It's the teaser trailer (featuring the soundtrack from Moon, FYI) of the new film about Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady. I think Meryl Streep is getting to that stage of celebrity where I all I see is her (similar to Johnny Depp), which means all I do while watching is mentally coo "oh Meryl!" . Still, this trailer is pretty amazing, I'm pretty sure I'll copy it at some point - " You can keep the change, but putting my yoghurt in a bag is ABSOLUTELY NON-NEGOTIABLE!"
Anyhoo. It relates BECAUSE I watched it right after finishing this book:
Mark this as the first book I read via computer. And I liked it, and would do it again, so there. The book is by John Quiggin, economist and fellow Queenslander. ("QUEENSLANDER!" - I'd make some smug comment re; State of Origin, but seeing as during the second game I was on a plane, and when the pilot announced that the "cockroaches" had won, I had no idea what he meant, and just clapped along for what, it turned out, was the other teams victory, I'm probably not deserving of even the most vicarious glory.)
The book's aim is to take apart theories of economics that people (even us lay people) unquestionably believe - i.e. that privatization of government-owned businesses are always a good thing. Maggie Thatcher was a big fan and lost the government a huge amount of money, as well as setting England up for it's current woes. And in terms of Australia, Telstra, anyone? Or that the markets are always correct, which, despite the clusterflap that was the GFC, market-liberals (aka Republicans in the US) are trying to downplay it's effects. Some are even trying to convince people that it wasn't a recession at all. Even as Greece spirals further and further into the proverbial crapper (caused in part, according to Quiggin, by lax privatisation) .
Anyway, I'll leave the rest to Quiggin. The book is (relatively) easy to understand, and Quiggin is an accessible writer. The "zombie" angle is a bit meh, but it sort of works. And he has alot of great insights into Australian economic history in bite-sized forms, great for all of us computer-chair political activists.
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