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Thursday Open Thread

by Fran
Thu Jul 24th, 2008 at 09:14:52 AM EST

Why not an early one...?

Comments >> (30 comments)

When we said we'd back renewables, we meant "set back"

by Colman
Thu Jul 24th, 2008 at 02:04:42 AM EST

The Guardian claims that, shockingly, the UK is busy trying to ensure that EU directives don't require it to give renewable energy sources priority access to the national grid: that might undermine important incumbent operators who provide jobs for the boys when they leave public service.
The renewables directive is intended to support an EU target to generate 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

On access to the electricity grid, the draft directive said: "Member states shall also provide for priority access to the grid system of electricity produced from renewable energy sources".

However, documents seen by the Guardian show Britain wants to change "shall" to "may" - which experts say would seriously undermine the directive. Turmes said the original wording was based on a similar policy used successfully to boost renewables in Germany, Spain and Denmark, and was meant to help countries "kick dirty energy sources like coal off the grid".

A lack of connections to the national grid, which was not designed to channel power from the scattered and remote locations that suit renewables, has stalled the uptake of alternative energy in Britain and led to completed wind farms across Scotland standing idle. A recent report from the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills said 9.3GW of wind power projects were currently waiting to be connected - the equivalent of a new generation of nuclear power stations.

But the strategy also noted that the draft EU directive obliged member states to give priority grid access to renewables, and said the government was working to "clarify this obligation".

Where "clarify" means "remove". They claim to be concerned that relying on intermittent sources like wind will cause problems, despite the experience elsewhere.

The problem here is that removing this obligation will give an out for every idiot government in the EU to make life hard for renewables for another decade or so.

Comments >> (10 comments)

European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 24. July

by Fran
Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 03:03:12 PM EST

On this date in history:

1803 - Birth of Adolphe Charles Adam, a French composer and music critic. A prolific composer of operas and ballets, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle (1844) and Le Corsaire (1856, (d. 1856)

More here and video

Read more... (93 comments, 465 words in story)

Wednesday Open Thread

by Jerome a Paris
Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 10:21:34 AM EST


From Private Eye

Comments >> (114 comments)

Flexicurity, the Danish model and the welfare state

by JakeS
Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 06:48:50 AM EST

One of the first replies I got to a comment here on ET ran along the lines of "cool, you're Danish, can you do a diary on the Danish social model?" And I've been meaning to do so since then - but never quite gotten around to it. So with no interesting current events in my neck of the woods right now (one of our parties is disintegrating, but hey, what else is new?), I figure I might as well.

The first thing to remember in any discussion of "the Danish model" is that it's actually a Scandinavian model, not an explicitly Danish. It evolved in all three Scandinavian countries more or less in parallel. I don't know about Finland, but I'd suspect that they had a slightly different trajectory because their primary trading partner is and was Russia, while the Scandinavian countries were firmly in the American sphere of influence.

The second thing to remember is that the Scandinavian model is not an economic model. It's a social model. The fact that it provides a number of not insignificant economic benefits - such as flexicurity and built-in counter-cyclical spending - is incidental. Nice, but incidental. Because its justification is fundamentally one of social justice, not economic efficiency.

What is usually discussed in the context of the "Danish model" is the labour market model, because it is the part of the Scandinavian social contract that most obviously increases economic efficiency. But as I argued above, this view is entirely too narrow: The labour market structure is a part of a coherent social contract that has evolved as a whole. It is possible that the labour market structure could be taken out of this context and transplanted into other countries with different overall social models. But it's equally possible that it can't. And we don't know, because it's never been tried.

Keeping these points in mind, we can identify six principal pillars of the Danish welfare state (I'll focus on the Danish because it's the one I know, but most of the conclusions should be applicable to all Scandinavian countries and a lot should be applicable to Finland as well):

Promoted by afew

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European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 23. July

by Fran
Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 03:11:22 PM EST

On this date in history:

1796 - Birth of Franz Berwald, a Swedish Romantic composer who was generally ignored during his lifetime. (d. 1868)

More here and video

Read more... (112 comments, 447 words in story)

Tuesday Open Thread

by Fran
Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 09:30:02 AM EST

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day,

and at last we cannot break it.

Horace Mann

Comments >> (81 comments)

Obama in Berlin

by jandsm
Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 07:57:20 AM EST

Apparently, Barack Obama will hold a campaign rally in the German capital Berlin. As most of you know, there was a debate on whether he should be allowed to give a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate right on the newly finished Pariser Platz. Charles Krauthammer, as BarbinMd correctly pointed out, turned the Brandenburg Gate into a holy shrine, which "you earn".

Well, as a German, let me point out: it is a holy shrine. Which is why they had it wrapped for 4 years with T-mobile advertisment only to have it reopened by Bill Clinton in front of 200,000 celebrating Berlin citizens. But anyway, anybody who has lived to see the Berlin Wall, anybody who has been to West Berlin while is was an island of hope in an ocean of oppression, knows what it means to be able to walk through it and why it was there that on the night of November 9th, 1989 people stormed the Wall. And it was not because of Ronald Reagan, whose speech is not part of the collective German memory.

Promoted by afew

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European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 22. July

by Fran
Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 03:05:44 PM EST

On this date in history:

1889 - James Whale, a British born film director, best known for his work in the horror movie genre, was born (d. 1957)

More here and here

Read more... (84 comments, 451 words in story)

Monday Open Thread

by afew
Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:10:27 PM EST

I suppose we'd better have one of these..?

Comments >> (45 comments)

Setting market conditions in Slovakia

by DoDo
Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 08:00:20 AM EST

Discontent with healthcare privatisation was the prime campaign theme of the 2006 elections in Slovakia, and promises to undo it were a main reason for a new bizarre coalition of three populist parties taking government.

After taking office, PM Robert Fico didn't dare to start renationalisation outright, and overall, his government implemented only minor changes to his predecessors' radical neoliberal reforms. However, it seems that with his power now consolidated, Fico felt he has the power to risk some conflict with the private insurers - and conflict there is, one of them brought the government into court, demanding half a billion Euros in damages.

Read more... (4 comments, 869 words in story)

Meet Iron Eaters

by das monde
Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 06:58:02 AM EST

This is a lazy photo-diary about people who are not allowed to be lazy.

A documentary about them won several film awards recently. The title is "Eisenfresser" ("Iron eaters").

The location is Chittagong, Bangladesh. It is very near in our globalized world.

A big sea-port, long beaches... stranded ships...

Pictures worth a thousand words - Diary rescue by Migeru

Read more... (28 comments, 275 words in story)

President Sarkozy puts his foot in it

by Frank Schnittger
Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 05:48:00 AM EST

President Sarkozy is reported as having told French Politicians at a lunch in the Elysee Palace today that "the Irish will have to vote again".  This runs directly in the face of the Irish Government's request at the EU Council that:

  1. The Irish people's vote be respected

  2. That the Irish Government be given time to analyse the result and come forward with proposals to address the issues raised by the campaign at the next Council meeting in September or December.

The timing is particularly unfortunate in that Sarkozy is due to visit Dublin on Monday and it was hoped that he would do so in "listening mode".

Topical, since Sarkozy is now in Dublin - afew

Read more... (66 comments, 800 words in story)

European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 21. July

by Fran
Sun Jul 20th, 2008 at 11:41:50 AM EST

On this date in history:

1893 - Birth of Hans Fallada, one of the best-known German writers of the 20th Century. He wrote primarily novels of social criticism, and his most famous work is the novel, 'Little Man, What Now?' (d. 1947)

More here and here

Read more... (84 comments, 465 words in story)

Sunday Open Thread

by Fran
Sun Jul 20th, 2008 at 10:15:35 AM EST

A gentle heart is tied with an easy thread.

George Herbert

Comments >> (66 comments)

A Rorschach Test

by Migeru
Sun Jul 20th, 2008 at 09:19:36 AM EST

I'm reading JK Galbraith's The New Industrial State, whose 3rd Chapter ends on the following note:
The modern large Western corporation and the modern apparatus of socialist planning are variant accommodations to the same need. It is open to every free-born man to dislike this accommodation. But he must direct his attack to the cause. He must not ask that jet aircraft, nuclear power plants or even the modern automobile in its modern volume be produced by firms that are subject to unfixed prices and unmanaged demand. He must ask, as just noted, that they not be produced.
While I finish the book and digest it and other recent readings such as Veblen's The Theory of Business Enterprise, I thought I would throw the quotation out there and ask for your reaction/interpretation of it. I see a large number of handles to go into favourite themes of ET.

Brought across by afew

Comments >> (67 comments)

European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 20. July

by Fran
Sat Jul 19th, 2008 at 04:06:46 PM EST

On this date in history:

1304 - Birth of Francesco Petrarch, an Italian poet, scholar, poet, and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists (d. 1374)

More here and here

Read more... (87 comments, 449 words in story)

Saturday Open Thread

by afew
Sat Jul 19th, 2008 at 10:51:39 AM EST

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Comments >> (67 comments)

Photography Blog No. 44

by LEP
Sat Jul 19th, 2008 at 09:46:59 AM EST

Greetings and welcome to the ET Photo Blog #44. Today, in addition to our technical section Ask the Experts we'll have just one general section which I like to call Anything Goes. Catch the great photos which accompany this Frank Sinatra rendition of Anything Goes.

             

                             Happy posting!

Weekend photoblog brought across by afew

Comments >> (59 comments)

European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 19. July

by Fran
Fri Jul 18th, 2008 at 03:27:52 PM EST

On this date in history:

1819 - Birth of Gottfried Keller, Swiss writer of German literature, became arguably best-known for his novel 'Green Henry' (German: Der grüne Heinrich). (d. 1890)

More here and here

Read more... (87 comments, 454 words in story)

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