Reliable news from China is hard to come by but it is now clear that the protest movement over the collapsed schools is not going away. My colleagues at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Monitoring in Caversham are producing a 14 day update of social unrest reportage in the Chinese language media, inside and outside the PRC. Here are just a few entries from the 12-25 June edition:
Beichuan parents block road in protest against police clampdown: On 12 June, more than 200 grieving parents blocked the road into Beichuan town in protest against the authorities' attempt to prevent them from commemorating the one-month anniversary of their children's deaths in the earthquake, Hong Kong's Asia Television reported. Beichuan county authorities kicked out 26 volunteers for organizing a memorial at the ruins of Beichuan No 1 Middle School, where more than 1,000 students were killed, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported...
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Tesco has a positive reputation among British trade unions, and among the HR profession in general. But since Tesco has opened up an American operation called Fresh & Easy, it's come in for a whole lot of grief. It's refused even to meet, let alone recognise, the United Food and Commercial Workers union. It advertised for an HR director, including "union avoidance activities" as part of the brief.
But now the union has a powerful backer: Barack Obama has found time amid his whirlwind schedule to write for a second time to Tesco's boss, Terry Leahy, urging him to sign a partnership with the American unions....
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"We live in a time when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organised lying exists on a scale never before known. For plugging the holes in history the pamphlet is the ideal form." - so wrote George Orwell in 1943. Fortunately today we have blogs: channels of free expression are running riot and "organised lying" - whether by spin-doctors, dictators or the PR industry - is on the back foot.
I was one of the first bloggers on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ. On and off I've been shooting from the lip here - as far as the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ editorial rules will let me.
Since I've become the economics editor of Newsnight I've noticed that, except with investment bankers and aid charity bosses, the job title tends to freeze any room I walk into. "Poor you," one receptionist said to me, "having to try and interest people in all that boring stuff".
So with this (the third!) relaunch of Idle Scrawl I am going to repurpose the blog slightly: here's the new mission statement.
a) to make economic stories, in their widest sense, interesting and above all not frightening.
b) to go on blogging about my obsessions, namely: China, global poverty, productivity, computer games, new technology, classical music and the follies of football managers. And of course the United Kingdom's hallowed and unassailable symmetrical CPI inflation target.
c) to make the occasional foray into economic theory: stand by - from Quesnay to Bernanke I have a whole bunch of guys with strange names and "-isms" to guide you through
d) to be as tight, acerbic and close to the truth as I can get.
I called the blog Idle Scrawl: it's an old Lancashire insult that my mother used to shout at me to get me out of bed. My Chinese producer translated it for me as Xian Ren San Ji - a piece of freestyle writing by a leisure author or, literally "bad writing by lazy person". I'll try and blog about twice a week. I will try (honest, bosses!) to stay out of trouble.
