Playing with the same people over a long period of time means that even at our casual level you can appreciate people’s different strengths and weaknesses – don’t give that guy the opportunity to smash; she can’t return from the back of the court but will get to anything you drop short; if you give him the opportunity to smash, make sure he has loads of time because he’ll overthink it and hit into the net… and so on.

More interesting than your opponent is your partnership with your doubles partner. With some people I can discuss tactics, and we manage to play accordingly; but some people all the talk between points just doesn’t stick – neither my partner nor I manage to stick to our plan. With some players it is pointless to discuss tactics. This can be good or bad – one guy knows his way around the court so well that you can just play around him, or if you make a move he will play around you, with no planning needed. Another player seems intent on returning to the dead centre of the court making it very difficult to locate yourself in a complementary position.

On the face of it I might expect the quality of the partnership to be based on a combination of badminton skill and how easily you have a rapport with that person off the court, but neither of those things seem to predict who I gel with on the court and who I don’t. I’m sure there is a lesson there…

I had almost reconciled myself to buying a new computer but I decided to try upgrading the memory instead. A very simple solution, but one that had literally never occurred to me. All that time spent Googling for solutions to having a slow computer, and all I got was “use CCleaner, remove software you don’t use, and defrag”. So, £25 later I now have eight times the memory (256 MB to 2GB), and it is a bit like having a new computer that actually works.

But the other thing that is even more like having a new computer is…

… not using Windows any more!

Oh yes, I am now one of the elite, more elite even than poncy Mac users.

Linux baby!

Specifically I am using Ubuntu, installed using Wubi. Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux “distributions”, and includes both the OS and all sorts of software (Open Office, Firefox and so on) straight out of the box.  Wubi (Windows Ubuntu Installer) is a tool that makes it so simple to try Linux that you really have no excuse not to. You install Wubi just like you would install any old program in Windows (Skype, Flash, whatever). This then installs Ubuntu on your system. There are a few steps to go through in the installation wizard but nothing more complicated than entering your name, choosing a password, and selecting a language. From now on whenever you switch on your machine you have a choice of starting Windows or Ubuntu. And that’s it. You can still use Windows any time you want, and if you really don’t like Ubuntu then you can just remove it in Windows the same way you remove any other program.

The most obvious benefit is how quickly Ubuntu  starts up. Post-memory-upgrade, I timed how long it took from switching on to opening an email in my gmail inbox. In Ubuntu, it took 1 minute and 20 seconds. In Windows XP, 7 minutes 30 seconds. It takes longer to get to the desktop in Windows anyway, but the real difference is that it then spends 5 minutes metaphorically patting its pockets looking for its keys and wallet before leaving, and then returning twice to check that the windows are shut and the oven isn’t left on. In contrast, Ubuntu is packed and out the door and doesn’t look back.

One of the problems I have with Windows is how anti-virus software updates and scans slow everything down. There is none of this in Ubuntu.

Installing new software is so much easier. There is even a software centre on the desktop menu which lists loads of different programs under different categories so you can go straight to the software you want and be on your merry way.

The only downside is that the initial installation doesn’t quite have everything you need for everything to work straight away. As I understand it, because of the software licence that Ubuntu/Wubi is distributed under, only open-source software is allowed to be included. So the first time you go to Youtube you can’t watch any videos because Flash is proprietary software and hence not installed. When you click on the video is does say basically, “You don’t have Flash, click here to install”, and a two minutes later you are sorted. Ditto DVDs, it doesn’t come with all the “codecs” required, so these have to be installed in a similar manner. I actually had some problems with this but found the solution after some searching. I am still having problems playing DVDs, but I haven’t put much effort in to solving this yet.

There is a distribution, called Linux Mint, that apparently includes all the non-open-source software you need for it to work completely out of the box, but this doesn’t have the user-friendly installation option of Wubi. Combining the advantages of both would make Linux a lot more reachable for people not inclined or confident enough to go messing around with their computers.

If you are in anyway curious about the non-Windows options, or dissatisfied with the Windows experience, I would strongly recommend giving Wubi a try. There is no risk, you can easily switch back if you want to.

It’s not too much of a simplification to say that modern American conservatives believe the national government to be ignorant, bumbling, and corrupt when it meddles in the U.S. economy, but sagacious, sure-footed, and righteous when it meddles in foreign-government affairs.

Nor are the boundaries of acceptable simplification breached by saying that modern American “liberals” believe the national government to be sagacious, sure-footed, and righteous when it meddles in the U.S. economy, but ignorant, bumbling, and corrupt when it meddles in foreign-government affairs.

I think that quote from The Freeman works quite well in British politics too (although “conservative” doesn’t necessarily map to “Conservative” and “liberal” doesn’t necessarily mean “Liberal [Democrat]” – it’s more a broad left/right thing).

For my part I’m definitely too gung-ho with foreign interventions and very sceptical of domestic government action. The argument that “Something Must Be Done” never works on me in a domestic context, because I usually think that government action, however well meaning, tends to pervert incentives and have unintended consequences. I need to carry that attitude over to my view on foreign gubbins.

If you awoke suddenly in an unfamiliar place with no idea how you got there, you would try and orient yourself in relation to the things you see around you. Conversely, if you have been on a journey it is easy to know where you are because you know where you have come from, how far you have gone and in what direction.

I think this is why teenagers and young people (that makes me sound really old…) can be very conformist. When you are a teenager, especially pre-16, your life hasn’t yet resembled a journey, certainly not one where you have had any options. And so to find out where you are – to find out who you are – the only thing you have to go on is the landmarks of the people around you. And it’s easier to know where you are if you are closer to landmarks, hence the sometimes ruthless and unpleasant conformity of being a teenager and the ostracism of those who are different.

As time passes, your life more and more resembles a journey – you have moved onwards emotionally, socially, intellectually. This makes it easier to know where you are because you have the reference points of the journey you have made. You no longer need to rely so much on the landmarks around you. Hence the greater tendency for independent bloody-mindedness and a liberating don’t-give-a-toss-about-keeping-up-a-facade of older people.

At court today waiting outside patiently for a hearing to begin. Heard a wide boy type bleating about his property to his brief. Apparently it has been valued at £240k, been on the market for 2 years and only had one offer at £178k.

So, presumably two or more years ago someone with no intention of buying said house told him that it was “worth” £240k. More recently, someone who actually did want to buy the house concluded that they would be willing to pay £178k.

Things don’t have an inherent value, they are “worth” precisely what someone is willing to pay for them. If you want to sell something, what you paid to buy it or make it is irrelevant – you will only sell it for what a buyer is willing to pay for it.

If you were given the task of constructing an environment that prevented people working efficiently but wasn’t actually damaging to them, it would be like most offices: lack of proper daylight (except when the sun hits your screen and you can’t see a thing); lack of fresh air (air conditioning is not fresh air); and inexplicable temperatures that are either too hot or too cold about which nothing can be done.

If you went further and began to construct people’s working lives around being unproductive, you would probably: insist that they all work at set hours irrespective of when they were most productive; insist they all came into a central location, possibly miles from their home, that is just like the place described above; make them responsible for things they can’t control but give them no responsibility for what they can control.

Sound familiar?

Everyone says that heightened talk of a Greek default is proof that last year’s bail-out has “failed”. But you could make a strong case for the opposite.

In reality, all that the Greek support programme last year was ever going to do was buy time. And that is exactly what it has done. It just hasn’t bought quite as much as governments hoped.

If the case for calling it a success rests on the problem having been punted a year in to the future, but that extra year hasn’t enabled Greece to solve the problem, I’d call it a failure. If you have a large debt, and you decide to borrow extra money to buy a car to allow you to take a better-paying job you have been offered which allows you to start repaying more quickly – that is a success. Transferring your credit card balance to another provider is not.

Flanders also goes on to say:

For some, these new dynamics shift the balance in favour of facing up to the reality of an involuntary restructuring or Greek default. Officials should stop fighting it, on this view, and instead focus on limiting the collateral damage, by recapitalising the banks that will be hardest hit (notably the Greek, French and German).

I’m not sure what “recapitalising” banks actually means, but it always seems to involve banks being protected from their own mistakes, a luxury granted to few other industries.

In practice, banks aren’t that different to other businesses. When a bank makes a £1 million loan (buying bonds amounts to making a loan), it has used £1 million in money to buy a £1 million pound asset. Yes, when you loan money to someone or something that loan is an asset, because it generates an income in the form of interest payments. It is a liability to the person/thing taking out the loan. So slightly counter-intuitively the more loans you make the more assets you have.

So when a bank makes a loan it is buying an asset in the expectation that it will generate an income and profit. This is exactly the same as a manufacturing business buying £1 million pounds worth of equipment to increase production. The expectation is that the purchase will generate income and profit in the shape of producing more goods to sell.

But if a manufacturer makes an asset purchase that back-fires they are not bailed out, and a good thing too. Why should banks be any different? The argument is that banks are too big and too systemic to fail, in the sense that the failure of a bank will have a lot of repercussions beyond them.

But banks have got too big because for years there has been an implicit and explicit understanding that they would be bailed out in the event of problems. If you run a business knowing that any failures will be compensated for, you will take too many risks. Banking is also an industry with high barriers to entry, so new competitors don’t tend to come along, making the incumbents even more safe and complacent about risk.

And what about the systemic risks? I wonder how much that is simply to do with the sheer size of banks and the loans they make. A manufacturing business that goes bust might also take down suppliers and customers so they too carry systemic risks; but a multi-million pound manufacturer will of course have less impact than a multi-billion pound bank.

has attacked the Lib Dems’ Tory coalition partners as “ruthless, calculating and very tribal” but insisted their alliance would continue

presumably because they had the temerity to campaign, you know, for the results they wanted.

But he also said:

We’ll continue the coalition in a business-like way.

Vince  Cable actually has some business experience, as Chief Economist for Shell (although that was only for a couple of years and it seems the rest of his experience was in politics, but that’s better than a lot of politicians). But it sounds like he has no conception of what “business-like” actually means.

For his information, a business-like relationship tends not to include public attacks on the character of your business partners.

I wonder if he thinks that business-like simply means unfriendly, or worse. Thing is, for the most part that is not how businesses behave. A business can have suppliers, partners, and clients. Suppliers are providing you with goods or services that you require and presumably can’t or won’t provide internally, and these goods/services are presumably critical for your business or you wouldn’t be paying for them. Ditto partners, you are working together for mutual advantage. And clients of course pay your bills, so you need them on side too.

Of course, some businesses are rubbish at these things. Promises are broken, people don’t communicate well. But this usually augurs the end of the business relationship, as the customer decides to stop buying your products or a business lets a supplier go because they are not working well together.

The other kind of business relationship is of course competitors, and here there may be little or no incentive to get on. In practice though, people will tend to know other people in their industry who work for competitors, and there will be industry groups and conferences and so on that serve to keep things cordial.

Perhaps Vince thinks that the LibDems and Conservatives are competitors, and that is the business relationship he is referring to. They usually are, but in the Coalition they are business partners, not competitors.