Two different culinary worlds

A two Michelin-starred restaurant in the small town of Machynlleth in mid-Wales has been given a failing one-star food safety rating by the Food Standards Agency, which puts it below minimum legal operating standards.

The mandatory checks are to ensure that food is being handled and produced hygenically. The one-star rating means that "major improvement" is needed at the fancy restaurant, which charges almost £500 a head.

The chef is predictably outraged, and says he is not embarrassed by the rating, suggesting that the inspectors just don't understand his operations. "Just because our rules don't fit their rules, they're questioning it", he whines.

The worst part of all this, though, is the reaction of influential food critic Giles Coren. "The normal health and safety things, I think it's fair enough, don't really apply", Coren opined, concluding that the rules "should probably be modernised". Coren whittered on about the special nature of the restaurant: "He is cooking with fire ... he stands there on his leather apron, and it's roaring like fireworks". *Yawn*

The Chartered Insitute of Environmental Health confirms that the rules are not "optional, subjective or old-fashioned", and that "no dining experience, however unusual or exclusive, sits outside the law".

Has the Nobel Peace Prize outlived its usefulness?

Speaking of the Nobel Peace Prize, you have to wonder these days whether it is still relevant and legitimate, least of all useful. No less a personage than Lloyd Axworthy, Canadian one-time Peace Prize nominee, echoes my own sentiments.

The Nobel Peace Prize was inaugurated by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, back in 1895, partly to assuage his own guilt at bringing such a destructive power into the world, and at the fortune he had amassed from the sale of armaments. So, you could say that the Prize was tainted from the get-go. But it was undeniably a worthy endeavour, with its mandate to honour those who have done the most to advance fraternity among nations, reduce standing armies, and promote peace through cooperation and dialogue.

There have been some very laudable winners over the decades, including Nelson Mandela, Liu Xiaobo, Dalai Lama, Andrei Sakharov, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, as well as a bunch of very worthy organizations like the International Peace Bureau, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, etc.

However, the Prize has also seen its share of controversial recipients: Henry Kissinger in 1973, in the midst of America's war in Vietnam; Yasser Arafat in 1994, despite his deeply ambiguous legacy of violence; Abiy Ahmed in 2019, who then plunged Ethiopia into a very nasty civil war just a year later; even Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, who seemed thoroughly deserving at the time, but whose brutal crackdown on the Myanmar's Rohingya minority decades later has drawn international condemnation. And now we have María Corina Machado, despite her support for sanctions and military intervention.

Several US Presidents have earned the accolade - Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama - some more deserving than others. There was a lot of debate about Obama's award, so early in his tenure, before he had achieved much of anything. And now, of course, Donald Trump is trying to lie, buy, bluster and batter his way into the annals. Nobel Laureate Machado has vowed to share her Prize with him, and the leaders of many other countries have promised to nominate him if he will only cut their countries some slack on trade. Under Trump, the Prize has become distinctly transactional.

Each year, when the Nobel Peace Prize nominees and winners are announced, it is met with more and more skepticism. It is hard for the Nobel Committee not to get caught up in global politics to some extent, and global politics is becoming increasingly messy, cynical and noxious. Has the Nobel Peace Prize lost its meaning, then, in a world where law, dialogue, morality and good-faith negotiations hold less and less sway?

Well, as the pragmatic Mr. Axworthy puts it: "Peacemaking has always been a grubby, imperfect business, conducted amid moral compromises and by flawed actors. To discard the ideal because its execution is imperfect would be to surrender entirely to the law of the jungle." Just so.

No, Machado can't "share" her Nobel Peace Prize with Donald Trump

Can Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado really "share" her Nobel Peace Prize with US President Donald Trump?

Well, of course she can't.

After the US's illegal invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Maduro, Trump decided to install Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as his new puppet president in Venezuela. He dismissed Nobel Peace Prize winner and exiled opposition leader Machado out of hand as lacking "the support or the respect within the country".

But his tone began to change after the wily Machado offered to "share" her Nobel Prize with Trump, knowing full well that the Nobel Prize has been Trump's goal all along (despite his openly militaristic recent actions). He called the offer a "great honour", although he still hasn't contacted Machado as far as we know, and he certainly hasn't done anything about placing her in a presidential position. I think he just likes to be asked...

Whether Machado deserved the Prize in the first place is an open question, especially given her calls for sanctions and military intervention. She is just the latest in the lost of ambiguous prize recipients, as many are asking whether the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way (or become too caught up in global politics) in recent years. Trump is definitely not going to help that trajectory.

But anyway, she definitely wouldn't be able to share her prize. The Nobel Committee has been very clear about that. They can award a shared prize, if they so choose, but once awarded, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred. Which make sense when you think about it.

UPDATE

Well, it seems like she gave it to him anyway, regardless of all of the above.

These people!

Is there really an "affordability crisis"?

So, can this be true? I think it probably is. But, if it is, it flies in the face of pretty much everything that politicians have been telling us for years, and everything that most people firmly believe about their own circumstances.

Everyone seems to believe that, even now, prices are through the roof, that it is harder and harder to make ends meet, and that earnings are just not keeping pace with inflation. This is the whole "affordability crisis" or "cost-of-living crisis" that we keep hearing about, whether it be sheepishly from the governing party or with righteous outrage from the opposition

Thing is, though, it's not actually true. Canadian inflation has been hovering around the Bank of Canada's target of 2% for the last year or so, and is expected to fall even further by the end of the year, to around 1.8%. Yes, inflation was much higher from 2021 to 2024, peaking at over 8% in 2022, and we are still feeling the effects of that to some extent. But inflation, in Canada and many other countries around the world, has been effectively tamed.

More to the point, though, data from the Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada, the two most prestigious and reliable sources of financial data for the country, agree that households in every income group, age group and occupational group have seen their after-tax income grow faster than prices over most of the past decade. Net financial assets have also increased for households across all income groups, even when excluding house and pension assets appreciation. In short, we are richer than we have ever been. Data from multiple sources shows that our standard of living has in fact continuously improved recently.

So, why is the cost of living still the major preoccupation of a sizeable majority of Canadians (about 62%), and pretty much everywhere else in the world? Why do we perceive that things are worse than they are, and getting still worse?

Well, the important word there is "perceive". For example, multiple studies have found that consumers' perceptions of inflation are influenced more by prices going up than by prices going down, and most of all by the prices of frequently-purchased goods such as food and gasoline. Their perceptions are also influenced by the rise in house prices, even though inflation only measures the costs associated with housing (utilities, rent, mortgages) and not the price of houses themselves. (In fact, the increase in house prices should make us feel richer, if anything.)

The other thing that is happening is that people's expectations may be overly optimistic, particularly because, although income has grown faster than prices for most Canadians over the period since 2009, it hasn't exceeded prices by quite as much as it did in the preceeding period from 1995 and 2009. (This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just in Canada.) So, if people are comparing their situations with that of their parents, or with earlier in their careers, then they may be disappointed and perceive themselves to be falling behind, even if objectively their situations have actually improved.

Take another circumstance into consideration, namely the ubiquity of social media. Comparing ourselves with others, some of whom may be richer than us, alters our financial reference groups and consumption norms, distorting our perceptions of "normal" and "necessary" consumption and expenditure. For example, many people are buying bigger cars, fancier phones, and travelling abroad more, but if you feel you don't have the money to keep up with these trends, you may well blame the cost of living for not being able to achieve these unrealistic goals.

So, there is a mix of economics, psychology and sociology going on. But the bottom line is that, actually, life has never been so good. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Poilievre.

Meet the Canadian N.I.C.E. Agent

A short sketch on the Canadian improv comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes has gone viral - in Canada and America and even further afield.

Trent McClellan is the N.I.C.E. Agent, targeting American tourists, checking their phones (for baby photos), taking selfies, handing out candies, and scoring hugs.

It's two minutes of wwholesome Canadian fun, and it obviously appeals to many.

Danielle Smith apparently hasn't learned from history

I hadn't really thought about it before, but there are some fascinating parallels between Alberta's almost-certain secession referendum later this year and Britain's Brexit vote in 2016.

In those halcyon and naïve days - pre-COVID, pre-Trump, pre-Ukraine war, pre-AI, etc, etc - British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron merely wanted to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union (EU), mainly to placate a small but vocal majority of ultra-right wingers in his party. He thought that threatening to leave the EU would be a good bargaining tool, and thought, as most people did back then, that there was no way that Britons would be daft enough to actually vote to leave. It was certainly the last thing that Cameron himself wanted.

As we all now know, things didn't pan out quite as expected, largely due to an egregious misinformation campaign by the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Britain voted narrowly to leave the EU, Johnson became Prime Minister for three wild and largely disastrous years, and Farage lay low for a while before reinventing himself, and is now odds-on favourite to become Britain's next disastrous Prime Minister. How quickly things can go pear-shaped!

Fast forward ten years, and the Canadian province of Alberta is threatening Albexit. Premier Danielle Smith says she is personally against it, and pretty much every serious economist and political analyst has warned that the consequences would be disastrous. All the polls suggest that support in Alberta for leaving Canada is low, around 20%, nothing like the level of support for secession in Quebec back in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

But Smith has for years been using the threat of separation as leverage to press the federal government for special treatment for Alberta, again largely to placate the hard right-wing hawks in her party. She has even made the process of starting a provincial referendum on the matter much easier than it used to be, hoping to squeeze still more concessions from Ottawa from the increased pressure. It now looks almost certain that a vote will in fact be held later this year.

Sound familiar? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one thing that could go very wrong is Donald Trump, and Ms. Smith doesn't seem to have factored him into her calculations and machinations. America's most interventionist president has made no secret of his desire to annex Canada, and particularly to get his hands on Alberta's oil. It seems likely that the Trump administration would expend a lot of money and effort in any Alberta separation campaign. At the very least, Trump would probably declare any "stay" vote to be unfair and rigged, creating constitutional chaos and uncertainty. 

(Alberta separatists make no secret of the fact that that have already had several meetings with the US State Department, which, they say, is very supportive of Alberta's secession.)

Could this be Danielle Smith's Cameron moment? We (and Alberta) have to hope not. What is it they say? "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Agentic AI takes over from generative AI

We're only just starting to get our heads around what generative artificial intelligence (AI) is. Now we have to deal with "agentic AI".

While generative AI refers to a computer response to a single query using natural language processing, agentic AI uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to solve much more complex multi-step problems. The idea is that AI serves as your agent to help you make better decisions, employing multiple data sources and third party applications to analyze challenges, develop strategies, and execute tasks, all with minimal human intervention. It learns from the results it achieves, and uses this feedback to improve future plans and actions.

Frankly it's what most people think AI is (or should be), although it's only very recently that AI has become sophisticated enough to deliver on this promise. Generative AI, by comparison, is really just a jumped-up search engine, based on single input prompts. For example, generative AI can used to create some marketing materials, but agentic AI can used to actually deploy these materials, track their performance, and adjust the marketing strategy accordingly.

Agentic AI is being increasingly employed by businesses to personalize customer service, streamline software development, and facilitate patient interactions. Another place it's being used (and this is what initially triggered my interest and concern) is in shopping and merchandizing. 

For example, Canadian shopping goliath Shopify has teamed up with Google and Microsoft to help shoppers find and buy its products more easily and even to help them make purchasing decisions. Shopify merchants can now sell directly through Google's Gemini app and the AI Mode of Google Search, as well as through Microsoft Copilot. Walmart and Mayfair have also recently set up similar agreements. Shopify is even setting up agentic plans with other ecommerce platforms, which will allow online stores throughout the world to sell through Shopify's catalogue, which already comprises billions of products. So, shoppers can buy multiple items from different places without ever leaving the initial AI conversation. Yikes! 

Analysts are saying that this has the potential to revolutionize online shopping and advertising. Sound familiar? The merchants stress that shoppers are in control of the whole process, and that they have the final call. 

But the agentic AI system can even complete checkout on a customer's behalf, based on pre-entered discount codes, loyalty credentials, billing options, and payment information. I do worry that this makes shopping a bit too easy, and I can easily see it spiralling out of control, or even becoming addictive. After all, it's the customer, not the AI, that has to pay the credit card bill at the end of the month. 

I don't have any evidence to back it up, but there just seems a lot that could go wrong with this developmemt.

Ontario moves to a more circular economy (but how does it work?)

As of January 1st this year, the collection of recycling in Ontario (the Blue Box Program) devolves from municipalities - Toronto in my case - to a not-for-profit organization called Circular Materials. In theory, this is a step towards a more circular, less wasteful, economy, but I am reserving judgement until I see how it works in practice.

The idea, so we are told, is not so much to outsource and privatize yet more city services, but to move to a model where the producers of all the packaging that gets recycled are the ones that pay for the recycling, a concept known as "extended producer responsibility" or EPR. Environmentalists are all in favour of EPR as it represents an extension of the "polluter.pays" principle. And it does make a lot of sense to me too, in principle at least. Plus. Circular Materials seem to be able to recycle a few more items than the old City-run program - toothpaste tubes, black plastic containers, nothing too crazy

The change is supposed to save Ontario's municipalities about $200 million a year (about $10 million in the case of the city of Toronto). Historically, under the municipality-operated recycling program, producers only funded about half of the costs, with the municipalities (i.e. taxpayers) paying the other half. Now, the organizations that produce the products and packaging will be responsible for operating and finding the entire program.

However, nothing I have read about it explains just how these cost are charged to the producing companies. It sounds like it would be a logistical nightmare. Does Circular Msterials somehow keep track of every paper, plastic and metal item that runs though its system and note down which producer was responsible for it? Surely not. But how else would it work?

Of course, the producers will no doubt recoup these additional costs through higher consumer prices - they're not charities after all - but the "producer pays" principle has been established, and in theory it is now in their interests to reduce their packaging in order to reduce costs. Except, in practice, as noted, they will probably just pass on the costs to us consumers anyway. But maybe consumers will become more picky about expensive over-packaged products, who knows?