OnPoint by Keith Ng

I haven’t given nearly enough thought to the relationship between Farrar and the National Party comms machine, nor to the role that he plays in testing, seeding and propagating National Party messages. But it’s impossible to look at this indecent assault on numeracy and not think that it’s a lightly paraphrased briefing paper written by a policy-cum-comms hack (Research Unit?) outlining the key messages that National wants to get out ahead of the Budget.

The main thrust of it seems to be trying claim that Labour’s tax cuts are just as bad as National when it comes to favouring the rich. Here, DPF relies on one really straightforward trick: Picking sample points that distort the real picture.

He says that those on $30k get $620/year, those on $50k get $860/year, and those on $100k get $1460/year. So, the richer you are, the more you get, right? It implies a line that looks like this:

Well it’s not. It actually looks like:

It shows that a) Everyone earning $70k/year or more gets $1,460 in tax cuts – not just people earning $100k/year, and b) nobody gets more than that, regardless of income. Compare that with National’s tax cuts, which scales up with income.

But this is all meaningless information when we’re talking about the entire population, rather than one person. To understand how the package is structured and where the money is going, we need to incorporate data about who pays tax. So, here is one I prepared earlier, showing who would have benefited from Labour’s tax cuts:

Each bar represents 10% of taxpayers, sorted by income. The bottom 10% is on the left. The top 10% is on the right.

The parts below the axis represent tax increases – the effect of wage growth plus fiscal drag – you know, the stuff that the Right loved to talk about so much last year? Cullen’s tax cut was designed so that the increases to the upper threshold would be recovered (i.e. Back to what it was in 2008) by 2011.

By 2011, the middle 50% of taxpayers would have had the greatest net gain from tax cuts. Compare this with National’s tax cuts.

National April 2009 package was entirely weighed towards the top 30% of earners. The only thing that the next 20% get is Independent Earners Tax Credit – Treasury assumes that around half the taxpayers in that bracket are eligible. The bottom 50% get nothing from National at all, and will be paying more in tax every year.

The top 10% sees most of their tax cuts wiped out by wage growth and fiscal drag – but remember, the 2008 tax cut had already wiped it out, so National’s tax cut comes on top of that.

--

Their other line is that National’s tax cuts is a good response to the recession.

The New Zealand Institute’s latest report, Not just a case of a passing ‘Recessionary Flu’ doesn't beat around the bush on the issue:

…the next two tranches of the proposed income tax cuts should be cancelled on the grounds that they would contribute to the structural deficit, are unlikely to do much for growth, and do not support the most vulnerable households. Very few of the benefits of these proposed tax cuts flow to the most vulnerable families during the recession: most of the benefits accrue to upper-income households, and the cut that reaches furthest down the income scale (the proposed reduction of the 21 percent marginal tax rate to 20 percent) is not scheduled to take effect until April 2011. Nor are these tax cuts especially well-designed for growth creation, with the top marginal income tax rates left virtually unchanged (marginal income tax rates having significant incentive effects on individual work and production choices).”

Half the equation is that it’s just not very good at stimulating economic activity.

The other half is that a good stimulatory response is supposed to pump money into the economy as quickly as possible, then recover it when the economy is in better shape.

The next two phases of tax cuts does the exact opposite – it’s an arse-loaded stimulus package. The cost of cutting the top rate (in lost tax revenue) actually increases with time, but has the least stimulatory impact in the short-term. Delaying it will make it even more ridiculous, since the long-term cost stays the same, but its stimulatory value decreases further.

Instead of short-term, immediate spending, or even one-off tax refunds, National wants to implement tax cuts that actually become more expensive with time, and they wonder why there's a looming structural surplus?

This tax cut grew up in a more innocent time, when "Supersize Me Surplus" was a derisive term, when trying to get rid of the surplus was an actual, stated priority, when you had every editorial writer and columnist in the country backing you on it for no goddamn reason, and when you could actually get away with it.

It should go back there and die.

--

Kiwis should dismiss Michael Cullen's protestations that the surplus is not real." (John Key, 18 May 2006)

Small towns cut off from the outside world by an earthquake which also releases swine-flu-spitting zombies from an interdimensional portal to hell have fewer problems than Mt Albert, apparently. (Fast-moving zombies, FYI.)

Shearer and Norman’s visions of doom sees Mt Albert being sliced in half by a motorway then annexed by John Banks. And because National has nowhere to go on the motorway, Lee’s found herself a winner with law and order: “Just look at what happened in Napier.”

Because… you know… there’s crime in Mt Albert… and there’s crime in Napier… which means that… crazy gunman is… crime… bad… and vote National.

Sigh. All these hoardings and slogans are triggering my PTSD. (I huddle in a corner and mutter: “Sell, iPredict, for the love of god, sell!!”)

Adding to the deja vu, John Boscowen brought his box of puns from last year:

No More Buy-Elections.”

I laughed. Still, it’s kinda ungenerous of him to say that spending money to avoid bulldozing 600 houses is “buying votes”.

The Greens are the last one off the starting block with their campaign launch today. They’re bringing out the “Vote for Me” campaign that everyone fawned over last time, but shot in authentic Mt Albert locations, with presumably authentic Mt Albert kids. Mixed in, rather awkwardly, is a new ad:

Get more muscle. Vote Russel.”

Ahem.

The point of difference they’re trying to push is that Norman is a party leader – why, just like Helen Clark! – and therefore he’ll have more muscle with which to fight for his electorate.

He cites the Greens’ negotiations with National over the more “Orwellian” changes that they wanted to make to the RMA, but more interestingly, he points out how the Mt Albert electorate MP can actually put a very large spanner in the works:

I think on Waterview there’s going to be a long battle in the community against the government about it. Cos these major motorway projects, they just end up locked in the community for [inaudible]. We saw it in the Eastern Motorway, which ultimately failed. The community can take on the government and win.”

I found it particularly interesting because it shows what a hole National has dug for themselves on Waterview.

Instead of the tunnel option, which already has substantial community buy-in, they want to opt for an option that is much worse than one that was soundly resisted by the community. Of course the community will fight them at every turn.

For the business community, this is going back to square one, with a high degree of uncertainty around the project. If the government saves $800m (just a guess) by bulldozing through Mt Albert, but the project gets dragged out for another five years while congestion continues to get worse, will business leaders think it was a good move? Will anyone?

--

An idea that floated around the campaign launch today was to cost public transport options to see what kind of public transport alternative Waterview could buy instead. Would be great to see how they stack up…

--

The worst part about this by-election so far is the candidates attempting to present their bona fides as Mt Albert residents. The fact that they frequent local shops and can name local landmarks is very nice, but if that’s one of the top ten things they have going for them, they sure as hell wouldn’t get my vote.

Lee really needs to stop apologising for living on the wrong side of the electorate boundary. And Shearer was in friggin’ Bagdad. He doesn’t need to be excused for shit.

While I’m at it, it was quite heartening to see him take the “private armies” stuff on the on chin. So he wrote a rational argument a decade ago justifying a position that is against party policy today. So he disagrees with the party on an issue. “Yeah. So?” would be a perfectly appropriate response.

Shearer is pioneering a new school of thought in New Zealand politics: You don’t need to apologise just because the Gallery read it on Kiwiblog. It’s okay, really.

FYI, I am qualified to write this post as I have eaten at restaurants in Mt Albert, and I’ve seen the suburb on Google Maps. Thrice.

--

Also, dear media organisations, Melissa Lee is Korean. I’d given up on the whole “can you stop calling us Asians” thing a long time ago, but it’s pretty significant in this case: Most of the “Asians” in Mt Albert are mainland Chinese. They speak Mandarin. This is different from Korean.

For Chinese voters, getting a Korean voice in Parliament is a fairly meaningless proposition, so please stop looking for the “Asian” angle.

When I was walking around the refugee camps in Sri Lanka, there was a moment of stark realisation: there wasn't a single young man to be seen. They were all in the field fighting, dead from the fighting, or hiding from the fighting. Being an able-bodied non-combatant meant that you weren't a patriot. Not being a patriot meant you were a traitor. Being a traitor meant that you were dead.

There have been credible, independent reports of civilians being forced to remain in the warzone by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers); then when civilian are slaughtered, this is used as evidence of the Sri Lankan government's brutality (warning – disturbing pictures) .

Human shields, forced recruitment, child soldiers – these are not creations of government propaganda, these are just mundane truths about a long, grinding and brutal war.

So, does Te Ururoa Flavell think that he is showing solidarity with fellow champions of ethnic self-determination with his stunt? Does he think it's okay for the LTTE to free their people by using their corpses as PR props?

Does Hone Harawira? From the answer that Harawira gave, he seems to be suggesting that the Sri Lankan government is the only party that needs to show restraint. The Maori Party's evasive half-silence isn't doing them any favours – the Sri Lankan government's propaganda machine has jumped on this to imply that the Maori Party mean the opposite of what they almost-kinda said.

There was this thank you note...

At a glance the motion looked like a very progressive one asking for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka but the Maori Party Member of New Zealand [sic], who represent the native people of New Zealand, Te Ururoa Flavell knew better. Using his powers as a MP he blocked the motion, because the resolution simply wanted to revive the world's most cruel terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and pull it out of the grave. Maoris are the proud natives of New Zealand, who inhabited the Pacific island before the white man invaded... Te Ururoa Flavell, congratulations for your wisdom and thank you very much on behalf of all peace loving Sri Lankans.”

... from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence.

Perhaps Flavell was swayed by New Zealand’s Sri Lankan Tamils who, like many other members of the Tamil diaspora around the world, have been protesting against the killing of civilians over the past few month. They've gathered in large numbers, displaying photos showing the grotesque aftermath of war, and calling for a stop to the “genocide” of Tamils.

They seem like perfectly genuine people when they tell me that they don’t care who wins, they just want the killing to stop. Yet, Nirmala Rajasingam, a Sri Lankan Tamil activist in London, makes a powerful point:

...in all the demonstrations not a single cry, slogan or placard seems to demand that the Tigers should let the civilians go or cease their own assaults on them. The silence of the diaspora community on this issue is deafening... There is no recognition in these demonstrations of the fact that the military objectives of the LTTE are no longer reconcilable with the safety of the trapped civilians. There is a disjunction between propaganda and reality here that reflects the way the logic of Tamil Tiger propaganda has become internalised by much of the diaspora. This does nothing to help Sri Lankan Tamils.”

It's no coincidence that they started a coordinated global campaign right after Kilinochchi, the administrative capital of the LTTE, fell. As sad as it is to say, this isn't an attempt to end the war, this is just the political arm picking up where the military arm left off.

If the protesters were committed to saving lives, the most rational, humane and obvious solution is for the LTTE to surrender. Or at least call for the LTTE to guarantee free passage to the refugees.

But a ceasefire saves no one. What would follow a ceasefire? The LTTE are cornered in a tiny outcrop with their backs to the sea. There can be no negotiations when the only thing on offer is a surrender, and the government isn't going to offer an inch more when what they are so close to obliterating the LTTE. In the meantime, the only thing standing between the LTTE and annihilation is the civilian population, so none of them will be allowed to leave.

The real depressing thing is that heavy shelling *is* the government's attempt to evacuate refugees. By shelling the area, they are “encouraging” civilians to flee the area, despite the LTTE's attempts to keep them in there. Naturally, they claim every escapee as a defection away from the LTTE, and therefore a moral victory.

How much can you save during Earth Hour? If you completely stop using electricity in your house, by my rough but generous estimate, you'd saved about 2,800Wh and reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by 420g. (Workings at end.)

If you change a 75W incandescent lightbulb to an energy efficient equivalent, you'd save 65,700Wh per year (assuming it's on for 3 hours a day). That works out to 9,950g of greenhouse gases. That's one lightbulb.

(Ridiculous? I know. Every time I re-read this I have to re-check the calculations. 60W saving x 3 hours a day x 365 days a year.)

Blacking out the entire house for one hour every year = 420g reduction per year.
Replacing one lightbulb with an energy saving equivalent = 9,950g reduction per year.

To put it indelicately: Fuck Earth Hour.

Go buy an energy efficient lightbulb and spend Earth Hour with the lights on watching TV - you'd come out ahead by a long, long way. Better still, take an hour's wages and buy energy efficient bulbs for people who don't have them. That'd actually be worthwhile.

Earth Hour supporters retort that even if it doesn't do anything, that's okay, because Earth Hour sends a dramatic message (visible from space!) to our politicians that the citizens of Earth really care and want them to do something.

Earth to Earth Hour: Our politicians, despite their best efforts, do not live in space.

This is not how they will respond to Earth Hour: “I am staring out the observation deck of my orbital platform/looking at live satellite imagery of the planet on the giant screen in my War Room, as I often do at 8:30. Oh shit! All the lights have gone out! WTF happened? Where'd all the lights go? Oh, Earth Hour, eh? I guess I'd better Do Something about climate change, then.”

Politicians don't need to see people doing something stupid for an hour. They *know* people can do something stupid for an hour. That's the problem.

Take the incandescent bulb ban, for example. It was the most rational policy in the world. At $2, a CFL bulb pays for itself in 56 days, and saves you $118 in electricity over its 9 year lifetime. More if electricity prices go up. Even at full price, they'd still be a steal.

Uptake was slow, and there were two main reasons. 1) People were poorly informed about their benefit, safety and functionality. 2) Price signals weren't transparent – you can't tell how much of your power bill was for your lightbulbs, and how much was for your dryer. So even if your incandescent lightbulb wasted $118 more power, you'd never know, since the price signals weren't clear to the end user. That's market failure.

You've got public *and* private good. You've got market failure. An incandescent bulb ban would have resolved it with minimal costs, saved money for consumers in the long-term and had environmental benefits. It was a win-win-win scenario. But nobody saw the Dimmer brigade coming.

“[Lighting store owner] said things were also not so bright for chandelier lovers as the sharp white light from CFLs could not bring out the sparkle in a chandelier's crystals.”

It was as if the essense of uselessness took corporeal form, put on a suit and became a lobbyist. Then came a bunch of bullshit about exploding lightbulbs based on unverified incidences of blackened bulbs. Then scientific ignorance about their mercury content conflated into urban legend, and they became little toxic bulbs of mass destruction.

Piercing through the mangled layers of bullshit was the “freedom from nanny-state” line. Arguably, this was the line that had the most impact on election day, and it was the also line that killed the hot water efficiency standards. And it was balls.

The argument is drawn from classic liberalism's core claim to freedom: That we have the inalienable right to any activity as long as it does not impinge on the rights of other citizens.

Except that nobody really believes that. Especially not the Dimmer Lobby. If they really believed in such a right, then they'd also champion the right of private individuals to make and sell consensual man-donkey-love videos. How dare the nanny-state come between a man and his right to document and commercialise his love for his donkey? Now, I know some libertarians who would gladly and publicly argue this point - and I take my hat off to them for their consistency - but the people who make this argument are not really championing absolute liberal rights. Like the rest of us, they agree that restrictions on freedoms can apply for the public good, just not when it comes to lightbulbs. And that's an indefensible position. In fact, that's a fucking stupid position.

While I'd love to extend the man-donkey-love erotica analogy, a more appropriate one would be restrictions on telecommunications equipment. It is illegal to sell telecommunications equipment that does not meet certain standards (that's why your phone has a Telepermit sticker on it).

We *could* spend hundreds of millions of dollars re-engineering our telecommunications network so that people can plug Tasers into their phone sockets without affecting their neighbour's service (maybe you can now, I don't know, the nanny-state won't let me have a Taser), but that would be stupid. Instead, we put restrictions on telecommunication devices, and we don't whinge about it being the heavy hand of the nanny-state molesting us.

Similarly, we *could* spend hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading our transmission lines and our generation capacity. But it's stupid to do so when we could first make substantial savings by banning inefficient lightbulbs and with more energy efficiency building standards at a fraction of the cost. (And that's not even considering climate change yet.) Sure, that's trampling people's god-given right to lightbulb-determination for the public good, but that's what democracies do every single day, with phones and drugs and food and cars - its ridiculous to argue that our right to incandescent lightbulbs is unique and sacrosanct.

The supposed principles behind the nanny-state argument was a gut-feeling at most. It never stood up when you thought about it. But nobody did, and the nanny-state argument held political currency.

A similar fate befell the hot water efficiency standards. By that time, I got to watch first-hand as the last government tried to unravel the layers of irrelevant bullshit that just kept piling on (“cold showers!” “nanny-state!” “cost for homeowners!”).

I watched as they tried to explain that the shower flow limit was just one option for increasing efficiency - you could also get some insulation for the hot water cylinder and keep the shower flow. But that was a complex sentence involving - gasp! - two inter-related clauses. Therefore, it was politically worthless. As the strands of retarded arguments built up, it quickly became too politically costly to try to explain why they were retarded. The policy got dumped in the too-hard basket - they weren't going to die in a ditch over hot water.

These were cheap, immediate, effective and economical policies. They paid for themselves and had no downside. And they're history. So what's the point in talking about the kind of climate change action that is expensive, that will spread the cost throughout the economy, that will slow down growth, that will hurt households?

Earth Hour talks a good game, but we need to get real here: We're pretty fucked. The front on climate change action in New Zealand has collapsed. Our political environment is so toxic to rational debate that the simplest, cheapest, easiest measures can get defeated by dimmer switches and pseudo-liberalism. Solidarity of the human race and global action to save the planet is all well and good... but it's perverse to talk in those terms when we can't change a lightbulb.

--

I was inspired to write the first part of this after hearing of people who turned off all the lights during Earth Hour, then lit up their fireplaces and burned candles instead. From sixth form chemistry: Burning organic material (like wax and wood) produces CO2. Tell your friends.

While I'm being a dick about this, I should also address the people who are opposing Earth Hour by joining "Edison Hour", which encourages participants to "use as much power and energy as possible in order to celebrate the advancement of mankind."

Please, learn some fucking science.

What do you think the *wheel* is, if not an energy saving device? Why do you think incandescent lightbulbs were successful? Entire fields of science and engineering - from cavemen with flint to nuclear power technicians - have advanced humanity by using less to do more.

If you want to celebrate human progress, use a CFL lightbulb and stick up a photovoltic panel. If you want to use as much power and energy as possible, just start burning shit. That is not an analogy. That is a literal intepretation of "use as much power and energy as possible". That's how fucking dumb your idea is.

Going out of your way to waste energy is the antithesis of technological progress and human enterprise, so don't you dare claim to be on the side of rationality and science. And take those goddamn chandeliers with you.

--

(Workings: Average household uses 8,000kWh/year. Earth Hour is at 8:30, just past the peak usage period, so I'll be super generous and estimate the usage at triple the average rate, putting it at an estimated 2.8kWh per hour. NZ electricity generators emit 150g of greenhouse gases for every kilowatt-hour generated (March 2007 quarterly average). Transmission losses ignored. Because I'm lazy.)

The day before the stabbing at Avondale College, the Herald fortuitously began its own campaign on school violence. In that first story, it said that there were “40 police callouts to NZ schools each week”.

After the story was printed, the Herald issued a retraction and posted the “corrected” version of the story: “Police made an average of 32 apprehensions a week at schools and universities last year”.

Then, in a second story two days later: “Police are arresting an average of 31 people each week of the year at places designated for learning.”

So, from "callouts" to "apprehensions" to "arrests". Which one was it, really? We had a crack at this on Media7 last week and the answer was: d) None of the above.

It's kinda a cliché that those on the Paul Henry side of the media establishment get a little nuts about ... well, a lot of things. And it's kinda a cliché that those of us on the Russell Brown side of the blogosphere get a little nuts on the MSM for pandering to whatever the fear-of-the-day is.

But this time, it's quite a lot more than hoodie-bashing and moral high-horses. This time, the Herald printed – on the frontpage, in big fat frontpage headline fonts – something that was thrice wrong; the statistics that they were quoting, even if they had quoted them correctly, was not an indicator of school violence; and everyone else re-reported those figures verbatim – even though some of the errors should have been evident from the first reading of the stories (as Editing the Herald noticed right from the start).

---

These callout/apprehension/arrest figures all came from the same table, a petit wee thing that the police sent through in response to the Herald's OIA request on 21 January – almost six weeks before the stabbing took place.

It was a strange OIA, since half the stuff they asked for was on the StatsNZ website, and the other half was a slightly more specific cut of those same statistics, which they could've just asked for and got in two days.

Anyway, the story that came out of this OIA request started:

Police are being called to schools about 40 times every week of the academic year to deal with behaviour teachers say they cannot handle."

Really? The numbers came out of a table entitled: "Table 1: Recorded Offences in Schools and Other Educational Institutions for the Last 10 Fiscal Years".

Recorded offence means that the police were made aware of an incident. (e.g. "Hi. Some cars have been smashed.") It says a crime has occurred. It says nothing about police presence being required, it says nothing about the situation getting out of control, it doesn't even say that there is a situation that needs to be dealt with. Callouts and recorded offences are different. Pretty. Goddamn. Different.

And how'd they get 40 a week out of 1658 a year? By dividing it by the number of weeks in the academic year, rather than, you know, *a year*. As you can see two paragraphs above, the title pretty clearly says "Fiscal Year".

The other part that they didn't read was that the statistics are for "Schools and Other Educational Institutions". And if there was any doubt over the title, the email which came with the figures pushed the point:

The data provided includes only offences recorded with the location description showing as "education school or educational institution". Police do not produce more specific data as to the location of an offence; therefore it is not possible to break down the data into the various types of school (i.e. Primary, Intermediate or Secondary). Additionally, the data provided could include offences committed in other educational institutions such as Universities.”

The fact that it's not just about schools makes using the school year problematic, but it also intimates a much, much bigger problem: These are not schools statistics!

They include universities, polytechnics, wanangas, industry training, language schools, etc. One third of students in NZ study in tertiary education institutions.

So, how much of this crime is happening at those places, and how much is at schools? We don't know. All we know is, of the 1064 violence offences, ???? happened on school grounds and ???? happened on the grounds of some other kind of education institution. And if they happened at school grounds, they may have happened during school hours. Or not. And they may have involved students. Or not.

It doesn't tell us shit about schools.

And that was just the first fuck up. After the story came out, the police comms people called the Herald and told them they got it wrong. The "senior editorial staff" they spoke to were very obliging, says the police, and promptly issued a correction.

Unfortunately, they amended the story the wrong way.

Instead of calling "recorded offences" "callouts", they decided to call it "apprehensions" instead. Putting aside the fact that "recorded offences" is not "apprehensions", it was also quite (additionally) misleading because the stats definition of "apprehension" doesn't mean what we think it means (like, "arrest").

According to StatsNZ:

An ‘apprehension’ means that a person has been dealt with by the Police in some manner (eg: a warning, prosecution, referral to youth justice family group conference etc) to resolve an offence. In some circumstances ‘dealt with by the Police’ may mean that the offender has been found to have a mental condition or is in custody, so no further action is taken other than to document the offence."

That's why calling apprehension stats "apprehensions", without clarification, might be a bit misleading, because people will think that it's arrests.

Two days later, the same reporter comes back and calls them arrests, making it sound like each instance was a case of the police coming down and dragging someone from the school. The fact that she rounded it down to 31 didn't really make it better.

The same set of numbers changed definitions three times in three days - and was progressively further from the mark each time. But even if they got the definitions right, it would still have been useless as an indicator of school violence, because it includes a whole lot of crimes from other places, and there's no way to separate them out.

(And just for an additional level of wrongness, they failed at copying and pasting. They wrote down the 1998/99 figure as 869, when it was actually 839. Sigh.)

--

So what do we actually know about school violence?

Normally, for something like this we'd look to the Crime and Safety Survey for answers. But the survey excludes under-15 year olds, so it's no good here. The best data we have is from the schools themselves - for every stand-down and suspension, we can find out the reason for them. It's better than the police data because we can be reasonably certain that every incident that's serious enough to warrant police attention is serious enough to warrant attention from the school, but it's exclusively schools.

It's possible that schools dole out stand-downs and suspensions differently now than they did a decade ago, so a change in stand-down/suspension numbers might reflect a change in school attitudes rather than violence.

Stand-downs:

For physical assault against other students, there were 5.58 stand-downs for every 1,000 students in 2000. In 2007, there were 7.32.

For physical assault against teachers, there were 0.52 stand-downs for 1,000 students in 2000. In 2007, there were 0.81.

Suspensions:

For physical assault against other students, there were 1.15 suspensions for every 1,000 students in 2000. In 2007, there were 1.22.

For physical assault against teachers, there were 0.18 suspensions for 1,000 students in 2000. In 2007, there were 0.31.

After we adjust for increased student numbers, schools were standing down and suspending more students for violence in 2007 than they were in 2000.

What does it mean? Schools are taking more serious steps more often when it comes to violence. Why? This doesn't tell us, but at least it gives us a question.