Economics ... what is it good for? Not much apparently.

In an effort to demonstrate a statistically significant negative correlation, with a p value less than 0.001, between the declining usefulness of economics as a social science and Mz Kitty's eye's glazing over, I spent 90 minutes in the company of economists last night.

This required first removing some confounding variables, notably random gents seemingly disturbed by states of singularity and wanting to know if they could have my mobile number to arrange a visit sometime soon. I appreciate that outliers can make the other dots in a series feel uncomfortable, or apparently get the wrong idea about the availability of the outlier for social outings, but I feel no need to be drawn into anyone else's line of best fit.

After some precision dispersal I found myself unfortunately regressing into a mental foetal position as speaker after speaker spoke about the state of statistics and economic measurement in India. Note that's not discussing the state of poverty in India, but rather how their ability to measure it has gone into decline since the original launch of the book, 'Poverty and Income Distribution in India', in 1974.

Detecting a fairly low level of standard deviation in the discussion, someone in the audience finally dared to ask how the eminent scholars (some of the world's finest, at Yale and MIT for example) might actually address poverty in India. The response from the MC was 'that's not the topic of discussion', and we returned to talking about how to measure it instead.

If you've got some of the finest economic minds in the business sitting on the podium surely they could have offered some thought on how to address poverty in India, or the world for that matter, especially now that it's over 40 years since the first publication of the book and in that time India has radically changed, culturally as well as economically, as a result of globalisation and neoliberalism.

To be fair, maybe I'm just too focused on my indeterminate ethnography with its pretty pictures and thematic analysis, underpinned by the certain belief that human beings cannot be reduced in totality to discrete variables, diced into quartiles and measured like so much daal. But I'm happy to work with statisticians and I even got a distinction in statistics in my Psych degree. I know my T-test from my Chi Square. And yes, I get that the underpinning data, government statistics, could be better, and statistical tools, and statisticians, need to be robust.

But dear economists, even with these caveats, in these days of re-writing the economic curriculum take a stand on what this thing called 'poverty' actually means for real people and the human implications of what your measurements are telling you!

I have no review of the actual book. I was going to buy it but by the end of the seminar my eyes had reached peak glaze and the only thing that appealed to me was the cover photo.

Perfect Day

Today has been, by Mz Kitty's definition, perfect.

A run in the morning as the sun is getting up, through a frosty white Victoria Park with noone but the hardiest souls sharing the glories of a still winter's morning.

My sourdough bread finally, after two years of experimentation, rose to the occasion and actually looked almost like a proper sourdough.

Then on to join thousands of like minded souls in the streets of London, reminding the newly inaugurated President Trump et al that we will be watching them.

Back to the marché for my coffee and the London Review of Books, to finish reading a 10,000 word essay on the life and works of David Bowie, some esoteric poetry, and squeezing in the latest instalment of Alan Bennett's diary for good measure (which I shouldn't really find as interesting as I do).

Home just in time to receive my new Salomon gortex-lined trail runners (although feet still slightly encrusted from last Sunday's mud so might wait a few weeks before christening them properly).

Some more baking of chocolate custard tarts, complete with home made flaky pastry.

Then anticipating a few hours in front of the goggle box with my fella (who did all the cooking yesterday for the coming week) watching Taboo and finishing a jumper.

It can only be bettered by the knowledge that tomorrow is Jane Austin, Cocktails and Knitting Appreciation Society day!

I suspect I may have hit seasonally adjusted middle age, where the desire to go out dancing in winter is outweighed by the desire to stay on a comfy sofa.

Things we love about Norway ...

Things we love about Norway:

1. Honesty. The country is legend for the cost of alcohol and waiters are not embarrassed to suggest we drink water. On New Year's Eve we thought we'd splash out and asked if they had any champagne. 'It's too expensive', we were told. 'Drink the red and more water'. The red was still £16 a glass.

2. They positively insist that we take food from the breakfast buffet for a picnic lunch (are you listening Switzerland!), only the Norwegians seem to take vegetables and fruit. This does however leave more bread, pancakes, apfel stroop and nutella for my continued carb fest that I kid myself will be burned off after a few hours of pottering around on skis.

3. They can ski madly for hours, occasionally stopping to shoot at things, then get on their bicycles and cycle up the hill to home, on snow, when it's -14 degrees, balancing their skis on their bikes.  It's all I can manage to finish the same 5km circuit in 40 minutes, trudge up the hill dragging my skis behind me, and then spend 20 minutes in the shower defrosting.

4. They are really good at cooking fish. Even my 'vegetarian' meal is fish; a 'cold water' fish I'm told when I ask what it is. In Norway I wonder if there is any other sort. It is Dingo Baby's ambition to change his diet and he reads 'Becoming Vegan' at the table while eating reindeer four ways.

5. That beneath that taciturn exterior that respectfully refuses to intrude on my personal space by saying 'hi' when passing (except when they want you out of the way on a trail and if you don't move it's your own fault if you get mown down ... I will get over it eventually) there is a sense of humour ... coincidently appearing whenever I deploy my magnificent snow plough on the steep bits.

6. Berries: in drinks, in deserts, stewed, whatever.

7. Hardy facial hair, essential for dealing with gale force head winds ripping across the fells that shred anything stupid enough to have been left uncovered.

8. And the fact that they can be as smug as they like about the wealth in the country. Rather than give away North Sea oil to BP et al, it has been used to fund the largest global sovereign wealth fund, worth today 711 billion pounds sterling. Four percent of the fund's return can be used in the national budget for the current population of 5.1 million people, saving the capital for future generations. The country is ranked in first place on the Human Development Index (2015), comes in fourth on the 2016 World Happiness report (flanked by other Scandinavian countries and Switzerland), is ranked in first place for income equality (gini coefficient), and is second on the global gender gap rankings (again, flanked by other Scandinavian countries). In comparison, the UK, who gave its North Sea oil to private interests (at least taxed from the 1970s at 50% under a 'super profit' law, but a rate that has declined over time and was effectively abolished in the 2016 Conservative party budget), is respectively: 14th, 23rd, 14th, and 18th.

Way to go Norway.

Notes to Self for the New Year 2017

1. Keep things in perspective: remember the Cold War when we learnt how to hide under a desk in the advent of a nuclear attack (although I was always a bit sceptical that hiding under a desk was going to be much use). There was never a 'golden age' of progressive liberal ideas nor will there ever be. Every civil liberty and law against bigotry we have now has had to be fought for and the coming years are just a continuation of that struggle.

2. Prepare strategically: the next five years is an endurance event, not a sprint. Carbo-loading is necessary, as is a flask of tea. Avoid chafing, and anything liable to fall off or breakage will need to be strapped down.

3. Pace yourself: fight one battle at a time, and fight it well.

4. Hang on to the belief that there is no way 2017 can be as interesting or as tragic as 2016.

5. Put on repeat ... 'not to compromise, not to collaborate, but to understand': remember that there is a reason why people do the things they do the way they do them. Just because someone votes against their own interests does not mean that they should be shunned, laughed at, or insulted. That would just be an indication of my own fear shining through and what generally got us into this mess in the first place. It is not beneath my dignity to engage in dialogue .. not to compromise, nor collaborate, but to understand.

Brexit, and other things lost in translation

It was inevitable on this year’s meanderings through the Pyrénées that Brexit would be le sujet du jour once the locals found out I lived in London (not that I ever admit at first to living in Britain but always start off by stating my Australianness, pre-empting any hostility that seems to have remained between the two countries since about the 12^th century).

'Pourquoi?’

Good question. And my response in Frenglish went something like this:

‘Parce que pleusiers raisons.

Une: le premier ministre David Cameron et son enemmi, Boris Johnson, sont narcissistes.

Deux: le pays est divisée. Dans le Nord, les peuples sont plus pauvres parceque de la deindustralisation, la mondialisation et le chomage. Dans le Sud-est, les peuples sont plus riches et ils n’ont aucun soin pour le Nord. Le Nord levée son doigt dans le ciel vers le Sud-est.

Trois: le democratie fecking ne marche pas.

I’m not sure it was the best explanation. It became even trickier when some Spanish asked ‘pourque?’ as I speak no Spanish and they spoke no English so we drew maps on the serviette in between eating pasta and gateau basque.

Language becomes tangled at the frontier, crossing over and back, ignoring Westphalian borders and imaginary nation-states, exemplifying why Europe as a cultural entity (not the EU as an economic project) is worth fighting for. Walk anti-clockwise around Pic du Midi d’Ossau and at some point bonjour becomes hola and then back to bonjour again. The refuge gardes generally speak at least four languages (French, Spanish, English and German). At communal tables people extend patience and grace to let me practice my atrocious French, and to converse with German French, Swiss French, Southern and Eastern French accents (even other French people had trouble following the latter so he switched to English).

There is a recognisable expression on someone’s face when they don’t understand (furrowed brow; head tilt; eye squint in concentration) and alternative words, sentence structures, hand gestures are used to keep the conversation going. The non-English nor French speaking Spanish men at les Viellettes were determined that we would have a conversation even if it was in pigeon, piecing together whatever language we could to include everyone in the debate. I’m always amazed at how few verbs we actually need to make ourselves understood. 

There are occasionally questions though that I will never have an answer for because I couldn’t think of the words fast enough to ask them before my protagonists had passed, like:

• Why were two young people taking their goats with them on a hike over Col de Riou?
• At my picnic spot above Luz Saint-Sauveur, where did the tall woman go and why were 20 goats following her?
• And how did the nude hikers I passed on the way to Bagnères de Luchon prevent their backpacks rubbing the skin?

The ‘strange’ invokes a necessary interpretation of cultural practice with its inherent risk of getting it wrong. Whether the cheese on the dinner table is for the vegetarian pasta only or for the veal ragout eaters as well is lost in translation. We share. More cheese is brought (there is always room for more cheese at least).

It’s not that anyone is immune to making the odd cultural stereotype. The French refuse to accept that lardons are not vegetables, but laughed at my joke, only made in French, that the lovely German group I was tagging had ‘put their towels down first’ in all the gîtes I had wanted to stay in meaning I was forced to stay elsewhere. And how do you know when you’re in a town with middle class English tourists? There’s no hummus left in the supermarket.

The Germans are loud and chatty over dinner (always getting their beer before finding their beds, while I’m always finding my bed and showering before even thinking of a beer) but share their vegetarian food with me and are in bed and asleep by 9pm. However, they also get up at 6.30am and, resplendent in undies and overhanging beer belly, turn on the main light, deciding everyone else in the room is getting up then as well. The French are not impressed. Viva la difference.

Navigating our differences can be exhausting, alienating, destabilising, using up precious reserves of cognitive and physical energy to manage the dissonance of someone else’s arrangement of consonants, values and comportment. And yes I understand I will make a twat out of myself by getting verbs and pronouns and tenses confused and yes there will be times when I will avoid all contact with another different human being because I just can’t consciously think about what I need to do to be understood anymore. But it will pass, and I will remember the joy of comprehending what someone else is saying, and I will give thanks for a stranger’s patience in trying to understand me. 

Things I would not be without in the mountains

• Voltarol and tea tree oil (no self respecting Australian travels without the latter and my knees no longer respect me and require the former).
• Wool clothing, from bra to socks (even in a heatwave and even though you will need to mortgage your London home in order to buy it).
• A can of tuna, crackers, cheese, and trail mix (NEVER leave home without emergency rations).
• Knitting (for those short days when your gîte is in the middle of a cow field you will thank me that you learned to knit).
• A book (NEVER equate sacrificing a book with saving weight – there are much less important things you can lose instead).
• Floss and toothbrush cover (while all other forms of hygiene practices may become questionable, NEVER forget to clean your teeth).
• Tupperware lunch box (for all sorts of purposes you haven’t even thought of yet).
• Craghopper towel (worth ignoring its obvious alien origins in return for its enormous lightweight hydrophilic capacity).
• Batons/poles (you cannot carry 12-18kg of extra weight up and, more importantly, down mountains without looking after your knees – it will save you on voltarol in the long run).
• Eyebrown tweezers, nail scissors and file (there is no excuse for becoming completely feral).
• Gusseted trek pants: 

Now I may have fallen fashion victim in the purchase of my latest trek pants. They have no gusset (and let’s not even mention the muffin top they create). I have always just assumed that every trek pant ever made had a gusset so I didn’t check when I bought them. I mean, why, North Face, would you make trek pants without a gusset!?! Surely the makers of trek pants understand for what purposes their pants are going to be put, even by a woman. Or perhaps, sadly, they do just assume that a woman will put her trek pants on for a wander to the park and back.

The stretchy fabric of modern tech pants may be more flattering around the butt but if it doesn’t come with a gusset leave it alone. Those of us with hips and gluts know that no matter how stretchy, if you’re taking a big step in any direction without a gusset the crotch is just going to ride up and you may very well find yourself having to delicately adjust your knickers while balancing on a rocky descent, poles in one hand, other hand manoeuvring under the backpack, and hoping no-one else is about to appear on the trail any time soon because you’re going to have to keep doing this until you get to some level ground which is the only type of ground that gusset-less trek pants are good for. ALWAYS buy trek pants with a gusset.

Reflections on time, Tour du Pic du Midi d'Ossau, 21 August 2016

In my picnic bag today I discovered a piece of Madaleine cake. Now it could be considered pretentious at this point to use it as a segue into reflections on time but I have to note that I can now spend hours doing nothing when just a few days ago I had no time to spare.

This can have serious consequences, for example, falling asleep in the sun beside a mountain lake with bare legs that soon crisp nicely, adding blisters to the welts gained from whatever bug I was sharing a bed with last night. But overall life doesn’t get any better than having nothing to do: sitting on a shaded terrace on a hot afternoon, reading a book with a cup of tea interspersed with listening to cow bells and crickets, waiting for my gîte host to arrive and freshly prepare my dinner (she left a nice note saying to ‘install yourself’ until her arrival). Perhaps lashing out with some knitting or playing with the local dog, but returning to the deck chair eventually to do nothing but watch light play on clouds, adjusting the green of the lake or the blue of the mountain range as it folds in on itself.

I have always wondered how the bergers fare being up in their huts with no-one but their dogs and sheep or cows for six months of the year.  But I suspect I could be a good shepherd.