Lenin's Tomb? More Like His Louis Vuitton Trunk

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 12/03/2013 02:10:00 PM
Talk about a marketing ploy gone bad: you are looking at a giant Louis Vuitton monogram-patterned building that was supposed to house an exhibition dedicated to the famous brand in Red Square. Say what you will about Vladimir Lenin, but his mausoleum featuring his embalmed remains has been there since 1924. In a way, it continues the Russian's morbid fascination with the communist legend. Sure the ultra-nationalists and old-style communists will of course venerate him, but even those who believe times have moved on retain affection for the human who put Russia on the course of being a superpower--at least for a handful of decades.

While various (usually high-end) retailers now ply their wares in Red Square, the giant Louis Vuitton trunk was apparently the last straw. Eventually, even its promoters decried the desecration wrought on this Russian landmark:
Suddenly, the enormous Louis Vuitton suitcase was just there, standing opposite Lenin's tomb and about the same size. Muscovites wondered why, then got angry. Patriots were insulted because Louis Vuitton is a foreign brand. "An alien, foreign firm's chest" is "blocking the view of Savior Tower and St. Basil's cathedral," ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky complained.

Communists were mad because of its proximity to Lenin's mausoleum, whose facade is only 78 feet wide, compared to the 100 feet-long, 30 feet-wide suitcase. Communist Party legislator Sergei Obukhov called the over-sized piece of luggage an "indecent" intrusion into a "sacred place." And liberals took offense on aesthetic grounds. "The LV suitcase in Red Square is a very honest statement, I think," actor Maxim Vitorgan wrote on Facebook. "LV has become a symbol of bad taste ... So everything is logical. Here it is, the goal, the dream ... And who cares if the view of the square is ruined and the architectural ensemble is broken up."

In the end, both the Kremlin and GUM, the upmarket department store that helped the French luxury conglomerate LVMH erect the monstrosity today demanded its removal.
Even the most jaded of Muscovites know that prices for luxury goods there exorbitant, so I don't quite get the point in mounting this exhibit aside from, indeed, making Louis Vuitton "a symbol of bad taste." Not that preserving a long-dead communist pioneer is the height of taste but...it's almost bad enough to make you want to staple your private parts to the cobblestone.
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Last Chance Saloon: WTO's Fate & This Week's Bali Meet

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 12/01/2013 03:55:00 PM
I just wanted to share the ICTSD's useful primer on the upcoming WTO meetings in Bali, Indonesia where the organization's fate as a credible negotiating forum hangs in the balance. The full report is available as a PDF file; below is the introduction to this crucial event:
Trade ministers are set to meet in the Indonesian island province of Bali from 3-6 December for the WTO’s Ninth Ministerial Conference, in a meeting that has been touted - for better or worse - as a turning point for the 159-member organisation. Yet on the eve of the conference, what will actually be on the agenda in Bali remains fluid.

Geneva-based negotiators have spent the last several months feverishly negotiating a small package of concessions [see my earlier post on it meager contents] that, if achieved, would mark the first multilateral trade deal since the WTO was formed in 1995. A deal in Bali, officials and observers alike had said throughout the year, would provide a major boost to the organisation’s credibility at what many have deemed to be a critical moment in its history. 
Days before the ministerial, however, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo confirmed that, despite a “tremendous effort” on behalf of the membership and some significant advances, they had not yet agreed on a deal to present to their ministers - leaving the fate of the Bali conference hanging in the balance.
Alike five years ago, India may play the spoiler by sinking the entire deal through kowtowing to its domestic agricultural lobbies:
Chief among those is India’s demand – affirmed at a cabinet meeting in New Delhi on Thursday – for a “peace clause”, intended to give another four years to negotiators to come up with new WTO rules for farm subsidies and the prices paid for staples bought as part of government programmes to supply food to the poor.

Other participants have accused India of backing down from an agreement struck earlier in November over that peace clause and thereby putting at risk a broader deal that would set about removing red tape at borders around the world and, advocates claim, add as must as $1tn to international trade. 
Cautious optimism holds going into next week; no outcome would result in outright despair, while an outcome would result in a welcome development. Still, prospects for a wider Doha deal are remote twelve years after it began.
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American Idiocy: Dying for Shopping on Black Friday

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 12/01/2013 09:04:00 AM
There are few things more pathetic than a consumerist automaton who lives to shop. This American disease has spread around the globe under the guise of various euphemisms--"economic efficiency," "free trade," "globalization," and so forth--but its symptoms are unmistakable. Today's Exhibit A is the phenomenon of "Black Friday," or the day after Thanksgiving when US retailers supposedly break even for the year and offer mega-deals to entice the American shopping classes.

Which would all be well and good if these mega-deals weren't as fake as the American Dream: to engineer "40% off," most retailers work backwards to come up with a suggested retail price (SRP) that the product is rarely if ever offered at:
The common assumption is that retailers stock up on goods and then mark down the ones that don't sell, taking a hit to their profits. But that isn't typically how it plays out. Instead, big retailers work backward with their suppliers to set starting prices that, after all the markdowns, will yield the profit margins they want. The red cardigan sweater with the ruffled neck on sale for more than 40% off at $39.99 was never meant to sell at its $68 starting price. It was designed with the discount built in. 
Being ever-so-gullible, the Yanquis lap up these frauds and are even willing to sacrifice life and limb joining the thronging masses. Witness reports of injuries and fatalities incurred by them last Friday in that all important life cause of, er, availing of larger "discounts":
  • In Chicago, a police officer shot a suspected shoplifter driving a car that was dragging a fellow officer at a Kohl's department store. The suspect and the dragged officer were treated in hospital for shoulder injuries. Three people were arrested, reports the Chicago Tribune
  • A shopper in Las Vegas who was carrying a big-screen TV home from a Target store on Thanksgiving was shot in the leg as he tried to wrestle the item back from a robber who had just stolen it from him at gunpoint, reports the Las Vegas Sun
  • At a southern California Walmart store, a police officer's wrist was broken as he tried to break up a fight between two men in the queue outside; there were two more fights over goods inside, reports the San Bernadino Sun
  • A 23-year-old man was doused with pepper spray and arrested after he allegedly attacked a police officer responding to an argument over a television at a Walmart in Garfield, New Jersey, reports the Star-Ledger
  • Despite Walmart's pledge to overhaul its crowd-control measures, scenes of mayhem such as this one were apparently filmed at a store in Fort Worth, Texas
  • Two arrests were made after a man was stabbed in an argument over a parking space at a Walmart in Virginia, reports local television station WVVA
Americans enjoy styling themselves as exemplars for the rest of us unenlightened colored peoples, but why the hell you would you like to be so shallow and live lives so pointless is beyond me.
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Conflict Minerals: Which Game Console is Most Violent?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/28/2013 07:52:00 AM
With the holiday season upon us and one semi-new (Nintendo) and two completely new (Microsoft and Sony) video game consoles on the market, consumer interest is . While you may be thinking of blasting away virtual opponents playing Call of Duty 107 or whatever version they have nowadays, pause for a moment and think of the more than 5 million persons estimated to have died in the Congo in various conflicts. For, many elements you find in consumer electronics--including video game consoles--are sourced from mineral-rich mines there: tantalum, tin and tungsten.

Instead of Call of Duty 107, Congo is home to true-to-life civil war, foreign invasions, warlords, child soldiers, sexual crimes and so on piled atop a humongous body count that is still increasing. To fund these endless wars, proceeds from minerals--"conflict minerals"--have picked up their share of the (bloody) tab. While there are monitoring mechanisms in place that allow consumer electronics firms to gauge their reliance on dodgy Congolese sources, compliance is oftentimes voluntary and thus subject to wide variation.

So, which then are the most peaceful and violent video game consoles in real life? Watchdog group Raise Hope for Congo ranks MNCs by the measures they use in ensuring their products do not contain conflict minerals. Note that scoring high or low does not necessarily mean that their products have a high or low proportion of Congo-sourced conflict minerals, but rather that its share cannot be accurately determined because they do not keep tabs.

Microsoft (X-Box One) is greenlighted with a score of 30, meaning it has "taken proactive steps to trace and audit their supply chains, pushed for some aspects of legislation, exercised leadership in industry-wide efforts, started to help Congo develop a clean trade." Sony (Playstation 4) scores a 27 having joined some global initiatives but has not yet traced its supply chain for links to Congolese conflict minerals. Worst of all, Nintendo (Wii U) score a big, fat 0. Despite the ostensibly more family-friendly nature of its games as opposed to the blood-and-gore soaked titles of the other consoles, it is the bottom of the barrel:


What would Bowser do? If you look at the list, American companies generally rank highest, South Korean ones are in the middle, and the Japanese fall towards the back of the pack. I would believe that it's a function of activism insofar as most of them operate in the United States. Why South Koreans are more receptive than the Japanese to such entreaties makes me wonder, though.

Still, you'd hope Nintendo did a better job on the CSR end given that they are not exactly setting the sales charts on fire.
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Business as Usual: Thailand Back in Crisis Mode

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/27/2013 11:50:00 AM
There is an anarchic quality to Thai politics that has to be seen to be believed. At regular intervals, mass protests, military coups and other forms of upheaval toss out leaders whether they are democratically elected or otherwise. Since the turn of the century, media mogul Thaksin Shinawatra--sort of an Asian Silvio Berlusconi--has dominated the political scene, being PM from 2001 to 2006, when he was ousted in a military coup. Since 2006, he has lived largely outside the country to avoid criminal prosecution. However, his allies have held office most of the time, including his sister Yingluck Shinawatra who was elected in 2011:
Although Thaksin or his allies have won every election in the past decade, the judiciary often undercuts him, illustrating how the billionaire former telecommunications tycoon and populist hero remains one of the most polarising figures in modern Thai history.

Since the 2006 coup, court rulings have removed two prime ministers, disbanded four parties, jailed three election commissioners and banned 220 politicians. The military will be watched closely. A major force in politics since Thailand became a democracy in 1932, the military has staged 18 coups - some successful, some not - and made several discreet interventions in forming coalition governments, almost all with the tacit backing of the royalist establishment that now reviles Thaksin.
Now Yingluck Shinawatra finds herself in trouble. She recently tried to ramrod legislation that would grant Thaksin amnesty, but to no avail. Instead of bringing big brother home, she has raised the ire of the middle class Bangkok-based opposition. I've already called her Badluck Shinawatra for her terribly expensive and quite frankly unaffordable populist policies of supporting rice farmers in Thailand's north and northeast. Aside from trying to bring home their bete noire Thaksin home scot-free, Thailand's deteriorating economic situation is driving much unrest as ten of thousands have, well, Occupied Thailand's Government Offices:
Thousands of anti-government demonstrators kept up pressure on the Thai government Wednesday by surrounding more official buildings amid the highest tensions the country has seen since deadly unrest three years ago. The protesters in Bangkok continued to occupy the finance ministry building, which they stormed Monday and turned into their secondary command center.

They plan to send groups to a range of other ministries and government offices around the capital Wednesday, said Akanat Promphan, a spokesman for the protesters. Their objectives include the public health, labor, industry, social development and science ministries, as well as a government complex that houses multiple agencies, notably the Department of Special Investigation. The number of demonstrators, led by the opposition Democrat Party, has declined from the huge gathering of roughly 100,000 people that assembled in Bangkok on Sunday.
So those are the politics; now for the economy part. The Thai baht and the stock market are both plunging. Part of the pressure comes from Yingluck trying to auction bonds to pay the rice subsidies she vows will remain in place. Since October (harvest season), the government has failed to pay the farmers. These auctions have not succeeded either in selling the entire amount on offer, raising fears among Yingluck's allies. After all, if the farmers desert her due to non-payment of subsidies, the Thaksinite political base will be angry:
At least four sales of three-year debt in Thailand have failed to raise the targeted amounts in July and August. The notes yesterday were sold at a yield of 3.53 percent, 39 basis points higher than similar-maturity sovereign bonds, Chularat Suteethorn, head of the Public Debt Management Office, said. The securities were issued on behalf of Bank for Agriculture & Agricultural Cooperatives, which is helping to support farmers by purchasing rice at above-market prices. 
There is another large auction scheduled for Friday, November 29. If that too fails (and it looks like it will), you can bet more economic turmoil will hit Thailand and add fuel to the protester's ire at the government. Call this another example in how democracy does not always work. Sure these Southeast Asian equivalents of (Venezuelan) Chavistas are very good at winning elections, but their policies are largely unsustainable redistributive initiatives.

In the end, you got the government you deserve if you vote for this kind of nonsense.
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Pound or Euro? Currency of an Independent Scotland

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/24/2013 02:22:00 PM
The next few years are literally going to be make-or-break for the United Kingdom. First of all, the ruling Tories have promised a referendum on its membership in the European Union that, if it is held and voters decide against it, will mean the UK leaving the EU. It's a scary thought we can explore in another post; I myself don't see how the EU will lose much given how it has been very aloof.

Next, we also have another referendum scheduled in Scotland voting on staying in the United Kingdom. While it seems just desserts to me that the UK with its breakaway tendencies from the EU would be subject to similar domestic pressures, the political economy of such a move are...complicated. Scottish independence will mean that it will have to reapply for EU membership if it wants to be part of it. Moreover, there is the question of what currency it will use--the British pound, the Euro, or its own currency unit. Obviously, using the Euro will be contingent on first joining the EU and then the EMU. Both will not happen overnight.

How about continuing to use the pound? It is here where the Conservatives are throwing their weight around by threatening to kick the Scots out of the "sterling zone" if they declare independence, leaving them with the sole option of being a small nation with its own currency circa 2014. As Iceland has so vividly demonstrated, this is not such an attractive option in the new millennium, but I digress. From the FT:
Scotland will be forced to quit the sterling currency union if it votes for independence next year, a cabinet minister has said, in the starkest warning yet for Scottish voters to remain in the UK. Speaking to the Financial Times days before the Scottish government releases its vision for an independent Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, the Scottish secretary, warned Holyrood not to assume it will be let back into the sterling area if the country becomes independent.
Such a declaration would complicate efforts of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to portray a "no" vote as a walk in the park:
The Scotland secretary’s words are part of a concerted campaign across the union to rebut suggestions that a separate Scotland could simply continue to use sterling. Carwyn Jones, the Welsh first minister, said in a speech on Wednesday that his Labour-led government should also be given a veto on the idea, which he described as “very messy”

The message comes as the SNP-led government prepares to unveil its blueprint for the make-up of an independent Scotland, designed to answer questions such as what currency the country would use, whether it would belong to the EU and what taxation system it would have...

SNP leaders insist that sterling is an “asset” part-owned by Scotland, and that in the event of a vote for independence, the remaining UK will want to share the currency, not least to minimise exchange rate fluctuations between the two countries. Alex Salmond, SNP first minister, tried to ward off the threat of exclusion from sterling last week by saying that if that happened, Scotland would not be obliged to take on its share of the UK national debt.
My take is that it's a lot of hot air on both sides since poll numbers suggest the Scottish public understands the consequences of independence and generally believes it's not worth the hassle. 

Not gonna happen, as the Yanks would say.



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Trade Deals: Ukraine Jilts EU, Returns to Russian Fold

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/22/2013 08:07:00 AM
When we last talked about Ukraine, it had elected a pro-Russian leader in Viktor Yanukovych--the same Russia-aligned "bad guy" the so-called Orange Revolution supposedly got rid of. Hard economic times (brought on by the global financial crisis) soured the partnership of his opponents Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko. in their place he offered, well, "change." Ukraine is a rather divided nation with its Eastern Russian-speaking portion favoring closer ties with Russia (and thus Yanukovych) and its Western portion which is warier of the giant neighbor's residual influence post-Soviet Union.

It was thus interesting to note that Yanukovych remained keen on concluding a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the EU that his ostensibly more Western-leaning predecessors had initiated negotiations on. In recent weeks, the EU had been pressing Ukraine to finally get this FTA done, but it wanted Yulia Tymoshenko released from prison. Jailed over corruption charges, many (especially Europeans) believe she is a political prisoner of the incumbent.

And so things came to a head at the Ukranian legislature. Yanukovych's allies would not let Tymoshenko go for medical treatment in Germany lest she mount a comeback in time for the elections in 2015. Unable to stomach her release, Ukraine has now gone a step further by not only ditching the FTA with the EU but signaling its intentions to revive economic links with Russia:
Ukraine abruptly abandoned a historic new alliance with its western neighbours on Thursday, halting plans for an imminent trade pact with the European Union and saying it would instead revive talks with Russia. EU officials, who had been preparing to sign the long-negotiated deal at the end of next week, said President Viktor Yanukovich cited fears of losing massive trade with Russia when he told an EU envoy this week that he could not agree terms.

Yanukovich's prime minister issued the dramatic order to suspend the process in the interests of "national security" and renew "active dialogue" with Moscow. EU officials, who had hoped the president's complaints in recent days were a last-minute bargaining tactic, saw little chance of saving the deal...
Ukraine's parliament, dominated by Yanukovich's allies, rejected a series of bills earlier on Thursday that would have satisfied the EU by letting opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko out of prison to travel to Germany for medical treatment [for a back problem]. Shortly afterwards Prime Minister Mykola Azarov issued the order on suspending the EU process and reviving talks with Russia, other members of a Moscow-led customs union and the former Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States.
Is the power of their neighbors such that Ukraine would so feebly accede to Russian pressure? Perhaps it was just Yanukovych playing Russia off with the EU in seeing who would give it more economic concessions. In the end, however, the Russians seemingly offered a better deal--at least to Yanukovych who was always inclined towards Russia to begin with. It was a feint that EU officialdom perhaps bought too eagerly.

However, this story is not yet finished since another Ukranian leader less receptive to its eastern neighbors may yet ink the DCFTA since s/he will have little at stake with regard to releasing Tymoshenko.

Meanwhile, we can pass time figuring out how to get Tymoshenko's famous braided hairstyle...

UPDATE: Yulia Tymoshenko has now declared a hunger strike until her country signs the EU FTA.
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After 12 Long Years, a WTO Deal in Bali?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/22/2013 04:42:00 AM
For obvious reasons--nothing much happening in Geneva--I have devoted very little attention to the conclusion of the WTO Doha Round, having given it up for lost. For all intents and purposes, the Doha Development Agenda as it is officially referred to is still on the back burner. But, there was activity stirring a week ago causing its new Brazilian Director-General Roberto Azevedo to remark "We are too close to success to accept failure but it is all or nothing now." Latin brio aside, they have taken some more "salable" items on the negotiating table to hopefully use in demonstrating that WTO negotiations are not yet dead by concluding a smaller multilateral deal during end-of-year gatherings of its members in Bali (3-6 December). 

What exactly is inside this "Bali package," then? Supposedly there are three pillars: (1) trade facilitation to reduce red tape among international customs authorities; (2) development in better operationalizing what kinds of special and differential treatment [SDT] are afforded developing countries; and (3) agriculture permitting developing countries more leeway in doing things such as helping feed their destitute members:
WTO ambassadors resumed consultations on Section II of a draft agreement on trade facilitation. This section provides the basis for special and differential treatment and for technical assistance and capacity building needed for the implementation of the agreement.

In agriculture, members are focusing on proposals about reducing export subsidies and related policies known collectively as “export competition”, reducing the chances that the methods used to share out a particular type of quota among traders become trade barriers in their own right, on how to deal with developing countries’ food stockholding for food security when the purchases could distort trade, on adding a number of environmental and development services to the list of programmes considered not to distort trade and therefore allowed without limit, and on cotton produced by least-developed countries (LDCs).

On development, members have agreed proposals by LDCs on preferential rules of origin and on operationalization of the services waiver for them. Work continues on duty-free, quota free treatment for LDCs. Members are also consulting on a monitoring mechanism for special and differential treatment for developing countries under WTO agreements. 
From my perspective, it's a bunch of giveaways from industrialized for developing countries which do not require substantial concessions from the former that the latter find reasonably attractive. They do not move the game on a whole lot. Still, the hope is that this "Bali package" is useful for demonstration purposes in showing the world that the WTO still matters. Yes, it's akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but the prospects are at least better than Doha. Ladies and gentlemen, a deal is now imminent...
Roberto Azevêdo, the recently appointed head of the WTO, is expected to present a finished draft of the agreement to the body’s highest organ, the general council, in a meeting as soon as Sunday or Monday.

Barring any unforeseen problems – and negotiators gave warning on Thursday that they could still emerge – the agreement would be signed by trade ministers from the WTO’s 159 member countries in Bali next month. “They have crossed over the threshold,” said a senior trade official in Geneva. Sealed, the deal would be a victory for Mr Azevêdo, who warned that the WTO risked irrelevancy if it did not deliver something substantive in Bali when took over in September.
For a guy who just came into office in September, it's certainly an auspicious beginning. And all it took was for a D-G from a developing country to do it?! We could have had something much earlier if so, but I think there's also an air of desperation that crept in which is making this deal more palatable all around. Believe it or not, trade negotiators probably got tired of attending these shindigs just to twiddle their thumbs year in and year out.
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So, Just How Urbanized is Our World?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/21/2013 11:46:00 AM
To be exact, it is 52.1% urbanized in terms of persons living in cities according to the latest 2011 figures from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). Having turned the corner in 2007, the pace is accelerating for better or worse as more people choose to live in cities.

Also above is a map [click to enlarge] depicting global trends in urbanization according to each nation's percentage of city dwellers. It's interesting stuff, especially from an urban planning point of view.
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The Difficulty of Improving One's "Soft Power"

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/19/2013 04:50:00 AM
The notion of soft power, defined by Joseph Nye as the ability of a nation to get its way through attraction rather than coercion, is an archetypally wooly concept. How do you measure it? What sort of indicators would you use in comparing different nations according to it? Yet, the lack of hard indicators of soft power or a blueprint for achieving it has not stopped nations from trying to improve their global reputations.

Recently, the lifestyle publication Monocle previewed its most recent edition of its annual soft power rankings showing Germany topping the global league tables after the UK and the US did the last two years. Aside from not speaking English, you would think Germany also suffers from not having immediately British institutions alike "Bond, the Bard (Shakespeare) and the Beatles." Still, there are modern compensations alike, er, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund--arguably the finest soccer teams in the world.

Actually, Britain's diminished performance in the 2013 rankings was predicted to some extent by Dorian Lynksey in the Guardian op-ed pages a few months ago. Given the current Tory government's obsession with quantifiable returns on expenditure--culturally important spending included--recent cutbacks may have taken their toll. For instance, diminished funding for the BBC World Service--still a plank of British cultural influence after all this years--will likely have wider repercussions.

That said, things could be worse than they are in Blighty. You could be China, which comfortably outspends the UK on cultural promotion but doesn't seem to be moving up the global rankings with any alacrity. As the Beatles sang, perhaps you can't buy love--or soft power, either:
Soft power is an unpredictable commodity that can't be bought in a hurry. China imposes a quota of 34 foreign movies a year but last year those imports outgrossed China's 893 homegrown productions, to the government's evident annoyance. Overseas consumers can't be blinded to a nation's flaws. When one of your most famous cultural exports, Ai Weiwei, is a tireless critic of the government, it's hard to pretend you're an artistic paradise, however much you spend. [Or cheap out on helping poorer crisis-hit neighbors for that matter.]

Britain has long enjoyed the cultural reach that China craves, but it's taking its enviable position for granted. Perhaps when you're the land of Bond, the Bard and the Beatles, not to mention the English language, you're prone to assuming it will be ever thus, but it's not just austerity that threatens Britain's soft power. Many elements of Conservative dogma are antithetical to it: resistance to immigration and Europe; suspicion of the BBC and state funding in general; and contempt for any area of the arts on which you can't immediately slap a price tag.
In America's case, I'd say Mickey Mouse cannot whitewash drone strikes or something to that effect. Meanwhile, the argument rages on in the UK whether its extensive cultural promotion ought to continue. Obviously, the British Council does not want the axe to fall on it despite not having "tangible" metrics to show their Conservative political overlords. Then again, assessing reputation is arguably more of an art than a science:
The British Council report rightly argues for a "move from short-term transactional and instrumental thinking to long-term relationship building". And if we must play the price-tag game, economists point out that growing demand for popular culture from newly prosperous nations plays to Britain's strengths.

Measuring the worth of culture using purely utilitarian arithmetic is a tricky path. Art should be valued on its own merits as well as for its financial rewards. But the government need only look at the global success of the Olympics opening ceremony or The King's Speech, one of the last movies to receive UK Film Council funding, to appreciate what the right combination of long-term state investment and individual creativity can do for Britain's reputation abroad, for relatively piffling sums. That, surely, is a language that even the most fanatical budget hawks can understand.
I'd pay up myself, but it's obviously not my decision to make. Read also through the informative British Council soft power report if you have some time to spare.
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