Parkour

Amazing Parkour Skills from Biertijd on Vimeo.

Winter Quotes

Image via Wikipedia

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. ~Andrew Wyeth

Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.” ~Robert Byrne

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you…. In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout

One of my current pet theories is that the winter is a kind of evangelist, more subtle than Billy Graham, of course, but of the same stuff. ~Shirley Ann Grau

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood. ~John Burroughs

Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. ~Stanley Crawford

I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood. ~Bill Watterson

Every mile is two in winter. ~George Herbert

“Hear! hear!” screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, “winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.” ~Henry David Thoreau, 28 November 1858 journal entry

When the bold branches
Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters.
~B. Cybrill

I was just thinking, if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime. ~Will Rogers

Winter dies into the spring, to be born again in the autumn. ~Marche Blumenberg

Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
~Charles Kingsley

To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring. ~W.J. Vogel

O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
~Bill Morgan, Jr.

Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

New Ott Album - Mir

To be released March 8th 2011!

Ott says he's been listening to a lot of Sly and the Family Stone as well as Kraftwerk. If those are his influences for this album, it's bound to be fantastic. PLease make sure you support Ott, even if you get his music from a file sharing site. You can make donations here.

UPDATE: See here.

The Most Remote Places in the World

From here.

Thanks to modern technology and air travel, the world is forever becoming a smaller place. Where journeys from one continent to another once took months, they now take hours, and sometimes it seems like there is nowhere left for a would-be adventurer to really get away from it all. Still, if you have the time, money, and know-how, there are still some places off the map—or just barely on it—that remain shrouded in mystery simply by virtue of being really difficult to reach. Whether mining camps at the top of the world, or tiny islands thousands of miles from civilization, the following are the top 10 most remote places left on planet Earth.

10. Easter Island

Located some 2,000 miles west of the Chilean Coast, Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is a tiny island that has become famous for its remarkable isolation in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. It is relatively small, measuring roughly seventy square miles in size, and is today home to around 4,000 people. The island has become well known for the massive rock sculptures called Moai that dot its beaches. They were carved sometime around the year 1500 by the island’s earliest inhabitants, and it has been said that the massive wood sleds needed to transport them from one place to another are a big part of what led to the almost total deforestation of Easter Island. Scientists have argued that the island was once lush and tree-covered, but today it is relatively barren, a feature that only adds to the sense of sheer isolation that is said to overtake most first-time visitors. When the first settlers migrated to the island, the journey took several weeks, but today there is a small airport (reportedly the most remote in all the world) that carries passengers to the island by way of Santiago, Chile.

9. La Rinconada, Peru

For sheer inaccessibility, few locations in South America compare to La Rinconada, a small mining town in the Peruvian Andes. Located nearly 17,000 feet above sea level, La Rinconada is considered the “highest” city in the world, and it is this stunning geography that makes it so desolate. The city is located on a permanently frozen glacier, and can only be reached by truck via treacherous and winding mountain roads. Just reaching the city takes days, and even then altitude sickness, combined with the shantytown’s deplorable condition, means that few people can handle living there for long. Still, the town is said to have as many as 30,000 inhabitants, almost all of whom are involved in the business of mining gold, which is extracted from beneath the ice inside nearby caverns. In addition to its remoteness, La Rinconada has gained a dubious reputation as a destination for poor and desperate workers, many of whom work the mines for free in exchange for the right to keep a small percentage of the gold ore they find.

8. McMurdo Station, Antarctica

Located literally at the bottom of the world, Antarctica is easily one of the most remote places on the face of the Earth. There are no native inhabitants to the continent, but there are several research centers constantly in operation there, and of these McMurdo Station is the largest. Located on Ross Island near the northern tip of the continent, the almost perpetually frozen station is a center of international research, and is home to as many as 1,200 scientists and workers during the warmer summer months. It’s one of the most desolate locations on the planet, but although McMurdo is as far from a major city as any location in the world, even it is no longer as backwater as it used to be. Trips by boat to Antarctica once took months, sometimes even years, but McMurdo’s three airstrips have helped make the region a much less remote destination than before. Thanks to this, the scientists at the station now enjoy many of the modern amenities found in major cities, including gyms, television, and even a nine-hole Frisbee golf course.

7. Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Australia is known both for its extremely low population density and untouched natural beauty, both of which are best exemplified by Cape York, Peninsula, a huge expanse of untouched wilderness located on the country’s northern tip. The region has a population of only 18,000 people, most of whom are part of the country’s aboriginal tribes, and it is considered to be one of the largest undeveloped places left in the world. This helps contribute to its stunning natural beauty, but it also makes Cape York about as difficult to reach as any destination in Australia. The peninsula has become a popular destination for adventurous tourists, who drive jeeps and trucks down the unpaved Peninsula Development Road whenever it isn’t closed due to flooding during the rainy season. But even with 4-wheel drive trucks, many of the more heavily overgrown parts of Cape York Peninsula are completely inaccessible, and some regions have still only been surveyed by helicopter. Photo: http://www.abc.net.au

6. Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland

At 836,000 square miles in size, Greenland is the world’s largest island, but its tiny population of 57,000 people means that it’s also the most desolate. And of all the towns in Greenland, perhaps none is as remote (or as difficult to pronounce) as Ittoqqortoormiit, a small fishing and hunting village located on the island’s eastern shore, to the north of Iceland. The town is part of a municipal district roughly the size of England, but it has a population of only slightly more than 500 people, meaning that each person technically has more than 150 square miles to call their own. Residents make their living off of hunting polar bears and whales, which are prevalent in the area, and by fishing for Halibut during the warmer months. Ittoqqortoormiit lies on the coast, but the seas surrounding it are almost perpetually frozen, leaving only a three-month window when the town is easily accessible by boat. There is an airport some 25 miles away, but flights are rare. For the most part, the town, one of the northernmost settlements in the world, is completely isolated in the vastness of the tundra. Photo: http://dlareh.blogspot.com

5. Kerguelen Islands

Also known as the “Desolation Islands” for their sheer distance from any kind of civilization, the Kerguelen Islands are a small archipelago located in the southern Indian Ocean. There is no airstrip on the islands, and to get to them travelers must take a six-day boat ride from Reunion, a small island located off the coast of Madagascar. The islands have no native population, but like Antarctica, which lies several hundred miles south, the Kerguelens have a year-round population of scientists and engineers from France, which claims them as a territory. The islands do have something of a storied past, and since they were first discovered in 1772 they have been visited by a number of different biologists and explorers, including Captain James Cook, who made a brief stop on the archipelago in 1776. Today the island is primarily a scientific center, but it also holds a satellite, a French missile defense system, and even serves as a sort of refuge for a particular type of French cattle that has become endangered on the mainland.

4. Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island is a tiny speck of land located nearly dead in the center of the southern Pacific Ocean. Its closest neighbors are the Gambier Islands and Tahiti to the West, but even these are several hundred miles away. The island, which is the last remaining British territory in the Pacific, has a standing population of some fifty people, many of whom are descended from crewmembers of the famed HMS Bounty. In 1789, the Bounty was the setting for a now-legendary mutiny, when crewmembers enchanted by the idyllic life of the native Pacific islanders overthrew their commander, burned their ship in a nearby bay, and settled on Pitcairn. Today, the descendants of those sailors mostly make their living off of farming, fishing, and selling their extremely rare postage stamps to collectors, but even with modern transportation they still remain one of the most isolated communities in the world. There is no airstrip on the island, and getting there from the mainland requires hopping a ride on a shipping boat out of New Zealand, a journey that can take as long as ten days.

3. Alert, Nunavut, Canada

Located in Canada on the tip of the Nunavut territory, Alert is a small village that lies on the Arctic Ocean only 500 miles below the North Pole. It is widely considered to be the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world (with a whopping five year-round residents), and also one of the most inhospitable. Temperatures in Alert, which also serves as a Canadian radio receiving facility and a weather laboratory, can get as low as 40 degrees below zero, and because of its location at the top of the Earth, the camp alternates between 24-hour sunlight during the summer and 24-hour darkness during the winter. The nearest town to Alert is a small fishing village some 1,300 miles away, and you would have to travel nearly twice that distance to reach major cities like Quebec. Because of its military function, Alert does have an airport, but because of weather it is often unusable. In 1991, a C-130 aircraft crashed there when its pilot misjudged his altitude and brought his plane down 19 miles short of the runway. 4 people died in the crash, and another perished while waiting for a rescue party, which took nearly 30 hours to make the short journey to the site because of a blizzard.

2. Motuo County, China

Considered the last county in China without a road leading to it, Motuo is a small community in the Tibetan Autonomous Region that remains one of the few places in Asia still untouched by the modern world. Just getting to Motuo is a Herculean task, as travelers must follow a grueling overland route through frozen parts of the Himalayas before crossing into the county by way of a 200-meter-long suspension bridge. The county is renowned for its beauty—Buddhist scripture regards it as Tibet’s holiest land—and it is said to be a virtual Eden of plant life, housing one-tenth of all flora in China. Despite its stunning geography and natural resources, Motuo still remains something of an island unto itself. Millions of dollars have been spent over the years in trying to build a serviceable road to it, but all attempts have eventually been abandoned because of mudslides, avalanches, and a generally volatile landscape. As the story goes, in the early 90s a makeshift highway was built that led from the outside world into the heart of Mutuo County. It lasted for only a few days before becoming un-passable, and was soon reclaimed by the dense forest. Photos: http://news.cultural-china.com

1. Tristan da Cunha

The single most remote inhabited place in the world, Tristan de Cunha is an archipelago of small islands located in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The nearest land to the island is South Africa, which is roughly 1,700 miles away, while the South American coast lies at a distance of about 2,000 miles. Despite its tiny size and astonishing isolation, Tristan de Cunha has enjoyed a rich history. The island was first discovered in 1506 by a Portuguese explorer, and was later annexed by the British, who feared the French might use it as a point of departure to rescue Napoleon, who had been exiled to nearby St. Helena. A small group of British, Italian, and American settlers began living on the island in the 1800s, and it is still under the U.K.’s jurisdiction today. The islands now have a total population 271 people, most of whom are descended from those original settlers and make their living as farmers and craft makers. Although the island now has some television stations and access to the internet via satellite, it is still the most physically isolated location on planet earth. The island’s rocky geography makes building an airstrip impossible, so the only way to travel to it is by boat. It was once regularly connected to South Africa by a British transport ship, but this vessel has since stopped calling on the island, and outside of the occasional cargo vessel, now the only visitors to Tristan da Cunha are deep sea fishing boats.

Old Time Stongman lift, The Two hand Anyhow

This barbell looks like it weighs 125 pounds. A one handed snatch is impressive alone. If you have never tried a Two Hand Anyhow, give it a shot, you will be surprised how difficult it is, even with light weights.

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Kiva is a SCAM

I've been saying this for ages. I know this article doesn't specifically mention Kiva, and I'll dig up some more proof. People with good intentions, stop being so naive.

India proposes regulating microfinanciers

(AFP) – 1 day ago

MUMBAI — An Indian central bank panel has put forward proposals for nationwide regulation of the microfinance sector after the industry was buffeted by accusations of lending abuses.

The panel urged that interest rates on microloans be capped at 24 percent a year and that loans to the poor total no more than 25,000 rupees ($550) per borrower.

The panel's report was commissioned after the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a hub of microcredit activity, took steps last October to crack down on microfinance firms' operations in a bid to stop alleged exploitation.

The panel said in its report on the bank's website Thursday that there was a need to halt such abuses as multiple lending to borrowers by competing microfinance companies, and coercive recovery methods.

The seven-billion-dollar microfinance sector has until recently been hailed as a saviour of India's poor for providing loans averaging 250 dollars to millions of borrowers -- often small entrepreneurs -- unable to get credit from mainstream banks.

But the microfinanciers' surging profits, charges of arm-twisting debt collectors and interest rates of over 30 percent have led to mounting controversy with some critics accusing the sector of greed.

Since the backlash debt collection rates in Andhra Pradesh, which accounts for a third of microlending activity, have plummeted and commercial banks have cut back sharply on lending to microcredit institutions.

Shares of India's biggest lender to the poor, SKS Microfinance, jumped sharply Thursday after the central bank panel proposed the regulations.

SKS, India's only listed microfinance firm, climbed as much as 13 percent to 750 rupees before easing back on profit-taking to close up nearly four percent at 694.25 rupees.

The proposals "give clarity to the industry's requirements. The recommendations have been long the demand of the industry," industry spokesman Alok Prasad told the Press Trust of India news agency.

Money For Nothing, Dire Straits Banned in Canada

Well, money for nothing is now banned in Canada under the tyranny of political correctness.

From here.

The 1985 Dire Straits song 'Money for Nothing’ has been banned in Canada for containing the word “faggot”.

Although a number one hit record around the world during the mid-Eighties, The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled the song to be "extremely offensive" - and thus inappropriate for airing on radio or television - as it contains an anti-gay slur.

The decision was made against the Newfoundland based radio station CHOZ-FM.

There are later versions of ‘Money For Nothing’ which replace the word ‘faggot’ with ‘mother’, which the Standards Council said the radio station should have played instead

Ron Cohen, the CBSC's national chairman, told The Washington Times this week that the decision effectively sets a "nationwide" precedent binding on all private license holders for TV and radio broadcasting.

This comes just days after a court in the Canadian state of Saskatchewan ruled a proposed provincial legislation, which would enable commissioners to refuse to perform same sex marriage ceremonies on the grounds of religious belief, to be ‘unconstitutional’.

A lawyer, who was appointed by the Saskatchewan government to argue in favour of the legislation, argued that marriage commissioners were entitled to their religious beliefs. He questioned whether it would be truly discriminatory for same-sex couples to have to phone another commissioner to perform the service.

Janice Gingell, a lawyer for the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, told the court that while the proposed law didn’t deny same-sex couples the right to marry, it did put another hurdle unfairly in their path.

Justice Minister Don Morgan says the government will take some time to review the decision so it can decide how to proceed.

Here are some lyrics you might find more offensive than faggot, what do you think the chances are that these songs won't be banned?

"Niggas in the church say: kill whitey all night long. .
. the white man is the devil. . . . the CRIPS and Bloods are
soldiers I'm recruiting with no dispute; drive-by shooting on this
white genetic mutant. . . . let's go and kill some rednecks. . . .
Menace Clan ain't afraid. . . . I got the .380; the homies think I'm
crazy because I shot a white baby; I said; I said; I said: kill
whitey all night long. . . . a nigga dumping on your white ass; fuck
this rap shit, nigga, I'm gonna blast. . . . I beat a white boy to
the motherfucking ground"; "Kill Whitey"; --Menace Clan, Da Hood,
1995, Rap-A-Lot Records, Noo Trybe Records, subsidiaries of what was
called Thorn EMI and now is called The EMI Group, United Kingdom.

"I kill a devil right now. . . . I say kill whitey all
nightey long. . . .I stabbed a fucking Jew with a steeple. . . . I
would kill a cracker for nothing, just for the fuck of it. . . .
Menace Clan kill a cracker; jack 'em even quicker. . . . catch that
devil slipping; blow his fucking brains out"; "Fuck a Record Deal";
-- Menace Clan, Da Hood, 1995, Rap-A-Lot Records, Noo Trybe Records,
subsidiaries of Thorn EMI; called The EMI Group since 1997, United
Kingdom.

"He preys on old white ladies [who] drive the Mercedes
with the windows cracked. . . . you should've heard the bitch
screaming. . . . sticking guns in crackers' mouths. . . . the cops
can't stop it. . . . remember 4-29-92, come on; Florence and Normandy
coming to a corner near you, cracker; we've been through your area,
mass hysteria; led by your motherfucking Menace Clan"; --"Mad Nigga";
Menace Clan, Da Hood, 1995, Rap-A-Lot Records, Noo Trybe Records,
Time Warner, USA.

"To all my Universal Soldier's: stay at attention while I strategize an invasion; the mission be assassination, snipers hitting Caucasians with semi-automatic shots heard around the world; my plot is to control the globe and hold the world hostage. . . . see, I got a war plan more deadlier than Hitler. . . . lyrical specialist, underworld terrorist. . . . keep the unity thick like mud. . . . I pulling out gats , launching deadly attacks";
--"Blood for Blood"; Killarmy, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, 1997, Wu-Tang Records, Priority Records, The EMI Group, United Kingdom.

I pledge allegiance to only the black. . . . black, you had best prepare for the coming of war. . . . look at you devil; now you're sweating; I'm telling you: you can't run from the hand of Armageddon. . . . he eats his pig-steak rare so he can taste the blood";
--"No Time"; RBX, The RBX Files, 1995, Premeditated Records, Warner Brother Records, Time Warner, USA.

"Killing devils [and] scatter they ashes over the sea of Mediterranean . . . . open your eyes to the revolution. . . . unite with the black coalition";
--"Wake Up"; Killarmy, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, 1997, Wu-Tang Records, Priority Records, The EMI Group, United Kingdom.

"My own kind blind, brain-trained on the devil-level. . . . chasing down loot, Dole or Newt, who do you shoot. . . . rough stuff to the babies, spread like rabies";
--"Niggativity . . . Do I Dare Disturb the Universe"; Chuck D, Autobiography of MistaChuck, 1996, Mercury Records, PolyGram, Phillips' Electronics NV, Netherlands. PolyGram merged within Universal Music Group in 1998, the parent being The Seagram Company, Canada.

"Buck the devil; boom. . . . shoot you with my .22; I got plenty of crew; I take out white boys. . . . we got big toys with the one-mile scope, taking whitey's throat";
--"Buck tha Devil"; Da Lench Mob, Guerrillas in tha Mist, 1992, Eastwest Records America, Elektra, Atlantic, Time Warner, USA.

"Little devils don't go to heaven. . . . the AK forty . . . hold a fifty clip, and I'll shoot until it's empty. . . . I'm killing only seven million civilians. . . . one dead devil";
"Freedom Got an AK"; Da Lench Mob, Guerrillas in tha Mist, 1992, Eastwest Records America, Elektra, Atlantic, Time Warner, USA.

"Grab your deep-ass crews. . . . we gotta make them ends, even if it means Jack and friends. . . . now you're doomed, hollow-points to the dome; once again it's on. . . . out comes my .22. . . . I'm the cut-throat; now I got to cut you . . . '94 is the season for lynching; from out of the dark is the South Central g., ready-hand steady on a bloody machete. . . . a devil is on my shoulder; should I kill it; hell yah. . . . I slice Jack. . . . took an axe, and gave that bitch, Jill, forty wacks. . . . with my hip hop . . . it don't stop, until heads roll off the cutting block";
--"Cut Throats"; Da Lench Mob, Planet of da Apes, 1994, Priority Records, Thorn EMI; now called The EMI

China devalues US buying power by 30%, Protects US Treasury Holdings

From here.

The trade imbalance between the US and China, a hot button between the nations for the last decade or so, is finally going to start to stabilize in the summer of 2011. However, it is doing so with a de facto devaluation of the US dollar and its buying power. The average American will see a spike in the price of everything from their favorite jeans and T-shirts, to the cost of some electronics.

The Chinese have decided to devalue the US dollar’s buying power, without devaluing the US Treasury holdings they hold. It is an elegant solution to their issues. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off, while they try to prop up the European Sovereign debt markets at the same time.

The Chinese are attempting, successfully so far, to introduce the Yuan as a global currency in which to settle international trade. China is pumping into its own internal currency markets so much liquidity, they need an export market to develop for the Yuan or their own internal markets will overheat.

So China is going to start offering Yuan based savings accounts, to westerners as a vehicle in which to park capital. While this is a test case only, one might expect Yuan based accounts to be offered around the world sooner rather than later.

If western investors take to Yuan based cash accounts as a way to try and gain an increase in value, the transition will drive the western banks to be more proactive in adding convertibility into their systems. To start, they are offering these Yuan accounts at three US based branches.

The US Dollar devaluation will come in the form of an increase in the prices of all products. In reality it will represent the uniform cost push effects of inflation. The US can expect it on all Chinese based products of one form or another. The timing of the change is set to arrive with the products on the US shores in the summer of 2011.

“They’re going to go home with 35 percent less product than for the same dollars as last year,” particularly for fur coats and cotton sportswear, said Bennett Model, chief executive of Cassin, a Manhattan-based line of designer clothing. “The consumer will definitely see the price rise.”

China has no choice at this stage, but to pass on the cost of raw inflation to its customers. The era of cheap Chinese imports is over. The real impacts of higher commodity costs are going to push into the economy at different levels.

The weather impact on Australia has not hit the Chinese manufacturing capacity yet, but you can expect that diesel will increase significantly in the coming weeks, as China draws upon the world’s spare capacity to fuel their economy this spring.

The US had warned China to adjust its currency peg with the US, or suffer the consequences. Those consequences are now being going to be return to the US shores as expensive imports of dubious quality.

However, not all nations or economist agree with the stance the US is taking. Robert Mundell, Nobel Prize winning economist, and the proverbial father of the Euro, feels that the US is pushing China too hard in this regard.

Robert Mundell, Professor of Economics, Columbia University, said: “It’s a mistake to have China change the exchange rate. This is a bad way of changing something.

“A big appreciation in China would create deflation, aggravate poverty in the western part of the country, in the rural areas. It would be something that would in the long run come back to haunt China.”

Channel News Asia

China has no choice but to push the cost of the rising raw commodity prices onto their end consumers. The dirty secret of the runaway commodity bull market that started in the summer of 2010 is how much real inflation is raging inside of the Chinese economy in 2011.

“Four percent, China can bear it — beyond 5 percent, people will complain a lot,” said Huo Jianguo, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation here.

The Chinese people are reported to be experiencing painful levels of internal inflation on food staples. The hard reality is that in the global trade in fresh produce, requires that energy inflation is quickly pushed through to food prices. The Chinese government has reacted to these increases by rolling out Nixon like price caps on staples.

“Given that food prices are spearheading immediate inflationary pressures, supply-side measures should be more effective than rate hikes,” Qu Hongbin, the co-head of Asian economics research at the international bank HSBC, “There’s no need to panic, as Beijing has more than enough effective policy options to combat inflation.”

The real mark up of inflation will be higher, and across the board for buyers of Chinese products in the spring 2011 for the next Christmas buying season. This is going to introduce expectations of inflation in the US by the spring of 2012.

Victor Fung, the group chairman of Li & Fung in Hong Kong, a 35,000-employee trading company that supplies most of the world’s big retailers with Asian goods, said that contracts signed late last year would produce a jump of 10 to 20 percent in the import prices of consumer goods arriving at American ports by the second quarter of this year.

“By the middle of this year, you’ll see considerable diversion of trade away from China,” which will start to bring down the United States trade deficit with China, Mr. Fung said in an interview.

New York Times

The Chinese – US bilateral trade will show signs of leveling at a new lower rate, just as the European mess grows worse. This is the Catch-22 China now finds itself in. Europe has grown into China’s most important export market, just as the economy of Europe shudders from the fiscal and monetary policies of the area. China can handle the market adjustment to one of its major export markets, but can it handle both?

The Chinese could find themselves in a situation in 2012 where their largest two export markets have radically changed on them. This leaves their government open to domestic issues concerning the support they are providing to bankrupt western nations.

The US purchasers for organizations like Wal-Mart are international mercenaries. They will look to relocate their international low margin purchases to nations like Vietnam, the Philippines, and Africa, and to the Mexicali factories, once again.

The Chinese are going to find themselves priced out of the low end of the cheap product market. While their factories are the largest in the world and they employ armies of workers, the scale of large numbers is starting to work against the Chinese as a whole.

The increase in prices from most if not all world sources, will drive new changes to the US business models in the near future. It will be interesting to see where China and its exports are in that make up.

Canada’s China Foreign Aid Policy

Image via Wikipedia

Canada’s China Foreign Aid Policy

From here.

The average person, when considering the requirements for a country to be a foreign aid recipient, would envision a developing country where the majority of the population is living in poverty. They certainly would not consider a country with a booming economy, a healthy trade balance, large foreign currency reserves, one of the world’s largest armies and foreign investments and a foreign aid programme of its own, as a suitable candidate. Yet that is just the case with regards to China today.

In 1983 Canada and China signed a Development Cooperation agreement. In the first twenty years, the Canadian government contributed nearly $1 billion in foreign aid, most of it through CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency). In CIDA’s words, this aid was for ’a targeted program of specialized cooperation in which Canadian experience and expertise support China’s reforms in good governance, human rights, and democratic development and in environmental sustainability.’ Where is the evidence for any such ’reforms’, particularly in human rights and democratic development. Despite contributions for this purpose, little progress has been made in any of these areas. Only six years after signing the agreement, the communist Chinese government crushed the democracy movement. Since then it has continued to suppress Tibet, kidnapped the Panchen Lama, and persecutes pro-democracy dissidents, followers of the Falun Gong movement and other religious groups in China. There are very few human rights, as well as little democracy in the country, where the Chinese Communist Party is the sole political power, accountable to no-one but its own congress.

CIDA admits that China ’has made enormous economic strides’ in recent years. For this reason ’Canada does not provide funds to the government of China. Instead, we provide Canadian expertise to assist the country in undertaking reforms that China, itself, is implementing and funding. The cooperation program involves many Chinese and Canadian partners including government agencies, public and private sector enterprises, academic institutions, as well as community based and other civil society organizations.’

While Canadian groups involved include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), let us not deceive ourselves into believing that they are working with their counterparts in China. There is no way any of these experts is allowed contact with political dissidents or human rights activists. Those who they do meet most certainly have been thoroughly vetted for their political loyalties and views. Furthermore, as all these programmes are totally dependent upon the approval and cooperation of the Chinese communist government, one can only wonder at their actual effectiveness and success.

According to CIDA’s Country Development Programming Framework (CDPF), it plans to spend $250 million between 2005 and 2010, on the old stand-bys: human rights, democratic development, good governance, environmental sustainability and others.

Foreign aid proponents and the pro-China lobby will maintain that since Canadian experts are being paid by CIDA, the money is not really going to China. However, that is a mute point. The expertise that these experts are providing is being given to China for free. Canadian taxpayers are footing the bill, which could quite easily be paid by the Chinese. If China is truly interested in foreign or Canadian expertise in the area of ’human rights, democratic development, good governance, and environmental sustainability’, it clearly has the capability to pay for it itself, and not just the small contributions it presently makes!

While CIDA is the most recognizable entity through which foreign aid is channeled to China, another source of Canadian assistance is the Export Development Corporation (EDC). Over recent years it has provided, in the advanced technologies and telecommunications field, $841,884,442.32 in short-term and medium to long-term financing, including various kinds of insurance. There is no real information as to what kind of projects receive EDC funding. Nor is there any way of knowing to what purpose these technologies will be put. For all we know they may be used to further persecute dissidents, human rights activists and other groups presently on Beijing’s hit-list.

One of the EDC’s prime borrowers is the Bank of China. Other Chinese government owned financial institutions, which have a relationship with the EDC, are the State Development Bank of China, the Export-Import Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Canadian telecommunications companies will claim that these loans help them do business in China. For lack of a better comparison, it is as if your local family variety store would lend thousands of dollars to Donald Trump or Frank Stronach, to ensure that they patronized their business.

This EDC policy raises an interesting question. Would these same companies be equally successful in promoting or selling their products if the Canadian government did not provide these loans? Are these loans in actual fact little more than bribes? How are these loans repaid? Are they interest free, thus providing additional aid at Canadian taxpayers’ expense?

While one branch of the government was handing out aid to China, another branch (Natural Resources Canada) was holding meetings with Chinese ministers and mining representatives to ’facilitate dialogue between interested Canadian and Chinese parties towards establishing mining joint ventures or any other investment options in Canada.’
Chinese direct investment in Canada has grown from $54 million in 1991
to $220 million in 2004, when China Minmetals Corporation, a state-owned company, unsuccesfully attempted to buy Noranda Inc. and Falconbridge Limited. Then in 2005 China invested in two tar sands and one gold mining company. China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) paid $150 million for a 1/6 interest in Calgary based MEG Energy Inc., while its Sinopec Group obtained a 40 per cent interest for $105 million in Synenco Energy Inc.’s Northern Light oilsands project in Alberta. The Zijin Mining Group invested $1.95 million in Vancouver-based Pinnacle Mines Ltd.

Clearly China is not an impoverished country if it has millions to invest in Canada alone.

Reasons why Canada should reconsider, or more specifically cancel, further foreign aid to China:

1) China has $1.43 trillion in foreign currency reserves, sufficient amount to pay for the experts and expertise that at present is being provided through CIDA by Canadian taxpayers.

2) From a Canadian trade deficit of $1.1 billion in 1995, the trade imbalance between Canada and China has grown by leaps and bounds reaching $7.6 billion in 2000 and $13.8 billion just three years later, in China’s favour. By 2004, imports from China were $24.1 billion, a 30 per cent increase over the previous year!

3) In 2004 China became the third largest trading nation after the US and Germany. With exports of $1.15 trillion US and imports of $561.4 billion, the balance of trade is greatly in its favour.

4) China’s defence budget is $30 billion and its army is the biggest in the world.

5) While Western democracies are concerned about what is happening in the Darfur region of the Sudan, China not only supplies arms to that country, but protects it from UN resolutions and action. In addition, it has invested about $4 billion U.S. in that country and imports about 10 per cent of its oil through the China National Petroleum Corporation built pipeline.

6) China has given aid to African countries from whom it is buying oil and gas, repressive regimes like Nigeria, Sudan and Angola. In 2006, a China-Africa summit was held in Beijing, at which China provided aid, technology and scholarships to the visiting African heads of state, in an effort to gain political influence in the region, and ensure it will get access to Africa’s oil, gas and mineral resources.
7) China supports repressive regimes around the world, such as North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Myanmar (Burma), a clear indication of its lack of respect for human rights. Whenever the UN tries to take action against any of these countries, such as Myanmar in late 2007, China uses its position to protect them. Its largest aid recipient is North Korea, a dictatorship whose leader lives in luxury while his people starve to death.

8) China is a nuclear power and also has its own space programme.

9) December 2007, China invested $5 billion in the brokerage company Morgan and Stanley. Here is a clear indication, if more proof was needed, that it is not short of funds to invest in its own country, or to help alleviate the poverty to be found there. However, it prefers to use its immense resources to gain political influence around the world, rather than concern itself about its impoverished citizens. With the Communist Party and an immense army in total control of the country, there is no need to seek favour with the disadvantaged. Unlike Western democracies, there is no electorate to be answerable to for its policies.

These are more than enough reasons for the present Harper government to take the bold decision to stop providing foreign aid of any kind to China. Any country that can contribute billions annually in its own foreign aid programmes, not to mention one that is the fastest growing economy in the world, is not an appropriate candidate for continued foreign aid. One thing is certain, no future Liberal government will make such a momentous decision. This is clear from the way previous Liberal governments, from Trudeau to Chretien to Martin, have treated relations with China.

Hon. Raymond Simard (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, among other positions), reported in Hansard on Nov. 16, 2005, that according to statistics given him during a trip to the region in 2004, ’60 per cent of the building cranes in the world were in China’ and that ’between 150 million and 250 million middle class now exist both in India and China.’ Yet China remains the darling of Canada’s foreign aid community and is either the second or fourth recipient of Canadian foreign aid, depending upon the year or which data one looks at.

The most telling indication of the Liberal government’s misconceptions about the effectiveness of Canadian foreign aid to China, and Canada’s actual influence on its policies, was made apparent in early 2005. Aileen Carroll, then Minister of International Cooperation, in the House of Commons refused to stop aid to China, on the grounds that: “China influences hugely and will continue to influence the international scene. As such, it is very much incumbent on Canada to continue to work with the groups to build freedom in that country, to develop human rights and to develop a rules-based society ...... “We are helping China grow and influence it in the right way.”

If anyone thinks that Canada has the influence to steer Chinese policies towards democracy and a respect for human rights, they are not only incredibly naive, but totally lacking in any semblance of common sense. A country that supports dictatorships or repressive regimes such as North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar, etc., is clearly not interested in democracy or human rights.

The problem here is that Canada is not alone in providing foreign aid to China. Among other countries are Japan, Germany, France, Australia and Great Britain, to name but a few, whose aid comes to billions of dollars. What is fuelling this misguided policy? Are businesses using their economic clout to influence their respective governments that business interests should take precedence over matters of principle? It is time the Western democracies, all of whom have increasing trade deficits with China, stopped providing foreign aid to a country which clearly no longer belongs to the ’have-nots’ of the world.

Rich Chinese Flault Their Wealth and Mix Expensive Wine with Coke.

Why is the West still giving Foreign aid to this country? From the Mail.

Talk to any upscale, London-based wine merchant and he’ll tell you two very important things about his rich Chinese clientele.

First, money is no object. Sotheby’s recently reported, for instance, that a vintage bottle of 1869 Chateau Lafite sold for more than £130,000 to a Chinese buyer.

And that’s for drinking now by the way: not to lay down in a cellar. ‘What we’ve seen emerging in the past year are people paying virtually any price for wine,’ said David Elswood, Christie’s head of wine. ‘That is not investment: that is just uncontrolled spending.’

Making London their home: Financier Andy Wong (right) with his wife Patti who is chairman of Sotheby's. They have been jovially nick-named 'bananas' - yellow on the outside, white on the inside

Second, and perhaps more ­crucially, the Chinese have their own way of imbibing their wine — a method that could cause offence to more traditional and pedantic oenophiles.

No slow and tentative sipping or deferentially swishing around on the palette for them. Even with a £6,000 bottle of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, the Chinese tilt the glass and knock it back.

Straight down the hatch. Or they mix it with Coca-Cola - so the story goes - to sweeten the taste.

It seems, too, that this behaviour is very much par for the course with the sudden Chinese invasion of London.

Even £6,000 wine is drunk straight down the hatch

With China’s once-booming finances now showing signs of slowing down, inflation alarmingly high and the property markets in Beijing and Shanghai overheating, China’s financial elite (China and Hong Kong now boast 89 billionaires, second only to the U.S.) are putting their money somewhere more secure — and many appear to have chosen our capital.

Before Christmas, the 57-year old Hong Kong real estate billionaire Joseph Lau Luen-Hung (fortune £2.5 billion) spent £33 million on a six-floor mansion in Belgravia.

Rich pickings: 57-year old Hong Kong real estate billionaire Joseph Lau Luen-Hung is the proud owner of this painting of Mao Zedong by Andy Warhol which cost a cool £11m

The house will make a splendid home for the Paul Gauguin canvas that Lau paid £25 million for in 2007, his £8 million Picasso and £11 million Andy Warhol of Chairman Mao. Also moving in will be Lau’s 10,000-bottle wine collection and the flawless blue diamond that he bought for £5.8 million last year.
Should Lau need to leave the UK in a hurry, he can call on the services of his £99 million Boeing jet, complete with a bespoke 4,786 sq m cabin.

Lau is not the only Chinese arriviste in the capital. A recent London Property Review released by estate agent Knight Frank suggests almost half of all investors in London come from Asia, and, most specifically, mainland China and Hong Kong. Knight Frank says Chinese buyers are by far the most active group of overseas investors in the capital.

In fact, this invasion of the so-called Peking Pound actually began two years ago. In 2009, data from tax rebate companies, which help foreign shoppers reclaim VAT on sales, suggested Chinese tourists were spending three to four times more than they were the year before.

Location location location: Joseph Lau Luen-Hung spent £33million on a six-floor mansion in Belgravia which will no doubt make a splendid home for his burgeoning art collection

One company, Global Refund, reported a 164 per cent rise in sales to Chinese customers on Bond Street in the first seven months of 2009. (By contrast, spending by ­Russians fell by 27 per cent.)

Skip forward a year to 2010 and Chinese shoppers spent more than £3 million on Bond Street in six months — more than double the previous period — according to figures from the Bond Street Association.

Retail analysts reckon the Chinese account for 30 per cent of the top-end goods market in Britain (British shoppers make up 15 per cent.)

Because of the endless Chinese custom of gift-giving, items such as watches and jewellery are bought as presents for relations, friends, business associates — oh, and mistresses.

A luxury London spa now offers Chinese medicine

Think high-end, heritage brands such as Louis Vuitton, Rolex and Burberry, bought in the UK partly because there’s a purchase tax rate of 20 per cent on the same luxuries bought in China.

The Chinese have become the biggest overseas spenders on such luxury items, beating visitors from Russia and the Arab nations. In short, the Chinese are taking on the oil sheiks and the oligarchs — and they’re winning.

A few weeks ago, during the pre-Christmas rush at Harrods, shop staff reported that more than half their clientele was from China.

Down the road is Harvey Nichols, bought in 1991 by Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Dr Dickson Poon.

Fine dining: Britain's new Chinese high society like to out in style and can often be seen dining in the likes of Hakkasan (pictured here) and China Tang at the Dorchester

Year-on-year sales figures there have shown a huge increase in Chinese clients, inspiring the famous department store to run a rather cheeky advertising campaign in Mandarin, tempting wealthy male Oriental customers with fine English tailoring.

‘The English gentleman is known for being a little boring in the bedroom,’ went the blurb. ‘Except, of course, when it comes to his wardrobe.’

Meanwhile, Harrods is offering the services of Mandarin-speaking staff, and Selfridges now accepts payment by China UnionPay card, the only domestic credit card available in China.

‘The influx of Chinese wealth [to Europe] has been primarily in the London market,’ says Aaron Simpson, founder of Quintessentially, the London-based luxury concierge service with offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

‘People feel that London is on an upward trend, and it’s a good time to buy property. A lot of people come to take advantage of the private healthcare.’

Quintessentially’s property division currently has a number of mainland Chinese clients on its books looking for properties in Central London, with budgets ranging from £8-17 million.

What China's expat millionaires spend their money on

Joseph Lau Luen-Hung - £33m Belgravia mansion, £35m Paul Gauguin canvas, £8m Picasso and £11m Andy Warhol of Chairman Mao, £5m flawless blue diamond

Mystery Chinese buyser - vintage bottle of 1869 Chateau Lafite sold for more than £130,000

Chen Wai Kung - owns quintessential Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes

Silas Chou - former owner of royal jeweller Garrard and Co, bought Pepe jeans London Corporation in 1991

Kenneth Fang - bought Pringle in 2000

Patti and Andy Wong - Lavish New Year parties have cemented their position within British society

When the Chinese are not shopping for houses, they are buying up businesses. Lots of businesses.

Chinese entrepreneur Silas Chou, former owner of royal jeweller Garrard and Co, bought Pepe jeans London Corporation in 1991.

Pringle, the venerable knitwear company, was purchased by the Hong Kong manufacturer Kenneth Fang in 2000, while Singaporean businessman Cheng Wai Kung now owns the 200-year-old Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes.

Chinese investment is creeping into different markets, too. Earlier this week, on a four-day visit to Britain, China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang confirmed energy and manufacturing deals worth £2.6 billion with companies including BP and Jaguar Land Rover.

Given Beijing’s decision to let the yuan appreciate against Western currencies, the influx of rich Chinese into London isn’t set to slow down anytime soon.

But there’s a crucial difference between the wealthy Chinese invading the capital and their Arab and Russian predecessors. For what the super-rich Chinese don’t do is show off.

They don’t cruise around in fast, over-revving Maseratis like the more rowdy summer visitors from Qatar and Saudi, or indulge in ostentatious Kristal champagne spraying marathons like young Muscovites at nightclubs such as Movida and Aura.

‘That decadent West thing doesn’t appeal to most Chinese people,’ explains Hong Kong-born, London-based financier Andy Wong.

‘Years of Communism have meant that the idea of having lots of money and splurging it around is considered distasteful. And they have never found the idea of lounging around on a yacht in St Tropez particularly aspirational.’

So, what do they do instead? ‘Oh, you know, they like looking at birds,’ says Andy breezily.

‘Calligraphy, painting . . . that sort of thing.’

The secret to his success: Sir David Tang runs the hugely successful Chins Tang restaurant as well as being the brains behind luxury clothing brand Shanghai Tang

Andy Wong and his wife, Patti, the chairman of Sotheby’s, are what the Chinese community jovially refer to themselves as ‘bananas’ — yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

Both Oxbridge-educated, they are the millionaire offspring of a brace of Hong Kong bankers. Andy’s grandfather founded the Bank of East Asia, Hong Kong’s largest independent Chinese Bank, while Patti’s grandfather founded Hang Seng, the second largest.

The Wongs arrived in London in 1995, and with the help of a decade or so of annual and very lavish Chinese New Year parties, attended by the likes of Prince Andrew and Shirley Bassey, they quickly became socially ubiquitous.

‘London’s Chinese do like shopping,’ confirms Patti. ‘But not for clothes. They buy property, businesses, art. And they’re food-obsessed.’

They eat at jaw-droppingly expensive Chinese restaurants such as China Tang at The Dorchester and Hakkasan, where Peking Duck comes with Beluga caviar at £165 a pop.

What super-rich Chinese never do is show off

From next month, should they need a respite from all this activity, they can hang out at The Langham hotel, which is opening the first luxury spa in ­London to offer traditional Chinese medicine.

Lisa Tseng, a beautiful, whip-smart, Kensington-based philanthropist, calls the new Chinese rich ‘the uncomfortable billionaires’.

‘They aren’t impressed by the high-society side of London,’ she says.

‘Anyone expecting the wealthy Chinese to behave like their Russian counterparts, spending money on designer goods and going to noisy nightclubs, will be very disappointed,’ adds Sir David Tang, the plummy-voiced Hong Kong entrepreneur behind the aforementioned China Tang and the Shanghai Tang boutique on Sloane Street.

‘We get plenty of very rich Chinese in my restaurant, but they are low key. They don’t care for parties or clubs. There are no flashy cars. We’re talking about stealth wealth here, not Versace.’

George Lucas fully believes 2012 is the end of the world

From here.

Funnyman Seth Rogen was left stunned by a recent encounter with his moviemaking hero George Lucas - because the Star Wars director spent 20 minutes telling him the world would end in 2012.

Rogen was left speechless when Lucas and Steven Spielberg joined a movie meeting he was a part of - but the encounter has left him worried his life will be over next year.

He recalls, “George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it.

“He’s going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, ’My nerdy friend won’t shut up, I’m sorry...’

“I first thought he (Lucas) was joking... and then I totally realized he was serious and then I started thinking, ’If you’re George Lucas and you actually think the world is gonna end in a year, there’s no way you haven’t built a spaceship for yourself... So I asked him... ’Can I have a seat on it?’

“He claimed he didn’t have a spaceship, but there’s no doubt there’s a Millennium Falcon in a garage somewhere with a pilot just waiting to go... It’s gonna be him and Steven Spielberg and I’ll be blown up like the rest of us.”

Sean Connery on Wife Beating

Russian strength and conditioning and...dancing.

I'd bet the strength and condition for this came from pood and a half Russian kettlebell training.

Traffic Lights at busy intersection turned off, traffic flow improves.

Nudge, nudge, wink wink... How the Government wants to change the way we think

Image via Wikipedia

Shame, vanity, laziness and the desire to fit in are all to be used as tools of Government policy by ministers acting on the advice of a new psychology unit in Whitehall.

The first glimpse into the confidential work of the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insight Team came on Tuesday when ministers suggested members of the public should be able to make small charitable donations when using cashpoints and their credit cards.

On Friday, the Cabinet Office again followed the unit's advice in proposing that learner drivers be opted in to an organ donation scheme when they apply for a licence, and also floated the idea of creating a lottery to encourage people to take tests to prove they have quit smoking.

These initiatives are examples of the application of mental techniques which, while seemingly paradoxical to the Coalition's goal of a smaller state, are likely to become a common feature of Government policy.

The public will have "social norms" heavily emphasised to them in an attempt to increase healthy eating, voluntary work and tax gathering. Appeals will be made to "egotism" in a bid to foster individual support for the Big Society, while much greater use will be made of default options to select benevolent outcomes for passive citizens – exemplified by the organ donation scheme.

A clue to the new approach came early in the life of the Coalition Government, in a sentence from its May agreement: "Our Government will be a much smarter one, shunning the bureaucratic levers of the past and finding intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves," it read.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, established the seven-strong unit in July, since when the Government has declined to divulge all its members and the full extent of its work. However, The Independent has learnt its guiding principles and some of the projects that have used its favoured techniques.

One experiment involved Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) secretly changing the wording of tens of thousands of tax letters, leading to the collection of an extra £200m in income tax.

Other ideas tried elsewhere that have been studied by the unit include reducing recidivism by changing public perception of ex-prisoners, and cutting health costs by encouraging relatives to look after family members in "patient hotels".

The unit draws inspiration from the Chicago University professor Richard H Thaler and his colleague Cass Sunstein, whose book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness is required reading for Conservative frontbenchers.

Professor Thaler, who advises the UK team, suggests that instead of forcing people to behave more virtuously through legislation, governments can guide them in the right direction using psychology. Ministers should become, in his jargon, "choice architects", making virtuous choices more attractive than unvirtuous ones. In his books he quotes the example of automatically opting workers into company pensions to raise the amount saved for old age, which will come into force in the UK in 2012 having been enacted by Labour. Another is from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, where flies were etched on to urinals to give men something to aim at, reducing spillages in the gent's toilets.

Mr Cameron embraced nudge theory two years ago in a speech about "Broken Britain", but has subsequently placed more emphasis on his own idea of the Big Society, where individuals and charities play a much greater role ias the state shrinks.

Both ideas, however, fit neatly into the work of the insight team, which reports to key Government figures including Jeremy Heywood, the Prime Minister's Permanent Secretary, Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron's director of strategy, and Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary.

Central to this is limiting regulation and cost, according to the unit's director, Dr David Halpern, a former Cambridge University social psychology lecturer.

In comments to policymakers and businesspeople in Brussels recorded by The Independent last month, Dr Halpern said: "One of the policies of this new administration is essentially a 'one in, one out' approach to regulation, so departments wanting to introduce a new form of regulation have to get rid one at the same time. One of the fashionable things to say is: 'Well, what are the alternatives to regulatory instruments?' – spending money – which they're not very keen on. So it tends to support this shift towards behavioural economics."

Dr Halpern has experience of seeking unconventional solutions to policy problems via his role as chief analyst at Tony Blair's Strategy Unit, which looked into ways of increase happiness in the UK that – in common with other western countries – have not kept pace with economic growth.

Dr Halpern's approach, carried over from his days with Mr Blair, centres on his favourite term, "Mindspace," an acronym that stands for: Messenger (i.e. he who communicates information affects its impact); Incentives; Norms (what others do influences individuals); Defaults (pre-set options tend to be accepted); Salience (revelance and novelty attract attention); Priming (sub-conscious cues); Affect (the power of emotional associations); Commitments (keeping public promises); and Ego (the stroking of which encourage positive action).

Seeking to explain Messenger he told his Brussels audience: "It matters who tells you. If you are go to say something about vaccination, you are much better off having the Chief Medical Officer say it than a Cabinet minister ... if you want anybody to follow the advice."

Similarly, tax officials who reinforce "norms" dramatically increase their collection rates. The authorities tend to be "quite aggressive and assertive" when chasing late payers, Dr Halpern said. "We will send you a rude letter and say: 'We're going to come and find you and break down your door and take away your children.' So [HMRC] officials had been reading a bit of [nudge] literature and they changed letters on just one block of letters [chasing] £600m in unpaid tax.

"The normal repayment rate is about 50 per cent. The [new] letter says: '94 per cent of people pay their tax on time', so now you emphasis the underlying social norm – and then: 'Even if one person doesn't it has a significant impact'. The repayment rate went up to 85 per cent, [collecting] £200m just in that experiment."

Intriguingly, closer co-operation between the unit and HMRC was referred to in passing by the Cabinet Office on Friday. At the centre of the unit's work, though, are its priorities: well-being, public health, the environment and philanthropy.

While there are few details so far on how the unit will tackle happiness, plans for public health are more advanced. Britons have one of the worst records in Europe when it comes to rates of obesity, drug use, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley favours nudging rather than legislation and has controversially recruited food and drink multinationals, who profit from unhealthy behaviour, to devise appropriate strategies.

One is likely to see signs placed at supermarket checkouts reinforcing social norms about the amount of fruit and vegetables bought by the average shopper. Another is the idea of "patient hotels", a Continental innovation where relatives can sleep alongside patients, cutting costs and improving outcomes. This has the added attraction of reducing health spending at a time when the NHS budget will come under increasing pressure from rising demand.

Public health campaigns on STDs are likely to replace factual warnings with questions designed to emphasise social norms. So, instead of advising people of the likelihood of sexual partners having an STD, posters would ask: "What would your girlfriend think of you if you say you don't want to use a condom?"

Some professional health organisations, such as the British Medical Association, are concerned that nudges will be used at the expense of new legislation on tobacco advertising, tax on junk food and other issues.

But Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, who is not involved with the unit, welcomed the new emphasis on psychology. "Broadly speaking, I think it's a valid approach," he said.

"If you are interested in changing people's behaviour for their own or the collective good, then regulation is often a blunt tool and it often doesn't harness goodwill. But it's misleading to think with a few nudges consumer behaviour will head off in another direction. [Behavioural economics] is definitely an additional tool, [but] I don't see it as a way to eliminate regulation or redistribution."

The nudge unit's priorities

* Health

Public health is a priority for the unit, because half of UK health spending goes on treating the consequences of unhealthy behaviour such as drinking, smoking and having unprotected sex. Yet only one half of one per cent of NHS spending goes on promoting healthy behaviour. The unit suggests using respected medical figures to give health warnings and reinforcing social norms about other people's behaviour, to spur consumption of fresh produce and condom use.

* Environment

The unit has been drafted in to help the Coalition achieve its aim of being the greenest Government ever. While investing in new sources of low-carbon energy generation should limit greenhouse gas emissions, individuals will also need to make greener choices.

* Giving

Creating a band of active citizens who contribute to public life is central to the Big Society. The Coalition wants to create a "culture change" to increase time and money for good causes. Its green paper Giving last week noted that the average UK citizen spends 16 hours a week watching TV, but only one hour doing voluntary work. But telling people that volunteering increases life satisfaction is unlikely to be enough, it warns. As Dr Halpern explains: "Evolution has endowed us with a social brain that predisposes us to reciprocate acts of kindness, not to just blindly help anyone and everyone, regardless of how they treat us."

* Social networks

The unit believes that individuals' social contacts and connections are vital to their health and welfare, and are an untapped resource for the whole of society. "Harnessing the capacity of social networks and affecting the behaviour of the individual" is one of its aims. The Giving green paper said it wanted to do more to support community groups, charities and social enterprises.

* Well-being

Monthly polls by Ipsos-Mori show that the UK is a fearful place. Despite being among the wealthiest in Europe, Britons are less happy than others in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia. We are also less trusting of our fellow citizens. The unit is looking towards Denmark, which studies suggest is the happiest nation in Europe. The most important thing to Danes is "love". By contrast, the least happy people, Bulgarians, are "much more worried about jobs and money", Dr Halpern told an EU conference in Brussels.

Related articles

• Nudge, nudge, wink wink... How the Government wants to change the way we think (independent.co.uk)
• First goal of David Cameron's 'nudge unit' is to encourage healthy living (guardian.co.uk)
• Lords to hold 'nudging' inquiry (bbc.co.uk)