Caribbean Food Made Easy

I experience this at work...

Speaking of the British

I recently went on a business trip with three members of the British ruling classes. The late-night banter over drinks was predictably excellent. Sometimes, though, we had to work. When that happened, my companions showed up unprepared and without notes – and did just fine. No wonder, because their entire education had been a lesson in winging it. They knew that all you need to succeed is to speak well, and that’s what the British ruling classes do: they speak well.

What motivates achievers

Whither the judiciary

I wonder how the US and UK judiciaries differ. The U.S. Supreme Court judges are (expected to be) political actors. Judicial activism goes by many guises (it is easier to defend a static "original" constitution when one's goal is to defend inequality, and make acceptable the status quo)...

A young couple fall in love and marry. She is British; he is Chilean. Because they are both under 21, immigration rules, which set out Home Office policy, forbid him to settle here with his wife, who has a university place and a promising career ahead. The purpose of the rule is to inhibit the importation of spouses by forced marriage. Forced marriage is a serious matter meriting determined government action, but there is nothing to link the vast majority of young couples affected by the rule with it. The young couple bring judicial review proceedings. The impact of the rule on their right to marry and to live as a family is manifest. The rule itself has a lawful purpose, but the Home Office accepts that it has no bearing on them. How could the courts decide whether the impact on the couple was legitimate without considering in detail the justification for the rule itself? That is what both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court did. Had they not done so, the home secretary’s case would have gone unheard. All but one of the judges decided that the impact on the individuals before them was out of proportion to the policy objective. The result was not to stifle policy initiatives designed to inhibit forced marriages; these remain a matter for government alone. It was to ensure that such initiatives conformed to the law by not impacting disproportionately on individuals. This is a critical linkage which recurs in the now well developed law of legitimate expectation, which sometimes requires government to honour its promises even when its policy has legitimately shifted.

Judicial Politics

Political and Economic Exigencies in Republican China

From Sino-Americana, by Perry Anderson (London Review of Books, 2012), Vol. 34 No. 3 · 9 February 2012, pages 20-22

"The historical reality was that no outstanding leaders emerged from the confused morass of the KMT in the Republican period. "

"The military clique that ruled Guangxi, on the border with Indochina, were better generals and ran a more progressive and efficient government, but their province was too poor and remote for them to be able to compete successfully against Chiang." ( whom was based in Shanghai and Zhejiang, and the surrounding Yangtze delta region, where he cultivated connections in both criminal and business worlds, in what was by far the richest and most industrialised zone in China)."

Normalization of Asian-American perceptions and power relations still have long ways to go...

 “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”

Harvard Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe