Mrs May was talking in January about the importance of the 'Industrial Strategy' on which her government was supposedly working very hard. It has now been unveiled, and although there is some straight thinking in it there is also grave incomprehension of economic realities. Just to list a few:
*Brexit: it is vitally important that any drugs, designs or other innovations are marketable throughout the European Union on more-or-less the same terms as at present: otherwise, firms that are subsidised to employ teams of researchers in the UK will do the final stages of development within the Union so that the product is not inhibited by regulatory barriers from getting to its primary market. Innovative products will be held up at any border by licensing and regulatory systems, to allow indigenous companies in the potential importer countries to catch up. WTO Rules will not stop such chauvinistic chicanery. Even before the advent of Trump, the USA was notorious in that regard: while firms in emergent economies - including China and India - are not above simple intellectual theft.
*Profits can be shoved abroad by alien companies. So the British state will be sponsoring and helping alien-owned firms to develop products - employing some British scientists and technicians, true - but also allowed to import their own managers and experts for the duration of the period of product development. The manufacturing of the developed idea can that be conducted anywhere on the globe, and the pricing structure can be adjusted so that British taxpayer gets little back for the investment by the British state. Although some share of the intellectual property in some ideas may go to British universities and individuals, the vast majority will be owned by alien organisations; and can thus be alienated as they wish.
*Fake apprenticeships such as are being developed with schools and universities in the UK are most unlikely to produce people with the skill-set that is achieved by real apprenticeship in Germany. It is therefore unlikely that the programme will develop a strong and longstanding skilled workforce such as exists in the dreams of the contributors to the strategic plan. The ongoing delay in the actual launch of the Apprenticeship-MBA will provide no obstacle to the companies that have already agreed to participate in the Industrial Strategy.
*Any genuine development of science and technology in the UK is greatly to be welcomed. But I have observed personally for more than forty years that a huge proportion of the research that is carried out in the best British universities of technology - places like Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield - is done by alien research students. Not enough Brits are capable of getting good degrees in science and technology, because of the awful state and status of science in schools. Side-tracking kids into fake apprenticeships where they simulate industrial processes instead of doing full-time hard learning will set the UK back in its development of the right skills for the twenty-first century.
My overwhelming feeling about the strategy is: "too little, too late"!
Most importantly, the 'strategists' still have not got lesson number one: that productivity improves only when productiveness gets the prime place. Productiveness is improved only when the profit from any activity is devoted to improving the plant, the processes, the materials used and the people employed. When that is done, productivity can improve and real economic growth [in the sense of generating more income-per-head from the workforce] can be achieved. I do not see that productiveness will significantly be enhanced by this new Strategy.
Showing posts with label Sheffield. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sheffield. Show all posts
Monday, 27 November 2017
Thursday, 23 November 2017
The Budgetary Pantomine
The media have given a generous response to the Chancellor's Budget, emphasising that the grim assessment of the prospects for the British economy supplied by the 'Office for Budget Responsibility' gave the Treasury team very little leeway to take any risks.
The torrent of publicity and public pressure that must have made the Chancellor's life quite unpleasant ever since he accepted the job came to a peak in the days before the Budget was announced; and many 'leaks' and hints and briefings had already made it clear what the principal elements in the speech would have to be. If no more money had been allocated to the National Health Service the fuss would have been intolerable for the whole government: though exactly how much more is being given than had previously been announced is obscured by the possibility of double counting. The relative regression of the British educational system, compared especially to those in emergent countries, has been shaming for many years; so small steps to tackle the issue are the least that could be done.
As founder of a housebuilding firm, Mr Hammond can be assumed to have a direct and personal grasp of the issues about housing which had to be addressed. While still fiscally cautious, the measures announced to increase construction and to begin to restore the dream of a 'property-owning democracy'.
The intrinsic theme of the Budget, as had long been foretold, was the desperate state of the British economy: most especially the deplorable level of productivity and the yawning north-south divide. In the past year, plans to electrify the main line to Sheffield and a transpennine route have been axed, thus the lie is given to the words about redressing regional inequity. Still the government is pressing on with HS2 and Hinckley Point, which will do no good for anybody but will take up both engineering capacity and money.
Nothing will be done about productivity until radical change is introduced to the economy at large. That will be my theme for the next few days, when I will be based in Derbyshire and thus can probably have a better perspective on things.
The torrent of publicity and public pressure that must have made the Chancellor's life quite unpleasant ever since he accepted the job came to a peak in the days before the Budget was announced; and many 'leaks' and hints and briefings had already made it clear what the principal elements in the speech would have to be. If no more money had been allocated to the National Health Service the fuss would have been intolerable for the whole government: though exactly how much more is being given than had previously been announced is obscured by the possibility of double counting. The relative regression of the British educational system, compared especially to those in emergent countries, has been shaming for many years; so small steps to tackle the issue are the least that could be done.
As founder of a housebuilding firm, Mr Hammond can be assumed to have a direct and personal grasp of the issues about housing which had to be addressed. While still fiscally cautious, the measures announced to increase construction and to begin to restore the dream of a 'property-owning democracy'.
The intrinsic theme of the Budget, as had long been foretold, was the desperate state of the British economy: most especially the deplorable level of productivity and the yawning north-south divide. In the past year, plans to electrify the main line to Sheffield and a transpennine route have been axed, thus the lie is given to the words about redressing regional inequity. Still the government is pressing on with HS2 and Hinckley Point, which will do no good for anybody but will take up both engineering capacity and money.
Nothing will be done about productivity until radical change is introduced to the economy at large. That will be my theme for the next few days, when I will be based in Derbyshire and thus can probably have a better perspective on things.
Wednesday, 20 September 2017
The Present State of Economy and Society
Official statistics are compiled by honest professional people, and tell the 'truth' in simple numerical terms. But much can be done to interpret them, either favourably or unfavourably, according to the wish of the interpreter. Hence, although the United Kingdom now has the highest proportion of its available adult citizens in employment since 1975 [one of the three years during which the mixed economy was tested most severely] it is sobering to note that in almost every way the present pattern of employment is massively more fragile than was that which NeoKeynesian inflation undermined. The effect of the inflation of prices, especially after the oil price hike of 1973, was that production was interrupted by strikes when the authorities took action to suppress wage rises in their clumsy attempts to cap the wage-price spiral. In each period of pay 'restraint' government costs rose while government revenues declined, and the balance of payments with the rest of the world became strongly negative. In those circumstances, the Labour government [which relied on minority parties to retain control of the House of Commons] sought a loan from the International Monetary Fund; and the conditions applied to that loan [in retrospect] can be seen as a demand for the state to bring in Monetarist policies to replace they failed pseudo Keynesianism that the Economic establishment had applied.
The Labour Party was torn apart by the consequent dissent from the new policy, with the trade unions - the traditional paymasters of the party - doggedly opposed to the government. Consequently the Conservatives won the 1989 general election. The new Tory leader, the largely-unknown and completely untested Margaret Thatcher, embraced monetarism enthusiastically; and she deplored the less-than-half-hearted attitude towards her radical policies from most of the Tory establishment [including most of her cabinet]. They had been broadly content with the mixed economy and were scared by the new radicalism. Mrs Thatcher and her close cohort dismissed the majority as 'wets', and became more intent on radical change in the economy. As to the social consequences of disruptive economic policies, Mrs Thatcher was simply to say 'There is no such thing as Society'.
The people who could be identified as the 'enemies' of the new Monetarist policies began with the Economists, 364 of whom signed a letter to the TIMES condemning her policies from a standpoint of NeoKeynesianism [and who succumbed thereafter, with amazing speed, so that those who remained in their 'profession' become locked in to the new Econocracy by the millennium]. Next among the 'enemies' were the trade unions, that had frustrated the attempts by the Labour government of 1974-79 to control the wage-price spiral. Here the Thatcher gang decided on a radical solution: if you close the coal mines and a large section of the iron and steel industry [including shipbuilding] you take the cash and the members away from the unions, leaving them as shell organisations with no real power. These radical solutions were adopted; and the majority of the electorate was unmoved by the pleas of miners and steel workers whose communities were largely isolated geographically and socially from the cities where banking, finance and smart retailing were providing more nice, clean jobs for the middle classes. While the traditionally unionised areas continued to return Labour MPs from constituencies with very high percentages of the industrial and ex-industrial population, other urban centres and the less-densely-populated majority of constituencies were content to return Tory [or, in some cases, irrelevant Liberal] MPs; and thus the wrecking job was done.
It is now more than thirty years since the steelworks of Sheffield, the pit sites across the country with their unmistakable winding-gear, the massive cranes on the dockyards to the Tyne and the Tees and the Upper Clyde, and other symbols of the most basic and essential industries were first left derelict; then cleared away. It is hard to believe that Meadowhall in Sheffield was once the world's leading steel and engineering centre, or that the placid banks of the Upper Clyde were once the proudest shipyards in the world.
No thanks to successive governments, pharmaceutical and biological companies have developed lucrative new products; creative industries [including computer games] have developed magnificently and - despite the idiocies that created the financial crisis of 2007-9 - the financial services based in London lead the world in expertise and innovation. So Britain has high spots, and remains uniquely innovative; but fools in government have congratulated themselves on 'attracting inward investment' as one after another the innovative firms [along with the intellectual capital] are snapped up by aliens. This almost-constant alienation of the most valuable assets that the British continue to create means that the balance-of-payments becomes increasingly adverse, as British consumers have to pay foreign firms to access British inventions, even if they are manufactured here.
The final knell of heavy industry has been sounded today, with the news that Tata is selling its steelworks in the UK to Thyssen-Krupp: whatever promises are made [and especially if we really do leave the European Economic Area] Port Talbot will go; and with it the last evidence of heavy industry will be consigned to the film archives and to history books.
The Labour Party was torn apart by the consequent dissent from the new policy, with the trade unions - the traditional paymasters of the party - doggedly opposed to the government. Consequently the Conservatives won the 1989 general election. The new Tory leader, the largely-unknown and completely untested Margaret Thatcher, embraced monetarism enthusiastically; and she deplored the less-than-half-hearted attitude towards her radical policies from most of the Tory establishment [including most of her cabinet]. They had been broadly content with the mixed economy and were scared by the new radicalism. Mrs Thatcher and her close cohort dismissed the majority as 'wets', and became more intent on radical change in the economy. As to the social consequences of disruptive economic policies, Mrs Thatcher was simply to say 'There is no such thing as Society'.
The people who could be identified as the 'enemies' of the new Monetarist policies began with the Economists, 364 of whom signed a letter to the TIMES condemning her policies from a standpoint of NeoKeynesianism [and who succumbed thereafter, with amazing speed, so that those who remained in their 'profession' become locked in to the new Econocracy by the millennium]. Next among the 'enemies' were the trade unions, that had frustrated the attempts by the Labour government of 1974-79 to control the wage-price spiral. Here the Thatcher gang decided on a radical solution: if you close the coal mines and a large section of the iron and steel industry [including shipbuilding] you take the cash and the members away from the unions, leaving them as shell organisations with no real power. These radical solutions were adopted; and the majority of the electorate was unmoved by the pleas of miners and steel workers whose communities were largely isolated geographically and socially from the cities where banking, finance and smart retailing were providing more nice, clean jobs for the middle classes. While the traditionally unionised areas continued to return Labour MPs from constituencies with very high percentages of the industrial and ex-industrial population, other urban centres and the less-densely-populated majority of constituencies were content to return Tory [or, in some cases, irrelevant Liberal] MPs; and thus the wrecking job was done.
It is now more than thirty years since the steelworks of Sheffield, the pit sites across the country with their unmistakable winding-gear, the massive cranes on the dockyards to the Tyne and the Tees and the Upper Clyde, and other symbols of the most basic and essential industries were first left derelict; then cleared away. It is hard to believe that Meadowhall in Sheffield was once the world's leading steel and engineering centre, or that the placid banks of the Upper Clyde were once the proudest shipyards in the world.
No thanks to successive governments, pharmaceutical and biological companies have developed lucrative new products; creative industries [including computer games] have developed magnificently and - despite the idiocies that created the financial crisis of 2007-9 - the financial services based in London lead the world in expertise and innovation. So Britain has high spots, and remains uniquely innovative; but fools in government have congratulated themselves on 'attracting inward investment' as one after another the innovative firms [along with the intellectual capital] are snapped up by aliens. This almost-constant alienation of the most valuable assets that the British continue to create means that the balance-of-payments becomes increasingly adverse, as British consumers have to pay foreign firms to access British inventions, even if they are manufactured here.
The final knell of heavy industry has been sounded today, with the news that Tata is selling its steelworks in the UK to Thyssen-Krupp: whatever promises are made [and especially if we really do leave the European Economic Area] Port Talbot will go; and with it the last evidence of heavy industry will be consigned to the film archives and to history books.
Thursday, 17 August 2017
The Uses of University
The principal social purpose of universities today is to keep around 44% of the age group 18-22 out of the jobs market and [in the main] in a life of sufficient social indulgence to keep them from radicalisation in support of any real or imagined cause. In England [which forms the bulk of the population] the cost of achieving this objective has been shunted from the state budget into a La-la-Land where it appears as a debt owed by the graduate community; which no one believes will be repaid in full, or even in half. The fact that the interest that is added to the accumulated debt has now increased to more than 6% - compound - makes the dream of repayment even more laughable.
It is still argued in some quarters that the universities have an economic purpose, to train the inventors of the future and to nurture some of the best researchers as teachers in the universities who combine their pedagogic work with the selection of the best students to join their research teams who will thus extend and perpetuate their work. This happens, on a depressingly small scale in comparison to the massive size of the university sector overall. Some buildings that were provided by the state in the nineteen sixties and seventies for university schools of science - especially of applied science and engineering - have been 're-purposed' to take some of the expansion in social studies: especially business and media. Where applied science capacity has been maintained, since the mid-seventies it has been occupied by an increasing proportion of overseas students [at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels] who mostly take their skills to competitor countries after graduating. Around the best scientific, medical and engineering departments have been gathered spin-off companies, which have developed innovations formed in the academic context into potentially successful businesses. Where these grow into conspicuous successes, the probability of them being taken over and developed by aliens, rather than by British capitalists, is overwhelming.
It is also worth noting that much of the best spun-off development has been in business parks funded by richly-endowed colleges, especially in Cambridge; which have been better resourced that spin-offs from Manchester or Sheffield Universities. Bullshit about the Northern Powerhouse has drawn heavily on the resources of the universities in the region for its rhetoric: but the Oxbridge endowments have not been matched by state funding for spin-offs from the multiple universities in Leeds or Birmingham.
The chief function of the universities is indeed to maintain intelligent young people in suspense over a period of years in which they have a good chance of being softened by drink, drugs, sex and idleness, or of being diverted into sports and hobbies that absorb their attention in ways that are not economically or politically disruptive. The school results that determine which university and course [if any] pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will take up are being announced today, and the universities are competing vigorously to attract the best talent [insofar as it is revealed by A-level results]. The short-term motives for this are to be able to claim a 'high quality' of intake to keep a flow of good applicants coming to the university, and to get their fees through the university's books. The longer-term objective is to be a survivor when the inevitable cull of the over-bloated higher education system is begun. Economic and social usefulness will then be asserted as the criteria for selection as to which institutions should be culled and which retained: but the objectivity and validity of those criteria will be subject to challenge. The outcome, as to the size, shape and orientation of the higher education system cannot now be predicted.
There still are great scholars and sensible researchers in the British higher educational system. One such has just challenged the increasing optimism of government and the media about the extent of the oil and gas supplies that can be gained by fracking shale. He has gently suggested that the shales that are to be found in the UK are mostly too new [in Geological terms] to yield much that is economically useful. So another bubble may be about to burst: which shows how important it is - and always has been - to develop and retain the applied sciences: they can provide counterbalance to the fantasies that emerge from the Econocracy, which currently corrupt far too great a proportion of the university population.
It is still argued in some quarters that the universities have an economic purpose, to train the inventors of the future and to nurture some of the best researchers as teachers in the universities who combine their pedagogic work with the selection of the best students to join their research teams who will thus extend and perpetuate their work. This happens, on a depressingly small scale in comparison to the massive size of the university sector overall. Some buildings that were provided by the state in the nineteen sixties and seventies for university schools of science - especially of applied science and engineering - have been 're-purposed' to take some of the expansion in social studies: especially business and media. Where applied science capacity has been maintained, since the mid-seventies it has been occupied by an increasing proportion of overseas students [at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels] who mostly take their skills to competitor countries after graduating. Around the best scientific, medical and engineering departments have been gathered spin-off companies, which have developed innovations formed in the academic context into potentially successful businesses. Where these grow into conspicuous successes, the probability of them being taken over and developed by aliens, rather than by British capitalists, is overwhelming.
It is also worth noting that much of the best spun-off development has been in business parks funded by richly-endowed colleges, especially in Cambridge; which have been better resourced that spin-offs from Manchester or Sheffield Universities. Bullshit about the Northern Powerhouse has drawn heavily on the resources of the universities in the region for its rhetoric: but the Oxbridge endowments have not been matched by state funding for spin-offs from the multiple universities in Leeds or Birmingham.
The chief function of the universities is indeed to maintain intelligent young people in suspense over a period of years in which they have a good chance of being softened by drink, drugs, sex and idleness, or of being diverted into sports and hobbies that absorb their attention in ways that are not economically or politically disruptive. The school results that determine which university and course [if any] pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will take up are being announced today, and the universities are competing vigorously to attract the best talent [insofar as it is revealed by A-level results]. The short-term motives for this are to be able to claim a 'high quality' of intake to keep a flow of good applicants coming to the university, and to get their fees through the university's books. The longer-term objective is to be a survivor when the inevitable cull of the over-bloated higher education system is begun. Economic and social usefulness will then be asserted as the criteria for selection as to which institutions should be culled and which retained: but the objectivity and validity of those criteria will be subject to challenge. The outcome, as to the size, shape and orientation of the higher education system cannot now be predicted.
There still are great scholars and sensible researchers in the British higher educational system. One such has just challenged the increasing optimism of government and the media about the extent of the oil and gas supplies that can be gained by fracking shale. He has gently suggested that the shales that are to be found in the UK are mostly too new [in Geological terms] to yield much that is economically useful. So another bubble may be about to burst: which shows how important it is - and always has been - to develop and retain the applied sciences: they can provide counterbalance to the fantasies that emerge from the Econocracy, which currently corrupt far too great a proportion of the university population.
Tuesday, 25 July 2017
The Fantasy Powerhouse and Historic Reality
Andy Burnham, having moved into the new [and partly undefined] job of a civic mayor has joined in the clamour - which resonates over the Pennines but hardly gains a mention in the London media - as to what has become of George Osborne's 'Northern Powerhouse'. The idea, such as it was, was to persuade Chinese and other foreigners to invest in Manchester and Leeds [and possibly Sheffield and Liverpool], to begin to lift those cities out of the post-industrial depression into which the Thatcher-Major-Blair-Brown-Cameron-Clegg continuum had left them. The concept was predicated on the assumption that there were no significant government funds, beyond the mega-scheme for a bifurcation of the [Chinese financed] HS2 railway to Manchester and to Leeds, north of Birmingham and perhaps some electrification of other lines in the north [to be paid for by the Network Rail budget; not by the government directly]. So a great bubble of talk was built up, Vice-Chancellors pledged their universities to help with surveys and research and local councils hoped to bring their districts into a new co-prosperity sphere.
No material structures were built. A few alien takeovers were made of firms in northern cities. Then came the Brexit vote, Mrs May, the removal of George Osborn and the dissolution of his verbal construct. He asserted that the powerhouse concept would continue, but [notwithstanding his editorship of a London paper] he was just a voice who occasionally visited the wilderness of the north.
Thus the desolation that Andy Burnham sees dragging on into the future is the most realistic prospect for the areas that were exposed to Osborne's 'powerhouse' fantasy. This contrasts directly with the picture as it was half a century ago. Under the Labour Government of 1945 the supposedly exhausted and bankrupt country that is depicted in Econocratically-influenced history set about rebuilding the railways. They began with a massive northern powerhouse project: a fully-electrified, largely newly-routed railway over [and through] the Pennines, between Lancashire and Yorkshire and planned to link with electrified east and west-coast main lines between the midlands of England and the midlands of Scotland. The massive Woodhead Tunnel was driven through the higher hills on the route, and the new Sheffield-Manchester route was a subject of national celebration when it was completed. While the primary use of the railway in its early days was to carry goods, and especially coal as the great source of power for the new economy, it was seen as a significant first step in modernising the entire rail network, as was to be done on the continent over the next couple of decades.
Then came Mr MacMillan and the motorways; and the decision that the country would not afford to develop the railways and new roads: even though the continentals were doing just that. Then, eventually, came Blair and Cameron and the promise to phase out coal burning power stations; which was logical as the Thatcher gang had shut the mines and coal - unlike oil, which had been found under British home waters - had to be imported, to the detriment of the balance of payments. The last vestiges of the real, material northern powerhouse were destroyed: symbolised by the closure of the Woodhead Tunnel. Sheffield and Manchester are now linked by a meandering branch railway and by an overcrowded M62; and there is no sign that this will change. This exemplifies a total and dramatic failure of governance, in what used to be a great country.
Just a footnote, on debt. Consumer debt - especially car loans - is a worry for the Bank of England, whose officials have begun to bang on about it. The government is silent on the matter, so far. When the Woodhead Tunnel was being built, the government directly controlled consumer debt: there were controls of hire purchase, a set minimum for the deposit that had to be paid in cash, and control of the period over which the debt could be spread. No-one felt unduly oppressed by such regulation: it was all accepted as being part of a plan for postwar reconstruction of the economy, that people could see was working as homes became available and the roads were repaired after wartime destruction and decay. Hope and promise were in the air: so control of credit was no harm at all. Now the government is under the influence of the Econocrats who would oppose any reintroduction of state control of credit, which [they say] is the business of the banks and the supposedly-independent Bank of England. So we are exposed to a credit crunch, again: to set alongside material failure of the economy.
No material structures were built. A few alien takeovers were made of firms in northern cities. Then came the Brexit vote, Mrs May, the removal of George Osborn and the dissolution of his verbal construct. He asserted that the powerhouse concept would continue, but [notwithstanding his editorship of a London paper] he was just a voice who occasionally visited the wilderness of the north.
Thus the desolation that Andy Burnham sees dragging on into the future is the most realistic prospect for the areas that were exposed to Osborne's 'powerhouse' fantasy. This contrasts directly with the picture as it was half a century ago. Under the Labour Government of 1945 the supposedly exhausted and bankrupt country that is depicted in Econocratically-influenced history set about rebuilding the railways. They began with a massive northern powerhouse project: a fully-electrified, largely newly-routed railway over [and through] the Pennines, between Lancashire and Yorkshire and planned to link with electrified east and west-coast main lines between the midlands of England and the midlands of Scotland. The massive Woodhead Tunnel was driven through the higher hills on the route, and the new Sheffield-Manchester route was a subject of national celebration when it was completed. While the primary use of the railway in its early days was to carry goods, and especially coal as the great source of power for the new economy, it was seen as a significant first step in modernising the entire rail network, as was to be done on the continent over the next couple of decades.
Then came Mr MacMillan and the motorways; and the decision that the country would not afford to develop the railways and new roads: even though the continentals were doing just that. Then, eventually, came Blair and Cameron and the promise to phase out coal burning power stations; which was logical as the Thatcher gang had shut the mines and coal - unlike oil, which had been found under British home waters - had to be imported, to the detriment of the balance of payments. The last vestiges of the real, material northern powerhouse were destroyed: symbolised by the closure of the Woodhead Tunnel. Sheffield and Manchester are now linked by a meandering branch railway and by an overcrowded M62; and there is no sign that this will change. This exemplifies a total and dramatic failure of governance, in what used to be a great country.
Just a footnote, on debt. Consumer debt - especially car loans - is a worry for the Bank of England, whose officials have begun to bang on about it. The government is silent on the matter, so far. When the Woodhead Tunnel was being built, the government directly controlled consumer debt: there were controls of hire purchase, a set minimum for the deposit that had to be paid in cash, and control of the period over which the debt could be spread. No-one felt unduly oppressed by such regulation: it was all accepted as being part of a plan for postwar reconstruction of the economy, that people could see was working as homes became available and the roads were repaired after wartime destruction and decay. Hope and promise were in the air: so control of credit was no harm at all. Now the government is under the influence of the Econocrats who would oppose any reintroduction of state control of credit, which [they say] is the business of the banks and the supposedly-independent Bank of England. So we are exposed to a credit crunch, again: to set alongside material failure of the economy.
Monday, 17 July 2017
High-Speed Idiocy: and Some Sense
Today will see another series of announcements on the scheme to build a completely new high-speed railway between London and Birmingham, with branches to Manchester and Leeds.
I am one of the many who deplores the London to Birmingham venture. The existing line from Euston takes only 70 minutes, non-stop. The need on that route is for more capacity to take stopping trains that can bring commuters more effectively into London from towns and cities on the route, and on feeder routes to that line. The environmental damage that it will inflict is immense, and the cost will be added to the effective national debt [from Britain to aliens, largely Chinese state-owned enterprises] even though it is to be wrapped up as corporate lending. That borrowing will have to be paid for: so if British people decide they cannot afford the prices that will be slapped onto tickets to travel on HS2, the cost of the daft first-stage enterprise will either be offloaded onto the prices of rail tickets nationwide, or onto taxes.
The so-say second stage: or, at least, investment in the improvement of main rail routes for travel across the north midlands and the south of northern England, is absolutely essential. Direct trains from Sheffield to London have been improved, and thus times on the route via Chesterfield, Derby and Leicester, with a sideline to Nottingham, are acceptable. The fast trains on the west-coast mainline that bypass Birmingham on the way to Edinburgh and Glasgow do not serve any major city in northern England: and they are slowed down by stopping at some selection from the list of Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle. The history of railway company formation, and the consequential construction of lines, means that there are various cities and towns to be served in Yorkshire, causing there to be barely-adequate services to York, Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax, Huddersfield and Hull from the metropolis: only after Northallerton is there a clear principal route via Darlington, Durham, Newcastle and the north: and this all leaves Sunderland and Middlesborough at the edges of the map. Huge expenditure is needed on that infrastructure to bring it up to the level that is common on the European continent. Half a century has been spent closing railways and parts of routes and despoiling the railways of the land that could have been sold to provide the cash to fund updating of the system. While the Osbornian HS2N plan may not be feasible, the investment is necessary: and it should come from a state-led infrastructure pool to which crowd-funding from the British people should be added. It is not necessary to add to the public external debt of the nation to improve this infrastructure: the state should lead, the people can follow, and the spending that will be generated by the construction work and then the operation of the lines will help to revive the economy. It is necessary to build not just 'strategic' main lines, but the ensure that all the 'bypassed' towns - even Darwen and Accrington - are effectively linked in to the new system.
Before one gets too depressed at the present state of the British railways, one should look at the home of capitalism, the United States of America: and at its financial capital, New York. There the railways are in a state of extreme dereliction: with collapsing bridges, five-mile-an-hour speed limits, frequent derailments at the major stations and [literally] century-old wiring providing power to some routes. President Trump trumpeted his intention to change all this, with massive investment in infrastructure, including in his home city: but so far he has cut down on the Obama-era commitment of federal investment.
Thought must be given to the effects of economic thinking, both in the neo-Keynesian era and in the more recent period when 'rational markets' theory has predominated, on the real structure and infrastructure of human life in the urban environment. It is Economics that got us down into this mess: economic dogma will not help us out of it.
I am one of the many who deplores the London to Birmingham venture. The existing line from Euston takes only 70 minutes, non-stop. The need on that route is for more capacity to take stopping trains that can bring commuters more effectively into London from towns and cities on the route, and on feeder routes to that line. The environmental damage that it will inflict is immense, and the cost will be added to the effective national debt [from Britain to aliens, largely Chinese state-owned enterprises] even though it is to be wrapped up as corporate lending. That borrowing will have to be paid for: so if British people decide they cannot afford the prices that will be slapped onto tickets to travel on HS2, the cost of the daft first-stage enterprise will either be offloaded onto the prices of rail tickets nationwide, or onto taxes.
The so-say second stage: or, at least, investment in the improvement of main rail routes for travel across the north midlands and the south of northern England, is absolutely essential. Direct trains from Sheffield to London have been improved, and thus times on the route via Chesterfield, Derby and Leicester, with a sideline to Nottingham, are acceptable. The fast trains on the west-coast mainline that bypass Birmingham on the way to Edinburgh and Glasgow do not serve any major city in northern England: and they are slowed down by stopping at some selection from the list of Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle. The history of railway company formation, and the consequential construction of lines, means that there are various cities and towns to be served in Yorkshire, causing there to be barely-adequate services to York, Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax, Huddersfield and Hull from the metropolis: only after Northallerton is there a clear principal route via Darlington, Durham, Newcastle and the north: and this all leaves Sunderland and Middlesborough at the edges of the map. Huge expenditure is needed on that infrastructure to bring it up to the level that is common on the European continent. Half a century has been spent closing railways and parts of routes and despoiling the railways of the land that could have been sold to provide the cash to fund updating of the system. While the Osbornian HS2N plan may not be feasible, the investment is necessary: and it should come from a state-led infrastructure pool to which crowd-funding from the British people should be added. It is not necessary to add to the public external debt of the nation to improve this infrastructure: the state should lead, the people can follow, and the spending that will be generated by the construction work and then the operation of the lines will help to revive the economy. It is necessary to build not just 'strategic' main lines, but the ensure that all the 'bypassed' towns - even Darwen and Accrington - are effectively linked in to the new system.
Before one gets too depressed at the present state of the British railways, one should look at the home of capitalism, the United States of America: and at its financial capital, New York. There the railways are in a state of extreme dereliction: with collapsing bridges, five-mile-an-hour speed limits, frequent derailments at the major stations and [literally] century-old wiring providing power to some routes. President Trump trumpeted his intention to change all this, with massive investment in infrastructure, including in his home city: but so far he has cut down on the Obama-era commitment of federal investment.
Thought must be given to the effects of economic thinking, both in the neo-Keynesian era and in the more recent period when 'rational markets' theory has predominated, on the real structure and infrastructure of human life in the urban environment. It is Economics that got us down into this mess: economic dogma will not help us out of it.
Saturday, 1 July 2017
Defence Spending in context
The United Kingdom has some pretension - still - to be a major military power, by virtue of the nuclear arsenal that Jeremy Corbin so ardently wishes to destroy. Were he to have his wish, Britain's decline, far below the status of 'the world's fifth-biggest economy', would instantly be apparent. No sane living person who has breathed since the end of the war with Japan in 1945 has ever wanted nuclear weapons to be used. Many people deplore the use of two atomic bombs to 'bring the Japanese to their senses' and thereby save many millions of lives by enforcing the surrender of the Empire of the Sun. But the Corbyn ideal of mutual nuclear disarmament is not going to happen within decades; so to undertake unilateral disarmament would diminish Britain further than it has been diminished under Thatcher and her successors would be an act of harebrained vandalism.
Millions of people in southern England have been told so often that Thatcherism was a great restorative of the country's power and of its pride, that they at least half-believe it. I had the benefit of a Sheffield perspective, where the truth that I beheld was totally different from the myth that enabled Blair and Cameron to continue the craze for deregulation and the dissipation of economic and political cohesion that made inevitable the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
The Thatcher government deliberately stood back from the steel industry, when fellow members of EFTA [notably Austria and Sweden] took simple measures to protect their equivalent production facilities. Thus the greatest concentration of skill and capital intensity in steel and related technology in the world was exposed to cheap, short-term competition; and destroyed. More than 60,000 skilled jobs [out of around 80,000] in the steel sector in South Yorkshire were redundant within three years; while the government rode high in the polls on the post-Falklands euphoria. In Sheffield the loss of HMS Sheffield during the campaign to recover the islands was a salutary symbol of what was to come when a previously-unpopular government was returned with a sufficient majority to press on with its destructive policies.
The primary target of the returned Tories was the coal mining sector. The oil industry was riding high globally. High inflation in the industrial countries had counteracted the negative impact that the OPEC oil price hike of 1973 had had on the oil price relative to that of coal; and awareness of the detrimental effects of carbon-based atmospheric pollution was increasing throughout society. In various corners of the state-owned coal and electrical power industries experiments were being undertaken - successfully - to find ways of using coal to produce energy with minimal polluting effect; and with a realisable end objective of being able to use coal indefinitely [mostly mined from the abundant resources under these islands] as a primary source of electrical energy. The oil lobby was empowered hugely by the development of oil wells in the North Sea, and their arguments against investment in coal resources had weight with a government hell-bent on simplistic privatisation of electricity generation and distribution without the successor companies being lumbered with the obligation to fund research on 'clean coal'.
A more urgent reason for the Tories' ideologues to oppose the coal sector was, of course, the National Union of Mineworkers and their influence over the whole trade union movement. The Labour government of the late 'sixties had encouraged union membership, and the weakness of the Wilson and Callaghan governments in the 'eighties meant that they could not resist the pressure from their trade union supporters [and funders] greatly to empower unions to recruit members in the workplace and demand negotiating rights between firms and their employees. Millions of people were members of unions under 'closed shop' types of arrangement, where people who could not prove a conscientious [usually that meant a religious] objection had to join the union to get the job. The government was keen to sweep away all such obstacles to a 'free market' in labour: and saw the Mineworkers as the inevitable block in their way. So they decided to tackle it directly, and a plan was carefully devised simultaneously to stockpile coal where it was still needed - mostly at the power stations - as the necessary preparation for a strike that would probably cause coal production to cease for a protracted period.
The National Union of Mineworkers was controlled by a clique of hard leftists, led by Arthur Scargill, who were on their side so determined to have a strike that they alienated their colleagues in some regions that those regions' miners stayed at work when a strike was called without a formal ballot and at the time of year -spring - when the demand for coal at the power stations was declining. The dispute then turned into an uprising. I saw this for myself. Hundreds of the police who were drafted in to confront the miners and their violent leftist supporters stayed in the hall of residence where I was the warden, during the vacations. Non-miner supporters of the strike [and of the revolution that they hoped it would ignite] came along for the rough-stuff; and the strike took on another political dimension when the already heavily-exploited miners of the Soviet Union were levied a portion of their wages to support the supposedly-starving families of British miners. No ordinary miner saw any of that money: it vanished into bank accounts for which no explanation nor audit has ever been issued.
People spoke openly of a potentially revolutionary situation. Those around Scargill included a cohort who believed that the mineworkers were the last mass workforce who could spearhead a revolution in the UK. From being a sympathiser with the union, I became a sceptic and then - regretfully - an opponent of the extremism that the confrontation bred. In the end, enough people went through the transition that I experienced myself for the government - despite its destructive motives - to have the strength and support to drive the miners to surrender, and return to work until the pit closure programme could be implemented.
The attitude that closed the steelworks went on to shut the shipyards and aerospace plant, and allowed the demise of the potteries and a series of other regionally-based industries. Much of industry was tied up with national defence - steel for ships and aircraft and guns, as a prime example - the rundown of the nation's defences became inevitable as the real economy slowed down. The bubble of financial services and the poison of consumer credit were encouraged as means of claiming 'economic growth' through the expansion of consumer spending: increasingly on imports.
I have warmed too much to my theme and gone on too long. Apologies to anyone who actually does read this.
Millions of people in southern England have been told so often that Thatcherism was a great restorative of the country's power and of its pride, that they at least half-believe it. I had the benefit of a Sheffield perspective, where the truth that I beheld was totally different from the myth that enabled Blair and Cameron to continue the craze for deregulation and the dissipation of economic and political cohesion that made inevitable the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
The Thatcher government deliberately stood back from the steel industry, when fellow members of EFTA [notably Austria and Sweden] took simple measures to protect their equivalent production facilities. Thus the greatest concentration of skill and capital intensity in steel and related technology in the world was exposed to cheap, short-term competition; and destroyed. More than 60,000 skilled jobs [out of around 80,000] in the steel sector in South Yorkshire were redundant within three years; while the government rode high in the polls on the post-Falklands euphoria. In Sheffield the loss of HMS Sheffield during the campaign to recover the islands was a salutary symbol of what was to come when a previously-unpopular government was returned with a sufficient majority to press on with its destructive policies.
The primary target of the returned Tories was the coal mining sector. The oil industry was riding high globally. High inflation in the industrial countries had counteracted the negative impact that the OPEC oil price hike of 1973 had had on the oil price relative to that of coal; and awareness of the detrimental effects of carbon-based atmospheric pollution was increasing throughout society. In various corners of the state-owned coal and electrical power industries experiments were being undertaken - successfully - to find ways of using coal to produce energy with minimal polluting effect; and with a realisable end objective of being able to use coal indefinitely [mostly mined from the abundant resources under these islands] as a primary source of electrical energy. The oil lobby was empowered hugely by the development of oil wells in the North Sea, and their arguments against investment in coal resources had weight with a government hell-bent on simplistic privatisation of electricity generation and distribution without the successor companies being lumbered with the obligation to fund research on 'clean coal'.
A more urgent reason for the Tories' ideologues to oppose the coal sector was, of course, the National Union of Mineworkers and their influence over the whole trade union movement. The Labour government of the late 'sixties had encouraged union membership, and the weakness of the Wilson and Callaghan governments in the 'eighties meant that they could not resist the pressure from their trade union supporters [and funders] greatly to empower unions to recruit members in the workplace and demand negotiating rights between firms and their employees. Millions of people were members of unions under 'closed shop' types of arrangement, where people who could not prove a conscientious [usually that meant a religious] objection had to join the union to get the job. The government was keen to sweep away all such obstacles to a 'free market' in labour: and saw the Mineworkers as the inevitable block in their way. So they decided to tackle it directly, and a plan was carefully devised simultaneously to stockpile coal where it was still needed - mostly at the power stations - as the necessary preparation for a strike that would probably cause coal production to cease for a protracted period.
The National Union of Mineworkers was controlled by a clique of hard leftists, led by Arthur Scargill, who were on their side so determined to have a strike that they alienated their colleagues in some regions that those regions' miners stayed at work when a strike was called without a formal ballot and at the time of year -spring - when the demand for coal at the power stations was declining. The dispute then turned into an uprising. I saw this for myself. Hundreds of the police who were drafted in to confront the miners and their violent leftist supporters stayed in the hall of residence where I was the warden, during the vacations. Non-miner supporters of the strike [and of the revolution that they hoped it would ignite] came along for the rough-stuff; and the strike took on another political dimension when the already heavily-exploited miners of the Soviet Union were levied a portion of their wages to support the supposedly-starving families of British miners. No ordinary miner saw any of that money: it vanished into bank accounts for which no explanation nor audit has ever been issued.
People spoke openly of a potentially revolutionary situation. Those around Scargill included a cohort who believed that the mineworkers were the last mass workforce who could spearhead a revolution in the UK. From being a sympathiser with the union, I became a sceptic and then - regretfully - an opponent of the extremism that the confrontation bred. In the end, enough people went through the transition that I experienced myself for the government - despite its destructive motives - to have the strength and support to drive the miners to surrender, and return to work until the pit closure programme could be implemented.
The attitude that closed the steelworks went on to shut the shipyards and aerospace plant, and allowed the demise of the potteries and a series of other regionally-based industries. Much of industry was tied up with national defence - steel for ships and aircraft and guns, as a prime example - the rundown of the nation's defences became inevitable as the real economy slowed down. The bubble of financial services and the poison of consumer credit were encouraged as means of claiming 'economic growth' through the expansion of consumer spending: increasingly on imports.
I have warmed too much to my theme and gone on too long. Apologies to anyone who actually does read this.
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