tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-138687122010-03-08T15:53:39.665ZA blog by Yorkshire-based freelance journalist Tim Chapman, featuring a mix of news, links, thoughts and photos on economics, regional development, science and technology, and much else. Unless otherwise indicated, all content is copyright Tim Chapman.<br> The title is borrowed from JK Galbraith, and refers to certain well-established and persuasive economic theories that rely more on hope and imagination than on practical experience or empirical reality.Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.comBlogger253125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-61306247331216220122010-03-08T15:53:00.001Z2010-03-08T15:53:39.922Z

This blog is now located at http://blog.2ubh.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here. For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://blog.2ubh.com/atom.xml.

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-54788780395032424402010-02-03T17:14:00.003Z2010-02-03T17:26:30.821Z

The current edition of Envirotech & Clean Energy Investor magazine has a cover feature by myself on renewables project finance:Renewable energy project finance gets a second windLong-term financing for renewable energy projects was all but halted by the credit crunch, but stimulus measures and state-backed investors are helping the market move again.As part of the research for the feature, I

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-26951104866992666982010-01-29T10:47:00.003Z2010-01-29T11:07:29.445Z

New research from Dr Horst Feldmann at the University of Bath on relations between the availability of venture capital in various industrial countries, and employment statistics:The study estimates that if venture capital availability in Italy, where it was most difficult to obtain during the sample period, had matched the United States, where it was in best supply, Italy’s unemployment rate

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-77288085066967306732010-01-10T13:33:00.006Z2010-01-10T17:37:21.655Z

The following is a letter I've written to the Fortean Times regarding the editorial column in the current issue (258). The FT is a magazine which I've read for close to 20 years, and contributed many book reviews to, and which generally has high standards of factual accuracy and impartiality. This editorial, mostly a summary of 'controversies' around climate change, failed to meet those standards

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-41867238633695204702010-01-06T15:28:00.001Z2010-01-06T15:31:03.308Z

In this iciest of new years, you might as well curl up with a good book and hope for sunnier times. A good candidate, if you're at all interested in some of the economics ideas occasionally aired here, would be Tim Jackson's Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (thanks to publishers Earthscan for the review copy). Based closely on Jackson's report for the Sustainable

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-11018974930298363442009-12-18T13:19:00.003Z2009-12-18T13:23:42.023Z

It's not been the most inspiring year all round, so here's hoping for better in the next.

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-1462685178305486812009-12-02T09:34:00.002Z2009-12-02T09:47:06.121Z

The above photo by myself has been selected by the rather well known photographer Martin Parr to feature in a new book he's publishing in partnership with the slightly controversial artist Joachim Schmid. Schmid is controversial because his art mainly consists of appropriating work by other photographers, taken from online resources such as Flickr, without credit or regard to copyright. The

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-22658153480373808472009-12-01T16:35:00.008Z2009-12-03T10:36:20.909Z

There's lots of stories today based on a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry on high-potency cannabis and the risk of psychosis. All the reports, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, lead with the same claim: Skunk, the powerful form of cannabis dominating the street drug market, is seven times more likely to cause psychosis than ordinary cannabis, scientists say.Which might be fair enough

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-92142347009283570512009-10-29T13:53:00.000Z2009-10-29T13:54:30.440Z

I recently read The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Finance, courtesy of the publishers at New Internationalist. As you'd expect from the title, it's a very digestible overview of the international finance system, starting from what 'money' actually is, through the increasingly weird and wonderful activities of banks, to the root causes and effects of the recent mess. As such, it's a great

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-68908027429702947812009-10-20T13:27:00.004+01:002009-10-20T16:42:35.607+01:00

As of this month, I'm working part-time at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, with the grand title of European Communications Manager. I'll be working across the centre's European research projects, helping write funding proposals and manage the various international academic and industrial partners, through to disseminating and publicising the research once it's

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-78125809993447962202009-10-05T16:45:00.003+01:002009-10-05T17:14:14.400+01:00

I'd been meaning to get up to Sheffield's Park Hill estate for a year or more, since first seeing the vast wall of hollowed-out flats while driving by Ponds Forge beneath. There wasn't any great rush - according to recent reports in the Sheffield Star, the project (estimated cost £160m) won't be complete till around 2017. It's three and a half years since I wrote about the plans here.I had a free

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-4439884480702872802009-09-22T10:02:00.003+01:002009-09-22T10:14:14.247+01:00

Now, this seems like bullshit. The Sunday Times reports:Roman Abramovich zaps snappers with laser shield[Abramovich's] boat’s most unusual feature is perhaps the anti-paparazzi “shield”.Infrared lasers detect the electronic light sensors in nearby cameras, known as charge-coupled devices. When the system detects such a device, it fires a focused beam of light at the camera, disrupting its ability

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-8017052478691060092009-09-21T13:31:00.004+01:002009-09-21T13:50:23.318+01:00

The Guardian Media section has a slightly annoying article from the paper's technology editor Charles Arthur on why technology journalists are terribly important trend-setters:Why, though? Because technology is the second-fastest changing field in news (after fashion). You'd watch what the fashion writers are wearing to find out what's going to be in next season. It's the same with technology,

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-89865226000880456572009-08-27T10:19:00.006+01:002009-08-27T10:34:04.162+01:00

Interesting to see Adair Turner apparently considering a Tobin tax to curb destablising speculative currency trades, in an interview with Prospect Magazine. As reported in the Guardian:He told Prospect: "If you want to stop excessive pay in a swollen financial sector you have to reduce the size of that sector or apply special taxes to its pre-remuneration profit. Higher capital requirements

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-60226371494505866592009-08-19T09:44:00.003+01:002009-08-20T13:09:03.580+01:00

Last evening, I caught a rather bemused-seeming Nassim Nicholas Taleb appearing at the end of Newsnight, apparently following some kind of meeting with David Cameron. When he could get a few words in between Kirsty Wark and some chap from the Times talking about Cameron's intellectual credentials (such as they are), Taleb was making his usual points about risk in the economy and other areas.

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-67700534560110235182009-08-12T19:24:00.004+01:002009-08-12T19:53:30.059+01:00

I've just been reading, somewhat belatedly, Jonathan Coe's very enjoyable state-of-the-(1980s)-nation gothic satire 'What a Carve Up!'. In his author's note at the end of the book, Coe notes his 'shadowy debt' to the works of Frank King, author of 'The Ghoul' (1928), on which the 1960 movie (from which Coe took his title and elements of plot) was loosely based. Coe also says that he had been

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-57195787451081231402009-08-05T10:24:00.004+01:002009-08-05T17:00:06.469+01:00

Arriving on my desk with an entirely appropriate crash, comes the new US edition of The Complete Stories of JG Ballard, courtesy of the publishers WW Norton. An expanded version of the Complete Short Stories, published in the UK by Flamingo in 2001 and now a collector's item, the new volume weighs in at something over 1200 pages and 98 stories. It dwarfs the comparable tome for, say, John Cheever

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-58801769090197173182009-07-13T17:39:00.005+01:002009-07-26T10:09:24.348+01:00

These are a few of a small set of slides that my parents bought in 1971 (when the Apollo 10 command module visited Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, Sheffield, as part of a travelling exhibition) showing key images from the Apollo 11 mission, the first landing on the moon, 40 years ago this week. This is before my time, really - I was born just over a month before Apollo 17, the final manned mission

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-80045757509461966952009-07-09T09:51:00.003+01:002009-07-09T09:56:15.441+01:00

From Reality Sandwich, an entertaining interview with author Douglas Rushkoff about his new book Life Inc, a historical critique/polemic on the developing role of corporations in Western culture, touching on many topics of interest:An over-arching theme I found in the book is how the common-sense stuff of our reality, the economy and money and shopping and working, is really science fiction; we

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-89433460049417770092009-06-25T14:40:00.003+01:002009-06-26T11:21:42.691+01:00

Fuck me, Steven Wells is dead:And of course all this bollocks is written by an idiot who has polished his image as an existentialist, atheist hard-man and anti-mope, forever sneering at the tribes who wallow in self-pity -- the gothers, the emo kids, the Smiths fans -- the whole 900-block-wide marching band composed entirely of the white male urban middle classes who are convinced that (as the

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-36816705846762485512009-06-12T17:12:00.006+01:002009-06-23T13:40:58.600+01:00

Congratulations to Bradford for being named as the first Unesco City of Film. It's been a while coming (the bidding started back when I was writing for Yorkshire Insider regularly, if I remember right), and it might be hard to entirely grasp the logic of it, but good for them. The city's proud Telegraph & Argus has a solid write-up (with some hilariously fruitbat comments), and the same paper's

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-85915962525780111462009-06-12T09:42:00.002+01:002009-06-12T09:48:31.696+01:00

Here's the most entertaining economics blog I've seen for a while - Ecocomics, applying economic theory to problems raised in superhero comics. How do super-villains pay for their dastardly schemes (all those minions!), what kind of insurance structure could pay for all that downtown devastation, the challenges of establishing an intergalactic union and monetary fund. That kind of thing. The

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-91918581340450441882009-06-09T12:29:00.003+01:002009-06-09T12:38:12.101+01:00

Lovely piece from Martin Wainwright in the the walks supplement with today's Guardian, in which he rhapsodises about the wuthering beauty of Ogden Water and Ovenden Moor, wind farm and all, just north of Halifax (described, rather curiously, as a 'market town' - while there is a great indoor market, I'd say it's still a classic mill town). There's also directions for the walk, which I've been

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-42946271502733914292009-05-27T15:17:00.003+01:002009-08-05T17:00:54.100+01:00

I've been reading A cognitive theory of the firm: learning, governance and dynamic capabilities by Bart Nooteboom*, professor of innovation policy at Tilburg University (with thanks to publishers Edward Elgar for the review copy) Nooteboom's core question is: what are the sources of innovation in firms? That's an important issue for a lot of people - managers and entrepreneurs, regulators and

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13868712.post-89500561600717888062009-05-15T13:14:00.003+01:002009-05-15T13:46:27.737+01:00

Faced with spending most of yesterday on the train to London and back, I finally entered the 21st century and bought myself an iPod. I know - despite writing a lot about technology, I'm not exactly an early adopter. I went out shopping for a basic model, and settled on what turned out to be the new Shuffle model. And it is bloody tiny. About the size and shape of a moderately showy tie-clip, it'd

Tim Chapmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16453592717592756707noreply@blogger.com0