Tim Worstall

Thank God For Peter Simple.

If Peter Simple had not existed it would be necessary for us to invent both him and his cast of characters. John Vidal today on the subject of Mugabe’s slum clearances:

Urbanisation is
overwhelming most African cities, which have been flooded by
impoverished people forced off the land. According to the UN’s 2003
study of urbanisation and slums, the driving force behind the slums of
Africa and Asia is not bad governance or tyrants, but laissez-faire
globalisation, the tearing down of trade barriers, the privatisation of
national economies, structural adjustment programmes imposed on
indebted countries by the IMF, and the lowering of tariffs promoted by
the World Trade Organisation.

It’s slightly unfortunate for this world view that the local prelate, Pius Ncube, is not of the Spacely-Trellis mold, comparing Mugabe directly to Pol Pot, but Vidal is, I think you’ll agree, a worthy winner of today’s Dr. Heinz Kiosk award.

Yes, yes! "We are all guilty!"

In

10 responses

  1. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    Surely Vidal’s central point is entirely sensible; that if you don’t have slum clearances, you have slums and that under whatever name, slum clearance programs have been part of development since the invention of the city. The point here is that there is a worldwide and structural problem which won’t be helped by pretending that the only thing wrong with African cities is that the bogeyman Mugabe is being a bastard because he is evil.

    Reply
  2. Eric Avatar
    Eric

    Well, I always thought you were a pompous know-it-all dsquared, but I am frankly surprised, and shocked, at your comments. Have you read the whole article? Are you aware of what is going on in Zimbabwe?
    Now you have extended your apologetics to Mugabee’s targeted “slum clearances”, you can take back all your, now obviously fake, concern about the dead in Iraq and stuff it up your arse.
    Mugabee is a bogeyman? Are the crimes of Mugabee imaginary?
    What next? Pol Pot’s clearance of cities was an understandable reaction to the emptying of the rural areas following the Vietnam War?
    I think you demonstrate quite clearly how well-educated “liberals” can start to excuse atrocities in the attempt to appear thoughtful and rather clever.

    Reply
  3. John Thacker Avatar
    John Thacker

    Yes, dsquared, and slum clearance programs have been disasters, especially for the poor, since the invention of the city as well. (HUD’s record is not good.)
    But your straw man, dsquared, is ridiculous. No one is pretending that the “only thing wrong with African cities is the the bogeyman Mugabe is being a bastard because he is evil.” We are insisting that Mugabe is a bastard and is evil. We’re insisting that his current plans are evil (depriving people of independent sources of food and attacking those who voted against him), and that he’s wrapping them in the cloak of slum clearances. Vidal’s op-ed, like your use of the word “bogeyman” to precede Mugabe, appears to be an attempt to downplay the horror of Mugabe’s actions.
    Although, honesty, I do believe that much of Africa’s problems have to do with being ruled by bastards. Although that has structural reasons. But, e.g., Botswana’s lack of bastards has been excellent for that country.

    Reply
  4. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    I set the bar fairly low in terms of the people who I’m prepared to argue with, but I think that someone who spells Mugabe’s name with two e’s doesn’t get over it.
    Vidal is clearly not engaged in apologetics for Mugabe and nor am I. However, he’s making serious points about development, and about the fact that the Western media concentrates on Zimbabwe to the exclusion of almost all else. If you’re arguing against him on the basis that he “seems to downplay” this or that then you’re at least as engaged in constructing strawmen as I am; Vidal has decades of experience in writing on Africa and really doesn’t need to show his credentials by making the ritual denunciation every time in paragraph 1 (instead of paragraph six where he actually does make it).

    Reply
  5. siaw Avatar
    siaw

    We set the bar fairly low in terms of the people with whom we’re prepared to argue, but anyone who flatly denies that an obvious and noxious piece of apologetics is precisely that is just too stupid, bigoted and/or self-righteous to be worth bothering with.
    As for “decades of experience”, so what? What kind of fatuous assumption is that supposed to express? Juan Cole has decades of experience wirting about the Middle East, Eric Hobsbawm has decades of experience writing about the US and dsquared has decades of experience writing about whatever pops into his head, but that doesn’t make their incorrigible biases, or their unreliability as sources of information, or their inability to write clearly and without showing off, any less blatant.

    Reply
  6. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    We set the bar fairly low in terms of the people with whom we’re prepared to argue
    Could you set it a bit higher and stop arguing with me then, please?
    As for “decades of experience”, so what?
    So it’s unfair to take a single passage of an article out of the context provided by the rest of the newspaper simply for the joy of pretending that the the Guardian is “soft on Mugabe”. And it’s unfair to make the very serious accusation that he’s an apologist for Mugabe on the basis of no stronger evidence than that he “seems to downplay” things he’s written about at length elsewhere.
    As I’ve mentioned to Eric elsewhere, I think that you’re allowing your personal dislike of me (which is obviously very great indeed) to cloud your judgement.

    Reply
  7. Lester Avatar
    Lester

    Even the rest of them at Crooked Timber dislike dsquared, so that’s not saying much.

    Reply
  8. Lester Avatar
    Lester

    Even the rest of them at Crooked Timber dislike dsquared, so that’s not saying much.

    Reply
  9. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    bless.

    Reply
  10. siaw Avatar
    siaw

    dsquared: We weren’t arguing with you, we were responding to your comment, in the hope of enlightening or amusing third parties. As for our “personal dislike of [you] (which is obviously very great indeed)”, don’t be so absurd and Chris-Bertram-esque. We’ve never met you and we know very little about you, so “personal” has nothing to do with it. Accordingly, our judgement of what you write is *less* clouded than it might otherwise be. And our judgement of everything we’ve seen with your name on it is that it’s stupid, arrogant, pretentious and/or woefully inaccurate – and in the case of your initial comment here, all four. See: we’re still not arguing with you. Oh, and by the way, since you decided to play the linguistic nitpicking game, “media” is plural, not singular. Glad to have been of help.
    Tim: Apologies for inadvertently providing dsquared with the pretext for diverting this thread away from Zimbabwe and on to the subject that (we suspect, in an impersonal kind of way) he’s most fascinated by: himself.

    Reply

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