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Archive: Politics

Another attempt to start reading more

28 July 2010 23:59

Categories: Books, Economics, Personal, University

This week, I have decided to make another attempt at reading more books. I read stuff all the time, but almost all of it is on the web. A few hundred words at a time. Lots of breadth but not much depth.

I have never done much in the way of reading books. Fiction is not for me, so novels are more-or-less out of the question. However, I do enjoy reading non-fiction books. But I somehow never get the time to read them.

Time is the scarcest resource imaginable, and I have a tendency to build these backlogs. Not too long ago I wrote about the huge number of podcasts that are stuck in my backlog (I am just about getting that under control). I also have a small pile of CDs that I bought several months ago and still haven’t listened to, and a slightly smaller pile of DVDs from before Christmas that I still haven’t watched.

But books are the big daddy of my backlog. I have special shelf just for unread books! Currently, 15 books sit there. Some of them I must have got almost a decade ago.

I think they are perhaps the wrong books. How tempted am I to ever reopen the ten-year-old book about US radio stations that I started but didn’t finish? How about the two political books that I started but never finished? Or the two books about economics that I started but got bored of?

In the summer of 2006, between my second and third years at university, I went on a big drive to read economics books. I had begun to realise that I was struggling at economics, and decided to spend the summer reading less academic, more accessible economics book in an attempt to soak up some of the subject and hopefully become a better economist in third year.

I happened to read a blog post by Greg Mankiw called Summer reading list, which seemed to fit the bill perfectly. After a bit of research, I selected five books from the list and ordered them. Sadly, it took me a year to read one of them. I finished another of them last year. I started one of them this year but gave up, and two others sit on the shelf virtually unopened. (I finished Freakonomics very quickly, but I think I bought that afterwards.)

My lack of talent in economics became clearer in third year, when I performed abysmally. My motivation plummeted. I later bought the Penguin History of Economics, which was on the reading list for the History of Economic Thought course that I took. This, also, has been started but not finished.

For a while, my main plan was to get through these economics books, and the other books in my backlog, before buying any others. But having not done any reading for several months, I had to recognise that this wasn’t a good plan.

Before I completed my degree, I had already more-or-less made the decision not to pursue economics further. I was lucky enough to somehow get a 2:1, but mostly due to the politics courses and my dissertation. It was clear to me that I just wasn’t cut out for economics, even though I planned to maintain an interest in it.

But there was no point in pretending I was going to start reading these books. So I have decided to buy more books on different subjects and start reading them. Last week I acquired seven new books — six that I had bought, and one surprise gift. It’s a mixture of stuff — some about writing and editing, a humour book, some motorsport books that I will probably blast through, and… an economics book.

Well, I figured that since I liked Freakonomics so much, I would probably actually read Superfreakonomics. Wish me luck. I will keep my LibraryThing thing updated.

2 comments

When is a green flag not a green flag?

17 May 2010 22:32

Categories: *, Formula 1

Up until yesterday, it had been a good year for F1. The spotlight has been on the racetrack rather than the stewards’ room. It had even reached the stage where some people — including me — were asking if the stewards were being too lenient. Overall, it seems as though the reign of Jean Todt is much less of a nanny state.

Unfortunately, yesterday in Monaco that changed — and for a typical reason. The rules were simply badly-worded and too ambiguous. And that left plenty of room for two interpretations of the situation.

It is not often you will find me on the side of Michael Schumacher — especially since, the longer he continues being average, the more I can say “I told you so“. But I sympathise with him and the Mercedes team in this instance.

What is the new rule for?

The confusion arises from the introduction of a “Safety Car line” for the first time this year. This means that drivers can start overtaking more or less as soon as the Safety Car peels in, rather than having to wait until passing the start line.

I think this has been a slightly under-advertised rule change. I first learnt about it during the Chinese Grand Prix when cars were passing each other into the final corner of the lap during a race restart. So the explanation for the introduction of the Safety Car line is unclear to me.

I assume the idea is just to get the race back under way again as quickly as possible. In that case the idea gets my approval, even though I liked the idea that there was skill involved in timing your restart perfectly for the start / finish line. I remember particularly Fernando Alonso really showing up Jenson Button at a restart during the 2006 Australian Grand Prix — still one of my favourite Alonso moments.

What a good idea, too, it would have been if this rule had been brought in as a result of last year’s Australian Grand Prix finishing behind the Safety Car. Allowing the drivers to race towards the finish line, rather than form an orderly queue towards it, would be a good way of maintaining the excitement of a motor race until the end, rather than allowing it to fizzle out like Australia 2009.

It seems as though article 40.13 is specifically designed to prohibit this though. I would be interested to learn of the rationale for this. It seems to me that it would be a particularly good idea to use a device like the Safety Car line only on the final lap — not on every lap except the final lap!

The return of Formula None

I keep coming back to the concept of Formula None. This is the curious phenomenon whereby the powers-that-be in F1 decide to outlaw anything that comes dangerously close to becoming motor racing.

Michael Schumacher’s move on Fernando Alonso was an incredible piece of opportunistic driving. It brought an exciting twist to the final lap. Then again, it becomes less special when you realise that Alonso wasn’t even thinking that he would have to defend.

I do find it a shame that, in a race which saw no position changes whatsoever in the final 48 laps, the one successful overtaking manoeuvre has been deemed to be illegal — and for slightly unclear reasons.

Differing interpretations of article 40.13

The contentious rule, Article 40.13 of the Sporting Regulations, reads as follows:

If the race ends whilst the safety car is deployed it will enter the pit lane at the end of the last lap and the cars will take the chequered flag as normal without overtaking.

Looking at the wording of this rule, it is in fact little surprise that it has caused confusion, since it is so badly worded. For one thing, it talks about something that should happen before the end of the race if a particular state is true at the end of the race.

You may safely assume that a race will end under “Safety Car deployed” conditions if the Safety Car is on track for the final lap. But you nevertheless need time-travel skills from the top drawer in order to carry out the instructions in the sequence that the FIA regulations request.

I admit that is a pedantic point. The real issue is in the definition of “Safety Car deployed”. It is clear now that the rules say that Safety Car conditions effectively end when your car passes the Safety Car line on the lap in which the Safety Car enters the pits. For some reason — unexplained — this is seemingly different on the final lap.

We must now turn to whether — theoretically — the 79th lap of this 78 lap race would have seen the Safety Car continue on the track rather than peel into the pits. This is key to understanding whether or not the race finished under Safety Car conditions.

It seems to me as though a message on the timing screens declaring that the Safety Car will pit in this lap, that could seal the deal. However, this may just be a procedural message, notifying teams and television viewers that the Safety Car will pit, even though Safety Car conditions will not technically end.

Perhaps, then, the “Track clear” message will underline the idea that our theoretical 79th lap would run under green flag conditions, and not Safety Car conditions.

If after that there was a shred of doubt, turn your eyes to the marshal posts, where you see a marshal merrily waving a green flag, just next to a big green flashing light (which is operated by Race Control). Surely a green flag always, always, means “racing”.

To me, it is absurd to throw out green flags, and yet prohibit overtaking. Even from a safety point of view, it is contradictory to what drivers are surely always told. Green means you can race safely; yellows mean you must slow down and not overtake. Apparently now green means “cruise to the finish line and don’t overtake — but only if you’re on the last lap, otherwise you can race safely.”

Are the green flags just for show? Surely if the intention of article 40.13 is to prevent racing in the last few hundred yards of a race just after the Safety Car has pulled in to the pits, the flag should still be yellow.

Looking back to that last Safety Car finish in Australia last year, you can clearly see marshals holding out “SC” boards and waving yellow flags as Jenson Button cruises his way towards the finish line. So why has the procedure been confusingly changed this season?

The decision was far from clear-cut

In many senses then, Mercedes and Michael Schumacher has a pretty strong case for claiming that racing conditions — “green flag” conditions — had resumed.

It seems as though their interpretation of the rule was unique. Certainly, Fernando Alonso had been told by Ferrari not to race. Lewis Hamilton was so surprised at Schumacher’s move that he went on the radio to enquire about it.

According to Andrew Benson:

This interpretation was shared by all the team managers bar that of Mercedes – I understand that upon seeing Schumacher’s move every single one of them got in touch with race director Charlie Whiting to say it was not allowed.

But the teams appear to sympathise with the Mercedes team’s point regarding green flags, with Jonathan Legard reporting that Mercedes have “support from other teams” on this issue, and that the procedure may be reviewed.

Some have tried to suggest that the rule is clear. In fact, it is not clear at all, particularly when the procedure — to throw out false green flags — is so confusing.

The fact that it took the stewards approximately two and a half hours to announce their decision denotes that the decision was far from clear-cut. It seems as though there has been a major cock-up in the FIA’s implementation of this new Safety Car system. As they might say in the areas surrounding Jean Todt’s office in Place de la Concorde, plus ça change…

(Image nicked from Alexj2002 at Digital Spy and the short guy in the white shirt.)

14 comments

Au revoir Renault?

5 November 2009 01:22

Categories: News, Opinion

On top of the exits of Bridgestone and Toyota came news that Renault had held an emergency board meeting to discuss their future in Formula 1. According to Andrew Benson at the BBC:

The French car company was considering whether to remain in the sport with its own team, switch to simply being an engine supplier or quit altogether.

Were Renault to pull out, it would conclude the removal of all of the major manufacturer teams in F1. Honda, BMW and Toyota have all gone in the past year. Renault are now seriously considering leaving.

In terms of manufacturer involvement, that would leave engine suppliers Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari. Both Mercedes and Ferrari are as close to being permanent fixtures as it comes in F1. Mercedes have been involved in F1 uninterrupted since 1993. With their increased involvement in Brawn, they look set to stick around. Ferrari have been in F1 since the beginning in 1950 and were they to leave it would be the end of F1. As such, you can more-or-less exclude both Mercedes and Ferrari from the list of manufacturers at risk of leaving F1.

I have to admit that I am wary of what Renault might do. I always suspected that Renault would be the first manufacturer to leave, certainly since Carlos Ghosn took over there. Now they are effectively the last one remaining. That is a surprise. Does it make it more likely for them to stay in the long run? Or is this the opportunity to join the queue of companies leaving the sport without looking a bit silly like Honda did?

There are more questions. Was Max Mosley right all along to push forward with his anti-manufacturer proposals? His justification was that manufacturers might leave with no warning, so it was wise to slash costs, freeze engines and neuter the sport in all sorts of ways. Now that manufacturers are leaving in droves, it looks like he may have been right.

The alternative possibility is that the changes he has forced through, along with the screeds of bad publicity it caused, have fundamentally made the sport less attractive. The manufacturers could well have preferred a breakaway than live with the FIA’s vision. But the FIA’s vision is what we’ve got. Ferrari certainly have their own views.

The thing is, manufacturers are always fickle. They always have been, and always will be. They will leave at the drop of a hat if it no longer forms part of their marketing strategy. Motorsport is not their core business. At the end of the day, if they won’t sell on Monday, why should they bother trying to win on Sunday?

But it was Max Mosley who originally moulded F1 into a sport dominated by manufacturers. He said that teams like Williams were not his vision of F1′s future. Now Williams is the model of the sort of team that will occupy around half of the grid next year.

In a sense, you can see this current phase as the F1 equivalent of a market correction. The bubble has burst. But while it seems painful now, this process paves the way for a more stable situation.

Throughout its history, Formula 1 has had a healthy mixture of manufacturer involvement and privateer passion. In recent years, the scales had tipped a bit too far towards the manufacturers, which drowned out the privateers to an almost dangerous extent.

F1 had become the plaything of manufacturers and multi-trillionaires. Let us not forget that alongside the likes of Honda and Toyota, businessmen such as Dietrich Mateschitz and Vijay Mallya — who have more money than they know what to do with — have bankrolled F1 teams to success. You will notice that, ignoring the ‘For Sale’ sign outside Toro Rosso (which isn’t very prominent), these teams have remained in F1, unlike the manufacturers.

They are a bit more like privateers in the traditional sense. They don’t want to sell cars, though they may want to sell drinks. But in a way they are in F1 because they are attracted to it as a sport, just as people like Frank Williams and Ken Tyrrell were. Manufacturers just do it because they feel like they should.

Next year there might be too few manufacturers. For there to be just three companies supplying engines would be a situation almost as unsustainable as what has happened up to this year. Cosworth may be crossing their fingers though. Their business model might work if they supply more teams.

But I can see Renault playing a happy role as an engine supplier, even if the Renault F1 team is put up for sale. I am certain that there would be a lot of interest from serious people wanting to buy the team. Despite the turmoil of this year’s scandal, and the fact that the team has gone off the boil for the past few years, this is a team that has the facilities and the capabilities to win World Championships.

I would be upset to see Renault leave the sport. I have a bit of a soft spot for them. Toyota were cold and clinical, on top of being comically bad considering their budgets.

Honda were always a bit of a fairweather presence. They took over BAR more-or-less because there was no-one else to do it after tobacco companies left the sport. Then they set up Super Aguri because they were scared to sack Takuma Sato properly. While many were attracted to Super Aguri for their pluck and while struggling at the back in difficult circumstances, it should never be forgotten that Super Aguri was always a crass and expensive publicity stunt.

Renault, though, have real heritage. They have a history in the shape of their involvement in the sport in the 1970s and 1980s. And the current incarnation of the team has been notably successful, mostly for being the one team that has been able to put up a sustained fight against Ferrari in this decade by beating the Scuderia two years in a row.

Here’s hoping that Renault don’t decide to depart. I am especially hopeful for Robert Kubica, a hugely talented driver who after being put through the wringer at BMW this year does not need this again. But, unlike the other teams, I have a feeling that the future of the Enstone-based squad will be perfectly safe no matter who owns it.

11 comments

Now we know the truth about "crashgate"

15 September 2009 23:39

Categories: Opinion

With the most recent revelations about the allegations surrounding Renault, all is becoming clear. It is just another one of Max Mosley’s power games — his parting shot, if you will. Having dispensed with enemy number one, Ron Dennis, earlier on in the year, Mosley has moved on to target number two: Flavio Briatore.

This is the inescapable conclusion one reaches when digesting the fact that Pat Symonds has been offered immunity if he “tells the truth” or, perhaps more accurately, in return for landing Flav in the shit whether it’s true or not. The scheme seems particularly odd given that most of the evidence thus far appears to implicate only Nelsinho Piquet and Pat Symonds for concocting any scheme that may have existed.

Even Piquet himself in his statement to the FIA seems reticent to directly accuse Flavio Briatore of concocting a conspiracy. Piquet only talks about Briatore’s presence in a meeting in which Symonds and Piquet discuss the crash strategy:

The proposal to deliberately cause an accident was made to me shortly before the race took place, when I was summoned by Mr. Briatore and Mr. Symonds in Mr. Briatore’s office. Mr. Symonds, in the presence of Mr. Briatore, asked me if I would be willing to sacrifice my race for the team by “causing a safety car”.

Instead, Nelsinho Piquet’s ire for Briatore is based on the fact that Briatore was reluctant to renew his contract. Boo hoo! Martin Brundle isn’t terribly impressed with that line of reasoning:

His rationale is that his contractual option hadn’t been taken the previous month so he was stressed and wanted to please the team. Try waiting the whole winter to sign a race-by-race contract days before the first grand prix of the season — that’s stress, but still not enough to crash a car intentionally.

I must agree with this. Normally, I would think that the normal course of action for a driver trying to renew his contract would be to improve his performances, not go around deliberately crashing.

For me, the only smoking gun we have seen so far is the reluctance of Pat Symonds to answer some of the questions the FIA investigators asked him. He was very reticent to discuss any plans he may have made with Piquet, while at the same time the idea was discussed. Symonds says it was Piquet who came up with the idea, while Piquet alleges that Symonds went as far as to specify on which lap and corner Piquet should crash.

Other evidence is inconclusive. The telemetry, which reveals that Piquet instinctively lifted but later applied full throttle while his rear wheels were spinning during the crash, is described by Symonds as “very unusual data”. But Piquet was no stranger to crashing. Meanwhile, the pit wall communications reveal little interesting, apart from an anxiety on the part of Piquet to know which lap he was on, and the fact that the team was concerned about Piquet’s condition following the crash.

So the evidence so far is that Piquet claims to have deliberately caused a crash. Symonds has acknowledged that a discussion took place, but refuses to talk any more about it. So where does Briatore fit in with all this?

We are now in the ludicrous situation where the two people who appear to be implicated the most have been offered immunity. Of those accused, that leaves just Briatore, against whom there appears to be very little evidence. It is surely not a coincidence that Max Mosley sees Flavio Briatore as an enemy.

There are other interesting aspects about the FIA’s behaviour over this scandal. Despite Max Mosley’s claim that he is greatly concerned about the leaks, The Times‘s Ed Gorman reveals that all of these leaks have come from the FIA! That newspaper would know — it is a common leaking outlet for both Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone.

Surely, Ed Gorman suggests, it is no coincidence that this entire scandal has overshadowed Ari Vatanen’s campaign to become FIA President. Mosley has made no secret of the fact that he would prefer his ally Jean Todt to replace him in the role, plumbing even his already-extraordinarily low depths to endorse Todt on FIA letterhead.

Vatanen has struggled to make headway in the media against the weight of the Mosley/Todt machine and recently his efforts to have his voice heard have been drowned out by leaks on the Renault case, widely thought to be from the FIA, and by strategically placed FIA announcements on the scandal.

I have to confess that I am not convinced by Ari Vatanen. To me, he seems like a failed MEP who is seeking attention and looking for a new purpose in life. His campaign has seemed ill-prepared in comparison to Jean Todt who has clearly been waiting to fill this role for a very long time. But what Todt has going against him is his anti-sporting record while at Peugeot and Ferrari, and the fact that his campaign has been unfairly advantaged by the FIA, which appears to be corrupt from tip to toe.

This is all turning out to be very convenient for the Mosley–Todt camp. Mosley has spent much of the past year trying to edge the manufacturers out of F1 (mere years after he lambasted the Williams-style model which he now apparently thinks is the life and soul of the sport!). He is clearly not good friends with Briatore, and is doing his very best to bring Briatore down. Very interesting that this comes mere months after he successfully brought Ron Dennis down, as though Mosley realised that this year was his last chance to do it. The Todt advantage is the icing on the cake.

I really am sick of the FIA. If an actual government behaved like this, there would be riots on the streets.

21 comments

Button's bounce back

14 September 2009 21:01

Categories: Report

This season never ceases to amaze me. The racing hasn’t always been the best, but the outcomes have seldom been predictable. At first, the utter dominance of Brawn, and Button in particular, was unbelievable. They were unstoppable, and it took longer for the other teams to catch up.

Then when the other teams caught up, it looked like Red Bull had the pound seats. But in fact the whole thing unravelled for Red Bull and we instead saw a run of six different drivers winning six different races. That hasn’t happened since 1985.

Throughout that period, Button had underperformed. And despite maintaining his Houdini-like grip on the Championship lead, he appeared on the back foot. He faced questions over how he was handling the pressure of fighting for the Championship, and lost his cool when asked a direct question about it by Ed Gorman of The Times.

He turned up at Monza apparently reinvigorated. It is said that he changed his approach. Instead of worrying about defending the Championship, he was thinking of it was a five race championship in which he had a 16 point head-start. His tail is now up again, and this weekend he was part of a great Brawn revival.

I have to confess that I didn’t predict Brawn doing well at Monza. After all, at Spa-Francorchaps, a circuit with similar characteristics, Brawn were stuck firmly in the midfield. But I guess the hard braking zones, coupled with the awesome power of the Mercedes engine, played straight into their hands.

It was a disciplined approach from Brawn, who shunned headline-grabbing table-topping throughout the weekend. They instead went for a one-stop strategy, which left them occupying row 3 of the grid, but played into their hands massively during the race.

The only problem for Jenson Button was the fact that it was Rubens Barrichello who won the race. But despite having his best race since Turkey, Button has only lost two points from his lead — which is more-or-less the same sort of drop he has had from most of the past six races.

At the same time, Red Bull had yet another disastrous weekend. Mark Webber’s race was over after a first-lap tangle with Robert Kubica through the tight Roggia chicane. Meanwhile, Vettel lacked pace and could only score one point. The chance of a Red Bull driver winning the Championship has significantly diminished. Vettel has a 26 point deficit with only four races to go.

However, the most noteworthy part of the race was probably when Lewis Hamilton crashed on the final lap while he was running in third. The odd thing about it is that there is no immediately apparent reason for the crash. It seems that Hamilton just pushed a bit too hard. He was certainly pushing very hard all race, but you have to wonder why he thought he had a chance of catching Button with so little of the race remaining.

Some people like the fact that Hamilton is an aggressive driver, and I agree that it is more fun to watch than a more conservative driver who might settle for third. But this kind of needless mistake is something that Hamilton is particularly prone to, and it is what, for me, stops him from being a truly great driver. He needs the maturity to realise when is the right time to be aggressive rather than the simple “always push hard” approach.

You look at a race weekend like this and it is no surprise that Mercedes appears to want to back Brawn rather than McLaren in future. The Mercedes engine was clearly the class of the field, and McLaren had the perfect opportunity to make it work for them.

Fuel-corrected, Heikki Kovalainen was fast enough to be on pole position. But he had a horrendous first lap, getting swallowed up by car after car, and losing four places when he really should have gained places because of his kers. Looking at his strategy, many tipped Kovalainen to win. But he looked very average during the race and could only finish 6th.

It further cements my view that Kovalainen is a driver who is simply unable to win. His one career victory was inherited after Massa’s engine blew. Fair enough, but he can’t race his way to the front. His underwhelming performance at Monza this year is very reminiscent of last year’s Italian Grand Prix. That was another one that Kovalainen should have won, but he was unable to challenge Sebastian Vettel in the Toro Rosso.

Oh, McLaren. If they’re not getting themselves embroiled in political scandals as a result of their overly complicated interpretations of the rules, they are messing up their strategy or making some awful error in the pitlane. As for their drivers, one is too aggressive for his own good and makes high-profile mistakes, while the other one is too slow to ever be in a position to make mistakes.

It’s interesting to compare McLaren’s driver line-up with Brawn’s. The Brawn pair have both been written off in the past, yet this year they are the class of the field. Meanwhile, McLaren’s highly-rated drivers of moderate experience end up looking like the Chuckle Brothers in comparison. It seems like Mercedes’s shift in focus towards Brawn can’t come soon enough.

The other Mercedes-powered team, Force India, continued its good form from Spa-Francorchamps. I suppose on reflection Force India may have cause to be disappointed. On the back of Fisichella’s scintillating performance in Belgium, Sutil’s 4th place looks relatively subdued. Meanwhile, Liuzzi’s retirement with transmission failure while he was looking set for a solid result must count as a missed opportunity.

Mind you, how impressive was Liuzzi this weekend? Liuzzi is a star of the future of the past, having once been tipped for a drive at Ferrari while he impressed the world in F3000. But he ended up getting swallowed and spat out by the Red Bull driver development juggernaut, where he was messed about by the management.

But it should be remembered that Liuzzi held his own against Sebastian Vettel while at Toro Rosso. The talent is there but has been wasted over the years. His performance at Monza surely cements his future at Force India or perhaps even a better team.

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