Archive for the ‘Rants & Musings’ Category

Inside The Economist

February 6, 2021

It’s a funny paper. The wags at the firm called it, when ensconced in a tower in lower Mayfair, the Tower of Truth. That is the gaffe that I remember. Now it has moved.

What made me laugh the most was when they decided to try Economist tv. Ho Ho Ho. Suddenly, it was just a bunch of public school boys pontificating to a tv camera. The hijab was off. They canned that idea pretty fast.
Day is not dumb.

But, I would say, The Economist has a soul.

And, if that soul were encapsulated by a single person. It would be a woman. Called Ann Wroe.

She is an earth mother. An extraordinary editor. And who knows what else. She just, somehow, understood, something.

This week, she did a digital interview. If you watch nothing else in your miserable life, watch Ann.

The young are hard at work

January 27, 2021

A friend of mine moved back to the UK many years ago and started a branding business. I asked him how it was going, and dealing with employing younger people, and he said: ‘The thing is, Joe, young people are better than us. We need to accept that. All we have is experience.’

I do hope so. That would be progress.

In this context, I offer up a couple of South London bands just now breaking:

Fat White Family:

To be honest, Fat White Family have been around for a while, and played a memorable Glastonbury set.

Newer is a band of Polish Roman Catholics called Children of the Pope:

A good car while it lasted

January 2, 2019

Subaru passing

Parked up and went for a walk on the beach on the Isle of Wight after Christmas. When we came back the car was not quite as we left it. There had been a small fire in the engine, of which there was no sign when we set off. The fire brigade, who kindly turned up while we were walking on the beach and wondering where all the black smoke was coming from, said it is not the first time they have seen this.

I had wanted to get rid of the car for some time, as I almost never use it. My wife is less pleased. Still, when it is time to go it is time to go, and I like to think that the Subaru’s soul is now in car heaven.

This post really isn’t about development, but I am hoping it might encourage me to start blogging again.

 

One of the very worst?

April 19, 2016

I am loath to post the following article from today’s Guardian because it concerns a woman who is subject to sexist abuse. However I cannot help feeling that Marissa Mayer’s compensation at Yahoo for doing zero (okay, less than zero) for shareholders is one of the most egregious cases of rewarding failure that we have seen. She had nothing to do with the investment in Alibaba 10 years ago that is the only reason that the share price has recovered somewhat of late. The money she personally will have stripped out of the business by the time it is sold is grotesque. And the only people who should be more ashamed than her are the board members who let her do it.

From The Guardian:

What’s the price of failure? For Yahoo’s boss Marissa Mayer it could be about $137m. Bids are now in for the ailing tech company – and no matter who gets it, Mayer is set to be one of the biggest winners.

Mayer has taken home $78m since she was installed as CEO in 2012, according to stock analytics firm MCSI; if she’s dismissed from the company after a buyout she’s set for another $59m, based on the terms of the company’s most recent proxy statement.

Mayer’s performance pay and vested options peaked in 2014 at $48m (double the previous year’s salary). Yahoo has yet to finalise this year’s pay package so the final figure is yet to be determined, but few are expecting her to take home just her base salary, in excess of $2m.

Despite the company’s fundamental problems – it has lost the ad wars to Google and Facebook and bet billions on new businesses that have failed to take off – Yahoo’s share price is still in better shape than it was when she started. The rally in the stock price is entirely due to its holding in Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company.

Shares are close to their mid-2014 levels, in fact, and that probably means Mayer is owed further cash.

Mayer has benefitted from a low “strike price” for her stock options. In 2014 it was $18.87 – and the day those options were granted, 27 February 2014, shares were worth more than twice that.

On Monday, Yahoo’s share price closed at $36.52. History suggests that Mayer will be entitled to buy those shares at a price far lower than that. Although her strike price for 2015 has yet to be released, it is expected later this month. Given that there are bids open for Yahoo’s core assets, however, experts say that filing may be delayed.

While nothing is cut and dried yet, the smallest amount Mayer could make at the company is about $80m if she receives absolutely no more of her long-term incentives.

“Until the new proxy is out it isn’t really possible to say how much Mayer will ultimately end up making, or to what extent she will be entitled to any additional severance amounts,” said MCSI’s Ric Marshall.

Marshall is MCSI’s executive director of environmental, social and governance research at the firm and he says much of the eventual compensation depends upon the decisions of the board: “What you can’t say is how the committee will evaluate the performance and what percentage of the original target they will deem as having been met,” Marshall said.

Investors see the board as unduly supportive of Mayer. One group, Starboard Value, asked that the entire body be replaced with members of its own choosing.

There is reason for shareholders to worry: Starboard thinks that the net value of the “Yahoo stub”, that is to say, Yahoo without its stake in Alibaba, is worthless. With the amount of money a purchasing company would have to pay Mayer to leave in the event of a change in ownership – $59.3m in numbers adjusted for share price from the company’s most recent proxy filing – Yahoo’s value by Starboard’s reckoning would be negative.

“The firm buying her knows all about this,” said Alan Johnson of compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates. “They’re not going to pay for it. That’s coming out of the hide of Yahoo’s shareholders – everybody’s got that in their spreadsheets. They look at this as another sunk cost, like a bad lease.”

In a word, Starboard is afraid shareholders may end up having to pay someone to haul Yahoo away.

Marshall told the Guardian he’s seen that happen in the past. “It has been proven more expensive to sell a company because of the change in control than it is to just bankrupt it.” He hopes it won’t be the case at Yahoo, he said.

 

On journalism

March 17, 2016

Tombstone cover

Yang Jisheng, author of Tombstone, a forensic account of the Great Leap famine that killed 30-40 million Chinese, just won a prize given by the Nieman fellows in journalism at Harvard. So he has written them a nice little piece on how he thinks about journalism. Of course the Chinese Communist Party wouldn’t let Yang go to America to collect the prize…

I cannot upload the Harvard page directly into WordPress because the typeface is not supported. So click here to read an English translation of what Yang wrote, or to find a link to the Chinese original. If you are a journalist you might want to print the document and stick it on the bathroom wall.

 

All is forgiven

December 10, 2014

I spent the 1990s fuming about Microsoft Office and its regular-as-clockwork crashes. But I now realise that I was wrong.

Why? Because of this.

Or in video format if you prefer:

In fact I see that Gates has written a full review of How Asia Works, here.

Parenting-mare

September 2, 2014

So here is the last blog post of the holiday season. Turn away now if you cannot cope with the f-word. 

What follows is a verbatim rendering of a conversation that took place last week in the car, driving down to the Isle of Wight. Me driving. Wife in the front. Three kids, 11, 9, 7, in the back.

9 year-old boy: ‘What does fuck mean?’

[pause]

Wife: ‘It’s very rude and you must never say it.’

9 year-old boy: ‘I know that. But what does it mean?’

[pause]

Me: ‘You’ll find out in Year 6 sex education.’

9 year-old boy: ‘But I don’t want to wait for Year 6. Tell me what it means now.’

Wife: ‘Look, I’ll talk to you about it later. We can’t do it now — daddy is driving and I have to do the directions.’

9 year-old boy: ‘Why can’t you just tell me what it means?’

[long pause] 

Worldly-wise 11 year-old sister, feeling very pleased with herself: ‘Look, It’s like a hug.’

[pause]

9 year-old boy, turning to 11 year-old sister: ‘Can I fuck you?’

7 year-old girl, turning to 11-year old sister: ‘I want to fuck you too.’

………………………………

More:

Here is a funny video I saw this summer, on how to assess the marriageability of women. It is funnier for me because my wife is called Tiffany. It is probably funnier for anyone when you have had a couple of drinks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKWmFWRVLlU

Here is a funny song about learning Chinese (in Chinese, so skip it if you don’t speak any). In case you are wondering, it was done in Taipei. Can’t imagine something like this being done on the mainland.

 

Addendum:

Just now in the car…

9 year-old boy: ‘I know what fuck means.’

Me: ‘Oh yes?’

9 year-old boy: ‘It means sex.’

Wife: ‘How do you know that?’

9 year-old boy: ‘X and Y [friends at school] told me.’

[pause]

9 year-old boy: ‘But why can’t you say: “What fuck are you?”.’

 

Public-school boy rehouses Amazon tribe on half-term break, gets Oxbridge place

August 17, 2014

Will Hutton drones on a bit sometimes, but it is hard to disagree with this analysis of Britain’s education system, published in Sunday’s Observer. Hutton recommends action against those who buy themselves out of society through private education. It is necessary not just for moral, but for economic reasons. However I reckon it will take another 20 years — if we are lucky. 

 

Hutton:

Believe the hype and Britain is on the verge of a great levelling. Of course it is good news to learn that 1,400 more students from disadvantaged homes will be going to university this year than last. But it is hardly the end of the class divide, as some reports have claimed; 1,400 represents a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of thousands from more advantaged homes. The gulf in expectation and life chances between rich and poor remains enormous.

In fact, given the expensive and comprehensive efforts that go into promoting access, anything less than that figure would have been disappointing, even disastrous. Any university that wants to charge more than the basic fee of £6,000 for full-time study or £4,500 for part-time study (which is every one of Britain’s universities) has to sign an access agreement with the Office for Fair Access (OFFA). The university sets out as a quid pro quo detailed plans about the promotion of access. There has been an avalanche of initiatives.

It could be summer schools – the Sutton Trust alone offered summer schools for 1,900 disadvantaged students this summer, joining with 10 universities as part of their access agreements. Or it could be rebates from fees. Every part of the higher education system is keenly aware that it has to do more to attract students from disadvantaged homes (and I write as principal of Hertford College, Oxford). They are aware, too, that Offa is getting increasingly tough about its access agreements. Moreover, they desperately want more disadvantaged students as a matter of principle. An open-minded visitor from Mars might ask, given all this effort over so many years, why has the return been so paltry?

The Independent Commission on Fees (which I chair) closely analysed recent data in a report published last week. From 2010 to 2013, the numbers of students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds attending the 13 most selective universities increased by 9%. For the 30 most selective universities, this figure was 12%. Good news. But the numbers entering from the most advantaged backgrounds also increased over the same period – up by 5% and 14% for the top 13 and 30 universities respectively. So there has been a slight narrowing of the entry gap at the most selective universities from 2010 to 2013, but it remains extremely large.

In raw numbers, in 2013, 11,695 students from the most advantaged backgrounds entered the top 13 universities, but only 1,232 from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, an almost tenfold difference. The ratio drops to just over seven times for the 30 most selective universities. For the entire university sector, the difference in 2013 stood at 2.8. You can bet that very few of the 1,400 more students going to university from disadvantaged homes will be going to the top 13 universities.

This matters. There is growing concern that too much of Britain’s elite sport is occupied by athletes educated at private schools: for example, 41 % of the medals won at the 2012 Olympics went to the privately educated. We know that sporting talent will be randomly distributed among the 700,000 babies born every year. Yet the British system ensures that it will be those lucky enough to be born into households rich enough to educate them privately that will have the best chance to lift their natural sporting ability to Olympic standards. By any moral code, this is not fair, but beyond morality this is a huge squandering of talent.

The same is true of intellectual and academic ability. The Sutton Trust reports that four private schools and one sixth form college in Cambridge send as many students to Oxbridge as nearly 2,000 state schools. Are we to believe that native academic ability is uniquely concentrated in the children of parents rich enough to afford to pay the fees (or live in the catchment area of Hills Road sixth form college, Cambridge)? The differences even come through in personal statements accompanying university applications: 70% of students from private schools with the same grades are generally admitted to top universities compared to 50% from state schools. The key difference is personal statements, testifying to vast differences in cultural capital and experience. Manchester University’s Steven Jones, for example, observes the different impression conveyed by accounts of work experience that involve a Saturday job or a school visit to a business, on the one hand, with a personal statement that cites work with a local radio station, with a City law firm or a designer, on the other.

What is to be done? One of the worries about the £9k fee regime was that it would deter applications overall, disproportionately affecting disadvantaged students. It has certainly devastated part-time higher education – there are now, incredibly, 100,000 fewer candidates studying this way, traditionally a popular choice for those from moderate- and low-income homes. Mature student numbers are also well down. But application rates from 18-year-olds for full-time education to English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities are all up on 2010.

Part of the reason is the recognition of the value of higher education, part is the state of the jobs market for 18-year-olds with wages falling. But also in play might be some reservation about taking on so much debt. For some 18-year-olds, repayment even of tens of thousands of pounds can seem very distant – in a far-off world of adulthood after university when, in any case, your earnings have to be above £21k to start paying. But, equally, for others, the prospect of a chunk of debt might be offputting. Distant prospect or not, less debt is plainly better than more.

One obvious way of persuading more kids from poorer homes to apply would be to universalise the patchwork quilt of access agreement rebates into a standard lower fee for disadvantaged applicants. .

So a skewed fee regime would help, but the reality is that differential university applications reflect the desperately unequal society Britain has become – and also reflect the ongoing offence to any system of morality presented by such widespread private education.

We should open up private schools, invest disproportionately in state schools in weaker neighbourhoods and pay teachers as proper professionals. But above all we should be mobilising against inequality in all its manifestations – in housing, jobs, wages, access to the internet, sport and culture. There is no future for Britain other than as a smart society, and the more our people are enfranchised, the smarter we will be. Universities can, and will, play their part, but they can’t solve society-wide failures by themselves.

5,000 years…

August 10, 2014

 

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After three weeks here, I stand by the assertion that Taipei is the world’s most interesting and liveable Chinese city. However it would be wrong to suggest that Taipei’s free society, strong sense of community, respect for other people, good manners and superb food are not undergirded by the fundamental and immutable laws of a deeper Chinese culture, the one with 5,000 years of continuous history.

The quotidian evidence of this is surely the piety shown for small dogs, as demanded by the Analects of Confucius  (‘Exemplary persons would feel shame if their small dogs were not well-dressed, or their perambulators not in working order.’) The mainland has begun to rediscover its ancient respect for small pooches in recent years, but Taipei reveals how far there is still to go. Here, pooches are properly dressed in dresses, vests and nappies, and wheeled around in high-end canine perambulators purchased from designer doggy shops that can be found on almost every street.

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I have been told that the real reason why the tomb of Qinshihuangdi at Xi’an — close by the terracotta warriors — has never been opened is that this would disturb the souls of 8888 Celestial Poodles who were buried with the first emperor. All the stuff about mercury poisoning is a red herring.

 

 

 

FT Longlist

August 8, 2013

The Financial Times published its longlist for the FT/Goldman Sachs Book of the Year today and I am honoured that How Asia Works is on it. Below is the full list of 14 titles.

 

After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead, Alan Blinder, The Penguin Press

The Alchemists: Inside the Secret World of Central Bankers (UK subtitle); Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire (US subtitle), Neil Irwin, Headline Business Plus; The Penguin Press

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, John Murray; Eamon Dolan Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund, Anita Raghavan, Hachette Book Group/Business Plus

The End of Competitive Advantage: How to keep your strategy moving as fast as your business, Rita Gunther McGrath, Harvard Business Review Press

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be, Moisés Naím, Basic Books

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Brad Stone,Transworld/ Bantam Press; Little, Brown

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Adam Grant, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Viking (Penguin)

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, Angus Deaton, Princeton University Press

How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region, Joe Studwell, Profile Books; Grove Press

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg, WH Allen/Random House Group; Knopf

Making it Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy, Iain Martin, Simon and Schuster

The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office, Tim Sullivan and Ray Fisman, Twelve

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Allen Lane; Times Books/Henry Holt