Hamish Malcolm

I was devastated to learn this morning that a friend of mine has passed away. Hamish Malcolm died of cardiac arrest a week short of his 26th birthday. I came to know Hamish this year as a friend, and occasionally rival, within the Political Interest Society. Hamish was a passionate lefty who believed strongly in justice and tolerance, but always managed to keep a sense of humour, often richly sarcastic. Having spent most of his life in Britain, that was where his heart lied, although he was rapidly becoming an honourary Australian after settling in Melbourne to continue studying.

Hamish had a significant on-line presence. You can read his blog Omission of Mercy as well as his lively blogger profile.

Here is the email recieved from the Melbourne University Debating Society explaining of Hamish's death and the events to celebrate his life:

Dear VCs Cuppers,

MUDS has recently received some very sad news regarding one of our members, Hamish Malcolm, who you may have met, chatted to and debated with or against during the VCs cup. He passed away on Wednesday, following a cardiac arrest, aged 25. Hamish was extremely friendly and always keen to be involved with MUDS and he will be sorely missed.

Hamish's funeral will be held this Monday, Oct. 31st 1:00 pm (please arrive early) at Lilydale Cemetery & Memorial Park 126-128 Victoria Rd.

His family has requested that the dress for the funeral be very casual (ie: jeans, cargos, etc.) and that no flowers be brought as the family is providing one floral tribute.

The following night Hamish's good friend Ali Lemer has organised to celebrate Hamish's 26th Birthday which would have been that day. So on Tuesday, Nov. 1st 7:30 pm at 6/48 Leicester Street (between Victoria and Queensberry, opposite Queen Vic Market) Carlton please join us to remember the good times. If any of you have photos of Hamish, Ali was making a slideshow for Tueday and would greatly appreciate any help in this regard. If you can help or need to contact Ali her phone number is 04xx xxx xxx and email a.lemer@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au.

If any of you would like more information regarding either of these events please contact us.

We hope you are all well,
and best of luck with assessment period,

MUDS

Rest in Peace, Hamish.



Hamish Malcolm, 1979-2005

Election week thoughts

Crossposted from Ari on the Web. What did other people make of election week?:

As election week 2005 at Melbourne University comes to an end today, it's worth reflecting on one of the more peaceful campaigns in recent years. Having seen the skullduggery of the 2003 election in the State of the Union (the official website even refers to it with the adjective 'skullduggerous' - nice work, lads), one expects all sorts of silliness to be going on. To the casual observer, though, there was little smoke nor heat.

The most visable presence on campus was the Left Union ticket, who were out in force last week and again during the election. Combining the considerable resources (oh, the irony) of Socialist Alternative and the left wing of the Labor Party, Left Union were the well organised voice of the left. In what was a real trademark of the entire election, there were few issues of substance raised by the Left Union folks. Apparently, they're really truely absolutely positively opposing VSU. And the war in Iraq. Still, these guys in their suave red t-shirts are an electoral force to be reckoned with.

The rival on the left were Activate, replete in Green. These guys are the non-aligned left, without a formal politial affiliation but their hearts in the right place (shit that sounded patronising). These guys were running on many of the same issues as Left Union, although with slightly less Stalinist zeal, which is most definitely a good thing. Given the connection with Students for Change, a worthwhile group trying to inject some integrity and transperancy into a union which desperately needs it, these guys were focused on life on campus as well as off it. For a fence-stradling centrist student like AOTW, Activate was the lefty ticket I could vote for with confidence.

Surprisingly disorganised this time around was the right wing (yeah yeah 'a broad cross-section of students' and whatever other spin they might want to try) coalition of Labor Right, Liberals and AUJS, under the banner of Fusion. Completely unsighted on campus until election week, they were later hard to miss in their camp bright pink t-shirts. Fusion were pushing a rather populist message during the campaign, promoting its completely unviable 'free gym membership' policy. Yawn. Still, the last thing that the union needs are a bunch of mad lefties wasting money and breaking stuff, so there's some merit in getting some Fusion folks elected.

Rounding out the Melbourne (Uni) Cup field were the Liberals, who made a sad sight prostituting the party brand name to act as a preference funnel for the Fusion ticket, where the Liberals had scored themselves some juicy positions. Old hack candidates, no real message beyond the oh-so-hilarious "You know we're Right" slogan... the only thing going their way was the superslick full colour leaflet thrust into my hand. Obviously the campaign was not quite as anorexic as it could have been.

Honourable mentions of course must go to the chilly-loving Kung Fu Banditos, Ken Courtis, the committee-loving, afro-wearing Josh Cusack, and of course the wonderfully dedicated Farragon of Virtue Farrago ticket. But the question must be asked, where was everybody's favourite nutter, Menachem Gunzberg? His absense was disappointing.

Predictions. For those whose memories extend back far enough, a left wing dominance of Union House is business as usual. Without a strong incentive to vote, turn-out is slack, usually dangling in single-figure percentages. Those who do vote are the highly motivated, politically aware students, and overwhelmingly these are on the left. Headstrong socialists are much more likely to cast a vote than lazy conservative engineering students, if only because they have no shame being caught within range of the ballot box. Incentive voting distorted the balance for a couple of years, bringing otherwise apathetic students out to vote if only for the promise of an $8 food voucher. Without this, we're likely to see a big swing back to the left.

Most likely, the Left Union guys will sweep the pool when it comes to Office Bearer positions. With resources, their roughest edges smoothed, and a hard core of lefty arts students, it's hard to see LU falling short of union dominance. Committees will be a little more finely balanced, with the 7 positions on each likely to be around about a 4-2-1 split (Left Union-Fusion-Activate), although there are enough minor parties and indies to upset the balance. In the battle for Farrago, Farragon are in with a chance although will be hampered by the momentum other candidates will recieve through running a full slate of candidates. As for turnout, the look of complete and utter boredom on the face of the four polling booth staff sighted on Wednesday, as well as the absense of a queue, suggests that the campaign has failed to ignite the imagination of most students. Look for a turnout between 5 and 10 per cent. Sad but true.

Disclosure, disclosure: I got links to just about everyone, so I suspect I'm biased in all directions. I'm a member of AUJS, scrutineering for Lib member Ken Courtis, wrote an article for the left-wing Farragon guys, am mates with one of the ALP guys. So get over it.

The Great Debate

I've put up some of the pics from last week's debate on my blog. Thanks again for a great semester, everyone, committee in particular. ;)

PIS Trivia Night

The PIS trivia night is coming!!!

Tuesday, 18 October, from 6:30pm @ Deep Dish $5 per person, with great prizes guaranteed

Plenty of food provided, and drinks at bar prices

RSVP to polintsoc@gmail.com by 16 October

Test your knowledge of the arts, sport, history, pop culture, religion,horticulture, numismatics, philately, aeronautics, molecular biology,deontelogical philosophy and yes, politics as well.

This is the ultimate test to see just who in the PIS is the biggest
smartarse of all!!

New Orleans 2005: microcosm of modern America

Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast on Monday. As it did, twenty thousand-odd people huddled in New Orleans’s sports stadium, the Superdome. Over the succeeding days they lost air-conditioning, food and water. Lawlessness took over. Hygiene disappeared. While there was a suitable similar facility to house the refugees just one state over – the ‘Astrodome’ in Houston, Texas – this was only grasped days after the event, when the Governor of Texas announced it could be used. It’s an episode indicative of government handling of the disaster.

Three pieces appeared in Saturday’s Age on Katrina. All focus on what is emerging as a central issue – the clear, damning, failure of the United States government.

Paul Krugman: ‘It was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you’d expect from an advanced country never happened…the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of preparation and urgency in the Federal Government’s response.

Gerard Wright: ‘Beyond the destruction of houses, lives and infrastructure, something disturbing has been revealed about the United States and its various levels of government…unable to take care of their own, unwilling to make even the most elementary preparations to protect a historic and beloved city’

It was an incompetent short-term response, but one grounded in long-term American belief, and it has brought to the surface shameful problems with America that that belief doesn’t deem to try and fix. 2005 New Orleans, more than 2001 New York, is the defining symbol of modern America.

There’s a simple narrative of breathtaking incompetence here. Thousands of the poor, elderly and sick were left in their slums, retirement homes and hospitals. Nobody from the government sent buses to help them get out, either before or immediately after. It was days before even close to adequate amounts of troops, food, water and medicine started to trickle into the city. Jesse Jackson commented that the response to the Asian tsunami was superior to America’s response to Katrina. But we have to interpret ‘federal government failure’ more broadly. The short-term response of the authorities to Hurricane Katrina is symptomatic of bigger problems, as Krugman seized on:

‘at a fundamental level, our leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government.’

We can link the non-activist response from the Bush Administration to its broader ideology about government. The Bush administration’s failure to deal adequately with Katrina isn’t limited to being slow off the mark in the last few days. For years they have, through doctrinaire (albeit massively selective) ideas on the role of government*, been hampering the nation’s ability to respond to a major disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, has been starved of funds and purged of quality officials in the post-Clinton years. The Army Corps of Engineers, too, has been badly compromised: its use compromised in terms of troops and equipment for the war in Iraq. Repeated warnings that authorities were unprepared for a major hurricane on New Orleans, and that the government should do something about it, were, like the warnings of a terrorist attack pre-9/11, ignored. The Bush administration views government’s task as being entrenching tax cuts and doling out pork at home, and periodic wars abroad. For these objectives the basic business of governing within America has been neglected.

We can see the lack of, and need for, American activist government not simply in the response to New Orleans, but also in the disaster itself: the stories and photos coming from the city have brought to the surface continuous deep-set problems in American society and culture. The simple presence of people in New Orleans after a mandatory evacuation order shows the huge problem of income inequality and poverty in America: these people simply couldn’t afford to get away. That those in poverty and abandoned are almost universally black highlights America’s problem of race inequality. The sick retirees that waited for days in a retirement home, the hospitals floundering under colossal demand, the fact that infectious disease may spread due to widespread lack of immunization, all highlight America’s astonishing lack of national interest in health-care: most of the faces on TV have no public health insurance. The stories of guns and ammunition being taken from Wal-Mart stores in New Orleans and used to take pot-shots at police officers and murder fellow citizens highlights the – incomprehensible to the rest of the Western world – gun control problem in America: what are guns doing in a Wal-Mart? If that isn’t an issue that needs government attention, what is?

The prism of New Orleans – problems unsolved and government slow to get its hands dirty – conforms to the prevailing view throughout American history of the role of government, from the American Revolution, at a basic level about getting government out of people’s everyday lives, to Ronald Reagan’s message of government being the problem, not the solution, backed up by colossal tax cuts and slashed funding for most government programs. We can see it in the anti-government militants from the heartland in the 1990s: the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh and the Waco siege. We can see it in many people of the rural South, even those now affected by the hurricane, who grumble about the ‘feds’ and Washington intervening in their affairs, as they grumbled about during Civil Rights; as they fought over in the Civil War.

The great paradox is these are all deeply patriotic Americans. The obvious question for an outsider to ask is: why can’t the American Dream be pursued, and American values entrenched, through government and not just individuals?

America has had its periods in which people and politicians viewed government as a tool to help improve society, an instrument to make people’s lives better. The most spectacular abandonment of the ‘small government’ ethos came with Franklin Roosevelt and the height of the Great Depression: the bleak times led people to a fundamental redrawing of federal government responsibility.

The most recent truly ‘activist’ American President leads me back to the Houston Astrodome example. Post-Katrina America will do well to remember another Texas President, Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ would be flabbergasted at the idea that a fellow Lone Star President, let alone not being driven to sleepless overdrive by the plight of thousands of Americans, didn’t even comprehend that his home state’s resources could be used to help a neighbouring state. Growing up around extreme poverty in Depression-era Texas led Johnson to spend his political career and presidency attempting to put the federal government’s resources to work curing national ills: fixing poverty, enhancing the prospects of African-Americans, improving justice’s relationship with law and order, instituting health-care and welfare for the lower-classes. Bush and those around him, in contrast, have no interest in using government to address fundamental problems with society. The current White House prefers tax cuts, pork, and war.

New Orleans raises an important issue, for all of us but particularly Americans: what is the role of, use for, government? Surely it is to, even in minor ways, manage and regulate society? Katrina makes obvious a minimum role for government. It should organise buses for starving, dying people to be transported out of a disaster zone. It should marshal what resources it can to prevent levees bursting. It should keep order in the streets and prevent or punish theft, murder and rape. It should preserve cities and human lives. It should join the dots between states and regions of the country, dots so simple as shifting people from a sports stadium in a disaster zone to a sports stadium away from one.

The question then is, will Americans ‘join the dots’ between the chaos in the Gulf and the ideological attitude in Washington? It’s a question writers in The Age focused on too:

Krugman: ‘after 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability’

Howell Raimes: ‘the sacrifices of New Orleans need a kind of national reckoning that would enable our people to see the President Who Forgot to Care for what he is’

Krugman: ‘America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can’t-do Government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.’

Pretty strong stuff, even for the decidedly anti-Bush New York Times. It’s been suggested elsewhere that this may be the beginning of the end for Bush’s popularity and prospects.

Let’s return once more to LBJ. Americans initially embraced his initiatives. They were persuaded in large part of the need to reform their society in the wake of another national tragedy, the Kennedy assassination. What sunk him was domestic overstretch, coupled with Vietnam and a failing economy. What that proves is American’s attitude to government fluctuates. They have, on multiple occasions, been convinced of the need for an active role for the federal government. Perhaps the post-Katrina period will mark a return to ideas of, if not big government, at least bigger government than currently, with a more proactive focus, that sees problems coming and tackles them. Prospective Democratic Presidents looking to 2008 may do well to launch their campaign in, and frame their liberal politics around, New Orleans.

This was originally posted on my blog, davidfettlingbycharlesdickens.blogspot.com, where I expect to pen some more thoughts on Katrina and America that the PIS will be spared.


* It must be said that considerable evidence paints Bush as diverting somewhat from this path. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ was about utilising government resources to drive the conservative agenda. Bush is the highest Presidential spender in forty years, funneling money into various departments, some noble, like education, and some dubiously ‘porky’, like prescription drug benefits. His central constituency of religious conservatives sometimes leads him to get government on to people’s backs, e.g. gay marriage and, possibly, abortion. In major respects, however, Bush very much subscribes to the minimal government mantra. The Bush tax cuts are infused with ideology; so too his Social Security reforms are grounded in a belief in weaning people off state dependence. The term that I’ve heard that best sums Bush up is ‘contradictory conservative’.

Bu…ye…gija

This is the maiden edition of what I hope will be a staple of the PIS blog, ‘Bu…ye…gija’, where all the half-formed thoughts that never quite collected in my head before two o’clock, all the proposals and dismissals and rebuttals I had on the tip of my tongue when the discussion swung in another direction, are instead imposed on the PIS community via the blogosphere.

‘…Bu…’: The clash of civilisations

To refresh our memories, Samuel Huntington claimed in 1994 that, post-Cold War, the world would be reconfigured with ‘fault lines’ between cultures replacing political and ideological boundaries as the sources of crisis and bloodshed. He claimed globalisation would lead to greater conflict, not less, because greater proximity means greater friction. He claimed Western civilisation is in decline and under threat, and that consequentially, the West ought to focus on enhancing its cohesion and protecting its own interests, restraining its universalist pretensions, which are immoral and dangerous, not interfering with other civilisations.

The Clash of Civilisations seems to come up in every second Arts subject and most lecturers are contemptuous of it. That attitude seems to me pretty valid. That’s not to say that Huntington doesn’t make any good points or truthful observations. Here are some:
– That China and South-East Asia (‘Confucian civilisation’) are an emerging economic and most likely political center and that their system will likely differ to some extent from purely Western liberal democracy, Fukuyama-style.
– That people are starting to think of themselves as civilisations: we can see that trend before the end of the Cold War, in the EU, the Pan-Arab movement, the Pan-African movement.
– That after the Cold War ethnic nationalism has made a significant return.
– That there are some fundamental antagonisms between some different world groupings or ‘civilisations’. There may well be something irreconcilable between the West in its current state and substantial parts of the Arab world in their current state. When one ‘civilisation’ has a post-Enlightenment worldview times 200 years, and the other civilisation has a pre Enlightenment worldview times about 200 years, amounting to one side practicing the rule of law and the other carrying out stonings of adulterers on Friday nights, it’s plain wrong to write off the language of ‘clash of civilisations’.

Huntington’s problem is simply that he got carried away. He does make some decent general points about the state of the world. He started out with a sound sensible idea, but sensationalism and fame got the better of him and led him to contort it and expand it into a spectacular all-encompassing Nostradamusesque prognosis of the future. It is predominately extremely simplistic stuff. Dividing the world up into seven civilisations is an extremely tidy way to describe the world, and it shows e.g. according to Huntington, Greece, the cradle of Western civilisation, is not considered part of the West. Huntington claims there are four torn countries. Surely every country is torn in a hundred different ways in terms of its imagined national identity. Surely every country within a civilisation is not exactly the same. As was said in the meeting, there are huge rifts within civilisations that are not going to disappear in a hurry.

‘…ye…’ Cindy Sheehan

I believe it’s a highly positive development that Americans are beginning to criticise Bush over the Iraq war. The administration has evaded accountability both over justification for the war itself, and its inept aftermath. For the good of the country that needs to change, and a critical public discussion needs to permeate the cognitive insulation and groupthink of the Bush White House and force a rethink of strategy.

Precisely because of this, Cindy Sheehan makes me a tad uneasy, because the debate she has prompted seems to not be about these things. It instead seems to be largely emotive. The Iraq war was wrong because Cindy Sheehan’s son died. The Iraq war is wrong purely because it is costing American lives. Maureen Dowd contributed to this the other day in the Age (reprinted from the New York Times) claiming that a bereaved parent’s moral authority was ‘absolute’. Let’s calm down and think about that. Nobody’s moral authority is ever ‘absolute’. And the ‘authority’ of certain citizens who comment on an issue often has to be taken with a substantial grain of salt e.g. does anyone argue that the family of a crime victim has ‘absolute’ authority when it comes to commentary on the criminal justice system? Rather, it’s recognised that they’re in no position to make a judgement on the nuances of policy. Their view is distorted. The same applies to the families of war dead.

I sympathise with Cindy Sheehan’s situation. I admire her courage. She is entitled to her opinion that all US troops should be immediately withdrawn. But she is in no position to put forward ideas on where America should go with regards to Iraq. If someone argues that invading Iraq was counterproductive foreign policy, incompetently implemented, they deserve all the media attention they can stomach. But the Cindy Sheehan movement seems to be simply saying that eighteen hundred deaths makes Iraq wrong. Not the type of Iraq debate America needs.

‘…gija…’ Teachers, left-wing bias and the fostering of scepticism in students

An interesting batch of education-related issues were discussed at Wednesday’s meeting: Peter Costello’s comments on anti-American left wing bias among teachers, the federal Government’s ideas on testing performance in government schools, Brendan Nelson’s ideas on values teaching etc. At the PIS meeting this all fused into a debate about how school-kids are taught, and what is important for them to learn.

The debate on classroom bias is the same as media bias. Does classroom bias exist? Of course it does. It’s unavoidable. And, like media bias, it’s not undesirable. All you have to ensure is that there is a diversity of different biases in a school. This means encouraging engaged, interested students. One of the best ways of encouraging engaged, interested students is to have engaged, interested teachers – left-wing or otherwise – who provoke them to think and debate issues. A majority of my school-teachers were left-leaning. Sometimes I fought with them, sometimes I agreed with them. But I came out of Year 12 engaged and interested. Do you know how I can prove that? When I got to uni, I was taught about constructivism and deconstructivism and postmodernism and all the allegedly scepticism-producing stuff we mentioned in Alice Hoy, and I sat and I listened, and after the lecture I emerged into the sunlight, and I said to myself, ‘what a heap of hooky shit’, and I went to a PIS meeting instead.

Draft Iraqi Constitution

Negotiators handed a draft Iraqi Constitution to parliament just before the deadline. While there are still negotiations going on to try and convince the Sunnis to support it, there is a chance that this will be the document which is voted on in a referendum later this year. Full text of the document can be found here. Some important bits:

Article (2):

1st -- Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:

(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.

(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.

(c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.

2nd -- This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and the full religious rights for all individuals and the freedom of creed and religious practices.

Article (3): Iraq is a multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-sect country. It is part of the Islamic world and its Arab people are part of the Arab nation.
...
Article (7):

1st -- Entities or trends that advocate, instigate, justify or propagate racism, terrorism, "takfir" (declaring someone an infidel), sectarian cleansing, are banned, especially the Saddamist Baath Party in Iraq and its symbols, under any name. It will be not be allowed to be part of the multilateral political system in Iraq, which should be defined according to the law.

2nd -- The state will be committing to fighting terrorism in all its forms and will work to prevent its territory from being a base or corridor or an arena for its (terrorism's) activities.
...
Article (9):

1st --
...
(b) Forming military militias outside the framework of the armed forces is banned.
...
CHAPTER TWO: RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

PART ONE: RIGHTS

FIRST: Civil and political rights.

Article (14): Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status.

Article (15): Every individual has the right to life and security and freedom and cannot be deprived of these rights or have them restricted except in accordance to the law and based on a ruling by the appropriate judicial body.

Article (16): Equal opportunity is a right guaranteed to all Iraqis, and the state shall take the necessary steps to achieve this.

Article (17):

1st -- Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality.

2nd -- The sanctity of the home is protected. They cannot be entered or searched or violated except by judicial decision and in accordance with the law.
...
SECOND: Economic, social and cultural rights

Article (22):

1st -- Work is a right for all Iraqis in a way that guarantees them a good life.

2nd -- The law regulates the relation between employees and employers on an economic basis, while keeping in consideration rules of social justice.

3rd -- The state guarantees the right to form or join syndicates or professional unions. This shall be regulated by law.
...
Article (25): The state shall guarantee the reforming of the Iraqi economy according to modern economic bases, in a way that ensures complete investment of its resources, diversifying its sources and encouraging and developing the private sector.
...
Article (30):

1st -- The state guarantees social and health insurance, the basics for a free and honorable life for the individual and the family -- especially children and women -- and works to protect them from illiteracy, fear and poverty and provides them with housing and the means to rehabilitate and take care of them. This shall be regulated by law.
...
Article (109): Oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people in all the regions and provinces.

Article (110):

1st -- The federal government will administer oil and gas extracted from current fields in cooperation with the governments of the producing regions and provinces on condition that the revenues will be distributed fairly in a manner compatible with the demographical distribution all over the country. A quota should be defined for a specified time for affected regions that were deprived in an unfair way by the former regime or later on, in a way to ensure balanced development in different parts of the country. This should be regulated by law.

It's worth reading the whole thing up to Chapter 3 (gov't structure). A lot of it is basic rule of law, due process and democratic freedom type stuff, there are some interesting idiosyncracies and local flavours, such as Art 21 "An Iraqi shall not be handed over to foreign bodies and authorities", which sounds rather unusual.

I bolded a section of art 110. I think this might be a major sticking point for the Sunnis as it guarantees decreasing power and revenue for the central government in time and an increase in the power of the Shiite/Kurdish provinces which have geographical control over the main oil reserves.

VSU Is Not About Free Market Choice

This generated a fairly fiery discussion when I posted it on my blog. Some didn't follow the technicalities of what I said, and I'll admit that it's rather long, so if you want to know my conclusion it is, in a nutshell, In the absence of governmnent interference in the university sector universities would provide services currently funded by student union funds by charging students for them. They would just take this money out of general revenue (ie course fees) but due to current price caps they have to charge a special levy. VSU thus makes the university sector less like the free market than it already is because it stops universities doing something they would do without government rules.

I had an epiphany the other day* and I realised that the debate about VSU has been tainted by an ingeniously deceptive conservative framing which happens to be completely bogus. I've decided that VSU has absolutely nothing to do with the free market or economic choice. In fact it has nothing to do with economic conservatism at all and the whole thing looks more like pseudo-welfare for the upper-middle class.

Choice in the free market is not about being able to get what you want, it's about accepting or declining what is offered to you. Thus, while I want to be able to buy a car which perfectly matches my requirements and tastes, I have to accept what car companies decide to offer me (based on their market research etc). There is no guarantees in the market that you will be able to buy what you want to buy, your choice is whether or not you still make the purchase even if it isn't exactly what you want.

The principle is superficially different with VSU. When you want to go to university and 'purchase' a tertiary education you are currently being 'forced' to pay for things like sporting clubs and BBQs which you might have no interest in paying for. But this sort of thing happens in the wider marketplace all the time. When you go to a private school you might be forced to pay a couple of thousand dollar surcharge for a sporting facility you have no interest in using or a laptop you don't really want, when you buy a Nike shoe a very large percentage of the price is a hidden surcharge to cover their advertising and sponsorship costs even if you despise advertising, when you buy a product from a large multi-bodied corporation you might be paying to subsidise an unprofitable and unrelated business arm... none of which you have any 'choice' over. Your choice with universities at the moment is exactly the same as in the general market – take it or leave it.

When you buy a product you are giving your money to the seller to do whatever they like with it. There is no free market principle whatsoever which says the money you pay for a service must be spent on that particular service and that particular service only. If the extras you are paying for, but not using, make the product too expensive in your eyes then you don't buy it. You don't go running to the government asking them to force the seller to split up their product offering. But that's exactly what the conservatives are doing.

Once again, there is another superficial point of differentiation when we're talking about universities in that it's not an entirely free-market sector. But, again, this is a superficial difference because VSU only serves to make the sector even less like the free market. Already universities have restrictive price caps on what they can charge for an education, so they are unable, in the absence of a compulsory services fee, to make the business decision that wider student services are worth providing. The vice-chancellors are opposed to VSU for a reason – being able to charge the fees enhances the 'product' the university can offer which attracts students, particularly of the lucrative full-fee paying international variety. VSU simply makes the sector even more closely regulated by government.

The ingenious framing I referred to earlier is to frame the union fee as a tax. That way defenders of union fees have had to try and justify them by pointing to either equity advantages of student services (such as free campus medical and counseling services which some might otherwise be unable to afford) or by playing up the public good aspects of some union services (it's really difficult to exclude people from watching the lunchtime band). But this is bizarre and irrelevant. Universities aren't governments. Peopole have a choice as to whether or not to go to them and none of the anti-taxation/government arguments legitimately apply. There is no market-based reason why universities should not be free to charge a services fee, especially as there is an on campus democratic system for students to utilise if they believe there is widespread corruption and waste in the student union.

Students are overwhelmingly from high income families or they will themselves become high income earners. Listening to their demands for the government to make a service they choose to utilise a few hundred dollars cheaper per year is nothing short of middle class welfare. I realise that at heart VSU is an ideological crusade unfinished after from the campus political wars of the 60s and 70s, but it's being sold under an entirely different 'free market' idology and I think the illegitimacy of that framing needs to be recognised.

*I had this epiphany while listening to the new Sigur Ros song which is awesome epiphany music.

PIS on the Web

Hehehe, is this the first time the PIS web site has received a link from a non-member's web site? That blog, The LEO Test, is an interesting academic project which might be of great interest to PIS members. It is run by a political science academic who is trying to build a model which can analyse the ideology of various political figures. While I thought the theory underpinning the model (read the posts linked under "about" on the site), I was sceptical about the ability of his method to accurately analyse people's position.

His method is basically a word search. He has three columns of words, one for each of what he sees as the major schools of political thought (liberty, equity and order). He simply runs representative text written by politicians or commentators through a program and grades the person by the percentage of L, E and O words which appear. Like I said, I was sceptical, but the results he's reported so far seem to be spot on. It's a blog to keep an eye on, I reckon.

IR Reform

We obviously didn't have any vocal conservatives at Wednesday's meeting because some of my comments on Howard's IR reforms were just screaming out for a rebuttal. For those that weren't there I was explaining the difference between the current system in which workers have redress for unfair and unlawful dismissal compared to the proposed system which would eliminate the unfair part. In essence the current system allows workers to argue their termination was "harsh, oppressive or unfair" and get redress if it is found in the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) that it was (according to all sorts of legal tests which have been built up over the years). They can also argue in a formal court of law that their dismissal was unlawful according to s.170CK of the Workplace Relations Act 1996. The grounds for unlawful dismissal are specific categories such as "race, colour, sex, sexual preference, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin" and there are, once again, all sorts of legal tests to determine if a dismissal has been unlawful.

My argument was that situations like that shown in the ACTU commercials could easily happen in the new system. An employee could be fired for a reason which is technically unlawful and have no effective redress as few employers are going to be stupid enough to admit they fired the worker for an unlawful reason. Without facing the prospect of having to establish an alternative "fair" ground for the sacking in the IRC, employers who wish to get rid of workers will have no real difficulty getting around the unlawful dismissal laws if they wish to fire someone on a ground which is technically unlawful - even if the Office of Worplace Services gets a funding boost.

I think my argument was sound as far as it goes, and I think Howard is being misleading when he tries to say that situations like those shown in the ACLU ads won't be more likely to happen under the new regime. However my argument didn't address the question of whether or not making it easier for small businesses to sack people is a good thing. Now I can understand why Howard doesn't want to try and make this argument on talkback radio, but it's a plausible argument even if it's not one I personally agree with. I'm sure we're familiar with it, but if not, it goes something like this.

<conservative> A worker's productivity is a difficult thing to measure objectively. In fact it's a difficult thing to measure subjectively, too, which creates a potential for "moral hazard" in the workplace. A moral hazard arises whenever one parties obligations under a contract are difficult to measure by the other party and anyone who's ever slacked off the second the boss goes out for a smoko (and that's all of you) knows exactly what I'm talking about. The productivity loss caused by this slacking off may be difficult to measure but a boss, especially in a small business, will generally have a good idea if a worker is much less productive than normal. However this subjective measurement is difficult to make into an objective measurement which can stand up in the IRC if an unfair dismissal claim is brought. The incidents which go to paint the picture of an unproductive worker are likely to be little things which don't seem like much on their own (especially in a pseudo-court where every little claim will be challenged) but have created a firm and possibly accurate picture of the employee's worthn in the employer's mind.

Thus the chilling effect of unfair dismissal laws. Small business which are unable to implement complicated HR policies and monitoring systems are scared to fire genuinely unproductive workers as it is too uncertain and costly (in money and especially time) to risk an IRC case being brought against them. Thus they are also unwilling to take on workers in a full time role for fear they will become a productivity drain. Also, the laws exacerbate the moral hazard problem as employee's know they can get away with slacking off as their boss is too scared to try and fire them. This increases unemployment and exacerbates the problems of casualisation of the workforce.</conservative>

I'm not saying I buy this argument fully but it is an argument and I wish there was someone around the PIS meetings to regularly make these kinds of arguments. I want people (especially me) to be challenged when they run with the kind of argument I was making on Wednesday. I don't want PIS meetings to turn into soft-lefty head-nodding sessions. We want to "hear both sides" dog-nammit!

Two takes on China

There were two interesting contrasting pieces on the Australia-US-China triangle on the Op-Ed pages of today's papers. In The Age, Hugh White argues in favour of Australia's pragmatic appoach to keeping China on side, comparing it favourably with the American approach of treating China as a strategic rival:

John Howard, visiting Washington last month, starkly displayed these differences when he and President George Bush spoke on the touchstone issue of China.

Standing next to Howard, Bush described America's relations with Beijing as "complex" and "complicated". "We've got issues when it comes to values," he said, and asked Howard to "work together to reinforce the need for China to accept certain values as universal."

Howard turned him down, flat. He told Bush: "We have a good relationship with China. It's not just based on economic opportunity. We are unashamed in developing our relations with China. I'll do everything I can in the interests of Australia to ensure it develops further."

The day before, he had said his approach was "to build on the things that we have in common, and not become obsessed with the things that make us different".

This is pragmatic politics at its most pragmatic - and the logic works. There are fundamental differences in values and philosophies between Australia and the US on one hand, and China on the other. Its a political truism to acknowledge this vast gulf of difference. The question is how to reconcile the two. It seems unlikely that China will move toward free markets, democracy and respect for the succession desires of some of its population by political isolation. Instead, engagement is needed. Similarly, there is little to gain for the western state which refuses to engage with China diplomatically or economically - the only state harmed is the state who refuses to engage.

Over at The Australian, Greg Sheridan presents an tempting, but ultimately wrong, alternative approach, framed with reference to Taiwan:

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must one day reunite with the mainland. Tiawan (sic) is independent in everything but name. It was for a long time ruled by the Kuomintang, which lost the civil war to the communists. Now Taiwan is a democracy and the KMT is the Opposition. The US, although notionally subscribing to the one China policy, is pledged to defend Taiwan. Now that everyone is joining up to the China boom it has been dismal to watch the way dollars trump democracy or human rights, and governments of Left and Right are happy to connive in the strangulation of Taiwan.

Sheridan's position is high on principle but low on practical effect. He suggests that Australia should not be afraid of getting the Chinese offside on a matter of principle, ie Taiwanese independence. The problem with this proposition is that it would cut Australia off from the significant and tangible benefits that a good relationship with China provides in order for us to feel warm and fuzzy for supporting our fellow democratic travellers, the Taiwanese.

Australia should stand by Taiwan, and do whatever it can to engage with it as a democractic ally in a part of the world that boasts very few democracies. Trade links, second-track diplomacy and quietly whispered words of support are all healthy and desirable. What Australia shouldn't do, however, is compromise our relationship with China over the issue.

Regardless of the outcome of the bullying of Taiwan, the talks in North Korea, the suppression of Falun Gung or the painfully slow development of Chinese democracy, the reality remains that China is going to be a major player in the 21st century, and it would be in Australia's national interest to be on good terms with the People's Republic. Tempting as it is to stand atop our soapbox and shrilly condemn the Chinese, there is a more sensible - and pragmatic - alternative. Engagement rather than isolation with China is smart politics, and positions Australia well for the political dynamic of the next couple of decades.

Cross-posted from Ari on the Web.

An Insight Into the Mind of Bolt

Andrew Bolt is hated with an intense passion by many on the left and I think some of the infuriation stems from his apparent lack of coherent principle and willingness to simply mouthpiece the current official conservative line. The beauty of his new ‘forum’ feature is that it provides an insight into his broader methodology and ideology as he gives quick responses to a wide range of comments.

I decided to send him a comment on a question of principle which I was sure he wouldn't agree with. The principle in question was freedom of speech. In two posts on my blog I had defended rights of two Christian pastors to say completely outrageous things about Australian Muslims and the Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir to advocate, non-violently, for the creation of an Islamic state in Australia. In both cases I applied the same principle to reach what I thought was the right response, but while I knew Bolt agreed with me with respect to the Christian pastors I was equally sure he wouldn't with Hizb ut-Tahrir. This was the message I sent to him:

Given your strident and not unjustified defence of Catch the Fire ministries, I'm wondering if you'll apply the same principles and defend the rights of Hizb ut-Tahrir members if/when the government bans them despite ASIO finding that they were not a threat? It seems to me the principle is the same in each situation - extreme speech which a lot of people disagree with but which falls short of incitations to violence shouldn't be punshed. If Catch the Fire pastors shouldn't be penalised for what they say, surely Hizb ut-Tahrir members shouldn't become criminals for exercising their freedom of speech even if what they say is outrageous.

I wasn't sure that he would know what the group was so I make sure to point out that ASIO had found they weren't a threat to national security (prompting Ruddock to say he'd look at changing the law so they could still be banned). He replied in the latest forum:

Are you serious? Who exactly were Catch the Fire threatening to kill? Abraham Lincoln had good advice for you, Jeremy – decide each case on its merits, to avoid the idiocy that often comes when one tries to apply an inflexible rule to a multitude of cases.

Now he's factually wrong, Hizb ut-Tahrir haven't threatened to kill anyone, otherwise I'd agree with him. The group is genuinely extreme, supporting to the Iraqi resistance and suicide bombings (rhetorically) and one member in Denmark distributed a leaflet which quoted a verse from the Qur’an apparently instructing Muslims to kill Jews but it isn't accurate to say they call their members to violence or make threats to kill.

Anyway, factual questions aside, this reveals a part of Bolt's broader methodology. He explicitly eschews broad principles (inflexible rules as he puts it), even though he'll happily invoke the principle when it suits him (see his Catch the Fire article I linked earlier). What he does is use his infallible powers of discernment to figure out what's right in each circumstance and then he'll use that as a basis for his argument. Based on his reply to my comment, at least one of the rules of thumb he uses to analyse situations is that extremist Christian groups are good and extremist Muslim groups are bad (and probably murderously violent). That's a certain kind of principle, I suppose.

Book review 'BRACKS: FLAWED GIANT' BY ROBERT DALLEK

Note: To give context to the following post, understand that it was written after reading Paul Austin’s column and doing some research on Lyndon Johnson in quick succession.

‘Why yet another book on Bracks?’, begins Robert Dallek, biographer of JFK and LBJ, in the preface to his new 1200 page tome, Flawed Giant: Steve Bracks And His Times.

Initially it seems a good question. The Dallek book, after all, is only the latest in a string of books on Victoria’s brilliant and enigmatic Premier. It arrives on the shelves while Bracksy by Roy Jenkins (author of Churchill and Gladstone) tops the non-fiction bestseller lists.

Dallek does rehash much of what we already know: the mystery as to when the great man sleeps, as light often emanates from the Premier’s Office until after five a.m.; the ministers frequently woken up to phone calls from an agitated Premier who has found some clunky phrasing or statistical error in a policy document; the marathon night-long intellectual debates Bracks has with Sports Minister Justin Madden.

Dallek also does his best to sum up the gargantuan six-year legislative program, known better as the Bracks Revolution, that shows no sign of ebbing. While the time when newspapers printed a ‘What Bracksy Did Today’ column are over, the media remains obsessed by Bracks’s ever-more radical ideas on transforming the state.

There are some details released for the first time – for example, Dallek confirms on page 974 that West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin did, as has been widely suspected, base his character President Josiah Bartlet on Steve Bracks. Victorian viewers of The West Wing have long been suspicious of the striking similarities between the fictional Bartlet and the real-life Bracks: the exceptional mind, oratory, charisma, statesmanship. The re-election strategy Bartlet’s adviser urged – ‘make this election about smart, and not. Make it about engaged, and not. Qualified and not. Make it about a heavyweight. You’re a heavyweight’ – is eerily similar to the method by which Bracks trounced Robert Doyle in the 2002 election.

Dallek’s biography includes the controversial and unpopular decision to back the tolls in Scoresby. Bracks has appeared increasingly haggard and disillusioned in recent times as he continually faces the anger of his ungrateful lessors/public. ‘I made a decision about tolls’ Dallek quotes, ‘it was the right decision, legally and morally, and I would make it again’. Bracks, claims Dallek, is utterly convinced that, twenty years hence, history will vindicate him on tolls.

‘The great statesmen are almost all gone’ says Dallek ‘They don’t run for political office anymore. Their places have been taken by insipid and mediocre party hacks, sustained by spin doctors who provide the sound-bites that woo an apathetic public. Bracks is the last of the Abraham Lincolns’.

The Causes of Terrorism

There's been a bit of discussion lately, again, about the causes of terrorism. We discussed in in PIS two weeks ago and one member came up with the very interesting observation that the London suicide bombers might be analogous to high school shooters. There's something in that, I think. Anyway, for some more discussion:

• A short post with a long discussion at Ari's blog
  
• Two somewhat longer posts (1, 2) at my blog
  
• A post on Iraq at John's blog which deals with some of the issues

Feel free to continue the discussion here.

Saudi Arabia's New King

There is an informative article about Saudi Arabia's new King Abdullah up at Salon which is worth checking out (all Salon articles are available to non-subscribers if you sit through a brief flash ad and get a "site pass"). It gives a rundown of the policies of the previous King Fahd which led to blowback in the form of Al Quaeda and the Iraqi Bath party and then looks at the different tack Abdullah has been taking over the past few years while he has been in de-facto control over the country.

The article is written by Juan Cole of the blog Informed Opinion. His blog is regularly linked to with approval by Kos and other hard-left blogs but has received sustained criticism from other sources. Examples here, here and here. A couple of the deficiencies (depending on your point of view) noted in Cole's writings are on show here, such as his unquestioning aceptance of the viability of a pre-'67 Israel borders + a Palestinian state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but it generally strikes me as a fair assessment.

Iraq Statistics

The excellent Brookings Institute has just released its latest Iraq Index. This is a superb collation of all the latest statistics from the country. All of the information is from reliable external sources, this is merely a monthly collection of them. It's a great way of getting your head around what things are like on the ground over there. A quick scan reveals that July wasn't bad compared to the hideousness that was May/June in terms of civilian deaths from terrorist attacks and US troop deaths. Things generally seem to be heading in a good direction, although the number of daily attacks by the insurgency is still comparatively high. Electricity and oil production has been very good recently, and that continued in July.

Welfare's Welfare

Cross-posted from my blog, Dispatches from the Moderate Left.

The health of our welfare system is something of a hot political issue, as the debate surrounding Howard’s proposals in this year’s budget demonstrated. The debate is characterised by stock talking points and emotion-fueled claims on both sides of the fence so it's interesting when someone injects some statistics into the mix. That's exactly what Peter Whiteford has done recently in a paper entitled The welfare expenditure debate: economic myths of the left and the right revisited.* Whiteford is a career bureaucrat and researcher who has worked for both Liberal and Labor governments and now lives outside Australia doing OECD research.

The main message I'd draw from his paper is that Australia's welfare system is extremely generous, efficient and well targeted. This graph illustrates the point nicely:

In case you didn't read the sub-heading, the graph shows the ratio of welfare payments going to the richest and poorest 20% of the population. By this measure, Australia rates exceptionally well. In contrast to a number of Europe's social-democratic states which give almost equal amounts of welfare to the two groups, Australia gives to the poorest 20% 13 times what is given to the richest 20%. That's an exceptionally good measure of the well targeted nature of the system, it does a great job of getting the money to where it's needed.

Last year ACOSS released a comparative report (.doc) labeling our welfare system as 'mean and lean' in comparison with other OECD nations. This was primarily because our raw level of benefits (as % GDP) is lower than most other OECD countries, and about 80% of the average. Whiteford explains this by pointing to demographics (many of the comparison countries are further along in the aging population trend than we are), poor targeting of other systems and the fact that Australia doesn't have the same level of early retirement as many European countries. A better measure of how generous the system is, if you think the primary goal of a welfare system should be alleviating poverty and hardship, is the percentage of GDP which is spent on the poorest 20%. By this measure Australia, which spends about 4% of GDP on this group in the form of welfare payments, is close to the most generous in the OECD – more so than Sweden or Norway.

Whiteford addresses two "myths of the right". The first is the oft-repeated claim that everyone could be made better off if we tackled "churning" – the situation where a taxpayer gets much of their tax back in the form of welfare payments. Whiteford notes that we have close to the lowest rate of churning in the OECD, due to the fact that the system is so well targeted. Further he notes that measures to tackle the problem inevitably have associated administrative costs, negating the administrative savings from fixing the problem. He concludes that the relatively low costs associated with churning in Australia do not justify drastic measures to tackle the issue.

He also addresses the claim that the cost of our system is spiraling out of control. This argument is based on the fact that our welfare payments have gone from about 65% of the OECD average in 1980 to 80% today. Whiteford analyses the myriad of changes in statistical methodology which have contributed to this apparent rise as well as changes in other country's systems over the period. He concludes that, relatively, we spend no more on welfare today than we did in 1980.

He does, however, note some problem areas. Due to the fact that payments are so well targeted there are a number of welfare/poverty traps created by the system. This is particularly stark with respect to single parents. It should be noted that the effect of these welfare traps upon single parents isn't as drastic as in other countries, as the payments are by and large above the poverty line. This group gets comparatively generous payments (which contributes to the effectiveness of the system as this group is generally poor), but as a result has the second highest level of unemployment in the OECD – 55% of single parents are unemployed. Welfare creates incentives, as I think the American experience aptly demonstrates, and the welfare system in Australia creates strong incentives for single parents to remain unemployed.

Whiteford notes that the effective MTR for single parents looking to go into full time employment is around 80%, something which is exacerbated by any associated costs of child care. On this note, I think the moderate changes made by Howard in the last budget to place single parents into a lower category of benefits once their children reach school age is a sensible step. However, I agree that more drastic US-style changes (where benefits cut off after a defined period of unemployment) have severe problems attached. There is only so far you can incentivise (that's not a word) single parents towards work by using a stick before they run into some fundamental barriers to their employment. Skills, flexibility, geography, lack of relevant job information, poor social-networks and substance abuse issues all mean that while strongly punishing single parents for remaining unemployed may drastically increase their employment levels (as happened in America), you will almost certainly create a sub-underclass of people who were once poor and unemployed but at least receiving welfare but are now just poor and unemployed.

Ultimately there are three things that can be done in an attempt to break the welfare traps. First is negative incentives, which I think is an entirely appropriate policy so long as it doesn't go so far as to undermine the whole point of having a welfare system in the first place. Second is positive incentives, ie. raising the rewards from work. This could be usefully done through income tax credits, service benefits (such as child care), increasing the minimum wage or working with employers and job network agencies to match people with better opportunities. The final option is to address the social and personal barriers to employment - obviously the hardest to effectively do.

Welfare traps can drain the public purse, trap sections of the population in welfare traps leading to intergenerational poverty and a lack of self-esteem and give fodder for reactionary commentators to beat up on single mums. Statistics, such as the useful ones provided by Whiteford, can shed light on the issues but can't proscribe the complicated policy responses necessary to fix them. Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric of welfare reform, given its narrow fixation on small-scale "stick" policies I'm not convinced the government is serious about attempting to do so either.

* I was alerted to the paper by this piece and reach many of the same conclusions, but have done so from an independent reading.

BOB CARR: INSIPID DO-NOTHING LABOR SAVIOUR

Farewell to Bob Carr, who quit the New South Wales premiership yesterday for a life of placid, snoozy dawdling, or for a life as federal Labor leader, or possibly both at once.
So much commentary has focussed on Mr. Carr’s ambitions, and whether they can be fulfilled, that I think it better to examine instead what the movement to take him federal says about Labor, and about Australia. In one respect, it is surely indicative of Labor’s malaise that they even consider someone who is unarguably a failed leader on ‘serving the public’ criteria. Every working day for ten years Bob Carr has gone to his podium and procrastinated, and spun, and fluffed, to disguise his treading water on policy. He has had a decade and three election wins; but has squandered his time and mandate. He leaves NSW with its health system and transport network in near crisis. His achievements have been a marginal improvement in literacy, and the Olympics, for which the real work was laid by past Premiers. He epitomises an ineffective politician.
But though he failed to serve his the state and public, he has served his party admirably: for in 1995 Carr created a formula that has proved highly successful for winning elections ever since. Carr invented the – very electorally appealing – do-nothing, unthreatening, take-it-easy Labor government. He has given the ALP its very own version of ‘relaxed and comfortable’.
The significance, and extent, of the revolution can’t be overstated. When Carr was first elected, Paul Keating was ensconced in Kirribilli: the personification of old-school, fire-breathing ‘downhill, one ski, no poles’ Labor. When Carr left, he and his formula are being touted as distinct possibilities to fill Keating’s old position. And why not? It’s worked, even in Victoria, where ‘relaxed and comfortable’ in the form of Steve Bracks defeated Jeff Kennett in 1999.
‘Relaxed and comfortable’ is a lousy motto, whether in its Liberal or Labor incarnations. But nobody can doubt that it works on the Australian electorate. I cringe to think of Bob Carr working his insipid magic at the federal level, his soporific voice promising nothing dramatic in tone if not in words, his reassuring waffle espousing pretend solutions to very real problems. That said, those who think his 'formula' is Labor’s best chance are probably right. Though they miss something: it is not, necessarily, a matter of drafting Bob Carr to try his formula out federally. In Kim Beazley, they’re already trying it.
First appeared on my blog: davidfettlingbycharlesdickens.blogspot.com

The quintessential blog welcome post.

Welcome to the Political Interest Society's official blog. Every Wednesday at 1pm, a smattering of Melbourne University students, of varying ages and degrees, assemble in Room 325/6 of the Alice Hoy Building. The President tends to be preoccupied with the biscuit tin in these early moments, while other members sit down in a rough circle of chairs, with Age's intermingled with the odd Australian or Economist resting on their laps. The President announces 'we'll wait a few minutes for more people to arrive', during which no people arrive; the President then announces 'we'll just get started then', and does, and immediately the steady trickle of people through the door resumes. For an hour club members pontificate grand political opinions, examine minute policy details, brood, smile, nod or shake their heads; and then all disperse to various lecture theatres, tutorial rooms and libraries around campus.
Now, the magical atmosphere of a PIS Wednesday meeting will be - hopefully - recreated online, for the entire cyberspace-dwelling world to enjoy. Watch this blog.