Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes

Polyvore is reporting the engagement of ‘Hon. Caroline Fiennes and Hon. Matthew White Ridley’. Congratulations to them!

However, please know that that is not me. In fact, we’ve no idea who it is: I know of three Caroline Fiennes’es, none of whom is engaged to Matt Ridley and nobody in our family knows of a titled Caroline Fiennes. Furthermore, father, son and grandfather in the Ridley family are/were all called  Matthew: the use of the ‘Hon.’ for the Matthew here implies that it refers to the son of Lord (Matt) Ridley, the science writer and former chairman of Northern Rock.

The joys of big families. On which note, here is a random photo of Ralph and me:

I have been looking through the catalogue for spending airmile-type points from the airline Etihad. Alongside the various objects and experiences are vouchers at various retailers. Strikingly, the price (in points) of a £50 voucher varies between retailers – pretty substantially. Money at Harrods costs over an eighth more than it does at Goldsmith, a high street jeweller. I thought that kind of funny because ostensibly £50 is worth the same anywhere.

I’ve long hated vouchers. They’re a way of giving people money but destroying much of the value – choice – therein. At best they’re an interest-free loan to the retailer; at worst you lose them and it’s a donation to the retailer.

Here’s the range of ‘prices’ for £50 vouchers on Etihad’s airmiles programme (i.e. a £50 Harrods voucher costs 11,815 points):

Even money is more expensive at Harrods. Funny old game. Gotta love classical economics…

A member of our family, James Fiennes, was recently fatally stabbed in London. Obviously this is truly dreadful news. James’ wife is called Caroline – that is, Caroline Fiennes. However she is not me: she does not work with charities or philanthropy – as misreported in The Telegraph and Daily Mail. (Neither is she the other Caroline Fiennes, Ralph & Joseph’s step-mother).

Obviously our thoughts and prayers are with Caroline and her family.

… is that they don’t go where you’d think they should go.

Badly-organised prizes are characterised by rewarding people who nobody thinks should be rewarded. A good example is elections which are obviously rigged: nobody believes that the ‘winner’ should have won.

Well-organised prizes recognise precisely the people they should recognise. The Venn diagram is like this. The Wimbledon Championships this year is a good example: everybody thinks that Marion Bartoli and Andy Murray should have received the singles prizes this year, because they got to the finals and won. No negotiation, no subjective judgement, no disagreement. Though you might think it was kind of weird that so many top women flunked out making Bartoli’s path strangely easy (she didn’t play any top 10 player all tournament), nobody disputes her prize. Royalty is another example: there’s no debate about who gets the crown, irrespective of any discontent about the rules of succession or indeed the whole monarchy system itself.

In Nobel Prizes, the overlap between the circles seems uncomfortably small. The group of people who ought to get it and who do get it – the intersection – includes the International Red Cross (Peace), Crick & Watson for discovering DNA (Medicine) and so on.  But there seem to be many recipients who don’t obviously merit it, such as President Obama in his first year in office, and the European Union. Since literary genius and contribution is often contested, I imagine that many literature prizes are controversial. On the other side of the Venn diagram, there are many people and organisations who one thinks should get it but don’t. The physicist Jocelyn Bell is perhaps the best example: her discovery of pulsars landed Nobel Prizes for her two (male) supervisors but not for her. (She’s still alive, so it’s not too late for the Nobel Committee to correct.) Einstein never got one for relativity – arguably the greatest achievement of the human mind – despite empirical evidence (a prerequisite for the Prize) during his lifetime. Another example might be physicist Peter Higgs for his accurate prediction of the particle which bears his name. It’s possible that that Higgs is ineligible because his predication resulted from a collaboration between many people and the Prize can be shared by no more than three people, though it could be awarded to CERN, for finding the particle, because organisations can receive it.

A further problem is the list of subjects. It excludes maths or anything related to technology, yet includes peace and literature which are unavoidably subjective and hence controversial. To see the limitations, try to figure out in which category could recognise Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the internet, or contributions to international poverty alleviation.

Such developments are perhaps the real dynamite of our time.

UK MPs are to have a payrise of £8000 which many say they don’t want. They may be unable to avoid it because their salaries are set by an independent body. So they should give it away. Giving Evidence’s Caroline Fiennes has this letter in the Financial Times today:

Dear Sir,

If MPs truly don’t want to receive their proposed payrise as some are claiming, they could donate it to charity or other social-purpose organisations. Such donations can be made well or badly, and such organisations vary between fantastically effective and useless. Giving Evidence, which supports donors to give well, is happy to advise any MP on expertly offloading their windfall.

Yours, Caroline Fiennes

If you are an MP – or anyone else – wanting to donate money or other resources, do get in touch, at enquiries [at] giving-evidence [dot] com 

Some quick pointers:

– ‘they could donate to charity or other social purpose organisations’: Much charitable work and ‘good work’ is done by entities which aren’t registered charities. For instance, social enterprises, co-operatives and mutuals, some arts organisations, and some universities aren’t charities, for good reasons.  The ‘charitable work’ in which you’re interested may be best done by local authorities, individuals (e.g., artists, carers), or even for-profit companies, e.g., developing pharmaceutical drugs.  There’s a whole chapter on this in It Ain’t What You Give.

– ‘such donations can be made well or badly’. One bad way of giving is to divide the funds between loads of recipients,  as we discussed in Freakonomics. The bad ways become more pronounced, and worse, when giving at scale, as illustrated by NatWest’s Community Force programme.

– ‘such organisations vary between fantastically effective and useless’: this article and this one document sizeable variation in the effectiveness of charitable programmes. Here are examples of charitable programmes which don’t work, and here is perhaps one of the worst charities in the world.

– If you just want some good organisations to fund, look at those we’ve recommended, are recommended by Giving What We Can or GiveWell. If you’re giving a lot, are a company, want to be engaged with orgs which you’re funding, and/or can’t the lists mentioned don’t have a good fit for you, do get in touch.

And never, ever judge a charity by its admin costs. Here’s why–>

All people in the universe are either in a relationship or not, and all people in the universe are either happy about that or not. Whichever category you’re in, Valentine’s Day is useless – with one microscopic and surprising exception.

Happy Singles

It’s totally irrelevant! And at the margin, a bit annoying because you can’t get a restaurant table, lots of your friends can’t come out to play because they’re out on contrived dates (see below), and should you happen to want to buy flowers for your mum, they’re suddenly absurdly expensive.

Happy Couples

They don’t need it: they’ll be capable of being romantic without instruction from Clinton Cards or whomever. Since spontaneity, originality and celebrating our uniqueness are central to love and romance, Valentine’s Day is a hindrance because it suggests actions (dinner, flowers etc.) which aren’t our own. Flowers on Valentine’s Day are less expressive, romantic or thoughtful than flowers on any other day of the year.

Unhappy Singles

Oh dear. Valentine’s Day highlights their misery. And not just for the one day, because the cards and flowers in shops remind them of their misery for weeks beforehand. Plus it pretty much prohibits dating for a while, for fear of an unnaturally fake ‘romantic’ dinner on the big day.

These may be the biggest losers, because the spotlight on their unhappy single-dom may prompt them into bad relationships.

Unhappy Couples

What are they supposed to do? Pretend, for one day, that everything’s OK, and go for an excruciating date together? Try to ignore it? Split up to avoid it?

In fact, this group may contain the only winners from the day – ironically – since it may prompt bad relationships to conclude rather than drag on.

So there we have it. Valentine’s Day is helpful for precisely nobody. Except…

The business of business…

Of course, the winners of Valentine’s Day are card companies, florists, chocolatiers, restaurant-owners, jewellers and other purveyors of other predictable ostensible vestiges of romance. Vestiges best ignored by real lovers who delight in celebrating each others’ individuality in more personal ways.

Here’s the link to the petition about the Leveson enquiry which Madeline McCann’s father’s asked you to sign: http://hackinginquiry.org/petition/

And here’s the bespoke letter I just sent to my MP about it, and libel reform (MPs are said to take more notice of tailored letters):

I write about two issues related to free press and free speech.

First, Leveson. I, for one, would like to see the recommendations implemented in full. Furthermore, my conversations with many friends, people on social networks, and colleagues, indicate that many others share this view. Many of these are your constituents: and they are all UK voters. Trevor Kavanagh’s view expressed on TV last night that the electorate don’t care is rubbish.

The Prime Minister said that he would implement the recommendations if they were “not bonkers”. They are not.

He further said this week that “we should think very very hard before doing anything which would impair free speech”. Well the guy he asked to think very very hard about this has done that, and recommended some things, so the PM should do them. Leveson was abundantly clear in his statement on Thursday that the legislation he calls for does not amount to state regulation of the press. It’s rubbish to claim (as the BBC’s Nick Robinson said the PM might) that we couldn’t explain this to the Russians.

Is the PM a man or a mouse? We’ve been in the last chance saloon umpteen times before and there have been way too many suicides of innocent people hounded by the out-of-control press. Time to act. As he said he would.

Of course the newspapers on Friday were supporting his ludicrous position: they don’t want to be managed at all. Which is precisely why Leveson thinks they should.

Why is the PM defending the interests of Mr Murdoch over those of Milly Dowler’s parents? The electorate will never forgive him.

Second, not unrelatedly, thinking “very very hard before doing anything which would impair free speech” also pertains to libel reform, about which we have corresponded before. The Bill currently in the House of Lords is an improvement but not enough. It still lacks a ‘public interest defence’, and hence still wouldn’t have prevented Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre and Peter Wilmshurst from being dragged through the courts for highlighting medical practices which are dangerous. [I spent an hour on the phone yesterday to the guy who runs the libel reform campaign, so this is likely to be accurate.]

Government by the people, of the people and for the people means letting them speak about truth and science, and not have journalists putting messages in their children’s lunchboxes or accusing them of murdering their own children.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Fiennes