IDS: Rip up the benefit system and start again

so why did no one laugh at the idea of the dome or the olympics or iraq?

tax money is for the poor and needy but the equalitists have their dogma that it wouldn't be 'fair' if everyone doesn't get it. which is a denial of the good as the highest idea of the mind. there is no good in giving millionaires who may not even live in the uk benefits just because of some idol worship of equality and fairness.

talking of benefits to the rich no one mentions the 4 billion a year that is given to mainly millionaires merely for owning land? why is the uk almost unique in having no land tax? why are these the untouchables? not everyone is pulling on the oars are they?

"the overly bureaucratic benefits system can act as a barrier to work, trapping people in poverty". What work? Where are the jobs that pay a decent wage and offer some basic stability of employment. Even with the minimum wage two earner families find it difficult to make ends meet - assuming there are the jobs in places where people are in need of work

There is no better welfare/benefits system than 'full' employment as experienced in the fifties and sixties when the taxation and living costs could even support a family with only one earner.

It does not help if even public sector employers are anxious to export jobs abroad or outsource to drive down terms and conditions thus adding to benefits dependency.

The existing system does not work and can not work because it is based on money and the choice of individuals to spend that money on energy, healthy food and other essentials or spend it on crates of cheap lager broadband and turkey twislers with baked beans.

Take the money out of the benefits system and replace it with what people need to live.

If they want more than that they will have to work or trade or grow something individually or in collectives in order to gain the 'value credits' (money) required to go beyond the state provison of basic essentials and into a nightclub or theatre or a pair of nice shoes or whatever.

That basic state provision of basic needs could be provided to everyone and be suported by a newly developed sustainable national infrastructure.

It can all be done, but first we have to get away from the idea that money is value, money is only value if it is used and earnt responsibly.


Humanity's technology is now way beyond our understanding and acceptence of what humanity actually is.

A MAN FOR NO REASONS

Why is IDS regarded as the man for this task? He has not convinced me of any great ability.

I am probably thinking right outside the box, but in the event of the government having to nationalize all the banks perhaps we have the opportunity to create a brand new sustainable stakeholder economy. The creation of a Citizens Income could overcome the current state benefits stigma, and would replace the complication of all current benefits including the Old Age Pension.

The object of the exercise would be to give every person ( over 21 or ten years legal residence ) in the country a virtual 100,000 quid in a national savings account which paid say 10% interest. This would equate to a " citizens income " and people would be able to be employed to increase this as they pleased. Income tax could be 50% after the first 5000 but it would be possible to allow tax relief on the purchase of your own home. Children could also attract tax relief, 7500 for the first, 5000 for the second but only 2500 for the third and extra children.

There would also need to be a maximum income, say 10 times the citizens income, anything above that would be subject to 100% tax. However some tax relief could be given for every full time person directly employed.

The object of the exercise would be to achieve maximum income via saving throughout life up to retirement. Obviously people in high paid jobs could retire earlier ( after having paid in full for their house ). Perhaps they could continue to work part time as consultants in their chosen field.

To prevent depreciation on consumer goods there would be no credit allowed on any product not capable of ( with maintenance ) lasting 30 years.

Inheritance tax would be 100% on cash savings but all property including business equipment and land could be tax free.

I suppose you could call it " universal credit "

Sounds a bit like the Dutch system .... simple basic entitlement and a straightforward form you fill in each month stating offsetting earnings.

Underpinned by a constitutional right to breathe? I like IDS - who has
taken the trouble to go out and study this big issue in eg Easterhouse.

If so that is vastly preferable to the complicated means-tested systems favoured by Brown, New Labour and an appallingly negative Yvette Cooper.

Watched the coalition documentary .... and noticed how Ed Balls tried to stick it to Clegg at every opportunity. We're well shot of these people!

I recently declared work to the DWP, less than 16 hours a week over two weeks. They stopped paying me until I could supply "weekly pay slips" (who gets those anymore?) and bombarded me with forms. I was paid for the work five weeks after putting in an invoice, partly due to the HMRC sending out contradictory advice to the contractor.

Luckily I obtained some more work, which allowed me to sign off for a short period. Now the council is demanding back money for housing benefit despite me being without income for the period it is claiming for.

The main lesson is honesty doesn't pay, if I lose my appeal against the council I am about £400 worse off if you factor in lost JSA. I am sure my story is typical.

While I wouldn't support anything the Tories come up with, it's an indictment on New Labour that it left unreformed a system where people who move from benefits to work are financially punished to a harsh degree and caught in various bureaucracies: local jobcentre versus DWP HQ, various branches of the HMRC and local councils.

Really, until you have been there you don't realise that the system is designed to harasss you. The amount of forms or inquisitions you have to go through just to work a few days is intimidating. If someone was not use to forms, had mental health problems or was just not confident with officials then it would be easier for them to stay unemployed.

If you want to cut the welfare bill then first you need the jobs and then you need a system that helps people into work. Currently we have neither.

It would appear that the Labour party is about to shoot itself in the foot by restricting the choice of new leader down to a pair of Milibands deeply long term infected with eco-fascism. After the Radio 5 Live debate today, those who leaned towards being a future Labour voter but were not necessarily Labour party members themselves came out in enthusiastic overwhelming support of Andy Burnham.

Particularly both the Milibands and to some extent Balls are contaminated by the eco-fascist sect of the Blair inspired " Corporate Nazi " ideology. Within the next 5 years the CO2 driven man made global warming theory could probably be totally discredited. perhaps we have already seen the " end of the beginning " for the Climate Change Scam. Only a few weeks ago the EU climate commissioner woman was bleating about increasing EU CO2 cuts by 30% as opposed to the original 20% by 2020 target. She rather blew the real intention of said directive suggesting that due to the recession a 20% cut would be too easy and not drive investment in things like pointless wind farms. Anyway her eco-lunatic proposal has got knocked in the head this week, and perhaps circumstances will eventually mean that the 20% pledge is also abandoned. Cameron has already pinned all the energy policy side of the Climate Change Scam on the Lib-demmics, looking to the future the Labour Party will need " clean underpants " on the Climate Change Scam. Taking everything into consideration Andy Burnham is the only serious leadership contender with relatively clean underpants on climate change, ED Miliband sporting the most soiled of all and closely followed by his brother.

'UNIVERSAL CREDIT' - WILL IDS TAKE DUE CREDIT IF IT FAILS?

Iain Duncan Smith believes (!) that an unemployed bloke will volunteer to be employed, if his income is higher thereby. (I use 'his' as I can't speak for the female.)

1/ In school physics, we learn about 'Limiting Friction' - it relates to the 'extra push' needed to 're-start' a slidable item that has come to a stop. I think idle bloke exhibits Limiting Friction.

2/ Then there is the (often very real) cost of being IN work. Travel and casual eating and drinking (ie not planned and prepared before leaving home) - even clothes. My guess is that this would more than nullify the IDS 'positive margin'.

3/ I leave others to divine how the Universal Credit can be scammed for profit. (You might reasonably hope MPs would be savvy there!)

I am in no doubt there is a lot of 'idle bloke' in me. I have a distinct impression IDS is not 'one of us'. Are we witnessing another grand political initiative - poorly thought-through, BELIEVED IN by yet another politician-believer, and doomed to fail expensively?

REMEMBERING THE BAD OLD DAYS

A bunch of decades ago, IN THIS COUNTRY, debt was disgrace and dole was ignominy. These were cultural norms - TABOOS. You might say the British PERSONALITY was imbued with restraint from decline.

In recent decades PERVERSITY has infiltrated the soul of this country. Nowhere is it more apparent than in Westminster, where 'perversity-blindness' is a requirement for the job of MP.

We need a revolution from foetus-level, on up through gestation, birth, nurture (mothering) maturing (psychological as well as informational) and out into life - imperfect as it is. This is light years away from the 'IDS solution'.

Oh - it could all go so much better.

There are at least two elephants in the room here.

Firstly - there are few jobs anyway, especially as the cuts begin to bite.

Secondly - the comparison between the 60-90% marginal tax rate for the poor, and the (usually less than) 40% marginal tax rate for the well-off. Add to that - as has been noted above - the deliberately attritional attitude taken towards benefit claimants (which helps to keep the number of claimants down) and the additional costs of getting to work, and it should be no surprise that people take the more secure option.

IDS has ideas are in the right direction, but I fear that he will be a casualty of the Treasury and deficit hysteria. The mood music is that we will have even more means-testing in the future - how is that going to fit in with IDS's plans?

"IDS points out that about 4.8 bn is lost through fraud or error."

We often hear about the cost to the government of errors and fraud.
We seldom hear of the cost to individuals of unclaimed benefit entitlements (£15 bn per year, last I heard).
We never hear of any entitlement resulting from contributions made - is it now just accepted that NI is income tax under another name?

If the aim is a fair welfare system, shouldn't the government be just as rigorous in meeting its own commitments as it is in compelling claimants to meet theirs?

IDS seems to be coming round to the Green Party idea of a Citizens Income, but without the necessary economic framework to implement it.

Despite seeming uncharismatic, IDS is a very interesting man. I look forward to observing his future journey!

IDS would be well advised to read #7 and #12 above if he wants to get a real understanding of how utterly unfit for purpose the current system has become despite good intent.

He should reflect on that and get pragmatic about it when he looks at ways of implementing his own good intentions.

Be warned, his pragmatic reflections may come up with something that is not popular with large sections of the voting public,his own party and the existing bloated government institutes that will have to implement them but will only do so kicking and screaming and meddling all the way.

In other words he won't be allowed to do what he needs to do and after 3 years consultation will end up with a hopeless concoction of 1/2 compromises as a solution that will please no one fully and still be unfit for purpose on a practical level, at which point, if not before, there will be another election and all bets will be off.

If only a benign dictatorship of engineers and business leaders (but not in the financial sector) were running things with a fixed 15 year mandate instead of career politicians we could probably sort everything out...

Pity really.

Emigration anyone?

Some real good comments here...I would be reassured if Frank Field had authored this report as I trust him rather than IDS on welfare and benefits. The problem faced by the country is that there are now too many people reliant on the safety net and economically inactive as far as GDP is concerned. For me the system has to have some means testing as this will be seen as fairer. There is too much moral hazard discouraging personal saving as it is. There is no tenable argument for middle income welfare benefits or benefits that reward personal lifestyle choice (choosing to have a larger than average family). Social trends mean that more and more people choose to live alone and/or as single parents - to maintain such a household is more expensive than say two sharing parenthood responsibilities.
Not addressed is the determinant to entitlement. People would probably welcome as fair a system that doesn't fund recent arrivals in this country EU/Non-EU, Irish, Aussie or African who haven't contributed to the system. Immigrants would have to prove that they could support themselves as they do in Australia - so no recourse to government funds for say 5-10 years provided they worked for that length of time (children excepted of course).
The welfare safety net can not be divorced from subjective policy objectives - it is not just an administrative problem of how the money is paid out it is a question of why. In a complex world that is why we have probably ended up with too many types of benefit. I welcome greater simplicity and the opportunity to reduce fraud - however, we shouldn't spend all our efforts on correcting the welfare system when there is a banking industry in greater need of sorting out.

@14 A modern day "Air Dictatorship" Jericoa?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Things_to_Come

As for emigration, what about Proxima Centauri? - or won't it be far enough?:-D

When IDS learned his wife had cancer he left parliament and - according to the print media - did not return for a further 6 months, caring for his wife.

Laudible per se, but different rights for different people.
Let us pray that the Big Society does not turn into an Orwellian Society of a similar name.

The speed with which the social fabric created to protect the vulnerable is torn up is highly alarming and will lead to a crime-ridden, impoverished majority of the population without access to proper homes, social and medical care. Very worrying times.

#15 "For me the system has to have some means testing as this will be seen as fairer. ... There is no tenable argument for middle income welfare benefits or benefits that reward personal lifestyle choice (choosing to have a larger than average family)."

There's a very good argument for middle income welfare benefits, and that is to get middle class approval for the state support of benefits that help everybody, for example, free universal childcare in many European countries. Withdrawal or means-testing of such benefits would be unthinkable in those countries.

This kind of social inclusion prevents the beggar-my-neighbour attitudes that low-benefit low-tax countries like the UK tend to have.

#16

Re 'HG wells 'air dictatorship'.... possibly, but without the protracted war and deadly plague as a prelude to its formation.

As for Proxima Centuri..no thanks, it is not the physical distance, its the self awareness thats the killer. For me the ultimate emigration is to be reincarnated as a well loved family cat.


Ahhh blissss.

BROKEN BRITAIN PART TWO - SMASHED BRITAIN?

A few counter-intuitive comments:

1. We are about to lose a large number of jobs - therefore there are going to be a whole load of people who want to get new jobs out there looking for them. As there are a sizeable number of people already out of work but seemingly willing to stay in the abject poverty of our benefits system - AND there are far too few jobs available for those looking for work - why are we bothering to throw money at welfare reform NOW, when it will make s*d all difference to the total number of people out of work? I'd rather see the £3Bn+ set up costs of his new welfare system spent on building houses - work for builders - homes we need - or are we seriously going to throw yet more money down the Government consultants/ICT contracts drain and sheepdipping every disabled person through the Disability Living Allowance re-assessment? It's pointless - it won't change anything and although I agree with many of the criticsms levelled at the current system, WHY DO IT NOW?

2. IDS does much hand ringing, he's made a real thing of being seen to care and wants to do something about the poor - he blames the state for creating the problem and believes hacking it back is the way to mend what he calls "the broken society." I take the view that the root cause of the problem is too little gainful employment in actually making things, low wages and the high cost of living in the UK, so no incentive to work and a big stick of marginal taxation. The root cause of this situation is the abject greed that drove deregulation and the gutting of British industry in the 1980s that led to "Broken Britain", which IDS to some extent recognises in his criticism of council house sales creating the underclass that now inhabit inner city sink estates.

3. IDS seems to think the nuclear family is the keystone to build on, with the mortar coming from the charitable/religious sectors, yet the minimum wage that was held to be evil incarnate when it was proposed is now an accepted part of the political landscape and made a real difference to the lowest paid, so I think the root cause of the so-called benefits trap is not the high level of benefits - you try living on £100 pw - it's the low level of wages that causes the narrow gap in living standards and the current policy towards labour market issues is likely ot make this worse, not better. We need to cut both the welfare bill by creating more jobs and reduce the tax burden on employers to allow them to pay more, but we also need to raise the min. wage level progressively to achieve this.

4. The 1980s not only concentrated the poor into sink estates, it also bred a whole generation of people who never got a job and simply gave up trying to get one because there was no work and were then unemployable when the economy finally picked up. We are about to make the same mistake all over again - 250,000+ will not get places in universities and the job prospects for those leaving education are extremely poor, meanwhile we allow our economy to be flooded with imported goods that we can't afford that provide employment in China, India etc., whilst we pick up the bills for the welfare payments, the imports and the debts, not to mention bailing out the financial sector that got us into this mess - £40k for every man, woman & child in the UK...

Another lost generation will turn Broken Britain into Smashed Britain - we simply cannot go on allowing the dogma of free trade to extract this price from our country - make goods here, employ British workers or face large import tarriffs to help pay for the welfare bill.

Give manufacturers, importers and retailers fair warning - you've got three years to restructure your supply chain, then the import taxes will ramp up rapidly. We'd soon see washing machine factories in S. Wales being opened, car plants expanded and the electronics industry taking on people.

Why are all three parties wedded to the libertarian dogma of free trade, which with the Chinese Communist Party running a rigged foreign exchange rate and a totalitarian labour market that is simply a license for multinationals to milk our consumer markets? What about the OPEC cartel that makes our energy much more expensive, or the hedge funds manipulating commodity prices? ITS NOT A FREE MARKET!

Given their illustrious economist father, surely one of the Labour leadership brothers could bring himself to break out of this ideological straightjacket? The "free" market is in reality extremely expensive and is rigged against us anyway.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Millband?

@20 Richard - overall, well said and well thought out. I liked your comments elsewhere about Osbo in India too.

I'm not sure I could cope with Miliband D though, - bright he may be, but he shows no sign of his father's integrity. He undermined Brown's government from within, yet shrank from open rebellion. My personal gut feeling is that he's as unprincipled as Tony Blair, but as slippery as Peter Mandelson.

Like Cameron, he did Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. I recently tried to dissuade a family member from taking this, on the grounds that is a degree for people who have no intention of doing anything useful, but instead want to spend their lives bossing other people about.

Ed also took PPE, but at least he took economics to a reasonable level afterwards.

However, I strongly believe that people need to to at least one real job before entering politics. Both Cameron and the Milibands would have benefited from a couple of summer vacations spent on a building site, and/or as a hospital porter etc.

It is being reported in Wales this morning that the planned changes to incapacity benefit will result in a doubling of Welsh unemployment figures - this does not take into account the coming Public Sector jobs cull.

I suspect Wales is going to need a few washing machine factories soon.

21 & 23:

thanks for the support Sasha. If I'd been looking down the barrel of the gun under Brown, I'd have struggled to keep my peace faced with the whole party being driven over the cliff by someone whose ego led him to the all-or-nothing strategy that in the end led to the ConDems taking over - the writing was on the wall three years ago...

Ralph Milliband was a man with real insight and commitment to bettering the lives of the poor - lets just hope some of it rubbed off on his sons, both of whom are smart enough to see that the New Labour cod of a rip-roaring deregulated private sector with state-run neo-Victorian philanthropism is a busted flush and we need a new concensus that isn't Neo-Con Libertarianism dressed up as responsible government that the ConDems worship.

I think the claim that the Tories today are more radical than Thatcher is quite right - but given the economic situation I suspect this radicalism will fail spectacularly, as tawse57 points out, the evidence is that they are heading for mass unemployment.

We all need to keep asking the central questions about their economic strategy for the remainder of the Parliament:

WHERE ARE THE 2.7M NEW PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS COMING FROM?
WHERE IS THE £400Bn OF NEW INDUSTRIAL INVESTMENT IN UK PLC COMING FROM?
WHERE IS THE 33%+ RISE IN EXPORTS GOING TO COME FROM?

When it becomes clear that none of these essential improvements are going to happen and public debt rises instead of reducing and unemployment tops 5m, what's plan B?

Labour must be ready to spell this out to the electorate - and it needs to be a complete break from all the libertarian free market dogma that has bedevilled British politics for the last 30 years: an industrial policy, a trade policy and a social policy all aimed at a sustainable economy for a sustainable society that is environmentally sustainable.

At the moment all we hear is that New Labour would have tightened the economic belt a bit slower than the ConDems and perhaps have imposed a different set of cuts - a real election winner! (not)

#23

'Ralph Milliband was a man with real insight and commitment to bettering the lives of the poor''

What is 'poor' exactly in 21st century UK? Is it the same thing Ralph was fighting for?

It is certainly not the same thing as it is in 21st century Congo or Ethiopia or Afghanistan.

Poor is not starvation or early death from common infectious disease or exposure or (generally) a lifetime of struggle for basic neccesities.

Life expectancy is still in a medieval mid 30's in some parts of Africa as an legacy of Aids.

They are still extremely keen to live in the Uk or other such countries that have 'moved on' from that.

Due to modern technology, mechanisation, medicine and governance (of a sort and not to be confused with leadership) I suggest 'poor' in 21st century uk is more to do with the early death of the human spirit rather than any physical demise.

Until the 'great and the good' like the Millibands start understanding what 21st century 'poor' actually means in the context of the uk in a modern era they will not come up with any meaningful policy on it.

We need leadership and insight not governance to solve these new problems, the 21st century uk political set up only seems capable of generating governance based on past political challenges, it does not even seem to recognise that all the old models be they social or economic are now out of date, made so by the inexorable rise of technology, mechanisation and medicine.

It is such a waste.

By the way, you are all free of my off topic eclectic ramblings, poor spelling, grammer, non existent background research and the like for the next 2 weeks at least.

No bad thing for all concerned I reckon :)

@23 Richard

I sympathise with your aspirations, but my experience as a member of the Labour party for a quarter of a century ('til the early naughties) makes me very pessimistic that Labour is capable of fulfilling them. In fact, if I had the time, energy and health to devote to politics, I'd probably campaign for the Greens. I don't believe in economic growth, and I object to the fact that if people like me don't consume c**p, others starve. Many Green ideas come from the New Economic Forum, and are well thought out.

As for the present Tory-dominated policies, I wonder if they are as stupid as they appear. Sometimes I rather incline to a conspiracy theory: that since Thatcher if not well before, our financial aristocracy has, in cahoots with the old old guard, had the aim of de-industrialising Britain to destroy the power of the lower orders. They now see the future for most of us as a choice between being their servants or as a "panem et circenses" (Sky Box) tranquilized lumpenproletariat.

Although I may be paranoid on this, can anyone tell me how the present poicies will lead to a different outcome?

Re: 24

I probably agree with you about the true nature of poverty and the difference between absolute poverty (read slow/rapid death) and relative poverty in the West.

All I'm saying is that our ability to use technology and medicine to help those in absolute poverty depends on our ability to produce resources to pay for it.

I'm afraid you're wrong about the need for governance - faced with a whole series of cartels rigging our trade relationships, failing to take steps to protect our economy is to allow a series of protection rackets to hold our country to ransom, consigning millions to unemployment in the UK whilst sweating workers on exploitation wages overseas to produce goods at rock bottom prices to dump in the developed economies: there are those who think we should be doing the sweating and enjoy the fruits of our exploitation - I do hope you're not one of them.

You're right about leadership and insight - but we need someone who is not subject to the domination of free market ideologies designed to justify grinding the faces of the poor whilst enriching those who are already taking far too much of the world's resources as it is.

I'm sorry to be critical, but the sum of your argument boils down to the case for anarchy - smash the state, remove controls and "free" the individual to follow their heart's desire - but in a globalised society with huge corporations and authoritarian governments, if you roll back the British state, all you do is open us to yet more abuse through market manipulation and naked greed.

Someone once said there is no such thing as society - someone else described us as "the naked ape", a gregarious species that craves social interaction. I beleive it's human nature to make common cause, to work together and in the era of globalisation, we stand together or we go down under the tidal waves of technology, global markets and environmental destruction.

Anyone need a back scratch?

This is our country, our society, our economy and our future. Don't walk away from building a responsible, sustainable future for our families: and yes take on the responsibility of helping alleviate absolute poverty.

@24 Enjoy your holiday Jericoa! :-D

The Coalition are in increasingly looking like the Obama in his first few months - all talk but little or no acction.

After Bush the entire planet wanted to give Obama the benefit of the doubt - boy, let's face it, that was a mistake.

Now, bearing in mind that Summer hols have just begun for the politicians and then there will be the Conferences, I doubt we will see or hear anything concrete about the economy until early to mid-October.

That is very worrying.

I keep hearing talk of the masive Public Sector job cuts but I am seeing virtually no evidence of this.

Even more disturbing is the obvious lack of any plan to generate Private Sector businesses and jobs other than keeping moaning that the banks are not lending.

As a result, with such a lack of clarity, more and more businesses I know are hunkering down and going into self-perservation mode. They simply have no idea what 'the plan' is. Is there a plan?

Loads of SMEs and one-man band businesses think they will not survive until Christmas.

In particular, IT companies of all sizes are almost grinding to a halt expecting any Public Sector related work to disappear in the coming year. This is not good - the affect of Cable's vocal luddite attitude to the entire IT industry is resulting in the industry becoming traumatised from bottom to top.

I myself am now personally targeting business in Germany, Holland, Belgium and further afield - with plans to move overseas for the duration - as I have grave doubts about the Coalition actually having any idea what to do at all.

It has been a long time since May 6th.

Obama, for all his failings, had a vision. He made big speeches. He talked the talk. We haven't even had that here.

#26

Dont be sorry about being critical.. apologising to someone for being critical comes accross as a bit patronising, which is surely a more grievous offence than being critical in the first place? Please don't apologise for being patronising now!

Please be critical, thats what I want, one has to properly and fully engaged with each other to eek out the truth of the moment, you cant do that without having a go or you just end up getting tied in knots with platitudes.

I am not against 'the state' as such, I am against 'the state' as is, nor am I a fan of anarchy in its most raw, but admit to being intrigued with ''anarcho-syndicalism'' which came up on the last thread.

In fact I am not sure if I have any firm views at all, I am trying to find some by engaging in the debate which goes on here, I am always interested in a counter opinion.

#27

Cheers Sasha..over and outta here, off to make my mark on the world, unfortunatley my mark will be made by a rather large carbon footprint in the comming few days.

TTFN

Having in a past life had a lot to do with washing machine factories both in Wales and in some other parts of Europe the issue is average cost measured against expected sale value. In other words can you make it cheap enough to sell at a decent profit margin and still remain competitive in the market-place?

Over the last thirty years and more the equation has been stacked against manufacturing in the UK to the point that it is close to vanishing if not, as in many cases, already vanished.

For as long as the assumption in government and the money-men is that it will always be more profitable to manufacture in a BRIC and import to the European market then nothing will change. However, we have now reached the point where the freight provider needs a proper return on his investment in boats, the fuel for the boats is getting more expensive, the workers in the BRIC want improving wages and conditions and there is a distinct prospect of mass unemployment in Europe with little or no money to pay welfare, I think there is a tipping point not that far away.

I have already heard that the cheap goods production for the European market is now looking at Eastern Europe as it can't afford the new fares from China. Also Turkey is doing very well by every account I hear. So as circumstances deteriorate across Europe how long will it be before it becomes more cost effective to consider manufacturing within Europe? I think this is an imperative and the economics, green and otherwise is staring us in the face. Time for those local supply chains, local manufacture and flat management hierarchies so ignored by New Labour to be re-energised?

With regard to welfare I have a lot of time for IDS. He comes from the one-nation Tory tradition and is not ideological in his approach. Like dear old Wille Whitelaw, (the archetypical pragmatist who, if he had been allowed to do what he could see was needed would have forestalled nigh on thirty years of terror in Northern Ireland) IDS wants to bequeath the country something that works. I wish him all the luck of it. I also wish his missus good health as she is a very decent sort.

#30

"Over the last thirty years and more the equation has been stacked against manufacturing in the UK to the point that it is close to vanishing if not, as in many cases, already vanished."

But is that actually true? Surely we have to ask ourselves questions like - why do we have next to no manufacturing industry, but Germany does. They don't seem to have much trouble being a major manufacturer and exporter - and in terms of wage rates are probably in a worse position than we are.

And we do have success stories like Dyson.

OK, they have moved manufacturing abroad as, presumably, have a lot of German manufacturers. But by retaining the design and development in the UK or Germany, and the ultimate ownership, then the profits are retained here. This is the old story of "going up the feed chain" [while Thatcherite and New Labour policies have taken us in the opposite direction].

Easy to say, of course, but none of this is rocket science. The problem is to provide the infrastructure to support a move in this direction.

Germany has long had the mindset that to rise to the top of a corporate that 'makes things' you actually have a background in engineering. The opposite is probably true in the UK.

In Germany Engineers are held in high regard. In the UK Engineers are kept in their place.

Says it all really.

I have contracted and consulted for a variety of major UK Tech industries & Broadcasting industries and I cannot think of a single one where any person near the top had an engineering background.

In fact, the only UK company that I can think of where they had an Engineer at the top was BP.

Oops.

#32

I have worked for major German and Japanese manufacturing companies...and could not agree with you more!

Most major technical German companies in particular, tend to have two CEO's, one technical and one commercial, both of equal status (though in my experience, the technical one tended to have the higher status outside of the company).

The same goes for their political leaders...they cannot rise to the top of the greasy political pole unless that have completed a significant period of empolyment in real world industry....and I don't mean a few summer jobs of work experience here and there.

I've seen it reported lately that Tony Hayward of BP was/is an engineer, but at the start of the crisis, I noted that the media reported that he was originally a geologist. Either way, his communication skills were lacking. A typical fault identified with engineers.

As much as it will upset some on here...IMHO the only poster on these blogs who has called it ALL correctly (posting over the last 4 years or so) was the poster...'jaded jean'/'statist' (probably before your time on here...google those names on the advanced feature with the www.bbc.co.uk filter to read their archives *).

*I especially recommend this to Richard Bunning...who seems somewhat confused on this blogsite. Ralph Miliband was an ardent free-market anarchist (especially wrt his association with E. P. Thompson and the New Left and the Frankfurt School)...as I strongly suspect both his sons are as well.

Liberal Democracies only promote the Liberal Arts

Only scientist in Commons 'alarmed' at MPs' ignorance
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only-scientist-in-commons-alarmed-at-mps-ignorance-2041677.html

The only scientist in the House of Commons has called for all MPs to be required to take a crash course in basic scientific techniques.
Julian Huppert, a research biochemist who became the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge at the last election, said he was alarmed at the lack of scientific knowledge among colleagues.

Proof....if ever proof was needed, that ‘statist’ was right all along!

Throughout my career I have been offered numerous jobs abroad, I now think it’s time to take up one of those offers and emigrate.

#32

"In Germany Engineers are held in high regard. In the UK Engineers are kept in their place."

This attitude can be traced back to the 17th century. I remember reading about the history of some Mendip villages, and the tension between "old money" and "new money" - much of the latter coming not from the merchant class but from the engineers that were building the canals and railways, and the coal and metal industry owners that came with them.

I also recall from my own education that engineering was looked on as a low-prestige degree compared with the arts or even the "pure" sciences.

The same attitude exists today, where our best brains are sucked into finance and consultancy - where the easy money is.

#25 Sasha Clarkson

"...I'd probably campaign for the Greens. I don't believe in economic growth..."

Joel Kovel's book "The Enemy of Nature" is an interesting read.

@34 thanks for that link - I knew it was bad in the HOC, but didn't realise it was that bad.

One quote strikes me as particularly true Dr Huppert said political leaders tended to come up with a stance and then tried to make the evidence fit it, rather than being driven by the science.

They certainly do that with economics too (as do many economists unfortunately.)

The trouble is, that even trained scientists are not immune from this fault, often clinging to a theory despite contrary evidence. Also, in any controversial field, they may well incline to a view convenient to those paying their salaries.

Apart from the constant hijacking and disrupting of blogs, on several occasions, your friend JJ/Statist was guilty of deliberately misusing statstics and psychological jargon to support spurious conclusions. He/she relied on the ignorance of those being preached to make points that would have been laughed out of court in any meeting of professionals.

@36 Thank you very much for the recommendation. Interesting - I'd never heard of Kovel. Ordered the book from Amazon and looked him up on Wikipedia. I think I would agree with many of his views, although I'm very put off by Hegelian/Marxist jargon like "small enterprises must exist...in a dialectic with the whole of things.." Part of the problem with thinkers with Marxist roots, is that they lecture the world in their own, rather ugly, language in an attempt to coerce the discussion to be on their terms.

It has to be said, I'm very pessimistic about the long term future of humanity, and I doubt that Kovel's solutions are viable. I'm not at all sure that the present human population is sustainable, let alone projected increases. I'm afraid that, unless the plague comes first, the future of humanity will be war and mass genocide. I hope I don't live to see it.

#35 gastrogeorge

The old money new money debate/attitudes in the industrial revolution was a product more of the split between old landed agrarian power and wealth shifting significantly (though not entirely) to industrial and trading interests. I would argue that engineers were a subset of industrial development power/wealth shift, and were caught up in the new money set.
For me, the problem is not that there is a paucity of engineers and scientists in the House of Commons, though in principle it would be better to have a balanced reflection of the population representing us. The problem is that there are too few small businessmen, and too many career politicians.
Politics is not an end in itself, or even a career, it is the process of reaching (in the UK) a democratic decision on legislation or controlling government/the executive. Someone who has run or been in the management of a business has special management skills, motivation, ideas and has experience in obtaining and using finance.
In the UK, in the past, we have been generally hopeless at promoting entrepreneurs and good managers within organizations. More recently, we are better and management training has come on leaps & bounds. The problem in the UK is often that due to seniority or other non-meritocratic reasons many are promoted to be manager or the ubiquitous "Director" beyond any capability to do so. Often this results in logjamming the advancement of managers, engineers and other talented people by others incapable of managing. In short, the universal application of engineers to all organizations is too simplistic.
This from someone who comes from a family of engineers, bridge & steelworks builders. Get an engineer to build you a bridge, by all means. Just get a small company entrepreneur/manager to manage within financial constraints, yet grow an idea and build an organization in a risky harsh environment.

#38 Sasha Clarkson

"I'm very put off by Hegelian/Marxist jargon like "small enterprises must exist...in a dialectic with the whole of things.." "

The dialectic, unfortunately, causes much confusion.
But it is really quite simple - change occurs due to contradictory forces.
The class struggle between capitalists & workers being the main cause of change.

I agree that things look very bleak & are going to get much worse.
But imagine a government that allocated resources based upon the needs of people, ensuring everyone has decent accomodation, enough to eat, enough water, etc.
And that to meet all these needs required everyone to contribute to the best of their ability.
And this co-operation formed the basis of a society, a togetherness not isolated individuals struggling to survive doing mindless work & stressed with debts & other worries.
It is possible!

#40 duvinrouge

It is possible...it's called SWEDEN!

#41

I've never been to Sweden.
But I do know that people have to sell their labour to capitalists in return for a wage & that there are capitalists living off the labour of others.
Social democracy is not socialism.
Allowing capitalists to exist alongside a large public sector is not socialism.
In a socialist society there are no capitalists.
There are no wages.
There are no taxes.
People labour for the common good & the people determine the allocation of resources (most probably in an equitable fashion).

39 tonyparksrun

I have often been heard to remark that a Director has to be called a Director as he certainly is not a manager.

Even today with the improvements in management training that you allude to, too often the top jobs go to those individual who can be relied upon to follow orders rather than those capable of building a business.

This is why I prefer to work within the SME rather than the corporate sector.

43. At 3:12pm on 04 Aug 2010, stanilic wrote:
.......too often the top jobs go to those individual who can be relied upon to follow orders rather than those capable of building a business.

This is why I prefer to work within the SME rather than the corporate sector.
--------------------------------------------
There is the same reasoning for SMEs to take no notice of financial advice from non specialist banks as they simply have no comprehension of how to run a business.

Recommended reading for would be dialecticians, system builders and reformers - a nice review and summary here :

https://swiftywriting.blogspot.com/2006/10/jorge-luis-borges-labyrinths.html

In particular I would recommend Avatars of the Tortoise !

43/44 Stanilic/Kit
I too find being involved in an SME preferable - having also experienced larger corporates. Those who join us from the larger corporates adapt or leave - very few are good managers, most will not turn their hand to flexibility needed to survive (changing lightbulbs anyone?). Everyone wants to be a director or an associate, a VP or some other title. Fact is few want to take responsibilty and go faint at the whiff of an AP01 (s.288a). Banks involved with small businesses, don't get me started. They really only need to know how to spell 'yes' or 'no' and the only question pertinent to their decision making is "how much exactly is your house worth?" I'll leave it there!

I found this article in the Scottish Herald re the economy, house prices and the banks to be an interesting 2 minute read.

Watching the housing bubble with ever increasing interest

https://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/iain-macwhirter/watching-the-housing-bubble-with-ever-increasing-interest-1.1046011

Nothing has changed.

The UK is still running on a property bubble, the bankers are out partying again in wine bars and lap-dancing clubs. The rest of the country is grinding to an economic halt.

...the paper "Welfare in the 21st Century" admits that:….

Admits???

BBC showing its disapproval again?

an interesting debate. In my social circles there is a lot of talk about how ideological this Tory govt is - the conclusion seems to be 'very', but they don't have the popular support that Thatcher had, and so will probably need a Falklands-style war to make sure nationalism plays its role as the real mass distraction.

Jericoa - for more info on anarcho-syndicalism the site libcom.org is good (altho can be very wordy and sanctimonious in some of the posts. 'An Anarchist FAQ' is quite a good place to see the anarcho-syndicalist take on things:

https://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html

But, just to quickly dispel a few mistruths here, anarchism is an idea of a social system of individuals where rules are agreed and then adhered to, not pure individualism, or chaos.

'Free Market Anarchism' directly contravenes the core anarchist concept of mutual aid, and so is a nonsense term - these people are in fact Libertarians, which is anarchism for people who hate other people, rather than love them, like what we do! :-)

Having worked through the document 21st Century Welfare (downloadable from the DWP website), the IDS model looks likely to be easier and cheaper to administer, and might even allow the claimant to be able to work out how their benefit was calculated, and how their circumstances would change if they found more work. So it might be seen as a better environment to encourage unemployed into work - depending on how that "taper rate" is set. All of the examples quote rates of benefit withdrawal which effectively impose marginal tax rates much higher than those considered tolerable by "wealth creators".

For me the problem arises around that statement:
"the overly bureaucratic benefits system can act as a barrier to work, trapping people in poverty".
The rest of the document proceeds on the basis that
".... the benefits system IS THE MOST IMPORTANT barrier to work,...."
and blithely ignores the others - postcode prejudice, defensive recruiting of plug-in people, work demands experience but experience demands work, etc.

In particular, the growth of part-time and temporary work. Underlying the approach IDS is suggesting is an assumption that temporary and part-time jobs are offered to deal with short term fluctuations in work, and offer the worker a reasonable chance at "a step up" - when business grows, they'll be offered longer hours. Yet you don't have to look far to see businesses where most workers (apart from a few managers) are part-time or temporary. It does look as if some businesses are indirectly using the welfare system to dump cost on the taxpayer and provide themselves with a conveniently disorganised, insecure and cowed workforce. Not much scope to reduce the cost of the in-work benefits bill offered there.

And I do have a serious problem with the following question it offers for discussion:

"8/ Do you think that we should have a system of conditionality which aims to maximise the amount of work a person does, consistent with their personal circumstances?"

“Maximising the work a person does” is not a valid goal in anything other than a slave-based economy. And I do see a worst-case situation where individuals rattling around from one temporary low paid job to another are continually harried by the DWP - making life in work even more miserable than life unemployed.

50 dinosaur

`It does look as if some businesses are indirectly using the welfare system to dump cost on the taxpayer and provide themselves with a conveniently disorganised, insecure and cowed workforce.'

Interesting point.

This happened before under the Speenhamland system back in the early nineteenth century which gave relief to able-bodied paupers in proportion to the size of their families. This allowed proprietors to pocket any profits without any regard to the wages of their workers. A quote at the time was `poor man's bread was made dear in order that the rich man's rental might be high'.

William Cobbett railed against it.

The labourer is worthy of his hire. This is from the Bible. So perhaps we can arrest all those who seek to drive down wages under the laws of blasphemy. Fat chance but worth a try.

Re: 33

Ralph Millband's a rightwing anarchist, is he? A founder of New Left Review and often described as a "Marxist intellectual" was a rightwing anarchist, was he?

A man who consistently opposed the "domino theory" used to justify the Vietnam War, a critic of the rightwing labour leaderships of Wilson & Callaghan?

I was there - I remember the LSE occupation of the 1960s and the collapse of Labour in 1979 that let Mrs. Thatcher in.

My perspective is that the rise of the libertarian right in the late 1970s and its infiltration of western political parties was the critical point where politics ceased being progressive and became driven by a hidden dogma that had insinuated itself into the bedrock of government and the economy - the Neo Cons ruled, OK.

This wasn't a concious conspiracy, it was a way of seeing the world that resonated through the media, the political parties and wider society and given the failure of the left in the shape of the USSR and socialist parties like the UK's (old) labour, libertarian ideas seemed fresh, free and modern.

Given the failure of "light touch" regulation and the crisis in credit, debt and the coming mass unemployment, all I am saying is that in reassessing how we got into this mess, we need to realise that just as state control of the USSR was unsustainable and flawed, so is the libertarian dogma equally ludicrous and the critics of both systems on the left like Ralph Milliband should be reassessed to see how their work might help us begin to construct a new way forward that isn't predicated on leaving the market to determine what sort of society we will leave to our children.

Cameron, Clegg, Blair and Brown are all subjugated to libertarian values and ideas - we need a new leader of the Labour Party who is free of this insidious dogma - the sons of Ralph Milliband might just be sufficiently independent and open minded to think outside the box.

#49 mafftucks

Interesting link.

The anti-capitalist & class struggle emphasis is clear.

It's the role of THE PARTY that seems to be the main difference between anarchists & communists.

Luxemburg saw things differently to Lenin.
But even Lenin in his book State & Revolution, strikes a tone not too dissimilar to the anarchists.

There's something in the human psyche that likes to belong to a tribe & to have a sense of belonging.
Promoting their banners & prophets against others.
We should all remember that we are all human.

US Fed to print QE2 making the annoucement tomorrow. Looks like they wish to inflate the global economy out of the mess that, ahem, printing and lending loads of cash caused in the first place.

This will be like the 1970s again. Should we all go and buy the biggest houses we can afford.

#52 rb

I read your post and tend to agree with 90% of what you have written...but I can't quite help thinking that you still haven't got it!

(Although, I can't remember the LSE occupation of the 1960s, as I was only born in 1965)

Are you sure that you really know what right-wing extremism is, or are you perhaps only aware of what you have been led to believe what right-wing extremism is? What is that psychological agenda? Might it be a subterfuge?

The parties which some keep mis-describing as right-wing are by any operational definition, socialist parties. The right-wing deregulates, i.e. it minimizes governance in the interest of the free-market and free enterprise. These are the people who encourage speculation and GDP growth from capital, exactly the opposite of the statist regimes of the last century.

Do you want the mob to decide how we are all governed? That's what the right-wing want. They want anarchism. They've got anarchism.

Have you ever seen any of the following links?

The influence of US intelligence services
on the British left
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/rrtalk.htm

The Neocons: An Illustrated Progression
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/01/GR2008020102389.html

What is the dominating thread that runs through the second link?

Who was Thatcher's ideologue? How could he have comfortably sat on either side of the house?

Why did Ralph Miliband oppose 'Old Labour' SO vehemently? [Wilson and Callaghan were NOT right wing as you erroneously proclaim]

Ralph Miliband WAS a free-market anarchist...just as his sons are...........it's in the genes you know!

Some interesting exchanges in my week off :-)

Comments:

1) Human history is far too complex to explain in terms of class struggle, although they undoubtedly play a part. Tribalism, ancient and modern, is at least as important. A recent TV series (can't remember the name - introduced by the young lady historian) suggested that modern humans triumphed over Neanderthals NOT because of superior intelligence, but because of more extended and complex social relationships. That means that anyone wanting to understand history needs to study group or mass psychology.

Funny enough, now I've written this, I remember Arthur Koestler making exactly this point in "The Ghost in the Machine" - I must re-read it after a quarter of a century.

I believe that in the early eighties, the miners and their supporters were an alliance of tribes, rather than a vanguard of the working class.

2) "The People" never decide anything, because most individuals can't be bothered to get involved. Cliques take control of any larger group and make all the decisions with the consent of the inactive until things go wrong. Then there is conflict until another clique takes over.

3) Most Britons are not truly a part of a "working class" anyway, as we depend upon exploited foreigners for too many of our basic needs.

I've seen the DWP plan to manage getting the unemployed into work, and it's pretty much a US style workfare concept, where big companies are given a free hand to get the unemployed jobs, using a two tier payment process - so much per person, then the other 50% of the payment if they are still in work x years later.

The DWP has a quality standard the companies have to comply with - the country is then carved up between them, pretty much replacing jobcentres and the companies are free to run it how they want to - but paid by results and the whole scheme must be self-funding, i.e. the cost must not exceed what would have been paid out in benefits. Locally they can farm out the employment centre role to smaller companies.

But parts of the private employment industry are quite sceptical about this, as they'd be taking quite a risk financially up front where the questionmark is whether there are going to be new jobs to place people in out there to get the performance payments. We could see a similar situation as with rail franchises where company X takes on the North East - huge rise in unemployment and they are required to manage the unemployed - but no jobs to place them in, but huge costs.

Company X starts losing lots of money - hands back contract to DWP - DWP has closed the JobCentres - the choice is then to reopen the JobCentres or offer £££ to the private companies to carry on.

I do think there is some merit in harnessing the skills of the recruitment industry, but I think the big question is where are the jobs going to come from? All the indicators point downwards - what will the ConDems do if the industry balks at the risk and doesn't sign up, or demands risk payments that would increase the costs above what the JobCentre network was costing? Rail privatisation dramatically increased the cost of running the railways - this could well go the same way...

#56 Sasha Clarkson

Class struggle doesn't explain everything - yes, things are more complicated.

Armed with an understanding of how human society reproduces, particularly under capitalism, I believe that the struggle between the rate of profit & the wage rate is central to explaining what drives the economy & so society.

So take the current crisis & the attack on the public sector.
Fictious capital (in the form of an asset price boom in shares & property) got devalued, & had to be reflated with government borrowing.
Current government borrowing is unsustainable, that is, taxes on the workers cannot be increased to the required level because this would hit workers ability to consume & fuel wage demands.
Reducing the state by sacking public sector workers & letting the private sector in is all in the interest of profit & not in the interest of workers.

The whole history of capitalism is about workers' interests versus the interest's of capitalists - class struggle.

I am looking for an analysis of the relationship between the budget deficit and the bank bail outs. Can anyone help?
Thanks

I deliberately avoided all things 'news' economic and politic for the last 2 weeks or so.

But upon the eve of my official return to the fray of employment I can not help but reflect on just one thing having skimmed the news for the first time today.

The rhetoric UNITE has chosen to put behind its strike plans has the feel of something significant about it.

Hitching their action to the injustice of the bank bail outs adds a moral cause to the struggle which has been largely absent in recent times in action of similar nature.

If they can make the strikes big enough (Heathrow closure is a big scalp) and get that moral message accross loud enough while many others in the real economy are paying the price for the greed of others, they could actually get some traction with this, something which has not really happened as yet.

The moral abohration, the heritage of a financial sector bail out by 'hard working families and small business' with no tangible or visible consequence as yet for the perpetyrators of the same still sits like a heavy stone in pit of the stomach of the national psychy.

I wish them success in finding a way to redress this imbalance, I hope the government sees the justification too and the likes of Vince Cable can use the momentum to excert pressure to effect real change in the financial sector and put the value in society back with its rightful owners.

Generally I am no fan of strikes, in recent times they have looked more like simple efforts at enrichments for members rather than things of any greater value.

I may make an exception to UNITES proposals this time if it is done on the basis as described above.


I also noticed said financial institutions are now hinting at a return on the taxpayers investment...an emerging calculated counter rhetoric to UNITE perhaps?

looks like we are in for abit of an arm wrestle in the coming months. It would paint a radically different picture if voters, delayed and sleepless non the less still expressed solidarity with the cause of the strikers.

I hope the unions media machine is up to both understanding the opportunity and the task that they could have here.

Go for it.

Jericoa

The problem is that for the moment there is no desire for change anywhere. All seem to want a return to what there was before the bust. There is no consciousness within the wider population that things have now changed forever.

I would agree that here is a massive political opportunity for imposing new structures on the banks, reducing the taxpayer liability and restructuring the economy away from just financial services. But this just remains a twinkle in the collective eye. The commitment is wholly absent.

All Unite want is to protect the interests of their members. They will do this in the usual pointless knee-jerk manner of the ritualistic Left by pulling the rug our from under the feet of the general public. You would have thought that after all these years they would have realised this is not the way to broaden your base of support. It just creates opportunities for dear old divide and rule to be played out yet again.

It is the bosses and their bonuses that need to be hit hard and this is not done by screwing the wider population. How about a mass picket outside the Head Office and leave the services to the public alone? How about publishing the income of the directors alongside the income of the employees? The unions will succeed by making a case against corporate behaviour and not just by kicking the public. The public is getting a good kicking as it is.

This is a time to use the imagination but I know I am being hopeful in that respect.

All the media are on about at the moment is that house prices are now falling and how awful this is. Rubbish! House prices are far too high and need to come down a great deal. Change it has to come: so let us embrace it.

There is a great article, truly superb, in The Independent this morning about why house prices need to fall.

Nothing that a reader of housepricecrash would not know but hopefully it will begin to sink through to the minds of those who trot out the mantra of ever-rising house prices.

Speaking of which, whilst Sky, ITN and other Broadcasters are openly talking about today's Rightmove figures about falling asking prices the BBC News 24 Channel has hardly mentioned them at all.

In fact, it was only a guest on one of the Business reports in the past hour who mentioned that the housing market was was at the top of a rollercoaster ride looking down into the abyss who has mentioned it at all. I doubt he will be invited back.

Oh, and the Fivelive business team very early this morning dared to briefly mention that falling house prices is actually a good thing - not something you expect to hear on the 'property porn' Broadcaster which is, sadly, now so much of the BBC's output.

Why does the BBC make so many programmes and news items that ramp property prices so much?

https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-ann-sieghart/mary-ann-sieghart-house-prices-are-finally-falling-good-2053554.html

#61

Sadly, I agree with much of what you say in terms of the likely motivation of UNITE and the likely public apathy towards it.

It does not stop me hoping that some galvenising force for change comes out of it.


The labour party, of all parties, blew their chance to take on the financial institutions when they were on their knees, they chose to bail them out instead of nationalising them.

Now, underwritten by taxpayers and able to soak the same taxpayers simultaneously with impunity off the back of low BOE interest rates to repair their balance sheets before property prices reduce significantly putting millions into negative equity bondage.

They could become more powerful than ever.

Not only can they become more powerful than ever but the conditions have now been put in place that sometime in the next 10 or 15 years we are likely to see a bank bust even bigger than 2008.

Gordon Brown will go down in history as the socialist PM who saved the super-rich at the expense of tens of millions of ordinary, hard-working decent people.

The banks should have been allowed to go bust. Bankers should have gone to jail en masse.

We are moving into a new era of extremes of wealthy and extremes of poor here in the UK and other Western nations. It is a new kind of slavery against which our ancestors fought, died and cut off people's heads to end.

Poor people are working so that their taxes can be loaned to the banks for virtually 0% interest and then the banks lend the money back to us at 5% or higher rates. Money for nothing for the banks.

Criminal IMPO.

People are too greedy or too stupid, or both, to understand what is going on.

The BBC does little to explain these things either.

tawse57

I understand the point you are making but Gordon Brown is not a socialist and never was: he is a career politician. Besides making comments like that you will force duvinrouge to say what he has already explained once in this thread already.

Brown's pretence and the pretence of the Labour Party was to have socialist values which you so rightly point out was not the case. Consequently those Labour voters who have a socialist perpsective were completely sold out by the last government. It remains open to question whether Labour recovers its original values when the four clones and Diane Abbott come up for election to the leadership. It doesn't look much like it. More careers for Oxbridge!

There is a critical need to break up the banks but we are going to have to wait until next year to see what the Coalition will bring. This may well be the break point. The taxpayer just cannot go on underwriting the banking industry and getting two fingers stuck up in return.

I remain hopeful of someone from the banking industry getting put up at the Old Bailey under the Theft Act. A scapegoat is psychologically essential for the turning of new leaves.

However it goes further. The entire target and bonus philosophy is wrong as it obstructs any return to professionalism and integrity in management in both the private and public sector. As things stand individuals are rewarded for looking after their own interests when it is the collective interest which should be sovereign. In all parts of the economy there are too many managers, too much greed, ridiculously expensive hierarchies and lots of meetings with very little productive work going on.

I loved the way the Audit Commission was shut down. It is a pity the same cannot be done to a bank or two at the moment. Nothing quite like a long dry broom handle forcibly placed in a fundamental position! Concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Hi there
I have enjoyed reading your comments- v refreshing.
Sorry to repeat myself, but I am looking for an analysis of the relationship between the budget deficit and the bank bail outs. Can anyone point me in the direction of articles on that have tackled this issue? Are the two related and if so, how?

Many thanks

#66
Take a look at the National Audit Office report of December 2009 " Maintaing Financial Stability across the UK banking system" ....

"The Treasury’s net cash outlay for purchases of shares in banks and lending 5 to the banking sector, including Northern Rock, will, after allowing for measures announced in November 2009, amount to about £117 billion."

You will need to dig a bit more to understand the net impact on the deficit. Remember, also, that Germany has just been directed to declare its bailed-out banking liabilities on its public accounts.

PlanC

The budget deficit originated from two directions:

1. There has not been a balanced budget in the UK since 2001. Lots of talk about a Golden Rule which was whatever anyone thought it migth be but even then never was.

2. A catastrophic collapse in government tax revenue consequent to the banking crash as profits disappeared overnight leaving nothing for the taxman.

The bank bail-outs came about on the one hand over-exuberant trading in debt and poor regulation in the other.

The only direct connection between the bank bail-outs and the budget deficit is Gordon Brown.

There is a reluctance on the part of most posters not to disclose their own researches to others: they tend to presnt conclusions rather than anlysis. Most of the national newspaper websites have a section devoted to the crash and associated economic circumstances. These would be the best place to start: then follow the references.

Dear shireblogger

That's great- thank you! I wonder how independent the report is- but I will have a read! Any other suggestions gratefully received.

PlanC
Another speech of interest was one by Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England Financial Stability unit with a title something like "The $100 Billion Question" 2010 where he coined the phrase banking pollution and gave a number of approaches to estimating the cost of said systemic pollution.

I have also found this:

https://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/psf0710.pdf

I'm not a finance expert or an economist- does anyone know where (if anywhere) the 'stabilising' of the banks shows up in these figures?

Thanks!

PlanC - final suggestion - look at Budget material June 2010

"Financial interventions and Bank of England schemes – impact on
fiscal aggregates (HM Treasury)
Table 2.10: Financial interventions and Bank of England schemes – impact on
PSNB
Table" You should get some idea from these. The IFS has probably also looked at this.

#68
I dont disagree with much of what you say here, but I have heard some say with confidence that much of this stemmed from a Clinton/Democrat initiative to socially engineer sub prime credit to enable less fortunate people get on the US housing ladder and breaking up Glass Steagall energised the process to applause at the time.

73

The inevitable unwinding of sub-prime loans in the US coupled to the way in which these defective securities were wrapped up with other more substantial investments to create a benign image for onward selling is the primary cause of the crash as it eventually undermined bank confidence in each other.

However, it all goes back to the quality of regulation both from within the banks themselves and amongst the government appointed regulators.

The entire episode is disgraceful as it shows up both banks, regulators and governments for being not more than a bunch of incompetents playing a dangerous game with all our lives.

There needs to be a reckoning.

Why do people keep talking about the housing `ladder'. The reason why house prices go up is because banks are prepared to lend against the value of the property and the mortgagees perceived income. Any connection to concepts of `value' and `home' have long decoupled from owning a house. Does anyone talk about the Ponzi ladder?

#64 and 65

I maintain that I hope UNITE adopt a similar tone to yourselves to support their proposed strike action.

Whatever you think of their motives and the likely public response to it (indignant at the inconvenience it will cause)they are just about the only ones left who could make it a front page issue and raise awareness of the ongoing fiscal rape which is occuring to the sleeping descent society creators AKA 'hard working families and small business'.

It is just so very very wrong.

I hope they pull it off, I really do.

As they said (and this could apply to most people).

''Why should our members accept a 1% pay deal in a time of 3% inflation when the financiars who created the conditions under which our members are asked to accept such an unjust deal are still recieving massive bonuses and salaries thanks to the support of tax payers like our members''?

Those are not the exact words I am sure (paraphrased from memory) but that is the message I understood.

I know it is not quite as simple as all that but there has to be a starting point of raising common awareness to facilitate change via the hard won backstop of democracy and the pressure politicians feel when faced with popular issues.

Y'know, I also agree with Shireblogger at #73, this probably did come out of good intentions, they did not realise they were letting our basic human instincts out of the legal shackles of (in this case) Glass Steagall when they sought to empower the poorest until it was too late.

I don't go for grand conspiracy theories as underlying reasons ( Dr David Kelly excepted), I go for human nature every time in matters of economics certainly.

The collective need to control certain aspects of human nature to minimise the quantum of human suffering, whether it be via religion or laws or informal cultural taboos they have all served and continue to serve the same purpose to keep greed and other such things in check unless we can in future genetically remove those traits from our make up we will always need those cultural and legal checks on our 'inner savage'.

This current slow burning crisis may well have occured inadvertently out of good intent but it should still be fought with the same determination moral courage and (to a a degree) measured ruthlessness our ancestors used to get these things under control sufficiently to allow us to move on from murdering each other on a weekly basis for a herd of cows or a patch of fertile land or something.

I am not seeing any stomach for a fight to maintain those basic things our ancestors fought for, which for me, is the most worrying thing of all.

If UNITE and its members has the stomach for such a fight, despite my past very stong reservations about what modern unions have become I would throw my lot in with them, as a means to an end if nothing else.

Was it not ever so.

BBC BREAKING NEWS - AIRPORTS STRIKE CALLED OFF

Bought out for a few quid.

Why do I bother getting my hopes up.


You were right tawse 57 UNITE are just another bunch of self interested blue collar spiv surrender monkeys pretending to be peoples champions because they felt there would be a few quid in it.

Labour (politics) failed

mass communication has failed

Civil and religious institutions have failed

The unions have failed


All the concievable mechanisms built up over centuries to defend societal values have failed to reign in the financial institutions in a measured sustainable and reasonable way.


What does that leave?

Complete collapse and chaos

or

1984


Y'know I heard the banks are pushing for a cashless society..shuffling all those bits of paper about is so unecesarry now y'know we could save about 3,00 tress a year. Why not store and control all that information on a microchip embedded in a plastic card for you.. so much more convenient... why do we need cash?

It would help get rid of the growing black economy as well.....


No physical cash means no untraceable business which means no summer jobs as a waiter for cash in hand plus tips.

and the rest.


You either go back to bartering or you COMPLY.

The end.

Dear Shireblogger et al

Thank you for your help. I did my homework last night, and here are further questions / considerations:

-I note that PSNB has increased dramatically: 16 billion in 2007,
67 billion in 2008, 152 billion in 2009;
-I note that the impact of 'financial interventions' is minor (relatively speaking): it makes about 10 billion difference?;
-I note that cash receipts (taxes) have diminished, but not drastically: 460 billion in 2007, 468 billion in 2008 and 422 billion in 2009;
-I note that government cash requirement has gone up quite significantly: 30 billion in 2007, 126 billion in 2008 and 201 billion in 2009.

I hope this is an accurate reading of the figures! If so: is it really as simple as government has been spending too much unsustainably? If this is the case, why is borrowing only going up now? Is it because too many projects have been started and too many people recruited, which now have to be accounted for?

I will look at newspaper pages / BBC for further analysis, but I am impressed by your posts and would be interested in having your views.

Many thanks!

PlanC

An almost 10% decline in cash receipts would be drastic for any organisation. It doesn't look much but it would hurt if you needed the money.

I am glad you can see that government spending was going out of control even before the banking crisis. To me this is the most damning evidence against the last government: they hadn't a clue what they were doing!

However, I do appreciate that keeping track of the government accounts must be an almost impossible task. The organisation is just too big and too complex for anyone to make any sense of it.

This is why I believe that in the end the pending cuts in expenditure will just degenerate into slash and burn to meet a given figure. It should be done a better way but I just don't think that is possible.

PlanC
I am no expert but there is a difference between Public Sector Net Borrowing and the Central Government Net Cash Requirement which needs to be raised in the gilt markets year on year. I noticed that an increase in PSNB 08/09 caused a significant increase in CGNCR ( ie gilts to be sold to raise cash). Several factors come into play. For example I noticed that a loan to Northern Rock was sourced back to the Treasury, raising the CGNCR. Also, old gilts are coming up each year for redemption. There could have been a spike in repayment/redemption of existing government debt to gilt-owners in particular years. Debt Management Office reports to Parliament are readily available and useful. These factors play on top of the revenue receipts and spending. What is interesting is the upward/escalating trend of gilt issuance going back through the decade.Either way, these monies have to be raised on increasingly stressed bond markets.Ofcourse, if contingent liabilities on financial interventions become real, that comes into play when it happens. Book values on shares and gilts remain book values until they are sold in the market!

Stanilic, Jericoa

Interesting posts as ever...
In a nod to Paul's original post, the IDS/Treasury tensions over benefit reform are bubbling up nicely (see FT today).
Apparently Treasury is only willing to support the initial outlay of £3bn or so cost needed to reform benefits, provided £10bn or so savings in benefits are made in due course. I put it to you that this is where we will start to see some widespread dis-affection grow (protest action maybe?). We have a society dependent on material welfare and the £'s will no longer stretch so far and there will be benefit losers. And that's before we debate Trident...
Suggest we all re-read Love on The Dole by Arthur Greenwood for a taste of the grim reality to come (pawn shops already coining it).

Dear stanilic and shireblogger

Thank you for your responses. I will look up the Debt Management Office reports. As you can see, I am a lay person trying to understand the full story behind the public deficit and this is proving difficult. Perhaps Newsnight could do an item on it? My instinct leads me to think that problems in the financial sector have impacted on government finances, somehow, but the figures are so complex it is difficult to establish / understand what the link is, if any.

Thanks again for your replies.

#80

Interesting will do for me.

I keep hoping that some 'widespread dis-affection' as you state will grow, in my tiny way I keep trying to stoke the fires be it by the coffee machine with colleagues at work or this space here.

What happened yesterday with UNITE is symptomatic of the whole dynamic.

They use the grand rhetoric of ''Why should our members accept a 1% pay deal in a time of 3.5% inflation when the financiars who created the conditions ...etc etc''

But when it comes to the crunch as soon as 2% is on the table they roll over and let the managers tickle their tummies. That is still a 1.5% below inflation deal they are now delighted with! The bankers are still coining it in...where is the drum banging grand rhetoric now UNITE?

That tells its own story.

I dont see the mass ranks of the 'disability allowance' class throwing away their cosmetic crutches and staging a mass sit in in the city of London any time soon either even if their benefits are cut, they simply dont have a focus.

I am continually on the look out for some galvenising tangible force for positive change but the financial institutions, their lobbyists, media machine and general massive influence via the raw power of controlling the accepted medium of value exchange (££££) seem to be able to continually press their boot onto the neck of hard working families and small business. Not hard enough to kill them, but just hard enough to keep em where they like em.

It is all pretty horrible really and so unecesarry.

82 Jericoa

There are two schools of thought developing amongst those who are critical of the status quo.

There are those who think that the declining economic condition will lead directly to action on the streets and those others who don't.

I am a convinced that there needs to be a defined extra-parliamentary political movement before there can be any effective manifestation on the streets. There is no sign of such a movement and there won't be until matters start to stabilise and improve. For the time being folk are hunkering down to just get by in the best way possible.

There might be spasms of incoherent frustration that become expressed in civil disorder of some sort but such will have no public support at all and will just terminate in the magistrates courts.

What governments fear most is public demonstration coupled to a defined popular need for change. Even then this does not mean that such change will be forthcoming.

I must confess I am starting to sound like a party hack of the old CP but there is a big risk in that political adventurism could frustrate the changes necessary.

I agree the political structures in the country are inadequate but sadly this is where the change needs to be focussed at the moment.

Last night I decided to write to my MP about it. I know it is a bit of a joke but this is what seems to be driving the political process at the moment.

Hi all
I hope you carry on posting. There is no dissent around me- just resignation. People are acting like children who have been naughty and have been sent to the head's office: they are a bit scared, a bit shame-faced, and quietly yearning for a bit of a telling off (authority is reassuring).

The question is: have they done anything wrong? I suppose there are some people who borrowed lots of money and spent it on big houses, week-end breaks, granite-topped kitchens and man-toys. They feel a bit guilty about 'splashing out'. It was the thing to do- Govt told them to spend, lifestyle sections of newspapers told them to spend, banks told them to spend.

But what about people who have had to use their credit cards to pay utility bills, sell their houses to repay debt, work part-time jobs, count how much money they have in their pockets, on a daily basis. Have they been naughty? Naughty for claiming benefits, naughty for not spending enough? Naughty for having too many children too young. They have been worse off for years, and there is more to come.

I don't know if there will be a movement, any resistence. Most people think the situation is inevitable and mostly they don't think things through. Perhaps the 80s destroyed their sense of fight, perhaps they are simply not taught to question things (a convenient form of control).

Britain is not Greece- there is a pride in the Keep Calm and Carry On attitude. Also, people don't believe in the collective- they don't trust it. It's probably cultural, historical, the result of many failed movements and uprisings. Think Glorious Revolution: that is England's way of handling national crises.

But maybe I'm wrong........

In answer to my earlier question re: relationship public debt / bail-outs, I have found a very useful document:

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

CF particularly green box on p15.

#83

A pretty accurate reflection of what actually seems to be happening.

I wrote to my MP a while back, I am sure not all MPs are the same but I was actually shocked at the arrogant tone in his response (it was a labour MP prior to the election).

Someone who gave the impression had been in power far too long and felt he knew way better than some 'common person'. There was not even a chink within his response that would even hint at their being an 'open mind' behind it willing to entertain any concept beyond what ever he had learnt in various think tanks or 'independently' commisioned reports on his way through the party machine.

By all means try and keep trying but I would manage your expectations on the type of response you are likely to get!!


I have even offered myself up as a volunteer to NEF to try to set up some kind of local focus / discussion group outside the London bubble.. I did not even get a reply, but I do get plenty of standard letters from them asking if I can increase my monthly donation to them!!

I really value the work NEF are doing, being the only organisations offering up very well researched and evidentially backed up alternative views which really do offer up an intellectual road map to what a better future should look like, they write impressive stuff.

But..I dont know, it just seems like everything is too comfortable, nobody really wants to make a pre-emptive effort '' to effect change knowing is not enough, you must take action''.

We are so used to living in our heads now in an information age and increasingly we just dont seem to know what to do in the physical world, we mistake recognition of a problem for solving it, when really that is only the thin end of the wedge. This will come back to bite us at some point if we are not careful.

For those who want another world, why don't you consider setting up a social forum in the style of the world social forum, european social forum, etc?
This is/was one in London.
Find a venue (pub, cafe, village hall, etc) & contact all the local organisations who want another world (greens, anarchists, socialists, etc).
A forum for exchanging ideas.
It may become the basis for direct democracy in another world.

#87

I am coming to the conclusion that if I want 'another world' I should just buy a PS3, a gaming chair (y'know one of those things that vibrates and moves and stuff) and a pair of kick ass virtual reality goggles plus a suitable selection of games and subscriptions to online virtual worlds.

All this church halls and pubs filled with anarchists, greens and socialists would probably make a better computer game idea than a real experience anyone would want to have in the real worlds anyway!!!

Whilst the present benefits system does not work as it should and should be able to cope with changes in your income and so on without it grinding to a halt and they stop sending out the payments you are entitled to just because there were 2 changes close together (and Housing Benefit should be able to handle variable income in a fair way that does not risk you losing your home- and probably all chance of working except Big Issue selling) the government need to be very careful how they replace the present system. If they set benefit rates low to make work pay but then those same rates are used for people who can't get a job because they are already working 24/7 as carers (for example)then it could cause those people real financial difficulties they can't escape from and makes a nonsence of the coalition's commitment to fairness. Just making it that the carers don't have to sign on and look for work wouldn't solve that. If the carers are forced to give up caring that would mean more diasbled/special needs kids going in to care, an over stetched system that won't cope with their needs, (and the effects will last the kids' lives both for the kids and others who are affected by them (eg. never learning to control ADHD impulsivity due to unstable life in care would affect those they might end up stealing from on an impulse)) and more elderly in Nursing and Old Peoples Homes potentially at least partly funded by the state. Unfortunately one size does not fit all.

89 AspieMum

`Unfortunately one size does not fit all.'

Very good point. This is the problem with a bureaucratically managed welfare systems.

No matter what we try and do we always end up with the equation the Victorians defined as the deserving and the non-deserving poor. They resolved the matter for their own consciences with the work-house at one end of the equation and huge mental asylums at the other.

Now we have care in the community which for the carer at least means don't care in the community.

#90

''...the Victorians defined as the deserving and the non-deserving poor. They resolved the matter for their own consciences with the work-house at one end of the equation and huge mental asylums at the other.''

Fascinating insight that.

Today we seem to consider everybody as 'non deserving poor' (rightly or wrongly), which has allowed a sub culture of absolutely massive benefit fraud to develop. It si not really a question of 'deserving' it is more a question of simply being capable of making a contribution in some way shape or form.

You are far better off on benefits and doing an odd job for cash in hand here and there than you are as a ligitimate worker unless you are earning about 35k a year as a family.

There is no way to balance the equation though in the context of a highly mechanised and technologically advanced society.

If you make the unemployed work for benefits that surely must lead to further unemployment for those who previously were paid to do those tasks?

At the moment the middle incomes work their butts off ( 40 to 50 hours a week is normal outside govenment i would suggest) to pay their mortgages and private health plans while disproportionately subsidising just about every public service there is via a heavy tax burden.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch we have millions who neither have to worry about a mortgage or work at all on the 'chronically unemployed' side or millions who happily only work 36 flexi hours a week for an unfunded gold plated totally unsustainable pension and the gaurantee of 2 years wages if they lose their job on the government worker side.

I doubt few people can guess at how radical the changes need to be to balance the system to be fair in the modern context of a technologically advanced society.

I have some ideas but I am too busy working my butt of on a Sunday to go into them now....

On a seperate note I was pleased to see the BBC giving a high profile to a story which suggests a cap on interest rates for credit cards and pay day loans and the like. Maybe they should consider one for interest rates above BOE base rate as well for mortgages?

Why should mortgage payers subsidise the banks profits and bonuses? Is it not enough to have underwritten the system? Whether a bank was directly bailed out or not wihtout the intervention they would have all gone down and therefore they all benefitted from the taxpayer.

Better go now before I start to get angry!!!!...again.

It appears that in Eire, where there has been a massive crash in house prices with falls continuing, that some are now asking serious questions of the journalists who, allegedly, ramped the housing market and prices during the bubble years.

Apparently, there is fear of being sued and questions raised about the perceived impartiality of journalists ramping the property market.

"Journalists fear they may be made legally liable for misleading readers who followed their advice and bought properties abroad, suffering major losses," says Richard Compton Miller, a property journalist himself. "There's a lot of anger among investors."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-false-estate-did-property-journalists-mislead-investors-2058639.html

I wonder how long it is before we hear of similar things happening here in the UK?

The BBC, in particular, turned large parts of BBC1 and BBC2 into what is now known as 'property porn' over the past decade. As anyone with a brain knows a major part of the bankruptcy of our banks is down to the ludicrous credit bubble in mortgage lending on ludicrously priced housing.

#93

Hmmm

Journalists being sued for not being impartial...now there is a thought!!!

If taken in its broadest sense in this country there would be a litigation bloodbath if such a thing ever occured.. the Daily Mail would be wiped out overnight, i dont think those guys would even bother to put up a fight.

Personally I would be in favour of such a culture of suing journalists for not being impartial...that is if it were not for the fact that so many lawyers would make a fortune out of it !!! Geeeze we can't win !!

The truth is without a personal inner sense of integrity by which the majority of people run their lives then it does not matter how many laws you have society will not work.

Without voluntary integrity society will begin to fragment and become a collection of individuals with individual interests rather than a nation with a vision all rowing (broadly) together and in time. Graham Green's 'The Heart of the Matter'' captured that particular human dynamic as well as I have seen it done.

Only afew more post to get over the 100 line..c'mon guys...

The idea of suing journalists because they preached nonsense is absurd.

You don't have to believe them. They are not giving you orders. Surely, people take a view on a matter of which the journalists opinion might be one of several factors.

Whatever happened to caveat emptor?

#94

It is absurd you are right, but a fun intellectual football to kick around for a moment or two non the less.

I have a day off today, with idle hands and all that I posted this on the NEF website, as ever more in hope than expectation. Heck I even took time to spell check it.


I am continually impressed with NEF's well researched, un-leveraged and logically robust assessment of the current world economic and resource dynamic in the context of trying to improve the experience of life most people have.

We are, collectively, it seems, embarking on taking all our astonishing and hard won technological advances and using them, not for a greater good, but to trash our own home and our own future prospects in a self destructive regressive cycle fed by a re-emergence of our most basic instincts to accumulate, instead we could use what we now know to reach tentatively towards a more utopian goal.

The quantum of my positive impression of NEF is equally tainted by the chronic lack of penetration into the mainstream media these robustly substantiated and logically coherent views obtain. Collectively we seem to be locked into a dance of death with vested interests whom via leverage (be it consciously or subconsciously) monopolise the popular view towards maintaining the status quo and marginalise the much more intellectually robust position as presented by NEF.

I think NEF has enough well researched documentation on-stream already, perhaps what NEF needs to do now is focus on getting that message into the mainstream to switch from the 'thinking' and into more of the 'doing'.

A common mistake, in a world where we now live so much of our lives in our heads, is to believe that thinking and writing is change. It is not. It is only the precursor to it.

'knowing is not enough, you must take action to facilitate a change''.

If you are serious about NEF's stated mission perhaps NEF needs to have a shift of emphasis, the baseline intellectual arguments are already there and will not substantially change for the foreseeable future. As an organisation please don't make the mistake of focusing on making more and more documents, which will simply be variations on the same core themes, instead switch emphasis to actively promoting the established core themes.

You will probably need a different type of team dynamic to do that than the one you have created to do the facilitating research. Change is something that is naturally (subconsciously) avoided by individuals and organisations of individuals. If you guys cant move it to the next stage as the people whom have (in my opinion) best captured the emerging world dynamic, how do you expect anyone else to be able to implement the types of policy NEF advocates?

I will continue to support NEF on the basis that NEF begins to move into a different mode of operating but I will withdraw support if NEF now chooses to drift within the confines of its organisational comfort zone into becoming a publishing house of ever more complex theoretical variations surrounding the same core themes underpinning the current world woes.

That will do no one any good and presents a challenge to the NEF organisation I hope it will embrace and not shy away from.

"52. At 00:08am on 08 Aug 2010, richard bunning wrote:
Re: 33

"Ralph Millband's a rightwing anarchist, is he? A founder of New Left Review and often described as a "Marxist intellectual" was a rightwing anarchist, was he?"

Yes he was. He was a Trotskyist not a Stalinist/Maoist, and Trotskyists ARE Libertarians (see the history of the Neocon movement as Debtjuggler suggests). Judge the New Left/Labour by what has actually happened to see what is true and what was spin/rhetoric/propaganda. Student anarchism in the 1960s and 70s was all Trotskyist, and was used to undermine the status quo (Keynesian statism). This served those behind Thatcher, then New Labour and now the Con-Libs - i.e. the free market deregulators. That is what they think freedom is, i.e. it's consumerism free of regulators/watchdogs. That is open predation. Contrary-to-fact Rawlsian equalitarianism and Social Justice has been abused so the unscrupulous can more easily prey upon the weak from behind a 'veil of ignorance'. These people have simply exploited human self-centredness, which is child-like. Beware, as the young are idealists and thus extremely vulnerable (and were useful in a baby boom too)..

"37. At 09:36am on 03 Aug 2010, Sasha Clarkson wrote:
@34 thanks for that link - I knew it was bad in the HOC, but didn't realise it was that bad.

"The trouble is, that even trained scientists are not immune from this fault, often clinging to a theory despite contrary evidence. Also, in any controversial field, they may well incline to a view convenient to those paying their salaries.

Apart from the constant hijacking and disrupting of blogs, on several occasions, your friend JJ/Statist was guilty of deliberately misusing statstics and psychological jargon to support spurious conclusions.

He/she relied on the ignorance of those being preached to make points that would have been laughed out of court in any meeting of professionals."

That's intriguing. As you have a different take on what debtjuggler was saying I'd be most interested to see what it is which makes you so sure that it would be "laughed out of court in any meeting of professionals" as science/knowledge doesn't advance via the forensic adversarial method, but via improvements in prediction and control based on conjecture and refutation. You appear to be confusing good argument (rhetoric) with good research which suggests to me that you are not a scientist but of that generation taught that argument is all.

All that argument is it's good for without real world evidence is games and conflict. This is the computer game generation.

On the fourth estate...
Whether we should sue journalists remains a moot point. I wouldn't follow investment advice from a journalist in any event.
Should we expect them to be impartial? They never have been, why should we expect them to be so now.
Are we expecting journalists to lead opinion? Well yes we do, because whilst it is admirable for such as Paul here to stimulate debate on the key issues, journalists in presenting the key issues must necessarily distil the options for the country(the world?).
I'm afraid we are very much of 'our time' in that few journalists treat the key issues deeply and forensically. A charge I would lay at the feet of journalists is that few understood the implications of the asset bubble (shorthand for the global economic imbalances) and were content to report on the indicators. They were also content to go with the flow in pumping up the bubble. It was after all what sold newspapers. For example, where they thought house prices would be in a years time, what would inflation show or the interest rate be. Only the likes of Tett, Wolf, Roubini & co saw the gathering storm in global terms and sought to explain it.
I don't doubt that the options are unpalatable, difficult to discern and will not necessarily sell newspapers or achieve hits, but by god we need some serious journalists to spell it out and galvanise the thinking population, or even the action party. We have the most immediate and accessible mediums of social & political communication available to mankind - we ought to be able to achieve some sort of discourse on the route out to T+10 years. And maybe uncover some leadership to boot.

If you switch on the State Broadcaster - the BBC - and daily they have so-called 'property porn' programmes telling you that house prices are constantly rising...

...to jump on the band wagon now otherwise it will be too late or the house will rise in price... implying that people offer the full asking price or even over-bid the asking price in some buying frenzy...

...then Joe Public, however naive financially, could be forgiven for assuming that houses were a sure-fire financial hit and, as our onetime 'dear' Chancellor and PM claimed, there was no more boom and bust.

Should I go on?

Where was the balanced debate on property? Where were the warnings? The dangers of getting into debt? Of being lured into a property ponzi scheme?

Arguably, where is it still on the BBC?

Hiring Estate Agents, who are basically sales people and vested interests, to make 'property porn' TV didn't really give the viewing Public a chance did it? Most people in the UK are not as financially literate about credit bubbles or as knowledgeable about Television as some are who post on this blog.

I imagine that journalists who work on Newsnight have to adhere to strict guidelines of impartiality? Can the same be said of Light Entertainment? I hope so. The problem is, for many years now, Light Entertainment has, arguably, IMPO been offering financial advice via their 'property porn' programming. I wonder how many people bought into the magnolia paint, the wooden decking and the impression, which I certainly got from such programmes, that buying property was a way to riches?

I personally think that some programme-makers, at all levels within the BBC and at other Broadcasters, need to be asked some serious questions about their involvement in the biggest housing bubble this country has ever seen. So I think it is very interesting that some in Eire are now consulting the lawyers.

Did you hear that?


POP!

#98

''I'm afraid we are very much of 'our time' in that few journalists treat the key issues deeply and forensically.''

The same could be said of modern politics, there is very little discipline in analysis and outcomes, except when it comes to trying to assess if a policy will be popular or not, the required cause leading to the desired effect gets the full treatment not the issue of concern itself. If the right thing to do is unpopular or unconventional (and therefore hard to sell)it will get canned.

I thought there was an interesting snippet from David Milliband the other day in an R4 interview. He said something like ''rising to the top of the political profession'' said in the context of decision making.

He consideres politics as a profession. Someone with certain aptitudes can go through a training regime and come out the other end as a politician.

Most of the politicians are now products of that sausage machine it seems to me and it is visible in that the quality of leadership has diminished. The gene pool of talent from which politics can draw has contracted significantly as a consequence of the process of candidate selection becoming semi-mechanised.

Almost all the politicians I see on offer simply do not display the depth and breadth of life experience coupled with a finely balanced nature required to effectively analyse situations, evaluate solutions and outcomes, make decisions accordingly and effectively communicate them.