@TheEconomist on a hybrid #VirtualParliament.

"Back to Abnormal"

Bagehot, The Economist, April 25, 2020

available at https://tinyurl.com/y8xn8dyb

This past week the Economist's Bagehot columnist wrote about the implementation of what are Zoom meetings for the United Kingdom's House of Commons, and some of the practical consequences. Adrian Wooldridge writes the column at this time. It is named after Walter Bagehot, a former editor of the Economist and author of "The English Constitution" (one of the books I kept from undergrad). He's also known for his rule for central bankers in a panic from "Lombard Street ("lend freely and at a penalty rate"). Both have been very practical of late, given COVID-19.

I wonder how we will regard the hybrid approach described herein in a few years.  While change has come for everyone, not least the "Mother of Parliaments" (churches were closed in the UK this year for Easter for the first time since apparently 1218), the piece makes clear the essential work that elected officials must do to support newspapers in their efforts to scrutinize the government. In the UK it is essentially only MPs that possess the combination of three critical tools -- they may ask written questions that the relevant ministers are obliged to answer, they have detailed knowledge of their own local constituencies, and they have the ability to speak on behalf of the voters.

Perhaps the "hybrid" we should be watching is not online versus in person meetings of Parliament. Instead it may be that recognizing that government accountability in the United Kingdom increasingly depends upon cooperative joint scrutiny by MPs and the press. Perhaps it would be best to call this the era of the dual hybrid Parliament ...

@TheEconomist on Alcohol and Health.

"A Sober Brawl," available at https://shrtm.nu/8Jwl
Sources: “Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria
 decision analysis”, by D. Nutt et al., The Lancet;
 “How dependent is the alcohol industry on heavy
drinking in England?” by A. Bhattacharya et al.,
Addiction; Centre for Responsive Politics; NHS

A brief piece this week, on the Economist's "graphic detail" item.  "Vaping" has been in the news, with ancillary reporting relating to tobacco and smoking. The newspaper points out, however, that it is alcohol that causes far more harm, and further illustrates (troublingly) that industry profits are based on the dependency of problem drinkers.  Should all who drink at hazardous or harmful levels moderate, the price rises necessary to maintain profits would be significant.

True, firms engage in public messaging to the contrary. But it appears public health officials question their commitment.  The article points out that the National Institutes of Health recently stopped working with the industry as a consequence, as did the World Health Organization. Perhaps sensing the danger, lobbying spending by alcohol firms has been on the rise. It now exceeds that of the tobacco industry by 31%.

image available at http://tinyurl.com/qh8ww2f

It's not the way we think about these things in the northern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, where so many wineries (and increasingly distilleries and breweries) find their homes. We think of the beauty of the orderly rows of vines. "Living on a vineyard" evokes a mental flash of magic and starlight, hopefully in some way both natural and sustainable. Further, such vistas are reminiscent of James Scott's legible forests -- suggesting, to borrow from David Brooks, that our desire for ordered rationality has found symmetry in our cultivation of the natural environment where we reside.

Yet the industry those rows of vines serve has its problems. To paraphrase Brooks, the highest form of wisdom is balancing the networks that shape our reality by perceiving, evaluating, and acting upon evidence.  Doing so means recognizing that the beauty of Napa and Sonoma, as ever, can come with an uncomfortable cost. Per the bard, roses have thorns, and silver fountains, mud, while clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun. Sobering thoughts indeed.