I have to say, I'm not a huge Chavista. I'm *very* pleased with the social change and equality that he's brought to Venezuela, but I've just got a thing about any model of politics that is ultimately hostage to the good intentions of just one guy. But he's come out with the goods on the world food crisis, calling it 'a massacre of the poor'. He's dead right, of course. What gets to me is that even in a good year, 850 million people were going hungry, thousands of whom died. Was that not a massacre too?

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Posted on 23 April, 2008 - 06:35

Robert Zoellick isn't the only man who thinks the best way out of the current food crisis is yet more of the same policies that got us into it. Stephen Pollard over at The Spectator believes this too.

As my good friend Chris Brooke has charted over the years, Mr Pollard believes a number of absurd things. Throughout them all, a common denominator can be found: an inclination for prejudice over evidence.

So let's have a look at a country that has done exactly as Mr Pollard would have wanted, stripping away all its protections and exposing it to the glories of the free market in all its key food commodities.

The country looks like this:

... read more »

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Posted on 23 April, 2008 - 18:07

If I get time, I'll tell the whole story behind the rationing of rice in the United States. It's a sordid tale of export quotas, harvest failures and hoarding, and one of the very few times when the word 'quota' gets to be associated with something not entirely boring.

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Posted on 23 April, 2008 - 19:31