Michael Skapinker in The FT
From 1999 until 2003, the UK’s Channel 4 screened an Emmy award-winning female-led comedy series called Smack the Pony. In one sketch a woman called Jackie O’Farrell (played by Doon Mackichan) marches into an adult education centre somewhere in England, sits down and tries to register for a course in speaking English as a foreign language.
But you already speak English, the puzzled course organiser (played by Sally Phillips) says. “I only speak English English,” Jackie replies. “I don’t know how to speak it as a foreign language.” She travels a lot, she says. “Foreign people can’t understand a word I’m saying.”
Hilarious, except that Jackie was ahead of her time. It is now widely recognised that many people don’t understand what native English speakers are saying. Widely recognised by non-native English speakers that is. The Brits, Americans, Australians and others who have been speaking English all their lives are largely oblivious to the incomprehension they leave behind at conferences, business meetings and on conference calls.
“The CEO gave me the most almighty bollocking,” I heard a British speaker tell a conference in Berlin a few years back. “I spent time at London Business School cutting my teeth,” I heard another Brit tell a room full of Dutch, French and German speakers in Amsterdam this year. “From the horse’s mouth,” yet another UK speaker proclaimed to a conference I went to in Dubai last month.
I don’t know what the audiences made of all this. A 2015 survey of a Nato working group tactfully observed that “native speakers of English are not always good at adjusting their English to the manner and level that is used”.
Regular readers of this column know that I have been exercised by native English speaker ignorance on this issue for years. There are thousands of courses, books and videos on how to be a better communicator, but almost nothing on how native speakers should speak English to foreigners, largely because, like the Smack the Pony course organiser, most native anglophones don’t realise they have a problem.
So I was pleased to be sent a pocket book (where I found the Nato study) called Is That Clear: Effective Communications in a Multilingual World by Zanne Gaynor and Kathryn Alevizos, two teachers of business English. They describe the book as “easy-to-follow tips for adapting your English”.
As well as telling native speakers to slow down when they speak to international audiences, Gaynor and Alevizos have advice on two issues I have addressed before: avoiding idiomatic language and being careful with the use of phrasal verbs — a verb plus a preposition — which many non-native speakers find hard to understand.
Different prepositions can change the verb’s meaning — break in, break up, break down. The authors also point out that the same phrasal verb can have different meanings: put someone down, put down a deposit, put down the cat, put the baby down.
They add other pieces of advice. I have written about the problems that colloquial language can cause non-native speakers: “shall we crack on then?” But the authors point to the confusion that polite language can use too — “to be honest, I was a bit upset he arrived so late” sounds convoluted to a non-native speaker. “I was angry he was late” is clearer.
Another issue is the phrasing of questions. “You don’t have time for a quick chat, do you?” is tough for a non-native speaker because it starts with a negative. “Do you have time for a chat?” is clearer.
The authors advise cutting down on “filler words” such as “as it were”, “actually” and “basically” because they cloud the central message. I am not sure about this. I find filler words helpful when I hear them used in other languages, such as finalement in French. Not only do they slow the speaker down; having heard them often I can also use them myself when I speak, which gives me more time to think of what to say next.
But the authors do have sound advice on slides. Don’t fill slides with words. Native speakers find them hard enough to read; second language speakers find them even harder. But do put numbers on slides, they say. Numbers can be hard to understand in your second language and seeing the figures on a slide makes it easier.
Tuesday, 3 December 2019
Monday, 2 December 2019
Sunday, 1 December 2019
America is not the land of the free but one of monopolies so predatory they imperil the nation
Its growing economic crisis is in contrast to a thriving and newly innovative Europe writes Will Hutton in The Guardian
Illustration by Dom McKenzie
Tomorrow, President Trump arrives in London for the annual Nato summit. Despite the boasting and the trappings of superpower status, he is an emissary from a country whose economy and society are in increasing difficulty, and whose global leadership is under challenge not just from the usual suspect, China, but from Europe. With the unerring capacity to be wrong that defines the Brexit right, Britain is about to decouple itself from a continental economy beginning to get things right, and hook up with one that is palpably beginning to fail.
This is not the conventional wisdom. The EU is sclerotic, undynamic, stifled by quasi-socialist red tape, and hostile to insurgent startups. It is so degenerate it cannot even defend itself – as Trump will undoubtedly remind its leaders over the next two days. The US is the mirror opposite. A free trade agreement post 31 January with the US is the number one strategic policy aim for Brexit Britain – unshackling the UK from the declining old, and embracing the English-speaking, dynamic new. Best be nice to “the Donald”.
Except the latest research demonstrates the reverse is true. Britain is about to make a vast mistake. In the recently published The Great Reversal, leading economist Thomas Philippon of New York University and member of the advisory panel of the New York Federal Reserve, mounts a devastating attack on the conventional wisdom, so perfectly embodied by the witless Boris Johnson. The news is that over the last 20 years per capita EU incomes have grown by 25% while the US’s have grown 21%, with the US growth rate decelerating while Europe’s has held steady – indeed accelerating in parts of Europe. What is going on?
Philippon’s answer is simple. The US economy is becoming increasingly harmed by ever less competition, with fewer and fewer companies dominating sector after sector – from airlines to mobile phones. Market power is the most important concept in economics, he says. When firms dominate a sector, they invest and innovate less, they peg or raise prices, and they make super-normal profits by just existing (what economists call “economic rent”). So it is that mobile phone bills in the US are on average $100 a month, twice that of France and Germany, with the same story in broadband. Profits per passenger airline mile in the US are twice those in Europe. US healthcare is impossibly expensive, with drug companies fixing prices twice as high or even higher than those in Europe; health spending is 18% of GDP. Google, Amazon and Facebook have been allowed to become supermonopolies, buying up smaller challengers with no obstruction.
This monopolising process gums up everything. Investment in the US has been falling for 20 years. Because prices stay high, wages buy less, so workers’ lifestyles, unless they borrow, get squeezed in real terms while those at the top get paid ever more with impunity. Inequality escalates to unsupportable levels. Even life expectancy is now falling across the US.
But why has this happened now? Philippon has a deadly answer. A US political campaign costs 50 times more than one in Europe in terms of money spent for every vote cast. But this doesn’t just distort the political process. It is the chief cause of the US economic crisis.
Corporations want a return on their money, and the payback is protection from any kind of regulation, investigation or anti-monopoly policy that might strike at their ever-growing market power. Boeing, for example, ensured – as one of the US’s biggest lobbyists – that regulation was friendly to its plans to shoehorn heavier engines on to a plane not designed for them – the fatal shortcut behind the two crashes of the 737 Max 8. Philippon shows this is systemic; how both at federal and state level ever higher campaign donations are correlated with ever fewer actions against monopoly, price fixing and bad corporate behaviour.
In Europe, the reverse is true. It is much harder for companies to buy friendly regulators. The EU’s competition authorities are much more genuinely politically independent than those in the US – witness the extraordinary fines levied on Google or the refusal this February to allow Siemens to merge with the French giant Alstom. As a result, it is Europe, albeit with one or two laggards such as Italy, that is bit by bit developing more competitive markets, more innovation and more challenge to incumbents while at the same time sustaining education and social spending so important to ordinary people’s lives.
Even starting up businesses is now easier. France is generating multiple hi-tech startups, with unemployment falling. Parts of Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam or even Milan are now rivalling San Francisco’s Bay area.
The EU’s regulations are better thought out, so in industry after industry it is becoming the global standard setter. Its corporate governance structures are better. And last week, to complete the picture, Christine Lagarde, the incoming president of the European Central Bank, in the most important pronouncement of the year, said the environment would be at the heart of European monetary policy. In other words, the ECB is to underwrite a multitrillion-euro green revolution. In short – bet on Europe not the US.
Thus Jeremy Corbyn, seizing on leaked documents showing how US trade negotiators want UK drug prices to rise to US levels, is on to something much bigger than the threat to the NHS, fatal though that is. Any trade deal with the US will require the UK to accept the protections that are making US capitalism so sclerotic, predatory and high priced – while dissociating itself from a European capitalism that is not only beginning to outperform America’s, but so much better reflects our values.
This election is set to seal not just the geopolitical but geo-economic mistake of Britain’s recent history. The tragedy is that our national conversation is hardly aware of how high the stakes have become.
Tomorrow, President Trump arrives in London for the annual Nato summit. Despite the boasting and the trappings of superpower status, he is an emissary from a country whose economy and society are in increasing difficulty, and whose global leadership is under challenge not just from the usual suspect, China, but from Europe. With the unerring capacity to be wrong that defines the Brexit right, Britain is about to decouple itself from a continental economy beginning to get things right, and hook up with one that is palpably beginning to fail.
This is not the conventional wisdom. The EU is sclerotic, undynamic, stifled by quasi-socialist red tape, and hostile to insurgent startups. It is so degenerate it cannot even defend itself – as Trump will undoubtedly remind its leaders over the next two days. The US is the mirror opposite. A free trade agreement post 31 January with the US is the number one strategic policy aim for Brexit Britain – unshackling the UK from the declining old, and embracing the English-speaking, dynamic new. Best be nice to “the Donald”.
Except the latest research demonstrates the reverse is true. Britain is about to make a vast mistake. In the recently published The Great Reversal, leading economist Thomas Philippon of New York University and member of the advisory panel of the New York Federal Reserve, mounts a devastating attack on the conventional wisdom, so perfectly embodied by the witless Boris Johnson. The news is that over the last 20 years per capita EU incomes have grown by 25% while the US’s have grown 21%, with the US growth rate decelerating while Europe’s has held steady – indeed accelerating in parts of Europe. What is going on?
Philippon’s answer is simple. The US economy is becoming increasingly harmed by ever less competition, with fewer and fewer companies dominating sector after sector – from airlines to mobile phones. Market power is the most important concept in economics, he says. When firms dominate a sector, they invest and innovate less, they peg or raise prices, and they make super-normal profits by just existing (what economists call “economic rent”). So it is that mobile phone bills in the US are on average $100 a month, twice that of France and Germany, with the same story in broadband. Profits per passenger airline mile in the US are twice those in Europe. US healthcare is impossibly expensive, with drug companies fixing prices twice as high or even higher than those in Europe; health spending is 18% of GDP. Google, Amazon and Facebook have been allowed to become supermonopolies, buying up smaller challengers with no obstruction.
This monopolising process gums up everything. Investment in the US has been falling for 20 years. Because prices stay high, wages buy less, so workers’ lifestyles, unless they borrow, get squeezed in real terms while those at the top get paid ever more with impunity. Inequality escalates to unsupportable levels. Even life expectancy is now falling across the US.
But why has this happened now? Philippon has a deadly answer. A US political campaign costs 50 times more than one in Europe in terms of money spent for every vote cast. But this doesn’t just distort the political process. It is the chief cause of the US economic crisis.
Corporations want a return on their money, and the payback is protection from any kind of regulation, investigation or anti-monopoly policy that might strike at their ever-growing market power. Boeing, for example, ensured – as one of the US’s biggest lobbyists – that regulation was friendly to its plans to shoehorn heavier engines on to a plane not designed for them – the fatal shortcut behind the two crashes of the 737 Max 8. Philippon shows this is systemic; how both at federal and state level ever higher campaign donations are correlated with ever fewer actions against monopoly, price fixing and bad corporate behaviour.
In Europe, the reverse is true. It is much harder for companies to buy friendly regulators. The EU’s competition authorities are much more genuinely politically independent than those in the US – witness the extraordinary fines levied on Google or the refusal this February to allow Siemens to merge with the French giant Alstom. As a result, it is Europe, albeit with one or two laggards such as Italy, that is bit by bit developing more competitive markets, more innovation and more challenge to incumbents while at the same time sustaining education and social spending so important to ordinary people’s lives.
Even starting up businesses is now easier. France is generating multiple hi-tech startups, with unemployment falling. Parts of Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam or even Milan are now rivalling San Francisco’s Bay area.
The EU’s regulations are better thought out, so in industry after industry it is becoming the global standard setter. Its corporate governance structures are better. And last week, to complete the picture, Christine Lagarde, the incoming president of the European Central Bank, in the most important pronouncement of the year, said the environment would be at the heart of European monetary policy. In other words, the ECB is to underwrite a multitrillion-euro green revolution. In short – bet on Europe not the US.
Thus Jeremy Corbyn, seizing on leaked documents showing how US trade negotiators want UK drug prices to rise to US levels, is on to something much bigger than the threat to the NHS, fatal though that is. Any trade deal with the US will require the UK to accept the protections that are making US capitalism so sclerotic, predatory and high priced – while dissociating itself from a European capitalism that is not only beginning to outperform America’s, but so much better reflects our values.
This election is set to seal not just the geopolitical but geo-economic mistake of Britain’s recent history. The tragedy is that our national conversation is hardly aware of how high the stakes have become.
WHY DO EXPATS VOTE DIFFERENTLY?
Nadeem F Paracha in the Dawn
Some nine years ago when, I was heading the media department of a British organisation, I got the chance to observe how most British expats in Pakistan voted in the UK 2010 parliamentary elections. Even though most of the Karachi-based British expats that I managed to talk to in this regard were somewhat reluctant to divulge which party they voted for, some eventually did tell.
Nine out of the 12 expats who agreed to reveal the party that they voted for, cast their votes for the Conservative Party. Two voted for the Liberal Democrats and just one claimed to have voted for the Labour Party. Two of them told me that, since the early 1980s, a majority of British expats around the world have preferred to vote for the Conservative Party. British expats have the right to vote in their country’s parliamentary elections, but this right lapses if the expat has remained resident outside the UK for more than 15 years.
Last year in Washington DC, during a round-table session that I attended on the electoral behaviour of expat Americans, most speakers were of the view that a majority of expat Americans tend to vote for the Republican Party. No significant data was shared to corroborate this, but some former US ambassadors attending the session claimed that most expat Americans working in Asian and South American countries vote for the Republican Party and that this has been the trend since 1980.
The session concluded that expats — at least American and British — were likely to vote for conservative parties. This is interesting, because over the last few years, there have been many reports published and columns written about expat Pakistanis and Indians overwhelmingly exhibiting support for centre-right parties such as the PTI and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Indian expats were given the right to vote in Indian elections only in 2010, but those holding dual nationalities still cannot. Pakistani expats were given this right in October 2018, during the by-elections. Whereas 7,461 expats registered online to vote, only 6,233 cast their votes.
The phenomenon of most Indian and Pakistani expats demonstrating support for the BJP and the PTI has been repeatedly observed by many, but never fully studied. The answers may lie in a hefty study published in the May 2019 issue of the Oxford Academic Journal.
The study conducted by two American political scientists, A.C. Goldberg and Simon Lanz, concentrated largely on European countries. But Goldberg and Lanz argue that the results of the study can be relevant for other countries as well. One of their conclusions was that the voting/support preferences of expats are often contrary to those at home.
This is because their social, political and economic contexts are different. An issue in the country of origin will have a more abstract impact on expats residing in a different environment, hundreds or thousands of miles away. The impact of the same issue on those living in the home country is more tangible and immediate. This might be the reason behind the somewhat different understanding of the issue among the two sets of voters.
An earlier 2006 study, by the Dutch economist Dr Jan Fidrmuc and econometrist Orla Doyle, came to the same conclusion after studying the voting behaviour of Czech and Polish migrants/expats in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. The results of this study indicated that the political preferences of immigrants change significantly because the migrants adapt to the norms and attitudes prevailing in the host country.
Fidrmuc and Doyle found that most Czech and Polish migrants living in European countries tended to vote for right-wing parties at home but, interestingly, those living in African and Middle-Eastern countries preferred left-leaning parties.
The economic and political environments in Europe and Africa and/or the Middle East differ. So expats/migrants in Europe, after experiencing the advantages of developed economies, are likely to understand ‘progress’ in their home country through the lens provided to them by their lived experience in developed countries. Thus they tend to support home parties promising progress along these lines.
But what about expats from developed countries opting to vote for conservative parties? Studies suggest that British and American expats voting for the Conservative Party and Republican Party largely vote to retain their countries’ rarely-changing external policies rather than the more fluid internal matters. They are more impacted by the foreign policies of their home countries than by their countries’ internal, more localised issues.
Findings of both the mentioned studies also more than allude to the fact that, outside the voting patterns of US and UK expats, expat voting can be fickle. Since most expats are likely to vote for the opposition, they can be quick to withdraw their support once the opposition comes to power and is slow to deliver.
Both PTI and BJP enjoyed overwhelming support from Pakistani and Indian expats before both were voted into power. However, the support for the two ruling parties is now receding at home, and there is restlessness within the pro-PTI and pro-BJP Pakistani and Indian diasporas respectively.
Indian PM Narendra Modi and Pakistani PM Imran Khan now apply separate rhetorics for their supporters within and outside the country. Outside their countries, to retain the diaspora’s attention and support, they have to continue sounding like they did when they were in the opposition, whereas the same rhetoric is now failing to stand up to a plethora of economic and political problems at home.
Indian historian Meera Nanda writes in The God Market that the changing worldview of the Indian middle classes (and diaspora) is being shaped by the “state-temple-corporate complex.” Rich Indians are heavily investing in this by fusing Hindu nationalism with modern economics. This combination excites the Indian diaspora and they identify it with Modi. But what happens when the corporate is finally swallowed by Hindu zealotry and leaves behind only Hindu nationalism?
On the other hand, what excited the Pakistani diaspora about PM Khan was the manner in which he tapped into the Pakistani diaspora’s engagement with contemporary identity politics, especially in the West. He did this by clubbing together displays of religiosity, anti-corruption tirades, populist post-colonialist rhetoric and lofty allusions to Scandinavian social democracy — which is curiously explained by him as an Islamic concept.
Whereas identity politics can lead to some awkward ethnic and sectarian tensions in Pakistan, it works well on the Pakistani diaspora. Therefore, the gap between the understanding of present-day Pakistani politics between the expats and the locals has continued to grow. Some locals have lamented that expats are still stuck in 2014, or in PTI’s more glamorous dharna years.
Some nine years ago when, I was heading the media department of a British organisation, I got the chance to observe how most British expats in Pakistan voted in the UK 2010 parliamentary elections. Even though most of the Karachi-based British expats that I managed to talk to in this regard were somewhat reluctant to divulge which party they voted for, some eventually did tell.
Nine out of the 12 expats who agreed to reveal the party that they voted for, cast their votes for the Conservative Party. Two voted for the Liberal Democrats and just one claimed to have voted for the Labour Party. Two of them told me that, since the early 1980s, a majority of British expats around the world have preferred to vote for the Conservative Party. British expats have the right to vote in their country’s parliamentary elections, but this right lapses if the expat has remained resident outside the UK for more than 15 years.
Last year in Washington DC, during a round-table session that I attended on the electoral behaviour of expat Americans, most speakers were of the view that a majority of expat Americans tend to vote for the Republican Party. No significant data was shared to corroborate this, but some former US ambassadors attending the session claimed that most expat Americans working in Asian and South American countries vote for the Republican Party and that this has been the trend since 1980.
The session concluded that expats — at least American and British — were likely to vote for conservative parties. This is interesting, because over the last few years, there have been many reports published and columns written about expat Pakistanis and Indians overwhelmingly exhibiting support for centre-right parties such as the PTI and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Indian expats were given the right to vote in Indian elections only in 2010, but those holding dual nationalities still cannot. Pakistani expats were given this right in October 2018, during the by-elections. Whereas 7,461 expats registered online to vote, only 6,233 cast their votes.
The phenomenon of most Indian and Pakistani expats demonstrating support for the BJP and the PTI has been repeatedly observed by many, but never fully studied. The answers may lie in a hefty study published in the May 2019 issue of the Oxford Academic Journal.
The study conducted by two American political scientists, A.C. Goldberg and Simon Lanz, concentrated largely on European countries. But Goldberg and Lanz argue that the results of the study can be relevant for other countries as well. One of their conclusions was that the voting/support preferences of expats are often contrary to those at home.
This is because their social, political and economic contexts are different. An issue in the country of origin will have a more abstract impact on expats residing in a different environment, hundreds or thousands of miles away. The impact of the same issue on those living in the home country is more tangible and immediate. This might be the reason behind the somewhat different understanding of the issue among the two sets of voters.
An earlier 2006 study, by the Dutch economist Dr Jan Fidrmuc and econometrist Orla Doyle, came to the same conclusion after studying the voting behaviour of Czech and Polish migrants/expats in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. The results of this study indicated that the political preferences of immigrants change significantly because the migrants adapt to the norms and attitudes prevailing in the host country.
Fidrmuc and Doyle found that most Czech and Polish migrants living in European countries tended to vote for right-wing parties at home but, interestingly, those living in African and Middle-Eastern countries preferred left-leaning parties.
The economic and political environments in Europe and Africa and/or the Middle East differ. So expats/migrants in Europe, after experiencing the advantages of developed economies, are likely to understand ‘progress’ in their home country through the lens provided to them by their lived experience in developed countries. Thus they tend to support home parties promising progress along these lines.
But what about expats from developed countries opting to vote for conservative parties? Studies suggest that British and American expats voting for the Conservative Party and Republican Party largely vote to retain their countries’ rarely-changing external policies rather than the more fluid internal matters. They are more impacted by the foreign policies of their home countries than by their countries’ internal, more localised issues.
Findings of both the mentioned studies also more than allude to the fact that, outside the voting patterns of US and UK expats, expat voting can be fickle. Since most expats are likely to vote for the opposition, they can be quick to withdraw their support once the opposition comes to power and is slow to deliver.
Both PTI and BJP enjoyed overwhelming support from Pakistani and Indian expats before both were voted into power. However, the support for the two ruling parties is now receding at home, and there is restlessness within the pro-PTI and pro-BJP Pakistani and Indian diasporas respectively.
Indian PM Narendra Modi and Pakistani PM Imran Khan now apply separate rhetorics for their supporters within and outside the country. Outside their countries, to retain the diaspora’s attention and support, they have to continue sounding like they did when they were in the opposition, whereas the same rhetoric is now failing to stand up to a plethora of economic and political problems at home.
Indian historian Meera Nanda writes in The God Market that the changing worldview of the Indian middle classes (and diaspora) is being shaped by the “state-temple-corporate complex.” Rich Indians are heavily investing in this by fusing Hindu nationalism with modern economics. This combination excites the Indian diaspora and they identify it with Modi. But what happens when the corporate is finally swallowed by Hindu zealotry and leaves behind only Hindu nationalism?
On the other hand, what excited the Pakistani diaspora about PM Khan was the manner in which he tapped into the Pakistani diaspora’s engagement with contemporary identity politics, especially in the West. He did this by clubbing together displays of religiosity, anti-corruption tirades, populist post-colonialist rhetoric and lofty allusions to Scandinavian social democracy — which is curiously explained by him as an Islamic concept.
Whereas identity politics can lead to some awkward ethnic and sectarian tensions in Pakistan, it works well on the Pakistani diaspora. Therefore, the gap between the understanding of present-day Pakistani politics between the expats and the locals has continued to grow. Some locals have lamented that expats are still stuck in 2014, or in PTI’s more glamorous dharna years.
Monday, 25 November 2019
Is Labour the answer to Capitalism's decline?
On Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys
Milton Friedman's pencil
On Milton Friedman's pencil story
Soviet Union
China
China
Soviet Union
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