South America Bidsta

Observations on My Vacations 2: The Continuing Dominance of the Automobile

2012-01-21T00:07:00.000+13:00

One day when I was down south for the holidays, I drove my rental car from my parents' place in Rolleston to my sister's in Kaiapoi. The plan was to take my nephew and niece for a swim and maybe to a movie.

The pool in Kaiapoi was closed so we drove out to Rangiora. From there we headed across to the Shirley mall, targeting a showing of Puss in Boots. It turned out the cinema was closed by the earthquakes, so instead we had lunch at the mall, then headed back to Northlands mall to catch The Adventures of Tintin (NB: may be a little scary for some younger children). After that, we drove back to Kaiapoi, and from there I drove the rental back to Rolleston.

The day was a sweeping, somewhat dizzying tour across northern Christchurch and its environs. I sat back while my sister navigated 80km/h ring roads, wide boulevards and spacious, multi-storey car parks. I conclude: the geography of doing things in Christchurch is a series of bubbles linked by automobiles.

It's a contrast to Wellington, where the geography is stacked vertically, and for most of the places I have to go the quickest way to get there is walking, with the bus a fall-back option if I really need to get over the other side of town.

There's some kind of path-dependency going on here, but I'm not sure what it is. Is everything desgned around cars because things are so far apart, or is the other way around? At any rate, there's mutual reinforcement -- and, as the previous post pointed out, the evolution of this urban shape has been cemented by the earthquakes.

I can kind of see how this state of affairs has evolved. A factor in the South Island, even more so than in the north, is that once you have a car there's much else that is opened up: back country, mountains, coastlines, resort towns. As reported in my previous post, I made flying visits to Queenstown and Hanmer Springs, and was able to appreciate that an automobile not only gets you to the main destination, but from there to the remote spot at the start of the track or the climb. It's also an extremely useful mobile storage device once you've checked out of your accommodation.

I also understand that another fundamental factor that drives the sprawl.is the yearning for a back yard.

Yet, although this may have come about because of choices, the default settings now close them off. An increasing amount of urban planning doesn't even consider the non car-driver. For example, as Riccarton Mall has slowly eaten up the surrounding streets, it's become gradually more impregnable to pedestrians. On foot, you can't really get in from the west, and from the south you have to negotiate a car park with no apparent pedestrian entrance. The same is true in my home town of Rolleston, which has mushroomed from a tiny village to a bustling district centre of 8,000 in less than 15 years . There's a single new commercial space right at the centre of a very spread-out residential area. It's a given that most people will "drive to the shops". There's no safe and obvious way for a pedestrian to enter some of the spaces there, either. You don't quite get arrested for walking yet, but in some environments it's not far off

Christchurch apparently used to be known as the "city of cyclists". I remember seeing a photo of from the 1960s or 1970s with a great phalanx of cyclists pushing off from an intersection either in the early morning or late afternoon (I assume they were commuters). The place is still as flat as it's always been, but these days peddling two wheels is a lonely and not particularly safe trade.

Even if this were sustainable, it would be really unfortunate, and it's not even inevitable. You can have the "freeways between suburban pods" urban model and still make the in-between spaces much friendlier. Designate the corridors along which the "inter-hub" traffic can move swiftly; then in the "local" bits, reduce the speed limit, narrow the streets, put in dedicated bus and cycle ways. A classic example is Amsterdam, where you can still drive your car in the city -- you just have to give priority to the cyclists and the trams. But even Brisbane, a truly enormous sprawl that's not known for urban sophistication, has dedicated busways, kilometres of cycleways, and a walking path along much of the length of its river. There are other ways to do things.

Observations on My Vacations, 1: The Transformation of Christchurch

2012-01-14T00:12:00.000+13:00

I've just spent approximately three weeks in the South Island, including Christmas, New Year, two weddings and trips to Hanmer Springs and Queenstown. As usual, this has inspired me to have partially-informed opinions on things, about some of which I intend to write a series of posts.The posts will be, probably in this order:

The Transformation of Christchurch
The Continuing Dominance of the Motor Vehicle
The Cafeterisation of Provincial New Zealand

The Transformation of Christchurch

Any discussion of Christchurch these days immediately devolves to the series of earthquakes that have battered the area. This is fair enough, given the human tragedy and unplanned destruction that has occurred. However, in the longer term, I think the earthquake will be seen as accelerating a transformation that was already happening.

I visit Christchurch on average a couple of times every year, and have the opportunity to draw a contrast both with my more youthful memories and with Wellington. Every time, I get something of a shock at the sprawl, the acres of space dedicated to car parks, the aircraft carrier-sized big box retailers, Riccarton Mall slowly consuming the surrounding streets.

The days are long gone when Christchurch was an "English" market town ordered around its central square. Rather, it has become a loosely ordered regional connurbation that links the port and airport with intensifying farming on the plains, giant malls, sprawling suburbs, clusters of services and manufacturing, and the satellite towns to the north, west and south that are gradually merging with the outer suburbs. Its role model is Auckland, and beyond that, the ribboned cities of the American west and south.

Public discussion of the "rebuild" of Christchurch has tended to focus on what might be made of the central city. But I think that's something of a distraction. The earthquakes that have so undermined the swampy centre and east have pushed traffic and activity to the west, onto the gravelly ground of the plains, ensuring that the city's centre of gravity will ultimately settle there.

The string of further sizeable quakes that kicked off on December 23 have solidified this process. Already, ideas about the "rebuild" are being scaled down and there's talk about the temporary "pop-up mall" in shipping containers on Cashel St becoming a semi-permanent feature.

There may well be something attractive to come out of a central city redevelopment If the opportunity is not taken to create a space completely friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, there's truly no hope for humanity. However, this is unlikely to be the city's commercial heart. To obtain any sort of insurance, permanent structures in the area will need to have the highest level of earthquake safety, making them expensive to build, own, and of course rent. The central city will be unlikely to be abuzz with small businesses; nor will it be a bohemian den of students and artists.

I can see it eventually becoming an "old town" of parks and gardens, some government services, boutique retailers, maybe some bars and cafes. It should be friendly to tourists and local visitors alike. Hopefully there'll be ruins that are preserved and turned into museums and memorials and the condemned land in the northeast will be transformed into landscaped recreational space. Meanwhile, the mallification of the city will continue apace, and it's most dynamic activity will be based around distributed centres in Riccarton, Papanui, maybe Sydenham/Addington.

I actually like some of the longer-term changes that are in the works, in that they acknowledge what the city has become and make something coherent out of it. The new express route linking Rolleston with the southern motorway will make sense of the weight of population that's shifted there and end the pretence that a country road gently working its way through the outer suburbs can support the roaring semi-trailers, the tourists and the burgeoning commuter traffic. The four-laning of Russley Rd and the proposed flyover at Memorial Ave will eventually create a genuine north-south bypass. These road systems should produce a better functioning regional hub that links the northern and southern hinterlands.

How sustainable this is going to be as oil gets inexorably more expensive, I don't know. For that reason, but also because I'd just like to see it, I hope there are some plans for the parallel development of alternative transport options. If the satellite towns are going to continue to grow, these could improve the viability of a commuter rail service along the existing lines. As new motorways are developed, this could create the space for protected cycle routes along the older roads. However, given the apparently universal assumption that everyone has a car and drives it everywhere, all the time, I'm not getting my hopes up.

Birds of a Feather

2011-12-16T22:48:00.000+13:00

Since I've been living in the Northland/Kelburn area of Wellington over the past three years or so, it's been my privilege to see native bird life return and flourish. The Karori Sanctuary (now renamed "Zealandia") is nearby, and, as the birds have established themselves there and reproduced, they've naturally decided to extend their habitat to wherever they please.

When I first moved here I used to get quite excited about seeing the occasional tui. Despite being very vocal, they could be slightly shy. Now they practically own the place, chirping regally on bushes and power lines alike.

When trekking along the Karori ridgeline a couple of years ago with some friends, we spotted a kereru, or native pigeon, as we descended through some bush above Khandallah. It was the first time I had seen one in the wild: my knowledge of it mainly derived from the Department of Conservation "Kereru in Crisis" poster that graced my bedroom wall (Unless steps are taken to halt its decline, this magnificent bird will disappear from most forests on the mainland...).

Now, there are a couple of kereru that have found a niche about half way up Garden Rd, occasionally flapping their plump bodies between clumps of vegetation. The other day, one alighted on a branch of a bush barely two metres to my left as I was walking up the road. I quickly froze and was able to stand quietly watch it pecking away at some berries for several minutes.

Best of all, there are now at least two kaka that have colonised the area around the Thorndon cemetery. The kaka is a native parrot, a little smaller and slimmer than the kea, which lives in the lowlands and at medium altitudes. The only time I had seen kaka previously was on a trip to Kapiti Island, and I never thought that I would find them in my own neighbourhood. The kaka seems to be an incorrigible extrovert and a show off. On Kapiti Island there was one that happily landed on and climbed all over the visiting tourists. While the ones inhabiting the cemtery aren't that tame, they are happy to make themselves visible. They seem to particularly like the big old pine and macrocapa trees, sitting in the highest branches and squawking or trilling before setting off on another strafing run across the cricket fields.

The presence of this native bird life is a source of joy for reasons I can't quite articulate. Part of is that they are just more interesting and beautiful than the blackbirds and sparrows. But part of it is also something more complicated to do with renaissance and reclamation.

It All Fits Together, Somehow

2011-12-14T00:05:00.000+13:00

Jorge Castañeda warns that with its slide into ever greater inequality, the United States risks falling into the trap Latin American countries have found it so hard to scramble out of. It is different here, but you could also plausibly substitute "New Zealand" into that sentence.

Jeffrey Frankel summarizes the characteristics of the "resource curse" well known to development studies students and suggests both existing and untried strategies for escaping its worst effects.

Red Logix at The Standard, channelling Ross Taylor, has an excellent post on innovation, small business and interdependence in provincial New Zealand.

Coalition Negotiations, Imagined

2011-12-10T11:07:00.001+13:00

Scene: the interior of a cafe. John Key and John Banks sit on opposite sides of a small table, drinking coffee.

KEY [winking]: Well, you've really got us over a barrel here, John. Can't govern without you. Holding the balance of power and all that ...

BANKS: I wouldn't worry, Prime Minister. I'll be doing my utmost to ensure a stable, John Key-led government.

KEY: Yes, of course...but, technically, you are in a pretty powerful position. I'm guessing there's probably a few concessions you want to extract from us.

BANKS: Concessions?

KEY: Yes, something you want, in return for letting us govern.

BANKS [strokes tie, looks down at table]: Well, since you put it like that...there is something I do rather want...only thing I've ever wanted, really...

KEY [sighs]: Look, I thought we'd gone over this. I can't make you Mayor of Auckland.

BANKS [pouts a little]: How about Minister of Auckland. Or Minister for Auckland, isn't that what they call it these days?

KEY [shakes head sadly]: Sorry John, no can do...not in this term at least. Anyway, what I really meant was that you, I mean the ACT party, probably have some policies that you want to implement, and you can make some demands about those...

BANKS: Policies?

KEY [looks slightly exasperated]: Yes. Hasn't Don been getting you up to speed?

BANKS: Strange chap. Wants to have us all smoking weed. Over my dead body, I say.

KEY: Yes, quite. But there's all the core ACT policies, like...shall I get you started? Low and flattened tax rates. Reducing burdensome regulations. Reforming the RMA. Individualised unemployment insurance. Education vouchers.

BANKS: Education! That sounds like me. Can we give more money to Auckland Grammar?

KEY: Hmm, I suppose...[picks up some papers and shuffles through them]. How about we just let anyone, say a successful business, set up a school to see what they can do with it. They get public funding, but don't have to put up with all the red tape and regulations. To hell with the teachers' unions and all that...[looks at the papers]...charter schools.

BANKS [grins]: Busting the teacher unions? Heh. Count me in.

KEY: Ok, charter schools it is then. Something else?

BANKS [adamant]: We've got to stop giving so much money to the Maoris.

KEY [shuffles some more papers]: Okayyy...how about just a cap on all government spending?

BANKS: I'll trust your judgement, Prime Minister.

KEY: Excellent. Charter schools and a government spending cap. I'll get Stephen to work on the details. Cheers.

They clink coffee cups.

Inequality in New Zealand

2011-12-07T23:52:00.001+13:00

It's interesting to see that this report from the OECD on New Zealand's rising inequality has been getting some local media attention -- although it had disappeared off the Stuff website by the end of yesterday. I've recently had conversations with several people -- some foreign, some from here -- in which I've claimed that "in the last thirty years Zealand has gone from being one of the most equal countries in the world to one of the most unequal developed countries".

They've tended to raise their eyebrows dsay that they're not sure that can be right.In fact, New Zealand is now the eight most unequal country out of 22 listed in the OECD report -- 6th out of 20 if you exclude middle-income Mexico and Turkey. But it has seen the most rapid rise in inequality of any OECD country over the past twenty years, with the Gini coefficient going from 27 to 33. Sure, we're not at Latin American levels yet (Mexico is at the relatively equitable end in a continent where the Gini coefficient ranges from the low 40s to around 60) butwe're heading in the right direction.

It should come as no surprise that most of New Zealand's rapid increase in inequality happened from 1985-95, during the time of radical reforms. The Gini coefficient peaked in 2000 and actually dropped by 1 point during the Helen Clark years of 2000--08.

It would be interesting to see some more detailed analysis of the changes in income distribution in New Zealand, perhaps with a nice graphical display like this. To what extent is increasing inequality about the educated upper middle class surging ahead, and to what extent the top few capturing most of the gains? To what extent is it related to upwards distribution of pre-tax incomes and to what extent a more regressive tax and transfer system?

Just Follow Orders

2011-12-04T22:59:00.001+13:00

Here's something that's worthy of support for a number of reasons: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organisation of US law enforcement empoyees opposed to the war on drugs.

The opening section of the article tells the story of Bryan Gonzalez, a Border Control agent who lost his job after expressing opinions in favour of decriminalisation to a fellow official. His termination letter said he held “personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps.”

Translation: "What we expect from you is blind loyalty, measured by the extent that you support obvious stupidity"

In My Naiivety About these Things

2011-12-04T14:20:00.001+13:00

The way I understand Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, it goes something like this:

Consider two countries, England and Portugal. England produces wool and wine. Annually, England can make 400 bales of wool and 200 barrels of wine. Portugal is also in the wool and wine business, but the Portuguese are less efficient. They can only produce 100 bales of wool and 100 barrels of wine per annum. Nevertheless, England should concentrate on producing wool and Portugal on making wine. Even though England is more efficient at everything, it should concentrate on what it is most efficient at, while Portugal should devote itself to its area of greatest relative efficiency (i.e. the thing it is least inefficient at compared to England).

We know this because some maths shows that such a strategy will lead to the greatest total combined output of both products. The two countries can then trade and, assuming the price system works well, they will both be better off than before*.

This is supposedly the closest that economics gets to a physical law, what economists cite when they're asked to name something in their discipline that's definitely true. It's what smart people explain, speaking slowly and occasionally rolling their eyes, when naiive interlocutors wonder about the benefits of free trade.

But let's look at how freer trade and increased specialisation could play out. Imagine that wool production in Portugal is undertaken by smallholders while wine is grown on estates owned by a landed oligarchy. After the Portuguese government enthustiastically embraces its new FTA with England, the sheep farming land is put into wine production and the former wool producers work on the estates. However, despite the overall gains from trade, the estate owners see no reason to pay more to either the new or the existing workers. In fact, maybe they can pay them less, since now there's little chance they'll run off and become a small-scale wool producer.

Later, some technological advances in wine production allows the Portuguese estate owners to increase production while laying off some of their workers. Fearful for their jobs, the remaining workers daren't ask for any pay increases.

This looks like it could lead to things getting worse for the majority of Portuguese who aren't wine estate owners. But never fear, an elightened Portuguese government ensures that the benefits of a growing economy are widely distributed. Having "grown the cake", the government receives increased tax revenues, which it uses to provide generous welfare payments to unemployed workers and increase funding for education.

However, this government is voted out, as the opposition rails against the the "irresponsible bribes" to "unproductive parasites". Why should the wealth producers give up their hard-earned income to support those who aren't contributing to the economy? Both the weathy wine estate owners and many of the embattled workers buy in to this argument.

This scenario is obviously simplified but may also sound rather familiar. You'd think that smart economists would factor in such changes to the political economy and would have done some serious thinking about how they could be addressed in the real world. You'd also think that in a democracy such changes would have to be thoroughly considered and negotiated before being accepted. But then, maybe I'm being naiive.

*If I'm working it out right, England could potentially end up with 450 bales of wool and 200 barrels of wine, while Portugal would have 150 bales of wool and 100 barrels of wine.

Aconcagua Gear by Category #2 Head and Hands

2011-12-04T11:43:00.001+13:00

Here's part 2 of my summary of different categories of gear I used on Aconcagua. Part 1 is here.

Head

For the trek in, you definitely need good sun protection, and a broad brimmed hat is preferable. I wore my trusty baseball cap with a buf arranged in Foreign Legion style to protect my neck. It wasn't quite enough. Two members of the group had the integrated floppy hat and neck flap made by Outdoor Research. These hats are far from stylish, inspiring both good natured ribbing and self-deprecation from their wearers, but seemed to work well. Recommended if you don't mind looking like an eccentric scientist catching bugs.

A warm hat is another essential. As I've described elsewhere, I took two. The North Face beanie later became a beloved item and was almost permanently attached to my head during this past winter in Wellington. However, on the mountain itself, my alpaca super-chullo, hand-produced in the village of Callalli in Peru, was unbeatable for warmth and comfort.

HandsA lot of attention needs to be paid to getting the right mix of hand protection. As I found out on Nevado Ampato, if you can't keep your hands both warm and usable, you become helpless pretty quickly.The gear list recommended two pairs of liner gloves, fleece gloves, mountaineering gloves, and expedition mittens.

As my basic liner gloves I took Outdoor Research PL 100 fleece gloves. I can't say enough good things about these gloves. They are warmer than you'd think, and are snug and stretchy, allowing good dexterity. After lots of scrabbling around with sharp rocks trying to anchor the tent I eventually destroyed the fingertips, but I made sure I bought another pair as soon as I got back to NZ.

I also took some Outdoor Research PL400 gloves, which are quite a lot thicker. These weren't particularly useful, as they didn't seem much warmer than the PL100s and weren't water or wind proof, but still prevented me from doing much with my hands -- I couldn't even get my fly undone while wearing them. If I had my time over, I would take another pair of PL100s, some windstopper gloves, and/or a thinner pair of fleece or wool liner gloves.

For my mountaineering gloves, I had a pair of Outdoor Research Arete gloves. Mine were an older version than the ones shown in the link and didn't have any insulation. I dispensed with the fairly useless factory liners and wore the outers over the PL100s. These provided adequate protection on the lower mountain when it was snowing, and they have a good idiot cord system. Starting over, I would prefer some gloves with insulation, which would work allow the option ofwearing them with thinner liners.

Finally, for the uber-warm mittens needed on summit day, I took the Black Diamond Mercury mitts. These were plenty warm enough and have an austere yet cuddly feel which makes it a little disappointing that another high-altitude expedition or camping in Siberia would be the only other occasions I can imagine wearing them.

As noted elsewhere, I would also highly recommend having some chemical hand warmers, as no matter how warm your mittens are, there'll be times you'll need to take them off, and they may need some help to warm your hands back up.

Election Reflections

2011-11-30T23:04:00.001+13:00

In the end it was about half way between the worst-case and best-case scenarios. Probably towards the disappointing end overall, but once the special votes are counted there's even a slim possibility that the Maori Party may end up holding the balance of power.

The Guardian's sports pages have taken to running a post format called "five things we learned from..." after a round of matches. In that spirit, here's some thoughts on the elections in New Zealand.

People cared less this time (but why?)

After special votes are included, participation of registered voters will be something like 72 percent, compared to 80 percent in 2005 and 79 percent in 2008. That's apparently the lowest turnout since the 1880s. There is plenty of speculation about the reasons for this relative apathy. Hopefully, some of the questions will be answered by some basic research. Some of it could be done fairly easily with summary data from the Census and Electoral Roll. Were the non-voters and the non-registered mainly young people, first time voters, those in particular geographical locations or socioeconomic strata? Or were they spread fairly evenly through demographic groups and classes?

Other questions would require more detailed research with a sample group. Were those who stayed away complacent National supporters? Left-leaning voters who felt it was a foregone conclusion? People generally happy with the state of things? Or the marginalised who felt that no party or politican spoke for them?

The polls were wrong (or were they...?)

A series of polls in the last week of the campaign gave National an average 52 percent of the vote. That was at least 4 points too high, and nobody picked the surge of support to NZ First (except perhaps the last Roy Morgan poll). On the other hand, the polls average was pretty close to the share gained by Labour, the Greens, ACT and the Maori Party. How badly wrong you think the polls were kind of depends onyour interpretation of the result. How much of the shift to NZ First was from strategic voting by Labour and Greens supporters wanting to get another opposition party over the threshold (worse for the polls); and how much was from soft National supporters having last-minute qualms about an absolute majority (which would suggest the polls were closer to being accurate).

Someone needs to make the Winston Peters movie

This would be an epic Godfather-esque tale of vengeance. Returning from three years in the wilderness after being hounded out by a broad coalition of media and politicians, Peters has once again outmanouvered his enemies. I'd love to be a fly on the wall to see the respective expressions if Peters and Rodney Hide pass in a corridor somewhere.

The liberal right continues to flirt with oxymoron status

The long journey of ACT from a right-libertarian vehicle to a party for angry white men reached tis concluson with the vesting of its electoral hopes in noted social conservative John Banks, who during the campaign smacked down his nominal leader's musings on cannabis law reform. In the aftermath of an election in which the party vote shrank to around 1 percent, Banks has been openly musing about merging ACT with the paleoconservative New Zealand Conservative Party.
My political education has advanced considerably since then, but what I wrote in a post six years ago still holds:

...across-the-board libertarian principles only seem to survive in universities, pubs and other theoretical settings...there's a mysterious process by which those who have to actually make policy see their social liberalism...rapidly eroded.

I have a partial theory on why right liberalism tends to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. The profound inequalities created or exacerbated by right-wing economics in the real world ultimately have to be explained by blaming their victims. This leads inexorably back to tough-on-crime social conservatism, until this overshadows everything else.

Some people really don't want to let FPP go

I have been astounded by the range of people, from Guyon Espiner on election night to John Key afterwards, who expressed puzzlement and dismay that after such a "resounding victory" by National, they only had a narrow majority. Either these people don't understand MMP, or, more likely, they prefer not to. Forty-eight percent is indeed a high number for any individual party, but nearly all of the remaining votes went to parties that broadly oppose National's programme (including, in theory, one of their likely coalition partners, the Maori party). Under a proportional system (news flash: we had a referndum on this and decided to keep it), the biggest player doesn't get to wield absolute power.

Some of this attitude is also coming from people on the left worried about Labor's position. Some sites have shown maps of New Zealand by electorate with only a few red dots in a "sea of blue". This does not refer to the electorate results (Labour actually won 21 electorates, with a couple of others still in play), but to the party vote in each electorate. There have been laments that even in strongholds in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, Labour "lost" the party vote to National. However, in most of those places, the Labour and Green party votes together easily exceeded National's. Granted the current high-tide position of National, the results need to be interpreted in the context of two strong parties on the left, one on the right.

More on that in another post.

What's At Stake in the New Zealand Election

2011-11-25T22:52:00.001+13:00

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I'd prefer to see some kind of left-liberal governmment in New Zealand. In an ideal world, it would:

1) Pursue energy, transport, and environmental policies that not only make New Zealand a more pleasant place to live in, but also help prepare for the inexorable increase in the price of oil over the coming years

2) Make a serious and constant commitment to reducing inequalities, as far as necessary through taxation and social services, but as much as possible through employment and wages

3) Wrestle with how best to manage New Zealand's place in the international economy, exploring different options but maintaining 2) as a constant point of reference

4) Explain its policies in a way that respects the public's intelligence. Be prepared to change its mind and admit it was wrong. Respect the various democratic processes and make more information publicly available.*

But that's not going to happen. Instead, tomorrow's elections offer only best and worst-case scenarios among a generally unappetising range of possible outcomes.

Best case scenario

National fails to win an outright majority. ACT and United Future lose their respective electorate seats. National forms a minority government and is forced to rely on the Maori Party plus perhaps some kind of abstension from the Greens in return for a few policy wins. Individual items of legislation require support from one or more of the other parties. Any asset sales are greatly scaled down and/or delayed. Welfare policy gets a little more emphasis on Whanau Ora and a little less on bashing beneficiaries..

Worst case scenario**

National wins an outright majority, either alone or in tandem with ACT. Midway through the term they take a more ideological turn, perhaps associated with John Key stepping down, with cover provided by a second global recession triggered by chaos in Europe There are deeper and more rapid cuts in, or privatisation of, public services, with little mercy for anything that can be portrayed as involving minority interests or bureaucrats. Various labour and environmental protections are discarded as "unaffordable". Scapegoating of the marginalised intensifies.

I guess by aroound 9:00 pm tomorrow night we should have an idea which way it's likely to go.

* And it should give everyone a pony.

** In the event of a global meltdown, the best case scenario could easily turn into the worst case scenario, especially if the Government calls a snap election, arguing that being forced to relie on minor parties prevents it from "taking the necessary actions".

Paradoxes of Neoliberalism, New Zealand Style, No. 2

2011-11-23T21:31:00.001+13:00

With No. 1 possibly being this one.

So, apparently the State can do little right because, apart from it being hobbled by self-interest, central planning is always inferior to the distributed intelligence of the market. Lots of individuals taking small, local decisions will allocate resources more efficiently than bureaucrats.

If this is true, then why do the likes of the Business Roundtable and their political spokespersons insist on the need for an electoral system that will provide "strong government" that can "take the necessary decisions"?

Electoral Propaganda Grammar Fail

2011-11-23T21:25:00.001+13:00

Today I received a National Party flyer in my mailbox which claimed that "Labour = Less Jobs".

Because "jobs" is a nebulous, non-discrete thing that really depends on how you look at it, kind of like "security", "growth" or "ultra-fast broadband".

Beyond a Joke

2011-11-18T17:34:00.001+13:00

It's good that Danyl Mclaughlan is still finding new absurdist takes on New Zealand politics, because recent events seem to have spiralled well beyond the bounds of satire.

When politicans organise a media circus to document their deliberate manipulation of electoral voting, and a recording is (apparently inadvertently) made of their conversation, you'd think there'd be at least a prima facie case that the contents of the recording are in the public interest.

As many have noted, outraged claims of personal privacy are extremely ironic coming from the leader of a government that urgently pushed through legislation to retroactively legalise covert videotaping on private property. Comparisons to News of the World phone hacking victims and parents of suicidal teenager journey further into the bizarre.

Then, when the police are involved (because they have "spare time") and start seeking to search the premises of news organisations, it truly gets surreal. When Hugo Chavez decided not to renew the licence of a TV channel that had repeatedly called for his overthrow, international watchdogs worried about " freedom of the press". Our supposedy transparent demoncracy merits at least some of the same scrutiny.

Manufacturing and Meaning

2011-11-18T17:31:00.001+13:00

A really interesting article from Aditya Chakrabortty on the decline of manufacturing in the UK, and the long-term impacts that are not just economic but also social and cultural. He argues that, in addition to jobs and income, "making things" brought a sense of purpose and social cohesion, and the "service economy" that has filled the void has been distinctly underwhelming:

And yet many of the arguments that preoccupy the British are haunted by the spectre of manufacturing. Angry at the overweening power of banks? Then you want a more mixed economy. Distressed at the gap between the rich and the rest of society? In the end, that will require jobs with decent wages and skill-levels, like the old manufacturing jobs.This applies to non-economic debates, too. Politicians go on about localism, without discussing what de-industrialisation has done to local economies. Pundits bemoan the loss of community spirit without considering the wrecking ball that has been put through many communities.

It's worth noting that the social history was summed up at the time by a certain Anglo-Scottish rock band.

A theoretical discussion of the same theme is offered by Dani Rodrik (a slightly more wonkish version here):

...the manufacturing sector is also where the world’s middle classes take shape and grow. Without a vibrant manufacturing base, societies tend to divide between rich and poor – those who have access to steady, well-paying jobs, and those whose jobs are less secure and lives more precarious. Manufacturing may ultimately be central to the vigor of a nation’s democracy....

...the service industries that have absorbed the labor released from manufacturing are a mixed bag. At the high end, finance, insurance, and business services, taken together, have productivity levels that are similar to manufacturing. These industries have created some new jobs, but not many – and that was before the financial crisis erupted in 2008. The bulk of new employment has come in “personal and social services,” which is where the economy’s least productive jobs are found. This migration of jobs down the productivity ladder has shaved 0.3 percentage points off US productivity growth every year since 1990 – roughly one-sixth of the actual gain over this period. The growing proportion of low-productivity labor has also contributed to rising inequality in American society.

Demographics, Shmemographics

2011-11-06T00:21:00.001+13:00

I don't quite get it.From time to time you occasionally see articles like this one and this one on the world's changing demographics. Birth rates are dropping, not just in the developed world, but also in middle and even low-income countries. At current rates, the world population is likely to stop replacing itself by 2020 and will eventually peak (thanks to increasing life expectancies) around mid-century.

You'd think that might be a good thing, as it might help avoid the Malthusian crisis where the population overshoots the environment's carrying capacity. An end to population growth should reduce some of the drivers for climate change and the "peaking" of various natural resources.

However, articles such as these raise alarms about the prospect of population stabilization because it will reduce the number of "workers" as a proportion of the population:

The consequences of rapid aging are manifold: a shrinking workforce and a narrower pool for entrepreneurship, which undermines prospects for economic growth; a looming threat to the sustainability of “pay-as you go” public pensions systems; and increased health-care and other costs associated with an elderly population.

This doesn't seem to fit the story we constantly hear (in reports such as this one) that widespread unemployment and stagnant wages are due to technological change and globalization. In short, workers are being replaced by machines and increasingly forced to compete with one another on a global level. If this story is broadly true*, then a relative decrease in the supply of workers should be a good thing. Increased competition for human labour should both increase wages and incentivise further innovation.

If productivity has increased because of technological change, and presumably will continue to do so, then why do we need the same ratio of "young workers" to "dependent older people" as in the past? People increasingly remain healthy and active into later in life. And as the articles note, the kinds of work demanded in a technologically and demographically different society -- such as health care -- might be appropriately carried out by older people**.

That's not to overlook the specific issues with the projected demographic transition. The societies that age earliest -- such as Europe -- are going to have to adjust better to immigration if they're going to maintain some sort of balance. The serious gender imbalance predicted for China and India (a shortage of females) could have explosive consequences. And experience suggests that demographically younger places tend to be brighter and more hopeful, whatever their material circumstances: the obverse being the kind of malaise that some attribute to contemporary Japan.

Nevertheless, the "hump" of older people will enventually pass and the demography will correct itself. Meanwhile, if humanity is to remain anything like a sustainable venture, the predicted trend is surely the preferable one.

*If this is all a fiction and all the value really is produced by the young workers, then they're being roundly exploited, in which case shouldn't we have a revolution or something?

**The "narrower pool for entrepreneurship" also seems like a misguided concern: there were plenty of new ideas and inventions in the 19th century when the absolute numbers of potential entrepreneurs was much lower than it will be in thirty years.

Raining on Our Parade

2011-11-01T00:21:00.000+13:00

(Which it did, last Wednesday in Wellington, as the crowds gathered to ticker-tape the All Blacks).

First, let's be clear that I was as wound up and emotionally invested in the Rugby World Cup as any Kiwi. I gritted my teeth during the first part of the quarter-final against Argentina; silently shook and bit my nails until around the 79th minute of the semi-final versus Australia; and sat ashen-faced through most of the final. Somehow despite all the intellectual defences, I couldn't escape the shared cultural yearning (there must be some German expression for that) that the All Blacks should win the damned World Cup.

And, I should own this, becuse I've criticised other people for it: at the end I was just relieved rather than joyous. We won on the scoreboard, but it wasn't convincing. Had we been lucky? Did we really deserve it? I know we couldn't really expect a Brazil 1970 or New Zealand 1987 moment, but the way we won just seemed a little anticlimactic. Maybe in another post I'll unpick that disappointment from a sporting angle.

Having made my own confession, and now that I've woken from my fevered dream and am once again conversant with concepts such as fairness and dignity, let me make the following little quibbles.

1.It's really a pity that no one associated with the All Blacks saw fit to congratulate or acknowledge the French for their performance. They silenced anyone who had written them off and were probably the better team on the night. Yes, they might have committed some skulduggery in the rucks, but we're not entirely innocent of that either. And even if you don't feel like being civil to them directly, offering an acknowledgement is a sign of dignity. Sean Fitzpatrick used to offer "full credit to the opposition", even after a 50-point shellacking.

2. The relentless booing of Quade Cooper during the tournamentwas dumb, boring and boorish. OK, so there were the cheap shots on Richie McCaw. But as noted above, the All Blacks are hardly angels either. I used to be embarassed that I had to support a team with Richard Loe in it. I'm not sure whether there was really an ethnic dimension to the treatment of Cooper but it definitely went too far. I admit that during the tournament I was supporting anyone against Australia, but that was mainly because I thought they were our biggest threat. I'm still rather terrified by the prospect of a backline including Genia, Ioane, Beale and O'Connor along with Cooper for the forseeable future. God help us if they find themselves a tight five.

3. I guess it's true that ultimately winning by 1 point is as good as 20, it's not how you win but whether you win, etcetera. Recognising that much is itself a kind of humility, so that's progress. But having embraced the Dark Side, let's be consistent. I never again want to hear from the New Zealand media about "boring" or "negative" sides from the Northern Hemisphere. In the semi-final, we did to Australia what South Africa at their best occasionally do to us: played a territorial game, put them under pressure, and kicked the penalties. In the final, we were like a particularly nervous version of England at their most conservative.

I also don't want to hear endless moaning about bad luck or poor referee's decisions. As we saw clearly during the World Cup, a number of sides had major grievances with how they were refereed, and Wales' whole tournament was derailed in a single moment. Let's acknowledge that there are swings and roundabouts and we probably got the rub of the greeen this time.

4. Could the media and people in general do any more to get things out of proportion and set everyone up for failure and disappointment? Endless repetitions of "24 years of hurt" (actually, from 1987-91 we were reigning champions, so strictly speaking any "hurt" has only been going for 20 years), and "how much it would mean" to the players, the coach, and the nation's collective psyche raised the stakes so much that collapsing under the pressure was almost the only possible response. Yes, everyone loves World Cups and given our track record it's about time New Zealand won the thing. But a tournament is by its nature fickle and no matter how good you are you can't legislate against a confluence of circumstances that can knock you out.Don't forget that football giants Germany haven't won anything for 16 years, and Argentina for 18 years.

On average the All Blacks win an excellent 3 out of 4 games against top opposition (Australia, France, England and South Africa) But that fourth game can occur at any time. And there's no guarantee of winning big games. New Zealand does well in general by having a good all round mix of skill and power. But player for player (especially without Dan Carter) you'd be hard pressed to claim that we are obviously superior to other teams. At present, Australia has a better back line, and France, South Africa and England would all slightly shade us in the tight forwards. So being the No 1 team and not winning the World Cup are perfectly compatible. Maybe we could have a little more celebration of the 10 Tri Nations titles and the unbeaten record in the Northern Hemisphere since 2002. That's what the Australians would do.

Progress, Inequality, Etc

2011-10-08T15:30:00.004+13:00

You can't keep updating a single post, so I'm ending the previous one while continuing to be preoccupied with the same broad set of themes. These link-heavy posts are kind of like my public filing system.

I don't want to be all Crooked Timber all of the time, as the posters there would say, but a couple of the recent post-plus-comment debates there cover off, and make largely redundant, my personal musings.

There's this one on whether, stagnant median incomes aside, things have really got better in the last 30 years. To be brief, I'd say that the basics of life -- housing, food, education and health -- have become more costly and less secure, even for the upper middle; but once you get past that threshold it's easier to have and do a variety of things.

This one on the fraught questionof how to balance concerns about short-term economic stimulus, long-term environmental sustainability, global poverty, and developed-country inequality.

Elsewhere, the morphing of Occupy Wall Street into We Are the 99 Percent suggests that this might be one protest movement with a good enough marketing pitch to gather momentum.

Also, Arthur Goldhammer criticisizes a"Randian" depiction of Steve Jobs:

To say this is to take nothing away from Steve Jobs, who was brilliant at what he did. But what he did was essentially to package the genius of tens of thousands of others, who worked not for extraordinary shares of immense profits or for rock-star celebrity but for love of the work itself. When the technologies are in place, it is inevitable that a Jobs will come along and find the key to commoditizing them, but creation of the technologies is a long, slow, and above all social process, which owes more to the actions of a far-sighted state and to basic research pursued in universities and private labs than to the genius of any entrepreneur.

For some light relief, ther's an interesting thread on Public Address discussing the implications of the Voluntary Student Membership bill likely to pass Parliament.

Tracking My Traffic

2011-09-07T00:00:00.000+12:00

So, after I finally get myself organised with an integrated blog / website at Andean Observer and think about maybe retiring this one, Blogger has introduced a new default interface, with complementary statistical summaries of traffic to the site. Until now, this has been the sort of thing you need to install separate software for. For the first time, I can see where visitors to this blog are from (i.e. by country), how they find it, and what they're looking at. The history only goes back to mid-2009, but it's fascinating nevertheless. The measurement is "page views", which I assume get counted every time someone loads a separate page. Here are some facts about my traffic to date:

About one third of all visits come from the United States. Around another 15 percent are from New Zealand. Russia (!), Germany, the Netherlands, France, Australia, Peru, the United Kingdom and Brazil round out the top 10. Although the US/NZ share seems to be pretty steady, the international traffice varies a bit. For example, this month I've been popular in Latvia, and China and Malaysia make it into the top 10.

Unsurprisingly, Google is the biggest referrer, led by the .com site and then the New Zealand, Peruvian, Canadian, British, French and Australian variants. Easily the most common search term was (and I find this rather endearing) chullo. Interestingly, the next most common was made up of various combinations of "South America" and "cave", most of whom would have ended up at the "Señor Mendoza and the Devil's Cave" page. "Nevado Ampato" was another prominent search term. A number of terms suggest people were specifically searching for this site, while there's also traffic for people searching for links to www.sudamericatour.com (that would be Hugo and his offsiders).

The most popular pages are rather an odd collection, although the stats do suggest the bulk of visitors go to the main blog page, so I shouldn't be too worried at the negligible page views for some of what I think are my best and most interesting posts. The post with easily the most page views is "Non-traditional Exports in the Andes", a rather nondescript development-related post from January 2010. This is followed by my post on Mario Vargas Llosa winning the Nobel Prize and then the aforementioned Señor Mendoza post. Posts on Ampato and Salkantay have also been relatively popular, but there are some other odd ones and most of what I consider my better pieces have been roundly ignored.

For the record, a little over 60 percent of site visitors are using Internet Explorer, with another 20 percent using Firefox. Approximately 90 percent of visitors have a Windows-based operating system.

Developed Country Political Economy Rolling Links Edition 5 September 2011

2011-09-03T00:08:00.000+12:00

NB: This is a progressively updated post. I've added the date to the post title to dentify the current version.

Recently, I've been reading a lot of versions of a similar general narrative which ties together changes in the political economy of the developed countries (especially the English-speaking ones) over the past 30 years. This time period has seen the wealthiest few percent of society recieve the great majority of gains from increased productivity and economic growth; middle class incomes stagnate; inequality consequently increase; and historical social compacts fray and start to fall apart. The share of GDP going to wages and salaries has fallen, and the the finance sector has become more important and powerful.

A lot of the story is summed up, for the United States at least, by this graphic in the New York Times showing the relationship between productivity and wage increases, income gains for the different groups in society, share of income held by the top 1%, and household debt. These trends are divided up into two periods: the"Great Prosperity" from 1947-79, and the neoliberal era from 1980-2009.

There's a lot of debate about the causes of these changes, their significance, and what to do about them. Paul Krugman in particular has written a lot about the relationship between deregulated finance, economic instability and inequality, as well as the strange and changing social attitudes that accompany the reappearance of plutocracy. But there are lots of other angles too, including thoughts about the consequences this maldistribution will have as resource shortages start to bite. A personal interest is in how the rich countries are increasingly starting to suffer from afflictions historically associated with the Third World. In a way, we're all becoming banana republics. I've made this into a rolling update post, so I can gradually incorporate the best discussions.

At Crooked Timber, John Quiggin draws a link between the massively disproportionate share of wealth now held by the top 1 percent in the United States and the breakdown of social compacts about tax and public services. As usual on CT, here's a long and interesting discussion in the comments section.

There's a follow-up from Quiggin in which he addresses responses to his first post suggesting a) that lower taxes on the wealthy don't affect total government revenue; b) that consumption inequality is lower than income inequality (maybe, but the difference is made up by increased debt); and c) [from Matthew Yglesias] that progressive action is still possible with current income distributions (perhaps at the margins, but many of the things Yglesias mentions relate ultimately to inequality).

In a third post, Quiggin reiterates the points that "when the top 1 per cent have 25 per cent of all income and this share is steadily growing, a government that doesn’t soak the rich can’t do much more than spread the pain a bit more evenly".

Anthony Robins at The Standard has a summary of "supply-side" arguments which suggest that tax cuts actually result in a higher tax take or at very least produce greater economic growth.

Also at The Standard, Rajan notes how some very wealthy people in the US and Europe have become so concerned about disproportionate wealth imbalances they are demanding to pay more tax.

But is there too much attention to tax? Dean Baker suggests so in a summary of the premise of his book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. Baker argues that tax issues are peripheral compared to the policies that redistribute before-tax income upwards, including anti-union labor laws, "too big to fail" policies for large banks, and strengthened protections for patent and copyright holders. He stresses that:

This is important for both policy and politics. If we have a hugely unequal distribution of before-tax income, even strongly progressive tax and transfer policy is likely to have a limited effect in ensuring that the bulk of the population benefits from economic growth. Furthermore, the politics of relying on tax and transfer policy to reverse the inequities built into the design of the market are horrible. It plays into the conservative story that progressives want to tax those who are innovative and hardworking to provide handouts to those who are not.

John Schmitt summarises what he calls a "surprisingly hard-hitting paper" from mainstream economist Robert Gordon. Gordon concludes that the current shortfall of 10-14 million jobs is due to excessive "managerial power". Schmitt quotes Gordon as arguing that:

The weakened bargaining position of workers is explained by the same set of four factors that underlie higher inequality among the bottom 90% of the American income distribution since the 1970s – weaker unions, a lower real minimum wage, competition from imports, and competition from low-skilled immigrants.

In addition, the increase in stock options as a part of executive pay packets has ecnouraged a slash and burn approach to cost cutting, including employee layoffs. Thus, according to his econometric analysis, "for every worker tossed overboard in a sinking economy prior to 1986, about 1.5 are now tossed overboard".

Increasingly, the most insightful way to view all this through is comedy. Here's Jon Stewart in top form, taking on the reaction to Warren Buffet's op-ed while lampooning the "class warfare" and "free ride for the poor" meme pushed by Fox News and other conservative vox pops:

So raising the income tax rate on the top 2 percent of earners would raise $700 billion dollars, but taking half of everything the bottom 50 percent have in this country would do the same. I see the problem here: we need to take all of what the bottom 50 percent have.

Stewart might be amusing, but some of the comments towards the end of the second video clip suggest that his satire is Swiftian in its dscomforting closeness to reality.

US Mainstream Media Eeuurrgghh! Edition

2011-09-02T19:49:00.000+12:00

I've previously praised The Good Wife as an intelligent, gripping drama series. Despite standing by that general evaluation, I almost had to boycott it as a result of an incredibly stupid and ultimately offensive plot element in the recent Season 2 episode 22, "Foreign Affairs".

In this episode, Lockhart & Gardner are representing a contractor to a large oil company who has not received payment for drilling work carried out in Venezuela. Negotiations are proceeding, when a celebrity lawyer played by Law & Order actor and former US presidential candidate Fred Thompson appears to announce that as the oil company's Venezuelan interests have just been nationalised and the Venezuelan government has hired his firm to represent it, he will be taking over the case.

At a court hearing the judge advises Lockhart & Gardner that they should merge their case with Thomspon's. "Great" says Will. "Now we have a dictator for a client".

Later, in a conference on the case, the supposed "President Chavez" participates personally. A video link shows a waist-down view of "Chavez" walking around, while a voice speaking obviously Mexican-accented Spanish interjects in proceedings.On several other occasions Chavez is referred to as a "dictator" and when Lockhart & Gardner's client is awarded over the odds damages Will says this is the “standard surcharge for dictators.”

It's kind of boring and annoying to have to state this: whatever his authoritarian "tendencies" or specific instances of executive overreach (and for examples of the latter, see Bush, G W, 2000-2008), Hugo Chavez is not a "dictator" but has been voted in through multiple free and fair elections. Incredibly, mainstream US media institutions that consider themselves serious have no problem in blithely repeating outright falsehoods.

Also completely misleading is the idea that the president can just change laws overnight without reference to Congress. Or that the president himself might be the client and take a direct role in a legal case against an international company. This is kind of like Obama involving himself in Government of the United States vs. Random defendant cases. Surely even virulently anti-Chavez Venezuelans would cringe at the depiction of their country as a tiny, tinpot banana republic which apparently has no institutions and makes no distinction between the State and the current occupant of the Executive?

As an aside, another plot point turned on a document titled "Exit Strategy" being mistranslated as Estrategia de Exito (Success Strategy). While hardly as lame as the Chavez depiction, this is not a mistake a translator would make.

Links Ahoy: Welfare, Obama, Italy, Chile and Travel

2011-08-27T16:34:00.001+12:00

Danyl McLachlan's satire sums up the latest welfare reform proposals. It suggests not much has changed since I wrote this.

Timothy Egan tracks the downgrade of Obama's promise of "hope and audacity".

Gordon Campbell is doing regular background pieces on the politics and economy of all the different countries involved in the Rugby World Cup. This one on Italy is especially interesting for its coverage of a failed scheme to address youth unemployment.

Two local Chilean acquaintances recently described for me the current social movements driven by protests about education. In what they describe as "the most neoliberal country in the world", much of the education system is run on a for-profit basis, resulting in a two-tier system of enormous inequities. The Guardian adds more background and profiles the leader of the protests: 23, beautiful, terrifyingly articulate, and a communist (if she didn't exist Isabel Allende would have had to invent her).

On a lighter note, these are pretty accurate observations on travelling from Ben Groundwater. I liked this one:

10. No one cares what happened while you were overseas
This is a little surprise waiting for you when you come home. All those amazing experiences you had on the road? No one wants to hear about them. No one wants to look at your photos. No one wants to see your souvenirs.

Climbing Aconcagua: Argentina's Stone Sentinel

2011-08-21T20:52:00.008+12:00

It's late afternoon at Camp 3 on Aconcagua, 6,000 metres above sea level. Huddled inside my sleeping bag, I listen intently for changes in the sound of wind and snow against the tent. Gradually, the wind drops to a whisper. Then, the yellow tent wall begins to brighten, filtering an unmistakeable warmth through the canvas. Sunlight! I unzip the tent door, spend a couple of minutes wrestling to get foam liners and feet into the plastic boots sitting outside, then haul myself out into the freezing air. Outside, a few flakes are still drifting, but the clouds have rolled away and the sun is glowing crimson on the western horizon. Below our eagle's eyrie of a camp site, the serried peaks of the Andes fade into the north. Above and behind is the flank of Aconcagua itself. I feel a thrill of elation. After nearly two weeks of struggle and uncertainty, tomorrow we will be making an attempt on the highest summit in the western hemisphere.

Towering above surrounding peaks near the border between Argentina and Chile, Aconcagua’s 6,962 metres make it not only the highest mountain in the Andes, but the highest anywhere outside Asia. Even more notable, the standard route to the summit is free of glaciers or crevasses and can be attempted by those without technical mountain-climbing skills. That doesn't mean it can be taken lightly. Aconcagua's altitude is literally breath taking, nearly twice that of New Zealand’s Mt Cook. And its weather is notoriously unpredictable, with -30 degree temperatures and fierce winds that sweep in from the Pacific. Every summer, the mountain claims some lives.

Our group of eleven climbers is on an expedition organised by Wanaka's Adventure Consultants. The journey starts in the leafy Argentinean city of Mendoza, where 35-degree afternoons and enormous juicy steaks make for pleasant preparation. Before we head to the start of the expedition we are briefed by our guides: leader Matias from Chile, and Mendoza locals Leo and Agustin. Between them, they have summited Aconcagua thirty-six times.

To even arrive at the foot of the mountain is a three-day, 50km trek in from the road up the Vacas Valley, over relatively gentle terrain but under a parching sun. Fifteen minutes before arriving at our second camp, we get our first glimpse of the mountain, glimmering blue-white and symmetrical through a gap in the hills.

The next morning comes the only river crossing of the expedition. It's just twenty seconds, but the numbing icy water leaves even the guides hopping and cursing on the opposite bank. From there we work our way up the Relinchos Valley to Plaza Argentina, our base camp at 4,200 metres. For two days we rest and acclimatise enjoying the relative luxury of permanent metal-framed cooking and dining tents, a water supply and long-drop toilets.

The gear carry to Camp 1 is the first real challenge of the expedition. With communal food and supplies as well as personal equipment, we'll need to carry as much as 25kg up steep and difficult terrain culminating in a brutal scree slope that crumbles and slips under our boots. For one expedition member, it’s too far beyond his previous experience on Africa’s Kilimanjaro, and he reluctantly abandons the expedition.

The “climb high, sleep low” policy sees us return to base camp before moving permanently to Camp 1, from where we do another five-hour gear carry to Camp 2 at 5,500 metres. After getting back from the carry, two more members of our group decide to pull out. A Brazilian team accompanying us up the mountain has also lost a third of its members. The afternoon weather closes in and it begins to snow heavily. The snow continues into the next day, preventing any further move.

The following morning a dazzling sun reflects off the snowed-in tents. We hurriedly pack up our gear and begin our move to Camp 2. But after only an hour the clouds roll in again. Snow falls, first gently, then horizontally, as wind howls into our faces. The weather worsens as we work our way around the mountain's northwestern flank, until visibility drops to twenty metres. Finally arriving at camp, we work desperately to pitch the tents and scramble into shelter.

The next morning there's grim news. A number of people have been reported missing, including climbers we had seen working their way up the Polish Glacier route the previous day. We'll later get confirmation that the storm has taken the lives of three people higher on the mountain and seen several others evacuated with frostbite.

As the storm continues, we huddle in the tents and try to conserve energy. Our guides melt snow for water and perform heroics to cook a nourishing dinner. Morale has dropped: with food and time running out, we wonder whether we’ll even get to make a summit attempt.

We're reluctant to believe in the still, clear skies the next morning. But the weather remains perfect as we carry gear to camp 3, taking turns with an American team to plough a trail through the thick snow. Another member has breathing problems and decides he’ll go no further. Seven out of eleven climbers remain.

Monday, 14 February, we complete the move from camp 2 to camp 3. Now at 6,000 metres, we’re poised for a summit attempt. But the afternoon clouds over and it begins to snow. Will we be frustrated at the final hurdle? Just before sunset, the weather clears. It looks like the mountain will grant us an opportunity after all.

After a long sleepless night, at 6am it’s finally time. By torch light we don balaclavas, down jackets and insulated pants, strap on crampons, and stuff energy gels into pockets. Dawn breaks as we trudge up through the snow. The arc of horizon evolves through an array of hues, unveiling a dizzying array of ridges and peaks below us. Daylight reveals a line of climbers on the slope above us. Some are already struggling, stopped, leaning forward on to their poles, breathing heavily. We inch our way up to the pass and into the shelter of a small hollow. This is Independencia, one third of the way.

Fifty metres up over a steep bank and we begin a long traverse across the mountainside where normally the wind screams in from the west. Incredibly, there’s hardly a breeze. After all the tribulations on the way up the mountain, today we’ve got very lucky.

At a rest stop, our guides take the tough decision that one of the group is struggling too much. With still five hours to the summit and three hours down, they judge he won’t have the energy to last, and he is escorted back to camp by Agustin. Two guides and six climbers remain, as we work our way up to a cleft in the mountainside known as the Cave.

Beyond the Cave, a steep route zig-zags upwards. This is the notorious Canaleta, which is usually dry scree. The snow cover makes progress slightly easier, but my calves burn with each step upwards. I later realize I've drifted into a meditative state: it’s hard to believe that three more hours pass as we ease uphill.

I can see two, three more bends before a jumble of boulders that mark the edge of the summit plateau. I feel a brief wave of emotion: after months of preparation and two weeks of climbing, I will make it to the highest point in the Americas. I think of all my friends and family that will be proud of me.

Nine hours after leaving camp, Leo stops by some large rounded boulders and waves me up. I scramble clumsily over them and lift myself on to the summit. Fellow expedition members join me and we share high-fives and hugs. We take photos next to Aconcagua’s famous cross, where climbers hang small trinkets to mark their ascent. Each year these are cleaned away by winter storms.

From there, we still have to make it down. It's several more hours, and two of the other group members are so exhausted they have to be roped to the guides. I have a little stumble on the way down to the Cave and a five-minute dizzy spell while resting there, but recover after half of litre water and an emergency One Square Meal. Ahead also is the next day's rapid descent, tired legs weighed down by overloaded packs and slipping on the icy slopes, to the Plaza de Mulas camp, with its almost unbelievable prizes of pizza and beer. Then the 30km trek out, along the dusty riverbeds of the Horcones Valley.

But the present moment is about the summit. It’s less joyful celebration than quiet reflection on the effort, team work and luck required to make it this far; and acknowledgement that we're here at Aconcagua’s grace. As the sign in the camp doctor’s office at Plaza Argentina says: “It’s not until you’re back at base camp that the mountain belongs to you. Until then, you belong to it”.

The Return of the Welfare Working Group: This Time It's Personal

2011-08-20T14:59:00.001+12:00

Is the National Party really planning to make beneficiary-bashing a prime election issue? And are New Zealanders going to make this popular? Are we so small-minded that we will happily be distracted from our many big problems by a proposal to micromanage the lives of a couple of thousand teenagers?

As usual Gordon Campbell has great coverage and arguments, but even conservative business columnist Fran O' Sullivan is fair-minded enough to point out what the problem is (a clue: it's to do with jobs). Danyl McLaughlan and Russell Brown have the centrist liberal angle.

This Is the Kind of Thing That Makes Me Angry

2011-08-17T18:24:00.002+12:00

Stuff reports that Restaurant Brands, which controls the Starbucks, KFC and Pizza Hut outlets in New Zealand, has no plans to pay Christchurch workers for their rostered hours for Monday 15 August when snow prevented business operation. Neither were they paid when a similar situation occurred on Monday 25 July. Instead, they will be expected to take a day of annual leave (assuming they are permanent employees and are eligible for it).

So, you're a fast-food worker, paid low wages even by the standards of our low-wage society. You work under difficult conditions and will often not know from week to week exactly when or how many hours you'll work. Most likely, you will occasionally have to perform miracles when faced with a rush period or short staffing. Then, through no fault of your own, you lose maybe 20 percent of your weekly wage because of the weather.

When an act of God like a snow storm makes economic activity stall, everyone is affected. Yet here we see the people with the least buffer against such events being expected to absorb all the consequences.

It's not as if we're talking about small independent businesses that have taken risks to provide employment. This is a large, powerful conglomerate that profits from economies of scale and an industrialised supply chain. Restaurant Brands is perfectly capable of telling all the respective owner-operators or franchise holders that it will absorb the costs of paying the rostered hours of snow-bound employees. In fact, you'd think that anyone with half a functioning public relations department would have done this already.

Such a situation is even more ironic in a community already beaten down by other natural disasters. In February, John Key said that getting Christchurch back on its feet wasn't Christchurch's struggle, it was New Zealand's struggle. I guess such theoretical solidarity didn't include large corporations.

Meanwhile, there's a lot of focus on the largely punitive measures aimed at young people as part of “welfare reform”. The message that is being delivered is clear: lots of responsibility for vulnerable young people; none at all for the rich and powerful.

UPDATE: Restaurant Brands has said it will pay snowed-bound staff after all. A small victory for decency and an indication that public shaming still has some power. Also, congratulations to the likes of Cookie Time who were doing this in the first place.

But the Market Says

2011-08-14T12:54:00.001+12:00

These are strange times for those who grew up ingesting the certainties of the 1980s and 1990s that it's impossible to argue with "the market".

First we see even the National and ACT parties agreeing to an enquiry into the price of milk. Then there's the furore over the price charged by Adidas for the All Blacks replica jersey.

I have no desire to buy an All Blacks jersey (despite enjoying rugby and supporting the All Blacks). However, I do think there's something wrong here. The dynamic is pretty close to what I think Naomi Klein was criticising in No Logo.

To begin with, we have a symbol that gains its value from popular culture, in this case New Zealanders' long history of dedication to playing and supporting rugby. The All Blacks are just the flagship for a culture which has its roots in provinces, clubs and schools and is based on the mostly unpaid commitment of ordinary people.

This cultural capital is then appropriated, commodified and privatized, in the form of the New Zealand Rugby Union giving exclusive rights to a multinational company to produce the "official" jersey. This is then sold back to the people who care about it. And precisely because its value is most salient here in New Zealand, the prices demanded are notably higher than overseas. New Zealand has been taken off allowable destinations of international websites that have the jersey much cheaper, seemingly at the request of Adidas.

Finally, it's worth noting that this whole process has its material basis elsewhere, since the jerseys are undoubtedly made in China and do not provide any local manufacturing employment.

This highly socially-constructed process is then presented as the market at work, a simple case of supply and demand, typified by the comment from Riche McCaw's [reported] girlfriend Nicola Grigg: "why the hell should Adidas change its prices". However, now we have Rebel Sports general manager talking about being "morally sensible" and Prime Minister John Key opining that "[Adidas] needs to determine whether their actions are in the best interest of the country". It's enough to make a time-traveller from the 1990s do a double take.

It's the Politics, Stupid

2011-08-13T21:41:00.001+12:00

The mainstream media infrequently acknowledges that the various economic and financial "crises" around the world relate to political choices rather than unstoppable economic forces of nature (category error intended) that no one can control.

No where is this more true than in the furore over the US debt ceiling. What has been presented as "partisan bickering" over an absolutely necessary reckoning with out-of-control debt and deficits was in reality a cynical act of blackmail by the Republican Party, which took advantage of what had always been a routine legislative process to advance their agendas (mainly cutting government programmes for the poor and middle class and ensuring rich people don't pay any more taxes). Obama has aided and abetted this by consistently acting as if the deficit is the biggest problem, while meanwhile, millions of people are unemployed.

The depiction of the United States as an economic basket case propped up by China is muddled and mostly wrong. There's a good piece pulling apart all the misinformation from Dean Baker and David Rosnick at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research: 7 Things You Need to Know About the National Debt, Deficits and the Dollar (see the press release for a potted version).

The only areas where the US has genuine sustainability issues are in the long-term with health care costs -- a massive issue for both the public and private sector. However, the sabotage by the Republicans may make short-term instability a self-fulfilling prophecy. (And these are some of the same people who decried as "unpatriotic" those who argued against invading Iraq!).

The downgrading of US debt by Standard & Poors also has political aspects. At least this is getting widespread push back. Numerous people have pointed out the ridiculousness of taking Standard & Poors seriously about anything, let alone sovereign debt. More here and, amusingly, here. Even a Reuters-circulated piece mercilessly mocks S&P. Note that in New Zealand, the Government defended their most recent Budget by boasting that "Phil Goff might not like it, but Standard and Poor's does". Hmm.

Krugman and others tear out their hair at the narrative that recent stock market panics are the result of fears about public debt. If so, why did the interest rates for 10-year US Treasury bonds go down following the downgrade? A more plausible story is that the markets are reacting rationally to the ongoing stupidity: the demand for austerity will hurt the economy, which in turn will fuel calls for more austerity, and so forth.

Why are these perverse and self-defeating choices being made? As always, an interesting question to ask is: cui bono? Krugman (again) analyses the terms of the interests of rentiers:

[The] only real beneficiaries of Pain Caucus policies...are the rentiers: bankers and wealthy individuals with lots of bonds in their portfolios.

And that explains why creditor interests bulk so large in policy; not only is this the class that makes big campaign contributions, it’s the class that has personal access to policy makers — many of whom go to work for these people when they exit government through the revolving door. The process of influence doesn’t have to involve raw corruption (although that happens, too). All it requires is the tendency to assume that what’s good for the people you hang out with, the people who seem so impressive in meetings — hey, they’re rich, they’re smart, and they have great tailors — must be good for the economy as a whole.

But the reality is just the opposite: creditor-friendly policies are crippling the economy. This is a negative-sum game, in which the attempt to protect the rentiers from any losses is inflicting much larger losses on everyone else.

There's more here and here, and some interesting debate from The Economist website here.

Crime & Consumerism

2011-08-10T22:35:00.001+12:00

Zoe Williams has kind of meta-analysis of reaction to the London (and now Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester) riots. She notes the ironies:

I think it's just about possible that you could see your actions refashioned into a noble cause if you were stealing the staples: bread, milk. But it can't be done while you're nicking trainers, let alone laptops.

She considers the authoritarian response that this is just "pure criminality" and the liberal view that it's just downtrodden people lashing out, but suggests a middle view: the riots arent directly political, but do need to be understand in the context of the prevailing political economy:

Between these poles is a more pragmatic reading: this is what happens when people don't have anything, when they have their noses constantly rubbed in stuff they can't afford, and they have no reason ever to believe that they will be able to afford it. Hiller takes up this idea: "Consumer society relies on your ability to participate in it. So what we recognise as a consumer now was born out of shorter hours, higher wages and the availability of credit. If you're dealing with a lot of people who don't have the last two, that contract doesn't work. They seem to be targeting the stores selling goods they would normally consume. So perhaps they're rebelling against the system that denies its bounty to them because they can't afford it."

The tragic mindlessness of smashing up shops so you can get their stuff is best criticised by this woman in Hackney.

The Big Picture

2011-08-08T22:33:00.000+12:00

Dani Rodrik looks anew at the relationship between GDP per capita and democracy at the country level and finds interesting patterns and unanswered questions (clue: the latter involve China).

Meanwhile, at an even bigger scale, University of California physics professor Tom Murphy considers the possbilities for ongoing economic growth in the context of tapering energy growth. It's a neutral, Club of Rome-style analysis that nevertheless has some (intentionally?) amusing bits.

This would mean that an increasingly small fraction of economic activity would depend heavily on energy, so that food production, manufacturing, transportation, etc. would be relegated to economic insignificance. Activities like selling and buying existing houses, financial transactions, innovations (including new ways to move money around), fashion, and psychotherapy will be effectively all that’s left. Consequently, the price of food, energy, and manufacturing would drop to negligible levels relative to the fluffy stuff. And is this realistic—that a vital resource at its physical limit gets arbitrarily cheap? Bizarre.

Beat. Head. Wall.

2011-08-01T22:52:00.000+12:00

For those of us watching in fascinated horror, the US debt ceiling drama has been a lesson in political science, and a teachable moment for those who urge collaboration and bipartisanship, no matter how unreasonable the opponent.

There's an interesting analysis from Bruce Bartlett, who argues that Obama lacks the experience of bargaining from the Cold War and labour disputes that hardened politicians in the past:

Now we are in the midst of a debt crisis that stems largely from Obama’s inability to accept the intransigence of his political opponents. Last December, he caved in to Republicans by supporting extension of the Bush tax cuts even though there is no evidence that they have done anything other than increase the deficit. There were those who told Obama that he ought to include an increase in the debt limit, but he rejected that idea, believing that Republicans would behave like responsible adults and raise the debt limit just as they did routinely when their party held the White House.

If you think that is a "partisan" analysis, note that Bartlett was an advisor to President Reagan.

Paul Krugman has been a regular, and increasingly vexed commenter on Obama's negotiation strategy:

It’s really hard to talk about this without getting into armchair psychoanalysis. I’ll try to refrain. But let’s just say that Obama’s continuing insistence on compromising, his continuing faith in bipartisanship despite two and a half years of evidence that these people don’t do compromise and will never make a deal, is looking obsessive and compulsive. It’s deeply frustrating.

And the most frustrating thing is that even when you start by moving more than half way to your opponent's position, the media will still report the ensuing efforts not to completely surrender as "partisan bickering".

Kim Jong-Il's Law?

2011-07-31T19:11:00.002+12:00

I propose a variation on Godwin's Law. This would apply to the first person, who in commenting on a discussion about the deleterious effects of rising inequality , mentions North Korea.

Example:

"Worried about how the top few percent hold such a large proportion of society's wealth? I suppose you'd prefer to go and live in North Korea"

Inconceivable

2011-07-18T23:57:00.000+12:00

I don't know quite what to make of the fact that the Copa America semi-finals will feature Uruguay vs. Peru and Paraguay vs. Venezuela. There would have been long odds on favoured teams Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Chile successively losing out to their opponents in the quarter-finals. The results came about in varying ways: from the epic Argentina-Uruguay match that neither team really deserved to lose, to the near-farce of the Brazil-Paraguay game where the Brazilians somehow failed to score in 120 minutes and then didn't convert any of their penalties.

All four of the winning sides were relatively pragmatic and unambitious, took their opportunities while their opponents squandered chances, and in the case of Uruguay and Paraguay, were helped through by the heroic goalkeeping performances.On the positive side, it's unpredictable, and means we avoid a third successive Brazil-Argentina final. On the negative side, it fuels arguments about the increasing mediocrity of international football. Negative tactics have been rewarded. None of the remaining sides (with the possible exception of Uruguay) have much charisma in footballing terms and most of the star players that were supposed to light up the tournament are gone, having failed to gel with their team mates and reproduce the form they show for their clubs.

In theory, Uruguay should win easily from here. But if we've learned anything so far, it's that the form book doesn't hold. For the record, I'm picking an easy 3-0 win for Uruguay over Peru, Paraguay to edge out Venezuela 1-0 with an ugly goal scrambled in from a free kick, then Uruguay and Paraguay to play out a dire 0-0 final. Who then wins on penalties? Well, I don't have a crystal ball.

For Their Own Benefit

2011-07-18T18:48:00.005+12:00

If you take the Welfare Working Group at face value, their greatest concern is the well being of people on benefits, and their children. Its final report states:

Reducing the unacceptably high incidence of child poverty in New Zealand through a particular focus on risk jobless households and whanau must be a high priority of reform.

A lot is also made of the gains to self-esteem and dignity from being in paid work. Apart from the apparent futility of getting sole parents to organise and pay someone else to look after their children while they try to earn the same level of subsistence income, this is fair enough

But what it would take to help the majority of people struggling on benefits to get paid work? As the WWG acknowleges at different points, apart from child care, there's less punitive benefit abatement rates, education and skills training, more intensive individualised support for disabled people, drug rehabilitation, better public transport, help with the cost relocating to job-rich locations, and the list goes on.

The final report sums it up:

Reducing long-term benefit dependency requires an effective health system, an effective education system, adequate provision of affordable childcare, and the availability of suitable jobs. Social barriers to employment also need to be addressed, such as discrimination in the labour market and in the workplace against various groups including the long-term unemployed and disabled people. (p.54)

The problem is, all this doesn't square with the other stated concern of the WWG of reducing costs, nor with the assertion, backed by rather odd use of data in their Issues paper, that the current system is "unsustainable". If you were sincere about the doing the things required to support as many people as possible to get paid work, you'd need to consider that it might actually cost more.

Then there's the immense blind spot explained in passing by the fact that "our Terms of Reference precluded consideration of rates of payment in the welfare system". The WWG duly recognises that "children whose parents rely on income from the welfare system are at significantly higher risk of poverty" but assiduously avoids noting the obvious: you could address at least some of the problems suffered by the children of beneficiaries simply by making benefits less miserly.
Short of sending people to live under bridges, the current system, as flawed as it is, may actually be the cheapest option. If the idea is that we need to invest more to prevent people being left to rot, then I'm all for it. But given that the most specific WWG recommendations mainly involve things like making the higher payments for sickness and disability benefit discretionary, and inventing byzantine new "sanctions" regimes, one wonders if that is actually the plan.

Aconcagua Gear by Category #1

2011-07-12T22:53:00.001+12:00

When I was preparing to climb Aconcagua, I had to make sure I had all the items on the Adventure Consultants gear list, and this meant getting quite a few things that I'd never had before. In doing the necessary research to find something that was right for me, I found the comments and reviews on various web sites to be very helpful. So here is where I return the favour. As promised, I'm going to go systematically through the categories of gear for Aconcagua to discuss what my experiences were and what I'd recommend. This post covers clothes. I make no apologies for mentioning brands and models, since in many cases their specific characteristics are important.

Trekking Clothes

For the trek in, I wore shorts-convertible synthetic trekking pants and a loose-fitting ultra-lightweight Icebreaker top. I regretted not having one of the trekking shirts recommended in the gear list, as despite my best efforts to wear my buff in the Foreign-Legion style and tie a spare t-shirt around my neck I struggled to keep the sun off my neck and upper sholders. I would highly recommend getting one of these.

Base Layers

The gear list recommended 2 thermal tops and 2 pairs of long underwear. There's a perennial debate about synthetic vs. merino: I come down firmly on the side of merino, but that's a whole other topic. Up the mountain, I took 150 and 200-weight Icebreaker Bodyfit tops and 150 and 260 Bodyfit long underwear. If you really wanted to be minimalist, you could probably get away with just one top and bottom. I shifted to the warmer pair after arriving at camp 1 and kept them on pretty much until we got off the mountain. But they don't weigh much and it's worth having a second pair as a backup.

Light fleece

The gear list recommended a light fleece as a second top layer. If you can get one, a Powerstretch type fleece is highly recommended, as this material fits easily with layers below and above it. Mine was an Arcteryx Rho AR. I put this on over the 200 Icebreaker at camp 1 and kept that combination on, day and night, until we got to Plaza de Mulas on the other side of the mountain some 9 or 10 days later.

Jackets

You need at least three and probably four jacket-type garments for warmth and weather protection.

You need a good Gore-Tex or equivalent jacket as the default outer layer for stopping all wind and precipitation. Mine was the Outdoor Research Furio, which worked out well. While some will prefer something nice and light, you want the jacket to be reasonably robust. It should be sized to fit comfortably over at least three layers (including the sleeves and the hood), and under pack straps. Some overlap with your pants is good, but the thigh-length jackets sometimes favoured by New Zealanders for the wet conditions here are not really appropriate for mountain climbing.

The other absolute esential is a warm down jacket. This provides your bastion of warmth while at camp on the lower mountain, and usually for at least the morning on the summit ascent. The Mountain Hardwear Sub Zero SL Hooded Jacket is perfect for Aconcagua, with just the right balance of warmth, weather resistance and packability. I was one of at least four on our expedition that had this exact jacket. You want to get the jacket, rather than the longer and more unwieldy parka model. On summit day, the down jacket needs to be worn over your Gore-Tex jacket. For this reason, and because it is cut short, if you are between sizes you should opt for the larger size.

The third jacket recommendation from Adventure Consultants was a "mid-weight jacket", but the specific examples they gave were a bit confusing. The listed options were an insulated soft shell such as the Marmot Super Hero, a 200 or 300-weight fleece or an insulated jacket like the Mountain Hardwear Compressor. These options all have rather different qualities and purposes. Based on my experience, I would strongly recommend the Compressor. What you are looking for here is a default source of warmth when your big down jacket would be too much or is stashed away. This is a jacket that goes over your trekking clothes at camp or long rest stops, and goes under your Gore-Tex jacket as a mid-layer higher up the mountain. The Compressor is about as warm as a 300-weight fleece, but much lighter and less bulky (if not very stylish -- in my green version I have been dubbed "Kermit the Frog").

The fourth jacket recommended by Adventure Consultants was a "wind shirt", such as the Marmot DriClime. This is actually what I'd call the "soft shell" category and is where I'd put the soft shell option mentioned above. This is a light, breathable and comfortable jacket that can be the outer layer in non-extreme conditions and a mid layer under the Gore-Tex jacket when wind and precpitation get out of hand. It will often have some light insulation and may have a hood. Strictly speaking, this is not obligatory, but you will be glad if you have one. I took the Arcteryx Gamma MX Hoody, and I wore this for about 60 percent of the whole trip (as well as large parts of the rest of my life). The great advantage of this jacket is its excellent fit as well as amazing appetite for abuse.

Pants

You need Gore-Tex pants as your main outer layer, and they must have a full zide zip so you can get them on and off over boots. I got the Outdoor Research Furio pants, the sibling to my jacket. These worked out well as I was fortunate enough that they fit me perfectly in both length and width (at least in the shape I was in during the climb). Some may prefer a bib or salopette, since these work with a roomier waist and the greater torso coverage provides extra warmth. This is a good option if you do lots of sking or snowboarding or are planning on doing more alpine climbing.

On Aconcagua you usually need insulated (not down) pants for summit day only. The default option here is the Mountain Hardwear Compressor, again the sibling of the jacket. These worked just fine, pack down very small and are easy to get on and off. I wore them for about the first half of summit day until it got too warm.

The gear list recommended fleece or soft shell pants. I'm not sure that anyone on the trip had fleece pants. I took a pair of MacPac Nemesis soft shell pants. I find these to be useful in intermediate conditions like climbing in Arequipa, but didn't really use them on this trip as we went pretty quickly from baking heat to very cold and snowy, so I switched straight from trekking pants to Gore-Tex. I thought I might combine the soft shell with the Gore-Tex pants for additional warmth, short of wearing the insulated pants, but never did so. If you really wanted to save space and weight, this is an item you could consider leaving out.

Designer Facts

2011-07-07T00:54:00.002+12:00

One of the variations on making shit up is rewriting history to suit your ideology; as Paul Krugman observes (with an appropriate nod to The Princess Bride):

I’ve often found that when things happen that aren’t supposed to happen according to the prevailing economic or political orthodoxy, reporting quite often describes what “should” have happened, not what actually happened.

New Zealand's economy and society is a common recipient of this treatment. Witness this article and interview with John Key in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Key is returning the country to a formula for prosperity that's worked in the past. As in Britain, the U.S. and Australia in the 1980s, New Zealand's government implemented a wide-ranging program of economic liberalization, including deep reductions in tariffs and subsidies, and privatization of state-run industries. The plan, nicknamed "Rogernomics" after then-Finance Minister (now Sir) Roger Douglas, was akin to Reaganomics, and the island nation grew smartly.

We often hear this story from those who argue for "further reforms". The only problem is that it happens to be false. New Zealand's premier economic historian Brian Easton identifes the 1986-1994 "Rogernomics recession" as one of the main places that New Zealand's economy fell behind Australia and the rest of the OECD (the others were the wool price crash of 1966, and he argues to a lesser exent the oil price shocks of the 1970s). Easton suggests that the culprits were high interest rates and a high exchange rate at the same time as much of New Zealand's productive sector was being dismantled. In any case, the 1986-94 dip is clearly visible on this chart.

The WSJ article continues:

But while the U.S. and Australia broadly continued their economic liberalization programs under both right- and left-wing governments, New Zealand didn't -- until now. Over the past nine years, Helen Clark's left-wing Labour government rode the global economic expansion and used the revenue surge to expand government welfare programs, renationalize industries, and embrace causes like global warming. As a result, the economy stagnated while Australia took off.

As you might have guessed, this also happens to be false. The chart above unfortunately ends in 2002, but you can see that New Zealand actually sees a slight uptick against both Australia and the OECD from 2000. Over the whole 1999-2008 period, New Zealand did a bit better than the OECD and was close to keeping pace with Australia, whose own economy boomed during this period. I can't lay my hands on the stats and charts I had bookmarked, but there's a nice presentation of the data in this post, from an Australian addressing some local scaremongering about MMP government.

That's before you get to the non-sequiturs in that paragraph from the WSJ. For example, I'm not clear what "used the revenue surge...to embrace causes like global warming" is supposed to mean. The renationalized "industries", which makes Helen Clark sound like Hugo Chavez, presumably refers to the reluctant rescue of Air NZ and the buy-back of Kiwi Rail. And it is something of a mystery how the Labour government could "use the revenue surge [while]...the economy stagnated".

It would be hilarious if wasn't so depressing.

The War on Welfare

2011-07-01T19:17:00.002+12:00

As well as Gordon Campbell's piece that I linked to earlier on the continuing life of the Welfare Working Group, there was a well-researched piece from TimWatkin, and series of acerbic posts from Danyl McLaughlan, including an amusing suggestion for a reality TV show involving Paul Holmes

The take home point is that it's the economy, stupid. The Welfare Working Group sets an objective of getting 100,000 people off benefits. It's not hard to see how that might be achieved: just prior to the recession, in June 2008, there were 75,000 fewer people on benefits than there are now. At one point in 2008, the number on the unemployment benefit had dropped to 19,000. It's hard to square this, and the hundreds of people that line up for a chance at a few supermarket jobs, with the view that New Zealander's need more "incentive" to look for work.

Any perception of a recently developing crisis is inaccurate. As Watkin reports, the proportion of the working age population on benefits has been higher than it is today for most of the last twenty years. Yet in 1970 it was just four percent. What changed? Since the 1970s, the New Zealand economy has seen radical restructuring, notably through the liberalization of trade, downsizing of government and sale of many public assets. These changes significantly raised unemployment: for their advocates that was the price of economic efficiency. At the time, some pointed out that they wouldn't necessarily be socially efficient, but that quibble was lost in the winds of change.

The other major change in the 1970s was the introduction of the domestic purposes benefit. As Watkin says:

Given that it allowed women to get out of unhealthy, unhappy, even dangerous, relationships, I assume we think it's not a bad policy.

Again, the figures are hard to square with the certainty of talkback radio callers and Stuff website commenters that large numbers of [young] women are "breeding for a business". The Ministry of Social Development's helpful fact sheets report that just 10 percent of domestic purposes beneficiaries have been continuously on the benefit 10 years or more. Coincidentally, this is about the same as the percentage of domestic purposes beneficiaries who are male.

A number of critics have made the point that the miserly payment levels of the DPB hardly make for any sort of viable "business". Less well noted is the assmption (including by the WWG) that caring for children is not "work". Paid, no. Work, definitely. As somebody who now gets quite well paid for working, I never fail to appreciate that most days it ends at around 6pm.

The final third of benefit recipients are those on the sickness and disability benefits. Campbell points that out the percentage of working-age New Zealand receiving sickness and disability benefits is well below the OECD average, and the proportion of sick and disabled people in employment well above the OECD average.

In short, where work that offers subsistence level or above is available, New Zealanders generally take it. Most analyses conclude that there may be a hard core of recalcitrants, but if so, they consistute a small minority of beneficiaries. The question is not whether some proportion of welfare recipients are ripping off the system. but whether this is the most important issue facing the country at the moment. While the economy remains sluggish, and even high-skilled jobs continue to disappear on a weekly basis, forcing sole parents, the sick and the disabled to pound the pavements seems like the height of perversity.

What's Happening in Football

2011-06-26T12:01:00.000+12:00

The European club season and the Champions League are over (maybe some thoughts on those in another post), but football has far from shut down for the northern summer / southern winter, as now the international game takes centre stage.

There was a round of Euro 2012 qualifiers in June with another in September. Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands are already almost guaranteed qualification.

The UEFA U-21 European Championships have just concluded in Denmark, with a dominant Spain beating Switzerland 2-0 in the final, becoming first team to be World, European and European u-21 champions at the same time.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup (North American, Central American and Caribbean championship) has been played over the last couple of weeks. Predictably, the United States and Mexico have reached the final, to be played today.

The U-17 World Cup is being played at the moment in Mexico. After a 4-1 win over Uzbekistan in the opening game and a 0-1 loss to the Czech Republic, New Zealand have just played out a cagey 0-0 draw with the United States to go through to the last 16 for the second consecutive tournament. Unfortanately, in the second round they are likely to play Germany, who have scored 9 goals so far and must be one of the favourites for the whole tournament.

Next week, the Copa America (South American championship) begins in Argentina. Can the home team take its first senior trophy since 1993, to break the dominance of Brazil who have won four out of the past five tournament?

Finally, on 29 July the U-20 World Cup gets underway in Colombia. New Zealand is drawn in a tough group with Uruguay, Portugal and Cameroon. The 2015 U-20 World Cup will be held in New Zealand.

RIP Big Man

2011-06-21T00:02:00.003+12:00

It was sad to hear yesterday that Clarence Clemons, best known as the saxophone player in Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band, had passed away following a stroke, aged 69. Dubbed the "Big Man" by Springsteen, Clemons was the soul of the band, his powerful solos giving another dimension to songs such as "Thunder Road" (listen to the lead out at the end), "Rosalita", and of course "Jungleland".

There's a nice tribute on Salon from Wallace Stroby. The title of his piece is from the song "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out", where Springsteen describes how "the Big Man joined the band".

Will to Power

2011-06-20T21:49:00.002+12:00

My current TV addiction now that House, as one wit said, "has the shark swimming around in its tank", is The Good Wife (TV3, Sundays 10:25 pm). I've no idea how close it is to the reality of a large corporate law firm (though it must be closer than Boston Legal) or whether the election of state's attorney is really as big a deal as they make out. What I enjoy are the intricate webs of conflict, as every single character struggles to gain and consolidate status and power.

As a cronic conflict-avoider myself, I watch in a kind of fascinated horror as the power plays and one-upmanship unfold, even between characters that are broadly speaking friends or allies. One thing I've learned later in life is that conflict is unavoidably woven into the tapestry of human existence -- and that this isn't even necessarily all bad. But I guess I get a kind of carthasis watching a depiction of American big city law and politics, much more highly-charged than anything I'll have to deal with (I hope).

My guess at a general theme would be something like: even those who want to be moral, must also learn how to be ruthless.

"Parapolitics" in Colombia

2011-06-19T13:05:00.001+12:00

Hat-tip to Terence Wood for this must-read piece on Colombia from the New York Review of Books. The article, which reviews And They Refounded the Nation…: How Mafiosi and Politicians Reconfigured the Colombian State, edited by Claudia López Hernández, sums up what has emerged about the relationships between the political allies of former president Alvaro Uribe and right-wing paramilitary groups. It explains how the "justice and peace" process to demobilise paramilitaries under Uribe was a fraud, bearing most resemblance to the deal that drug lord Pablo Escobar tried to strike for himself in the 1990s. It documents the close links between Uribe's coalition and the paramilitaries, whose political and economic objectives were thoroughly interlinked with drug trafficking:

The paramilitary bosses who founded the AUC just over three years later were mostly former associates of Escobar. They had gotten their start as leaders of vigilante groups set up in the 1980s to deter guerrillas from kidnapping drug traffickers. These groups had joined forces with large landholders and, with the military’s support, expanded their operations from targeted retaliations to more widespread violence against suspected guerrilla allies, including leftist politicians and trade unionists.

By the 2000s, they had more systematic ambitions:

The paramilitaries had driven more than one million poor farmers off their lands, preparing the way for what the authors refer to as a “counter-agrarian reform.” Large landholders and investors—including paramilitaries and other traffickers—acquired the land, and corrupt officials helped them obtain title. As one former paramilitary put it: “We went in killing, others followed buying, and the third group legalized.”

Gradually emerging evidence has undermined the "democratic" credentials of Uribe, from revelations about the collaboration of members of his congressional allies with paramilitaries in rigging elections, to evidence of illegal bugging and threats by the national intelligence aganecy against judges and journalists investigating the allegations.

The review also mentions the somewhat surprising changes that have happened under Uribe's handpicked successor, former Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Santos has promised to respect judicial independence and has promoted a "Victim's Law" which would return stolen lands to displaced people and also make monetary reparations to victims of violence.

As I'm sure I will be reminded, none of this is new to Colombians, even if they're only following it from afar through their national media. But it's important that these kind of accounts be available in English, given the poor and unbalanced information that predominates in the international press.

Word Ex-Pressing Myself

2011-06-19T00:36:00.005+12:00

In a fit of belated getting with the play, I've moved all the historical content of this blog to a Word Press format, which I integrated with my self-hosted Andean Observer site. At the moment, it's at andean-observer.com/blog but I'm thinking of making it the home page of the Andean Observer eventually. Due to importing issues, the posts before about November 2005 have lost their category tags, but I'm fixing that.

Word Press provides a very powerful and easy-to-use content management system, which you can not only use with your own domain but also import into your own hosted site. They let you generate a (seemingly) unlimited number of fixed pages; they don't insist that you put a logo anywhere; and they even let you keep your AdSense banners if you have your own hosting and can figure out where to paste the code. The templates aren't quite as easily modifiable as I'd like, but the one I've chosen is better than anything my limited design and layout skills could put together anyway.

One motivation for this change was that the Andean Observer site was getting many more page views than this site despite not having any activity for a while, and the blog part being dead since Blogger stopped allowing FTP posting to external sites in around March 2010. But really, it was well past time. I finally have a site in line with the minimum modern requirements in terms of organisation and presentation. It's hard to believe I've had a blog since late 2003 (where did nearly eight years go?), but although I was reasonably up with the first wave of Web 2.0, I've kind of drifted behind since.

For the forseeable future I'll still keep posting at the Blogspot address. However, regular readers might want to update their RSS feeds (I know there's at least two or three of you out there).

The Development Impact of Rural Tourism in Peru's Colca Valley

2011-06-17T21:47:00.002+12:00

That was the title of my Master's thesis, which I handed in this January. I still haven't got it back but my academic supervisor seems to be confident enough that it will be acceptable that he's got me to work on an article based on the thesis.

Last year I also received a scholarship from the NewZealand Agency for International Development (NZAID) to assist with some of the costs involved in doing field research overseas. One of the things I had to do in return was to write a brief report on my research findings, placing particular emphasis on anything relevant to development practice and policy. As advised, I wrote a 3-page report and sent it to them a month or two ago. Although I haven't received an acknowledgement yet, I'm assuming there's no obstacle to publishing this elsewhere.

So, I have made a pdf copy and uploaded it to Scribd, while there is also a direct link here. It's not the best written piece in the world, and I'm not sure that it is even the best summary of the themes in my thesis, but it is only a couple of pages. So, for anybody with an interest in my thesis topic but who doesn't want to delve into the thesis itself, there is is.

I will eventually upload the thesis itself, but will wait until I get it back marked and make nay final changes.

The Crafts of Sibayo and Callalli: A Nice Story from the Colca Valley

2011-06-12T11:08:00.001+12:00

When I was doing field research in Peru for my Master's thesis last year, I spent some time in a little village called Sibayo in the upper Colca Valley. Sibayo sits at 3,800 metres above sea level, but most of the surrounding district is above 4,000 metres, and, with a climate too harsh for agriculture, livelihoods are based on herding alpacas and llamas. There's a long tradition of weaving in alpaca fibre, which has recently seen a renaissance under the influence of NGOs and an unusually active municipal government. The local artisans have formed an association called Sumac Pallay (based on my intepretation of Quechua, this means something like "fine collection"). The association is in charge of quality control, sales and marketing of its members' products, which include fine hand-made scarves, gloves, and chullos (the classic "Andean" hat with ear covers).

Forty minutes walk away across the river from Sibayo, the more populous district of Callalli has its own artisans collective that has also received assistance from NGOs and has a wider range of products, extending to sweaters as well as scarves and hats in more mainstream styles that are made on small machines. The micro-industrial character of the craft association's commercial outlet has seen it dubbed the "Maquicentro" (from the Spanish maquina for machine).

Last year, I bought a few things in Sibayo as presents for people back home, including a hand-made scarf that delighted my mother. When visiting Callalli's maquicentro with an NGO from Chivay, I was unable to resist getting myself one of their premium double-layered chullos: warm and beautifully designed with a soft inner lining of baby alpaca.

Although both Sibayo and Callalli have had intermittent success selling to tourists and have even filled some export orders, they struggle to maintain links to markets and obtain the value their products merit. This is partly because their high-quality, hand made crafts get drowned in the sea of cheap mass-produced "alpaca" items sold in thousands of stores and galleries throughout Peru. A shop in the provincial capital of Chivay which the Sibayo municipality subsidized for the craft association proved a disappointment: in addition to its low visibility at the back of a narrow gallery, it was surrounded by numerous other stalls selling hats and gloves, mostly made in Puno factories and any alpaca blended with synthetic fabric, llama and sheep's wool. Casual tourists mostly aren't able to tell the difference.

As reported previously on this blog, this February I climbed Cerro Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Andes. Included in my extensive gear collection were two warm hats: a fleece North Face beanie, and my Callalli-sourced alpaca chullo. Beyond about base camp, I found the alpaca hat to be much warmer than the fleece beanie, and as we progressed towards the summit I barely took it off. It was also so comfortable and breathed so well that I found I was still wearing it on the way out on the other side of the mountain, as the temperature ticked back up towards 20 degrees Celsis.

As we rode out the snowstorms while heading up the mountain, it occurred to me that I ought to see if I could generate some free publicity for the artisans of the Colca Valley. Not that I'm making myself out as a model, but a gringo swearing by their product as he tackled the continent's highest mountain might be worth something. In a spare moment at Camp 1, I got my tent mate to shoot a few photos (there's a whole other amusing story about what's going on the background).

After the mountain climbing was over, I headed from Argentina back to Peru for about three weeks. One of my first tasks on arriving in Arequipa was to visit Geovanna, the co-ordinator of the rural community tourism programme in the regional government's tourism office. As well as providing an overview of my thesis, I explained about my endorsement of Colca Valley headwear and gave her copies of the photos.

From there, I spent a couple of weeks in the Colca Valley, trekking, visiting NGO contacts, reporting back on my thesis findings and doing a bit of additional research. On the last Wednesday before I had to go back to Arequipa, I made a day trip from Chivay to Sibayo to catch up with some people and see how the tourism project had advanced since last year. I also wanted to buy some things from the crafts shop to take back to New Zealand. With not a tourist seen since the start of the year, the shop was closed, and it took a while to track down someone to open it up. In the end, I left with a decent haul of chullos and some excellent hand made scarves.

Later I walked the half hour or so across to Callalli and found my way to the Maquicentro. It was closed, and deserted apart from an NGO worker from Arequipa occupying an adjacent office. He was more than happy to find someone to open the Maquicentro, but it took us a few trips around the block before we found someone who had a key (my image from this: the traditionally-dressed señora in sombrero and skirts standing in a muddy corral conversing into a late-model cell phone as she tracked down her comadre). Eventually another señora appeared and opened up the shop for me. She explained about the trials of the wet season looking after the alpacas up in the estancia as I picked out another haul of items to complement the ones I had bought in Sibayo. Among them were another couple of versions of the hat I wore on Aconcagua, which I have officially dubbed the super-chullo.

I returned to Chivay in the usual dilapidated overcrowded minivan with my overflowing backpack squashed between my knees. After a couple more days there, I headed back to Arequipa for my last weekend before returning to New Zealand. On Monday I went to make my final reports and say farewell to Geovanna. She told me she had been in Callalli the previous Friday -- two days after me -- and had given a presentation to the artisans association. In one of her Powerpoint slides she included one of the photos I had given her of the Callalli chullo on Aconcagua. She explained that the photo had been provided by a foreign traveller who had found the hat to be exceptionally warm and comfortable in extreme conditions.

From the audience a woman got to her feet excitedly. "I sold to him!", she announced. (Nice to know she recognised me even though all gringos look alike and I had definitely shaved since that photo was taken).

Geovanna said that the artisans were thrilled with the feedback and it seemed to help drive home to them that they really do have premium products capable of being a hit in international markets. So, even if my academic research is of no practical use to people in the Colca Valley, maybe I've at least provided some useful encouragement.

Peru's New Minister of Tourism

2011-06-06T22:41:00.003+12:00

Given that it was sent to everyone on his mailing list, I don't think my friend Hugo would mind me reposting this photo with the same title as the subject heading in his email. It gave me a good couple of minutes of chortles.

Exit Polls Showing Humala Win: Reuters Grumpy

2011-06-06T11:37:00.004+12:00

Slightly behind in most opinion polls until a couple of days ago, Ollanta Humala appears to be holding a roughly 4 percentage point lead over Keiko Fujimori in exit polls following today's presidential runoff in Peru.

The elections have even made top spot on Stuff's World News page. But let's look at some of the subtle inaccuracies and biases in the Reuters article pasted there.

Humala, 48, has moderated his anti-capitalist views since narrowly losing the 2006 election, and most polls in the run up to the vote had the two candidates in a statistical tie.

Humala was never an anti-capitalist. His 2006 platform had a strong nationalist emphasis, with favourable references to the State-led capitalism of Juan Velasco Alvarado, but I doubt there was ever the slightest mention of Marx.

The elder Fujimori also defeated a Maoist rebel army but fled into exile in 2000 as his government was hit by corruption allegations, and he is now serving a 25-year prison sentence for graft and using death squads against suspected leftists.

Did Fujimori defeat a Maoist rebel army (the Shining Path)? That's what his apologists like to say, but the truth is that it was ingenious police work that tracked down the Lima hiding place of leader Abimael Guzman, after which the Shining Path promptly belied its supposed anti-individualist Maoism and to all intents and purposes, collapsed.

"Corruption allegations" is interesting shorthand for "leaked videos showing incidents of blatant and undeniable corruption for all the world to see".

Still, investors are wary of Humala. Peru's currency and stock market weakened whenever opinion polls showed him gaining ground. The stock market lost $14 billion in the weeks after Humala won the first-round vote, before recovering as Fujimori caught up with him in polls.

If the election is too close to call, there will be a recount, causing even more market volatility.

A paragraph on the stockmarket. Not until late in the article, in a sentence tag-on, is it mentioned that despite the "booming economy", 35 percent of Peruvians still live in poverty.

He promises to respect Peru's many free trade pacts and central bank independence, and to run a balanced budget. But he also favors policies that would increase state control over natural resources in one of the world's top mineral exporters.

For context, it could be mentioned that Peru has the least state control over natural resources of any large Latin American country, particularly compared with "free-market" Chile, where ~~60 percent~~ a significant proportion of copper production is controlled by the State. An alternative -- and possibly more accurate -- sentence could read: "Humala promises to impose windfall taxes on mining companies that have benefited from unprecedented rises in mineral prices".

Critics say Humala has not abandoned the hard-line ideology instilled in him by his father, a prominent radical. They warn he would take over private firms and change the constitution to allow himself to run for consecutive terms like his one-time political mentor, Venezuelan socialist President Hugo Chavez.

Who are these critics? Do they have any credibility? Should the article not mention that Humala has disavowed these claims?

"Humala's policies are statist and totalitarian," said Rosa Tolentina, a 60-year-old housewife in Lima. "We're going to end up like Venezuela: without freedoms, and poor."

Well yes, it's understandable that a housewife would say something like this, given what the corporate media have been saying. But again, is this credible? Is this an appropriate, balanced way to finish the article?

Finally: nowhere is there mention of facts that would appear to be of interest to an international audience, such as that prominent centre-right democrats including Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa, his son Alvaro Vargas Llosa, and former president and first-round presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo have all endorsed Humala.

Important Stuff Out There

2011-06-01T21:47:00.006+12:00

Just links today, but on some matters that I think are pretty important:

Gordon Campbell has a typically excellent post on the Government's decision to consider implementation of the Welfare Working Group's recommendations.

Terence Wood describes NZAID's rapid move away from international best practice under Murray McCully.

The Auckland Transport Blog assesses the Government-commissioned Ministry of Transport review of Auckland's proposed inner-city rail loop, and the Auckland Council's commissioned review of its own business case.

David Haywood proposes the "Copenhagenization" of Christchurch, in the sense of making it live up to its bicycle-friendly potential in the post-reconstruction period.

Humala the Neostructuralist?

2011-05-02T13:38:00.001+12:00

An excerpt from an interview given by presidential candidate Ollanta Humala on Peruvian TV last week (my translation):

Humala: First, when we talk, really about the model...we're not proposing to go outside the capitalist economic model.

Interviewer: But, the impression of many who've spoken from your camp...it would seem so.

Humala: Sure, that's why the commitment I'm making to the nation is that we're going to provide an open economy, based on the market, which is the national market economy, but which looks to create and promote other productive forces. And why is that? Because the Peruvian economy, fundamentally, depends on the rent from mining. And the mining rent is high these days because of high international mineral prices. That doesn't depend on Peru, it depends on the current international context. And if those prices fall, so does the Peruvian economy. So, we can't now be so irresponsible as to believe that international prices are going to stay high for 10 or 20 years, that's not sustainable over time. This is the moment, now there's money, to stabilize and consolidate economic growth through other productive activities such as tourism, such as agriculture, agro-industry, agro-exportation, (pastoral) farming, national industries. And that implies good quality education, to generate value-adding industries.

The most remarkable thing about these statements is how unremarkable they are. Humala's answers could come directly from an introductory development studies text, noting the drawbacks of relying on primary resource exports and stressing the need to develop a diversified, more sustainable economy with greater local participation. The role envisaged for the State in steering the economy towards greater competitiveness, especially through improved education, is in line with a broad church of thinking termed “neostructuralism” which in the Latin American context has its clearest exposition in Osvaldo Sunkel's volume Development from Within . The first-up mention of tourism as an important alternative economic activity is interestingly in tune with the arguments in chapters 3 and 4 of my thesis (forthcoming).

In short, this is pretty mainstream stuff. If we take him at his word, Humala plans to make some policy reorientations that would bring Peru more in line with just about every other South American country, with the possible exception of Colombia. Yet, you would hardly know it by the fear and loathing with which the possibility of a Humala victory in the presidential run off is being received by many in the Peruvian upper middle classes and some sections of the media. More on that in a further post.

Aconcagua: Gear Issues

2011-04-30T15:35:00.001+12:00

More on Aconcagua, this time about gear. This post covers a few of the surprising and obscure gear-related things I discovered on the expedition. In another post I'll go more systematically through the various gear categories.

Get to grips with your balaclava

Some of the trickiest items of gear to get right are the ones you never need until you're in really extreme conditions. For example, the balaclava. This is something you might not pay much attention to. Everyone's used to jackets, sleeping bags, boots, and it's easy to imagine them needing to be bigger and warmer high up on the mountain. But needing to cover your whole face is a little harder to envisage until you're actually being battered by freezing winds and horizontal snow. At this point, you really want your balaclava to fit well, and to let you breathe.

A couple of days before our summit attempt. I was pretty sure I would need to wear a balaclava for good part of the ascent, especially on the stretch from Independencia to the Cave where the wind is usually relentless. I hadn't got used to wearing either of mine in a way that I felt comfortable with and was panicking slightly. On the climb to camp 3 in fine conditions I experimented with wearing my buff over my nose and mouth. I found that to be ok when walking slowly and steadily, but rapidly ran out of breath whenever I had to make an effort. How would I manage on the summit climb? Would I be forced to choose between running out of oxygen or getting a frostbitten nose?

Fortunately, we were blessed with a summit day of unusual calm; on the infamous traverse (see picture) there was hardly a breeze. I wore my balaclava in the morning cold up to the rest stop at Independencia (6,400 metres) and then dispensed with it. But when we are eating dinner on our arrival back at Penitentes, we sat next to a group of Polish climbers who had summited on a different day than us: several of them had painful-looking swathes of windburn across their faces, rather like protagonists of that joke where you answer the phone while ironing.

Kill two birds with one pair of sandals

There's little doubt that on Aconcagua you'll need two main pairs of footwear: regular trekking boots for the walk in and double plastic boots from base camp. The gear list from Adventure Consultants also recommended: 1) some old running shoes for wearing around camp and using in river crossings and 2) down booties for wearing around camp and in your tent/sleeping bag. Based on my experiences, I would scratch both those items and replace them with a good lightweight pair of sandals. The running shoes were comfortable to wear around camp on the walk in, and I did use them on our one (brief but stunningly cold) river crossing. However, from base camp space and weight were at a premium and there was no way I could justify taking the shoes. I did squeeze in the down booties, but found they weren't up to the task of tramping round camp in the deep snow. Their role inside the tent is limited, since you mostly just put your feet in your sleeping bag to keep them warm.

After many occasions battling to get my double plastic boots on and off just to get in and out of the tent, I was looking enviously at the sandals worn by a couple of other expedition members. Small and light enough to carry, they can be worn with socks (there are no fashion crimes above 5,000 metres) and are a good option for short trips around camp. Sure, they're not the best in deep snow either, but are more robust and more easily cleaned or dried than the booties.

Yes, you need those water bottle jackets

Another obscure item you might not spent much thought on is the insulating "jacket" for your water bottles. While I researched and fretted about many of the items on the gear list, I had completely forgotten about these, and was fortunate enough that my sister Terri threw a couple in with some other things I borrowed off her just before I left. They aren't always sufficient to stop your water from freezing, but they are necessary.

Also, one area where I felt the pre-trip advice was wide of the mark was the recommendation to take two 1-litre drink bottles (plus one pee bottle). Most days you want to drink at least 3 to 4 litres, and for much of the expedition there's no chance to refill. We had to use coke or mineral water bottles for the additional water, which was not ideal. I would recommend taking at least 3 dedicated, wide-mouth 1-litre water bottles on the expedition. The softer plastic Nalgene bottles are probably better than the hard plastic ones, since they squash down better when empty.

Hand warmers are worth it

When I looked at the suggestion of hand warmers on the gear list I was a little sceptical. Surely if you got the right gloves and mittens you wouldn't need them? Well, yes. Top-line mittens will be plenty warm enough if you have them on the whole time. But to do anything like opening your pack, getting water, or even adjusting your hood, you need to strip to liner gloves or even, as in my case for about 15 minutes on summit morning, your bare hands. Your mittens might not be enough to warm your hands back up, and a throwing a couple of toasty hand warmers in them gives you extra security. On the other hand, there's not much point in getting specialist toe warmers: there's generally no space for them in a well-fitting pair of boots.

Try it all on

As I gradually accumulated gear in the months before the expedition I on various occasions got myself dressed up in layers of thermals, jackets, pants and socks. I felt rather stupid as I tried out my down jacket in the middle of summer, sweat pouring off as I fiddled with various chords and zips. Ultimately, however, I probably didn't do enough of this. You really should know exactly how everything zips, buckles and fastens, what can be worn with what, the best way to adjust your hoods, and so on. And you should practice doing it all with gloves on. For the same reason, as much of the gear as possible should be your own. Most items can be hired in Mendoza, but renting an item from a limited selection with 15 minutes to choose is not ideal. I got pretty much everything except crampons and ice pick. I did generally get to grips with the crampons in my hotel room in Mendoza, but on summit day I realised that I'd never tried them on with my snow gaiters and insulated pants. The extra bulk under the already short straps meant I had a panicky 5 minutes or so wrestling to get the crampons tightened in -15 degree conditions on summit morning.

Important Things About Aconcagua

2011-04-17T13:28:00.000+12:00

I still plan to write a blow by blow account of the Aconcagua trip: it was about sixteen days up and down, so it's going to be spread over at least three posts. Meanwhile, here are some general thoughts about things I learned or found to be very important during the expedition. Some of them might be useful advice for people thinking of making the Aconcagua trip themselves. In another post I'll focus specifically on gear issues.

It's the Guides, Stupid

Some very experienced mountaineers will prefer to organise the trip themselves, taking care of all the gear and food, planning their route, and evaluating the weather. For the rest of us who go on an organized expedition, the quality of the guides is paramount. I cannot exaggerate the importance of the contribution made by our three guides: Matias (Chilean, lead guide, 16 previous Aconcagua summits), Leo, (from Mendoza, 11 previous summits) and Agustin (also from Mendoza, 7 previous summits). The expedition was organised by Adventure Consultants, based in Wanaka, New Zealand, and the local agent was Fernando Grajales Expeditions of Mendoza. Both companies did an exemplary job with the logistics. But up on the mountainside, any plans and policies of the tour operators rely on the guides to implement them properly.

The first night we all met up at the hotel in Mendoza, Matias gave a briefing which set the tone for the expedition. He told us that the objectives were, in order: 1) to get off the mountains safely; 2) to enjoy the "process" of climbing and learn something; and 3) to reach the summit. In a period where three people died on the mountain and a number more were evacuated with frostbite, none of us were left in any doubt about the wisdom of that approach.

Eat, ~~Pray, Love,~~ Drink, Eat

If I were asked to identify the other most important success factor for Aconcagua, it wouldn't be great physical fitness. Sure, there are some minimum standards. But apart from a couple of hours here and there on different days, it's wasn't an especially athletic expedition. The slow, steady rhythm set by the guides was aimed at conserving energy. If you work out a lot or play sport, you'll probably actually lose form while on the mountain.

No, the key to survival and success on the mountain was simply to eat and drink as much as possible. To operate at altitude, as a friend in Peru once said, you need a "strong organism", and that organism has to be constantly refuelled. On Aconcagua, everything dehydrates you: on the walk in, it's the heat; higher up, it's the altitude. So, if you want to do well, you have to drink a lot of water. Drink before you get thirsty. Drink more than you think you need. Wake up in the middle of the night and drink some more.

Eating is just as important. All the theory says that you lose appetite at altitude, and most of the accounts I read of people's experiences on Aconcagua described forcing down minimal quantities of food at the higher camps. This wasn't so for me and most of the others who made it to the summit. In fact, the guides said they were rather taken aback by how much I and my tent mate were still eating at 6,000 metres, "maybe even more than at sea level". This was helped by the fact that the quality of the food was very good, which again, was in large part thanks to the guides. One of the defining moments of the expeditions came after we had braved a fierce snow storm to arrive at camp 2 and set up our tents. Cold, bedraggled and anxious about our prospects of even getting an attempt at the summit, I and my tent mate were roused by the voice of Agustin telling us that dinner was ready. We unzipped the back door to find Agustin, icicles clinging to his beard, holding a large pot from which he served us generous helpings of spicy meat and and rice. It was one of the most memorably delicious meals I've had, and greatly improved our mood at a difficult time.

Details Matter

I hoped the Aconcagua expedition would be a learning and growing experience for me, and in a number of ways it was, even if it just showed me how far I still had to go. One of the sharpest learning curves was to do with organisation and attention to detail. So many small things can derail your expedition. Secure your tent ineffectively or leave it unzipped and it could blow away, ending your trip. Fail to dry your boot liners or let your water bottle freeze and you could be in big trouble. It's not just with gear that that things can go wrong, but with your own person. Catch a cold or get a bout of diarrhea up high, and your body may not be able to recover quickly enough. Sunburn, headaches, blisters, and dehydration can all be dangerous as well.

So, you need to be meticulous about keeping your hands clean, your feet dry, your body warm, your skin protected, and your things stashed and organised. There are many details to think about. Are your plate, cup and spoon quickly accessible? Can your jacket be easily pulled out and stashed again at rest stops? Are your trekking poles set to the right length for the terrain (shorter for up hill, much longer for down)? How can you secure your water bottle to allow you to take sips while you walk?

It's also important to be familiar with all your clothes and equipment before the expedition, including how things tie, zip and buckle, what can be worn with what, and so forth. More about this in the post on gear. Despite my efforts to improve my organisational skills, and many nights spent lying in my sleeping bag mentally organising my pack, I struggled with this aspect and was always one of the last to be ready, starting in the morning, pitching and packing tents, and at rest stops (to be fair, three of my companions were ex-military).

Stay Regular

There was a lot of pre-trip information from Adventure Consultants, ranging from the essential to the relatively obscure, from advice on insurance to tips on high-altitude photopgraphy. Funnily, nowhere was there any comment about something that had inspired curiosity in most expedition members: how would we go to the toilet? Up to and including base camp, there's little mystery. Each expedition company supplies the camps with long drops -- barrels which are helicoptered out when full.

Beyond base camp, it's a different story. Within Aconcagua Provincial Park, the authorities have taken the admirable decision that you can't just "go" anywhere. Each person is given a quota of "wag bags" which they must use for any number two beyond 4,200 metres. The wag bag includes an inner, larger bag which contains a chemical powder that neutralizes and deodorizes excrement, as well as an outer ziplock bag designed to hold the inner bag.

For me, learning to love the bag was an important mental step in surviving and thriving on Aconcagua. It's tricky enough to aim into a bag in any situation, but when perched on a mountainside at -15 Celsius with snow and freezing winds, it becomes an adventure sport. Yet, it's not a good idea to avoid a showdown by eating less or just bottling it up. Staying healthy and comfortable means staying regular, so you need to treat it as just one more challenge to embrace.

Peruvian Elections: Humala First, Second Round Unpredictable

2011-04-11T15:05:00.004+12:00

For various reasons (Master's thesis, Aconcagua, travelling in Peru away from internet access, many things to do on arrival back to New Zealand), I haven't done any blog posts on the Peruvian presidential and congressional elections, which took place on Sunday 10 April local time. The line up of candidates made as much, if not more of a soap opera story as it did in 2006. The lead up had even more twists and turns, as right until the end there were five candidates with possibilities of making it through to the second round of voting.

In the end, the result of the first round has meant a rather different scenario than the last elections. As he did in 2006, Nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala headed the initial vote. Coming from seeming irrelevance only a couple of months ago when he was polling below 10 percent, Humala won around 32 percent of the vote, almost identical to his numbers five years ago.

However, this time there's not going to be a solid alliance of the "democratic" establishment against "authoritarian" Humala of the sort which benefited Alan Garcia in 2006. This is because Humala's opponent in the second round will be Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the currently imprisoned ex-dictator, who in her campaign has frequently referred back to what "we" did in the 1990s. As La Republica columnist Mirko Lauer puts it:

In addition, if it's about a competition between two political chambers of horrors, the phrase used by political scientist Steven Levitsky is eloquent: "you can have doubts about Ollanta but about Keiko we've got proof"

The success of Humala and Fujimori sends a clear message. The establishment candidates -- 2001--2006 president Alejandro Toledo, former Lima mayor Luis Castañeda and one-time Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuzcysnzki (PPK) -- eventually obtained less than 45 percent of the vote between them. It's not quite true, as is being portrayed in some places, that Peruvians abandoned the centre and chose contrasting "extremes". Despite being placed on the far right, Fujimori shares a similar economic approach with the other three candidates -- with PPK probably the purest neoliberal -- while Humala is hardly "leftist" in any coherent sense. What these two have in common is their populism, and the perception that in some sense they are outsiders. Their strong showing amounts to a rejection of continuismo and disagreement with the establishment argument that staying with Peru's current economic and political track will eventually be good for everyone.

Since the last election, Humala has gone a considerable way towards moderating his image. He's been dressing smarter, got a team of Brazilian advisors to give his policies an aura of Lula-ness, and avoided the association with Hugo Chavez that Alan Garcia took such advantage of last time. Already, the sort of people who pegged their noses and reluctantly voted for Garcia are wondering whether he might be the least worst option. Mario Vargas Llosa, for example, has said that he "could" vote for Humala, depending on the kind of alliances he forms, but could never vote for Fujmori. In another post, I'll give my own opinion.

The Next Goal

2011-03-01T07:28:00.002+13:00

It seemed to have worked well with Aconcagua, so I'm going to repeat the tactic of announcing a goal publicly in order to force myself to carry it through.

My next objective is to run a marathon before winter 2012.

On Top of the World (Outside Asia)

2011-02-21T03:13:00.002+13:00

So, after quite a few doubts before and even during the expedition, this past Tuesday 15th of February, I stood at the summit of 6,962-metre Cerro Aconcagua with five others from our original expedition party of 11. About two hundred metres from the summit I felt a sudden warm glow as I thought of all my family and friends who might be proud of me for making it and could in some way share in the achievement. About a hundred metres away, when the last boulders that have to be clambered over came into view, I felt tears welling up. It was the culmination of a long and often distant-seeming dream and it was an emotional experience to stand on the summit, hugging and high-fiving team mates and guides.

Aconcagua tends to be presented in general descriptions as a relatively simple, non-technical mountain that is useful as a an introduction to high altitude. It's sometimes referred to as "the world's highest trek". Our guides and the base camp doctor who was doing his fourth season on the mountain all lamented this publicity as misleading. I can just about see how this description could be close to accurate on the Normal route under certain conditions. But by the end of the trip , I and I think every other member of the group were convinced that Aconcagua was all mountain -- and subject to cruel and unforgiving moods.

During the expedition, we experienced some of the worst sustained weather on the mountain in 10 years, with practically four days of snow including a pretty intense storm. Getting from camp 1 to camp 3 was a real trial both in physical and mental terms. Three people died on the mountain in the last week and a number of others were evacuated with frostbite (pretty much all due to bad decisions). Our guides said it was the most snow they had seen on the mountain. However, this was made up for on our summit day which was a beautiful morning with almost no wind -- even, incredibly, on a 3-hour traverse where the books and our guides coincide in saying the wind is usually relentless. There was so much snow we could go all the way from camp 3 to the summit and back with crampons. While that made it slightly tricky in some parts, it was probably easier in others

I can't speak highly enough of our guides Matias, Leo and Agustin, who did an incredible job and did an enormous amount to get us through safely. It's been quite an experience. I like to think I learned a lot on this trip and have improved as a person in some small way.

In future blogs I aim to do a bit more of a blow-by blow account of the expedition as well as listing some of the surprising things I found to be important, thoughts on gear and preparations, and some tips that might help people who are thinking of trying this expedition themselves.

Aconcagua Bound

2011-01-30T08:27:00.003+13:00

Once again, there's no continuity to this blog. Since last time I wrote about my plans for tackling the non-technical but daunting peak of Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina, there have been almost no updates. None of the intermediate posts about gear and training that I had planned. The Master's thesis (maybe more in another post) simply expanded to occupy all available time. I simply have to announce that I'm sitting here in Mendoza, amidst a 34 degrees kept comfortable by the abundant leafy trees, just two days away from starting on what will be an approximately 20-day expedition.

The way things have turned out, perhaps the less talk about the upcoming trip, the better. The amazing expanding thesis also cut into a lot of training time so I'm definitely short of a gallop there. Plus in the last few weeks I've had some kind of mysterious illness with very mild but nevertheless energy-reducing symptoms. All in all I don't feel that confident. The worst case scenario is that at basecamp they'll decide my oxygen levels are below par and send me back to Mendoza.

Still, I need to honour my big talk in previous posts by at least acknowledging that I'm about to start the attempt. This morning when I checked into the hotel where everyone is meeting I talked to a guy who is making a second attempt: last year he lost feeling in his toes just a couple of hundred metres from the summit and had to turn back. He said his boots had been on their last legs and just failed him. Given that I've been pretty studious about getting all the right gear and equipment, that's at least one situation I should avoid. Anyone interested can get updates on progress with the expedition at the Adventure Consultants web site

Wouldn't Happen Here?

2011-01-24T17:39:00.003+13:00

In reading about underdevelopment in Latin American countries, one is often informed that an obstacle to positive reforms is insufficient "institutionality" (in short, rules and processes that are applied transparently and with continuity) and the dominance of "clientilism" in politics.

What is meant by "clientilism"? Well, to give an idea, this seems like a pretty good example, from a poorly governed banana republic in deepest...no, wait...

Philosophies, Summarised

2011-01-24T10:38:00.000+13:00

Two of my favourite bloggers help render irrelevant long-postponed posts by providing pithy explanations of why I still, at times reluctantly and with distinct reservations, opt for social democracy as my general political / ideological orientation.

During the US election in 2008, Obama was harried by conservatives for supposedly telling a questioner that he wanted to "spread the wealth around". For the rest of the campaign, Obama responded to queries about this by immediately stressing how he wanted to give most Americans tax cuts. I was rather depressed: if the best hope of progressive politics couldn't at any stage mount a single defence of economic redistribution, what was the point?

I started to write a post that set out at least five moral, historical, and practical reasons why we should spread the wealth around. That never got very far advanced. However, in a recent post, Paul Krugman has a neat summary of one of the central, and perhaps most easily understood, points: the "equality of opportunity" that most people say they support would require rather more radically redistributive policies than we actually have:

So when you hear conservatives talk about how our goal should be equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes, your first response should be that if they really believe in equality of opportunity, they must be in favor of radical changes in American society. For our society does not, in fact, produce anything like equal opportunity (in part because it produces such unequal outcomes). Tell me how you’re going to produce a huge improvement in the quality of public schools, how you’re going to provide universal health care (for parents as well as children, because parents in bad health affect childrens’ prospects), and then come back to me about the equal chances at the starting line thing.

In another post, Krugman describes his philosophy as "basically Rawlsian" and that would capture my general position, too: you choose the kind of system to live under not knowing your place in it beforehand (unlike Rawls, I would see this basic principle applying internationally and not being limited to the nation state).

I also think there are conceptually even stronger, historical reasons for justifying spreading the wealth around, but that's for another post.

Then, at Waylaid Dialectic, Terence Wood goes some way to summing up why I'm not an anarchist or even really a thoroughgoing left-libertarian:

... once the unit of governance gets large (i.e. a state as opposed to a tribe or what have you) the potential for violent coercion of minority groups increases. On the other hand, larger units of governance bring with them dramatic benefits, if they behave, they facilitate trade, labour mobility, and social insurance. They also benefit from economies of scale in providing public goods and services.

Which means that development depends to a degree on forming reasonably large units of governments. Ones large enough to tyrannise minorities. What’s the solution? Surely not returning to anarcho-tribal collectivism? Rather, I’d say that the best, or at least, least worst, solution is the one we’ve already got: governance systems with checks and balances — democracies and constitutional protections.

At different levels of social grouping, humans have always formed "governments" that set obligatory rules and mediate conflicts. I'm with the libertarians in worrying that the bigger the scale of government, the more capacity for evil -- so we should be very careful about making sure there are checks and balances. But I don't think that government at a larger scale is necessarily more likely to be evil. In fact it might be argued that in "community" or "local" forms of governance regular human despotism has a greater chance to run amok. In short, I think it's probably an empirical question which things should be decided at which levels, and, as Terence says, we should concentrate on building good institutions.

Open to having my mind changed, though.

Harping On the SOEs Again

2011-01-17T23:54:00.002+13:00

An excellent critique by Marty G in the Standard of what he terms a "stalking horse article" in the Herald promoting part-privatisation of State Owned Enterprises. The article itself reads like a mash up or three or four hundred similar ones over the past thirty years.

Something I've always wondered as I've digested the neoliberal talking points that are on such high rotate in New Zealand discourse: if the Atlases of the business world are such incredible wealth creators that they must not be constrained by taxes or regulation, why aren't they out madly creating new industries and markets instead of constantly obsessing about government services and getting their hands on public assets?

NZ's Poor Unemployment Performance in Recession

2011-01-16T18:40:00.002+13:00

The Sunday Star Times picks up on a report by the International Labour Organisation that New Zealand, along with Spain, had the worst drop in employment compared to GDP during the worldwide recession.

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly notes the relationship to New Zealand's "flexible" labour laws and is summarised as pointing out that:

... there's a growing recognition of the long-term erosion in "human capital" rapid rises in unemployment can bring.

Younger generations are shut out of work for longer, careers are interrupted, ethnic minorities are hit hard, and, it is increasingly often being argued, there seems to be a direct link between innovation and tougher labour market regulation.

I think we've been here before -- and it was called the 1990s.

Of course, the 'he said, she said' style of reporting aways requires comment from a dinosaur neoliberal:

Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable said there was no reason why the country could not function on near full employment, but it should be achieved by "reforming" the welfare system to make it even less attractive not to work, while at the same time lowering the minimum wage and bringing back permanent "youth rates".

Yes, because forcing people to work at below subsistence levels is proven to produce a happy, well-functioning society.

The last paragaph of the article is fankly bizarre:

Although many lost jobs in the Great Recession, not all Kiwi workers lost out. In contributing to an International Monetary Fund review of employment experiences during the crisis, data and opinion supplied by New Zealand officials show a belief employers got rid of less productive workers, the result being that the country's productivity figures could well tick up.

It's well-known that the increase in average productivity tends to slow down during times of full employment because those with the least skills are getting jobs (normally seen as a good thing). The same people tend to be the first to lose jobs when a downturn arrives, so productivity (essentially, just average production per worker) does indeed "tick up". But how this statistical artefact is an objectively good thing, let alone proves that "not all Kiwi workers lost out" is beyond me.

Greenwald's One Way Mirror

2011-01-01T20:27:00.000+13:00

It seems that although my original thoughts on the philosophical significance of Wiki Leaks were a bit garbled, the basic point is in line with smarter people who write more coherently. I highly recommend reading this piece by Glenn Greenwald on the "one-way mirror" of government surveillance.

Beating Up on Bureaucrats, US Style

2010-12-30T10:48:00.001+13:00

I have to link to this column from Paul Krugman because it's argument is so similar to ones I've made in the past.

Krugman in November 2010, in relation to Obama's announcement of a unilateral freeze on public-sector pay:

The truth is that America’s long-run deficit problem has nothing at all to do with overpaid federal workers. For one thing, those workers aren’t overpaid. Federal salaries are, on average, somewhat less than those of private-sector workers with equivalent qualifications. And, anyway, employee pay is only a small fraction of federal expenses; even cutting the payroll in half would reduce total spending less than 3 percent.

So freezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. It’s a (literally) cheap trick that only sounds impressive to people who don’t know anything about budget realities. The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit.

Me in January 2008, in response to cheap bureaucrat-bashing in the New Zealand media:

These pundits...give the impression that the salaries of chaps in ties take up a significant chunk of taxpayer dollars. A common anecdote is about the increase in central Wellington office rents over the last couple of years, due to demand from the various ministries. Some even go so far as to blame the country's macroeconomic ills on the hordes of 'pdf pushers' spilling out of offices along Molesworth St and The Terrace, claiming that their high wages are creating inflation and pushing up interest rates.

It may therefore come as a surprise that, as a burden on the country's economy and taxpayers, the cost of the public service almost fails to register...Let's say we entirely eliminate every bureaucrat, every government job, every department, ministry, commission and quango. This would free up the same amount of money as if New Zealand's GDP grew by 3 percent, rather than 2 percent, for just one year.

There are differences between the two countries but also similarities. Krugman points out that a supposed "surge in government employment" under Obama was nothing more than temporary blip in hiring for the Census. In New Zealand, increases in core public sector employment up to 2008 (still tiny as a proportion of the total workforce) were largely driven by those well-known dens of policy wonks, the Inland Revenue and prisons.

But while quibbling on the details is necessary, the main point is that the focus on public servants is ideological and not at all about economics.

More in another post if I have time. In the meantime, other links to digest: Krugman describes the "systematic, even industrial" production of "humbug" by conservative think tanks, while Matthew Yglesias points out the basic perversity in demanding a unilateral decline in public sector employment.

Sparing a Thought

2010-12-25T12:45:00.003+13:00

A great column in the Independent by Johann Hari on the under-appreciated people of 2010. Number 1 on the list is Private Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked the documents publicised by Wiki Leaks that documented complicity of occupation forces in torture of Iraqi civilians. He is currently being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, denied even a pillow or sheets, despite no substantive concerns about being a danger to himself or others -- and this without even having had a trial. Hari writes:

To prevent the major crime of torturing and murdering innocents, he committed the minor crime of leaking the evidence. He has spent the last seven months in solitary confinement – a punishment that causes many prisoners to go mad, and which the US National Commission on Prisons called "torturous". He is expected to be sentenced to 80 years in jail at least. The people who allowed torture have faced no punishment at all. Manning's decision was no "tantrum" – it was one of the most admirable stands for justice and freedom of 2010.

A traitor? Maybe, but then how many people throughout history now looked on as heroes were traitors to someone?

His Name Will Never Die

2010-12-17T23:51:00.005+13:00

I hadn't been aware of it, but yesterday (allowing for time difference) was the anniversary of Stuart Adamson's death and I found myself for the umpteenth time seeking out Big Country songs on You Tube.

If I could do one thing to make the world a better place, it would be to beg and plead anybody who stumbles across this blog and who hasn't listened to Big Country or Stuart Adamson's other work in The Skids and the Raphaels to give a chance to their music.

If you have any appreciation of lilting ballads that become driving epics, crashing anthems filled with existential doubt, melodic reflections on human suffering, soaring guitar lead outs, or just harmony-filled pop choruses, then you should find something there to savour. Y0u might even join the ranks of the converted.

We Have Always Been At War With Eurasia

2010-12-17T23:22:00.002+13:00

Yes, it's just Fox News and therefore shouldn't be surprising. But Fox News is hugely influential in the US, and what happens in the US is influential in what happens in the world.

Elsewhere, Paul Krugman has another post and an op-ed column on the growing tendency among tendency among conservative elites to respond to inconvenient facts by just making stuff up.

This strategy is scarily effective, it seems to be increasing, and is by no means limited to the US.

More Wikileaks

2010-12-10T23:40:00.001+13:00

Rereading my convoluted little post on the significance of Wikileaks, I'm not sure that I quite managed to convey what I was talking about. Fortunately, Finlay McDonald makes much the same point rather more clearly.

Also, read Glenn Greenwald on the subject.

Death to the Humanities?

2010-12-10T23:27:00.003+13:00

It's worth reading about what is happening to the British tertiary education system through Crooked Timber. A sample quote:

If you see universities overwhelmingly through the optic of access to labour-market advantage and you think that social justice is about opportunities for this, then a scheme that loads the costs onto the direct beneficiaries can start to look plausible. In my view, a conception of social justice that confines itself to equalizing opportunties to get a better position in a system of radically unequal outcome is a radically deficient conception. A scheme where higher educatation conferred fewer differential benefits because fewer such benefits existed would be a superior one.

What Would Foucualt Say

2010-12-01T23:28:00.003+13:00

For some, the latest Wikileaks release raises complicated issues about confidentiality, secrecy and diplomatic practice. The mainstream media, predictably, chooses to focus on the gossip and celebrity angle. The US State Department would just love to shut the whole thing down. I prefer to see it as something like karma, or some kind of ecological law of equilibrium.

Over the past couple of decades, digitised information has allowed the State and other corporate bureaucracies to capture, retain, share and use ever increasing amounts of personalised information . Smart cards, search records, cell phones, street cameras, and biometric passports are just some of the innovations that turn people's lives into readable data. Meanwhile, the latest security paranoia is a useful excuse to track, surveil and literally strip naked ordinary citizens who have the temerity to do things like travelling.

One way of responding to the latest Wikileaks is to see them as turning the whole process back on itself. The irony is that this time it's the bureaucratic machine itself (with the US diplomatic establishment as its proxy) that is exposed, its embarassing secrets eviscerated, its behaviour held up for scrutiny. We're so used to being the ones who worry about being caught out or having done something wrong, it's somehow shocking, yet liberating, to see the system itself caught with its figurative pants down.

If nothing else convinces you, what about the creepy revelation that diplomats were asked to get hold of personal details including credit card numbers and biometric data of foreign politicians and UN bureaucrats?

So, it's tempting to see some kind of symmetry in all this: maybe there is after all a limit to the power that can be wielded facelessly, before that power ends up being turned against its master.

Living Beyond My Means

2010-10-26T23:41:00.000+13:00

When I decided to finish work to do my Master's thesis full time, I knew it would be interesting making ends meet. Since I got back from Peru, I've been seeing how this works out.

I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Master's by Thesis scholarship This scholarship gives me $277 per week to live on. My rent, for my part of a 2-bedroom flat in Northland, is $200. Electricity and telecommunications bills add another $40 per week. That leaves $37 for everything else. Much as I have come see living well and frugally as an interesting and worthy project, I haven't been able to get my food budget much below $100 per week, even leaving aside such frivolities as sport or the occasional beer or espresso coffee.

To be fair, the $20-odd per week for telecoms includes broadband internet (arguably a necessity these days), and the basic Sky TV package. With our electricity usage (both out of the house a lot), the $20 per week estimate may be a little above the average. But these things only make a couple of dollars difference in any case. The elephant in the room is the rent, which takes up 72 percent of my principal income.

You might think that the rental is high, but although it's in quite a good location, it's not luxury. I also walk everywhere and have no transport costs. From memory, the cheapest monthly bus pass is at least $100, or $25 per week. In summary, I'd make the case that a subsistence income for living in Wellington would be at least $350 per week.

Now, although it would be nice to have an income that matches my outgoings, I don't have any actual problems. I have savings from several years of well-paid work as a backup. I also have a bit of work doing tutoring and marking, which, although not well-paid for something requiring a graduate degree, is relatively stress-free and drags my overall income part of the way towards the break-even level. Studying is a personal choice, and there are a number of othe rbenefits gained through being a postgraduate student.

However, for those on a benefit or pension, working on close to minimum wage, or god forbid, having to support dependents, things must be very difficult. In some future posts, I want to reflect on the situation of people on low incomes, which I think includes some structural disadvantages that aren't always noticed.

Swings to the Left? (1)

2010-10-11T23:49:00.005+13:00

An interesting round of local body results at the weekend in New Zealand: Len Brown has become the first mayor of Auckland Super City, while in Wellington it's possible that Green party member Celia Wade-Brown could pip has beaten Kerry Prendergast on special votes.

This hardly constitutes a massive swing to the left: Brown seems like a pragmatic centrist, while Wade-Brown has acknowledged that the knife-edge result doesn't give her a huge mandate and she will need to work with others on the council. However, it does a) make the New Zealand political situation a little more complicated and interesting and b) it provides some impetus for important public transport projects in both cities.

The push back has started already, with John Key and Steven Joyce doing their best to deflate expectations about expansion of inner-city rail in Auckland or new public transport. Gordon Campbell has the usual good coverage of the new central government-local government dynamic.

Meanwhile, the Dominion Post on the day after Wade-Brown's count back victory was confirmed ran with the rather extraordinary headline: "Wellington goes green and fluffy". Isn't there some kind of journalistic tradition of at least outward respect to a newly elected political leader? There's already been two stories about how she prefers to walk or cycle to work and may not want to use the mayoral Audi very much. Human interest pieces, or working up to the "she's a wierdo who wants to take away you cars" angle. Time will tell.

Of course, as Obama will tell you, these days it's pretty hard to undertake even the most timid reforms without provoking the corporate media to scream that you're a radical socialist who will enslave poor hard-working rich people. For comparison, here's an interesting story in the Globe and Mail arguing that big business and media systematically undermined a social democratic government in Ontario in the 1990s.

Mario Vargas LLosa Wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2010

2010-10-08T10:54:00.003+13:00

The Reuters news item is here, and coverage in La Republica here. I think it's well-deserved. Vargas Llosa is not all that popular in Peru. This is perhaps partly due to tall-poppy syndrome. Partly it relates to his conversion from leftist to neoliberal politics, his failed presidential run in 1990 and subsequent self-imposed exile in Spain. There's also a reasonable case that he has a quintissentially limeño viewpoint that treats the Andean world as the mysterious Other, misunderstanding and essentializing it. His involvement in an investigative commission into the murder of eight journalists in the Ayachucho locality of Uchuraccay in 1983 during the Shining Path uprising remains controversial, and the commission's conclusions contested.

Even my limeña development studies classmate in New Zealand frowns at the mention of Vargas Llosa and says "I prefer [fellow Peruvian novelist] Bryce Echenique" I'm a fan of Alfredo Bryce Echenique as well, but he only wrote a handful of books. In terms of the range of styles and technical virtuosity, Vargas Llosa has few parallels. I've read five of his novels, and they're all different, while all are also very readable. Conversation in the Cathedral is surely one of the great achievements of Latin American writing, remaining gripping in terms of plot and character while gradually piecing together a thoroughly splintered array of time sequences and viewpoints with amazing literary dexterity.

Other than that, the great strength of Mario Vargas Llosa is his depiction of power, its abuse, and the fear of it, especially from a male perspective. Perhaps influenced by a period of his youth spent in a military academy, themes of authority, obedience and oppression run through most of Vargas Llosa's work, including burlesque like Pantaleon y las Visitadoras. He has a genius for showing how the personal is political and the political personal. Regardless of his current views and pronouncements -- which I often don't really agree with -- this makes him a worthy recipient of an award for lifetime achievement.

Not Acceptable

2010-10-04T21:47:00.005+13:00

This is one of the relatively few occasions when I'm ashamed to be a New Zealander. It's bad enough that a mindless buffoon like Paul Henry gets air time at all, but on a state-owned broadcaster that is supposed to be in some way representative of our society it is truly beyond the pale.

What really takes the cake is the official response from TVNZ, that: "The audience tell us over and over again that one of the things they love about Paul Henry is that he's prepared to say the things we quietly think but are scared to say out loud"

So ok, New Zealand has an ugly, narrow-minded, ignorant, reactionary underbelly. TVNZ thinks it's ok to not only acknowledge this, but to embrace and perpetuate it? And who is this "we" that they refer to?

I can't actually bring myself to watch the clip, so can't comment on John Key's initial reaction, but as the Prime Minister ought to have made a stronger response in the aftermath. Likewise, how limp is Phil Goff's comment that: "I think it's just Paul Henry being Paul Henry"? (If the focus-grouped strategy to get back in touch with working class voters by not appearing too "liberal" requires you to assume they're all stupid bigots, this may not be a good start).

My long-ago post on political correctness has some relevance here. But a more concise summation of what's wrong with Paul Henry comes from the Unite Union's Mike Treen:

"Unite Union national director Mike Treen said he did not call for someone’s dismissal lightly. “However Paul Henry legitimises racism and bigotry in the workplace. I deal every day with problems associated with managers and even co-workers abusing staff because the look or sound different,” he said. Workers could end up “tormented and bullied out of their jobs by the so-called humour being practiced by Paul Henry”.

“When we try to protect the workers, the inevitable response is ‘well, Paul Henry is allowed to use this language on national TV why can’t I?’ Paul Henry has become the poster boy for bigotry.”

Another good comment from Public Address commenter Deep Red:

Seriously though, to those who say "harden up, ya PC wankers!", Mr Henry's latest sewage-mouthing reminds me all too well of my high school experiences. Not just any old high school, but a reputed First Four Ships/Ivy League one.

It reminds me of my high school as well. And authority figures there who could have expressed disapproval ignored or laughed it off , too.

Update: and then he comes out and "apologises" by talking about gypsy ancestry, which is "much, much worse" than being British. Seriously, wtf?

Update: TVNZ has suspended Henry until the 18th of October. So that's something.

No One Really Wants to Hear About My Medical Records

2010-10-02T19:13:00.002+13:00

...but I'm still going to report that in my check-up at the Travel Doctor required by Adventure Consultants if I want to join the expedition to Aconcagua, I had a resting pulse rate of 66 and blood pressure of 104/60. That pulse rate seemed low. "Your pulse rate goes down as you get older, right?" I asked the doctor. "Actually, it goes down as you get fitter", she corrected.

So, I must be doing something right. The only down side is that I managed to have a mild hangover today after just three beers last night (and not large ones either). It's a far cry from when we used to play for beer at His Lordships in Christchurch and over the course of the night it was a reasonable goal to work your way through ten jugs. I'm not sure how I would have gone at high altitudes in those days, though.

Random Short Posts

2010-09-26T20:05:00.001+13:00

Since I got back from Peru it's remarkable just how hard I've found it to be devote any time, with a clear conscience, to writing blog posts . A thesis makes a lot of demands, and then there's the attempts to earn some kind of income around the fringes. Then there's the cooking.

But I'm still keen to keep this blog going and feel like I have things to say -- just that for now, most of them are random, disjointed and non-profound.

So over the next little while, expect a variety of short posts on music, sport, books, movies, gear, training, top 10 lists, and the odd bit of politics when things really get out of hand.

Pesky Democracy

2010-09-17T12:04:00.003+12:00

Those with a passing interest in minutiae like the rule of law will have their curiosity piqued by the New Zealand Parliament's decision, through the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act, to let Gerry Brownlee do pretty much whatever he likes, which in turn "may not be challenged, reviewed, quashed, or called into question in any court".

Good critical commentary from Gordon Campbell, The Standard, Kiwipolitico, No Right Turn and, yes, The Herald. Scoop's Lyndon Hood is apparently the author of the much-posted "with apologies to Hans Holbein" portrait.

The idea of a former St Bedes woodwork teacher being granted absolute power has elements of Monty Python, though not really in a good way. As everyone says, the point is not necessarily that Gerry Brownlee might decide to restore slavery, but the blitheness with which every party in New Zealand's Parliament would agree to overturn checks and balances which go back to the Magna Carta.

As a commenter on Kiwipolitico says:

Although I must say that some where the ghost of Charles 1 will be wishing he had thought of this instead of that damned stupid ship money tax.

The Interesting Stuff Is Not in the Newspaper

2010-08-23T13:39:00.003+12:00

More links to interesting things I've been reading lately:

Auckland Transport Blog has thorough discussions of public transport issues in Auckland, based on detailed examination of the relevant geography, economics and engineering. Some of it is pretty wonkish, and a bit detailed for those of us who don't live in Auckland, but this deconstruction of the argument that "Auckland is not densely populated enough for mass transit" is interesting (needs to be followed into the comments section). It seems that the belief that Auckland is one of the least densely populated cities in the world was generated by Kenneth Cumberland in the 1960s, who included large swathes of rural and wilderness land in the Auckland district to make the numbers look kind of right.

I'm also enjoying Reading the Maps, a multi-author blog covering New Zealand literature, art and history, among other things. The posts, and subsequent comments, which try to engage with John Ansell over the "Coastal Coalition" billboards and the attitudes that lie behind them, are particularly compelling.

Crooked Timber is another favourite: an enticing blend of philosophy, development studies and politics. An interesting recent post is about productivity and lifestyle differences between Europe and the US. It's an old and oft-rehearsed argument, but always interesting, with its mix of value judgements and technical arguments about the facts.

Last but not least, Terence Wood's blog Waylaid Dialectic is an excellent resource for anyone interested in development studies. It combines link-fests with incisive, open-minded reviews and incisive commentary about aid effectiveness, development economics and social justice. (Declaration of interest: Terence is a graduate from the VUW development studies programme, currently working on his PhD in Canberra).

PS: distractions are useful; it's good to keep learning things, and you can't work on your thesis the whole time.

Workers of the World

2010-08-15T21:46:00.003+12:00

I'm afraid I have a million tasks in the first few weeks since getting back to New Zealand, and still haven't found time to produce anything like a coherent blog, though I'm still planning on recounting some amusing stories from my time doing field research.

In the meantime, there's a couple of topics I've picked as highly recommended reading.

The Independent's Johann Hari reports on the incipient attempts of Chinese workers to form their own unions, amidst Dickensian factory conditions which reportedly see 600,000 people a year die from overwork. This piece from Foreign Policy in Focus provides interesting background on how international corporations opposed and helped water down a new Chinese law which would have recognised unions.

Back in New Zealand, there's been a discussion paper released by the Government-appointed Welfare Working Group on "Long-Term Benefit Dependency: The Issues".

Gordon Campbell's take is typically straightforward:

There is a peculiarly airless quality to the working paper, driven as it is by ideology and not by any discernible engagement with New Zealand, 2010. Because the panel pays so little attention to events in the real world – newsflash : the job market has not yet recovered from the worst economic recession since WW11, and that global recession seems about to recur – it could have been written at any time over the last four decades.

The posts and commentary at The Standard here and here are also interesting reading.

When thousands of New Zealanders are out of work because of a recession largely caused by greed and speculation in the world's financial capitals, is it really the right time to be hassling people on sickness and disability benefits to get a job?

World Cup Review

2010-06-29T13:18:00.006+12:00

Ok, so now I'm back for Peru, where I literally had no spare time, and was frequently away from anything like reasonable internet access. Something like normal blog service should now resume.
For now, here's a summary of how my World Cup predictions turned out. Thanks for all the offers to buy me an octopus.

All Whites
First of all, I'm happy to have been proved wrong in my (with hindsight) pessimistic prediction that New Zealand would lose all three games. We did indeed achieve the anticipated "success" of scoring a couple of goals, but the difference was that Ryan Nelsen, Mark Paston and company achieved the remarkable feat of restricting the opposition to just two goals as well. I was jumping up and down deliriously when Winston Reid equalised in the last minute against Slovakia, and burst into hysterical giggles when the game against Italy ended with the score still tied at 1-1 (I missed the Paraguay game in the middle of the fiesta of San Juan in Sibayo).

Possible winners
Ok, so I was as wrong as I could be. Not only did none of my predicted teams win the title, but this was the first time in 19 World Cups that the final did not include any of Brazil, Germany, Italy or Argentina. Spain and the Netherlands have traditionally been flaky teams that played nice football and lost the important games. Both of them managed to shed that that reputation somewhat during this World Cup, in ways that would probably be more pleasing to the Spanish than to the Dutch.

As for my choices, Italy did indeed have a shocker, but I would not be at all surprised to see them bounce back in the next European Championships and World Cup. For much of the tournament, Brazil looked fairly unstoppable, and it was strange to see then get rattled and fall apart against the Netherlands. Germany were as strong as I expected and so impressed with their counter-attacking demolitions of England and Argentina that a number of pundits started picking them to win. I can't prove it, but from what I had seen of the tournament by the semi-final stage, I wasn't surprised to see Germany go out fairly limply against a Spanish side that was never going to be anything like as naiive or disorganised as their previous opponents.

Dark horses

Neither France nor Argentina managed to overcome the burden of their respective coaches: the loathed, arrogant Domenech and an excessively adored, tactically naiive Maradona. Argentina were one of the more entertaining teams until the quarter-finals, although their individual talents never really looked like cohering enough to go all the way. Again, I can't prove it, but I did verbally predict to a number of people in Peru that Germany would beat them in the quarter-final.

African teams
I was also wrong that an African team would make it to the semi-final for the first time, although there was only milimetres in it, with Asamoah Gyan's 120th-minute penalty for Ghana against Uruguay dramatically pinging off the crossbar. Nigeria and Cameroon were disappointing, though it took a couple of outrageous misses in front of goal for Nigeria to fail to qualify for the second round. South Africa also failed to live up to my prediction that they would make it to the quarter-final, though to be fair they did beat France and along with Slovenia were the "best third-placed team", unlucky to go out of the tournament after obtaining 4 points.

Unlucky losers
As I suggested, Chile and Mexico were the teams that played the most sparkling football -- particularly Chile -- yet both dipped out in the last sixteen. Chile was the only team that really tried to attack Spain, and gave them a real fright for the first 60 minutes or so -- even when down to ten men. Unlucky? Well, Chile was well beaten by an imperious Brazil, although they were missing several key players through suspension. Mexico certainly had an element of bad luck against Argentina, with numerous goal-scoring opportunities and a definite offside in Argentina's first goal.

General tournament impressions
For me, this tournament was better overall than 2006, 2002 and 1990, though not as good as 1998, 1986 and 1982, with 1994 hard to evaluate because it's forever coloured by the final being won on penalties after finishing 0-0. The first round of group games was pretty dire and defensive, perhaps because almost all teams thought they had a chance, and were desperate not to lose. After that, it improved, and I found most games to be intense and absorbing. Though perhaps better for the fanatic than for the casual fan.

In 2010, there may have been fewer goals per game than in any previous tournament, but you can put some of that down to the lack of outright thrashings in the group stages. There were many more goals in the knockout stages than the dry offerings of 2006, and I was very pleased that only 2 out of 16 knockout matches were decided on penalties. There was no match to rival the Italy-Germany semi-final from 2006, and the closest to a "classic" match was Uruguay-Ghana, with dramatic last-minute twists and turns weighing more than the absolute quality of the play.

Another factor for me was that the best team overall won the tournament, and in almost all the knockout stages the best team advanced -- a possible exception being the Uruguay-Ghana quarter-final, where over the 120 minutes I thought that Ghana just shaded it. The Netherlands didn't look anything like their famous teams of 1974, 1988 or even 1998, but as finalists they weren't as weak or uninspiring as Germany in 2002 or Argentina in 1990. The ideal final should really have been Spain vs. Brazil.

There's been a lot of debate, mainly in the British press, about whether Spain was "boring" or "the new Italy". Part of that is just an inferiority complex from a nation whose team were completely unable to keep the ball. But in part, it's fair to question a team that won with a string of 1-0 results, managed only eight goals in the whole tournament, and whose obsession with maintenance of possession almost forced their opponents into Internazionale-esque defensiveness.

On balance though, I think we should cut them some slack. Yes, their apparent desire to pass the ball into the net got infuriating at times. But the low goal tally was partly due to some incredibly inept finishing (the Honduras game should have been won at least 6-0, there should have been at least two or three against Germany), in turn due to striker Fernando Torres being at about 50% effectiveness. And the overall conservatism can be understood given the weight of historical underperformance: desperation to get the result demanded by the squad's talent produced caution in both selection (two defensive midfielders where one might have sufficed; witness the change when Fabregas replaced Xavi Alonso for the last part of the final) and style of play (all those sideways passes). I'd expect to see a more liberated Spain in Poland/Ukraine 2012 and Brazil 2014.

A word on the octopus
Paul the octopus originally rose to fame on the strength of predicting Germany's results. Only on achieving this fame were his predictive skills directed at the final, between two other nations. Paul made his selection by preferring one or other of the flags of the competing teams, which were lowered into his tank. He predicted Germany's wins over Australia, Ghana, England, Argentina and Uruguay, and its losses to Serbia and Spain, as well as Spain's win over the Netherlands.

Germany's flag is dominated by yellow and red, as is Spain's. Ghana's also includes yellow, red and black, as well as green. The flags of the the other countries are dominated by blue (Australia, Argentina and Uruguay), white (England) and red and blue (Serbia and the Netherlands). A simple preference for yellow and red explains most of his choices (the German wins against Australia, Argentina, England and Uruguay, and Spain's win against the Netherlands). In the games involving Germany against Ghana and Spain, a 50/50 choice between similar colours suffices. Only the prediction of Serbia's win over Germany is un accounted for by this theory.

World Cup Predictions

2010-06-01T09:55:00.003+12:00

I had meant to make a more throrough analysis of prospects for the World Cup, but haven't even had time to write regular blogs, so this is going to be brief.

--the winner will be one of Brazil, Italy and Germany: simply because of the weight of history, ability both to defend and score goals, and the mental strength to do what it takes to win. Italy seems the weakest of the three at the moment, but then no one really rated them before the 2006 tournament either.

--dark horses are Argentina and France: the former because of a wealth of attacking talent, the latter because despite all their problems, they are solid in most areas and have a talented squad. Both sides seem to be undermined by their coaches, but if could go all the way if they manage to address their obvious weaknesses (Argentina in defense, France in scoring goals).

--Spain, most people's favourite, will crash and burn, somewhere between the second round and the quarter-finals. I'd love to be proved wrong, but think they will struggle when they meet a tactically-astute, physically strong side that knows how to throw up a solid wall of defence. Anyone wanting to know why I make this prediction should watch the two legs of the Barcelona-Inter Milan Champion's Leage semi-final or Spain's 0-2 defeat to the USA at last year's Confederation's Cup.

--at least one African side will make the semi-finals: Ivory Coast seem the most likely, but Nigeria or Ghana could also surprise.

--Hosts South Africa will do much better than expected and will be carried to the quarter-finals on a wave of home support.

--England will go out on penalties in either the second round or the quarter-finals, amidst an injury to Wayne Rooney, a controversial sending-off, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The Netherlands will become one of the favourites after stellar performances in the first round, then will lose limply in one of the knock-out rounds to one of the eventual finalists.

--New Zealand will lose all three games. Relative success will be scoring a couple of goals.

--Chile and Mexico will win admirers with their attractive style of play, but will be knocked out unluckily or unjustly

--The USA or Greece will cause a pretty big upset somewhere, and will go much further than expected

The Snows of Nevado Ampato

2010-05-31T16:48:00.011+12:00

I've explained before about my motivational tactic of announcing to all and sundry when I plan to do something challenging, in order to force myself to carry through with the plans. So it was here in Peru: from almost my first day here I started talking about climbing Nevado Ampato and discussing options with various people. After so much talk, I had to pin myself down to an actual date, and eventually settled on the 28th of May as the day of departure.

Originally, several people, including Hugo, Gelmond and Pablo, had all talked about going on the expedition, amidst much hot air and machismo about not needing a guide, and taking alternative routes starting in Cabanconde or Pinchollo (both needing an extra couple of days trekking just to get to the base of the mountain). But in the end, it was just me and a French guy called Mateo, who is living in Cabanaconde and working with Pablo.

On Friday 28 May, I hauled myself out of bed at 5:30 am. After around 4 hours drive we reached the road end. It's two hours from Arequipa, on the road to Chivay, to Patapampa, where at 4,900 metres there are spectacular views across the high plain to the volcanoes of Ampato, Sabancaya and Hualca Hualca. From there it's about 1 1/2 hours more on a track of varying quality which crosses the pampa and winds down into a quebrada before petering out at the foot of the mountain.

At the road end we met up with Alejandro (previously my guide on both Misti and Chachani), who had already been on the mountain with a group of Mexicans -- experienced travellers who had previously summited Aconcagua. Conditions had been so bad, both in terms of the weather and underfoot, that Alejandro had been trying to call to Arequipa to tell us to put the trip off, but cloud cover had blocked calls even in spots where reception was normally ok.

The weather these last couple of months has been extremely strange for Arequipa. Normally, skies are brilliantly clear from early April, but cloud and even precipitation have persisted through until the end of May, with several notable snowfalls on the mountains. There had been particularly bad weather in the previous week, and Ampato was covered with an icing sugar-like coating of snow. A common route calls for climbers to work their way slowly up to and around the crater rim, before heading down into the crater and up to the summit. The Mexicans had found this route covered in energy-sapping deep, soft snow, at times sinking up to their waists. They had got to the crater, but, facing exhaustion and worsening weather, had turned back.

It didn't sound too promising, but we had paid for the transport and made the trip, and so had to make the best of it. The weather looked like it was clearing, and we hoped that some of the snow would melt, while some would freeze, leaving us with a manageable path to the summit.

We made easy progress up the mountain passing the camping spots at 5,200 and 5,400 metres, before reaching the high camp at 5,700 metres, a narrow windswept ridge of rock surrounded by snow. I was carrying at most only 11 or 12kg, but was pretty satisfied that I didn't find the going too challenging. Mateo, on the other hand, started to struggle for oxygen after the first hour. He is much stronger than me and has trekked all over the Colca Canyon, but had only once been over 5,500 metres, and, as may people have found, altitude can change all the rules.

The camp at 5,700 metres was an interesting and valuable experience (the highest regular camp on Aconcagua is at little more than 5,800 metres). I didn't sleep much at all at 4,700 metres at base camp on El Misti, so you can imagine what it was like at high camp on Ampato. We were in our sleeping bags before 6 o'clock, and the minutes ticked by interminably. After a couple of hours, Mateo asked me if I had a bag: he felt like being sick. He also complained of headaches. I wasn't particularly surprised. For my part, it's not like I have some super-metabolism that's immune to the altitude -- rather, I credit the regime of Diamox recommended by my sister Terri: starting 4 or 5 days before a climb, to allow the diuretic effects to run their course before you're actually on the mountain. Maybe the fact that it was my fourth time near 6,000 metres helped a little.

And even I wasn't feeling that crash hot. It was cold in the tent, and even with a couple of layers of clothing my sleeping bag wasn't keeping me warm enough unless I closed it completely over my head. As soon as I did that, I started breathing very heavily as the oxygen petered out. Meanwhile, the wind howled down the mountainside and blew powdered snow in under the tent door. I alternated between shivering and gasping, and had strange waking dreams that there were other people in our group (Mateo had similar visions).

By 2:00 am I was more than eager to get out of the tent and start walking. In the cramped tent I took about twenty minutes to get on pants and fresh socks, and manouevre objects into appropriate jacket pockets. Outside I added boots and Gore-Tex layers, and we strapped on crampons. Alejandro had prepared a pot of coca tea, and I had to force down a cup, which gives an idea of how delicate I was feeling.

Alejandro had recommended that we take a different, more direct route towards the crater rim, avoiding the deepest snow and allowing us to attack the summit from a different angle. At first it was reasonably easy, as we traversed left across the mountain. There were patches of thick snow, but a lot of it had frozen enough to make the going easier. Soon we began to head more steeply up the mountain, and I started to find the pace tough and the oxygen scarce. Worse, my hand that was grasping the ice pick got very cold. The other hand, moving around while I walked, was fine, but the fingers staying still on the handle of the ice pick (used as a baston in non-technical situations) were going numb inside my gloves. This was a learning experience, and in another post I'll reflect on some of the gear and technical issues from this climb.

The going got steeper and tougher as we crossed slippery patches of gravel and loose earth. I battled to keep up with Alejandro, with an increasingly churning stomach added to my general malaise. Worse, I was reduced to near helplessness, as I couldn't take off my outer gloves for the cold and couldn't work my zip pockets or adjust my clothing with the gloves on. I was reduced to asking Alejandro to extract water from my pack and sweets from my jacket. Eventually we reached the base of the rock tower that had been looming up to our left and marked the crater rim. One route would take us across the bottom of the crater and up to the summit, but Alejandro felt the snow would be too deep here and could be hiding crevasses. Instead we headed up at another steep angle to the left, across firmer snow, towards a precipitous ridge that led around towards the summit.

Here we had to rope up and scramble a tricky 7 or 8 metres up to the crest. A truly freezing wind tore across the ridge as we stepped gingerly along, past one, two, three false summits. I guess there were some spectacular views up there, but I was so numbed by cold and tiredness that I just have to be grateful for Alejandro's presence of mind and balance in making sure we got a couple of photos. As we were about to swing to the right to make the last stretch to the real summit, Alejandro called a halt. There was a nasty looking crack running right across the area of snow we were about to step across. On both sides of the ridge were near-vertical drops. "It's too dangerous", said Alejandro. "We have to go back".

The following pictures give an idea. We went as far as the end of the ridge you can see between my legs, from where you had to hang right along the next ridge and up to the little knob which is the "true" summit. But you can see that we were basically at the same altitude: nearly 6,300 metres. Alejandro suggested we may have been the first people this year to reach this point.

The following is my "haggard" picture. It's looking back away from the summit; we had to scramble up the little bit you see behind me to my right (left of the photo) and this was the point where we attached the rope. On the way down I felt a little sick in my stomach and had to take a couple of "bathroom" breaks. I have a feeling it was from eating snow that contained sulphur: not the altitude, as it got worse not better as we went downhill, and perhaps not something I had eaten, as the others ate the same as me.

The photo below has the best view of the mountain in general. This is at around 5,200 metres, about 30 minutes from the road end. From here you can't see the summit: it is hidden beyond the long, rounded ridge which is the crater rim. You can see a little tongue of rock meeting snow on the left side of the mountain about half way up, pretty much in the middle of the two large stones behind my right shoulder. About here was where we camped. Our route to the summit went pretty mugh straight up from here to the the base of the the triangular rock tower on the left side of the mountain: we rounded this, climbed further up to the left, and scrambled up to the ridge that heads round to the summit, as can be seen in the other photos.

Alejandro and I reached the summit around 7:00 am, about 4 hours after leaving camp. From here, Alejandro insisted we had to get quickly at least half way back to camp, as the rising sun would create a high risk of rockfalls and avalanches. We planed down easily through the snow, making it most of the way down in an hour. At camp we found Mateo a little improved, and leisurely packed up our gear and headed the rest of the way down the mountain.

When we reached the road head we crossed paths with several members of a group of (according to later reports) 60 people who were part of an expedition organized by the municipality of Chivay. They were making an ascent as part of the 185th anniversary of the province of Caylloma, and planned to make an offering on the mountain. The group included members of the High Mountain Police, but as far as we could determine, none of the most experienced guides from Arequipa.

Around midday on Sunday back in Arequipa, I got a call from Pablo, who was in Cabanaconde. The local radio station was reporting that at least one person had disappeared on Ampato, and he was worried for Mateo and I.

Since then, news reports have been confused and contradictory, partly due to the remoteness of the zone, and partly due to few people being entirely sure what had happened. But by today (Tuesday), the stories have acquired a consistency and coherence to allow me to imagine a reconstruction of events. The death toll is two, with one body still not found. It seems that of the 60 people who went up the mountain, only 5 left camp and aimed for the summit. All of these were caught in an avalanche, which struck around 8:35 am. According to news reports, they were assisted by members of the High Mountain Police (though its unclear where these police were before the accident). Three people were rescued with injuries, one was already dead, and one body was not recovered; the search is ongoing.

Today's paper said that the recovered body was found at 5,888 metres. There was also a picture of the mountainside. Alejandro came round to the house today, and recognised the photo as an area of the mountain to the right of our route, where the snow was heavier. He thought that the climbers had probably headed up this way before spotting our footprints from a day earlier and trying to take the same route to the summit. The place and time of the accident suggests that, however far they had got, they were on their way down when they were overtaken by the avalanche.

I've become something of a minor celebrity among friends and acquaintances in the last couple of days, and have received several worried phone calls wondering if I'm still alive. The general consensus is that we were lucky. I agree that for some reason, the mountain seemed to have been kinder to us than to those who came before or after. But I'm also convinced that a significant reason I got back down safe and sound was the experience and judicious decisions of my guide: Alejandro understood what the conditions were like and what precautions we needed to take. For now, that's where I prefer to invest my gratitude.

Ode to a Backpack

2010-05-23T06:48:00.003+12:00

Yet another frivolous post thrown up for the sake of it while I don't have time to write a proper narrative. I'm in Chivay for a couple of hours with a slow connection and a sticky keyboard. I'm just come back from three days in Sibayo. This afternoon I'm heading to Cabanaconde, and will be back in Arequipa around Tuesday. Maybe, just maybe, there'll be time to write a couple of proper posts before we head to the daunting challenge of Nevado Ampato on Friday.

For now, I'll put in a plug for my Macpac 25-litre backpack which has been my sole piece of luggage in all of my trips between Arequipa, Chivay, Cabanaconde, Sibayo, and Cuzco. It gives you much more freedom and tranquility being able to travel with only one bag, that can be taken with you in all forms of transport and easily carried around between times. This backpack has allowed me to travel lightly, while still taking almost all of what I need for an average of 5 to 7 days. It has easily outperformed any other day-size pack I've had before.

My standard load on all these trips has been as follows (with me usually lightly dressed at departure in jeans, t-shirt, cap, socks and shoes):

--one pair nylon trekking pants, 2 t-shirts, 3 long-sleeved tops, one soft shell jacket with hood, 6 pairs socks, 4 pairs underwear, one pair long underwear, chullo, wool gloves

--2 paperback books, 2 notebooks, handful of A4 sheets and newspaper clippings

--camera, digital recorder, retractable USB cord, USB memory, couple of pens, cord and plug to recharge cellphone, instruction booklets for camera and digital recorder

--toilet bag with: electric shaver, cord and adaptor for recharging, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, moisturizer, hair gel, sun cream, silicone ear plugs with plastic case, nail scissors, various medicines and accoutrements (if this seems excessive, bear in mind that the climate and environment of the Peruvian sierra are extremely harsh on the gringo countenance, and I have to remain presentable for the variety of situations encountered in my research).

--roll of toilet paper, half litre of water, chocolate or small pack of biscuits.

All this fits comfortably inside the internal compartments of the pack. The books, notebooks and papers are isolated and kept flat in one compartment, and the electronic equipment and cables in another. I can easily access any of the above without having to rummage around or take out other things. After two months, my books are not even the slightest bit dog-eared.

As clothes get dirty, they're moved into the outer overload compartment. The available space in this depends on how much is in the interior compartments, so the pack remains balanced. Even at its fullest, the backpack fits into the overhead racks of the old buses that travel into the Colca Valley, and under the seat footrest of the comfortable coaches that go between the larger cities.

Once off the bus, it's extremely comfortable and easy to carry, with the profile of a school backpack. There's a handle on the outside that, at a push, could serve to lash a light sleeping bag to. The only drawback is that the waist belt seems superfluous; even with the heaviest loads the pack sits better with the shoulder straps drawn right up and the weight sitting high up on the back. So mostly I leave the waist belt tucked away, where it sits quite nicely without causing too much bother.

Comings and Goings in Arequipa and the Colca Valley

2010-05-06T05:39:00.006+12:00

I'm afraid this blog has been a bit of a disappointment lately, given that when in Peru I usually churn out posts fairly regularly. I've headed up and started posts on the following: the serendipity method of social research; first impressions of Sibayo and the upper Colca Valley; the peculiar style of public conferences in provincial Peru; and the complex problem of informal mining, which with its contradictory relationships to Peruvian social, cultural and economic issues, would be worthy of at least a PhD thesis.

Obviously, however, none of these have been finished: I've spent long periods away from reasonable internet and computer access, and when in Arequipa have had to prioritise transcribing what I can from my notebook and giving a helping hand to Hugo and Lizbeth with translations and various other things. I've been back and forth between the Colca Valley and Arequipa several times in the last couple of weeks. In the last week of April I was in Chivay attending a conference on "The Municipal Management of Tourism", which was very enlightening as well as partly frustrating, and deserves its own blog post.

Tonight I'm heading to Cuzco to help guide the Salkantay trek with Gelmond (a favour to Hugo), and in the next couple of weeks may have to go to Lima, as well as leaving the country before the 17th of June to comply with immigration requirements (I will go briefly to Bolivia or Chile and come back after a couple of days). In addition, we now have a pretty firm date to go to Ampato -- the 28th to the 30th of May.

With these various movements, not only will I have very little time for blogging, but I'm beginning to get slightly anxious about my research schedule. I have done reasonably well in relation the institutional perspective and Cabanaconde, not so well with regard to the ethnographic approach and Sibayo / the upper valley. It's easy to get distracted here, and not always easy to distinguish between genuine slacking off, and necessary maintenance of friendship links, which are ultimately the most valuable means of obtaining insights in a foreign culture.

So, for now, all I can offer is a couple more photos from a day last week in Cabanaconde when I went to help harvest corn with a couple of local acquaintances, Liliana, and her mother Señor Prudencia.

The chacras (fields) were about 40 minutes walk from the village (like most villagers, Señora Prudencia has several other chacras scattered around other sectors of the Cabanaconde campiña). There were four guys working; all of them migrant labour from Chivay and the upper valley, and they were paid in corn. I and Mateo, a French guy who is staying in Cabanaconde, also put in a few decent hours and helped clear the fields, and we also received a quota of corn for our troubles. Mine is currently outside on the terrace here in Arequipa drying in the sun, waiting to be degrained and turned into canchita, toasted corn kernels which are exceedingly popular here and can accompany almost any meal. Corn from Cabanaconde, maiz cabanita, is fully organic and is considered by many to be the best in all of Peru.

The first photo is at lunchtime; I'm sitting next to the Señor Prudencia, while Mateo, is seated on the rock with his dog Chewbacca (long story, another time). In the second, I'm carrying my corn back to Cabanaconde in the lliclla (woven blanket used by local people to carry everything from potatoes to babies; men wear it slung over a shoulder as I have in the picture; women over both shoulders with the weight thus falling in the middle of the back, which strikes me as more practical. )

Meetings...

2010-05-05T16:35:00.002+12:00

Hat tip to Terence Wood for this link from the Guardian: it's nice to know that once in a while some scientific study can justify one's instinctive, bloodyminded contrariness (I'm sure former colleagues will vouch for me on this one).

El Misti Redux

2010-04-25T04:52:00.009+12:00

I'm jumping way ahead of myself and getting out of order with all the other posts I had intended, because this post is mainly photos and therefore easy to finish. This week was the second time I'd climbed El Misti, and although I found it easier than five years ago, it was enough of a struggle to make me doubt my chances at Ampato, let alone Aconcagua.

Misti has both easy and challenging aspects. On the one hand, the climb starts at 3,400 metres and ends at the summit at 5,825, so it's a pretty decent ascent, with two consecutive days of around 1,200 metres. On the other hand, the terrain is quite easy: a well-worn trail over loose earth and sand mixed with some narrow scrambles over rock, and (these days) no snow or ice to speak of. You don't have to reserve much energy for the descent -- most of the mountain is sand, so you can basically slide most of the way back down. We took 5 hrs 20 minutes to get to base camp, 4 hrs 10 to the summit, and just 2 hrs 20 to get all the way back down. It's also not very cold -- it would only have been -3 or -4 Celsius at the summit, and there was hardly a breeze during the whole climb.

On the first day, I carried approximately 14kg in my pack, maybe a little more at the very start. This is good practice, but I found it tougher than I would like. A partial excuse is that I had done a reasonably intense leg workout at the gym a couple of days previously, so was a bit stiff even at the start of the climb. More worrying was how challenging I found the stretch to the summit, where I was carrying little more than a spare jacket and pants, 1.5 litres of water, chocolate, snacks, and my camera.

Unlike last time, I never doubted I would make it to the summit, but above about 5,000 metres I was breathing increasingly heavily, and felt quite weak as we took a stroll from the summit down to the crater. It's a sobering thought that Misti's summit is at a similar altitude to the high camp on Ampato, and the equivalent of the base camp-summit stretch would have to be done fully laden, over more difficult terrain. Even the summit push on the higher peaks would require carrying more, with the need to take crampons, ice picks and so forth. So I will need to get considerably stronger and better acclimatised before attempting anything bigger.

Here are some of the shots I took, with captions below (you can click to enlarge):

View uphill towards the summit about an hour into the climb.

Base camp at 4,700 metres. On the mountain were me, Alejandro, a Belgian guy, and two French guys with another guide.

My climbing companion Jonas from Belgium reflects on the landscape near sunset.

The spectacular colours of the sunset are helped along by the dust and pollution trapped in an inversion layer over Arequipa.

Jonas silhouetted against the sunset: I think I could licence this shot for one of those light-evangelical Christian inspirational posters.

From near the summit, the volcano casts a conical shadow over the landscape at sunrise.

Looking westt from the summit over nevados Chachani (6,075 metres, in the foreground) and Coropuna (6,425 metres, in the distance).

The city of Arequipa laid out like a map, seen from the summit.

View north to the national reserve of Laguna Salinas y Aguada Blanca.

The French guys had to light up a cigarette to celebrate their arrival at the summit. I suggested a game of football. Note the predominance of the chullo.

A fourth chullo. Me at the summit with a view looking west

I should include one where I look a bit less grave. View of the cross at the summit of Misti, with the city of Arequipa in the background.

A view of Misti's crater with its smoking fumaroles. An expedition led by Johann Reinhard found four Incan-era mummies near here in 1999.

Interim Update

2010-04-21T13:58:00.002+12:00

Contrary to appearances, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but have merely been very busy and have recently spent 10 days in non-blogworthy internet conditions. Tomorrow morning I'm taking the opportunity to start a climb of El Misti, an essential warm up to future expeditions.

I will be back Thursday afternoon and then there's a short window before the next set of important commitments start next week. There's actually a whole set of blog posts I have in mind for when I have time. Hopefully I'll get some of them written.

Feast Fit for a Student

2010-03-30T16:26:00.007+13:00

Who would have thought that the major achievement of my first week in Peru would be to put on a bit of weight?

A long and disorienting flight, the aforementioned brutal headache, a fifteen-hour bus ride to Arequipa; then, after just one day settling in, a 2am start, and three days in the Colca Valley: these are the kind of things that mean travel tends to make me skinnier. But in the last week, their cumulative effects have been firmly counteracted.

When I got to Arequipa, my first action was to flick some emails to the best and most helpful contacts that I made last year, asking them when would be a good time to stop by for a chat. The response from Alejandro, the director of the tourism programme at the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín, was almost immediate. He wouldn't be in the office because he was heading off to the Colca for the next couple of days with a couple of assistants, to do a survey commissioned by a university from Lima. I was welcome to join them.

At first it seemed as if Alejandro was going to be able to get a 4WD, but then he sent another message to say they were leaving on the 3:30 am public bus to Chivay. This was a good opportunity to make a start on some research-like activity, so despite my trepidation about the schedule, I hastened down to the bus station to get myself a ticket,

This meant I had to be "up" by 2:30am. This is almost the worst time of all to have a commitment. Too late to stay up for, too early to really get any sleep. Lingering in a sleep-like state from about 11:30pm, I dragged myself out of bed and down to the bus station, where I met Alejandro and his assistants Juan Carlos and Sharon. Bleary-eyed, we climbed aboard and braved the 3 hours to Chivay, including the nasty stretch between Vizcachani and Patapampa. This is a suspension-shuddering piece of highway that I'm told is due to a failed attempt at paving in around 2005, subject of dark rumours about poor materials and a kickback-deflated budget.

The good news was that our accommodation in Chivay was in a comfortable mid-range hotel with (sometimes) hot water, and, even better, we had access to the lunch buffet at a restaurant owned by the same woman as the hotel. My trips to the Peruvian sierra have usually meant lots of walking at altitude and meals of soup, potatoes and legumes. I come back lean and maybe a little stronger.

Not this time. Instead, fine cuts of meat, cheesy vegetable pie, and cake with mango soufflé were my repast. At lunch, I manfully lived up to Alejandro's expectation that we would all make five trips to the buffet table. This included a la carte service of soup and a main course: on Sunday all four of us chose what the menu charmingly, and sincerely, described as Alpaca Gordon Blue.

Task-wise, we spent Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday surveying the hotels and restaurants of the Colca Valley, grappling with survey questions established in Lima that were for the most part totally inappropriate for the largely informal and family-run businesses of the area.On Friday we jolted and bounced in an ancient taxi all the way to Cabanaconde, where I made a surprise visit to Lizbeth's family at the Valle del Fuego. On Saturday we "did" Chivay, went out for a couple of drinks, and at first enjoyed and then gritted our teeth at a concert across the road from our hotel featuring huayno singer Gisela Lavado (think Sonia Morales without the tuneful voice and melodic variety) which continued until 4:30 am. On Sunday, we took a more modern car to Yanque -- perhaps the most orderly and pretty of the villages in the Colca Valley -- and then to peaceful and sunny Coporaque, where the oldest chapel in the valley sits on Collagua foundations and a statue honours the Inca Mayta Capac, who formalized the area's subjection to the empire via marriage of one of his generals to the daughter of the local cacique.

Then it was back to Chivay for another stomach-bursting buffet lunch and the tiring ride back to Arequipa, with a delay due to a horrible-looking bus vs. 4WD accident that had recently occurred near Yura.

I got back to Arequipa last night and have been looking after the downstairs because Lizbeth has taken Gerardo to Lima for some dental attention and is meeting Hugo there.

This should involve me fending for myself, getting by on bread, cheese, yoghurt and coffee, and maybe frying an egg or two. However, no sooner had I arrived back last evening than the señora Gloria presented me with "my lunch" -- a large plate of chicken and rice. I had barely recovered from the four rounds of the buffet table in Chivay. This morning, when I had already eaten breakfast, Hugo's sister-in-law Erica appeared to announce that "my breakfast" was upstairs. I could hardly refuse. This afternoon, just as I was about to head out to get a sandwich in town, Hugo's niece Lia appeared with a plate of battered beef, tamales and rice sent down by her mother Vivian.

This was of course lovely of all of them, and I offered my sincere thanks. But the thing is, I don't think this was just good will. Rather, my presence in the house, combined with the absence of Lizbeth or any appropriate domestic employee, created an anomaly that cultural logic just could not allow. It seems a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in Peru must be in want of a meal.

Lima: This Year´s Thoughts

2010-03-24T13:06:00.004+13:00

It's become something of a tradition for me to try to sketch out my impressions of Lima each time I arrive here anew: see the 2005, 2006 ,2007, and 2009 editions.

If anything, the city seems more relaxed, ordered and optimistic than it was a year ago. At least in the centre: I of course can't really comment about conditions in the pueblos jovenes on the margins. My traditional temperature guage -- the taxi driver on the way in from the airport -- was relatively positive about both security (the police have reportedly recently dismantled a number of kidnapping gangs), and the economy (there's been "a lot of investment").

Cetainly, the number of poster boards outside the municipal buildings showing "before" and "after" pictures of public works in the city has nearly doubled since last year. Quite a number of them involve the replacement of disastrously crowded t-shaped intersections with overpass interchange systems. This clears away the immediate chaos, (at least in the "after" pictures) but it's unclear whether they're part of any coherent overall plan. On the other hand, a number also involve the conversion of wasteland or chaos into green space. For me, this is crucial: public space is the underpinning of citizenship (maybe I can elaborate on this in a future post)

One of my life's ambitions is to gain some command of Lima's geography and negotiate my way along at least the main north-south routes by kombi and bus. On my last afternoon before taking the bus to Arequipa, I took a long walk from my hotel, near the church of San Francisco, to the Parque de la Exposición, which is about twenty blocks south.

I am now able to see how the whole central part of the city, at least from the Rimac river to the National Stadium, is a coherent piece of urban geography, packed with magnificent architecture, and riddled with historical sites, churches, museums, and locations from Mario Vargas Llosa and Alfredo Bryce Echenique novels. It's worth remembering that, despite basically being destroyed a couple of times, Lima was the centre of the Spanish empire for several centuries. In the Americas, probably only Bogotá and Buenos Aires can compare as historical urban centres.

You'd hardly know it, though, as central Lima is fragmented by incessant traffic, crumbling paving, and general insecurity outside the central four to six blocks. The past couple of municipal regimes have indeed done a lot to improve the centre from a virtual no-go zone, but it's still a matter of islands amidst the chaos. The boardwalk along the Rimac river is a pleasant public space (if you ignore the color of the water), while 20 blocks away the metropolitan and fine arts museums are being refurbished, both sitting adjacent to the surprisingly green, beautiful and tranquil Parque de la Exposición. Yet, it's a bit of an adventure even getting from one end of the centre to the other: just getting across a couple of the intersections requires a diploma in jaywalking Peruvian style.

In my view, it's the lack of a mass transport system combined with disdain for the lot of a pedestrian, more than the general insecurity, which means that tourists in Lima tend to either hole up in enclaves like Miraflores, or hop from point to point by taxi. I've braved journeys by kombi a couple of times in the past, but you kind of need to know exactly where you're going -- otherwise you can end up in one of the undesirable spots concerned citizens warn you never to go to, with little idea how to get out. If you're a traveller who has come to Lima and made your way easily around different parts of the city as one can do in Santiago, Buenos Aires, and even to an extent in Mexico City or Rio de Janeiro (all blessed with metro systems), then I'm impressed.

However, the achievement level in this task may be about to diminish, and it may even become routine for tourists and newcomers to negotiate the city much as they would elsewhere. For Lima will soon see the inauguration of El Metropolitano.

El Metropolitano is partly based in Bogotá's system of guided busways, the Trasmilenio. The pamphlet from the Municipalidad de Lima boasts that it will be the first bus system in the world to be powered entirely by natural gas (making at least some local use of the fruits of Camisea), and will incorporate such modern features as electronic ticketing, disability-friendly access ramps, security personnel and real-time schedule updates.

The publicity says that what is currently a two-hour trip will be cut to one hour. That's not hard to believe when you see the jams of smoke-belching kombis at rush hour. But let's put this in perspective: while the Transmilenio is a city-wide network, Lima's equivalent will have just one main line, running north to south (total 32km), with a few short feeder lines running in at each end (total 26km). In the inevitable comparison with Peru's southern neighbour, it doesn't quite match up: Santiago has a city-wide bus system and a metro.

At least it's a start, though. Little by little, Lima seems to be progressing from the sub-Blade Runner reality of its recent past, to the vibrant, liveable place its history and national prominence suggests it ought to be.

Greetings From Lima

2010-03-19T23:54:00.003+13:00

I've hardly had time to write on this blog at all in the recent past. Almost every minute seems to have occupied with some important commitment or another. So there has been no chance for a warning or lead-in: I simply have to announce that I'm writing this from Lima.

All going well, I should be in Peru for around 4 months, although I'll need to leave the country for a while before three months are up to comply with immigration requirements; at this stage it's most likely that I'll cross the frontier for a brief trip to Bolivia.

Some regular readers will know what the main purposes of the trip are. I'm unsure how much detail I'll be able to post on these, but at least hope to be able to update the blog regularly.

For now, I can reflect on a trip that from Wellington took approximately 24 hours, including time spent waiting at Auckland and Santiago airports. Maybe it's age, but this time it seemed less enjoyable and exciting and took rather more out of me than in the past. On the Auckland-Santiago leg I watched three and a half movies and hardly slept. The half, which I finished on the Santiago-Lima leg, was Pan's Labyrinth: I usually avoid 'serious' movies at 35,000 feet, but I'm really glad I eventually got to see it as it was a truly intense and moving film.

You have to be impressed with the Chileans. I wasn't aware of it, but apparently Santiago airport took a bit of damage in the recent earthquake, and half the international terminal was out of order. But they had everything running more or less smoothly with only eight available gates, and buses taking passenger to and from the planes. I'm also grateful for the fixed seats in the waiting areas that are more less amenable to exhausted passengers curling themselves up and sacking out for a few hours. I spent about two thirds of my nine hours in Santiago airport in this position.

After getting into Lima, I crashed, and despite hitting the sack at the 'normal' time of about 1:30 am, I slept and slept, through to nearly 4pm the next day. I got up in a bit of a daze, found something to eat, and then shortly afterwards the power on our block went out. By the time I finished my novel by the light of a battery-powered lamp on the hotel terrace, it was time for bed again.

This was when I discovered, as I had expected might happen even before the flight, that I had a steadily worsening headache. And I didn't have any panadol. I couldn't believe that I had neglected to buy some in the airport before leaving, despite idly anticipating this exact eventuality. I have a delicate head at the best of times, and the combination of low-oxygen cabins, sleeplessness, dehydration, and hours staring at a screen or a book in low light, was bound to play havoc with my pain receptors.

This was almost as bad as my worst hangover headaches: but while those could be relieved a little by lying very still with a wet cloth on my forehead, in this case the wet cloth did nothing and lying with my head back was the worst position; sitting up made it slightly better, but I couldn't stay that way all night.

Eventually I managed to achieve a little relief by lying on my stomach and bunching the pillow under my head. In this way I managed to fall asleep, and made it through till the sunlight and early morning traffic signalled it was time to make my way downstairs and round the corner to a pharmacy where I found panadol, a Coke, and blessed relief.

On the positive side, I may have beaten the jet lag a lot quicker than usual. I was up this morning by 8am, am still going reasonably strong now at 7pm, and hope to make it through to about 11, and then hopefully tomorrow will be up at a normal time. Of course, tomorrow night's bus trip to Arequipa could throw a spanner in the works.

However, never again will I travel anywhere without a supply of painkillers.

Gear for Tekking and Climbing: Footwear

2010-03-18T22:01:00.001+13:00

This and subsequent posts could be subtitled "what I've learnt over the last little while". A while back, in one of my most rambling posts ever, I reflected on the shortfalls of various items of equipment in my last trekking trip to Salkantay. I realised that I would need to equip myself better for future adventures, if I wanted to enjoy and survive them. As my thoughts turned to Aconcagua, this became more urgent: if you don't have the right gear, they won't even let you start.

Over the last six months, I've gradually acquired many of the things that I need for outdoor adventures. Having undertaken a quite intensive process of research and learning about what to get and how to use it, I thought I would share some of what I've learned. As I've gone along, I've found the anecdotes, reflections and summaries on other people's web pages to be some of the most useful information: more honest than marketing descriptions; more accessible than technical reviews. Perhaps some of what I write here will be of use to someone else.

In this post, I'll cover one of the areas I realised I badly needed to fix after my last trip: footwear. But first, some of the general things I've learned.

General principles

The most important thing I've learned is that specialisation is your friend. Getting gear or clothing that is specifically designed for your planned conditions and activities will be repaid hundreds of times over when you're comfortable and competent in those conditions / activities. It may mean that you have to get more individual items, and, yes, perhaps spend a bit more. Trying to get something optimally versatile will likely mean that it will not be quite right for any specific circumstance. This doesn't mean you can't get things that are good for a range of conditions; it just means that it's usually not a good idea to compromise on quality or specifications because you want to cover all bases.

It's also true, to a certain extent, that you "get what you pay for". This does not always amount to a strict ratio of expense to quality. Sometimes, the extra expense of a very costly thing will be because it has additional features that you don't necessarily need for what you are doing. And in many cases, you can get things at the end of a line or in last season's colours, for considerably less than the previous price, and you can be sure that there's little if any quality difference. In other cases, you can pay a premium for details like fit in a garment, which might seem to be a stylistic indulgence, but can actually make a real difference to function, like shutting out cold.

Footwear experiences and recommendations

For hiking and tramping in New Zealand conditions and mountain climbing up to what I plan to do in Peru (daytime temperatures to around -10 Celsius, some non-technical crampon use across light snow and ice), I have a pair of Asolo full-grain leather wide model boots.

(The first link is to the backcountry.com page, which has a lot of reviews for something that seems to be pretty much the same boot as I have, but has a different serial number. The second link is to the exact model of my boots on the Bivouac site. I think the difference with the ones on backcountry.com is that my ones do not have a Gore-Tex lining and do have a specifically wider build.)

These are apparently very popular among New Zealanders -- we tend to have wider feet because we grow up running around without shoes on. Of the several that I tried on in shops, they stood out by immediately feeling "right" and not pinching my feet across their width. From what I've read elsewhere, this is a minimum standard that should be exercised by people purchasing trekking boots and other technical footwear. Although boots do get "broken in", you can't just expect them to mould to your foot after purchase, especially when they are specifically constructed to be rigid in certain areas.

On the other hand, you still need to take a careful approach to sizing. You shouldn't just go with what feels snug and comfortable in the shop like a nice pair of shoes. With boots, you are trying to balance two things:

1. You don't want your heel to be too loose and to lift up too much as you walk, since this is a recipe for blisters and can also affect maneuverability.
2. You don't want your toes to push too much into the front of the boots, because, well, this will destroy your toes.

Obviously, there is something of a trade off between these two desirable qualities. As a rule, when standing in an unlaced boot and pushing your toes all the way to the front, you should be able to fit an index finger snugly in between your heel and the boot. This should mean that when you are going downhill your toes will slide forward to touch the front of the boot, but not press into it. Many shops provide a little incline bench that you can walk up and down to test out footwear.

If in doubt, it's better to be a little on the large side than the small side. First, your feet swell up when you walk. Second, you may want to add more layers of socks in colder conditions. The bottom line is that you can compensate for boots being too big, but not for them being too small.

I've worn the Asolos on several multi-day tramping trips now and am pretty satisfied. As someone who has always avoided boots, I can't believe how comfortable they are. They are probably no hotter or more constricting than most pairs of shoes I've had, and I feel happy to sit around with them on before or after trekking.

I've worked out a system for lacing: when I'm going to be heading mainly uphill, I lace relatively loosely, which reduces the pressure of my heels against the rigid back of the boots. When I'm going to be heading mainly downhill, I lace as tightly as possible so my toes don't push forward too much. So far, I have not come close to getting a blister, although I have definitely felt heat and pressure at certain points. On steep terrain carrying up to 18kg, this may be unavoidable. On several occasions my trekking companions have had blisters despite taking reasonable care with their footwear.

I go with a liner sock / midweight trekking sock combination and find it works well. I tend to run hot and sweat a lot. Either my (expensive) merino or (cheap) synthetic liner socks do a good job of passing that moisture on to the outer layer.

I can't speak to the durability of the Asolos yet, since I've only had them six months or so, but they do get a good rap for this from the past users. They don't have a rubber "bumper bar" over the whole front of the toe like some boots, which is probably good in terms of reducing weight, but it means the leather takes a bit of a hammering. I was a bit disconcerted after my first trip to the Tararuas to find that there were quite a few little chips and nicks in the leather, but after a couple more trips these just seemed to have blended into the surface to form a generally "well-loved" look.

I have also been making an effort to take good care of my boots, and have cleaned and waxed them after every trip, while avoiding wearing them around town to save their soles. My father, who used to have to hound us to polish our school shoes once a week, would be astounded to see me cleaning off the mud with a toothbrush, then lovingly applying leather conditioner and wax. The task is made more pleasant by the fact that natural beeswax smells quite nice and can be applied and rubbed in with your fingers.

For everything else, I've got a pair of Merrell Moab Ventilator trekking shoes. These work well for people like me who feel that they'd really just rather wear their running shoes everywhere, from formal occasions to the tops of mountains. The Ventilators have a mesh-dominated upper, and are close to being as cool and breathable as a pair of regular sneakers. The fact that they are a bit heavier and warmer is due to the extra padding, rubber reinforcement around the toe and heel, and tank-like Vibram soles which means that these shoes actually are appropriate for traipsing up and down mountainsides.

I now wear these around most places and expect them to be good for both the hot asphalt and rough, dusty trails I should soon be encountering in Peru, while also coping with long trips in buses and airplanes and plenty of sitting around writing at a computer.

Originally, I had bought a pair of the Ventilators' cousins, the Pulse II. This has the exact same footbed and sole, but a considerably sturdier upper. This was based on a recommendation by my sister Cecilia's boyfriend Mark, who said he wore them around everywhere, including outdoors in Florida. I guess I run hotter, because it took just one 25-degree afternoon in Wellington for me to decide they wouldn't quite do. Fortunately, the shop let me take them back and exchange them for the Ventilators.

For Aconcagua, I will need to get a pair of double plastic climbing boots that are sufficiently warm to cope with temperatures down to -30 Celsius. So far, I've been able to ascertain that pretty much nowhere in New Zealand carries a range of these boots. When I figure that one out, I'll write an update.

Learning from Failure

2010-02-23T13:02:00.002+13:00

So, the half marathon didn't go that well. I ran 1:34:35, only my third-best, or alternatively, second worst, half-marathon time. I was pretty disappointed as I finished, and as it became clear that I wasn't going to go close to 1:30, I didn't even try to do a lung-bursting sprint at the finish. Because of timing of the respective race starts, the finish area was being flooded with Round the Bays fun runners, all smiley and "participating". I ate my free banana, drank some water and stalked off in disgust.

To be fair, I did go a bit quicker than I had in training -- almost two minutes quicker than I'd previously managed to the traffic lights at Cobham drive. However, I had wrongly estimated the course, and that stretch was not one third of the race as I had thought. The turn around point was about 1.5 km further on than I'd thought it was.

So the real problem was that I hadn't trained well enough or long enough and wasn't strong enough to make it up on the day. If there was a positive, it was that the cardiovascular system was fully intact. I didn't do any gasping, 'thank god I've finished' routine at the end, just crossed the finish line and wandered off looking glum. The problems were with the legs and the general musculoskeletal system.

On Monday the results were in the paper and things looked slightly better. The winning time wasn't that fast, at 1:12. I came 105th out of 574 runners. Only 50 people went under 1:30. I don't know whether it was a moderately slow course or whether there just weren't very many serious runners taking part. The conditions were reasonable in the end, although it was a little warm. The temperature reached 23 degrees during the day, and during the race it was maybe 20 with around 60 or 70 percent humidity and some pretty strong sun. Sweating out fluids and salts may be extra tough on the muscles of the amateur runner, and perhaps there's something in the fact that may two winter half marathons have been faster than my two summer ones.

Anyway, the lesson is that if I want to achieve a better time I'm going to have to be a little more serious about it, and I'm definitely going to have to train at a longer distance than the race itself. Time, discipline and motivation are key -- and at least the first may be easier to muster now I'm going to be a poor student.

On another note, last Sunday I managed to get up early enough in the morning to take part in the Meridian Gutbuster race, which heads 12km up and down the tracks around the Karori Sanctuary, with a total elevation gain (and drop) of 400 metres. I had no ambitions for this one, merely hoping to maintain a running-like motion for most of the race, which included some pretty brutal climbs and drops over some rather rough terrain.

Relatively speaking, I probably did worse in this race than in the half marathon, with a time of 1:08 and a placing of 87th out of 294 runners. But to be fair, I haven't done much hill training and almost none at all off road, and I ended up enjoying it more than I thought -- so much so that I might do some more of these.

Last Minute Running Update

2010-02-20T21:31:00.002+13:00

So, the race is tomorrow. Last weekend I had my last training run and it didn't go well. I was a little stiff from previous exertions, and found it a struggle. Three indoor football games later (all of which came close to qualifying as my worst of the season) and I'm tender in a number of areas. Sleep and diet haven't been that good in the last week either, so overall I'm not confident.

The one thing looking good is the weather. A moderate northerly is looking likely in mild early morning conditions. That should make for some blistering times given the southern bias of the course. I'm just hoping to struggle through to a personal best, but it will be touch and go.

Training by Running Update: Hoping for a Northerly

2010-01-23T19:53:00.003+13:00

Since the last post on training for the half marathon, I've managed four training runs of 16 to 17 km. I managed to reduce my 17km-ish time from around 1 hr 11 to a little over 1 hr 09, and on the 14km section which tracks the actual course of the race I improved from 58 minutes to a little over 56.

However, to be fair, the last couple of runs have been in close to perfect conditions whereas the first one was in a howling northerly of extrordinary strength -- heading north back around Point Jeringham the gusts were so strong that at one stage I was actually making no progress despite pushing into the wind with all my force. So it's questionable how much improvement I've actually made.

The last week has been a bit of a write off for training purposes. I spent the weekend doing the Southern Crossing of the Tararuas, and then I allowed recovery time to be in reasonable shape for my two mid-week games of indoor football (they're close to the highlight of my week and take precedence over everything else). There's also been some non-optimum eating and drinking over the past few days.

I have one more training run tomorrow, and then that's it until race day next Sunday.

This brings me back to the issue of wind and wind direction. Presumably because it's an add-on to the 7km Round the Bays fun run, this half marathon is not geographically balanced, unlike the Harbour Capital race run in June, which is an "out and back" course. The course heads from Frank Kitts Park to Cobham Drive, up around the Miramar peninsula almost to Scorching Bay, then back to Kilbirnie Park. Two-thirds of the course goes essentially north to south, making a significant net movement south over the race as a whole.

This means that, while light winds would still be preferable, a moderately fresh northerly would still be ok, because it would be close to a tail wind for two thirds of the race, including the last leg. Even a light southerly would be ok: I've found I can still do the first 7km leg into the breeze in 28--29 minutes, and a tail wind would be useful in the 'difficult' middle part of the race. Where things would really come unstuck is in a fresh southerly, so I'm praying we don't get those conditions next Sunday.

The race starts at 8:30 am, so strong sun and warm temperatures should also be taken out of the equation (yes, we actually have had a little bit of those recently in Wellington). The ideal would be a light northerly, overcast, around 16 degrees and maybe the lightest of intermittent drizzle. Currently the forecast says fine with a high of 20 and a northerly at 30 km/h. That would be acceptable! But weather forecasts can of course change in a week.

It's been good to have a goal, but pounding up and down the pavements is not actually my favourite activity, and it does take a lot out of you. Succeed or fail in the half marathon, I'll be quite glad to get back to regular trips to the gym and of course the football.

Scooter Races

2010-01-23T14:51:00.003+13:00

I had to put up these pictures, from Christmas Day at my parents' place in Rolleston. My almost-five year old niece Alex and almost-three year old nephew Tommy got scooters for Christmas. Tommy hasn't quite got the scootering thing figured yet, although judging by his trampolining and tricycling skills (including braking), it won't be far away.

Alex on the other hand hardly wanted to leave the scooter for a second, and was keen to take on all comers, including her uncle.

Needless to say, I was no match for a light and nimble almost-five year old. "You're too sloow", was the verdict from the finish line as I scrambled the last few metres down the driveway.

To be fair, I was hindered a little by not putting my whole weight onto the scooter, keen not to buckle the kids' Christmas present. Later, on a longer run down a footpath in Kaipoi, Alex's Dad Jeremy showed this was indeed possible and I was able to gather a bit more speed -- but not enough to catch up with Alex.

Latin America's Gifts to the World

2010-01-14T21:44:00.003+13:00

Many thanks for the responses to my previous post from my regular readers (all three of you). Between you, you managed to name most of the major food products or ingredients that come from the Americas and were unknown elsewhere in the world until the 16th century. There's still a few more than didn't get named, but sufficient time has passed and it doesn't look like I'm going to get any more responses.

Here is the list I had in mind, after much consultation of Wikipedia. I may have missed a few myself, so feel free to point out any other products I might not have thought of.

Potatoes
Maize / corn
Chili
Chocolate / cocoa
Vanilla
Common bean (green, red, black, yellow, pinto, etc)
Tomatos
Avocados
Squash family (including courgette, marrow, pumpkin)
Peanuts
Cashew nuts
Brazil nuts
Pineapple
Papaya
Guava
Coca (as in Coca Cola, so yes it qualifies as a food ingredient or flavouring, as well as a narcotic).

Related to the last item, apparently Latin America is also home to about 85 percent of all known hallucinogenic plants. As far as I know no one has a really good theory about why that is.

The American origin of many of the above comes as quite a surprise (or at least it does to me), given how inherently globalised they seem. It's therefore interesting to reflect that none of the following are native to Latin America and were unknown there until the 16th century:

Sugar
Coffee
Bananas

The Joy of Chili

2010-01-09T18:34:00.003+13:00

Today's interesting Wikipedia article: a summary of the biology, history and culinary uses of the chili pepper in all its varieties and permutations. I have to admit to being surprised that the plant family is native only to South and Central America (including the Caribbean). Who would have thought that with its importance to cuisine from East Africa to Italy to India to Southeast Asia to China, this marvellous source of piquancy only become known to the rest of the world through Iberian colonisation of the Americas in the 16th century?

If they haven't already, someone should surely write a sweeping historical biography of the pepper's rise to world domination, along the lines of such books on salt, sugar, and, um, cod.

A prize to readers who can name other major food products that are widespread staples or central ingredients in national and international cuisines yet are relatively recent gifts to the world from Latin America. (Actually, no prize sorry, but see if you can name some anyway).

Mountain Climbing Preparations, No 1 -- Training by Running

2010-01-06T21:10:00.002+13:00

Having a big, long-term, terrifying goal has flow-on effects. It motivates you to to do things which then develop their own sub goals.

One of the ways to train for mountain climbing (or anything that requires endurance) is running. The training web sites recommend that as much as possible you train "in kind", i.e. by actually carrying a heavy pack uphill. However, there's limits to how much or how often you can do this (viz, aborted tramping trip in the Tararuas, Dec 17--20). And in any case, it may not be possible to simulate the stresses you will be under climbing. The duration, pace, elevation and difficulty of any treks you get to do will depend on things like the time available, the terrain accessible, the preferences of your trekking companions, and the vagaries of the weather.

Running, on the other hand, allows you to destroy yourself at your leisure. And with my ability at cycling (distinctly mediocre) or swimming (close to non-existent), running is the obvious choice for sustainable, easy-access pain infliction.

Thus, it was the decision to aim for Aconcagua that provided the incentive to get back into running. I was long past due to replace my running shoes, since my existing ones were falling apart and never fit me that well anyway. When I finally made the trip down to the Shoe Clinic to have my gait analysed and buy some shoes, I'm not sure if I'd actually gone as far as saying it out loud, but the idea was certainly germinating somewhere in my mind.

At first I mainly ran on hills, or at least included a hill in the run. I managed to run for 1 hr 45 around the bays, with a loop up part of Mt Victoria. I did several runs up to the Brooklyn wind turbine. From my flat in Northland, that requires a descent to Aro St, followed by perhaps 280 metres of vertical ascent over a few kilometres.

In the most recent of these excursions, I pushed on past the windmill along the increasingly rough track that heads towards a mysterious radar station and eventually the sea. After about 25 minutes on this track, it started to get dark, the misty drizzle got thicker, and in the end I only just turned around in time to make it back to the windmill before the weather and the night closed in. I had been out nearly two hours -- not long by marathoners' standards, but seemingly a bridge too far for my body. I must have suffered dehydration, salt loss, or something, aggravated by being battered around in two indoor football games over the next couple of days (see future post on "training mix"). For about the next week I felt wiped out, even mildly depressed.

I was at risk of getting discouraged and allowing my training schedule to drift into haphazardness. Fortunately, I discovered that there is a half marathon scheduled for February 21 as part of the Wellington Round the Bays event. The opportunity to run under 1 hr 30 is something of a lifetime goal and a definite motivation. I have run three previous half marathons, in times of 1:34, 1:37 and 1:31. The last two were in strong northerly winds, and the last one may have been "worth" less than 1 hr 30, given that the winner didn't go far under 1:10 and I was 80th in a field of 800. But the time you did is the time you did, and it remains the case that I've never broken that magical figure.

I've now entered the race, and even just the anticipation of entering was enough to inspire a 16 1/2 km post-Christmas jog when I was down south at my parents' place. Since coming back to Wellington, I ran over the course last Thursday (appreciating the rata-splashed joys of the Miramar peninsula), and on Sunday did an out-and-back run of the first leg from Frank Kitts Park to Kilbirnie Park. I managed the course proper in 1 hr 35, while the 14km Sunday run took bang on an hour. That leaves substantial room for improvement if I want to reach my target.

Slightly worrying is that on both occasions there was a northerly tail wind on the first leg and I couldn't do it in less than 29 minutes: on Thursday my 7km splits were 31/34/30, and on Sunday approximately 29/31. It was somewhat odd that Sunday's last leg should be the quickest: on the positive side it shows good endurance, but on the negative, it could suggest that for some reason (encroaching age, poor technique?) I have no speed.

A consoling factor is that I think (based on my reading of the course map) that I have been adding some extra distance on to the first bit by doglegging around Te Papa. I have also been running with a small backpack carrying a little food, light pants and a sweater, and carrying a drink bottle in one hand. You don't want to run for an hour or more without liquid, but I think the bottle may be a slowing factor by restricting use of the arm which is carrying it. On Sunday, I ditched the bottle in a bin by Cobham Drive; it was notable that my time on the return leg was only 2 minutes slower despite running into a howling northwesterly that was so strong at times it was hard to stay upright.

Anyway, I'm off for another run tomorrow, and this time will be able to leave my things at work and run without a backpack, so we'll see how that goes. Also, although I know it's good practice, it would be nice to have a little bit less wind!

Non-Traditional Exports in the Andes

2010-01-01T10:03:00.006+13:00

I'm a regular reader of Peruvian economist and La Republica columnist Humberto Campodónico -- for New Zealand readers, sort of a cross between Brian Easton and Rod Oram. Campodónico writes dense, detailed columns on the world and Peruvian economies, with particular attention to national policies on natural resources such as minerals, petroleum and gas. He is a trenchant critic of what he argues is the Peruvian government's unreformed neoliberalism, its lack of a coherent plan for development and its pandering to the whims of international investors in extractive industries.

Campodónico often resembles a traditional investigative journalist, as he strings together data and timelines to demonstrate how resources have been given away cheaply or tax revenue needlessly wasted. It's hard to imagine a columnist with such a wonkish, fact-based approach, which requires readers to really concentrate, getting such a prominent slot in a New Zealand newspaper.

A particularly interesting recent column compares the progress in developing "non-traditional exports" in Peru, Chile and Colombia. In Latin America, "traditional" exports refer to primary materials such as minerals and petroleum and unprocessed cash crops such as bananas and sugar. These have often been dominated by international coporations operating in economic "enclaves". "Non-traditional" exports are those with a greater value-added content: often, though not always, they are produced at a smaller scale, are more labour-intensive and tend to be locally owned.

A rise in non-traditional exports can be viewed as one measure of the strength of a developing country's economy. Exports are of course important because they provide the foreign currency needed to buy things that aren't produced locally and to pay for borrowing. A higher proportion of "non-traditional" products may indicate greater economic sophistication, resilience and broader participation. For Campodónico, they represent "the insertion of the local entrepreneurial classes in the world market".

In this respect Chile, Colombia and Peru are worth comparing because they are the medium-sized South American countries that have opted to continue with orthodox "market" economies, as opposed to the "Bolivarian" triumvirate of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, who have built strategies around greater state control and redistribution of the rents from raw materials.

According to the respective central banks, in 2008 Chile exported $65 billion USD, of which 41% was earned by non-traditional exports (mainly food products such as fish, fruit and wine). Colombia exported $37.6 billion, with 47% non-traditional (chemicals, paper, textiles, leather and food). Meanwhile, Peru exported $31.5 billion, with just 25% from non-traditional products (metallurgy, textiles and agroindustrial products).

Campodónico also notes that state-owned companies were responsible for about a third of the "traditional" exports in Chile and Colombia, whereas in Peru most mineral extraction is done by foreign, privately-owned companies.

These statistics show Peru to be significantly weaker than its two Andean neighbours -- a useful counter to triumphalism about its recent recent rate of growth in GDP. This perspective helps raise the questions: how much of this growth is being distributed among ordinary Peruvians? How much is being usefully reinvested? And, can it be expected to last?

Andean nations, Peru, development, exports,

Development Gone Bananas

2009-12-30T12:22:00.002+13:00

Via Paul Krugman, a note in the New York Times on the end of the "banana wars". A long-running trade dispute between European states and US/Latin American banana producers over whether Europe could impose quotas favouring their former colonies has finally ended, after the EU agreed to to reduce tariffs on Latin American bananas by 35 percent over seven years..

Op-ed writer Eduardo Porter comments that as often seems to be the case, this resolution has come about less through the capacity for intelligent compromise than because the whole issue has turned out to be less important than the antagonists thought.

He concludes:

China’s growth stands as a beacon for the power of trade. But others that have hitched their economic strategy to trade, like Mexico, have found prosperity elusive. Despite growing banana exports, both the Latin American banana exporters and Europe’s impoverished former colonies remain poor.

One thing we have learned over the past 15 years is that trade is necessary but not sufficient for development. Countries also need investment in infrastructure, technology and human capital. They need credit. They need legitimate institutions — like clean courts to battle monopolies — and help building them. Putting up a few barriers against banana imports, or tearing a few of them down, can’t do it all.

Credit for the conclusion. But isn't it a little disturbing that people think there wasn't any evidence about this until 15 years ago?

Storm Front Wellington

2009-12-20T21:08:00.007+13:00

Today in Wellington was a rare day, in recent times, of warm sunshine and light winds, with the moist air helping send the cumulus clouds puffing up over the Eastbourne hills. But there was also a cold front due late afternoon. Seeking some extra exercise after a weather-aborted tramping trip in the Tararuas, and with half an idea that some interesting weather might develop, I strolled up the Polhill Reserve track to the Brooklyn wind turbine.

My timing was good: just as I got to the windmill, the southerly buster arrived, sweeping in over Cook Strait. I was hoping some thunderstorm-like activity would brew, but nothing developed. However, I did get some reasonable photos over the harbour and the strait as the front arrived. In the last one you can see a plane that has just taken off from Wellington airport.

Prospects for South Africa: New Zealand

2009-12-09T22:49:00.006+13:00

From a New Zealand perspective, the World Cup draw turned out about as well as could be expected: our group rivals will be Italy, Paraguay and South Africa. The ideal would have been a group headed by South Africa, which, as the host nation, is automatically one of the seeded teams. But of the big teams, Italy is perhaps the best one to play.

The Italians tend to be inspired by adversity and their style is based on impassable defense combined with ruthless finishing on the counter. They sometimes seem to get a little muddled when playing smaller teams and struggle to a narrow win or even a draw. We are lucky not to be in a group with Brazil or Germany, who have no qualms about thrashing minnows. Likewise, as they showed at the Confederations Cup, Spain are flat track bullies par excellence.

While it's good to have a desire to compete, and not merely enjoy the "romance" of playing Brazil or England, the New Zealand public remains wildly optimistic or blindly ignorant. In a recent Stuff poll (unscientific, to be sure), more than half of the respondents thought New Zealand would come other than last in their group. The rationale seems to be that Paraguay and Slovakia sound like rather insignificant countries, therefore we should be able to do well against them at football.

However, anyone thinking Paraguay is a minor or obscure team should note their July 2008 2-0 defeat of Brazil where they spent half a game with ten men, or perhaps their recent rather comfortable 1-0 home win over Argentina.

I don't know much about Slovakia, but any team that tops a group including two times World Cup semi-finalists Poland, Euro 1996 finalists Czech Republic, fellow qualifiers Slovenia, and Northern Ireland, is clearly not to be trifled with.

Let's be realistic. Success for New Zealand, in terms of meeting expectations, would be to score a couple of goals. Getting a point would be a historic achievement. Winning a game sits squarely in the realm of fantasy. Progressing to the next stage would be like the All Blacks winning the World Cup and the cricket team beating Australia in a test series on the same weekend, with the economy making it into the top half of the OECD in time for dinner.

So much for New Zealand. In a future post I'll make my predictions for which teams I think will be the likely winners, giant killers or surprise failures in South Africa.

The Road to Aconcagua

2009-12-05T18:19:00.000+13:00

Generally I've found that writing down things I plan to do is helpful, making them more concrete and spurring me on to carry then out. Telling someone what I plan is the next step: the more people I tell, the harder it is to back out without losing face.

I've already said the following to a number of people and now the time has come to write it on the blog. I am making plans to climb Argentina's Cerro Aconcagua, the world's highest peak outside Asia, in the summer of 2011. The idea has gradually become more concrete ever since my older sister Terri made it to the summit in January 2008.

That was a fantastic effort, but Terri has won competitive road cycling races in the United States, run a marathon under 3 hrs 30, and likes nothing better than to cycle 60 km before breakfast. By contrast, I am a slob who sleeps in until 10am where possible. I admired my sister's achievement but didn't think it realistic for me. Yet over the last twelve months or so the possibility has kept nagging away at me until I eventually said: "why not?".

Now I've put a stake in the ground, this is likely to become a new narrative arc on this blog. In the past I've written about my struggles with fitness and inadequate gear. I've begun to address both of those issues recently and will discuss them more in future posts. I also hope that readers will contribute to those posts, as there's a number of things I'm unsure about and would be happy to get some feedback on.

But to be honest, I'm not even wholly confident of even making it on the expedition (health, finances and a master's thesis are all capable of throwing a spanner in the works), let alone to the summit. So to to start with, I'm going to take a look at my chances by summarizing the advantages and disadvantages I have. Again, writing them down makes them more tangible and easier to tackle.

Advantages

I have reasonably good physical endurance. I have reached a summit over 6,000 metres before (Nevado Chachani). I've climbed 1,900 vertical metres in a single day (Andagua trek) and trekked for around 10 hours for three consecutive days while carrying a pack (also the Andagua trek).

Importantly, I also understand that none of this adds up to much compared with the task ahead. When I climbed El Misti, it was a two-day trek of around 2,600 vertical metres to the summit at 5,825. Yet the last 150 of those metres, from volcano's crater to the true summit, felt about as hard as the preceding 2,450. I was in a group of six climbers and two guides. I, one other American climber and a guide, reached the crater a little ahead of the rest. I recall the final stretch, winding up a narrow ridge with the summit always in view, as being pretty agonising. The other four climbers reached the crater and decided that they couldn't go any further, despite being little more than a stone's throw from the summit. That was about the same altitude as the high camp on Aconcagua -- where the long trek to the summit starts.

Add to this the fact that my 6,000-ish summits have been in Peru, less than 15 degress south of the equator, with daytime temperatures creeping near 0 degrees Celsius in a gentle zephyr. Aconcagua is more than 30 degrees south, and I understand that temperatures on the summit can be around -30 Celsius in summer with vicious winds.

It might look like I'm just citing difficulties here, but the fact that I understand these things very clearly is actually an advantage.

Disadvantages

Physically, I deteriorate rapidly when I don't have enough to eat or drink. I also struggle to maintain a steady pace. I tend to go too rapidly when I have energy and tire myself out.

However, my biggest drawback is probably mental weakness. Deep down, I'm a bit of a wimp and a coward and I instinctively look for a quick payoff. The longest treks I've ever gone on have been around four days, and by day two or three, my mind is already shifting to the prospect of a nice hot shower, good coffee, and sitting back in a comfortable chair reviewing photos of the trip. Unlike true outdoors people, I don't really thrive in the back country. When I'm there, I usually start to fixate on little discomforts and dream about being back in civilization.

I also don't have very good interpersonal skills: I like my personal space and usually find it hard to fit in with groups. When I lack the skills to contribute much to practical things like preparing food, putting up tents and packing gear, I feel like I don't have any control and can get disengaged and grumpy. The likelihood of becoming bored, anxious and disprited on the long tramp in, and in particular during days spent waiting around in bad weather, is one of my biggest risks. From previous experience and from what I'm read, I expect this challenge to be as much mental as physical. Being in as positive a frame of mind as possible during the tough bits will be important.

So, that's probably something to train for over the next 12 months just as much as carrying a 25-kilo pack in low oxygen.

Tramping in the Tararuas

2009-11-20T20:05:00.001+13:00

The other weekend I was fortunate enough to spend three days tramping in the Tararuas, to the north of Wellington, with my friend Noam and his fiancee Rachel. We did the "Jumbo circuit", which starts near Masterton, following a loop from the valley floor up to the summit of Mt Holdsworth and back down again through the bush. It's actually possible to do the whole circuit in one exhausting day, but we did it in a relaxed fashion over three days, spending most of the time wandering up along the ridges.

Here are some photos. Most are courtesy of Noam, and are superior in both technique and technology to the couple from my camera. Click to enlarge to full size.

Patches of snow still lingered on some of the ridges amidst the wind battered tussock.

The green folds of the Wairarapa plain look idyllic in the later afternoon haze when viewed from above. Great photography from Noam.

This is a kind of lookout point at around 1,350 metres above sea level, about halfway between Powell Hut and the summit of Mt Holdsworth.
Noam arrives at the lookout point, with the south Wairarapa plains in the background.
The action and effects of the wind can be seen in this photo of Noam's.

Mountain tarns on the ridgeline on the way out to Angle Knob, from where we could see both the Pacific and the Tasman.

These mountain flowers (native daisies?) have an amazing plastic-like appearance that makes them appear almost artificial.

In the centre of the photo, people walking along the ridgeline down from the summit of Mt Holdsworth give an idea of the scale of the landscape.

Reaching the summit of Mt Holdsworth at 1,470 metres with the lower hills and the Wairarapa plain spread out behind.

Serried ranges of hills unfold westward towards the sun in this view from Angle Knob, around an hour's walk along the ridgeline from Jumbo Crossing. The faintest hill in the distance is Kapiti Island, and the adjoining blue is the sea.

And In a Calmer Moment

2009-11-20T00:04:00.000+13:00

OK, some analysis in a calmer moment now. The game was a thrilling rollercoaster of emotion. It wasn't until Bahrain were awarded a penalty early in the second half that I realised how much the crazy hope that we might do it after all had taken hold of me. At that moment it all drained away, and I was making a monumental effort to achieve Zen-like calm, telling myself that at least it had been a great occasion and we'd been competitive. Then Mark Paston saved, and I was leaping all over the place again.

Technically, it wasn't great football, but tightly-contested World Cup ties often aren't. There was about as much hoofing the ball up the field as you'd see in a Six Nations rugby match, but you couldn't fault the commitment or the tension.

There were several outstanding performances from New Zealand players. Goalkeeper Paston was of course everybody's hero for his penalty save and a generally assured performance. Just to catch the final flicked-on header of the game from a long Bahraini free kick without the collective quivering nerves of 35,000 people causing him to drop it was an achievement in itself.

Ryan Nelsen was, as they say, "immense" at the heart of the defense, making numerous intercepts and haranguing his fellow defenders when they wandered out of position. Leo Bertos somehow managed to make Ricki Herbert's structure look reasonable by haring up and down the field to both make attacking thrusts from midfield and also cover off the right side of defense. Chris Killen had a couple of dangerous shots, held up the ball well, and ran all over the place, pressuring the Bahrain defence into mistakes.

Rory Fallon of course scored with a bullet-like header, but looked a bit off the pace in general play. After a quiet first half, Shane Smeltz did some very nice things in the second, but he remains an enigma in front of goal -- by my count he failed to convert at least four reasonable opportunities to score.

Commentary in the Monday papers gave Ricki Herbert the benefit of the doubt: the win showed his tactics had been a gamble that paid off, they said. I'm still not sure we wouldn't have been better off playing a more traditional structure. The defense and the midfield got in each other's way at times, and it was unclear if there was an actual plan in attack. What helped was that the much colder conditions meant New Zealand could chase the ball round, playing an English-style pressing game (Greece 2004 occasionally sprang to mind). They also had a physical advantage, and the Bahrainis were intimidated enough to not even try to fire in first-time balls from corners and free kicks -- something I thought was a surprising concession.

You had to feel a little sorry for Bahrain. They were clearly the more skilful team, and played a lot of neat passess and touches. Whenever they went down the right side they looked extremely dangerous. But after the missed penalty they visibly dropped, and by the end of the game seemed to be panicking. Their defence lost its shape, and had New Zealand been a more ruthless team, they could easily have won 3-0. The Bahrain players' tendency to topple over at the merest hint that someone had touched them won the ire of the crowd. On the other hand, the had the New Zealanders' timing been slightly poorer with some of their challenges -- at least a couple of them two-footed -- we could have been in big trouble.

Apologies for all the posts on football -- there are still a couple more to come, as I make early predictions for next year's World Cup and look at who it would be good for New Zealand to play. Then it will be back to tales from South America and thoughts on development.