© Roger M Tagg 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Richard Layard is a retired Economics Professor from the London School of Economics. He was appointed to the British House of Lords as Baron Layard in 2000, having helped the Blair government in the UK as a sort of "Minister for Happiness". It might be interesting to compare his line with that of The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler.
This all sounds good stuff to me, although I can see why liberal economists and right-wing people will not like it. Authoritarians, hierarchies of organized religions and believers in a "know your place" society will not like it either. Such people believe that the main motivation which works on the majority of citizens are the "carrots and sticks" of self-indulgence, economics and the law. There is unfortunately some truth in this - in my opinion, its because we citizens haven't yet become smart enough to see that there is a better way than this, that a lot of our motivation comes from ourselves, that doing good - and smiling - to other people has enormous influence.
The problem I can see is that many of the solutions Layard proposes will cost money, and mean higher public expenditure. Therefore the stumbling block is likely to be getting over our unwillingness to pay more taxes and persuading us (at least in developed countries) to be happy with our lot.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| 1 - | 5a | Jeremy Bentham and his maximizing happiness idea; just as with the US Declaration of Independence, this clashed with religious notions of morality |
| Problem | 5b | The ideals of "self-realization" and "rampant individualism have failed, so the tide is turning back to the "common good" |
| 7 | What people actually want: 1) not just things, but it depends on what others have (leads to a status race); 2) security, some insulation from the worst disasters; 3) to trust other people (levels of trust have plummeted) | |
| 8 | There is also the personal psychology factor; people are happier if they are compassionate | |
| 8-9 | Cognitive therapy is more forward-looking than backward-looking (Freud-type) psychoanalysis. We can encourage positive thoughts and dispel negative ones, and drugs are now available that can help | |
| 9 | In the West, we have eliminated much material poverty, but we are no happier | |
| 2 - | 13 | Most of us can ride the ups and downs, and still count ourselves as generally happy |
| Happiness | 14 | Table for UK-US subjects asked shows very happy: 36-38%; quite happy: 57-53%; not very happy 7-9%. Little difference between men and women |
| 16 | Graph shows a daily happiness peak at noon, a low between 2 and 4 pm, then an increase to a maximum at bedtime | |
| 22 | Are there higher and lower pleasures? Not intrinsically, but one can distinguish different pleasure sources, e.g. purpose in life, autonomy, positive relationships, personal growth, self-acceptance | |
| 23 | Happiness improves health and life expectancy | |
| 24a | Happiness is our "overall motivational device" | |
| 24b | What makes us feel good is generally good for our survival; what causes us pain is usually bad for it | |
| 25 | We often have to choose between satisfying different drives (e.g. money versus sex versus health) | |
| 26 | We may make mistakes (e.g. excessive drinking, dieting) | |
| 27 | Anxiety and stress have some purpose, but their original forms (fear of wild animals etc) have gone - so why are many of us still struggling with them? | |
| 3 - Trends | 30 | Graph shows that US real income per head increased 5 times between 1945 and 2000, but % 'very happy' stayed the same. Some European countries have risen slightly |
| 31 | When people become richer compared with other people, they become happier - but there's no upward trend for whole societies | |
| 32 | Scatter diagram of % happy + % satisfied against income per head for many countries. Group of 20 earn a bit less than US, but have the same happiness. A lot of countries that earn less (down to Vietnam at a tenth of US income) are not much less happy. Other low income countries go down in happiness from 70% to 40%. Worst of all seem to be former communist USSR and Eastern Europe. | |
| 35a | The failure of happiness to rise with income is coming from less harmonious social relationships | |
| 35b | Other contributing upward trends are 1) clinical depression; 2) drug dependence (especially alcohol); and 3) crime (300% rise between 1950 and 1980 except in Japan, but falling a bit since 1980) | |
| 4 - | 42a | When asked, rich people always say they need more income than poorer people |
| Rich but | 42b | US incomes doubled in real terms since 1972, but the % saying they are satisfied actually fell |
| unhappy | 43 | Graph shows "required real income" closely following the actual - so people are saying they 'need' more all the time |
| 44 | We regard our income compared with that of others as a measure of how we are valued; it depends which "others" one is looking at | |
| 46 | If everyone earns another 1%, your happiness increases by only 2/3 of what it would if only you got the 1% | |
| 47 | Comparing weeks of vacation doesn't have nearly the same envy effect | |
| 48 | The "hedonistic treadmill" - we keep needing more of a new experience just to maintain our current happiness level | |
| 50 | Histogram of hours worked per year in 2002: UK and US nearly 2000, other big European countries only 1650-1750 (is it all those Saints' days?) | |
| 51-2 | The same amount of money gained or lost matters less to a rich person than a poor one (so - transferring some should raise the overall level of happiness) | |
| 52 | Some people feel we need some inequality | |
| 5 - What makes us happy? | 57 | Evidence that genes affects happiness: if one twin has a problem, in how many % of cases does the other (identical v non-identical): Schizophrenia 48 v 17; Manic-Depressive (bipolar) 65 v 14; Alcoholism (men) 41 v 22; Criminal conviction (adult) 52 v 23; Juvenile delinquency 91 v 73 So genes matter, but aren't everything |
| 59 | Family upbringing: adopted children are at more risk (although they may do better than in a bad birth mother's family). Criminals tend to bring up criminals | |
| 61 | Single-parent children are 70% more likely to have a criminal conviction by age 15, twice as likely not to complete high school, or have a teenage pregnancy, or be unemployed at 20. And 30% of American children are in this situation | |
| 62 | What doesn't matter: 1) age; 2) gender; 3) looks; 4) IQ; 5) education | |
| 63 | What does matter ("big seven"): 1) family relationships; 2) financial situation; 3) work; 4) community and friends; 5) health; 6) personal freedom; 7) personal values | |
| 64 | "Happiness points" cost of problems with the above: 1) divorced=5, separated=8, widowed=4, unmarried=4.5, cohabiting=2; 2) income down by a third=2; 3) unemployed=6, insecure job=3, unemployment rate up 10%=3; 4) % of people saying that other people can be trusted down 50%=1.5; 5) health down one notch on a 5-point scale=6; 6) enduring a government like that of Belarus 1995 rather than Hungary 1995=5; 7) saying that "God is not important in my life"=3.5 | |
| 70 | Swiss cantons with the most rights to demand referendums, compared with the ones with least, have happiness higher as if they had double the income | |
| 71 | Six factors account for 80% of the variation in a nation's happiness: 1) divorce rate; 2) unemployment rate; 3) level of trust; 6) membership in non-religious organizations; 5) quality of government; 6) fraction believing in God | |
| 72-73 | People who care about other people are on average happier than those who are more preoccupied with themselves. More anxiety comes from striving to do well for oneself than from striving to do good to the rest of the world | |
| 73 | We can't be happy without setting ourselves goals. If our goals are too low, we get bored; if they are too high, we get frustrated; both can cause depression | |
| 6 -What's | 77-8 | Just the change to allow TV in Bhutan resulted in big increases in family breakup, crime, drug taking and school playground violence |
| going wrong? | 79 | Family problems UK between 1960 and 2000: divorce rate per year 0.2% to 1.3%; out-of-wedlock births 5% to 40%; single parent families 6% to 21%. US not much different |
| 81 | Drop in trust in UK: 1959 56% said most people can be trusted; 1998 down to 30% (US similar). In US, % of people thinking others were as moral and honest as they used to be fell from 51% in 1952 to 27% in 1998 | |
| 82 | In US, % of mothers going out to work rose from 20% in 1950 to 70% in 2000. | |
| 85 | % of families that eat the evening meal together on a daily basis: US 28%, UK 38% | |
| 86 | Average TV watching time per week in UK is 25 hours - has come from social life. In many homes, children watch their own TV sets | |
| 87-88 | In US, for 2 days after heavyweight boxing fights, homicides are up by 9%. When TV was first introduced (without violence) there weren't any problems | |
| 89 | One extra hour a week watching TV causes one to spend an extra $4 a week | |
| 90a | Both men's and women's feelings dropped after seeing TV programmes with beautiful women | |
| 90b | "Before Darwin, most Westerners believed that God created the world, that he set the rules of moral conduct, and that there was an afterlife in which virtue would be rewarded and sin punished. Now these are minority views, at least in Europe." | |
| 91 | This change has brought liberation from false guilt, but a moral vacuum. Socialism provided a social ethic for many in Europe, but that has faded. Rampant individualism has only been balanced by the concept of human rights (RT: and animals?) | |
| 92a | The "death of deference" - young people now pass through a "youth culture" unrelated to the adult world, and some don't recover and become uncertain of their role in society | |
| 92b | Unless we can find an answer to the question "why should I feel any responsibility for other people?" we cannot hope to create a happier society | |
| 92c | We are left with Social Darwinism (to survive you have to be selfish and look after #1) and Adam Smith's "invisible hand" (If everyone is completely selfish then free contracts between independent agents will enable everything to turn out for the best) | |
| 7 - | 94 | The "two mules tied together" analogy (neither can quite reach their food pile, so they go to each pile and eat together |
| Common | 96-8 | 'Prisoners' dilemma' and Game Theory; zero sum versus "win-win" situations |
| good | 98 | The human race has survived because our genes give us the ability to cooperate |
| 99a | In the past, good behaviour occurred because bad behaviour is punished - as Hobbes maintained. (RT: compare threats of hell fire in the after-life). But most moral action does not arise from fear | |
| 99b | One other motivation is building a reputation as someone with whom others will feel like cooperating | |
| 100 | Another motivation is approval, and praise | |
| 101-2 | Another motivation is a sense of fairness; playing fair can make you feel good (as shown in MRI scan experiments). Fairness arises through pragmatic experience | |
| 102 | In the long run, moral and fair people do better than the cheats or freeloaders | |
| 103-4 | A feature of good behaviour is sticking to commitments, possibly deferring gratification. This goes along with trust | |
| 105 | Good behaviour by one person elicits good behaviour by others | |
| 106 | Tribalism - cooperating to support your own group, but against other groups. Graph of % of male deaths caused by warfare in various societies - worst was 60% (in S America), while even counting in 2 world wars, US and Europe only scored 2%. The idea of the noble savage is a myth | |
| 107 | Tribalism is still rife (although not so lethal) in modern societies, e.g. schoolboys (different schools, houses, buses) | |
| 8 - | 112a | Pragmatism is asking "what works?", but "works to what end?" |
| Overall | 112b | Bentham's "greatest happiness" principle: needs fairness too - everyone is equally important |
| goal | 112c | Why choose happiness as the single bottom line? Because every other criterion can be reduced to it, but it's not so good in reverse |
| 113a | Unlike all other goals, it (happiness) is self-evidently good | |
| 113b | Unless we can justify our goals on how people actually feel, we'll be guilty of paternalism | |
| 114a | People won't be happy lotus-eating for too long - we need to be stretched | |
| 114b | Most of us probably wouldn't want to rely on Brave New World's 'soma' or a "happiness machine" | |
| 115a | It would not make sense to have public ethical policy that people wouldn't recognize as good private policy | |
| 115b | We acquire rules socially, e.g. promise-keeping, truth-telling and consideration for others. The problem comes when there are clashes | |
| 116a | Ethical principles must be more than just "don'ts" - they should guide us on how to use our time and our talents | |
| 116b | When weighing up what to do, we should try reflecting from the viewpoint of an impartial spectator | |
| 117a | The Golden Rule - "do as you would be done by" - but with sympathy and impartiality | |
| 117b | Such thinking goes beyond our basic animal nature | |
| 117c | If we don't follow this, the cancer of envy will eat up all our gains | |
| 119a | The paradox of happiness: one can't simply seek happiness; one needs to actually do something else to achieve it; what's more, maybe in advance of later gratification (RT: might not everyone feel happy and yet there's something wrong overall; maybe outsiders suffer) | |
| 119b | The action itself (i.e. the means) is part of the consequences, since it happens after the decision to act is taken; so it's not "means versus ends" | |
| 120 | Forecasting longer-term consequences, knock-on and downstream effects is difficult, but we ought to try (maybe giving the nearer consequences more weight?) | |
| 121 | Marxist "false consciousness" = "you don't really know what's good for you (because it's conditioned by your class situation). But we (the rulers) do know. | |
| 122a | It's often more important (and less contentious) to relieve suffering than to generate extreme happiness | |
| 122b | Oppression is a sure cause of misery, so relieving it should get plenty of weight - "let my people go!" | |
| 122c | We should add "punishing the innocent" to this | |
| 123 | It makes good sense to enshrine some of these things in laws and rules | |
| 124 | In summary, 1) there may be a conflict between different rules; 2) we need to be able to review the rules (as we did with slavery etc); 3) there will often be major choices where the rules provide little guidance - in these cases we need to apply the "Overarching" happiness principle | |
| 125a | Just leaving it to everyone's individual intuitions or preferences isn't good enough. One reason we have made progress as a species is that we have created (RT: often temporary) general theories, models, stories and structures (RT: which save us re-thinking things out on every occasion) | |
| 125b | "Me first" may pollute our way of life | |
| 9 - Economics | 128 | A behaviourist view of economics says we are all subject to conditioned behaviour, like Pavlov's dogs. But this is weak because it doesn't allow for feelings and the sometimes unpredictable way they can break out and upset the apple cart |
| 129 | The Adam Smith view, of exchange to mutual advantage being the only influence, falls short as a model. It's efficient, but ... | |
| 130 | Conditions that must apply: 1) market must be free to allow new entrants; 2) buyers and sellers must have access to the same information 3) the deal shouldn't adversely affect parties (individuals or groups) that were not involved in the deal. Very often, economies fail to meet some or all of these | |
| 132 | Cost-benefit analysis has the drawback that it tries to reduce everything to money in a limited domain, rather than happiness of all affected | |
| 134 | GNP has many weaknesses as a measure of the welfare of a nation | |
| 135 | The 5 factors that are missing from most economic models: 1) the same amount of extra income matters more to the poor than the rich; 2) there are "external effects" (in either direction) that are not part of any deal; 3) our values and norms evolve, usually in response to external influences; 4) we hate loss more than we value gain; 5) we often behave inconsistently (RT: probably because we have many motives rather than just the economic one) | |
| 136 | Re 1), there's a basic dilemma that raising tax can shift happiness to the poor, but it may dampen incentives for those that want to make an effort - and hence it may reduce the "size of the cake" | |
| 137-8 | Examples of 2) external effects: my happiness with my income depends on what those around me earn; same with performance bonuses; if people work harder and neglect their families, divorce rates may rise and people feel insecure; if there's too much mobility, incidence of mugging in our home area may rise; my depression may depend on social networks; we may feel angry if we can't (for fear) speak our mind; if everyone becomes more selfish, life becomes harder | |
| 139 | Re 3), expectations change, e.g. size of house, gadgets | |
| 140a | Internal and external motivation, the effect of prizes, awards, perks and honours | |
| 140b | When assessing what people have done, how can one really measure their performance or value? We may rely on bean-countable things only | |
| 141 | The happiness of a society is likely to increase the more people care about other people - pure economics ignores this | |
| 142 | We should question policies of continual change - the level upset can grow suddenly and dangerously | |
| 143 | Re 5), we don't always act consistently, maybe because we don't know how we will feel in the future, or we don't understand the risks, or can't hack the calculations - feeling unhappy can itself fuel these problems | |
| 144 | People exaggerate small possibilities, e.g. health scares, air crashes | |
| 146 | The policy-makers models are usually too simplistic | |
| 10 - | 150 | Gaining status brings higher physiological happiness - upwardly mobile monkeys get more sex and hence more offspring |
| Rat race | 151a | Gore Vidal: it is not enough to succeed; others must fail. (RT: see more Gore Vidal quotes) |
| 151b | The struggle for relative income is totally self-defeating, like standing up in a football stadium, or arms races | |
| 152a | If we as consumers want to consume more, we as producers have to produce more | |
| 152b | If we raise our relative income, someone else's goes down, which is an external disbenefit, "pollution" or "noxious emission" (RT: and inflatory?) | |
| 153a | It's wrong to say taxation is pandering to envy, which should be disregarded. But envy is real. Tax should be a corrective on any "noxious emissions" | |
| 153b | We should do something to reduce the distorting effect of the struggle for status. Even though this has some value as a motivator, there are perhaps better motivators, e.g. internal motivation of teamwork and the work itself - or even keeping one's job (RT: which might go if inflation soars?) | |
| 154 | Tax can also be a corrective on addiction; just like tobacco or alcohol, we can become addicted to higher income and lifestyle. | |
| 155 | Taxes do more that just raise money for public expenditure; they hold us back from an ever more fevered way of life (RT: I don't think many politicians have thought of this) | |
| 156 | We should cultivate more respect for those who contribute to the welfare of others, instead of banners saying "getting ahead" | |
| 157 | Performance related pay doesn't make much sense in many jobs, because it's so hard to accurately measure an individual's contribution, especially when it's a team effort, or when external factors make a lot of difference. Beside this it involves an uncertain ranking process and undesirable encouragement of envy and feelings of unfairness. (RT: Bean counting only measures what is easy to measure, so people adjust to maximizing their own beans) | |
| 158-9 | Performance pay gives greater salience to rank, which can lower overall happiness and cooperation, and skews motivation too much towards the external | |
| 160-1 | Advertising also encourages the rat race - "an arms race of spending" | |
| 162 | Competition is however natural; maybe we can give it an outlet in games (as we did instead of war), or move instead to "reaching a benchmark" | |
| 163a | We need to become less obsessed with rankings; otherwise losers will become alienated and a threat (they have little to lose) | |
| 163b | Table shows 11-15 year olds' view on whether other students were kind and helpful. Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Denmark said 73-81%, France and USA 53-54%, Russia 46%, England 43% | |
| 164a | We do need some risk taking, but this also has external effects, as the ordinary citizen (who wasn't part of the decision making) often bears some of the risks. Examples include going to war, or major projects (RT: which may fail and the taxpayer has to bail the thing out) | |
| 164b | Many US and UK leaders glorify change for its own sake, but each reorganization destroys channels of cooperation and trust (RT: Petronius rules OK) | |
| 11 - | 168a | A loss hurts roughly twice as much as an equal gain helps |
| Security | 168b | A happy society wants a certain amount of security |
| 170 | More security may mean less pay - but that's peoples' choice | |
| 171a | We probably need the occasional "bust" to clear out the inefficiencies | |
| 171b | The trend to private pensions funded through investments have meant poor security for many due to crashes. (RT: But otherwise, governments have a big burden as life expectancy increases, and as we know, national economies can come unstuck) | |
| 172-4 | Welfare-to-work is better than both unlimited unemployment benefits and benefits that stop after 6 months (as in the US). Long-term unemployed "enter a phase of grey resignation" | |
| 175 | Total flexibility to hire and fire is not totally conducive to general happiness | |
| 175-6 | Skill is an issue; in US and UK 20% aren't up to reading an instruction manual (only 10% in Germany, Netherlands and Sweden). And over a third have no job-specific qualification. These folk are going to be near the bottom of the heap, more likely to get the push, and less happy | |
| 177 | Since having a single parent makes such a difference to later happiness, what can be done? In US, legalizing abortion produced a big drop in crime | |
| 178a | Flexible working practices and parental leave can make a difference to a family functioning well | |
| 178b | Australian Positive Parenting Programme has been shown to reduce disruptive behaviour by 2/3 | |
| 179a | Deifying romantic love is counterproductive if it causes family break-ups and hence late unhappiness for children | |
| 179b | Geographical mobility also has a downside on peoples' feelings of security | |
| 180a | Mental illness is more likely if you live in an area where your group is a minority | |
| 180b | The usual real reason why governments (RT: in Europe?) encourage immigration is that they can get work done for lower wages | |
| 180c | The council estate ground floor effect - closing the paths going through reduced mental illness by 25%, because then people mainly saw only neighbours | |
| 181 | Depression causes more misery than poverty | |
| 183 | Drugs are cheap and fairly effective, but only a partial answer. There are too few psycho practitioners, given mental illness is 25% of all illness, and spending on it is only 13% of the health budget (7% in US) | |
| 12 - | 188 | Experiments show meditation makes a difference; people were happier and healthier. We are not just victims of our situation (pace Marx or Freud) |
| Control mood? | 189-92 | Buddhism - it helps to get rid of our cravings and anger, or too much "framing" of particular goals; let compassion take up the empty mind space |
| 192 | Most religions have many don'ts, but less on how to reach a state of serenity and loving-kindness | |
| 192-3 | Christianity has a few sects that try - e.g. St Ignatius' spiritual exercises, Quaker meetings | |
| 194 | Alcoholics Anonymous have 12 steps - this sort of thing can help | |
| 195 | Cognitive Therapy (Aaron Beck) is superseding Freud; challenge the negative thoughts, improve one's perception of reality, drop unrealistic goals | |
| 196 | The Serenity Prayer: "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference" | |
| 197-9 | Positive Psychology: 1) play to our strengths; 2) be a 'satisficer' rather than a 'maximiser'; 3) resist the temptation to compare oneself with others; 4) enjoy the success of others; 5) have confidence in our own judgments rather than those of others. | |
| 199a | We can spend too much time living in the future. "Life is not a dress rehearsal". | |
| 199b | Ezra Pound" "What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross" | |
| 200 | We ought to have a school subject on emotional intelligence: 1) understanding & managing one's feelings (incl. anger and rivalry); 2) loving and serving others; 3) appreciation of beauty; 4) causes and cures of illness (esp. mental, drugs, alcohol); 5) love, family and parenting; 6) work and money; 7) understanding the media and preserving one's own values; 8) understanding others, and socializing; 9) political participation; 10) philosophical and religious ideas (compare with Daniel Goleman) | |
| 202 | The placebo effect often works | |
| 13 - | 205-8 | Review of drugs; benefits and risks, especially addiction |
| Drugs? | 208-12 | Review of mental illnesses; histogram showing genetic effect (identical twins 48%, other twins 17%, children 13%, siblings 9%) of chance if the other has it |
| 212-8 | Successful drugs for treatment: 1) chlorpromazine; 2) imipramine (tricyclics); 3) lithium (treatment for bipolar disorders); 4) diazepam (Valium); 5) fluoxetine (Prozac) - and the problems (side effects, addiction) that can arise | |
| 218 | Objectors to drugs: 1) misery is part of human experience and we should accept it; 2) we should only fight mental problems by mental means, i.e. leave it to psychology and religion. Layard disagrees with both; the second, he says, reveals a simplistic body/mind dualism, and we know that isn't true | |
| 219 | Do drugs kill creativity? Great artists and creative thinkers have a higher depression rate than the rest of us | |
| 220 | Lithium certainly didn't affect creativity. The creativity doesn't necessarily come from suffering. Relatives of manic-depressives are in general more creative than the sufferers | |
| 221 | As time passes, better drugs will replace the ones we have now that bring problems | |
| 14 - Conclusion | 224-5 | 1) happiness is a real, objective phenomenon - and is basic; 2) we are programmed to seek happiness; 3) Layard argues that it is "self-evident" that the best society is the happiest; 4) society won't become happier unless people agree that this should be the goal |
| 225-8 | Sources of happiness: 1) being social, in company; 2) trusting each other; 3) keeping the familiar and what we have; 4) feeling a sense of status (being valued) | |
| 226a | Economists complain that people care about processes and not just about outcomes. But that's how people are | |
| 226b | People don't like high turnover in jobs, housing, marriage, organizational structures | |
| 228 | Status has a downside - pollution of the status of others. Taxation should be seen as a way of containing the rat race, rather than a general disincentive | |
| 228-31 | Conditions on keeping happy: 1) being adaptable; 2) recognizing the diminishing happiness returns of "more and more"; 3) seeing that the inner life matters as much as outer circumstances | |
| 231-2 | The model posited by economics is only partial. Exaggeration of 'survival of the fittest' and the 'invisible hand' have led to more inequality and a decline in trust | |
| 232-4 | Layard's prescription for a better world: 1) re-think the role of taxes; 2) spend more on helping poor people and countries (RT: to help themselves, where possible?); 3) spend more on tackling mental illness; 4) improve family-friendly practices at work; 5) subsidize activities that promote community life; 6) eliminate high unemployment, but with welfare-to-work; 7) ban commercial advertising to children (RT: how?); 8) introduce better "moral" education | |
| 234 | We need a stronger concept of "common good" | |
| 235a | It's a dismal philosophy to say one can only be happy as a by-product of something else - it should come, at least in part, from within | |
| 235b | The secret is compassion towards both oneself and others. The goal of happiness is better than that of dynamic efficiency | |
| 235c | Life is for living |
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 19th January 2011
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .