http://www.robfisher.net/blog Rob Fisher's Weblog Sat, 10 May 2008 14:14:13 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Gordon prefers locally grown seasonal food. Good for him. But he wants to throw you in jail for buying strawberries from Kenya. That's bad news for you and Kenyan farmers. Amazingly I agree with something someone from Oxfam says: "the million farmers in east Africa who rely ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/05/10/gordon-ramsay-is-a-pillock/ If you look around the world, you will find that freer countries tend to be richer, and less free countries tend to be poorer. Meanwhile, rich countries are better equipped to deal with natural disasters because people have mobility and can escape, and buy food from various sources. That explains ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/05/07/burma/ The blog Junkfood Science takes a critical look at media reports of health studies. One exemplary article debunks a study that finds that fat people are at greater risk of heart disease even if they exercise. Looking at actual incidences of strokes reported, for example, only 1.1% of ‘normal’ weight ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/05/07/junkfood-science/ I am glad Boris won. He's been accused of being a joke, and has said that he intends to take the job seriously. I am sure he will continue to be a bit of a buffoon. That's a good thing. The last thing anyone needs is ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/05/03/boris-is-mayor/ Tonight I am going to spoil my ballot paper. London doesn't need yet another layer of parasites. It has managed without a mayor before. I want my money back. I can't quite bring myself to vote for UKIP. I don't like the EU, and the candidate makes ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/05/01/london-mayor-election/ There are so many civil servants, these days. What do they spend all our tax money on? The new OGC logo offers some clues as to what 564 of them get up to. http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/04/24/another-government-logo-farce/ One of the stories on Radio 1's Newsbeat this morning was about a campaign to introduce concealed carry licenses on Virgina Tech campus. It's also covered on the website story, although you have to scroll down a bit. It goes without saying I agree with the campaigners that allowing weapons ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/04/16/bbc-covers-virgina-tech-concealed-carry-debate/ I won on the Grand National at 10:1. This is unprecedented. I never win anything. I chose the horse because it was the second favourite but still had good odds. I also chose it because it is called "Comply or Die", which is an excellent name that sums ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/04/08/comply-or-die/ Further to the story about the Home Office banning an Israeli politician from visiting Britain, Jameel emailed me a story about criminals in Gaza blowing up a British war monument. It's unclear exactly who they are or what they did, but why blow up something like that unless you have an ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/04/08/criminals-explode-war-monument/ I'm reading The Constitution of Liberty by Hayek. In some ways he seems to be making a utilitarian argument for liberty, and I'm not keen on utilitarian arguments. However, it makes sense to understand why freedom from coercion, which I think of as an end in itself, leads ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/03/17/rich-leading-the-poor/ Someone bought my girlfriend a book called Andrew Duncan's Favourite London Walks, and today we went on a walk around the Inns of Court. The walk passed a branch of Waterstones near the London School of Economics that called itself the economists' bookshop. I couldn't resist and bought a few ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/03/14/civilised-signs/ Stumbling off the Eurostar at St Pacras, I pass through the third passport check of the journey. This one has a motley gaggle of officials, some in blue jackets and some in white shirts. A man in a blue jacket glances at my passport and waves me through. "Is ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/03/13/pointless-official-bossyness/ This is a disgrace. The deputy leader of Israel’s Likud party, Moshe Feiglin, has been excluded from Britain by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith using powers invoked after the July 2005 London bombings — even though he had no plans to visit. [...] In a swipe at the government’s refusal to exclude Ibrahim Mousawi, ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/03/09/home-office-biased-against-jews/ PC Woody is a friend of mine who blogged about training to become a police officer but had to delete the blog when her superior officers found out. Well, now she's not a police officer any more, and has reposted all the old posts about police training, and promises ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/02/26/pc-woody-is-back/ This is almost too good to be true (via News.YC). A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is ... http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2008/02/25/pakistan-unleashes-denial-of-service-attack-on-self/