When Railtrack - notionally, a privatised company - was declared bust, its assets [railway lines, signalling systems, many stations, masses of land etc] were seized and a new government agency called Network Rail carried on as Railtrack had done. Under the daft scheme of privatisation that was undertaken by the Major government, the infrastructure was [mostly] put under Railtrack/Network Rail while the train operating companies competed for franchises to run the trains on the Railtrack infrastructure.
In a crazier development, the government began to subsidise Railtrack [and continued with Network Rail] by giving them money to make improvements, and allowing them to borrow money for track maintenance, updating signals systems, making level crossings safer etc. They also began to subsidise some of the franchised train operating companies as well. These companies could run on a relatively slender capital investment, as the majority of the rolling-stock on the railways had been privatised separately to leasing companies that leased the trains to the operators. The leasing business was quite exclusive and was generally profitable; but where there was doubt as to whether the mass purchase of updated trains would be affordable to the leasing company or the operators, the government opened the taxpayers' assets yet again to pay for the new trains.
The net result is that the people [as a whole] are paying more, per capita, in real terms than they did under British Rail; for a service that is in some cases inferior to British Rail when it was strapped for cash.
A few years after the Railtrack debacle was ended - by the creation of Network Rail - some bureaucrat noticed that the growing debt ascribed on the books to Network Rail was in fact guaranteed by the government; that Network Rail was ultimately part of the state apparatus. So the Railtrack debt was aggregated with the national debt: which made the government's debt-reduction target even less attainable.
And now, suddenly, some other bureaucrat has noticed that housing associations are established as companies. So their aggregate debt [which has been accounted as part of the national debt] should be shunted off the government's books: and that is to be done.
The political importance of that decision is that the government is under huge criticism for the failure of 'the system' to address the dearth of 'affordable housing'. The housing association sector will now be pressured to borrow masses more money - at the prevailing low interest rates - to provide a partial solution to the housing crisis. If the bureaucracy had had the simple common sense to shunt the housing debt off the state's ledger seven years ago, when Osborne began to implement his austerity mania, thousands of homes could now be in use. Under the present regime, politics never offers the right response, even to the most obvious and urgent social issues.
Showing posts with label austerity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label austerity. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 November 2017
Friday, 10 November 2017
Mrs May: Deadline or Deadbeat?
Theresa May has announced her intention to confirm March 2019 as the date on which the UK will leave the European Union; and has indicated an intention somehow to establish that date in law.
On the same day, a spokesperson for the European Union has said that unless there is to be a 'hard border' in Northern Ireland [which no party in Ireland will accept; and which the British state cannot afford to enforce] Northern Ireland must remain under EU jurisdiction permanently: regardless of what arrangement will apply to the rest of the UK. The Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes in the Commons keep Mrs May in power, thus faces a huge dilemma. The one thing that can deprive them of their majority mandate in Ulster would be for them to be seen on the island of Ireland as the group who would vote to enforce a hard frontier. However the DUP may decide that dilemma, there is a bigger one facing the UK government.
Can any UK government [Tory, Labour, fragile coalition - LibLab - or 'grand' coalition of three or more parties] contemplate bearing the cost or the odium of renewed conflict in Northern Ireland? This is an intractable question, to which I have drawn attention on previous occasions. The headbanging Brexiteers have put Ireland into the 'too difficult' file, as they busily fantasize about trade deals with countries that have no particular interest in doing Britain a good turn. Ireland has been a determining factor in British politics for centuries: and it is worth remembering that whenever the British think they have found an answer to 'the Irish question' the Irish change the question.
By a vote of 52% to 48% the UK population voted in favour of ceasing to be a member of the European Union: without any deep understanding of the implications of that question. Now that the ramifications of just a few of the implications are becoming clear, the proportion of the literate classes [especially of the civil service, which would have to administer Brexit Britain] that favours Brexit has declined rapidly.
Millions of people - including me - voted 'out' in genuine opposition to the ever-closer union of a corrupt political dictatorship [masquerading behind a facade of democratic institutions]; we also wanted to cock a snook at the British political class [represented by Cameron, Clegg and Osborne] who were the principal advocates of Remain and of austerity. None of us wanted to ruin the country economically. Some 'out' voters accepted assurances that that the world was open for free-trade deals on WTO terms. Some - me included - believed that, in the unlikely event of the 'outs' winning the vote, a continuance of the [Liberal-supported] government that had given us the referendum would negotiate terms that enabled stable economic life to continue. Nobody expected David Cameron to be such an utter coward as he proved to be. Nobody much minded what happened to Osborne: as he has demonstrated, he could move on to adopt half a dozen lucrative careers at once. On the day of the referendum nobody contemplated Mrs May being the prime minister; and we could not have conceived that she would place herself in thrall to people who actually would be prepared to see the British economy dismembered: starting with the crown jewels in the City of London.
Today, in the Silent Ceremony at Guildhall, a new Lord Mayor of the City will be installed. By the end of his year, the die will have been cast as to whether Britain will survive [and thrive] as an economy in association with the European Union, though with greater facilities for trade with the rest of the world.
Yesterday's two announcements - Mrs May's 'firm deadline' for leaving the EU, and the EU's comments on Ireland - are incompatible and will almost certainly ensure that no kind of Brexit happens in March 2019. Meanwhile, Mrs May's government looks increasingly unlikely to survive even to March 2018. The Tories will implode, even if the DUP do not simply repudiate their voting pact. Mrs May's chances of winning a by-election, even in the leafy home counties, are vanishingly small. Politics has become far too exciting; and that is before the inevitable mass movement against economic suicide begins to capture the headlines.
On the same day, a spokesperson for the European Union has said that unless there is to be a 'hard border' in Northern Ireland [which no party in Ireland will accept; and which the British state cannot afford to enforce] Northern Ireland must remain under EU jurisdiction permanently: regardless of what arrangement will apply to the rest of the UK. The Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes in the Commons keep Mrs May in power, thus faces a huge dilemma. The one thing that can deprive them of their majority mandate in Ulster would be for them to be seen on the island of Ireland as the group who would vote to enforce a hard frontier. However the DUP may decide that dilemma, there is a bigger one facing the UK government.
Can any UK government [Tory, Labour, fragile coalition - LibLab - or 'grand' coalition of three or more parties] contemplate bearing the cost or the odium of renewed conflict in Northern Ireland? This is an intractable question, to which I have drawn attention on previous occasions. The headbanging Brexiteers have put Ireland into the 'too difficult' file, as they busily fantasize about trade deals with countries that have no particular interest in doing Britain a good turn. Ireland has been a determining factor in British politics for centuries: and it is worth remembering that whenever the British think they have found an answer to 'the Irish question' the Irish change the question.
By a vote of 52% to 48% the UK population voted in favour of ceasing to be a member of the European Union: without any deep understanding of the implications of that question. Now that the ramifications of just a few of the implications are becoming clear, the proportion of the literate classes [especially of the civil service, which would have to administer Brexit Britain] that favours Brexit has declined rapidly.
Millions of people - including me - voted 'out' in genuine opposition to the ever-closer union of a corrupt political dictatorship [masquerading behind a facade of democratic institutions]; we also wanted to cock a snook at the British political class [represented by Cameron, Clegg and Osborne] who were the principal advocates of Remain and of austerity. None of us wanted to ruin the country economically. Some 'out' voters accepted assurances that that the world was open for free-trade deals on WTO terms. Some - me included - believed that, in the unlikely event of the 'outs' winning the vote, a continuance of the [Liberal-supported] government that had given us the referendum would negotiate terms that enabled stable economic life to continue. Nobody expected David Cameron to be such an utter coward as he proved to be. Nobody much minded what happened to Osborne: as he has demonstrated, he could move on to adopt half a dozen lucrative careers at once. On the day of the referendum nobody contemplated Mrs May being the prime minister; and we could not have conceived that she would place herself in thrall to people who actually would be prepared to see the British economy dismembered: starting with the crown jewels in the City of London.
Today, in the Silent Ceremony at Guildhall, a new Lord Mayor of the City will be installed. By the end of his year, the die will have been cast as to whether Britain will survive [and thrive] as an economy in association with the European Union, though with greater facilities for trade with the rest of the world.
Yesterday's two announcements - Mrs May's 'firm deadline' for leaving the EU, and the EU's comments on Ireland - are incompatible and will almost certainly ensure that no kind of Brexit happens in March 2019. Meanwhile, Mrs May's government looks increasingly unlikely to survive even to March 2018. The Tories will implode, even if the DUP do not simply repudiate their voting pact. Mrs May's chances of winning a by-election, even in the leafy home counties, are vanishingly small. Politics has become far too exciting; and that is before the inevitable mass movement against economic suicide begins to capture the headlines.
Sunday, 29 October 2017
Brexit Buffoons and the WTO
Nobody who voted, either way, can claim to have understood the full implications of a 'Remain' or of a 'Leave' vote in the 2016 Referendum on Britain's place in the European Union.
It is almost certain that the great proponents of Remain - Cameron, Clegg and scaremaster Osborne - had no idea in advance how they would interpret, then implement, the Leave vote that occurred. Cameron ran away from responsibility:and even a gold-plated palace would not be a sufficient environment in which to write the exculpatory memoirs from which he hopes to make a pile of pennies. The fact that he has bought a sort of gypsy caravan, reminiscent of certain dead children's writers, for the purpose displays his ability to compound folly with ever-deeper illusion. Since the guilty men and their followers [and their mentors] had put the question to the nation, they should at the very least have had transparent contingent plans. They evidently did not. Nor did the civil service have anything like an adequate plan for what would happen after Cameron ran away, Clegg went into obscurity with his party, and Osborne's toxicity with the electorate was recognised by the new prime minister [of whose judgement and capabilities Osborne had been a vigorous critic when they had sat together in cabinet]. Evening Standard editor Osborne has been intermittently sensible in his comments on the Brexit situation, but he remains so much in the public mind as the author of the twin disasters of the Cameron era - austerity, and 'operation fear' in the Brexit campaign - that his political resuscitation is most improbable.
The prominent 'leavers' - who were far fewer than the high-profile 'remainers' - appear to have undertaken even less preparation than the remainers to meet the contingency that their side would actually win. The clownish assertion - written on their battle bus - that the net amount someone had calculated on a chewing-gum packet as the net annual payment made by the UK to Brussels would instantly be available to allocate to the National Health Service, resonated with a population that was all too aware that osbornian austerity was depriving family and friends of treatment that could be available. Whether the sum was in any way valid as an arithmetical calculation or an allocable fund did not count with those who used it. It was merely one of a few desperate claims that they made to align themselves with a population that was disgusted by the failed political class and utterly unconvinced by the econocratic arguments that underpinned austerity. Boris Johnson became a more popular buffoon, becoming recognised outside greater London. Michael Gove surprised people with his articulateness: only to earn buffoon status for himself by his last-minute, half-cock, ill-considered decision to stand for the party leadership after Cameron scuttled away [thereby sparing the party from the embarrassment of having Johnson as their leader].
Mrs May began her period as prime minister well, with conciliatory speeches and the dismissal of Osborne; since which she has got everything wrong that was within her power to influence. She called an election unnecessarily then threw it away. She activated the withdrawal procedure with the EU before she had any clear plan. But from the start she made clear her utter incomprehension what she was dealing with, when she said 'Brexit means brexit': while everybody knows that the word itself is totally meaningless. While she has struggled, with a group of spectacularly inadequate ministers, to define what Brexit might mean the country has drifted towards the disaster of leaving the EU with no interim deal that will keep the UK effectively [under deep make-up] within the European Economic Area.
This has created a field day for the couple of dozen Tory MPs who appear really to believe - in their enfeebled minds - that the World Trade Organisation [WTO's] tariff regime will enable Britain to survive as 'the fifth-largest economy in the world'. The whole point is, that it is NOT tariffs but REGULATIONS that are used by all countries and economic communities to keep out unwelcome competition. Inside the European carapace the UK necessarily conform to the rules, and thus its trade with other EU members states can move freely. To loose that benefit, with the block that sends and receives about half of Britain's imports and exports, would be irreplaceable. The assumption that German motor manufacturers and French wine growers will 'see us right' is infantile. Professor Minford's calculations of the 'benefit' for Britain of trading on WTO terms with the global community - including the EU - are agonisingly bereft of any allowance for the predominant pattern of restrictions on trade, that would be tightened against an innovative economy such as the UK if we were adrift in the world and thus are extremely dangerous. But those are the argument to which the headbangers adhere: because they have nothing else. Yet they hold the government in awe; and are increasing their power to ruin the country. I will have to return to this topic in the coming days, as the argument gets more fraught approaching the deadline for the next meeting of EU heads of government.
It is almost certain that the great proponents of Remain - Cameron, Clegg and scaremaster Osborne - had no idea in advance how they would interpret, then implement, the Leave vote that occurred. Cameron ran away from responsibility:and even a gold-plated palace would not be a sufficient environment in which to write the exculpatory memoirs from which he hopes to make a pile of pennies. The fact that he has bought a sort of gypsy caravan, reminiscent of certain dead children's writers, for the purpose displays his ability to compound folly with ever-deeper illusion. Since the guilty men and their followers [and their mentors] had put the question to the nation, they should at the very least have had transparent contingent plans. They evidently did not. Nor did the civil service have anything like an adequate plan for what would happen after Cameron ran away, Clegg went into obscurity with his party, and Osborne's toxicity with the electorate was recognised by the new prime minister [of whose judgement and capabilities Osborne had been a vigorous critic when they had sat together in cabinet]. Evening Standard editor Osborne has been intermittently sensible in his comments on the Brexit situation, but he remains so much in the public mind as the author of the twin disasters of the Cameron era - austerity, and 'operation fear' in the Brexit campaign - that his political resuscitation is most improbable.
The prominent 'leavers' - who were far fewer than the high-profile 'remainers' - appear to have undertaken even less preparation than the remainers to meet the contingency that their side would actually win. The clownish assertion - written on their battle bus - that the net amount someone had calculated on a chewing-gum packet as the net annual payment made by the UK to Brussels would instantly be available to allocate to the National Health Service, resonated with a population that was all too aware that osbornian austerity was depriving family and friends of treatment that could be available. Whether the sum was in any way valid as an arithmetical calculation or an allocable fund did not count with those who used it. It was merely one of a few desperate claims that they made to align themselves with a population that was disgusted by the failed political class and utterly unconvinced by the econocratic arguments that underpinned austerity. Boris Johnson became a more popular buffoon, becoming recognised outside greater London. Michael Gove surprised people with his articulateness: only to earn buffoon status for himself by his last-minute, half-cock, ill-considered decision to stand for the party leadership after Cameron scuttled away [thereby sparing the party from the embarrassment of having Johnson as their leader].
Mrs May began her period as prime minister well, with conciliatory speeches and the dismissal of Osborne; since which she has got everything wrong that was within her power to influence. She called an election unnecessarily then threw it away. She activated the withdrawal procedure with the EU before she had any clear plan. But from the start she made clear her utter incomprehension what she was dealing with, when she said 'Brexit means brexit': while everybody knows that the word itself is totally meaningless. While she has struggled, with a group of spectacularly inadequate ministers, to define what Brexit might mean the country has drifted towards the disaster of leaving the EU with no interim deal that will keep the UK effectively [under deep make-up] within the European Economic Area.
This has created a field day for the couple of dozen Tory MPs who appear really to believe - in their enfeebled minds - that the World Trade Organisation [WTO's] tariff regime will enable Britain to survive as 'the fifth-largest economy in the world'. The whole point is, that it is NOT tariffs but REGULATIONS that are used by all countries and economic communities to keep out unwelcome competition. Inside the European carapace the UK necessarily conform to the rules, and thus its trade with other EU members states can move freely. To loose that benefit, with the block that sends and receives about half of Britain's imports and exports, would be irreplaceable. The assumption that German motor manufacturers and French wine growers will 'see us right' is infantile. Professor Minford's calculations of the 'benefit' for Britain of trading on WTO terms with the global community - including the EU - are agonisingly bereft of any allowance for the predominant pattern of restrictions on trade, that would be tightened against an innovative economy such as the UK if we were adrift in the world and thus are extremely dangerous. But those are the argument to which the headbangers adhere: because they have nothing else. Yet they hold the government in awe; and are increasing their power to ruin the country. I will have to return to this topic in the coming days, as the argument gets more fraught approaching the deadline for the next meeting of EU heads of government.
Friday, 13 October 2017
Mrs May's Brexit: from Chaos to Catastrophe
Mrs May and Mr Hammond - her Finance Minister - are represented by various sections of the media as being in a serious conflict about making provision for a 'no deal' outcome from the current negotiation between the UK and the EU. The Chancellor [who is wedded, as tightly as if he were welded] to the concept of 'austerity' has told a Commons committee that he has contingency plans, but does not want to release any funds until the very last moment. He could not make that statement if staff time and some expenses [notably consultancy] had not been applied to the planning: so what he obviously means is that he is reluctant to release funds on implementing such a plan until that should appear to be the [utterly disastrous] inevitability.
Mrs May seems to be saying the same things, when she indicates that £250 million has been set aside for implementing a 'hard Brexit'. Yet the press, notably the Daily Mail, has become hysterical about the 'dispute' and the 'disloyalty' - even 'sabotage' - attributed to the Chancellor.
This stupid scenario shows that the minority of extreme Brexiteers are dragging the Tory party to its destruction; which would be no bad thing [in view of the appalling inadequacy that is apparent right across the government] if there was an opposition that combined honesty and competence over the board. But that is not the case. Labour is led by an unreconstructed Marxist who is as good as the late Comrade Suslov [the chief exponent of Leninist-Stalinist orthodoxy as the USSR was heading for destruction] at avoiding direct or evidence-based questions. The Momentum group show a dangerous revival of the 'entryism' that undermined the Labour government in the nineteen seventies, and thus opened up the way for Thatcherism and the dissipation of all that remained of the legacy of the first industrial revolution.
If May or Hammond was serious about managing a really 'hard' Brexit their first decision - however covertly it was taken - would be the abandonment of 'austerity'. Government spending far in excess of £250 billion would be needed to install a full customs border with the EU. The recruitment and training of hundreds of thousands of officials would need to begin now: somehow, the IT systems would have to be provided - almost instantly - despite the fact that even modest government schemes for computerisation are always over-cost and excessively delayed in implementation [to the extent that they often have to be abandoned].
British firms that still make things - there are many, often high-tech companies developed or reconstructed since 2008 - are almost all integrated into just-in-time Europe-wide supply chains [both in getting their necessary inputs and in selling components to EU companies]. Such businesses are making contingency plans that would require them at least to double the manpower and computer availability just to manage the 'paperwork' that would be involved in trying to maintain the flow of business after a default Brexit. Many such firms are already finding that their European customers are looking elsewhere for contingent supplies. Furthermore, insuring trade and the goods traded in a crash-Brexit situation will become massively more complex and thus expensive.
The clowns on the Tory right, with their airy assertions that all will be well 'under WTO Rules' [which they certainly do not understand:cf my many references to point protectionism], are driving an amazingly weak Cabinet towards the destruction of the national economy.
There must a popular movement, of Leavers and Remainers united, to avoid national economic destruction.
Mrs May seems to be saying the same things, when she indicates that £250 million has been set aside for implementing a 'hard Brexit'. Yet the press, notably the Daily Mail, has become hysterical about the 'dispute' and the 'disloyalty' - even 'sabotage' - attributed to the Chancellor.
This stupid scenario shows that the minority of extreme Brexiteers are dragging the Tory party to its destruction; which would be no bad thing [in view of the appalling inadequacy that is apparent right across the government] if there was an opposition that combined honesty and competence over the board. But that is not the case. Labour is led by an unreconstructed Marxist who is as good as the late Comrade Suslov [the chief exponent of Leninist-Stalinist orthodoxy as the USSR was heading for destruction] at avoiding direct or evidence-based questions. The Momentum group show a dangerous revival of the 'entryism' that undermined the Labour government in the nineteen seventies, and thus opened up the way for Thatcherism and the dissipation of all that remained of the legacy of the first industrial revolution.
If May or Hammond was serious about managing a really 'hard' Brexit their first decision - however covertly it was taken - would be the abandonment of 'austerity'. Government spending far in excess of £250 billion would be needed to install a full customs border with the EU. The recruitment and training of hundreds of thousands of officials would need to begin now: somehow, the IT systems would have to be provided - almost instantly - despite the fact that even modest government schemes for computerisation are always over-cost and excessively delayed in implementation [to the extent that they often have to be abandoned].
British firms that still make things - there are many, often high-tech companies developed or reconstructed since 2008 - are almost all integrated into just-in-time Europe-wide supply chains [both in getting their necessary inputs and in selling components to EU companies]. Such businesses are making contingency plans that would require them at least to double the manpower and computer availability just to manage the 'paperwork' that would be involved in trying to maintain the flow of business after a default Brexit. Many such firms are already finding that their European customers are looking elsewhere for contingent supplies. Furthermore, insuring trade and the goods traded in a crash-Brexit situation will become massively more complex and thus expensive.
The clowns on the Tory right, with their airy assertions that all will be well 'under WTO Rules' [which they certainly do not understand:cf my many references to point protectionism], are driving an amazingly weak Cabinet towards the destruction of the national economy.
There must a popular movement, of Leavers and Remainers united, to avoid national economic destruction.
Thursday, 28 September 2017
Labour Luddites and a Prime Minister as a Poodle
Jeremy Corbyn has gained a new measure of popularity in recent months, largely because he has become popular. He has changed from being a crabby, obsessed 'leftie' to being an almost-charismatic emblem of popular disgust with boring, respectable politicians. In his speech yesterday his main task was to transmit some of the enthusiasm that was being shown - to excess - in the hall at the Labour Party Conference to the wider population; while combining it with a measure of responsible policy that can be presented to the electorate. Much of what he has recently advocated has my strong endorsement , based on half a century of intensive study of the history and effectiveness [or, as usual, ineffectiveness] of economic policy: especially when derived from economic theory. A modern country needs a mixed economy, with a large amount of state investment and public ownership of natural monopolies [which must, of course, be at least as well managed by the public sector as the private sector: which would be hard to achieve, but is doable].
One aspect of his speech, however, verged on the cretinous. That was his apparent Luddism in suggesting that action should be taken - including punitive taxation - to prevent human beings' jobs being taken over by robots; presumably at the behest of wicked capitalists. Virtually every forecast for the medium term future of the economy envisage huge benefits [not least, massive gains in productivity and in the range of products and experiences that will be available] due to innovations where human ideas are made into products and experiences to be enjoyed by everyone by the combined action of people and machines drawing on intensified robotics and enhanced artificial intelligence [AI].
The origin of the term Luddism comes from the mythical character Ned Ludd, the supposed organiser of the gangs of handicraft workers who broke into premises and smashed machines that were capable of replacing old-established crafts [because they greatly enhanced productivity] in the new factories, particularly in textile manufacture in the period 1790-1820. Individual employers were ruined by the Luddites, and a few workmen were penalised when they were caught in the act [or betrayed by colleagues]; but over a couple of decades the machines prevailed, and employment increased [though this often included child exploitation, until that was banned by laws that were enforced by inspectors who actually entered the employers' premises]. The ban on child labour, the ban on womens' night work, bans on the use of dangerous chemicals and processes need to be enforced in a civilised society: the state must be active in the economy to promote and preserve human rights and humans' health. One result of recent laissez-faire attitudes in society at the start of this millennium is the rise of 'modern slavery' [though I cannot detect anything notably modern about it]. The government's obsessive austerity has reduced the numbers of police officers, while terrorist threats have reoriented the work of many officers: with the result that offences like internationally-traded forced prostitution and domestic service have grown almost uninterrupted.
This is the background against which - so it is promised - Mrs May is to utter a peon of praise to the 'free market' as the central point of her speech to the Conservative Conference which opens today. This will be contrasted by the press [which is predominantly pro-Conservative] with the backward-looking old socialism and Luddism of the Corbyn effort yesterday. Mrs May will utter this claptrap in between calls to the US president asking for his intervention in a trade war with the US over the fate of the Bombardier aircraft factory in Belfast [and three other plant in Northern Ireland, as described yesterday in this blog]: a prime example of point protectionism which makes nonsense of the hard Brexiteers' vision of the future. Mrs May has to press this case, in defence of free trade ideology, despite the fact that her parliamentary majority depends upon taking a chauvinistic stance on the Bombardier issue. She lost the recent general election, and clings on to power with the votes of the Democratic Unionists. All the Bombardier plants are in constituencies held by the DUP: and the Bombardier jobs are of such importance to Catholic as well as Protestant workers that Sinn Fein's leader has signed a joint letter with the DUP leader to send to the US Vice-President. Hostilities at Stormont have been transcended by this issue; and Mrs May is compelled to make a nonsense of her free market rhetoric even as she utters it. Nevertheless, as a poodle of the Northern Ireland politicians she has no option but to demonstrate in the clearest way that her rhetoric is claptrap. Thus the Tories will be diminished by the inconsistency and infighting that will be in full view in the coming days: yet they all know they must hang on to office, or Corbyn will have the chance of his lifetime.
One aspect of his speech, however, verged on the cretinous. That was his apparent Luddism in suggesting that action should be taken - including punitive taxation - to prevent human beings' jobs being taken over by robots; presumably at the behest of wicked capitalists. Virtually every forecast for the medium term future of the economy envisage huge benefits [not least, massive gains in productivity and in the range of products and experiences that will be available] due to innovations where human ideas are made into products and experiences to be enjoyed by everyone by the combined action of people and machines drawing on intensified robotics and enhanced artificial intelligence [AI].
The origin of the term Luddism comes from the mythical character Ned Ludd, the supposed organiser of the gangs of handicraft workers who broke into premises and smashed machines that were capable of replacing old-established crafts [because they greatly enhanced productivity] in the new factories, particularly in textile manufacture in the period 1790-1820. Individual employers were ruined by the Luddites, and a few workmen were penalised when they were caught in the act [or betrayed by colleagues]; but over a couple of decades the machines prevailed, and employment increased [though this often included child exploitation, until that was banned by laws that were enforced by inspectors who actually entered the employers' premises]. The ban on child labour, the ban on womens' night work, bans on the use of dangerous chemicals and processes need to be enforced in a civilised society: the state must be active in the economy to promote and preserve human rights and humans' health. One result of recent laissez-faire attitudes in society at the start of this millennium is the rise of 'modern slavery' [though I cannot detect anything notably modern about it]. The government's obsessive austerity has reduced the numbers of police officers, while terrorist threats have reoriented the work of many officers: with the result that offences like internationally-traded forced prostitution and domestic service have grown almost uninterrupted.
This is the background against which - so it is promised - Mrs May is to utter a peon of praise to the 'free market' as the central point of her speech to the Conservative Conference which opens today. This will be contrasted by the press [which is predominantly pro-Conservative] with the backward-looking old socialism and Luddism of the Corbyn effort yesterday. Mrs May will utter this claptrap in between calls to the US president asking for his intervention in a trade war with the US over the fate of the Bombardier aircraft factory in Belfast [and three other plant in Northern Ireland, as described yesterday in this blog]: a prime example of point protectionism which makes nonsense of the hard Brexiteers' vision of the future. Mrs May has to press this case, in defence of free trade ideology, despite the fact that her parliamentary majority depends upon taking a chauvinistic stance on the Bombardier issue. She lost the recent general election, and clings on to power with the votes of the Democratic Unionists. All the Bombardier plants are in constituencies held by the DUP: and the Bombardier jobs are of such importance to Catholic as well as Protestant workers that Sinn Fein's leader has signed a joint letter with the DUP leader to send to the US Vice-President. Hostilities at Stormont have been transcended by this issue; and Mrs May is compelled to make a nonsense of her free market rhetoric even as she utters it. Nevertheless, as a poodle of the Northern Ireland politicians she has no option but to demonstrate in the clearest way that her rhetoric is claptrap. Thus the Tories will be diminished by the inconsistency and infighting that will be in full view in the coming days: yet they all know they must hang on to office, or Corbyn will have the chance of his lifetime.
Sunday, 17 September 2017
QE: The Social Cost
The Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown [1977-2010] progressively moved from following their Tory predecessor's conservative budgetary policy to creating a deficit on government spending [the amount by which the government spent more than their income from taxes, tolls etc]. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown made a very quaint use of the word 'investment'. It has been normal for a couple of centuries [at least] to use the word 'spending' [or expenditure] to mean the amount that is spent on pay-as-you-go government activity, and the word 'investment' to mean spending on projects that have a net cost as they are undertaken, but which it is hoped will yield an economic or a social dividend - ideally, both - when they have been completed. Under Labour, this distinction was eliminated. 'Investment' was just part of current spending: it just sounded better to make it seem as if some future return was in mind.
Alongside this abuse of words [and of common sense] the Labour government introduced the wildly irresponsible PFI concept, by which a school or a hospital building [which could be seen as an investment for the long term, in the conventional understanding of the term] would be built by a private contractor who could then charge a rent for the building while it was in use. This crazy system meant that the contractors, and the funders with whom they formed consortia, would be able to take a high rent from the health service or the school governing body. In addition, many such contracts gave the builder the right to undertake all maintenance work - at their own 'costing' - for several years, at the expense of the user of the building. This obviously provided a massive drain on the income of the user organisation when the premises came into use. As the premises had often been designed many years before they came into use, the designs were often very much less that state-of-the-art when they became operational. Thus taxpayers were involuntarily having to meet these charges.
Thus, when the Tory-LibDem coalition came into power they were horrified at the 'out-of-control' public spending obligations that they confronted. They decided that the burgeoning annual deficit on the national budget must be reduced: then they experienced their own brainstorm, and decided that they must cut future spending projections by the state. Hence began the regime of 'austerity'. Under that regime, public spending has been held down; almost as a matter of faith.
This policy was imposed in 2010, just after the Bank of England had become used to administering its programme of Quantitative Easing, as explained in the previous two blogs. The orderly queue of bankers was allowed each to encash approved securities for new credit, which they could then spend as they wished. This meant that they could keep in being the securities whose existence had been threatened by the market crash of 2007-8 until they came to their term dates; and an increasing proportion of them could be sold once their face-value had been restored [more or less] within the highly flexible wholesale finance market. So while people running public services were increasingly constrained by what they could spend - including on wages and social benefits - the banks could lend more money to firms and to individuals. Not many firms needed to borrow from the banks: the successful among them could derive all the investment they needed from their profits and from share issues; the unsuccessful drew in their horns and hoped to survive. Furthermore, the government provided modest funds to help some classes of start-up and developing businesses [although most of the more successful of them fell prey to overseas takeover, whereupon the technological innovation that they embodied was alienated].
In both the public and the private sectors, wages were constrained; in the public sector by the austerity rules, which included either nil or 1% increases each year. The private sector was able to import staff from less high-wage countries, and a consensus of commentators accepted that the combination of immigration with the appallingly low level of skills among the indigenous British population kept wages low; in both cash terms and real terms. Hence after 2010, most people found that the only way to increase their spending on consumption was by borrowing. Loans and credit card debts were freely available, so people borrowed; largely to buy imported commodities. So the balance-or-payments deficit burgeoned, while the government struggled to keep public spending within the limits that Osborne and then Hammond vainly aimed to enforce. Unsecured household indebtedness increased, alongside the debt that the UK owed to the rest of the wThen it became apparent that QE had another perverse effect on ordinary people. After the financial crisis, new starts in house building had reduced to a record low level; and virtually nobody was building social housing. Thus the resale prices on existing properties increased: but with interest rates set at their lowest ever level by the Bank of England the cost of borrowing [per pound] seemed affordable. Cassandra-like warnings that people who had mortgaged their property heavily might not be able to maintain payments when interest rates rose received scant attention.To get a new home, people had to borrow the money to buy expensive new properties on terms that profitable to their constructors. Mortgages were freely available for house buyers with even modest incomes, thanks to QE and government schemes to enable a minority of first-time buyers to enter the market. The majority of would-be first time buyers could not find the cash deposit they needed to enter the housing market; and anyway their incomes, especially for those burdened by student loan debt, could not support the ongoing cost of house purchase. In addition to the existing poor, there was a growing cohort of nearly-poor, including many graduates. In the next blog I will examine the pattern of poverty in Mrs May's Brexit Britain, and relate it to QE and to austerity.
Alongside this abuse of words [and of common sense] the Labour government introduced the wildly irresponsible PFI concept, by which a school or a hospital building [which could be seen as an investment for the long term, in the conventional understanding of the term] would be built by a private contractor who could then charge a rent for the building while it was in use. This crazy system meant that the contractors, and the funders with whom they formed consortia, would be able to take a high rent from the health service or the school governing body. In addition, many such contracts gave the builder the right to undertake all maintenance work - at their own 'costing' - for several years, at the expense of the user of the building. This obviously provided a massive drain on the income of the user organisation when the premises came into use. As the premises had often been designed many years before they came into use, the designs were often very much less that state-of-the-art when they became operational. Thus taxpayers were involuntarily having to meet these charges.
Thus, when the Tory-LibDem coalition came into power they were horrified at the 'out-of-control' public spending obligations that they confronted. They decided that the burgeoning annual deficit on the national budget must be reduced: then they experienced their own brainstorm, and decided that they must cut future spending projections by the state. Hence began the regime of 'austerity'. Under that regime, public spending has been held down; almost as a matter of faith.
This policy was imposed in 2010, just after the Bank of England had become used to administering its programme of Quantitative Easing, as explained in the previous two blogs. The orderly queue of bankers was allowed each to encash approved securities for new credit, which they could then spend as they wished. This meant that they could keep in being the securities whose existence had been threatened by the market crash of 2007-8 until they came to their term dates; and an increasing proportion of them could be sold once their face-value had been restored [more or less] within the highly flexible wholesale finance market. So while people running public services were increasingly constrained by what they could spend - including on wages and social benefits - the banks could lend more money to firms and to individuals. Not many firms needed to borrow from the banks: the successful among them could derive all the investment they needed from their profits and from share issues; the unsuccessful drew in their horns and hoped to survive. Furthermore, the government provided modest funds to help some classes of start-up and developing businesses [although most of the more successful of them fell prey to overseas takeover, whereupon the technological innovation that they embodied was alienated].
In both the public and the private sectors, wages were constrained; in the public sector by the austerity rules, which included either nil or 1% increases each year. The private sector was able to import staff from less high-wage countries, and a consensus of commentators accepted that the combination of immigration with the appallingly low level of skills among the indigenous British population kept wages low; in both cash terms and real terms. Hence after 2010, most people found that the only way to increase their spending on consumption was by borrowing. Loans and credit card debts were freely available, so people borrowed; largely to buy imported commodities. So the balance-or-payments deficit burgeoned, while the government struggled to keep public spending within the limits that Osborne and then Hammond vainly aimed to enforce. Unsecured household indebtedness increased, alongside the debt that the UK owed to the rest of the wThen it became apparent that QE had another perverse effect on ordinary people. After the financial crisis, new starts in house building had reduced to a record low level; and virtually nobody was building social housing. Thus the resale prices on existing properties increased: but with interest rates set at their lowest ever level by the Bank of England the cost of borrowing [per pound] seemed affordable. Cassandra-like warnings that people who had mortgaged their property heavily might not be able to maintain payments when interest rates rose received scant attention.To get a new home, people had to borrow the money to buy expensive new properties on terms that profitable to their constructors. Mortgages were freely available for house buyers with even modest incomes, thanks to QE and government schemes to enable a minority of first-time buyers to enter the market. The majority of would-be first time buyers could not find the cash deposit they needed to enter the housing market; and anyway their incomes, especially for those burdened by student loan debt, could not support the ongoing cost of house purchase. In addition to the existing poor, there was a growing cohort of nearly-poor, including many graduates. In the next blog I will examine the pattern of poverty in Mrs May's Brexit Britain, and relate it to QE and to austerity.
Thursday, 7 September 2017
More Pathetic Government Papers on Brexit
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the British State does not have the resources that are necessary to arrange for any sort of Brexit. Some commentators [from both sides of the debate] have welcomed this absence of any clear thinking and positive planning as a time during which a consensus can emerge in the wider public, in favour of a 'soft Brexit' based on remaining in the European Economic Area [EEA]. Such commentators argue - persuasively - that Mrs May's government does not possess sufficient brainpower [either in numbers of people or on a basis of their average intelligence] to work out alternative solutions to the tens of thousands of issues that are emerging, within eighteen months.
The EU has now produced two papers [among others] that are unanswerable by the May team within the constraints of time and human resources that apply. One challenges Britain to find a way of carrying forward the European system for designating such products as Cornish pasty, Stilton, Camembert and Parma Ham. The other carries the ultimate challenge: it throws entirely on the British government the initiative in creating open borders in Ireland that is acceptable to the Irish Republic and supported by all 26 other EU member states. England opened the 'Irish Question' when the English Pope Hadrian gave King Henry II an invitation to assume the role of Lord of Ireland, and the Union of England and Scotland has been struggling with the aftermath for at least two hundred years. The chances of it being resolved, other than in the context of the EEA, are negligible. Mrs May depends on the support of the most hardline opponents of concessions to the Irish Republicans for her majority in the House of Commons; thus there is no chance of the Irish Question leading to any new answers.
This blog has also emphasised the simple fact that a 'hard Brexit' could only be implemented at the cost of many billions of pounds of extra state spending on border and customs controls, both to implement the hard border then to maintain it. It would be impossible to continue to implement 'austerity' if such extra costs were being imposed on the state budget. Borrowing to pay for such border controls would make the government's attempt to end state borrowing [that has failed so far] even more ridiculous than it already is. The alternative, to try to pay for the new resources of equipment and manpower by increasing taxes, would result in revolt by business lobbies and the general public. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose department would have to present this scenario to the public [and must, surely, have attempted to warn the Brexiteers in the Cabinet of these facts], has argued for the general acceptance of a transition period in recognition of the fact that none of these issues can be resolved by March 2019: which is deadline set by Mrs May when she formally notified the EU of her interpretation of the referendum result.
The headbanging Brexiteers know that the longer time passes before a resolution is imposed on the country, the chances of a rational solution - withdrawal from the political EU while remaining in the EEA - will rise; and they hate this concept. They will therefore be hell-bent on pushing the weakest Prime Minister since the Second World War to take panicky decisions in a show of uncharacteristic determination that would make her ridiculous, and almost certainly push her to a position where the DUP would refuse to support her and Tory Remainers would be opposed to her.
In all this political maelstrom key facts could get lost; but here the sheer incompetence of the UK government's papers on Brexit are significant. A draft text on immigration, post-Brexit [leaked to the Guardian], assumed that Britain does have the native resources of skilled, fit and willing labour to fill most of the jobs that would be vacant in the period after a 'hard Brexit'. The mass of work that has been done on labour supply and skills shortages in the UK contradicts that naive assumption; unless - and this is a really chilling thought - the authors assume that there would be so big a contraction in the economy that skills shortages would disappear. The absence from the paper of any reference to seasonal labour from the EU, on which much of UK agriculture depends, illustrates the sheer incompetence and inadequacy of the work that is being done in Whitehall.
This all serves to strengthen one's fear that those who have a clear policy, who I call the headbanging Brexiteers, will have too much of the argument for too long; because everybody else is inadequately informed to make judgements on myriad issues that any form of Brexit will throw up.
The EU has now produced two papers [among others] that are unanswerable by the May team within the constraints of time and human resources that apply. One challenges Britain to find a way of carrying forward the European system for designating such products as Cornish pasty, Stilton, Camembert and Parma Ham. The other carries the ultimate challenge: it throws entirely on the British government the initiative in creating open borders in Ireland that is acceptable to the Irish Republic and supported by all 26 other EU member states. England opened the 'Irish Question' when the English Pope Hadrian gave King Henry II an invitation to assume the role of Lord of Ireland, and the Union of England and Scotland has been struggling with the aftermath for at least two hundred years. The chances of it being resolved, other than in the context of the EEA, are negligible. Mrs May depends on the support of the most hardline opponents of concessions to the Irish Republicans for her majority in the House of Commons; thus there is no chance of the Irish Question leading to any new answers.
This blog has also emphasised the simple fact that a 'hard Brexit' could only be implemented at the cost of many billions of pounds of extra state spending on border and customs controls, both to implement the hard border then to maintain it. It would be impossible to continue to implement 'austerity' if such extra costs were being imposed on the state budget. Borrowing to pay for such border controls would make the government's attempt to end state borrowing [that has failed so far] even more ridiculous than it already is. The alternative, to try to pay for the new resources of equipment and manpower by increasing taxes, would result in revolt by business lobbies and the general public. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose department would have to present this scenario to the public [and must, surely, have attempted to warn the Brexiteers in the Cabinet of these facts], has argued for the general acceptance of a transition period in recognition of the fact that none of these issues can be resolved by March 2019: which is deadline set by Mrs May when she formally notified the EU of her interpretation of the referendum result.
The headbanging Brexiteers know that the longer time passes before a resolution is imposed on the country, the chances of a rational solution - withdrawal from the political EU while remaining in the EEA - will rise; and they hate this concept. They will therefore be hell-bent on pushing the weakest Prime Minister since the Second World War to take panicky decisions in a show of uncharacteristic determination that would make her ridiculous, and almost certainly push her to a position where the DUP would refuse to support her and Tory Remainers would be opposed to her.
In all this political maelstrom key facts could get lost; but here the sheer incompetence of the UK government's papers on Brexit are significant. A draft text on immigration, post-Brexit [leaked to the Guardian], assumed that Britain does have the native resources of skilled, fit and willing labour to fill most of the jobs that would be vacant in the period after a 'hard Brexit'. The mass of work that has been done on labour supply and skills shortages in the UK contradicts that naive assumption; unless - and this is a really chilling thought - the authors assume that there would be so big a contraction in the economy that skills shortages would disappear. The absence from the paper of any reference to seasonal labour from the EU, on which much of UK agriculture depends, illustrates the sheer incompetence and inadequacy of the work that is being done in Whitehall.
This all serves to strengthen one's fear that those who have a clear policy, who I call the headbanging Brexiteers, will have too much of the argument for too long; because everybody else is inadequately informed to make judgements on myriad issues that any form of Brexit will throw up.
Wednesday, 16 August 2017
Brexit and Ireland
At least since the time when the only English pope 'asked' King Henry II of England to take full possession of his Lordship of Ireland, there has been an endless and fascinating sequence of tense relations between the rulers based in Westminster and the people of Ireland. Several times, kings and the Cromwellian republic tried to settle conformable populations of Scots and English in Ireland, and between 1670 and 1690 the great Sir William Petty wrote extensively about his plan to resettle half the Irish population on the island of Britain and/or in British colonies elsewhere, replacing them in Ireland with Brits, so that a short period of interbreeding could eradicate the difficult characteristics of the native Irish. Often, British policy in Ireland has been highly revealing about the actual character of British government and the real intentions of British policy.
Thus the publication yesterday of a less-than-half-baked paper on the future of the Irish border under Brexit is in that revealing context. As I have commented previously in this blog, the present UK government can not possibly give effect to any sort of Brexit that involves leaving the European Economic Area whilst retaining the policy of austerity. Actually to erect realistic customs borders and controls on the passage of people all around the UK - which would be necessary before Britain could begin to trade with anybody under the rules of the World Trade Organisation, outside the EU - is totally incompatible with austerity.
Yesterday's UK government paper on the Irish border rejects any hegemonic physical line, either on the land border between the Republic and Northern Ireland or enforced by frigates in the middle of the Irish Sea. One radio commentator summed up the potential control methods as "an iPad in every truck's cab". Interestingly, this looks as if it would put the primary cost of compliance with any new system of "technological" border and customs control onto the private sector; but, of course, billions of pounds would have to be spent for the government to acquire the equipment and train up and pay the skilled people [who probably do not exist anyway] who would be needed to create and maintain the records that would be needed of the passage of people and goods over the borders. The notion implicit in yesterday's paper is simply potty.
Both the British and Irish government are adamant that there cannot be a hard border in Ireland: not just prosperity, but also peace is dependent on free movement of people, goods and arguments.
Ireland will prove to be a sticking-point: the first - and probably the most fundamental - of all. Any genuine Brexit is not affordable to the British state, even if Osbornian austerity were relaxed. Corbyn will not understand this; but, more importantly the headbanging Tory Brexiteers - on whom Mrs May relies for her parliamentary survival - will not understand it: some because they do not want to, and some because their intellectual capabilities do not stretch that far.
The Irish Question will again be a determining factor in British history: and [as Sellars and Yeatman said, in their inimitable 1066 and All that] the English will never solve the Irish Question because whenever they come up with an answer, the Irish change the question. This is certainly the present situation, where the new Irish Prime Minister has set new terms for the discussion of the border: and we can be sure that the great bulk of the European Union will back him to the hilt. Nigel Farage and the 'hard Brexiteers' will claim that the electorate is being betrayed as a 'transition period' mutates into continuing membership of the European Economic Area [but without membership of the Brussels political set-up]. The 'betrayal' will come from the incomprehension and incompetence of the political class: against which a majority of the nation voted on 23 June 2016. Hence, the political class - the very people who are least trusted by the nation - froth and posture about 'taking back control'. They don't know how to do it, because there is no affordable way to achieve it within their mental universe.
Interesting times indeed.
Thus the publication yesterday of a less-than-half-baked paper on the future of the Irish border under Brexit is in that revealing context. As I have commented previously in this blog, the present UK government can not possibly give effect to any sort of Brexit that involves leaving the European Economic Area whilst retaining the policy of austerity. Actually to erect realistic customs borders and controls on the passage of people all around the UK - which would be necessary before Britain could begin to trade with anybody under the rules of the World Trade Organisation, outside the EU - is totally incompatible with austerity.
Yesterday's UK government paper on the Irish border rejects any hegemonic physical line, either on the land border between the Republic and Northern Ireland or enforced by frigates in the middle of the Irish Sea. One radio commentator summed up the potential control methods as "an iPad in every truck's cab". Interestingly, this looks as if it would put the primary cost of compliance with any new system of "technological" border and customs control onto the private sector; but, of course, billions of pounds would have to be spent for the government to acquire the equipment and train up and pay the skilled people [who probably do not exist anyway] who would be needed to create and maintain the records that would be needed of the passage of people and goods over the borders. The notion implicit in yesterday's paper is simply potty.
Both the British and Irish government are adamant that there cannot be a hard border in Ireland: not just prosperity, but also peace is dependent on free movement of people, goods and arguments.
Ireland will prove to be a sticking-point: the first - and probably the most fundamental - of all. Any genuine Brexit is not affordable to the British state, even if Osbornian austerity were relaxed. Corbyn will not understand this; but, more importantly the headbanging Tory Brexiteers - on whom Mrs May relies for her parliamentary survival - will not understand it: some because they do not want to, and some because their intellectual capabilities do not stretch that far.
The Irish Question will again be a determining factor in British history: and [as Sellars and Yeatman said, in their inimitable 1066 and All that] the English will never solve the Irish Question because whenever they come up with an answer, the Irish change the question. This is certainly the present situation, where the new Irish Prime Minister has set new terms for the discussion of the border: and we can be sure that the great bulk of the European Union will back him to the hilt. Nigel Farage and the 'hard Brexiteers' will claim that the electorate is being betrayed as a 'transition period' mutates into continuing membership of the European Economic Area [but without membership of the Brussels political set-up]. The 'betrayal' will come from the incomprehension and incompetence of the political class: against which a majority of the nation voted on 23 June 2016. Hence, the political class - the very people who are least trusted by the nation - froth and posture about 'taking back control'. They don't know how to do it, because there is no affordable way to achieve it within their mental universe.
Interesting times indeed.
Saturday, 29 July 2017
Insurers, the Fire Service and the Grenfell Tower Tragedy
Not many years ago, the local Fire Brigade would have been needed to certify the arrangements for controlling the risk of fire in the Grenfell Tower, Kensington; as they were for all such buildings. Since the millennium, governments of all parties have slackened the regulations and the Fire Brigade has no statutory role in fire protection. Whether or not the London Fire Brigade was aware of the innate vice in the sort of cladding that was recently applied to the Tower is a moot point, because the brigade was no required to verify the suitability of the material.
The local authority [as the ultimate owner of the structure] and the management company did what was minimally necessary to comply with safety law: which was thereby shown to be grossly inadequate.
In parallel with the slackening of standards for fire certification of structures, so insurers made economies [thus keeping down the cost of policies] by becoming much less interventionist in regard to the structures they insured. Half a century ago, an early stage in the career of any promising recruit to the insurance industry included a period - usually a few years - serving as an Inspector. By sending inspectors to make announced and unannounced checks on the buildings and the processes that they insured, the insurer could be reasonably satisfied that the conditions applied to the policy were being met. Thus the subject of the insurance was compliant with the law on structural soundness, health and safety and any special regulations relating to what the building or the machinery was used for. More recently insurers have shunted the burden of verification to the insured, who simply "warrants" that the conditions of the policy, including legal requirements, are fully met.
If, in such circumstances, a George Osborne heavily influenced by the Econocrats come into power, the fire brigade and the insurer have no direct influence in the operational decisions taken by the occupant of a building [such as a housing management company].
On a national scale, admonished and applauded by the Econocracy, young George pursued his historic mission to eradicate the deficit on the national accounts: by imposing austerity. The only other way to remove a deficit of the size of the British budget deficit in 2010 would have been by a massive scheme of investment to kick-start economic growth: which was ideological anathema to the Econocracy. The coalition government in which George was loosed upon the economy deliberately decided on the austerity policy, as a whole government of Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Thus they were - entirely unintentionally - responsible for the impact of austerity on the Grenfell Tower. Combine that with the previous Labour government's decision to reduce the cost of the fire service by removing their role in building certification, and a diabolical cocktail of governmental failure was served up to the residents of Grenfell and [apparently] dozens of other towers.
Little local people all went along with the flow, and some may be faced by charges of personal liability; but the real chain of high command that was responsible for the tragedy is unambiguously clear.
The local authority [as the ultimate owner of the structure] and the management company did what was minimally necessary to comply with safety law: which was thereby shown to be grossly inadequate.
In parallel with the slackening of standards for fire certification of structures, so insurers made economies [thus keeping down the cost of policies] by becoming much less interventionist in regard to the structures they insured. Half a century ago, an early stage in the career of any promising recruit to the insurance industry included a period - usually a few years - serving as an Inspector. By sending inspectors to make announced and unannounced checks on the buildings and the processes that they insured, the insurer could be reasonably satisfied that the conditions applied to the policy were being met. Thus the subject of the insurance was compliant with the law on structural soundness, health and safety and any special regulations relating to what the building or the machinery was used for. More recently insurers have shunted the burden of verification to the insured, who simply "warrants" that the conditions of the policy, including legal requirements, are fully met.
If, in such circumstances, a George Osborne heavily influenced by the Econocrats come into power, the fire brigade and the insurer have no direct influence in the operational decisions taken by the occupant of a building [such as a housing management company].
On a national scale, admonished and applauded by the Econocracy, young George pursued his historic mission to eradicate the deficit on the national accounts: by imposing austerity. The only other way to remove a deficit of the size of the British budget deficit in 2010 would have been by a massive scheme of investment to kick-start economic growth: which was ideological anathema to the Econocracy. The coalition government in which George was loosed upon the economy deliberately decided on the austerity policy, as a whole government of Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Thus they were - entirely unintentionally - responsible for the impact of austerity on the Grenfell Tower. Combine that with the previous Labour government's decision to reduce the cost of the fire service by removing their role in building certification, and a diabolical cocktail of governmental failure was served up to the residents of Grenfell and [apparently] dozens of other towers.
Little local people all went along with the flow, and some may be faced by charges of personal liability; but the real chain of high command that was responsible for the tragedy is unambiguously clear.
Friday, 21 July 2017
The Tories' Dilemma: 'Hard Brexit' or Continued Austerity
Mrs May appeared to think that she could do three impossible things on becoming Prime Minister: now she has come to realise that not only is each of them unfeasible in itself, but that they are mutually exclusive.
First, she did not even consider an alternative to the continuance of the Cameron-Clegg-Osborne austerity, so that had to be maintained, as near intact as possible.
Second, although she had been an unconvinced remainer, she was prepared to embrace the idea of a 'hard' Brexit: though she had no idea what this might mean, so she appointed not one, not two, but three Brexiteer Secretaries of State to come up with the policies that would be needed.
And thirdly, she wanted to be a 'compassionate conservative': at zero cost [because finding any 'new money' would, by definition, breach austerity].
Then she called an election in which she thought that she could defeat Labour purely on the grounds of the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the party's leader. Because he had decades of experience of not being a conformist or conventional politician, Corbyn almost won: and Mrs May had to clear out her inept kitchen cabinet and begin to respect ministers who she was reported to have wanted to dispense with.
Meanwhile Philip Hammond as Chancellor of the Exchequer was becoming buried in 'The Treasury View', a centuries-old tradition which insists that any new expenditure is unnecessary and any unnecessary expenditure must be opposed; regardless of the social and moral benefits that the expenditure is predicted to deliver to taxpayers. Thus he learned that stopping the free movement of people from the EU into the UK, and movement the other way, would cost billions of poundsworth of new expenditure in frontier police recruitment, training and salaries, and in the construction of immigration and emigration control points and the IT backup that would be needed to make such controls achievable at all. Add to that the cost of building modern port controls that could prevent smuggling and validate the contents, provenance, ownership, insurance and compliance with health-and-safety requirements [et cetera] of every item in every cargo and every private piece of luggage - and staffing them with men and women as tough as eighteenth-century revenue officers, in sufficient numbers, adequately well-trained and remunerated and backed up by the most advanced IT - that would be more billions.
A 'hard Brexit' would not only interrupt much trade with Europe, and permanently end more - it would thereby cause massive unemployment and demands for billions more in social payments. Most firms that trade significantly with Europe would experience catastrophic falls in sales, which would force some to cull their workforces and many to declare bankruptcy and their inability to pay their debts and their taxes. The government's income would plummet as the demands of a desperate population became clamorous. Not only would austerity have to be abandoned: government would become untenable in the context of democracy.
Thus minsters have been running around, meeting groups of representatives - particularly from the business communities - whom the May team had ignored in their first year in office. Now the government is indicating that Brexit will be 'soft', and nobody or no firm will find themselves at a 'cliff edge'. There will be a 'transition period' as long as Mr Barnier will be allowed to concede; followed by a shoddy compromise which lets the Treasury maintain at least the skeleton of austerity in place. On that basis of squalid surrender to the ghosts of Clegg and Osborne, a sort of exit from the EU Commission and Parliament, and a limitation of the powers of the European Court 'of Justice' [sic] will be found; and Britain will remain within the EU otherwise. Any alternative is unaffordable in the context of Treasury thinking: and The Treasury Rules: OK?
First, she did not even consider an alternative to the continuance of the Cameron-Clegg-Osborne austerity, so that had to be maintained, as near intact as possible.
Second, although she had been an unconvinced remainer, she was prepared to embrace the idea of a 'hard' Brexit: though she had no idea what this might mean, so she appointed not one, not two, but three Brexiteer Secretaries of State to come up with the policies that would be needed.
And thirdly, she wanted to be a 'compassionate conservative': at zero cost [because finding any 'new money' would, by definition, breach austerity].
Then she called an election in which she thought that she could defeat Labour purely on the grounds of the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the party's leader. Because he had decades of experience of not being a conformist or conventional politician, Corbyn almost won: and Mrs May had to clear out her inept kitchen cabinet and begin to respect ministers who she was reported to have wanted to dispense with.
Meanwhile Philip Hammond as Chancellor of the Exchequer was becoming buried in 'The Treasury View', a centuries-old tradition which insists that any new expenditure is unnecessary and any unnecessary expenditure must be opposed; regardless of the social and moral benefits that the expenditure is predicted to deliver to taxpayers. Thus he learned that stopping the free movement of people from the EU into the UK, and movement the other way, would cost billions of poundsworth of new expenditure in frontier police recruitment, training and salaries, and in the construction of immigration and emigration control points and the IT backup that would be needed to make such controls achievable at all. Add to that the cost of building modern port controls that could prevent smuggling and validate the contents, provenance, ownership, insurance and compliance with health-and-safety requirements [et cetera] of every item in every cargo and every private piece of luggage - and staffing them with men and women as tough as eighteenth-century revenue officers, in sufficient numbers, adequately well-trained and remunerated and backed up by the most advanced IT - that would be more billions.
A 'hard Brexit' would not only interrupt much trade with Europe, and permanently end more - it would thereby cause massive unemployment and demands for billions more in social payments. Most firms that trade significantly with Europe would experience catastrophic falls in sales, which would force some to cull their workforces and many to declare bankruptcy and their inability to pay their debts and their taxes. The government's income would plummet as the demands of a desperate population became clamorous. Not only would austerity have to be abandoned: government would become untenable in the context of democracy.
Thus minsters have been running around, meeting groups of representatives - particularly from the business communities - whom the May team had ignored in their first year in office. Now the government is indicating that Brexit will be 'soft', and nobody or no firm will find themselves at a 'cliff edge'. There will be a 'transition period' as long as Mr Barnier will be allowed to concede; followed by a shoddy compromise which lets the Treasury maintain at least the skeleton of austerity in place. On that basis of squalid surrender to the ghosts of Clegg and Osborne, a sort of exit from the EU Commission and Parliament, and a limitation of the powers of the European Court 'of Justice' [sic] will be found; and Britain will remain within the EU otherwise. Any alternative is unaffordable in the context of Treasury thinking: and The Treasury Rules: OK?
Wednesday, 19 July 2017
The Tragic Triumph of the Econocracy
'The Bank', with a capital letter, means the Central Bank in any country or community: in our case, the Bank of England; and 'the banks', as a collective, means all the other firms and partnerships that the Bank recognises as legitimate banks and thus it is authorised to give them instructions and to trade with them. Specifically, it will sell them bonds and other debt certificates [from a list of approved categories] and lend them money at a publicly announced rate of interest called 'base rate'. A large proportion of the Econocracy [the prevailing rat-pack of professors of Economics] argue that if the management of the banks by the Bank is perfectly calibrated the economy can operate perfectly. If the money-managing institutions work perfectly, the whole economy can achieve 'equilibrium': a state where all the resources available to the human race are allocated to their optimum uses.
This is a model of perfection. The realities of human existence make it a total nonsense: but the Econocracy currently has control of the channels of advice to governments, and most of the economic commentators in the media, in banks and investing institutions are required to parrot the prevailing orthodoxy: though there have always been some brave spirits who have the wit and the integrity to deny the validity of the whole structure.
So-called Monetarism, a package of ideas formulated by Econocrats in terms that could be explained to politicians and to students, was introduced in the USA in the later nineteen sixties, when the flaws in the attempt at practical neo-Keynesianism had generated a disastrous wage-price spiral as trade unions demanded pay increases to match price increases [as reported on official indexes of 'inflation']. In the early nineteen seventies the major oil-exporting countries tripled the royalties that they charged for access to their oil and natural gas; and this sent up the prices of all goods and services because of the universal impact of the costs of fuel for vehicles to deliver goods and people to where they were wanted, and the price of fuel for the provision of energy to heat homes and schools and to power factories. Additionally, petroleum was a vital ingredient in many plastics and polymers. So all prices were rising, hence wage demands took on a new stridency: and governments tried to stop the 'spiral' going out of control.
The Monetarists argued that if real control was given to the Bank and the government backed up the Bank in issuing stringent instructions to banks as to when and on when terms they could lend money to whom, that would strangle the spiral of rising wages and prices. Employers would not be able to borrow from their banks on affordable terms: so instead of borrowing to pay workers inflated wages, they would have to tell them "take what is on offer, or we'll have to close down and sack you all". Similarly, consumers would be told that they could only stay in the homes on which they were servicing mortgages provided they paid penal interest rates which went as high as 15%: which left them with little to spend on other things. So if they kept the house and the car, paying high mortgage interest and high interest on their car loans and the loans against which they had bought their fridges and TV sets, they had to reduce consumption of everything else.
The Thatcher government adopted their own version of this policy straight after their election in 1979, and by 1992 they were well on the way to implementing it. Economic growth slowed dramatically; and wage growth slowed even more. Then the government itself stopped creating money with which to maintain activity in the coal mines and the shipyards. They compensated for the loss of income that they suffered as the real economy declined from the tax revenue that they received on North Sea oil and by the sale of the privatised industries. They cut back heavily on government spending on defence and in support of industries that had previously been considered essential for national survival: steel, shipbuilding, aerospace and coal. The economy was dramatically changed, as the 'real' material productive sectors were decimated and the financial services - notably 'investment banking' - began to predominate: and that sector of the economy was supposedly susceptible to refined control by the Bank.
Thus, by 2005 the 'real' - the material - economy on which human animals depend for their continued existence and comfort was utterly denigrated and largely despoiled; and the finance sector was put in a position to undermine the entire economy through its greedy overindulgence in speculative deals that the Bank did not even understand. This is the achievement of the Econocracy. The real incomes [money wages adjusted so that their current purchasing-power can be computed] of the mass of the British population have been static for a decade. Over those years, 2007-2017, plenty of jobs have been created; almost all of them in activities that do not result in any substantive increment to the real economy. There has been a spectacular degree of material stagnation which, set alongside the government's obsession with 'austerity' [in which they have been mentored by the same Econocrats] leaves almost everyone with an awareness that the economy is not "working for me". That is because the economy is being driven in obedience to an abstract model. The fundamental reality, that the economy should be the mechanism that serves material, living, aspirational individuals, has no place in contemporary Economics. That is why Economics must be brought down from its high place in academic temples, and opened up for radical restructuring.
This is a model of perfection. The realities of human existence make it a total nonsense: but the Econocracy currently has control of the channels of advice to governments, and most of the economic commentators in the media, in banks and investing institutions are required to parrot the prevailing orthodoxy: though there have always been some brave spirits who have the wit and the integrity to deny the validity of the whole structure.
So-called Monetarism, a package of ideas formulated by Econocrats in terms that could be explained to politicians and to students, was introduced in the USA in the later nineteen sixties, when the flaws in the attempt at practical neo-Keynesianism had generated a disastrous wage-price spiral as trade unions demanded pay increases to match price increases [as reported on official indexes of 'inflation']. In the early nineteen seventies the major oil-exporting countries tripled the royalties that they charged for access to their oil and natural gas; and this sent up the prices of all goods and services because of the universal impact of the costs of fuel for vehicles to deliver goods and people to where they were wanted, and the price of fuel for the provision of energy to heat homes and schools and to power factories. Additionally, petroleum was a vital ingredient in many plastics and polymers. So all prices were rising, hence wage demands took on a new stridency: and governments tried to stop the 'spiral' going out of control.
The Monetarists argued that if real control was given to the Bank and the government backed up the Bank in issuing stringent instructions to banks as to when and on when terms they could lend money to whom, that would strangle the spiral of rising wages and prices. Employers would not be able to borrow from their banks on affordable terms: so instead of borrowing to pay workers inflated wages, they would have to tell them "take what is on offer, or we'll have to close down and sack you all". Similarly, consumers would be told that they could only stay in the homes on which they were servicing mortgages provided they paid penal interest rates which went as high as 15%: which left them with little to spend on other things. So if they kept the house and the car, paying high mortgage interest and high interest on their car loans and the loans against which they had bought their fridges and TV sets, they had to reduce consumption of everything else.
The Thatcher government adopted their own version of this policy straight after their election in 1979, and by 1992 they were well on the way to implementing it. Economic growth slowed dramatically; and wage growth slowed even more. Then the government itself stopped creating money with which to maintain activity in the coal mines and the shipyards. They compensated for the loss of income that they suffered as the real economy declined from the tax revenue that they received on North Sea oil and by the sale of the privatised industries. They cut back heavily on government spending on defence and in support of industries that had previously been considered essential for national survival: steel, shipbuilding, aerospace and coal. The economy was dramatically changed, as the 'real' material productive sectors were decimated and the financial services - notably 'investment banking' - began to predominate: and that sector of the economy was supposedly susceptible to refined control by the Bank.
Thus, by 2005 the 'real' - the material - economy on which human animals depend for their continued existence and comfort was utterly denigrated and largely despoiled; and the finance sector was put in a position to undermine the entire economy through its greedy overindulgence in speculative deals that the Bank did not even understand. This is the achievement of the Econocracy. The real incomes [money wages adjusted so that their current purchasing-power can be computed] of the mass of the British population have been static for a decade. Over those years, 2007-2017, plenty of jobs have been created; almost all of them in activities that do not result in any substantive increment to the real economy. There has been a spectacular degree of material stagnation which, set alongside the government's obsession with 'austerity' [in which they have been mentored by the same Econocrats] leaves almost everyone with an awareness that the economy is not "working for me". That is because the economy is being driven in obedience to an abstract model. The fundamental reality, that the economy should be the mechanism that serves material, living, aspirational individuals, has no place in contemporary Economics. That is why Economics must be brought down from its high place in academic temples, and opened up for radical restructuring.
Sunday, 9 July 2017
Penal Economy
It is increasingly well-recognised that prisons in the United Kingdom are at, or very close to, a crisis point. The Cameron-Clegg-Osborne austerity programme has reduced prison officer numbers below the level at which health and safety requirements for the inmates can properly be maintained, and though some recruitment is now taking place it is probable that the new staffing levels will be enough.
Meanwhile health fetishists are arguing for a complete ban on smoking in prisons. This indicates the tip of a huge iceberg of trouble. It is notorious that many thousands of prisoners are addicted to tobacco [and very many to other addictive substances, including cannabis], and that there is a massive underground economy to supply the prisoners with their 'need': backed-up by a brutal system of enforcement among the inmates. Today the BBC placed a report that massive amounts of tobacco and other addicts' supplies had been found in prisons over the past year: together with thousands of illicitly-held mobile phones [and, presumably, the related charging devices]. The use of drones to carry some of this contraband into prison has been reported extensively; and means to prevent their use have been implemented in some prisons to modest effect.
But it is clear that the historic routes for illicit commodities into prison are via visitors and by the use of corruption or intimidation on prison officers. To impose mandatory vaginal and anal examination of 'innocent' visitors to prisoners would be considered outrageous; so that route for contraband remains open. Given the operation of human nature, activities like threatening an officers' family will always find a way of influencing individuals. There are historic ways of mitigating this problem, but it will never be eradicated. As was indicated in Ronnie Barker's brilliantly-scripted series of TV scripts about life in prison, there is a stand-off, a compromise, between inmates and management that can usually be kept in balance. To overset that balance by having too few staff, or unacceptable strains placed on prisoners [such as a smoking ban would cause], would be calamitous. The attempt both at once would be catastrophic.
Meanwhile health fetishists are arguing for a complete ban on smoking in prisons. This indicates the tip of a huge iceberg of trouble. It is notorious that many thousands of prisoners are addicted to tobacco [and very many to other addictive substances, including cannabis], and that there is a massive underground economy to supply the prisoners with their 'need': backed-up by a brutal system of enforcement among the inmates. Today the BBC placed a report that massive amounts of tobacco and other addicts' supplies had been found in prisons over the past year: together with thousands of illicitly-held mobile phones [and, presumably, the related charging devices]. The use of drones to carry some of this contraband into prison has been reported extensively; and means to prevent their use have been implemented in some prisons to modest effect.
But it is clear that the historic routes for illicit commodities into prison are via visitors and by the use of corruption or intimidation on prison officers. To impose mandatory vaginal and anal examination of 'innocent' visitors to prisoners would be considered outrageous; so that route for contraband remains open. Given the operation of human nature, activities like threatening an officers' family will always find a way of influencing individuals. There are historic ways of mitigating this problem, but it will never be eradicated. As was indicated in Ronnie Barker's brilliantly-scripted series of TV scripts about life in prison, there is a stand-off, a compromise, between inmates and management that can usually be kept in balance. To overset that balance by having too few staff, or unacceptable strains placed on prisoners [such as a smoking ban would cause], would be calamitous. The attempt both at once would be catastrophic.
Monday, 3 July 2017
A Long Week
Harold Wilson, allegedly the Queen's favourite prime minister, said "A week is a long time in politics".
The present prime minister must be finding the weeks constantly elongated as events turn against her and more of her ministers begin publicly to cavil at the inheritance of Osbornian austerity that almost cost the Tories the election. The precarious position of the party in parliament makes it almost impossible for the leader to dismiss querulous ministers; and the chancellor [whom she expected to be able to dismiss, following an electoral triumph] is now in a position strongly to influence the Brexit discussion.
A delegation from the City of London is off to Berlin this week, to make an assessment of the appetite of the Germans for a form of Brexit that would leave the UK firmly within the European Economic Area. The shock of the Brexit decision has been followed by months of assiduous work in the City, and there is no doubt that the loss of [at least] tens of thousands of jobs from the financial services would be a calamitous blow to the whole British economy. The financial bubble that has been inflated ever since 1986 in compensation for the destruction of the materially-productive bulk of the economy has provided a support mechanism for the economy, and its removal would have utterly catastrophic consequences. The chancellor is now fully aware of this; but it is doubtful if the prime minister could comprehend this: it is also questionable whether all three Brexit Ministers - Davis, Johnson and Fox - fully understands the importance of the point. Certainly the insouciance displayed by Davis on the matter is alarming.
But the clock has been ticking, and those who are capable of recognising the signs of impending crisis have begun to read them the same way. A minority of Labour MPs also showed last week that they have a pretty good idea of the problem, when they voted against the party line to stress their concern that Corbyn's left-wing contempt for capitalism could impose on the Labour party an interpretation of Brexit that would plunge the country into chaos and a whole era of impoverishment. A tiny number of extreme lefties would be happy to impose the hair shirt austerity of the Stalin era in Russia on the British nation; but they would not have many followers, and the Momentum movement has not yet gained sufficient power to unseat all the rational Labour MPs if there were to be an early general election.
All the rational Conservatives have come to realise that their precarious alliance with the Paisley faction must last for at least the two years while the Brexit negotiations continue. If the government can gets its act together in the next month, recognising that the maintenance of momentum in the economy depends on being in the European Economic Area [on the best terms that can be negotiated: though they will not be ideal], there is a chance that they will gain sufficient goodwill in the mass of the population to have a chance of winning an election. That is conditional on the change in policy that I mentioned yesterday: there needs to be more money for public sector workers' pay, as Gove and Johnson are not pointing out. And there must be a resolution of the student fees issue: the reckless promise of Labour in the last election, simply to abolish those fees [and probably write off the debts owed by past borrowers] puts the Tories in an impossible position as long as they retain the Osborn line; so they are going to have to admit that so many holes are being poked in austerity that it might just be wise to admit that the policy is not acceptable.
Wars are fought by selling government bonds, to buyers who accept the extreme urgency of the situation. The present situation is no less alarming than a war. The government must be willing to replace austerity by a combination of flexibility on key areas of public spending and a massive investment in infrastructure, coupled with the development of a facility for the state [directly and through the banking sector] to invest heavily in all the firms that have credible business plans to advance technology and innovation. Mrs May's early decision to let Japanese speculators buy ARM was a very bad indication of her incomprehension: she needs to be educated; otherwise, like Anthony Eden, she needs to be taken away on leave. And there are not many weeks left for one or the other of these steps to be taken. The Tory party has saved itself by ruthlessness in the past: the era of "you've never had it so good" followed on very soon after the Suez catastrophe. They need to find the same strength again: with or without Mrs May.
The present prime minister must be finding the weeks constantly elongated as events turn against her and more of her ministers begin publicly to cavil at the inheritance of Osbornian austerity that almost cost the Tories the election. The precarious position of the party in parliament makes it almost impossible for the leader to dismiss querulous ministers; and the chancellor [whom she expected to be able to dismiss, following an electoral triumph] is now in a position strongly to influence the Brexit discussion.
A delegation from the City of London is off to Berlin this week, to make an assessment of the appetite of the Germans for a form of Brexit that would leave the UK firmly within the European Economic Area. The shock of the Brexit decision has been followed by months of assiduous work in the City, and there is no doubt that the loss of [at least] tens of thousands of jobs from the financial services would be a calamitous blow to the whole British economy. The financial bubble that has been inflated ever since 1986 in compensation for the destruction of the materially-productive bulk of the economy has provided a support mechanism for the economy, and its removal would have utterly catastrophic consequences. The chancellor is now fully aware of this; but it is doubtful if the prime minister could comprehend this: it is also questionable whether all three Brexit Ministers - Davis, Johnson and Fox - fully understands the importance of the point. Certainly the insouciance displayed by Davis on the matter is alarming.
But the clock has been ticking, and those who are capable of recognising the signs of impending crisis have begun to read them the same way. A minority of Labour MPs also showed last week that they have a pretty good idea of the problem, when they voted against the party line to stress their concern that Corbyn's left-wing contempt for capitalism could impose on the Labour party an interpretation of Brexit that would plunge the country into chaos and a whole era of impoverishment. A tiny number of extreme lefties would be happy to impose the hair shirt austerity of the Stalin era in Russia on the British nation; but they would not have many followers, and the Momentum movement has not yet gained sufficient power to unseat all the rational Labour MPs if there were to be an early general election.
All the rational Conservatives have come to realise that their precarious alliance with the Paisley faction must last for at least the two years while the Brexit negotiations continue. If the government can gets its act together in the next month, recognising that the maintenance of momentum in the economy depends on being in the European Economic Area [on the best terms that can be negotiated: though they will not be ideal], there is a chance that they will gain sufficient goodwill in the mass of the population to have a chance of winning an election. That is conditional on the change in policy that I mentioned yesterday: there needs to be more money for public sector workers' pay, as Gove and Johnson are not pointing out. And there must be a resolution of the student fees issue: the reckless promise of Labour in the last election, simply to abolish those fees [and probably write off the debts owed by past borrowers] puts the Tories in an impossible position as long as they retain the Osborn line; so they are going to have to admit that so many holes are being poked in austerity that it might just be wise to admit that the policy is not acceptable.
Wars are fought by selling government bonds, to buyers who accept the extreme urgency of the situation. The present situation is no less alarming than a war. The government must be willing to replace austerity by a combination of flexibility on key areas of public spending and a massive investment in infrastructure, coupled with the development of a facility for the state [directly and through the banking sector] to invest heavily in all the firms that have credible business plans to advance technology and innovation. Mrs May's early decision to let Japanese speculators buy ARM was a very bad indication of her incomprehension: she needs to be educated; otherwise, like Anthony Eden, she needs to be taken away on leave. And there are not many weeks left for one or the other of these steps to be taken. The Tory party has saved itself by ruthlessness in the past: the era of "you've never had it so good" followed on very soon after the Suez catastrophe. They need to find the same strength again: with or without Mrs May.
Saturday, 25 August 2012
Greece, Time and Eternity
The Greek Prime Minister is running around Europe, ostensibly to seek an extension of the timescale against which, he asserts, the Greek state will be able to achieve the cost and debt reductions that were promised in return for a loan that has already been received from the euro area and the IMF. He knows, as everyone he talks to knows, that his mission is impossible. Greece has neither the will nor the means to meet the requirements; and it is most improbable that politicians from the relatively-strong 'northern' eurozone member countries will dare to agree to lend Greece any more money to burn, because of the opposition of their own electorates. The exit of Greece from the eurozone is inevitable; and it will happen as soon as the zone has been able to agree on terms that will keep Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland within the system.
For more than two decades the Greek people were the over-indulged victims of a gigantic con, pulled on them by their politicians and bureaucrats, and by their Economists, acting in close concert with the eurorats who assembled the eurozone on the basis of an untrue prospectus and egregiously fudged data from various member states; among whom Greece was conspiculously mendacious [and, almost certainly, self-deluding]. The political future for Greece is deeply uncertain as living standards for wasters and for savers alike plummet into dire poverty. The one massively viable business sector - tourim - depends on the visitors feeling safe: if there are street riots, muggings on a vast scale, embezzlement of tourist companies' cash floats, and closure of hotels while the visitors are still in them, that will cause hundreds of thousands of tourists to opt for 'anywhere but Greece' for their annual over-exposure to solar energy.Greece faces anarchy - a Greek word - as the time for the resolution of the debt problem extends until an exhausted cohort of creditors agrees to a settlement of the debt at a monumental write-down; with everyone aware that the notional ultimate repayment will never happen.
The British peoples have similarly been deluded to the Greeks; and the present coalition government - like the Greek coalition - is trying desperately hard to achieve some sort of result that will vindicate its assertions that the austerity policy is 'succeeding'. But just as the Greeks are spending what they have most recently borrowed, within an economy that has declined significantly but which has not significantly been reconfigured; the British state is borrowing more than was projected and is doing massively less to stimulate growth that anyone believes necessary. The economy has shrunk for three successive three-month periods, with no sign that this trend will cease. The pound remains strong against the euro and the dollar simply because it is an alternative to those currencies as a short-term 'safe haven' for international investors, and among the assets denomiated in pounds that can still easily be sold are British government bonds. This is a precarious temporary solution to the conundrum of how to fund the excess of state spending [especially on benefits for the unproductive members of society]. George Osborne entered the government as the lead missioner for the doctrine of austerity, with full support from his colleagues: now he looks increasingly isolated. His former close ally, David Cameron, is less able to support Osborne as his own credibility has evaporated. Outside the national government, the Conservative Mayor of London has featured largely in the euphoric promotion of the Olympic Games by all the media; to an extent that begins to make him credible figure as a challenger for the Conservative Party leadership.The strong element of buffoonery in his persona is held to be an asset by many of the public, and probably makes him an ideal candidate to soften the members' pain as his party shrinks rapidly from the national political scene.
Greece has run out of plausible politicians: the current prime minister is a technocrat who was effectively appointed by the EU; though he then managed to gain a reluctant endorsement from the electorate.
The British Conservative and Liberal-Democrat parties are busily undermining any myth of their relevance or their competence. Despite the appalling legacy that the last Labour government left to the country, they probably need one more short stint in power finally to destroy their own credibility. Then - as in Greece - politics will be voided.
For more than two decades the Greek people were the over-indulged victims of a gigantic con, pulled on them by their politicians and bureaucrats, and by their Economists, acting in close concert with the eurorats who assembled the eurozone on the basis of an untrue prospectus and egregiously fudged data from various member states; among whom Greece was conspiculously mendacious [and, almost certainly, self-deluding]. The political future for Greece is deeply uncertain as living standards for wasters and for savers alike plummet into dire poverty. The one massively viable business sector - tourim - depends on the visitors feeling safe: if there are street riots, muggings on a vast scale, embezzlement of tourist companies' cash floats, and closure of hotels while the visitors are still in them, that will cause hundreds of thousands of tourists to opt for 'anywhere but Greece' for their annual over-exposure to solar energy.Greece faces anarchy - a Greek word - as the time for the resolution of the debt problem extends until an exhausted cohort of creditors agrees to a settlement of the debt at a monumental write-down; with everyone aware that the notional ultimate repayment will never happen.
The British peoples have similarly been deluded to the Greeks; and the present coalition government - like the Greek coalition - is trying desperately hard to achieve some sort of result that will vindicate its assertions that the austerity policy is 'succeeding'. But just as the Greeks are spending what they have most recently borrowed, within an economy that has declined significantly but which has not significantly been reconfigured; the British state is borrowing more than was projected and is doing massively less to stimulate growth that anyone believes necessary. The economy has shrunk for three successive three-month periods, with no sign that this trend will cease. The pound remains strong against the euro and the dollar simply because it is an alternative to those currencies as a short-term 'safe haven' for international investors, and among the assets denomiated in pounds that can still easily be sold are British government bonds. This is a precarious temporary solution to the conundrum of how to fund the excess of state spending [especially on benefits for the unproductive members of society]. George Osborne entered the government as the lead missioner for the doctrine of austerity, with full support from his colleagues: now he looks increasingly isolated. His former close ally, David Cameron, is less able to support Osborne as his own credibility has evaporated. Outside the national government, the Conservative Mayor of London has featured largely in the euphoric promotion of the Olympic Games by all the media; to an extent that begins to make him credible figure as a challenger for the Conservative Party leadership.The strong element of buffoonery in his persona is held to be an asset by many of the public, and probably makes him an ideal candidate to soften the members' pain as his party shrinks rapidly from the national political scene.
Greece has run out of plausible politicians: the current prime minister is a technocrat who was effectively appointed by the EU; though he then managed to gain a reluctant endorsement from the electorate.
The British Conservative and Liberal-Democrat parties are busily undermining any myth of their relevance or their competence. Despite the appalling legacy that the last Labour government left to the country, they probably need one more short stint in power finally to destroy their own credibility. Then - as in Greece - politics will be voided.
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