Beware: cozeners abroad

5 June, 2008 in Crops, Minerals, Papua New Guinea by John Burton | No comments

At yesterday’s Crawford School PNG Update we were treated to Shakespeare:

Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! (The Winter’s Tale Act IV Scene IV.)

The lines were those of Autolycus, a pickpocket, who, immediately before lifting a victim’s purse, says in a guileless manner “sir, there are cozeners abroad”, betraying his own calling.

The bard-quoter was Bob Warner, in a paper on the effects of a current resource price boom on the economy of PNG. At issue was whether the paper’s analysis was a waste of time. The choice was (a) the PNG government has hidden a K1.318 billion resources windfall in extra-budgetary trust accounts that selected chaps can raid later when nobody’s looking, or (b) the K1.318 billion is indeed in the accounts, but the chaps are about to go straight and will spend it on the country’s clapped out hospitals, roads and university campuses “soon”.

While we ponder which is more likely, the study notes suggest we often find good sport in the Shakespearean rogue:

Indeed, so delightful is his bad behavior, that his promise to “go straight” … may actually seem a disappointment, leavened only by the hope that the rascal will eventually abandon respectability and return to being a rascal (SparkNotes Study Guide: The Winter’s Tale).

Quite.

Possible design of an anti-cozening
device.

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