeed, and they have Christmas markets! And beer...

I'm in Bonn for a few days for a conference. I've roughly finished my presentation work (have to discuss someone else's paper and present my own (joint) paper tomorrow), and so I'm sitting back in my hotel room. The internet costs and is metered, while I have only a single bed, and no desk to work on, no ironing board, iron, or thingie to stick my rechargable toothbrush (which went flat in my case) into to recharge. But it's still great - I get free breakfast here, all I can eat breakfast no less. And I walk out of the hotel, two minutes down the road and I'm at the central station and the subway/U-bahn/underground, which takes me to the conference venue in minutes and minutes...

To To:, to CC:, or to BCC:?

2007-12-16T05:04:00.000-08:00

I just read an amusing article in the Economist about etiquette when new technology comes along. One of the questions about emailing was the To or BCC question (you're writing to many people, do you put their addresses in To or BCC?), and the article writer, without any ambiguity, said the answer was to BCC, with your own address in the To.

Now I hate getting emails that have done that, because you have no idea who else got the email. So I'm firmly a To person, if nothing else, because within friendship groups, others can re-use emails sent round if all addresses are in the To field, whereas that's not possible with BCC. Also it seems a little secretive and shady to put addresses in the BCC field. So I don't agree!

A bunch of moaners

2007-12-14T05:11:00.000-08:00

Well, England are about to, it seems, appoint an Italian, Fabio Capello, as the new national coach.

Yet it's greeted with a load of moaning, because he's not English. What happened to the last English manager? Hasn't he just produced possibly the worst set of performances imaginable given the quality of players before him?

And where are all these English managers queuing up to manage the team?

Paul Ince talks about how discouraging it is. Maybe that's England's problem is this kind of mentality. Capello won't be in the job forever, and there will be more chances in the future to manage England. It's hardly like it's banished forever the possibility the manager will be English.

Dawkins in Christian admission shock

2007-12-10T08:21:00.000-08:00

Richard Dawkins calls himself a cultural Christian - he enjoys singing carols, which begs the question - why does he like singing about things he completely disagrees with?!

Leaving Toronto

2007-12-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

It's nearing 9pm Eastern Time, and I have another two hours to kill at Toronto airport before catching my flight back to Heathrow. It's been an eventful few days here in Toronto. I arrived on Thursday evening, and quickly got acquainted to the notorious traffic I'm told Toronto suffers from. Even getting the bus back out to the airport tonight, a Sunday evening, took a long time as traffic was very heavy.

I certainly experienced that Canada gets cold, and even then I only experienced a mild version of this: at worst it was about -4 degrees here; while I've been here, it's been -29 in both Winnipeg and Edmonton, so it's been quite warm relatively here!

I've experienced the problem with not informing NatWest that I was going to be in Canada, as very quickly my debit card was blocked, and looking online, my balance hasn't been affected so it's unlikely to be fraud elsewhere. Thankfully my credit card remained useful.

I've remembered that Tim Hortons is pretty damn useful - they're cheap, and they're everywhere! Other things I've been reminded about: Not being allowed to cross the road apart from at specified crossings, and cars that can turn right when the lights are on red, having to ask for the washrooms and not the toilets (or even bathrooms apparently in Canada!), and the distinct lack of privacy afforded in public washrooms/bathrooms/toilets - big gaping hopes between the doors!

I enjoyed Toronto. It would have been better had the weather not been quite so cold, and not snowing, as it was today, on my day of sight-seeing. It meant that heading up the CN Tower, the world's largest building, didn't give particularly spectacular sights, because the top of the tower was obscured in clouds and visibility was low due to the snow.

But never mind, there'll always be some other time I'm sure to explore what Toronto has to offer. Toronto doesn't have numbered streets as far as I could work out; all had names, and slightly strange names like Bloor, and Yonge, and Harbord. They even have a railway station here, with real trains going to real places! I guess there's a lot more towns nearby that make a train service realistic in this part of Canada, whereas over in Alberta there's about 4 big towns a long way apart from each other.

Anyhow, enough rambling about Toronto.

What's going on at Newcastle?!

2007-12-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

You might think Newcastle fans never learn; they're calling for Sam Allardyce, a manager in charge for all of 16 matches so far, to go!

One day soon I'll investigate something which I'm certain of; a club with a stable manager over a number of years will succeed more than one that chops and changes all the time.

Newcastle have been chopping and changing for years now, and they've been doing badly as a result. Keegan was there a long time, and he did pretty well for them. The examples of other managers in a job a long time and doing well are many. Man Utd under Alex Ferguson, Crewe Alexandra under Dario Gradi, Leicester City under Martin O'Neill...

There are some exceptions; Jose Mourinho is one. That's why he should be the new England manager!

Economist Letters

2007-12-02T05:18:00.000-08:00

Sadly this link doesn't pull up the actual letter that caught my attention in this week's print copy of the Economist, but it was someone suggesting that the increase in church attendance and religiosity in the States was entirely driven by "non-spiritual" factors such as movement into suburbs, and a need for community from somewhere.

I'm quite sure this is true. The Bible is clear that Christianity is not man seeking God, but God seeking man. On our own, we try to avoid God, and keep Him out of our lives as much as we can. Right now I'm blogging and not doing something useful like communing with God in one of various ways (prayer, reading Bible, reading Christian-based literature). Thankfully God reaches out to us, and provides Jesus to take the punishment we deserve for this rejection of God (eternal separation from God and all He's created - i.e. everything - since that's what we short-sightedly want isn't it?!).

Thankfully Christianity isn't about what I do, but about what Jesus did.

So, just like part of my attendance at church is the social side of things (going to the pub after church), I'm sure a big part of the US attendance is similarly motivated. It's human nature after all, and what the Bible predicts fully well.

Does David Cameron ever shut up?

2007-12-02T05:14:00.000-08:00

I guess not, given he's leader of the opposition and has to try as best he can to get in power. However, constantly harping on and on about something that really doesn't appear to need harping on about don't really seem to me to be good strategy.

However I am biased. There's no way I ever want to see a Tory government in power ever again. There are Tories I sometimes like, and really wouldn't mind if they were in power. Michael Howard's not that bad, and I always liked Ken Clarke (probably because he wasn't anti-Europe, as most Tories appear to be), and Boris Johnson, for his comedy appeal.

But Cameron? I really hope we never have to have four or five plus years of him in power. On the other hand, I may well be in another country by then, which may make such a thing bearable. In the meantime, keep going Gordon...

Finally: an attendance prediction

2007-11-30T12:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it's reached December (it will have by the time the match I'm predicting takes place), and finally I've updated the dataset for the new season, and am predicting gates. I knew it would be a big job, and indeed at 8pm on a Friday night, having just spent three hours updating the dataset, my suspicions have been confirmed.

However, tomorrow afternoon Oldham entertain Crewe Alexandra (interestingly enough Crewe to go Oldham while I go to (near) Crewe for a family get-together tomorrow) in the FA Cup Second Round. Signs are Oldham are finally getting their act together. Hopefully in the weeks to come, the score prediction modelling will get back online too.

Attendances this season, well they have begun pretty much as they did last season - the Oldham public don't seem that convinced after the disappointment of missing out in the play-offs last season, and perhaps they've been right - so far Oldham have lost twice as many home matches as they've won. Thankfully a few away wins have meant Oldham are roughly mid-table now.

Anyhow, the prediction for the gate tomorrow is a slightly underwhelming 4587. I wonder how close it'll be... it certainly seems a roughly right ball-park figure - gates have been about there, the opposition is Crewe, they are local but not hugely well supported, it is the FA Cup, but then Oldham haven't won a home match for quite a while now - in fact since Crewe last visited Boundary Park at the end of September. Here's hoping for another win!

Update: this was supposed to be on my work blog website, but I posted it on the wrong one...

An amazing website!

2007-11-30T11:15:00.001-08:00

For a geek like me who likes football numbers, Tony Kempster's website is immense. It's also damn helpful for putting together any dataset on anthing at all football related, which is exactly what I'm currently doing, revamping my Oldham Athletic FC attendance prediction model...

Woohoo

2007-11-30T09:49:00.000-08:00

Today I spent a good amount of time re-organising my website. It needed it, and it's not been updated in a long time, and my research has (thankfully!) progressed a little.

Interest Rates

2007-11-28T10:00:00.001-08:00

They move in line, right? Economics says so. Within limits, you move your money to where it earns the most. If the Chinese interest rate is higher than the US one, you put your money there and earn, right? Though you factor in the exchange rate too, or at least the expected one for the point where you've earnt your interest and want the money back in your own currency. That's what uncovered interest parity says.

But since 1998 it doesn't look like that's what's been going on between China and the US, as the plot above shows. In fact it looks pretty much like the opposite has been happening. These are three month interbank interest rates, and they certainly seem to suggest that something else is at work. The exchange rate between the US and China has remained fixed this entire time, with the odd revaluation, suggesting something else is at work. Inflation differentials? Capital controls?

Answers on a postcard please...

Immigration

2007-11-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

A very good article in the Economist on immigration, and why it's not quite as bad as the Daily Mail might have us believe...

Politics...

2007-11-28T09:01:00.001-08:00

...what a joke! The BBC reports how yet again it seems all they're doing in the House of Commons is trade insults with each other instead of discussing the relative merits of different policies...

Naturally I'm sympathetic to Brown as a Labour voter, and certainly think Cameron should get on with his job of coming up with good alternative policy proposals rather than attacking Gordon Brown because some chap donated a load of money under different names. It's quite good Brown isn't like Stalin (as the Lib Dem "leader" suggested he once was like), and doesn't know every single little detail about his party. I'm happy to think Brown's more bothered about running the country than that...

Phillip Pullman

2007-11-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

I doubt I will read his books, nor see his film (I haven't read the Narnia books, Harry Potter or any of the Lord of the Rings stuff, and seen the first Narnia film and fifth Harry Potter) so I doubt I'll change here.

Plus given his scathing criticism of the purpose of the CS Lewis Narnia books - that's they are a thinly veiled attempt to indoctrinate children, a criticism which Pullman is quite guilty of himself - I'm quite put off.

But I'm intrigued by the idea that at the end of the third of his books (see BBC article), "God dies" - people often talk about God dying, or having died, as if his existence was dependent upon what we thought. It's not that often, however, that (say) a clay pot will kill its maker, and the same is true with us. Whether or not we believe in God, he is either out there or not; we can't kill him.

Pullman finds the God of the Bible offensive, and presents some other view of God that he's made up. We can all do this, but the Bible claims to be God's revelation to about himself to us (see John 1:1-18 as one of many bible passages that claim this), and can be argued to be persuasive and reliable.

Soccer matches decided by flipping/tossing a coin

2007-11-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

After a dubious question in a sports quiz on Saturday night, I decided to set out to prove that the only football match settled by a toss of a coin was not the European Championship semi-final in 1968 between Italy and the Soviet Union, as claimed. In fact, the Wikipedia entry I can find relating to this states that this was simply one particular match settled by a toss of a coin...

I'm pretty sure a match involving one of the US or England in a World Cup in the 1950s was settled by the toss of a coin from memory, but from Google I find that Spain was eliminated by Turkey in the 1954 World Cup by a toss of a coin.

The Guardian Unlimited website also tells me that Liverpool beat Cologne in 1964-5 in the European Cup quarter finals by the toss of a coin, though it does agree with the poser of the sports quiz question that the Italy-Soviet Union match was the most important to be decided by a coin toss!

Pride

2007-11-26T11:41:00.001-08:00

I heard a few great quotes from CS Lewis over the weekend on pride.

Before becoming a Christian, I agreed with everyone (I thought) that pride was a good thing. "Show some pride" is often an encouragement/insult thrown at people. Taking pride in one's neighbourhood or country is seen as a good thing. But is it? I don't think so any more, and CS Lewis puts it much better than I ever could, so I'll give you those quotes, which come from one of the best book I've ever read, Mere Christianity:

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Tony Blair's a religious nutter

2007-11-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

Well, he feared being labelled as that while Prime Minister so he kept it quiet...

I certainly find it a shame that it's deemed better for one's career in politics to keep it quiet about their faith in God, and that other politicians firmly believe that he wouldn't have got anywhere near as far as he got had he made it clear he was a Christian.

Interesting in a society that takes horoscopes seriously enough that they're in all the magazines and papers that belief in God is such a no-no...

Death Penalty Saves Lives?

2007-11-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

Does it? Apparently, some economists have run some regressions and decided there's a deterrent effect of between 3 and 18 lives.

Off away for the weekend (hurrah!), so none of my usual whitterings on such topics, but thanks to Holly for the tip off.

Four-limbed Wolfson star...

2007-11-23T06:03:00.001-08:00

Four-limbed Wolfson star...
Originally uploaded by jjreade

This came in Wolfson's disappointing 8-1 home defeat by Corpus-Linacre last weekend. I'm getting into sports photography, hopefully next weekend I'll get another chance to capture the mighty red and yellows, when they play Magdalen in the Oxford University Cuppers competition...

Try and celebration

2007-11-23T06:01:00.001-08:00

Try and celebration
Originally uploaded by jjreade

A few weeks back now, but this picture made it, thanks to Ed Mezzetti, into the Oxford Mail in their report on table-topping Chinnor Rugby Club.

Some good writing on the England situation...

2007-11-23T05:50:00.000-08:00

...from the Economist. Protectionism, in the form of quotas on foreign players will not change the fact our players are mediocre because little investment is going into grass roots development, compared to that in Europe. Lets hope the FA still have enough money to set up a system like the French system, because they churn out excellent players year after year in vast quantities, as do the Dutch and Spanish.

The BBC also opines on the passing of a golden generation of English footballers. Were they really all that good though? The proof ought to have been in the pudding, or results. These guys have been lacking. But not helped by the lack of grassroots development. They were helped by having to play week-in week-out against top world footballers. Long may that continue in a free football labour maket...

The Harlem Hot Stompers

2007-11-22T14:31:00.001-08:00

This is my dad playing in his band - he's on the piano far left. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I love it!

Home Internationals

2007-11-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

Once more there's talk of re-introducing home internationals, which are matches between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It probably wouldn't be a bad thing to create some kind of "friendly" matches that have a bit of an edge to them, in order that England, and the rest of the home nations (well, looks like Scotland and Ireland are doing well without them) get a bit of practice, especially since they've nothing better to do now next summer...

Why capitalism is best...

2007-11-22T05:02:00.000-08:00

A good article on why communism is doomed to failure, and the underlying cause of the "tradegy" is than mankind is not good, and is certainly not getting any better.

Thankfully there is a solution to all this.

McClaren's gone

2007-11-22T02:29:00.000-08:00

See the BBC article. I feel very sorry for the guy, it has to be the most horrible job in the entire UK, to be England team manager, probably worse even than Prime Minister! But after last night's shockingly poor performance and 3-2 home defeat to Croatia, which ensured England didn't qualify even for the European Championships, never mind the World Cup, there was little doubt he had to go.

And the blame game begins. Sure, McClaren put out a team that should have been able to work much more effectively as a unit, and ensure England at least got the draw they needed. But what about the over-played over-hyped players on the field? What were they doing when it mattered?

What about the media? How our media completely clobbers any player the moment they show any sign of weakness. Poor Scott Carson, his error conceded the first goal, but his subsequent saves to keep the scoreline reasonable as England continued to be hopeless and aimless, will be forgotten in the tabloids today. England has a small number of good goalkeepers, and our media continues to hound each one of them out of the England jersey for small errors committed here and there. It's far too much to hope that instead of berating each of these young goalkeepers, the media might build them up a little.

And what about the FA? Incompetent enough to leak announcement of Scolari's immenent appointment way back when, the Brazilian then got a quick idea of the kind of media scrum he was likely to face, and got out quick. Any quick appointment that followed that would easily be seen as the second (at best) choice. Curbishley moaned and moaned about not being talked to, but if this is true, that's pretty shocking. Curbishley would surely still make a good manager, having achieved a great deal with what he had at Charlton. Martin O'Neill would also have made a great choice.

Furthermore, the FA has presided over the watering down of international football to a dangerous extent. Top players are conveniently "injured" when friendly internationals come about, and in fact friendly internationals are largely ignored. Yet this is a far cry from only a few years ago, when it was said English players did not know how to play "friendly". Less practice playing together, less time as the clubs demand their players back asap, and release them late, means an ill-prepared England team.

Yet everyone's pointing the finger at the wrong thing - it's the number of foreigners in the Premiership, of course! But I've ranted enough. Sadly it seems the thing that most needs to be realised is that England are a second rate nation that thinks too highly of itself in footballing terms. I'm sure they'll recover and qualify for the next few tournaments, but it would be good if a dose of realism was injected into us all...

Spaghetti religion!

2007-11-21T06:55:00.000-08:00

Follow the link to a rather "special" website, home of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Evidently someone in the States has got a little fed up with the prevalence of Christianity and "Christian" reasoning over there, such as the debate about whether creation has a role in science teaching.

Does it? Well, insomuch as science tries to explain "why" we're here, then creation has some role, because science cannot ever explain "why" we're here. It might get some grasp on "how" we got here, but even then it's grasping at straws the further back we go. So why does science get to preach its faith about how we arrived?

It may be worth pointing out that as a graduate in the semi-science that is economics, I have a lot of time for science, and scientific investigation. I love trying to work out more about this world God's given us. But try as I might, I won't find out why this world is here by science alone.

Capping foreign players...

2007-11-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

Recently there have been more and more calls for some kind of cap on the number of foreign players playing in the Premiership. Steven Gerrard has joined the chorus begun by Steve Coppell and Alex Ferguson. However, recent mootings from the EU are that they wouldn't allow such a restriction on the movement of labour within Europe.

I have to admit I'm a bit in two minds on this. One has to ask, why are there so many players here in the first place? One reason is that Premiership clubs have an awful lot of money and so can afford the best players from around the world, another is the English players generally, for a given standard, are reputed to cost more than their overseas equivalents.

Another reason might be that the English players just aren't good enough. However, it doesn't follow that restricting the number of competing foreign players will increase this quality of English player. Right now, the best English players have to cut the mustard in an extremely competitive domestic league, and so those that are actually in the Premiership are world class.

Restrict that, and will English players necessarily be so good?

England are (in all likelihood) about to fail to qualify for the European Championships, which is a national embarrassment, yet it would bring an end to a run of five consecutive championships (World Cup or Euro Championships) that England have qualified for - which is a record, hence it doesn't follow that necessarily the England team is suffering that much for the current Premiership situation.

All in all, I think I'm against a quota, and not just for this reason - it's giving a false sense of quality, of achievement. Being in academia, where universities employ people from all over the world, I think I might feel a little uneasy to know that I only got my job because someone else couldn't have even applied for it. The same goes for English players in the Premiership - it's up to them to prove themselves!

Is health all that matters?

2007-11-12T04:25:00.000-08:00

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/11/where-would-you-rather-be-sick.html

Greg Mankiw waxes lyrical about health in the States - once you've controlled for murders, car accidents and other "premature deaths through non-health-related injury". Apparently the stats will look even better when obesity is controlled for.

His question is, where would you rather be sick? Clearly, the US is doing something right in terms of healthcare to some extent.

However, one has to ask about all those murders and car accidents. Presumably there is a higher chance in the States of being involved in both, if they have such a considerable effect there?

Furthermore, averages hide an awful lot. The distribution of "outcomes" of lives would be interesting. Is it skewed in the US due to their insurance-based system? Do the wealthy who can afford the better treatment live longer?

Good to see...

2007-11-09T00:54:00.001-08:00

...it's not just England that the Aussies thrash at cricket: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/7086351.stm

How often, if ever...

2007-11-09T00:39:00.000-08:00

is doing 45 in a 30 zone "safe"?! The only possibility I can think of it perhaps, maybe just, a dual carriageway going through a forested area that also happens to house a massive grave yard, which is 30 and used to be 40.

The BBC article is here.

Other than those oddities (and in those cases, you have to accept that the law's the law), 45 in a 30 zone is NOT safe, not matter what the enlightened Paul Smith of "Safe Speed" might think. The mind boggles that someone can actually say something like that.

Increasing the number of points people get for speeding offences is a fine (boom boom) idea - if someone (like me) gets 3 points for creeping up to 35mph in a 30 zone as he reached the top of a steep hill in his banger car, yet someone doing 45 or 50 in a 30 zone also gets 3 points, how is that fair, or right?

Both should be punished for sure, but one is dangerous, the other is not, and there ought to be better reflection of this. Drivers that drive too fast should be able to be banned after just two offences.

Also, Mr Smith says "we all know exceeding the speed limit isn't automatically dangerous," but it does automatically break the law, and it remains that in 99.9% of the cases, 45 in a 30 will be dangerous.

Answer: it's not. Bring on increased fines for dangerous drivers.

How does that work?!

2007-11-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7080301.stm

The Royal Mail thinks that it should have secular images on its Christmas stamps every other year and avoid "religious" ones. Last time I checked, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, and hence is a fairly Christian (not "religous") event.

It may have been taken over by industry, but it remains a Christian celebration, so it hardly seems inappropriate if stamps at Christmas have a Christian theme.

Oh dear oh dear

2007-11-01T02:19:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7072404.stm

Reading BBC articles on Christian groups makes me slightly sceptical about some of the article's accuracy, but on the other hand it wouldn't surprise me if some "Christians" do this kind of thing. Not only is cheering the deaths of others abhorrent, they also haven't got a clue about their Bibles either, and they also haven't, to use a tired old phrase, got a clue about what Jesus would do.

The Bible says the whole world is under the suspended sentence of death because of its rebellion against God, not particularly the US, and not for a particular sin. Jesus himself is pretty clear in Luke 13:1-3 - some people that had died in unfortunate circumstances were not worse sinners than anyone else. So these guys in the article, who claim to be Christian, by asserting that God punishes US soldiers for particular sins taking place in the US, are a long, long way off the mark.

In particular, Jesus clearly rejects the idea that one sin immediately leads to a judgement. Thankfully there is hope that everyone can avoid this suspended sentence - see here.

Given also that the Bible says that judgement is God's alone (1 Peter 2:23), and furthermore says that only if we repent of our sins can we be right with God (1 John 1:8-9), then these guys cheering deaths with placards saying "You're going to hell", and claiming that in the appeal court they'll win, are firstly casting judgements, and secondly unrepentent of their abhorrent and patently sinful behaviour.

Really makes you wonder...

Just the very next day...

2007-10-31T03:18:00.000-07:00

...I'm once again reminded why I have concerns about politicians:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7069011.stm

On the need for two signatures for abortion, MPs suggest that "the requirement did not serve a useful purpose and might be causing delays". I can see one purpose it serves - it makes it harder to take a life, which can't be a bad thing.

And thinking back to yesterday, if anyone argues for abortion on the grounds of rape, then they've already conceded abortion on demand is wrong.

Another draw...

2007-10-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

...another one we should have won, according to the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/7065127.stm

However, I must admit, I've been to a few matches where I've disagreed with the BBC reporter. Disappointing though, at some point soon we actually need to start scoring goals and winning matches. Currently it's a case of lose home games, and draw away ones. Not good enough really... come on Oldham!

Interesting indeed...

2007-10-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/10/27/do2702.xml

Abortion hardly seems to be the issue it is in the States here in the UK, but in the Torygraph, a newspaper I usually do my utmost to avoid, is a very interesting article on abortion, taking a clearly anti-abortionist line. I'm certainly against abortion on demand, and would fiercely oppose any attempts, as have recently been mooted, to allow abortion here on only one doctor's signature (against the current two).

However, I wouldn't claim to have seriously thought through answers to issues of rape and the possible resulting pregnancy. My initial thought is, just like a child concieved in infinitely happier circumstances, the child of a rape is human nontheless, and killing it is still killing it. Adoption would of course be an option, but then that would put the woman through nine months of being reminded (more so than otherwise perhaps?) of what happened. Anyhow, I'm not a woman so I'm not sure about whether I can really comment on something like that. I'll leave that to others and simply say I am also anti-abortion.

Good news!

2007-10-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4181629.stm

Bed bugs apparently don't thrive on unmade and dirty beds - get in!

Oh no!

2007-10-22T09:55:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7056501.stm

They're going to have a cull of badgers in the UK! To stop TB in cattle apparently. So it seems that will no longer be the badger!

God FAQ

2007-10-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

Actually, there's a proliferation of these websites, as Google points out, but the one in particular that I was directed to by my friend Tom is at http://www.400monkeys.com/God/.

It simply says "Q: Does God exist?", with the response "A: No".

Quite amusing, witty, but slightly unsatisfying. Why doesn't He? What evidence does the author, who turns out to be a chap called Alain Omer Duranceau, have for this? Well, he has none, simply claiming, as most do, that somehow the burden of proof falls on Christians (or God believers) in this case, and not atheists.

Yet atheists are making just as dramatic a claim as Christians are about the existence of God - why should they get away without having to reason why they've said what they've said? Seems a little unfair to me. Dawkins does talk a bit more, but mainly attacks Christians in misguided ways. Though I'm told he isn't atheists' main spokesman these days, he irritates them as much as he does Christians and agnostics, in his position for public understanding of science.

Either God exists, or He doesn't. Neither case will be proved by scientific reason, simply because science asks the "how?" questions, and is stumped by the "why?" question. But it also certainly isn't opinion. The Bible makes dramatic claims about God, as does the God FAQ. All good fun...

I like Scrabble, and I like writing

2007-10-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I've just finished a real live game of Scrabble. Not one of those online ones, great as they are. I like Scrabble, but I guess it's just like golf really, it can still be very frustrating. I think quite possibly I take it a bit too seriously - it did really affect my mood the other week, when on arriving home from a great road trip through the Rockies, into Vancouver and on to Vancouver Island, I found that a friend had got a seven-letter word and gone out (effectively) in a game against me, and won!

Or maybe that's just the competitive gene I have in me (not to excuse myself by genetics!), as my dad is currently bemoaning his poor strategy, as I just edged our game tonight by a couple of points.

I'm currently in a good mood about Scrabble, so I'm going to go and ruin it by playing a game of Scrabulous...

Missing Canada?

2007-10-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

Finally I've got round to setting up a blog where I can rant on things unrelated to my work. My "work" blog originally began as a way that I could try to link being a Christian with being an economist. That still runs, and is mainly work related, hence not really the place to write all the thoughts that come across my head that I think I'd like to write on something people might even choose to read.

I do wonder about the value of setting up a blog. I can rant about the world around me to my friends, so am I just spending more time online I could be spending socialising? Or am I spending more time that I should be working? I'm also not taking much in while I do this, just ranting my own self-declared important and interesting views. Maybe I should spend this time reading? Reading my Bible even, perhaps? Or doing some work? Or finally transferring all the numbers from my old phone to my new phone? Or watching the football?

Anyhow, I thought I'd lament on missing being in Canada, since I am. I don't think I'm missing being on holiday as such. Anyone who knows my girlfriend lives in Canada will know I have a good reason to miss it. I certainly miss her a lot and miss being in the same city as her. But there wasn't just that there. I was there during the autumn, so I didn't get the freezing cold winters they get (though even in September there was at least three frosts!), but then also I didn't get the wonderful hot summers I kept being told about. There's a lot more to learn about a place than you learn in one month, and for sure the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side. I think right about now it's browner over in Edmonton than here in England, and yellower in the summer, but maybe I do fancy that move away from Oxford.

I have a wonderful base in Oxford, and I've had five memorable years there. I have a great church to go to, I have many friends both in church and in the economic department, and there's no doubt I'd leave them behind. I'd have to attend a church which sung some of the most lame Christian songs I've ever heard, even despite otherwise being very biblically sound and forthright (this is Beulah Alliance church), and I'd be starting from nearly scratch in terms of friends. Would I be able to carry on doing economics? Well, I think I'd only be moving there if I got a job with a university, so yes I'd carry on doing economics. It could be pretty exciting too, and I wouldn't shut off working with people back here in Oxford, given the modern age and Skype, email, and super-fast internet connections.

Anyhow, this was all prompted by playing a track I listened to loads while out there last month, which is Mi Swing Es Tropical by Nickodemus, which is the salsa track off the recent Apple commercials. I'm sure I'll rant a lot more on this and on other things on here. Woohoo...