the corner office

Boris Johnson on Gordon Brown in the Telegraph:

He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the house as well. He is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling hangover, and who reaches for the whisky bottle to help him dull the pain.

Hehehe.

I like arctic winds. Today was gloriously wet and miserable, and it snowed! There was only a white dusting on the ground and it didn't take long to melt, but that doesn't matter. It snowed, dammit.

Something technical for a change. For months this year, I had a weird problem in Eclipse where I'd be typing away, and suddenly my keyboard would start working like it was a US keyboard, instead of the normal UK keyboard that's actually plugged into the box. I'd mutter something unkind about Eclipse, restart the IDE and the problem would go away. I presumed it was some bug in Eclipse itself.

I eventually got annoyed enough by this semi-regular problem that I did a search to see whether it was fixable. It turned out not to be Eclipse's fault at all. When I travelled to Romania earlier this year I was still working on my PC back in London, and had to enable US keyboard support because that's what they use in Romania. Problem is, Windows uses Alt-Shift as a default shortcut to switch between keyboard types, and it goes without saying that Alt-Shift is two thirds of a great many shortcuts in Eclipse. The keyboard shortcut applies only to the application you're currently using, so it looked like it was 'fixed' each time I restarted Eclipse.

To properly resolve the problem you can either just hit Alt-Shift to toggle back, or change the shortcut keys in the Regional Settings control panel (iirc that's where it is), or as I did, disable all keyboard layouts except for the one I use daily.

It's hard to believe that this counts as news:

The government is preparing to confirm that a huge and unplanned rise in government borrowing will have to be paid back in the years to come.

A bugbear of mine is the push for 'local produce'. Reducing the environment impact of food to how many miles it's travelled is an oversimplification which ignores all sorts of related costs and externalities. And I've often argued that it's just stealth protectionism. Why first-world farmers are any different to abacus and 8-track manufacturers, I don't really know.

Reason: The Food Miles Mistake

So just how much carbon dioxide is emitted by transporting food from farm to fork? Desrochers and Shimizu cite a comprehensive study done by the United Kingdom's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) which reported that 82 percent of food miles were generated within the U.K. Consumer shopping trips accounted for 48 percent and trucking for 31 percent of British food miles. Air freight amounted to less than 1 percent of food miles. In total, food transportation accounted for only 1.8 percent of Britain's carbon dioxide emissions.

...

Local food production does not always produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the 2005 DEFRA study found that British tomato growers emit 2.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of tomatoes grown compared to 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of Spanish tomatoes. The difference is British tomatoes are produced in heated greenhouses. Another study found that cold storage of British apples produced more carbon dioxide than shipping New Zealand apples by sea to London. In addition, U.K. dairy farmers use twice as much energy to produce a metric ton of milk solids than do New Zealand farmers. Other researchers have determined that Kenyan cut rose growers emit 6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per 12,000 roses compared to the 35 tons of carbon dioxide emitted by their Dutch competitors. Kenyan roses grow in sunny fields whereas Dutch roses grow in heated greenhouses.

Another reason why I believe the only sensible way to deal with global warming is for emissions and pollution costs to be adequately factored into transport and energy prices. That way what's best for the planet is fairly reflected in the price at the till, and if you choose a more expensive option, you know you're paying to offset your footprint.

In the meantime, do the planet and people who really need it a favour and buy from poor farmers in Africa.

In a few days' time we'll have been in the UK for 2 years. Which means that it was time for our visa renewal. We weren't worried about not qualifying, but an unkind and cold universe and an unkind and cold government department whose raison d'etre is to tell people to sod off more often than not are never a good mix, and caused us a bit of angst anyway. Thankfully the Home Office decided we're fine upstanding immigrants and said we could stick around for a little longer. Yippee (and phew!)

The story (aired on Fox News so it must be true) that Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent is priceless. Even if it is apocryphal, it resonates, because Palin was the poster-girl, epitome of the 'he's... he's an Arab' demographic.

She is kinda hot though.

I said back in February that I wouldn't get caught up in the US elections. The whole world watches, enthralled, only partly because it has any meaningful impact on our lives - a large part of it comes down to high theater, drama, the talent show to beat all talent shows. I got caught up in it in 2004, and afterwards I realised I really had better things to do with my life. Hence my complete avoidance of it all this year).

Having said that, I said in February that I liked Barack Obama, and I'm glad he's won. He promised the American people a way out of the mess they voted themselves into in 2000 and 2004, a way to prove to the rest of the world that Americans aren't all ignorant, hate-filled, over-Jesused racists, that the American psyche is better than that. (A bit too late for tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, but better late than never). While the competition were pandering to some of the ugliest and basest elements of the American electorate, Obama came across as mature, decent, dignified and in all respects the better human being. His victory represents optimism and opportunity, and justice, the good guy winning. It's the American Dream reclaimed from the nightmare it had started to become. I think he deserves this victory and I'm sure most Americans are justifiably pleased and proud of how things have turned out.

My annual sports post. Last year I said I didn't believe Lewis Hamilton deserved to win the F1 Championship. This year he won it fair and square, good for him.