Civil Society

Conservative British think tank: Abandon Liverpool

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This from the Times:

David Cameron has been embarrassed by his favourite think-tank after it suggested that Liverpool, Sunderland and Bolton should be abandoned because the North would never improve.

The Tory leader, who begins a two-day tour of the North today, firmly rejected a report by Policy Exchange, which suggested that the Government should help northerners to relocate to Oxford and Cambridge. It suggested that Britain’s two university towns are likely to be able to “form the basis of strong, successful, substantial cities”.

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“No one is suggesting that residents should be forced to move, but we do argue that they should be told the reality of the position: regeneration, in the sense of convergence, will not happen, because it is not possible.”

and this from the BBC:

The Policy Exchange report said coastal cities like Sunderland and Liverpool had “lost much of their raison d’etre”.

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It said the largest coastal cities like Liverpool and Hull had built up for reasons that had since disappeared – like ship building.

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Policy Exchange, a registered charity, has been described as Mr Cameron’s favourite think tank. But Mr Cameron, who will be keen to minimise any embarrassment as he tries to gain ground in traditional Labour heartlands, distanced himself from the organisation’s findings on Wednesday, saying the report was “insane”.

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“I think the idea that cities can’t regenerate themselves, they were built for one purpose and can’t do another purpose, is just nonsense.

He is certainly right about that. If those cities turn out to be unable to reinvent themselves, they are going to wither away in the long run, but chances are that they are going to be able to adapt and prosper. There are a lot of formerly decrepit cities around the world that have done just that. This think tank seems to have lost contact to reality.

No Parking

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My friend Nathan and I differ greatly in our perspective of how and when film crews ought to be allowed to close off parking in the maze that is Manhattan’s Chinatown. You can catch some of our debate here and here.

What it comes down to for me, as a libertarian, is that the film studios are using the coercive power of the state to force (see if the police won’t clear away any protests before you object to my use of the word “force”, especially if the protestor is a lone businessman) the neighborhood into accepting something that will benefit the private film company, and a minority of the businesses there. The difference from the Suzette Kelo case is only a matter of degree.

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On Professionalism

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Col Mike Wyly, of the Marines, has written a piece in Armed Forces Journal on the nature of Professionalism, using Boyd as the exemplar of the subject. The article is completely correct, and is worthy of reading by all military men.

One of my pet peeves regarding “Professionalism” is the supreme misunderstanding of what the term implies. On the eve of my first deployment in 2004, my detachment Officer-in-Charge, a Major, took the 43-Marine detachment aside and told us his expectations, which he said could be summarized on two words: “Be Professional.” Unstated were what his ideas of what professionalism entailed. To him, Professionalism meant keeping the appearance of a Marine, combined with a touch of CYA: Keep hair short, uniforms serviceable, be tactful, and do what you need to do to keep the detachment out of trouble.

This conception of Professionalism is wrong.

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Thomas PM Barnett, Rule-Sets, and Democratic Sovereignty

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In a recent post on the Thomas PM Barnett Weblog, Tom laments the Irish people voting against the Lisbon Treaty:

It is weird how the EU can let one country decide to run a plebiscite and then kill a treaty.   Better is majority like we did with the Constitution.

(I might add that the Constitution wasn’t adopted by the United States by way of a majority; it required consensus of all thirteen states under the Articles of Confederation.   Tom is correct, however, in that Treaty ratification today requires the consent of the Senate, which is not unanimity.   But I digress…)

Tom’s view seems to fall in line with his views on forms of governance around the world:   In the first of his books he discusses the concept of the Rule Set:

A collection of rules (both formal and informal) that delineates how some activity normally unfolds.

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Live by the Study, Die by the Study

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According to a NY Times story:

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented. The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

I can only say one thing: ROFLe3!

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