I have met Damian Green a few times, mostly in his capacity [when the Tories were in opposition] as a director of his regional water company. I would be very surprised indeed if he wasted his time, or risked his reputation, using an office computer to spend 'many hours' watching soft porn. If his computer was used in that way, by one of the staff in Portcullis House or possibly by an intern, then it is no part of the role of the police to make accusations against Mr Green on national television. The fact that the credibility of the First Secretary is being challenged suggests that there are indeed dark forces at work, with the intention of bringing about the end to the agony of failure of this government.
The precarious state of our national politics is again emphasised by the letter to the Prime Minister [which has, of course, been released to the press] from Nigel Lawson, John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg and others who seem to want the nation to be quite sure of their guilt if the economy hits the disaster to which their demands would drive it.
I find it difficult to concentrate on other issues - of which there are many - when the key elements of national sustenance and security are being knocked away. The people, whether the they voted to stay in or to leave the European Union, deserve a better politics than they are offered at present. The entire political class, including McDonnell and Corbyn no less than Mrs May and the Thatcherite dinosaurs who have just sent her a 'nudge' towards ruin, have forfeited the trust of the electorate; but we are left with no better choice, no alternative that could achieve any degree of visibility to the electorate before March, 2019.
If, in the coming days, there is real news about the economy or our society - or about Economics - I will not be able to restrain myself from blogging about it; otherwise, I shall go off-line for a period and try [yet again] to set out my current understanding in a longer piece of continuous text.
Showing posts with label Damian Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Damian Green. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 December 2017
Thursday, 13 July 2017
Good Jobs?
Yesterday the Right Honourable Damian Green, for the first [and perhaps the only] time stood in for Theresa May to answer Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. As is common, he had been fed with various points to include in his responses: regardless of whether those points actually fitted with the run of the questions that were put to him. Thus he challenged the opposition to agree that the employment statistics that had just been issued were a very positive indication of the strength of the economy. He did not get the answer that he was supposedly seeking, but that did not matter as the boast about the state of the jobs market was entered into the records of the House.
Only in the most superficial sense are the data positive. The number of people recorded as being employed had gone up, and the recorded number of unemployed had gone down; which meant that on those measures the figures are the most positive for more than forty years.
Forty years ago, in 1977, the Thatcherite destruction of the real economy had not begun and the mixed economy was essentially in good shape. There was an economic crisis nevertheless, due to the effects of failed neo-Keynesian economic policy in stimulating inflation and a consequential wage-price spiral that was causing ever-more-disruptive strikes.
During the nineteen-sixties the Economics profession was dominated by self-styled neo-Keynesians who believed that they could advise the government so precisely on using the 'tools' of macro-economic management that the economy could be 'fine-tuned' to produce a high level of employment without shortages of specifically skilled sets of workers that could became so severe that wages would rise due to the competition by employers to attract those skills.
During the nineteen-fifties there had been willingness among the general population to develop the economy step by step to repair the ravages of the Second World War both in terms of direct damage [especially by bombing] and the exhaustion of industrial plant due to it being run hard for a decade with absolutely minimum investment. Thus a massive house-building programme was given high priority both in the public sector of council homes and in the private market where the building societies were flourishing. It was also accepted by trade union leaders as well as by company directors that Britain was a trading nation, highly dependent on imports. This had been emphasised during the war by the U-boat threat: everyone knew that the country would have been starved into surrender if the German navy had been able to cut off imports of essential foodstufs and other commodities. So it was easy for people to understand that in peacetime it would be necessary to build up the export markets that alone could pay for the imports the UK would continue to need.
But the workers were also consumers, who were informed by mass media [among which television was emerging as probably the most important] as to what was fashionable as well in the USA as on this side of the Atlantic. Most of continental Europe was more damaged and run-down than Britain, so it was to the prosperous North American markets that Britons looked for examples of what was fashionable. American films were the principal content in the cinemas, and there too people saw what a relatively-affluent community of consumers could have. Twenty-first century people will find it hard to understand how desirable nylon stockings and simple make-up were to women, and why their menfolk accepted and accommodated those 'needs'. Thus scarce foreign currency, especially dollars, had to be spent importing those things, and many others. Consumer goods were far more prominent among imports than economic planners had anticipated during the war. Thus less machinery was imported to develop the exporting industries, so that more could be spent on consumer goods; and once that trend was accepted it came to dominate the pattern of economic evolution.
Fast-forward sixty-odd years and we see that the balance of payments is hopelessly adverse for Britain. Industry is still important as provider of goods for export, but massively overshadowed by service trades. Tomorrow I will develop this theme further.
Only in the most superficial sense are the data positive. The number of people recorded as being employed had gone up, and the recorded number of unemployed had gone down; which meant that on those measures the figures are the most positive for more than forty years.
Forty years ago, in 1977, the Thatcherite destruction of the real economy had not begun and the mixed economy was essentially in good shape. There was an economic crisis nevertheless, due to the effects of failed neo-Keynesian economic policy in stimulating inflation and a consequential wage-price spiral that was causing ever-more-disruptive strikes.
During the nineteen-sixties the Economics profession was dominated by self-styled neo-Keynesians who believed that they could advise the government so precisely on using the 'tools' of macro-economic management that the economy could be 'fine-tuned' to produce a high level of employment without shortages of specifically skilled sets of workers that could became so severe that wages would rise due to the competition by employers to attract those skills.
During the nineteen-fifties there had been willingness among the general population to develop the economy step by step to repair the ravages of the Second World War both in terms of direct damage [especially by bombing] and the exhaustion of industrial plant due to it being run hard for a decade with absolutely minimum investment. Thus a massive house-building programme was given high priority both in the public sector of council homes and in the private market where the building societies were flourishing. It was also accepted by trade union leaders as well as by company directors that Britain was a trading nation, highly dependent on imports. This had been emphasised during the war by the U-boat threat: everyone knew that the country would have been starved into surrender if the German navy had been able to cut off imports of essential foodstufs and other commodities. So it was easy for people to understand that in peacetime it would be necessary to build up the export markets that alone could pay for the imports the UK would continue to need.
But the workers were also consumers, who were informed by mass media [among which television was emerging as probably the most important] as to what was fashionable as well in the USA as on this side of the Atlantic. Most of continental Europe was more damaged and run-down than Britain, so it was to the prosperous North American markets that Britons looked for examples of what was fashionable. American films were the principal content in the cinemas, and there too people saw what a relatively-affluent community of consumers could have. Twenty-first century people will find it hard to understand how desirable nylon stockings and simple make-up were to women, and why their menfolk accepted and accommodated those 'needs'. Thus scarce foreign currency, especially dollars, had to be spent importing those things, and many others. Consumer goods were far more prominent among imports than economic planners had anticipated during the war. Thus less machinery was imported to develop the exporting industries, so that more could be spent on consumer goods; and once that trend was accepted it came to dominate the pattern of economic evolution.
Fast-forward sixty-odd years and we see that the balance of payments is hopelessly adverse for Britain. Industry is still important as provider of goods for export, but massively overshadowed by service trades. Tomorrow I will develop this theme further.
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