Politicians should listen to big business – but not too much - Independent

July 9, 2018.

Politicians should listen to big business – but not too much
Business has a right to a voice in politics. And sometimes that voice deserves a special hearing. But it should only ever be one voice among several

Ben Chu
@Benchu_

Businesses have been sounding a Brexit chorus of warning

In recent days Airbus, BMW, Siemens and Jaguar Land Rover have all raised their voices to highlight the severe economic damage that will be done to their operations if the cabinet’s hardline Brexiteers get their way and wrench Britain out of the EU’s customs union and single market. Some have even said the harm could be so grave that they would pull out of the UK altogether, costing jobs and investment.

Choruses need a conductor. And it’s more than likely that these interventions were coordinated to prepare the ground for Friday’s Chequers meeting to force a cabinet agreement on what proposal the UK government should submit for a post-transition Brexit trade deal with the rest of the European Union.

But not everyone in the audience has been appreciative.

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“F*** business” was allegedly the concise review of one of those cabinet hardliners, Boris Johnson. The pro-Brexit Conservative internet entrepreneur Tim Montgomerie sought to present this four-letter reaction from the foreign secretary last week in the grand tradition of Adam Smith, citing the father of economics’ renowned alertness to firms’ tendency to anti-competitive behaviour.

Others have made the point that the voice of a handful of large pro-EU multinationals could be drowning out a different perspective from smaller firms.

It’s a curious consequence of Brexit that it has got “pro-business” right-wingers to pay attention to the dangers of monopolisation and lobbying by big firms. The fact that such concerns have surfaced now that businesses are warning about Brexit puts one in mind of the jailed dictator who suddenly becomes an advocate of prisoners’ human rights.

Yet even if the source of the argument is dubious, that doesn’t mean it’s an empty one. No serious person disputes that businesses often lobby in their own narrow interest. And it’s a fact of life that large firms with tens of thousands of employees usually have a degree of political access that smaller firms with only tens of workers lack. Even those who welcome big businesses’ interventions over Brexit would have to acknowledge these truths.

But that leaves us with a dilemma. When should politicians listen to big business? And when shouldn’t they? When should the public pay particular attention to their arguments? And when should we discount them? How can we distinguish relevant interventions from irrelevant special pleading?

One sound criterion would seem to be when a question of public policy directly impinges on a particular firm’s operations, giving them a special expertise.

That’s clearly the case with Brexit. No one is better placed to talk about the impact of customs delays than a car manufacturer which runs a “just in time” assembly plant.

When businesses write letters to newspapers supporting the Conservatives because of the general thrust of their tax policies the voice of business should command less reverence.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has called Airbus and BMW’s airing of their perspective on the dangers of leaving the customs union “inappropriate”. He would be more credible if a record could be found of him telling businesses to pipe down in the past.

Yet proximity to the consequences of policy can’t be the sole criterion of when we should listen to businesses’ views.

Soft drink manufacturers know a great deal about how the soda tax is likely to affect the public’s consumption of their wares. Cigarette manufacturers know all about the impact of plain packaging rules. Banks are experts in how regulatory requirements to increase their capital safety buffers will impact their profits. And so on.

But as all those examples show, having a financial interest in a policy doesn’t necessarily equate to that interest aligning with the broad public interest.

Other criteria are necessary when it comes to evaluating lobbying.

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The first is transparency. Private lobbying by big money is particularly insidious. If Jeremy Hunt wants to talk about inappropriate behaviour he might consider David Cameron’s non-disclosed “kitchen suppers” in Downing Street for Conservative Party donors.

Transparency relates to another vital criterion: equality of access. If a minister only listens to one section of business, such as large firms or finance, there is a danger that they start to see the world through the eyes of that section. We saw this clearly with Gordon Brown’s ultimately ruinous love affair with the City of London.

If ministers only hear from businesses and shut out other social stakeholders, such as trade unions and charities, that too is liable to be distorting and dangerous. Transparency about how often ministers meet various groups is a vital defence against this kind of capture.

But, in the end, there is no foolproof rule, or set of rules, that can reliably separate social useful business lobbying from the socially useless kind. It will always depend on a judgement about context.

Business has a right to a voice in politics. And sometimes that voice deserves a special hearing. But it should only ever be one voice among several.

Academics think they've figured out why people voted for Trump and Brexit - Independent

July 9, 2018.

Academics think they've figured out why people voted for Trump and Brexit
Posted 2 months ago by Louis Staples in news 
UPVOTE 
              
The election of Donald Trump and Britain’s Brexit vote came as a huge shock to most people, causing politicians, commentators and even scientists to search for answers.

After months of hot takes in newspapers and on TV, scientific studies have finally provided solid evidence of what made people vote for Trump and Brexit.

Two papers on the topic have now been released, the first of which focuses on Trump’s election.

After Trump's victory, pundits debated the influence of factors such as economic hardship and racial anxiety. With the absence of hard evidence, Professor Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania questioned 1,200 voters.

She observed:

Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups.

Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.

Mutz concluded that the people most likely to vote for Trump, after either voting Democrat previously or not voting at all, were those who felt their place in the world was being threatened.

Trump voters perceived that America was having to share its status as the world's most powerful nation, and also feared the possibility of losing the benefits of being part of a dominant ethnic group.

But the corresponding study of Brexit voters, authored by PhD student Leor Zmigrod and collaborators at the University of Cambridge, proved even more controversial.
The team sampled 332 UK citizens and asked them how they voted in the referendum, as well as probing their attitudes to related issues regarding national identity and culture.

Brexit voters were found to have greater nationalism, conservatism, and support for authoritarian policies. The paper concludes that these reasons accounted for almost half (47.6 percent) of the variability in support for Brexit.

Zmigrod added:

In today’s politically-polarised climate, it is important to understand more about the psychological processes behind nationalistic and social attitudes if we are to build bridges between communities.

Though in such turbulent times, these conclusions seem unlikely to heal the political divisions on either side of the pond.

HT: IFLScience

Factbox: How could Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May be removed from office? - Reuters

Factbox: How could Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May be removed from office?
Reuters Staff

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May is facing a rebellion from eurosceptics in her party after she announced plans to negotiate close trading ties with the European Union after Britain leaves the bloc next year.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May commences a meeting with her cabinet to discuss the government's Brexit plans at Chequers, the Prime Minister's official country residence, near Aylesbury, Britain, July 6, 2018. Joel Rouse/MOD/Handout via REUTERS
Brexit Secretary David Davis and another minister, Steve Baker, resigned late on Sunday in a blow to the prime minister and some members of her party are now calling for her to be replaced.

Below is an explanation of how May could be removed from office if she has to face a leadership challenge:

- What needs to happen for there to be a leadership contest?

A leadership challenge can be triggered if 15 percent of members of parliament in May’s Conservative Party write a letter to the chairman of the party’s so-called “1922 committee”.

The Conservatives currently have 316 members of parliament (MPs) so 48 of them would need to write such letters to challenge May.

Once that threshold has been reached, the chairman will announce the start of the contest and invite nominations.

- Could this happen to May?

The chairman of the 1922 committee is the only person who will know exactly how many members of parliament have submitted letters of no confidence.

But some eurosceptic members of parliament have started submitting letters to the committee chairman in protest over her Brexit negotiating strategy.

- What will happen during a no confidence vote?

If a no confidence vote is called then all serving Conservative members of parliament will be able to cast a vote for or against the serving leader.

If May wins any confidence vote she remains in office. If she loses, she is obliged to resign and barred from standing in the leadership election that follows.


- How quickly can a no confidence vote take place?

In the last no confidence vote against a sitting Conservative leader in 2003, the chairman of the 1922 committee announced he had received enough letters to trigger a vote on Oct. 28 and the vote was held the next day.

- What would happen if May lost the no confidence vote?

If May lost a no confidence vote then there would be a leadership contest.

If several names are put forward to lead the party, then a vote is held among Conservative MPs using the first past the post system to whittle down the field with the candidate with the fewest votes removed. Another ballot among Conservative lawmakers is then held until two candidates remain.

The final two nominees are then put to a ballot of the wider Conservative Party membership with the winner named the new leader.

Following David Cameron’s decision to step down as prime minister and Conservative leader after the EU referendum in 2016, five candidates put their names forward.

The field was narrowed to May and then junior minister Andrea Leadsom but she pulled out of the race before members voted, leaving May to become leader unopposed.

Reporting By Andrew MacAskill, Editing by William Maclean

This is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s simple formula for happiness - CNBC News

This is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s simple formula for happiness
Catherine Clifford 11:30 AM ET Sat, 3 Feb 2018
Steve Wozniak

When Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was young, he defined a successful life for himself — one that, despite its radical simplicity, has worked for almost 50 years.

"I thought out my philosophies when I was about 20 years old ... How do you do in life? ... How do you become a good person?" explains Wozniak, speaking at the at the Nordic Business Forum in Stockholm on January 24.

He continues, "It if I died and had all this wealth and yachts and all this stuff, would I be as happy as when I laugh? And I thought about pranks I played and jokes I had told and music I would hear that would make me smile, and I came up with my formula that life is about happiness."

Yes, a formula. Always the engineer.

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"Maybe success with money makes you happy too — but for me it was really just down to earth laughter and smiles. So I came up with my formula: Happiness equals smiles minus frowns," says Wozniak. "H = S-F."

"The Woz," as he is affectionately called, determined a key way to maximize happiness is to decrease the amount of sadness in your life.

"How do you get rid of the frowns? I worked on that," says Wozniak, who is now 67.

"Don't care that much that you are going to frown. Let things happen. Things do go badly in life and just say, 'Hey, my car got scratched, I will fix it,'" he explains.

In these situations, complaining or blaming others is just going to make things worse, says Wozniak. So will judging other people.

"And don't argue. Don't argue! You don't win an argument, you just walk away unhappy," says Wozniak. "You only have to convince one person in life, and that is yourself.

"This kept me so happy, to this day. My mind just kind of floats in a state of happiness and I just don't really have a lot of always being upset," he says.

 James Altucher shares his simple formula for achieving happiness James Altucher shares his simple formula for achieving happiness 
Indeed. Speaking in Stockholm, Wozniak continually smiles, gestures and is easily excited. It's that genuine enthusiasm that drove Wozniak to work in computing. Building computers was not a plan to get rich.

"I was never into money in any way — finance — to this day I have never used Apple stock app, I don't buy and sell stock," Wozniak says.

In fact, Wozniak sold virtually all his bitcoin holdings when the price shot up so he wouldn't be compelled to watch the price yo-yo. "I don't want that kind of care in my life. Part of my happiness is not to have worries."

Of course, Wozniak is worth millions, by one account as much as $100 million, so perhaps that's easy to say.

But there is one thing that makes him mad, he says: illogical, counter-intuitive machine user experience.

China foam insulation blamed for jump in ozone-depleting gas - Financial Times

July 9, 2018

China foam insulation blamed for jump in ozone-depleting gas
Manufacturers of PU product admit using chemical CFC-11 despite global ban

The Antarctic ozone hole has swelled this month to one of its biggest sizes on record, UN and US scientists say © AP

Emily Feng in Beijing 20 MINUTES AGO Print this page0
A mysterious jump in levels of a banned industrial gas that depletes the earth’s ozone layer has been linked to Chinese production of cheap insulation foam, according to a research report.

Scientists had puzzled over what caused atmospheric levels of the chemical CFC-11 to jump up to 38 per cent since 2012, despite reported global production being effectively zero.

Researchers from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a UK-based non-governmental organisation, uncovered large-scale use of CFC-11 by Chinese foam production companies, despite the gas being effectively banned since 1989.

“Information collected from foam production companies in China confirms that CFC-11 continues to be extensively produced and used illegally in China’s PU (Polyurethane) foam industry,” the EIA researchers wrote.

“The evidence gathered from conversations with multiple industry sources . . . points to its widespread use in the foam blowing production industry as the primary source of the illegal emissions.”

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CFC-11 is one of the most potent destroyers of ozone, a gas that protects the earth from harmful UV radiation. Once commonly used as refrigerant, the chemical was supposed to have been phased out by 2010 under the Montreal Protocol, a widely praised international agreement to protect the ozone layer that went into force in 1989.

“The increase in emission of CFC-11 appears unrelated to past production; this suggests unreported new production,” a separate government scientist wrote in Nature.

China is the world’s largest consumer of PU foam, comprising three-quarters of demand in Asia and a third globally in 2015, according to IHS Markit. PU foam is being used for insulating buildings as well as cooling units such as refrigerators.

In interviews with EIA researchers, 18 out of 21 foam manufacturers across China confirmed they were using CFC-11 because of its low cost, with several acknowledging it was illegal.

In China’s industrial province of Hebei, representatives of the region’s largest manufacturer of white agent — a component of PU foam — told researchers that 90-95 per cent of their production used CFC-11.

A representative of another Hebei company said it used CFC-11 in most of its products, admitting that it did so by running unlicensed factories in what the report called “shady and hidden operations” in Inner Mongolia.

Since 2016, environmental regulators in China’s Shandong province have acknowledged in public reports that “large volumes of illegally produced CFC-11” were used in plastic foam production.

EIA researchers said annual emissions from China’s illegal use of CFC-11 were equivalent to carbon dioxide emissions from 16 coal-fired power stations, but pointed to a “high degree of uncertainty” in their calculations.

Chinese officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the Montreal Protocol, some manufacturers, particularly in China, have substituted their production with HCFCs, a chemically related pollutant less harmful than CFC-11 but thought to be a contributor to global warming.

Environmental regulators in China have moved to phase out HCFCs from manufacturing by 2030.

Follow Emily Feng on Twitter @emilyzfeng