Benefit Scroungers, Food Banks, and the deaths of Mark and Helen Mullins

On Friday 27 January 2012, the Blackpool Gazette's front page was devoted to the story of a man who claimed he was trapped in his flat suffering from agoraphobia. In fact he had been living in Spain.

Appearing before Blackpool magistrates he pleaded guilty to three offences of cheating the DWP out of £15,816. Lord Freud was quick to take the opportunity to use the case to justify the government's welfare reforms. He told The Gazette:

It's cases like these that show us why welfare reform is needed. Benefit thieves are costing the taxpayer almost £1bn per year ... We will continue to tackle this problem ... by reforming the benefits system to make it less open to abuse."

In the previous week I received a letter from The Trussell Trust, the second para of which reads:

The UK foodbank network is growing as more and more people are recognizing the need in their own communities. There are now 168 foodbanks across the country, meeting people at their point of need and providing practical care and support. We have been pleased to see increased numbers of foodbanks in previously under-represented areas, especially Northern Irelan, Scotland and the north of England.

That's an increase of 68, since the Trust opened its one hundredth food bank in May 2011. [TTM].

On 23 Feb 2011, Radio Lancashire reported that ...

A leading charity claims more than 40,000 children in Lancashire are living in severe poverty. In new figures released by Save the Children, Blackpool is listed in the top ten of the most poverty-stricken local authorities in the UK.

The Blackpool Gazette's of report, 27 January 2012, did not balance it's benefit theft story of the 'agoraphobic' living in Spain by reminding it's readers of the Save the Children report.

Nor should this surprise us.

The Gazette is now part of Associated Newspapers, stabled with the Daily Mail, which rarely, if ever, passes up the opportunity to imply that everyone on benefits is a cheat.

Also, like the Daily Mail, the Blackpool Gazette is only too ready to pass up the opportunity to inform its readers as to the expansion of food banks in one of the world's richest countries.

The Mail - to its credit - did report on the case of Mark and Helen Mullins.    [TTM] The call for an inquiry into their deaths does not seem to have been followed up. Nor has there been any comment from Lord Freud on the matter.

   Corporate Media    Thatcherite Britain

The Myth of Full Employment    'Unsustainable Burdens'

Rich and poor: deserving and undeserving

Carey 'call for the humane treatment of Pinochet'

Child Poverty Map

Deserving vs Undeserving

Former Archbishop Carey under fire over arms trade comments

Joseph Merrick

UK Foodbanks

Well, hallelujah!

Welfare Reform and the Small State

Whitehall loves complexity, it keeps the small state at bay. But there is, in fact, no need for the small state to be anti-welfare, it just needs simplifying.

1. The tax allowance should equal the JRF's Minimum Income Standard. (£14,400 in 2010)

2. Welfare payments would be via a Negative Income Tax.

3. This would be triggered by the employer when the person concerned was made redundant, or signed off long-term sick. (Not sacked!)

4. HMRC would pay out on the understanding that (a) the person was actively seeking work, and/or (b) the person concerned was being treated for a long-term sickness/condition, as verified by a second - independent - doctor.

5. The weekly payment would be a democratically agreed per centage of the MIS, and subject to regular review by a committee established by the local authority for that purpose, and subject to democratic review.    Coalition Log    IDS Welfare 'Reform'

IT Scandals

Why IDS is heading for a date with disaster

Real Time Initiative

Reflections on Peter Oborne's commentary on the Cameron-Miliband attacks on 'crony capitalism'

The neoliberal experiment - launched on 9/11/1973 in Santiago, Chile - is a mirror image, or if you like a photographic negative, of Stalinist communism.

Both utopian theories preach the dawn of a utopian age, both resulted in a vicious dystopia.

Both were predicated on the assumption that human beings could be made into 'New People' - for Stalinism it was the end of entrepreneurialism, for Pinochet-Reagan-Thatcher it was the end of society and the birth of Ayn Rand's heroic individual.

Both systems believed that the measure of success was either the Marxist "withering away of the state", or the neocon "small state" which kept away from the markets.

Both systems produced an impenetrable elite; Peter Oborne's 'arrogant and deracinated “overclass” of super-rich'.

Both systems need/ed to marginalise the people who were not going to make it to the 'New Person', which is why we are seeing the coalition - and its New Labour predecessor btw - persecuting the sick, the disabled and the frail elderly.

In the USSR the marginalised died digging canals; in Britain they work for their benefits in Poundland.

Both theories have their meeting point in the Nazi's Aktion T4 programme - the elimination - by whatever means - of "life unworthy of life".

Economic Democracy    Growing Inequality

A utopian experiment    Inequality, Consumerism & Biodiversity

Given the time scale suggested for the completion of the London-Birmingham leg of this project, it's important to examine it against ...

• the 'Branch Office Britain' test;    [BOB]
• the climate change-fossil fuel question, and specifically the availability of 'green' electricity to power the trains;    [AtFF]
• the likely impact of Peak Oil on the economy circa 2030, and the likely imperative to localise the economy;    [PO]
• leading to the 'could-the-money-be-better-spent-on-other-projects' question.    [TEoG]

It's unlikely that any of these questions have been uppermost in the minds of those - whether in the previous government, or the coalition - planning this huge project.

In particular, it's indicative of the bankruptcy of forward thinking on the part of the current generation of politicians, that concurrently with the announcement of the HS2 project, former the climate minister, Ed

Miliband ... will set out three ways to achieve fairness in more austere times:

• Reforming the economy to support long-term wealth creation with rewards fairly shared.

• Tackling vested interests that squeeze the living standards of families across the country.

• Making choices that favour the "hardworking majority".

[Gdn]

It all seems faraway from the climate minister who advocated ...

A global campaign in the style of Make Poverty History is needed to pressure political leaders into sealing a treaty on tackling climate change, Ed Miliband, the environment secretary, has said.

Miliband told the Guardian a "popular mobilisation" was needed to help politicians push through an agreement to limit carbon emissions in the face of concerns about the economy.

"There will be some people saying 'we can't go ahead with an agreement on climate change, it's not the biggest priority'. And, therefore, what you need is countervailing forces. Some of those countervailing forces come from popular mobilisation." ...

Guardian 08 December 2008

If Labour is not assessing policies in the light of climate change and resource depletion, it ought, nevertheless, to be examining all prospective policies against the question: what would a reformed economy "with rewards fairly shared" look like, and is it an economy that will be based on growth?

It's clear that HS2 is based on the belief that the current global-free-market economy is the only show on the planet, and all other options are regarded as cranky, weirdo, and utopian.

Which aptly describes the theories of Hayek and Friedman.

Dave's Diverse Day

Making Britain safe for Corporate Capital

Dave's diverse day started in the north west with Andrew Lansley relegated to the side-lines while Dave single-handidly re-organized nursing routines in the cash-strapped NHS.

The new anti-target target: every patient seen once an hour, will presumably be recorded in triplicate, copy to the DoH.    [BBC]

NHS cuts: The real picture
53,150 Total number of confirmed, planned and potential NHS staff cuts
27,000 Previous estimate of job cuts, published by the Royal College of Nursing last November
15% Cuts expected at mental health trusts including: Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership, Derbyshire Mental Health Services, and Mersey Care
20% Staff cuts planned by Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust
1,755 Posts being cut by Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in 2010/11 including 620 nurses ...
[Ind]

Also on this day, bereavement-councillor Dave found time to speak to Anuj Bidve's family, and to assure them of his "huge sympathy".    [BBC]

Film-critic Dave has taken exception to the new film about Margaret Thatcher:

The prime minister said the portrayal of his predecessor by Meryl Streep was "a fantastic piece of acting", but questioned the timing of the film.

He told the BBC it was "more about ageing and elements of dementia rather than about an amazing prime minister" ...     [BBC]

Finally, and this is Cameron on-home ground managing the news, industry-minister Dave told the BBC that ...

"All of Britain's car manufacturers - Nissan, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover with their announcement yesterday of more jobs in Merseyside - there isn't a British car manufacturer that isn't expanding at the moment." ...

"There's been some government assistance in some places, but generally speaking that is a re-industrialisation and enhancement of manufacturing, and they are bringing a lot of their supply chain on-shore."

"Waitrose, where I was yesterday; planning a massive expansion and creating more jobs around the country.

"Burberry is another company that's on my advisory board; they are building a huge factory up in Pontefract," he said.

Mr Cameron's upbeat assessment comes against a backdrop of data released earlier this week which showed British manufacturing shrank for the third consecutive month in December ...     [Tel]

Pity about the Telegraph going off-message at the end there!

The real David Cameron is well hidden by all this high profile busyness, but he emerges from time-to-time in his true social Darwinist colours.

His latest populist gimmick is health-and-safety, that all-purpose butt of fun in the right wing press ...

Britain's "health and safety culture" will be killed off for good by the government, David Cameron declared as he warned that a "monster" was hampering business growth ...

"One of the coalition's new year resolutions is this: kill off the health and safety culture for good. I want 2012 to go down in history not just as Olympics year or diamond jubilee year, but the year we banished a lot of this pointless time-wasting from the economy and British life once and for all."    [Gdn]

In this same vein, in January 2011, Dave vowed to make it easier to sack workers without companies having to face "vexatious claims" ...

David Cameron plans to get Britain back to work by making it easier to sack staff in the first two years of their employment. The Prime Minister's proposed 'employers’ charter' will allow companies to get rid of workers without the threat of being taken to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal.

Under current legislation, an employee can bring an unfair dismissal claim against an employer after only a year, so the Coalition wants to double the leeway given to firms ...     [DM]

It's unlikely that Dave has heard of precarity, but he certainly knows how ramp it up.

Work places are to become less safe, and jobs less secure.

Meanwhile, over at HMRC - presumably with the blessing of his Bullingdon Club mate Osborne - being nice to the likes of Vodafone and Goldman Sachs is the order of the day - [BBC] - but for small businesses it's a rather different story.
[Tel]

The corporate state is safe in Dave's hands.

Divi Dave Log

David Cameron: my vision for a fair Britain

PM aims to tackle 'care problem'

Anuj Bidve shooting

Thatcher film 'made too soon'

David Cameron: industry is returning to Britain

Is David Cameron unsafe in the workplace?

David Cameron takes aim at Britain's 'health and safety culture'

Displacement Activity: Chris Grayling making less seem like more

'Most' unemployed have a criminal record

Propagating the belief that 'most' people on benefits are criminals is the obvious subtext to the concurrent reports in the Express and Torygraph.

Closer inspection of the reports - especially that in the Telegraph - demonstrates that the stats are somewhat, er, 'elastic'.

The report starts off by asserting that a third of those on benefits have a criminal record.

Later in the report the number drops fo 26 per cent; so one-in-three becomes one-in-four, which leaves 74 per cent without a criminal record.

But by this time the mud has stuck, and 'Thatcherite Britain' has been drawn into another Tory scam to smear those on the bottom rungs of the Darwinist ladder.   [TB]

The aim ...

... Britain needs a rehabilitation revolution, and particularly to help former offenders into sustained employment ...

... is wholely laudable, but the likelihood of the coalition funding (a) a rehab 'revolution' is risible; and (b) as a the concurrent report in the Telegraph makes clear, with 23 applicants chasing every job, ex-cons are unlikely to be in the front of the queue.

But the myth of full employment is re-emphasised; the third face of power does it's job.

Displacement Activity

Britain must join the euro – and Cameron is the man to do it

I fear you have misunderstood Mr Cameron, Mary.

He is a PR man who passed out of Eton with that school's greatest gift: the ability to make talentless individuals sound clever, to turn sow's ears into silk purses, and lead into gold.

Blair could have taken this country into the Euro.

He had one short window - the summer of 1997 - when he was still perceived as someone who could walk on water. But his chancellor would have none of it.

Just supposing, for one fantasy moment, that Cameron could understand - and act on - the logic of your piece: he would be swept aside by his own party.

BTW, sceptics and Little Englanders, Cameron has two quite specific goals today:

1. The destruction of the working time directive, which many of our fellow citizens would find a disaster, and,

2. Protecting that cess-pit of greed - aka the City of London - from a Tobin Tax, and for the very simple reason that although it's 'wealth' creation is entirely of the bubble variety, it's the only economy we have.

Which leaves open the question: why would anyone in Europe want a third-world basket-case in the euro?

Ind  09 Dec 2011

A free market train wreck    A Two Speed Europe Log    Coalition Log    Euro Crisis    Whither Britain? Log

How to Forge a Common European Identity

Nick Clegg's war on executive pay fails to address the 'free market train wreck'

Gao Xiqing put his finger on an unexplored dimension of income inequality three years ago: the rewards for, er, 'talent' are now in financial services and law. (*)

Britain's Thatcherite economy was fatally skewed by (a) Thatcher's 'Big Bang' deregulation of The City, and (b) the high exchange rate policy pursued by her chancellors which destroyed much of the industry in the West Midlands, North West, and North East, leaving several questions marks of the 'Whither Britain' variety, eg: where is full employment coming from?    [TMoFE]

The extent to which governments can tackle inequality are circumscribed by the economy - heavily over-dependant on the bubbles created by the fiat-currency-driven City of London - and the culture: becoming more ruthlessly individualistic, aka the Fuck You Buddy Dystopia.

Add a target-driven education system 'managed' by here-today-and-gone-tomorrow politicians of the Ed Balls/Eric Forth variety, and the dystopia is complete.

Nick Clegg's upcoming war on executive pay is based on a complete misunderstanding of the complexity of the wider issue: the need to rebalance the economy away from fiat-currency-driven financial services, whose bubbles are mistaken for growth.

The possibility of government offering Derby-based Bombardier subsidies, a la British Leyland, confirms the need for greater study of the mechanisms by which such rebalancing might take place.

Rebalancing the economy from Whitehall is most unlikely to work, but leaving the matter to the markets is also fraught with difficulties, since financial 'services' seem uninterested in the areas most likely to solve this problem: newly-founded small businesses.

The need for a state-investment bank to by-pass The City is more worthy of Mr Clegg's attention, since the problem posed by the disparity in the rewards offered by financial 'services' and those in the 'real' economy will, in the long-term, only be addressed by rebuilding the 'real' economy.

Meanwhile, back in the coalition's fantasy world, 'Dreary' Duncan Smith thinks there is no incentive to work!    [Tel]

If only there were more vacancies than there are unemployed, Mr Duncan Smith!

Ind 05 Dec 2011

A free market train wreck    Economic Democracy    Inequality    Whither Britain

A very 'third face of power' Autumn Statement

Do less, make it seem like more

" ...nobody believes there is very much he, or any government, could do today to overcome the economic crisis."    [Tel]

That's the reality in a global economy, where the rich can avoid taxation, bankers can still clock-up mega 'earnings', and growth can only emerge from the pursuit of trickle down economics.

Since the hoi polloi must on no account be allowed to realise the reality of their utter powerlessness, it is necessary to present a range of measures which create the appearance of government activity.

For example, the headline - 'George Osborne pledges £6bn for infrastructure projects' - creates the impression that the Chancellor has found £6bn to improve roads and railways, and to cancel a planned increase in fuel duty.    [Gdn]

Cue: round of applause from the corporate media.

However, it emerges that the money is actually to come from pension funds.    [Tel]

Should the private sector not be available to prop up the appearance of doing more, the poorer sections of society are on hand - as usual - to carry the burden.     [Gdn]     [Tel]     [Gdn]

And if the poor cannot do enough, there's that well known Tory whipping post: the public sector.

Thanks to the efforts of the corporate media, this handy punch-bag - with its tendency to call strikes - is due for a further shrinkage; no doubt with the expectation that the 'big society' will fill in the gaps.    [Gdn]

Six more years of pain can safely be blamed on Gordon Brown, and the Eurozone.

Meanwhile, it's high pay and big bonuses - as usual - in The City.     [Gdn]     [Ind]

Alternative policies, such as those proposed by Richard Murphy are far too dirigiste for Tory - and LibDem - free marketeers, and the real governors of the country: the one's who run the casino opposite St Paul's Cathedral.

Finally, George tells us ...

"I am worried about the combined impact of the green policies adopted not just in Britain, but also by the European Union … if we burden [British businesses] with endless social and environmental goals – however worthy in their own right – then not only will we not achieve those goals, but the businesses will fail, jobs will be lost, and our country will be poorer."    [Gdn]

This is a man in his forties who, presumably, believes his family's wealth will see him through peak oil, and climate change, while the hoi polloi are abandoned to manage as best they can.   [RH]

Autumn Statement 2011

Dystopia 2018

Third Face of Power

Collect the evaded tax, avoid the cuts

Chancellor George Osborne dreaming up income

George Osborne introduces six more years of pain

Struggling families to lose £1,200

Osborne tears up key countryside protection and green energy project

George Osborne increases squeeze on poor families with cuts to tax credits

Borrowing up by an extra £111bn

Public sector job losses to hit 600,000 by 2016

The proverbial have taken over the asylum

A variety of looters

Switching on any channel carrying ads is to be bombarded by the 'have it all, have it now' consumer culture, which depends on credit for its existence.

As viewers we have been routinely encouraged to feel that owning the latest 'whatever' is vital to the enhancement of status and self-image.

The notion that the marginalised should be strong enough - stoical enough - to accept their failure to participate, is a counsel of perfection addressed to those least able to manage it.

The possibility that full - and fulfilling - employment might be the royal road out of this dystopia is unmentioned by the the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, as is the strong possibility that vastly unequal 'societies' vastly increase the difficulty of finding detachment.

City workers still banking on bonuses despite gloom

Based on average salaries of £83,000, a payout of 24 per cent would translate into a bonus of £19,920.

A managing director would receive a bonus of £166,000 if their expectations are realised based on an average salary of £237,000.

City workers have enjoyed rises of around 12 per cent to their basic pay ... at a time when most other workers are dealing with either below-inflation rises or pay freezes as the economy stumbles ...

Ind  28 Nov 2011

Consumerism and police failures to blame for scale of summer UK and London riots

The hypocrisy involved in blaming 'consumerism' is breathtaking, since it is the key source of corporate-created discontent, and is held by some politicians to be the route to recovery.

A desire to “have what we want when we want” and "expecting something for nothing" drove the looters on to the streets in August, a review set up by the Government said.

It claimed consumerism and peer status through owning top brands had become a “new religion” ...

“In the Panel’s conversations with communities and young people, the desire to own goods which give the owner high status (such as branded trainers and digital gadgets) was seen as an important factor behind the riots.

“In addition, the idea of ‘saving up’ for something has been replaced by the idea that we should have what we want when we want.” ...

Tel  28 Nov 2011    
A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log    Economic Democracy    Inequality    Riots    Third Meltdown Log

A Very Neoliberal Catastrophe    Family Breakdown    Neoliberal Consumer Culture

5 Days in August

Burkino Faso as vision of the future global collapse

Paraphrase, based on Michael McCarthy's piece on Burkino Faso in the Indie. (*)

... more than 90 per cent of [the world's] energy needs are supplied by fossil fuel.

The vast majority of the people rely on petrol to get to work, gas and/or electricity to cook the daily meal ... and juggernauts stacked high with goods which have traversed the planet, and which throng the roads of every town and city.

They really do. Plane after plane, ship after ship, vehicle after vehicle.

The oil is gathered from underground ...

... the oil companies are having to go further every year, the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic ocean, as each oil field - like the North Sea - becomes exhausted.

The people are visibly, and tragically, trashing their own planet ...

Who could blame them? It is done out of need. They were only trying to survive. But they are consuming their own future ...

The West is poised on the edge of failure; a major rise in temperature may be enough to tip it over completely.

In such a case, would the people of try to migrate, to, say, the neighbouring country? And would the neighbours let them in?

There are worse things on the horizon than the future of the euro.

(*) Exhausted, deforested landscapes show the truth about over-population

Top

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Nasty Church, Nasty Party, Nasty Rich

"The nasty church has joined with its kin the nasty party
to look after their kin - the nasty rich."

Blogger whitecross, Guardian, 31 Oct 2011

The Bishop of London clocked at number 75 in a list of the top 100 environmentalists compiled by The Independent on Sunday, according to the Wikipedia biog. It also suggests that he does not allow his anti-aviation beliefs to come in the way of the use of air travel.     Wiki

He showed the same lax attitude towards the Sermon on the Mount when St Paul's Cathedral announced that it could not function without daily takings of £20k, which those pesky protestors were impacting negatively.

How the police are going to clear Occupy London without violence, he doesn't say.

It would certainly be a first.     Ian Tomlinson

If the 99% are Evicted, it Will be by the 1%

According to the church's website, their financial strategy at present involves "a mix of styles and approaches" having "scaled down holdings in UK company shares and invested more in global company shares and private equity." .

In acknowledgement of the UK's newest and principle religion (shopping) its extensive property portfolio includes retail parks, great chunks of high street and the MetroCentre mall; pre-Westfield the biggest shopping centre in Europe.

It also operates highest end retail units in London's Savile Row, and for a mere £85, one can lunch on a steak and a glass of red at the Royal Lancaster, the luxury hotel it owns on London's Hyde Park .

The Mayor of London's love and dedication to high-finance and the City is known and outspoken, and the City of London Corporation is best summarised by the Penguin Rough Guide to London:

"with its Lord Mayor, its Beadles, Sheriffs and Aldermen, its separate police force and its select electorate of freemen and liverymen, the City of London is an anachronism of the worst kind. The Corporation, which runs the City like a one-party mini-state, is an unreconstructed old boys' network whose medievalist pageantry camouflages the very real power and wealth which it holds."     Huffington Post

Bishop of London branded hypocrite ...

Mark Field, Tory MP for Cities of London and Westminster, said: “While no one expects anti-capitalism to be a 24-hour activity, I would have hoped the protesters would show a little more respect for the sanctity of St Paul’s.” ...

Nick Herbert, the policing and justice minister, said the Government was examining whether the law was working effectively in light of the continued protest.

He told BBC1’s Politics Show: “Everybody agrees there should be a right of peaceful protest in our country. People have an entitlement to make their view known.

"It’s fundamental to our democracy and the coalition is committed to protect that.

“But we saw – for instance in Parliament Square – where there was a permanent encampment which had gone on for years and was very disruptive to the enjoyment of Parliament Square by others.

“And if necessary we will take action to deal with other invasions of private property that involved permanent encampments."

He added: "You do have the right to protest but you don’t have the right to go and live somewhere and that’s why we do need to look again at whether the law is operating effectively.”

Tel  31 Oct 2011    Coalition Log    Corporate State Log    The 'Fuck you buddy' Dystopia

MF Global files for bankruptcy after European debt bets

If the 99% are Evicted, it Will be by the 1%

Is Occupy London a part-time protest?

Sermon on the Mound

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A Three-Pronged House of Cards

Watching BBC NEWS 24 on the Euro Crisis - 27 Oct 2011 - was a surreal experience of the 'emperors's new clothes' variety.

Someone had the temerity to ask where all the money was coming from.

A load of waffle followed.

That, it emerged, was a matter of detail.

The Chinese might help out. Brazil might help out. (On the other hand they might not).

The money, it was implied, did not actually exist, but was promised. By whom?

You've guessed it: those guys with bottomless pockets - aka the taxpayer.

One intriguing fact did emerge: according to the BBC, Europe's debt would swell to 120 per cent of GDP - the same as Italy's is currently!

And what was the long term solution? You've probably got there already: growth.

Years of austerity is going to produce growth.

Welcome to Bedlam, version 2011.

In the middle of all this there was a short interview with an ex-member of the Bullingdon Club: Mr George - Gideon - Osborne.

Wearing that now-familiar sinister 'smile', he assured viewers that the British taxpayer was not involved in the bailout.

He was not asked if the IMF was involved - as could well be the case - but the BBC are not up-to-speed on that possibility, which definitely would involve the British taxpayer.

Repatriation of powers? - aka more precarity for working people - yes, he was in favour of those.

He didn't spell out why; that would reveal what is curtained off by the 'third face of power'.

The BBC wasn't up-to-speed on that, either.

Tough-talking Germany takes the eurozone to the brink of a break-up

Eurozone deal has put European economy on right road, says Osborne

Tory revolt and the precariat

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Towards two-tier schooling

"Do you go to a council school?! You must be thick!"

The case of academy plans launched by the governors of the Montgomery High School, Blackpool, raises national issues similar to the unfolding 'reforms' planned for the NHS.

The Tories have a long-held belief that national pay scales for teachers should be abolished, and it's almost certainly the case that the NUT's opposition to academies is centred on this fact.

However, a report in the Blackpool Gazette - dated 24 October 2011 - hints at a much darker agenda:

... there was criticism from mums - and teachers - after a letter about a meeting with headmaster Simon Brennand to find out more about the academy plans had not been handed to all children ...

It takes little imagination to speculate on the possibility that there may be a link between those not receiving letters, and those pupils whose attainments might be a threat to the school's league table position once it is an academy.

The re-introduction of selection by the back door will also help to create a new two-tier system: academies for 'bright' pupils, and council - 'sink' - schools for 'thick' pupils.

Guess which will be better funded?

Academy plan fury given over

ANGRY teachers campaigning against controversial plans to convert their school into an academy have handed over a petition to school chiefs.

More than half of Montgomery High School’s teachers signed the petition ...

Blackpool Gazette  19 Oct 2011

Education for the Good Society    Tory Education 'Reform'

Education spending 'falling fastest since 1950s'

Academy Schools ... audit services

Schools’ academy bids cost £18.6m

The trust behind UK's controversial academy schools seeks PR agency

Emmanuel Schools Foundation joins the United Learning Trust

Do academy schools really work?

What are academy schools, and is their future under threat?

What are academy schools?

Education spending 'falling fastest since 1950s'

United Learning Trust

Ark Academy

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These protests are inarticulate, weak and self-righteous

... if there's one thing that's shocking about these demonstrations, it's how weak and inarticulate they were. Fine to speak up against greedy bankers, but without any other political arguments – who needs arguments when you have Facebook? – it rather seems like you're damning the millions who lived off their loans in the first place. And why would they want to do that? ... [Ind]

James Harkin's article is a strange little rant which doesn't move the debate forward.

The current 'problem' has arisen as a result of three events:

1. Nixon's decoupling of the dollar from gold in 1971;

2. Maggie's Big Bang deregulation of the City of London, and

3. Clinton's abolition of Glass-Steagall.

From 1933 to 1971 capitalism - and finance - was carefully regulated and kept on the leash.

There's no sign that politicians realise that they have surrendered their power to 'mad dog' capitalism and it's 'food': fiat money.

Merkel and Sarkosy are emblematic: their efforts to 'solve' the euro problem are predicated on the assumption that more borrowing is the solution.

Capital-finance will not be back under control until there is a Debt Jubilee, and an end of fiat currency.

Full reserve banking should do it.

Alternatives to Fractional Reserve Banking

'The Greatest Threat to Europe Is the Bailout Fund'

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A "modern and compassionate" party

" ... we mustn't leave people behind ... "

Terminally ill patients told their benefits may be cut

Contrast David Cameron's speech to the Tory Conference - in which he made this oxymoronic claim - with a raft of reports which have confirmed that life with the, er, 'modern and compassionate' party is, well, somewhat less than caring.

To put it mildly.

Trapped in the globalist pact with fiat money, the Tories are using the third face of power to operate the 'do less make seem like more' policies of Ronald Reagan's 1980s Republican administrations.

Back in the 1980s Milton Friedman advised Margaret Thatcher to go for the Pinochet 'shock doctrine' and treat the UK as a second Chile.

This was a step too far even for the Iron Lady, and it is still a step too far for Cameron's 'compassionate' party.

The actuality is a gradualist erosion - death by a thousand cuts - of the social state.

Ergo, the groups most in need of compassion, are the groups at the front of the queue for cuts.

And right at the head of the queue are the unemployed.

IDS's call to the "workshy" to 'get on the bus' and look for work - [Gdn] - was followed more recently by a directive that the unemployed must look for work "up to" 90 miles from home. [Gdn]

Mr Grant Shapps - the minister who tore up Labour's plans to regulate landlords - has got in the act, with a house-swap plan.

Presumably, the idea is that the unemployed will apply for a job in the South East, and swap their council house in Rochdale with a pensioner from Barking.

The alternative, of course, is that the unemployed in the South East would take turns doing a stint of unemployment in Rochdale.

You can see how fatuous the idea is in practice.

But that's what happens when out-of-touch millionaires get hold of the reins of government and look for ways of cutting the numbers on benefit while actually adopting recessional policies, like socialising bank losses. [Gdn]

Recent examples of 'care and compassion' include the Southern Cross 'care' homes saga, in which care for the frail/sick elderly became a vehicle for private equity to demonstrate its systemic sociopathy.

This spectacular example of what the BBC is calling "alleged" corporate greed, demonstrates the attitude of the Tory Party to those marginalised by the demands of the Washington Consensus:

'Caring' for the Elderly the Free Market Way

Has the Coalition Abandoned Children?

Housing Benefit_Rough Sleepers

Marginalising the Disabled

'On the sick'

'Reserve Army'

Rough Sleepers

The 'Fuck you buddy' Dystopia

The line-of-travel is that the social state is to be replaced by what the Lisbon Treaty calls Communitarian Citizenship; known in it's English translation as: The Big Society

Top

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A Very Social Darwinist Beast

Capitalism, and the so-called 'free' markets have several problems which make them anti-social.

First, they expect their costs - social (unemployment) and ecological (fossil fuels) - to be picked up by the tax payers and not factored in.

Second, they use greed and 'keeping up with the Joneses' to motivate people to buy their products.

Yes, I agree the fault is also in ourselves on this one.

Third, there is what Joseph Stiglitz calls 'asymmetries' - they seller always knows more than the buyer.

Yes, I agree caveat emptor is the watch-phrase here, but this assumes that the buyer can get hold of the info s/he needs, which is not always the case.

Fourth - and Marx got this one right - competition becomes monopoly, which is why the US went in for 'trust busting' before WWI.

In the UK the Competition Commission is largely toothless, either by choice or design.

Put those four issues right, and you might well count me a supporter of markets.

But they will not be put right because, underpinning the four of them, are the traders who profit by gambling on other people's needs: corporate capitalism is irredeemably social Darwinist.    

Is capitalism the only game in town?    The 'Fuck you buddy' Dystopia

'Capitalism is survival of the fittest, and sometimes it's not pretty'

Gambling on our financial future

Top

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Top

Globalized 'Free' Markets:

Invisible Hand or Freudian Id?

For an all-too-brief few years after 1945, it seemed as though the key to growing - and shared - prosperity had been found.

Glass-Steagall, the 1944 Bretton Woods gold standard, and progressive taxation delivered full employment and the social state.

The fly in the ointment was the Cold War in general, and the Vietnam War in particular.

The resultant inflation and balance-of-payments deficit led to the break up of the Bretton Wood's gold standard and its replacement with fiat money.

As Richard J Greene puts it:

Between 1948-1969 world money reserves increased only 55%, since that time they have shot up more than 2000% ...

Within two years Pinochet's Chile was overturning the post-war consensus with the help of Milton Friedman's Chicago Boys who used Chile as a test-bed for what has since become the normative programme for countries like Chile - which had an inflation rate of 700 per cent at the time of the revolution ...

... economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation ... [MoC]

Underpinning Friedman's economic theory was Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, a belief (a) in perfect - undistorted - markets, and (b) rational human beings making rational choices.

This optimistic 18th century belief - a confection of Newtonian physics and Deism - does not stand up to a moment's examination, since (a) markets are constantly distorted by activities like "shorting", and, allowing for the remote possibility that all human beings are rational all of the time, the market is subject to what Joseph Stiglitz calls asymmetric information, which, in simplistic terms is: the seller knows more than the buyer, hence the term caveat emptor. [JS]

The other possibility - born out, I suggest by real world experience - is that markets are like the Freudian Id: driven by as much by emotion as reason, and above all driven by that most basic of human instincts - greed. [JPM]

Certainly, the end of any formal link between money and wealth - like the Gold Standard - and the adoption of the Washington Consensus as the driver of political policy - has removed any checks and balances on the financial markets. [WC]

At the same time, with the move away from social norms to extreme individualism, economic inequality has returned to Victorian times, but stripped of the culture of 'noblesse oblige' which tended to ameliorate some of its worst excesses.

With the removal of 'society' the mega-rich have pulled up the drawbridge, retreating behind gated communities, complaining constantly about high taxation.

For this reason, the likelihood of Obama's current tax plans being implemented is zero. [NYT]

The trickle down theory of wealth redistribution has re-appeared to justify the 'necessary' low taxes. [JR]

The results of a 'system' based on allowing the Id full expression can be seen in some recent reports:

• Jobless total rises to 2.51m [Gdn]
• Reduction in benefits for families with disabled children [Gdn]
• Failing care in hospitals and care homes [Gdn]
• UK children caught in materialist trap [Tel]
• The RCM report said 4,700 more midwives were needed across England to keep up with added pressures [Gdn]
• Inflating the money supply is the only show in town [Ind] [NYT]
• The anthropocene marches on [Ind]

A Faustian Pact 3

Adam Smith & the Invisible Hand

Fear and Greed: The Market as Freudian Id

On the Limits of Rationalism

Uncertainty Rules

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The great euro swindle

The central historical error of the modern Financial Times concerns the euro.

The FT flung itself headlong into the pro-euro camp, embracing the cause with an almost religious passion.

Doubts were dismissed.

Here is the paper's Lex column on January 8, 2001, on the subject of Greek entry to the eurozone:

"With Greece now trading in euros," reflected Lex, "few will mourn the death of the drachma. Membership of the eurozone offers the prospect of long-term economic stability."

The FT offered a similarly warm welcome to Ireland.

The paper waged a vendetta against those who warned that the euro would not work ...

A Napoleonic Dystopia

It did not need to be this way.

The euro was always a political alternative to the Napoleonic road to union.

For the economic road to be a success, the democratic institutions necessary to cultivate deeper economic union needed to be in place first.

On the fertile soil of growing solidarity, the gradual economic convergence would have come by letting free trade meld disparate economies together.

Okay, the proces would have taken a many years longer, but patience is a virtue, as is taking people with you at the pace they wish to go.

Instead the political élite could not wait.

And there is as yet no sign that they have learned any lessons.

It's an enormous tragedy for nations trapped in a world in which the nation state has already lost so much power, and to no observable gain except to the very rich who have long since left national borders behind anyway. (*)

It's an enormous tragedy for Britain, because, alone amongst Western nations Britain's embrace of neoliberal free markets has been fundamentalist, hollowing out the economy to the extent that it's not possible to conceive of full employment ever coming back while this utopian dystopia holds sway.

So please spare a thought for the better Europe that might have been, the better Britain that also might have been. (#)

Tel  22 Sept 2011

A Faustian Pact 3

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The Greek Crisis and the IMF

'Neoliberal financial terror' ... the only show in town

The IMF always has the same solution to economic problems.

Without mentioning Greece by name - it uses the term 'periphery' - the IMF's policy wonks urge :

... a determined commitment to adjustment in the program countries, including ...

• immediate and far-reaching structural reforms ...



• an ambitious drive to open up the economy to foreign competition and foreign ownership ...



• privatization ...    [IMF]

No sign of any thinking outside the box there, and if the standard of living in 'peripheral' Greece falls through the floor, what the hell, bankers and bondholders will keep their money.

(Like they did in the UK, when Brown bailed out Northern Rock, RBS, and HBOS)

And when the 'only' solution results is mass unemployment, the corporate press is on hand to castigate the victims as 'layabouts' and 'scroungers'.

More important, the corporate EU will remain 'on message' and insist that Ireland, Portugal, and Spain - more 'peripheral' nations - will continue the 'treatment' as ordered by the Draculas at the IMF.    [SBH]

Currently there's a spectre haunting Brussels and the IMF: it's the dreaded 'D' word: default.

Greece is (just) a sovereign nation and could still, even at this late hour, pull out of the euro and renege on it's debts.

It would - say all the pundits - be bankrupt.

Nonsense: a state cannot go bankrupt - something that silly litle boy Osborne doesn't understand - it could simply print money.

Carefully, of course; but it could get people back to work, and it could also do something currently unthinkable: tax the rich.

Other nations now caught up in this crisis are also enslaved by the IMF's servility to the Austrian School of Economics.

In reality, there will be no change until the banks are socialised and all sovereign debts wiped out.

And the euro?

The latest Napoleonistic fantasy deserves the same fate as the original marque.

The banks need to be back under democratic control.

Greece must exit the eurozone

Greece's ace card

The Power to Make Debt Disappear

European debt crisis

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'Last Nation Standing'

The politics and economics of national survival

The, er, 'revelation' that BP was involved in talks with the Blair government about Iraqi oil as early as 31 October 2002 supports Richard Heinberg's 'last nation standing' hypothesis.   [CI]   [LNS]

Heinberg takes the cases of China and the USA to discuss the conditions under which a nation might survive global meltdown:

For these two nations, avoiding collapse would require solving a range of enormous problems, of which at least four are non-negotiable: climate change; peak fossil fuels (in effect, stagnating and, soon, declining energy supplies); the inherent instability of growth-based financial systems; and the vulnerability of food systems to factors like fresh water scarcity and soil erosion (in addition to global warming and fuel scarcity). If they fail to address any one of these, societal collapse is inevitable—in a few decades certainly, but perhaps in just the next few years.   [jritchie]  

This para summarises the threats posed to humanity and, by implication, the failure of the current political generation to face up to them, a failure compounded by the frequent lip-service paid to the problem of climate change and the need for something vaguely referred to as 'sustainablility'.   [AD]   [ETF]   [TBCDF]

The case of the coalition's claim to be "the greenest government ever" demonstrates the systemic deceit.   [ITCEF]   [TCP]

As ministers are - allegedly - intelligent people, Heinberg's thesis must be in pole position to account for the duplicity.

The truth is that the world has been enmeshed in the neoliberal utopian experiment since that other 9/11 in Santiago, in 1973, when Pinochet - and his 'Chicago Boys' - set the experiment in motion in typically violent fashion.   [1973]

In order not to frighten the populace, the agenda has never been spelled out, much less put in front of voters in election manifestos, for fear of rejection.

For behind the insanity of 'just-in-time' corporate globalisation lies the neoliberal core motto: 'greed is good, greed works'.   [GiGGW]

Since 2008 we have experienced the downside of greed - and failure of neoliberalism - in the bailout of the banks, and the concomittant austerity regimes introduced to confirm their 'too big to fail' importance to modern economies.   [AQoS]

Neoliberalist policies have, btw, lead directly to the emergence of the corporate state.

In the case of the UK, the resultant austerity has led in the postponement, not just of the Green Investment Bank, but any semblance of the massive programme needed to rebalance Britain's economy away from banking-finance, and towards a 'green' - and sustainable - economy more likely to survive the threats summarised by Richard Heinberg and others.   [GIB]

With the possible exception of China there may not be a last nation left standing, so much as last communes - of the uber rich - who will believe they have enough resources to ride out the ultimate crisis.

But as President Fletcher found out at the end of Alistair Beaton's satire, without other people we are nothing.
[APFTP]

And this is where the corporate-neoliberal message is such a snare and a delusion.

We are not 'autonomous individuals': the degredation of democracy, society and the environment - the flip side of unrestrained greed - does not enhance empathy with the plight of others, rather it degrades it further - especially faced with Thatcherite responses - from government, banks and the IMF - to a crisis which 'autonomous individualism' actually created in the first place.   [AI]   [AVNC]   [NTDSE]

The responses of those most impacted by unemployment and marginalisation can represent a return to what Jonathan Friedman calls 'primordial loyalties'.   [VaV]   [DS]

Iraqi oil ... 'vital' to British interests

Finland's Right Turn

Green laws labelled as red tape

Insights from ecologists show ways of preventing economic disaster

What caused the credit crunch?

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'Whither Britain?'

In answering her own question, Mary Dejevsky offered two predictions, one optimistic, one pessimistic.    [MD]

The Indie's Stephen King and the Guardian's Larry Elliott both speculated around broadly the same question.

Stephen King, rejecting Keynesian solutions, sees only austerity ahead:

No amount of fiscal stimulus will be enough to return the UK to the conditions that prevailed before the financial crisis, dependent as they were on excessive credit growth and a build up of systemic financial risks. It's up to our political leaders to work out where the axe will fall but there is no escaping the years of austerity which lie ahead.    [SK]

Larry Elliott highlights the OBR's expectation that private debt will replace public debt, as - presumably - consumers are expected to play the Keynesian role the government - under pressure from Moody's - will not. [50]

Buried away in the small print of the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecasts for the budget was the projection that household debt will rise from £1,560bn in 2010 (160% of household income) to £2,126bn in 2015 (175% of income) ... Now the public debt is to become private debt once more. That looks like a pretty suspect cure, even assuming the private sector is willing to load up on more debt. If households save more, because they are worried about their prospects, the economy will hit the wall with an almighty crash.
[EA]    [ARTPD]

Jeremy Warner takes the view that a 10 per cent reduction in living standards is optimistic, while David Prosser cannot see where growth is coming from.

The Green Investment Bank is on the back burner; the 'greenest ever government' will not drive the transition to a green economy; the lights will start to go out - [Tel] - and Mary Dejevsky's pessimistic scenario will inevitably unfold.

John T. Harvey's way out will not be considered, so the end result of the thirty-one year pursuit of a utopian experiment - with Britain in the van - has betrayed ordinary people all over the world, and has left Britain contemplating an economic and social dystopia.

A Free Market Train Wreck

Alternatives to Borrowing

Britain in Debt

Contesting Austerity

Energy Policy

Falling Living Standards

The Carbon Plan

Portugal bailout: the rights and wrongs

Portugal bailout: UK could contribute £4bn

Cuts 'needed to avoid debt crisis'

Gesture politics that cost £2bn

Households sink under a sea of debt

Ministers admit family debt burden is set to soar

"Although the weaker economic growth prospects in 2011 and 2012 do not directly cast doubt on the UK's sovereign rating level, we believe that slower growth combined with weaker-than-expected fiscal consolidation could cause the UK's debt metrics to deteriorate to a point that would be inconsistent with a AAA rating," Moody's said in a statement ...    [Gdn]

There you have it: to get an AAA rating from Moody's it's not enough to be launching the biggest cuts programme since the 1920s, Britain has to have growth as well.

The suggestion that the cuts programme might not create growth is, of course, similar to Galileo suggesting to the Church that the earth went round the sun, and not - as the received wisdom of the day believed - the reverse.

The argument that the cuts programme is both unnecessary - and actually destructive - has not had much traction within the corporate media, since the beneficiaries are the likes of Moody's and its paymasters in banking-finance.

The insanity of the current dystopia is underlined by the creation of the so-called European Stability Mechanism.

In order to create a bailout fund worth €700 billion, Der Spiegel reports that Germany "will significantly raise ... borrowing".

In other words, EU countries are going to borrow from the money markets in order to create a bailout fund to lend to countries like Greece and Ireland.

This chain of borrowing represents a further transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

The destruction caused is highlighted by a raft of recent reports concerning 'unsustainable' state spending on groups of people who are now - in the words of Zygmunt Bauman " ... talked about mainly as a financial problem".  [WL]

Three such 'unsustainable burdens' are the disabled, the frail elderly, and the unemployed.  [UB]

John T. Harvey, writing for forbes.com torpedoes current orthodoxy below the water line. He points out that nation state is unlike an individual with a maxed-out credit card, for the very simple reason that it can create money out of thin air.

His argument deserves the widest possible discussion.

The banks, of course, having been 'creating money out of thin air' since the Dutch invented fractional reserve banking in the 17th century. Since Thatcher and Clinton's deregulation of the banks, however, the 'reserve' bit of the equation has shrunk to virtually zero, playing a key role in creating the current financial debacle.

It is indicative of the extent to which capitalism has now come to rely on this hugely addictive form of finance that no amount of suffering is too much for ordinary people to have inflicted on them, providing that banking-finance - and its political lackeys - can indulge their sociopathic demands for grotesque levels of wealth, which would otherwise not be possible.   [AGiGWL]    [APWCC]    [NEF]    [PF]    [WS]

Looked at in this context, the deaths of elderly patients at the Mid-Staffordshire hospital were a mere symptom of a much deeper systemic malaise.

It's a confection of greed and social Darwinism.     'Last Man Standing'

Given the systemic failure of Thatcherite regulators to act in the interests of consumers, we are entitled to react to headlines - like this one from The Independent - with considerable cynicism.

Thatcherite privatisations were spun as introducing competition where there had been state monopolies, but in practice - with the possible (later) exception of BT - we exchanged nationalised outfits with either private monopolies, or 'markets' dominated by what appear to be de facto cartels.

Water supply falls into the first category, and energy into the second.

Ofgem has, er, 'discovered' that the energy market is dominate by six corporations who ...

... have been exploiting price changes on the wholesale gas market at consumers' expense while attempting to hide what they've been up to behind an ever-more baffling range of tariffs ...

customers who stay with their existing energy provider for an extended period end up paying more than those lured from rival suppliers by an aggressively priced new tariff ...

just as the banks mis-sold customers inappropriate savings and borrowing products, so the mis-selling in the energy sector is still going on ...

You might think that a 'full-monty' capitalist party like the Tories would be in favour of more competition, not less, since the broad thrust of their attacks on the public sector make frequent mention of the public's 'lack of choice', the ingrained idleness of public sector workers, and the need for competition to stimulate better - for which read cheaper - services.

Oddly enough, however, when it comes to banks and energy companies, we hear very little about the importance of competition, probably because this would mean that new entrants would be encouraged to enter both fields, a development which the banks would certainly regard with considerable alarm.

Lloyd's CEO told the Treasury Committee ...

The UK's banking sector is already "enormously competitive" and banks do not need breaking up, the boss of Lloyds Banking Group has said.

Eric Daniels, Lloyds' chief executive, added in his testimony before the, that "concentration does not lead to lack of competition".

He said the "great majority" of Lloyds' customers were satisfied, and denied that banks overcharged customers ...

Responding to criticism from members of the Treasury Committee that four banks - Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and RBS - have a 73% share of the UK current account market, Mr Daniels said this compared well with the international picture. [RP]

When I finished National Service in July 1956, and re-joined Lloyds Bank in central Birmingham, there were - within walking distance - branches of Barclays, the National Bank, the Westminster Bank, Glyn Williams, the District Bank, the Birmingham Municipal Bank, the Trustee Savings Bank, and a shed load of building societies - all mutual.

Over the years mergers have degraded competition into what is now a cartel well able to make life very difficult for new entrants into the field. Which is perhaps why only Santander has joined the club, despite earlier loose talk of resurrecting Glyn Williams.

The Tories and their pals in banking-finance show no interest in 'competition' in the private sector for the simple reason that they - like their New Labour opposite numbers - value the revolving door between government and City, and the lucrative rewards which await those ministers who have facilitated the Corporate State.

Don't expect Ofgem's new-found dedication to the interests of customers to make much headway.

A reasonable definition of a capitalist crisis is a situation in which all available economic policies seem only to exacerbate the problem they are intended to alleviate. In 2011, textbook examples are all around us.

There is nothing that the Bank of England can currently do to interest rates which will be economically beneficial.

Banks are being asked to both lend more and build up capital at the same time.

Our economic situation requires consumers and governments to both spend more and spend less.

Resolving such situations requires significant and arduous re-thinking of core precepts of economic policy and theory.

That's the problem with neoliberalism: the future does not matter.

All that matters is short-term profit.

There's no short-term profit in switching to renewable energy sources; just as there's no short-term profit in switching out of oil.

Yet all the issues the world faces are of a long-term dimension.

The World Economic Forum's "Global Risks" report - [RR_WEF] - highlights the problems.

BUT it seriously believes that it's possible both to address climate change, and revive the Doha Round free trade talks.

As though more neoliberalism and ameliorating climate chaos are compatible goals.

The current coalition government in the UK also seriously believes that it is possible (a) to offer motorists cheaper petrol and (b) to wean ourselves off oil.

Clearly, at a time when living standards in the West are about to be challenged in a manner unprecedented since 1945, it's understandable that a populace fed a diet of 24/7 consumerism funded by easy credit is going to react very poorly to such a challenge, and is going to look round for groups to blame, like 'baby boomers', 'workshy layabouts', and, of course immigrants.

The future matters whether we like the idea or not - the past is so often much more attractive, shorn, in the memory, of it's less pleasant features, like the cultural feudalism of Britain before 'Look Back in Anger'.

The future holds - at best - the resurrection of the local economy, since oil will no longer be 'funding' the 'just-in-time' global economy.

On the other hand it offers a return to a variety of fascist-style regimes as people turn to 'the man on the white horse' who offers 'heroic' solutions to complex problems.

1933 becomes 2033?

openDemocracy  09 March 2011

The appointment of Paul Kirby as David Cameron's new head of policy development raises the spectre of school vouchers, ie the privatisation of schools.

This is the logical next step in the context of Michael Gove's programme to 'encourage' all schools to decouple from the control of their local council.

But Paul Kirby's remit almost certainly goes well beyond schools.

The KPMG paper - 'Payment for Success' - argues that public sector ...

... productivity has not improved over the last decade – payment has been disconnected from results and accountabilities have been confused.

It outlines seven reasons for this lack of improvement, and argues for a radical overhaul of services ...

Payment for Success is based on 3 principles which are outlined and explored in the paper:

(i) Three distinct customer roles should be created for each of the different types of service – personal, local and national – with each of these customers radically empowered to decide what they want and from whom.

(ii) Payment by results should be implemented across the public sector without exception – where it exists already, it should be made more forceful and sophisticated, where it does not exist, it should be introduced with very limited transitional periods.

(iii) Public service providers (whether public, private or voluntary sector) should be given almost total freedom to respond effectively to their customers and the PBR regime, supported by the active divestment of public sector staff into independent providers in control of their own future.

Note that users are referred to by the buzz word 'customers' who, presumably, will have 'choice', and 'choice' indicates a surplus of supply.

Which is just as well as that other free market buzz word - 'competition' - is built into the fabric of the proposed 'reforms'.

The measure of succes is, of course, 'payment by results'.

There is to be a direct link, presumably, between a satisfied customer and the payment to the provider.

My confusion, however, is based not on the KPMG paper - which self-evidently commodifies the public sector - but David Cameron's paper in the Sunday Telegraph - 'How we will release the grip of state control' - which is a fudge of truly Blairite proportions.

Like his apparent mentor, Cameron is one of the best double-think guys in the business.

'Choice' and 'diversity' are hard to argue with until you realise that the commodification of the public services - begun under Thatcher, and continued by Blair - is going to be ratchetted up still further.

There might be an argument - I won't be making it - for the total privatisation of all public services.

But, like Blair, Cameron wants to insert 'fairness' into the equation.

Here's what he has to say about it in the Torygraph:

"Of course, the state will still have a crucial role to play: ensuring fair funding, ensuring fair competition, and ensuring that everyone – regardless of wealth – gets fair access.

"But these important responsibilities for central government must never become an automatic excuse for returning to central control ... " [Tel]

There you have it: some quango or other is going to ensure 'fair access', but it's no way the same thing as 'control' from Whitehall!

The difference escapes me. If you have a market there will be better services - which cost more - or 'basic' services - which cost less.

It's the difference between Waitrose and Lidl.

We don't get to have 'fair access' to Tesco, Sainsbury's or Morrisons courtesy a Whitehall quango.   More

Commenting of the NHS ombudsman's report on the 'care' of the elderly in the NHS, Michelle Mitchell argues that the ...

... report reveals that at the heart of the problem is an attitude – both personal and institutional – which fails to treat older patients compassionately or respond to their individual emotional and social needs ...

The experiences of the bloggers indicates that the ten cases highlighted are but the tip of a much larger iceberg. That there seems to be something more than a systemic problem within the NHS - one to be solved by 'more resources' and/or another reorganization - chimes with Michelle Mitchell's implication that there is something deeper at work here.

We may have to look for fundamental changes in 'society - the shift towards the far end of individualism - which might explain the fact that this report is not a one-off.  [BBC]

The attitude towards the frail elderly is of a piece with attitudes towards the disabled, the mentally ill, and anyone on benefits.

These are Zygmunt Bauman's 'redundant':

To be 'redundant' means to be ... unneeded, of no use ... The others do not need you; they can do as well, and better, without you. There is no self-evident reason for your being around and no obvious justification for your claim to stay around ... More often than not, indeed routinely, people declared 'redundant' are talked about mainly as a financial problem.   ['Wasted Lives' pbk ed. 2004, page 12]

Twenty-two days to get out of home

Lest anyone should think this is an exaggeration, Sharon Brennan's piece in The Guardian confirms this fact ...

Yesterday, the government finally showed its true colours ... With the publication of their disability living allowance (DLA) reform paper, it is now written in black and white that the government believes supporting the disabled is, using their own word, "unsustainable" ... In the executive summary of its DLA consultation document, Maria Miller, minister for disabled people, claims the reason for change is that "the rising caseload and expenditure is unsustainable" ...   [Gdn]

Similarly, the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that ...

Britain faces more painful austerity within a decade to address the “unsustainable” pressure the country’s ageing population is putting on the economy ...   [Tel]

And, of course, social security spending was 'unsustainable' well before the last election ...

Total spending on social security will reach "unsustainable" levels this year, a think tank warns, as handout payments now equate to a quarter of the Government's entire budget.   [Tel]

When, through no fault of your own, you become an '"unsustainable" pressure' on the economy, it's time to get very frightened indeed.

No one asks to grow old; very few ask to be unemployed; no one wants to get sick or disabled. But that's the way it is. Life is a lottery, and the objective of the social state was to try to counteract Bauman's state of 'redundancy'.

You only get one life.

Social Darwinism, on the other hand, recognizes no such 'sentimentality'.

It is here that the 20th Century's other social Darwinist creed - Nazism - merges with neoliberalism.

Caring for the elderly the free market way

Has the Coalition abandoned Children?

Is the Coalition marginalising the Disabled?

"Britain has become the true Prozac Nation. I believe this trend has gone too far. We must cut the number of anti-depressants prescribed by doctors. Pills must not be a crutch for the wider issues in our society which cause mental health problems."   [Nick Clegg]

" ... the spread of the US model of capitalism is responsible for the epidemic of emotional distress that has swept across the developed world ... We end up treating ourselves and others as commodities, as mere means to vacuous ends ... Anomie, alienation and addiction await us ... "   [Oliver James]

"There are more mentally ill people on incapacity benefits than the total number of unemployed people on benefit ... "   [LSE Depression Report]

It seems likely that the announcement that doctors are to be awarded bonuses for 'spotting' the mentally ill probably comes from Nick Clegg.

The rational probably goes like this: mental illness = more benefits = threat to cutting the deficit.

Therefore, let's throw a few crumbs at the problem - £150m to be exact - and save more on benefits later.

The realisation that the, er, 'wider issues in our society which cause mental health problems' might have some connection with Clegg's 'Orange Book' neoliberalism would be a step too far, of course.

As David Smail put it:

... we are free to do only that which we have the power to do ... much of our sense of agency follows necessarily from our nature as embodied creatures ... we invent a language of autonomy and responsibility that does not in fact stand up to critical examination and analysis.

If we want to understand what we are up to and why we suffer, we are going to have to pay far more attention than we have in the past century to the structure and dynamics of social space-time.

Cartesian Dualism

Young unemployed 'face mental problems'

Britain's £100bn mental health crisis

Antidepressant use rises as recession feeds wave of worry

GPs call for better treatment for depression

Depression costs economy £8.6bn a year

Catastrophic shortage of psychiatrists

Call to increase child therapists

'Too many' mentally ill in jails

Depression among the young 'alarming'

On 03 September 2010, the New York Times reported that the chairman and CEO of Kabul Bank had been asked to resign. They were accused of presiding ...

... over the bank in a reckless and freewheeling manner, doling out millions to allies of President Hamid Karzai and pouring money into risky investments that crashed ...   [03-09-10]   [08-09-10]

Four months later, the terms of the investigation had not been agreed ...

Since last fall Western officials and the I.M.F. have been pushing for the Afghan government to commission an audit of Kabul Bank by an outside accounting firm, but they have met resistance from the government.

One point of contention is who would pay for the audit: the Afghan government or Western donors.

The Afghan government wants to ensure that the results are not necessarily shared with outsiders, but if donors pay for the audit, then they would have a right to see the results.

Another point of contention is whether the audit would be forensic, meaning that the results could be used in a subsequent prosecution of wrongdoers.

So far there has been no agreement ...   [15-01-11}

On 30 January 2011, the NYT reported that losses at Kabul Bank could be " ... as much as $900 million ... " and that the bank might need a bailout.

It seems that $800m of loans - many made to what the NYT describes as "... powerful people, including government ministers ... " - are unlikely to be recovered.

“If people who are thought to be clean and who were held up as ‘good’ by Western countries suddenly are caught with their fingers in the till, it will cause questions from donors,” said a Western official in Kabul.

“They will say, ‘Why are we here?’ ”   [31-01-11]

Faced with the, er, 'need' to find £20bn in savings, and meet a predicted 4 per cent increase in demand, the coalition is betting it's bottom dollar on competition - the private sector - to square the circle and provide both outcomes.

In doing so the NHS will be transformed - degraded - in ways that are currently unpredictable.

One theory is that the NHS will become a sort of BT; a one-time monopoly surrounded by growing rivals eroding its market share by undercutting its costs.

This trend will driven by the ending of the NHS monopoly on treatment, and the introduction of competition law into the bidding process, which will favour the private sector.

(Recall how Stagecoach used predatory pricing to knock out the competition when buses were first deregulated.)

Patient 'choice' will - according to the theory - both drive up standards and drive down costs.

There are two points to be made here: first off, 'choice' in our local PCT (RIP) currently involves a choice of where to go to meet the same team travelling peripatetically around the local patch. Medically, it's no choice at all.

Second, and much more important, the sick are not comparing phone tariffs: the key factor in choice is the record - the expertise - of the nurses, doctors and consultants.

All the indications are that such information is not only unavailable to patients but, if your doctor is actually doing the choosing for you, s/he could well direct to you to the 'choice' favoured by his/her local consortia - the private replacement of the PCTs which will have its own agenda!

Finally, as the NHS Support Federation points out, it's probable that the private sector will cherry-pick the more straight forward cases, leaving the more complex - and more chronic - conditions to the NHS.

Meanwhile, the Lansley's of this world will make costs comparisons between sectors - tiers - with the aim of demonstrating the superiority of the private sctor.

But this will not be a like-with-like comparison!

NHS 'Reforms'

Phillip Pullman's comments on the 'big society' - and the future of of libraries - digs deep into the psyché of neoliberalism, and exposes both its hatred of learning and it's yearning for small - but top-down - government.

It's the bidding for a pot of money from central government that worries me most.

It says the Big Society is something under Whitehall's control, and confirms Douglas Jay's much misquoted - but entirely accurate - view of our rulers, who are effectively Plato's Guardians:

"The man (sic) from Whitehall really does know best"

The problem with local government was brilliantly summed up by Stuart Weir.

Local government should either be financially independent from central government, or run by a Prefect answerable to Whitehall, argued Weir.

(It raises the problem of postcode lotteries, which is why many will support a prefecture.)

The deeper issue is that books-and-learning are a culture on the wane, to be replaced by the 'Richard and Judy' 'culture' in which we will be entertained by the latest ongoing saga of who's splitting from who; Kerry Catona's latest incarnation; who looks stunning in that latest outfit all women should aspire to; and which Hollywood DVD we should all be watching this week.

Consumerism and learning don't sit very well together, but you have to ask yourself which one is going to save humanity from the damage wrought by the Greedy Ghost?

The Greedy Ghost is everywhere today, corrupting the schools and the NHS, and rewarding the financiers.

Worse, the Greedy Ghost wants us to be at war with each other, since by that means it can keep us under control.

For example, Mr Iain Duncan Smith talked of a 'Benefits Crisis'; he did not talk of an employment crisis, since that would expose the Greedy Ghost's need for a reserve army of the unemployed to keep wages flat, and profits sky-high.

Worst of all, the Greedy Ghost is about trashing the environment, such as the upcoming rape of Arctic Russia in search of oil to feed the global economy.

The Greedy Ghost is at war with Gaia, the only home we have.

The Titanic metaphor recurs. One of the less publicised events on the doomed liner involved 'steerage' passengers being locked in their 'accomodation' at gun point whilst their, er, 'betters' climbed aboard the inadequate lifeboats. A more fitting analogy with the coalition's attitude to today's politically marginalised could not be found.

The VAT increase is the first instalment in what amounts to the largest peace time tax hike in British history. Those at the bottom of the pile face cuts in housing benefit, disability living allowance, council tax benefit and other welfare payments over the next year or two. But the pain will also be felt across so-called “middle England”. In April workers will face higher national insurance contributions – an extra 1 per cent taken from their wages for most, a rise in income tax in all but name ...

Factor in changes to tax credits and benefits, especially child benefit, and the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies believes that the changes will cost average families – those who earn £23,000 a year after tax – about £500 a year by 2012. For those households with teenagers receiving the educational maintenance allowance, abolished this year, the effect will be still greater ...

Soon will come an even stronger test. Pay rises are lagging far behind inflation. On the Bank of England’s estimates, price rises will approach 4 per cent this spring, and could be much higher. Typical pay awards are running at only 2.2 per cent, and will be nil for public sector staff on more than £21,000, for two years. But things are very different for those bankers lucky enough to be sharing in the £7bn bonanza about to be enjoyed in the City.   [Ind]

So, the very people who steered Britain's Titanic economy into the financial iceberg are not only NOT being treated as steerage passengers, they have their very own luxury lifeboat, and the satisfaction of knowing that - despite the fact that the only thing they manufacture is fiat currency - the bankers lackeys in government will polish their shoes if that's what it takes to get a 'thank you' directorship when the electorate throw them out of office.

A raft of post-Xmas reports confirm the coalition's line of travel going into the New Year.

The Lansley NHS reforms are being attacked on all sides, and - to indicate the broader link between health, society, and work - the Prince's Trust reports on the mental health of unemployed young people.  [BBC]

There can be no greater failure on the part of the successive governments, than to adopt policies which condemn young people to inactivity.  [YU]

Lack of proper - civilised - care for the frail elderly is damning enough, but to neglect the rising generation is the very stuff of national collapse.   [YU27]

The quality of a child's start in life can hardly be of more critical importance, but complaints about NHS maternity services - which go back over many years - show no signs of leading to improvement.   [MS]

It should be the case that no NHS service receives higher priority, and that no mother-to-be should be without one-to-one care. Stories of one-to-three 'care' have recently been aired on a Radio 5 phone-in.

Back in the real world, the silence from the Labour benches confirms that Lansley's policies are - broadly speaking - not that different from his predecessors: the commodification of healthcare. [Ind]

At the same time Cameron's 'big society' continues to be exposed as a 'third-face-of-power' con.  [TFoP]

On the one hand we have the absurd suggestion that we should give to charity everytime we draw cash at the hole-in-the-wall, while the coalition withdraws funding from charities which no amount of public philanthropy could replace.

Further, you might think that faced with job cuts - and the general insecurity of the times - charity will tend to begin - and end - at home.   [Gnd]

The disconnect between a cabinet of millionaires and the people they govern is confirmed. [ADG]

“You may wonder what is happening with the Murdoch press”, Mr Cable said.
“I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we’re going to win” ...   [Tel]

Thus, fall-guy Vince before hubris turned to nemesis.   But is this also nemesis time for the coalition?

Consider this: the Torygraph - reflecting the views of many Tories - wishes to see a full-monty Tory government unecumbered with wobbly, soft-hearted LibDems - like Simon Hughes - so that Britain can be subject to the full 'shock-and-awe' treatment.   [NK]

How to bring this about? Simple, set up a number of, er, 'constituents' visits to LibDem ministers.

Surprisingly, for someone who has worked for Shell, Vince Cable turns out to be a push-over, eagerly telling his 'constituents' that Murdoch is going to meet his very own Waterloo.

David Cameron must be out of the loop, since he is not persuaded - at this juncture - to sack Cable for a gaff which one might think rather more serious than that committed by David Laws.

But the Torygraph has by no means finished with the LibDems.

Messrs Moore, Davey and Webb also got visits from 'constituents' who are told of their collective opposition to the scrapping of universal child benefits.  [Tel]

The Torygraph is making a hard-headed calculation here: the window of opportunity for the Tories will start to close by next April - at the latest - when the cuts start to impact, and people uninterested in politics will realise that the consumer party is over, and that it's not only 'workshy scroungers' who are on the Tory hit list, but everyone on PAYE.

Therefore, an election is needed before the end of March, and to this end the implosion of the coalition needs a helping hand. Fortunately for the Tories, Cable & Co are only too co-operative.

There's one final bonus for the Tories: Ed Miliband, the potential Michael Foot v.2011.

Batten down the hatches, it's not only the weather that's freezing.

And would it still be happiness if you could?

Cameron's so-called Happiness Index illustrates the point.

Neoliberal forms of government are grounded in the assumption that human beings will only conform to its requirements if motivated by money.

The economist James M. Buchanan ...

decries the notion of the "public interest", asking what it is and suggesting that it consists purely of the self-interest of the governing bureaucrats.

Buchanan also proposes that organisations should employ managers who are motivated only by money.

He describes those who are motivated by other factors — such as job satisfaction or a sense of public duty — as "zealots".  [FYB]

John Ruskin was aware of this line of, er, 'thinking' when he wrote his essay 'Unto this last'

But John Ruskin had not heard of Pavlov and his dogs.

Behaviourism is a key pillar of neoliberal dogma. We are merely complex bundles of Stimuli-Responses, and we are here to 'modelled' for our own economic good.  [Bhvm]

But those doing the modelling - neoliberalism's 'players' - betray the theory by acting as though they are outside it. [Like Plato's guardians, they are above the fray.]

The rest of us - neoliberalism's pawns - are expected to perform at sub-human levels, responding - like Pavlov's dogs - to the appropriate stimuli, such as an ad for the latest iPod - consumer mode - or working on Xmas Day to get the shop ready for the Boxing Day sales - serf mode - or accepting an education system based on teaching pupils to be unthinking fact parrots.

This last illustrates the difference between training - which can easily be measured - and education - which cannot.

The difference is well described by A.C. Grayling in his essay 'The importance of knowing how':

Knowing how to evaluate information, therefore, is arguably the most important kind of knowledge that education has to teach. Some schools offer courses in it, and there are a number of books about it on the market. But only the International Baccalaureate makes critical thinking ("theory of knowledge") a standard requirement, and in this as in so many ways it leads the field, because critical thinking and evaluation of claims to knowledge should always be right at the centre of the educational enterprise.   [ACG]

'Critical thinking and evaluation of claims to knowledge' are, in fact, the very last skills which neoliberalism's 'players' wish to impart to the 'pawns', since - like students' fee protesters - pupils might come to contest the free market 'utopia', and their subordinate role within in it.

The adoption of mechanistic - reductionist - model of human behaviour is, arguably, only fully possible since the destruction of holistic philosophies, and in particular religious philosophies, which would contest the Pavlovian-Behaviourist theory of humanity.

Professor Richard Dawkins - perhaps unwittingly - has added his own idiosyncratic gloss to the trend. No sense of Gaia questions his reductionist hubris.

Without wishing to argue for the core beliefs of Christianity - or any other religion - the passages quoted from 'A Moral Climate' sum up the core of the neoliberal dystopia:

Neoliberals in the last forty years have sought to redescribe human behaviour in purely mathematical terms after Newtonian-style laws of object relations, time and motion, and also by analogy with binary computer codes and mathematical models of genetics.

These mathematical models have acquired near-mystical power in British and American government circles, as well as among bankers and corporate managers.

Consequently the United States and British governments have both sought to confer on markets powers over more and more areas of human life while shrinking political mediation in economic and social policy.

Even government agencies have adopted mathematical mantras as markets are introduced into education, healthcare and, most recently, into climate-change mitigation with the inauguration of carbon trading as the principal social mechanism for responding to global warming.

The effect of all this has been to produce what Walter Wriston calls the 'twilight of sovereignty', in which the powers of local human communities and even national governments to order their affairs according to shared deliberation on moral ends is given up to autonomous market instruments based on the movement of bits of mathematical information between computers.

But of course these instruments are not truly autonomous, but humanly made.

They further exalt exchange values over intrinsic worth. And they exalt the corporate holders and accountants of money wealth as sovereigns, or even gods, in the neoliberal global economy.   [MSN]

The ongoing commodification of what was once the public space is part of the wider process of remodelling humankind to accept the cash-nexus as the only relationship individuals need with other people.

Cameron's 'happiness index' is thus an oxymoron, since the neoliberal's only measure of happiness is monetary wealth.

A hole in the world

A very neoliberal catastrophe

Cartesian Dualism

Happiness and production

Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore

Neoliberalism and education: the autonomous chooser

No such thing as society

The pursuit of happiness?

In the annals of the corporate governance of Britain, the FSA's secret report on the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland stands out as spectacularly egregious.  [Gdn]

It seems not only do the banks need reform, their, er, 'regulator' sees no need to share its findings with the taxpayers who rewarded the bank for its failure, and - worse - allowed its psycho CEO to walk away with a mega-pension as a personal reward for his very special part in the collapse.  [Wkp]

It was also some sort of achievement on the part of the FSA to have upset Mr Osborne, who - it's alleged - has ordered a 'review'.  [Tel]

You might think matters could not get any worse. You would be wrong.

The FSA has agreed to publish the report, with one caveat. The people mentioned in the report get to approve it first!  [Gdn]

Imagine, if that's possible, a report into the death of Baby Peter has been produced by Haringey Social Services.

But it cannot be released until those reponsible for his death have read the report and suggested changes!

That's Britain 2010. Governed by banker's lackeys, so desperate for lucrative jobs after their time in office - like the egregious 'Sir' Steve Robson who f*ck*d up the railways before getting a knighthood and a job in the City - that nothing must be done to jam the revolving door between government and 'finance'.  [Ind]

Talking of which Brown's old pal Myners has the effrontery to suggest banks be broken up. Not something he talked about when he was a minister.  [Gdn]

Fiat Currency Banking

Bob Diamond

City bankers should learn lessons of Sir Fred's hollow victory

Lack of credit damaging recovery, Bank warns

RBS chairman said directors 'failed to live up to their duties'

Sir Fred Goodwin in the clear

UK banks borrowed more than £640bn from US Federal Reserve

US cables put FSA under fresh pressure to release RBS report

Students and young people protesting against the education cuts are representative of a generation who have been consistently overlooked by politicians who have little regard for their democratic voice.

The Liberal Democrats' abandonment of their policy pledge will help to further entrench the political isolation of young people and encourage their disengagement from mainstream politics.

Efforts to denigrate the student protesters overlook the sense of helplessness and disempowerment felt by many students in secondary, further and higher education.

The preparedness of such large numbers to demonstrate against a huge increase in tuition fees, 80% cuts in the teaching budget and the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance highlight that many young people have a sense of responsibility and consideration for future generations that is not apparent amongst most politicians and media commentators ...

openDemocracy  09 Dec 2010

Students in higher education are but one of many marginalised groups who are at the sharp end of precarity, and autonomous individualism: the new social Darwinism.

Unlike deprived children, the mentally ill, frail elderly, and the so-called 'NEETS', they are able to discern the nature of the present dytstopia, and to find ways of contesting it.

We are all victims of the systemic infantilisation of the media, a 21st century reincarnation of the Romans' 'bread and circuses', designed quite cynically to to keep us in a semi-comatose state of mind, and fully tuned in to the consumerist con, which is driving the destruction of the eco-sphere.

The sensation seekers - News International's semi-literate 'hacks', and their ilk at the Express and Mail - will be unaware of the driving force behind the protests quite simply because the majority of today's 'commentators' are tuned into goings-on within the celebrity so-called 'culture': who's had a boob job, who's split from who, who's having it off with someone else's partner, etc, etc.

Titillation and diversion is the name of the game.  [RTDM]

When the vacuous 'presenters' of the ever-popular phone-in shows - on such as Radio 5 - receive a call from someone who is aware of what is taken place they are bullied and brow-beaten to get off the phone.

(The odious Stephen Nolan (R5) is an excellent example of wooden-headed bigotry who brings his own brand of Northern Irish charm to the task of battering anyone sympathetic to the current higher education protests.)

The failure of the so-called fourth estate is complete.

The left must tackle the baby boomers' timebomb

As I've demonstrated on the page Ponzi Housing Market, if luck has been with you the house price booms of the last forty years have seen many of us sitting on vastly inflated wealth thanks in part to the tax relief of an ultra right-wing government, a fact which seems to have escaped David 'two brains' Willetts.

In his 2010 book The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children's Future, [David Willetts] gives the intellectual underpinning for an attack on all those who benefited from the boom and refuse to share the pain of the bust ... generous pensions, expensive healthcare and over-inflated property values means leaving a legacy of debt to the younger generation ...

The Adam Smith Institute's response is to call for the privatisation of the NHS and the recapitalisation of PFI obligations along with

... "a supportive tax and regulatory regime to foster private provision of incapacity, income and mortgage insurance" ...

This would be the end of the welfare state: something the Adam Smith brigade wanted long before the present crisis.

Is there an alternative? The Guardian's Philip Inman, thinks so:

There are huge subsidies for the rich that could be cut, and taxes on land and wealth that could put state finances on a sounder footing.

George Irvin, a professor at SOAS, University of London, said recently:

"The right peddles inter-generational conflict as a way of diverting attention from the gross inequalities that have plagued Anglo-Saxon countries ... over the past 30 years."

That may be true, but it avoids addressing genuine shifts in wealth over the last 20 years.

Without inflation, the traditional method of devaluing wealth, the baby boomers have joined the rich at the expense of everyone else.

Only by tackling the problem they pose with fairness in mind will the latest Tory justification for cuts be nullified.

A lame and inadequate conclusion.

No matter how the tax system is rejigged in favour of 'fairness', unless and until there is full employment, proposals such as those argued for by the Adam Smith Institute, and 'left' alternatives of a 'soak the rich' variety, are merely shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Guardian  06 Dec 2010        Cutting the Deficit

On Borrowed Time

Systemic Fiscal Reform

... asks the Indie's leader writer.   [Ind]

Just over four years ago Dave was full-on green, as this plan to 'enforce' carbon reductions confirmed.

After attacking New Labour for its failings, he announced that ...

The Conservative Party is ... proposing a Climate Change Bill with binding, year-on-year targets on carbon emissions.

As The Independent pointed out forcefully on its front page yesterday in its own radical green manifesto, only this will provide the accountability that is desperately required and help us to reduce our emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Annual binding targets for carbon reduction will create a price for carbon in our economy, so things that produce more carbon will become more expensive. It will place a responsibility on us all to find environmentally friendly alternatives.

We also believe an Independent Climate Change Commission, comprising scientists, economists, non-governmental organisations and representatives of industry, commerce and finance, should be established to set and enforce these targets, not merely monitor them as the Government is proposing.

The Commission will operate in a similar way to the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee ...   [Ind]

Unsurprisingly, there's no sign of this commission.

Instead it's become the Committee on Climate Change, an independent advisory body which doesn't seem to have the powers of the Bank of England's MPC, or any other powers come to that.

When it came to axing quangos, however, the Sustainable Development Commission was first in the queue for the chop. [BBC]

The details of Dave's switch away from eco-friendly policies can be seen in more detail here,  here.

This is part of a wider trend to obfuscate.

Merkel and Sarkozy have had another of their kozy meetings - to which other leaders are not invited - to cook up a permanent bailout scheme post 2013.

Needless to say Ireland was in their thoughts.

No, not the Irish people: the imperative is to stop Ireland leaving the euro whatever it takes.

Mr Regling - the EFSF's head - told Germany's Bild newspaper there was "zero chance" that the euro would collapse.

"No country will voluntarily give up the euro - for weaker countries that would be economic suicide, likewise for stronger countries," he said.

Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, also chimed in, saying that she was "more confident than this spring that the European Union will emerge strengthened from the current challenges".   [BBC]

European, er, 'centrists' - from Charlemagne to Hitler - would have applauded the sentiments.

"The time has come for Dublin to change course" lectured the Independent.

No, the time has come for Brussels and Merkel to change course.

The EU elite - as seen on C4 Dispatches - live on a different planet from the rest of us, with the proviso that we finance their fantasy lifestyle.

This elite is not going to reform until its money supply is cut off, after which it might possibly realise that a neoliberal Europe was always an oxymoron, or if you prefer, just plain moronic.

Currently, the EU serves two purposes: first off, the pursuit of Napoleonic ends by economic means, and second, it's a European branch office of the World Trade Organisation.

Since the nostrums of the WTO have assisted in turning local crises into one world-wide crisis, you might think it would dawn on the political elite that the WTO's theories - Hayek-Friedman - are unfit for purpose.

It's doubtful whether the founders of the EU ever dreamed that the Austrian School would hijack their project, but that is what has happened.

November 2010

It's doubtful whether Dave has heard about the third face of power.

Nevertheless, like most politicians, he is adept at using it to obfuscate his agenda.

It was good to hear his attack on targets. It was good to hear him talk of "power to the people".

The 'big society' can sound - on first hearing - like something Ivan Illich might have warmed to.

And who could object to the unemployed getting the opportunity to keep up with the routines of work?

But, peer around under the bonnet, and a wholely different agenda comes into view.

First off, the empowerment of public sector workers turns out to be a smokescreen under which
the 'third sector' (charities) - and, more likely, the private sector (Yank corporations) - will take over the running of
public sector activities, and targets will morph into payments by results.

Expect more failing hospitals.   [Gdn]

Second, it will soon become obvious to employers that the long-term unemployed can be hired
for £1.63 an hour, considerably less than the minimum wage.   [Obs]

As the Indie's leader so aptly put it:

The danger could be that paid jobs will be cut, only to reappear as unpaid jobs in the voluntary sector. It is not hard to imagine the absurd situation where a local council employee is laid off, only to be displaced by a benefit recipient putting in his or her voluntary hours.               [Gdn]

The minimum wage - aka the miniscule wage - has long been a favourite target of attack by bodies
such as the CBI, who argue that it threatens jobs.

Let's be honest here, Mr Lambert, it threatens profits!

Public sector workers encouraged to form John Lewis-style co-operatives

Cameron pledges more power for the people

Long-term jobless 'could face compulsory manual labour'

These cuts aren't building a 'big society'

Council plans 'big society' reward points

The Corporate Big Society

The real nature of Cameron's Big Society became clearer with the report that Windsor and Maidenhead council is joining the 'vanguard' of David Cameron's big idea. (Well, Philip Blond's actually.)

The scheme will involve offering reward points - such as Nectar - for undertaking ...

... good works such as litter-picking or holding tea parties for isolated pensioners ...

Later the scheme might, er ...

... reward improved behaviour in areas such as school attendance and healthy living ...

Finally - help! - it might go nationwide, presumably incorporating other 'reward' schemes along the way.

The possibilities for expansion seem limitless.

Why should 'volunteers' not also stack shelves in Sainsbury's, or go beyond helping children to attend school by popping in to do a spot of teaching when they get there?

The reserve army could be conscripted into the scheme - on an entirely voluntary basis, you understand - and get Nectar points instead of benefits.

Your local corporate care home would, presumably, also welcome 'volunteers' on the same cost-saving basis.

Just one small question: as reward points cannot be cashed-in, it rather looks as though volunteers will have to spend their 'reward' at particular outlets, thus boosting profits.

Which, of course, is a welcome incentive to take part.

Strange how it always returns to the bottom line.

Council plans 'big society' reward points

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Top

Cameron's Cap on Housing Benefits

Dave's rush to get people sleeping in shop doorways has come undone. Not only will councils be unready to implement changes before January 2012, rumour has it that London councils are block-booking bed and breakfast accommodation.  [Gdn]

The Telegraph's leader on the subject of Cameron's defence of the coalitions cap on housing benefits, will get widespread approval.

Some of the rental figures quoted for central London may well involve tiny numbers of claimants but they will chime with the current anger whipped up by the right-wing press against the gargantuan dimension of the overall welfare bill.

Only the elderly can recall a time when house prices were relatively stable in the UK; a post-war phase which lasted until the first credit explosion around 1973, when house prices "went up 60 per cent in two years". (*)

There was a second boom in the late 1970s which came to an end in 1979, the year of Margaret Thatcher's first election victory.

The next boom came after Maggie's 'Big Bang' deregulation of The City in 1986, when house prices went up about 50 per cent, before falling in the mid-nineties.

New Labour, secure in the belief that boom-n-bust had been abolished, launched their own house-price bubble. House prices "doubled in real terms", peaking around 2008. (*)

I have argued elsewhere that house prices during the period 1973 to 2008 seriously distorted the UK economy.
[PHM]

For this Margaret Thatcher's own ideological prejudices bear a huge share of the blame.

Not only did she attack council housing in the most vicious manner, she further distorted the market by giving tax relief on mortage repayments.

The upshot is that we have arrived at a situation where property is wealth, the rented sector is a dystopic
free-for-all, and first-time buyers are unable to get a foot on the housing ladder.

In the middle of this fiasco we have seen the buy-to-let boom turn to bust, leaving newer landlords - as well as buyers in the later years of Brown's bubble - struggling with negative equity.

Everyone, except those unfortunates in rental accomodation, eagerly awaits the next boom, and the end of negative equity.   [PHM]

Until the economy is rebalanced away from finance, and we can access other forms of saving besides rising house prices, the plight of those on cappped housing benefit will be but a darker feature of the seamless canvas that is Britain's Ponzi housing market.

In the meantime the coalition signals it's lacked of any joined-up policy when IDS tells the unemployed to 'get on the bus' to find work - which would mean heading to the South East - but to cut housing benefit so the same people would have to move to areas of cheaper housing where is there is less likelyhood of finding employment.

(*) A short history of UK house prices     Ponzi Housing Market

Boris Johnson: No 'social cleansing' over benefit cap

Boris Johnson opposes David Cameron over housing benefit cut

UK house prices fall faster than expected

UK house prices: April-June 2010 - Greater London

UK house prices: April-June 2010 - North West

UK House Prices Index Historical Data

The Depression of 2010

Top

'Grave danger of financial collapse' says Clarke

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke told the Prison Governors Association:

"There's no one alive who remembers a crisis of this kind."

But we can all read about the 1931 National Government in the history books, Ken.

And what a disaster it was.   [IM]

It went down exactly the same road the coaliton is going down: mindless cuts without much forethought, and long-term unemployment only ended early in the Second World War.

Not a very happy precedent, Mr Clarke!

Bringing the bankers into line could be a good move if you want the public to get on your side.  [CBI]  [BoJo]

And squeezing the unemployed until the pips squeak isn't a very good move at the moment.   [BoBl]  [WL]  [WS]

Unless, of course, you're relying on 'Big Society' food banks like the Trussell Trust.

A very American solution, btw!    [FS]

Independent  14 Oct 2010    Contesting Austerity

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Top

Cutting Child Benefit: More Haste Less Speed

Axe today; think tomorrow!

The child benefit saga has underlined once again one of the basic problems of modern government: the apparent absence of time for reflection, and the inability to consult widely enough before formulating policy.

Several options would seem to be on the table in respect of savings from child benefits which first prompt the question: what is its purpose?

Initially it was quite simply to grow the population which, after a war, was perhaps a good idea, but the 'baby boom' of the late forties did the job anyway.

In a world where men went to work and women stayed at home, it was an opportunity to put cash into the hands of the wife, who had no earnings herself.

The biggest argument for any non-means tested benefit - in this case the stay-at-home mums caught on the wrong side of the £44k cut-off point - is that such unfairness is avoided.

It's always been possible, of course, to claw some of the benefit back through the tax system, but that seems not to have been considered.

But this would probably not suit the coalition's haste to be seen - by the markets - to be merrily hacking away at everything in sight.

On the other hand, the coalition might have considered bringing in cuts in respect of children born after date dd/mm/yyyy, but continue current payments.

More importantly, you might expect astute politicians - if that's not an oxymoron! - to consider the impact of these proposals on the voting intentions of those hurt by them.

The FT's recent review of the Tories poor performance in the May 2010 election led to the suggestion that:

Another reason for the disappointing election result suggests itself.

Perhaps two-thirds of the country still found the idea of voting Tory repellent. [David Cameron] must fear the brand is still toxic.

If he does so fear, then it might be a good idea to review these proposals now, before Ed Miliband capitalises on the open goal presented, and the potential - and unlikely source of - votes Labour might gain.

Capping benefits (and families?)

Child benefit to be scrapped for high earners

Child benefit withdrawal will mean some worse off after a pay rise

David Cameron's welfare reform to target middle class

End for middle class benefits

Osborne: cuts must be fast and deep

Osborne under fire over child benefit cuts for higher earners

Top earners to lose child tax credit benefits

Why the Tories failed

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Bank of England deputy Charlie Bean says spend, spend to save economy

Keynesian approaches to the recession have been exhausted, in part because Gordon Brown's 'end of boom and bust' meant it was OK not to save during the so-called boom years, so Gordon had to borrow to bail out the banks.

Now, according to Mr Bean, consumers are called upon to run a kind of privatised Keynesianism, despite the fact that the UK record of private savings in the, er, 'boom' years was so poor.

Mr Bean doesn't seem to have considered the implications of what he is asking - in particular - older people to do.

The idea, almost certainly, is that the elderly should withdraw equity release from the value of their houses - to the profit of financial 'services' - in order to 'splash the cash' like so-many millions of mini Keynesians.

There are several problems with this.

First off, many older people grew up in an era when the current vogue for obsolescence-driven consumerism was virtually non-existent.

(It certainly did not exist in the war years, when there was a compulsory saving scheme called Post War Credits.)

Second, older people grew up in an era when saving was encouraged, and they may find it hard to shed the habit, particularly in times of austerity.

Third, and this might be the killer, older people who have done as Mr Bean suggests, may not have an equity left to release when it comes time to (a) go into a corporate care home, and/or (b) pay for home-help services.

Thus they may end up as a bigger burdon on the state than younger people who have died of obesity, or 'drug' related ilnesses.

These, in the long run may turn out to have been a lesser overall burden than the very-elderly who have blown it all for the benefit of manufacturers in the Far East.

For that is the final argument against Mr Bean's insulting and deluded nostrum: the goods bought will by-and-large not be manufactured in the UK, so it is hard to see who benefits other the small numbers of box-shifters at places like Amazon, Argos, and Comet.

The BBC reports that unsecured debt is falling, along with savings:

Savings balances held at mutuals decreased by £699m in August, following a decrease of £1bn in July. Excluding interest credited to accounts £1bn was withdrawn in August, compared with £1.3bn in July.

"Households are facing a difficult economic environment which helps explain the withdrawal from savings accounts seen in August," said Brian Morris, head of savings policy at the BSA.

So, it's just possible, Mr Bean, that people are drawing on their savings to pay their bills.

Guardian  28 Sept 2010    Britain in Debt    Consumer Culture

Consumer confidence falls

Work Consumerism & the New Poor

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What's in your chalice, Ed?

Meanwhile Ed, back in the real world, and in no particular order, you might want to have a look at some of the current trends which suggest that the future is going to be rather more challenging than just winning 'middle class' votes ...

the Afghan 'election' is running true to form;

the coalition is busy cutting spending like a drunk with a chain saw;

capitalism is still the only show in town;

the Arctic is about be trashed to postpone Peak Oil for a couple of years;

hedge funds managers, like Choc Finger, are pushing up the price of foodstuffs;

another, er, 'investment' banker has got the job i/c another big bank HSBC,

and Tessa Jowell - democratic centrist - has an article extolling the 'Big Society' in openDemocracy.

It will be interesting to learn whether of not there is a coherent world-view behind the day-job of holding the coalition to account, and creating the appearance of ameliorating neoliberalism.

Can Ed Miliband renew the Labour Party?

Labour leader ... makes vow to middle classes

Ed Miliband: my vision to rebuild trust

Welcome Ed

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On the shape of things to come

"We are all in it together, only some are more 'in it' that others"

Birmingham City Council is looking to cut the pay - and worsen the conditions - of 25,837 staff in order to save £330m by 2014.

It would be interesting to know, btw, how many of B'ham City Council's 'top brass' are on the list.

At the same time Ofsted have found a novel way of cutting education costs: claiming that half of all SEN children are misdiagnosed, and therefore their specialist provision can be cut.

Included in Ofsted's sights are the children of service personel serving in Afghanistan, who probably have nightmares about Mum/Dad's face appearing on prime-time TV, and being driven through Wootten Bassett in a hearse.

As a three year old - circa 1939/40 - I recall similar nightmares which only made sense when I was old enough to understand what had been going on, and how frightened the adults were around me. (My father, I discovered later, had been wondering which part of Canada I would go to.)

I write this to point out the failure of imagination on the part of Ofsted's inspectors.

Finally, we have the ugly spectacle of the police threatening the coalition not to cut their numbers, as they are needed to control all the rioters who could plead no such 'necessity' when they were faced with the chop.

Recall Maggie's cockney police waving wads of cash - and their overtime slips - at striking miners.

Autumn Spending Review    

IMF warns of the 'human cost' of public spending cuts

Birmingham city council puts 26,000 staff on notice

Half of special needs children misdiagnosed

Police: we can't take care of cuts protests if you cut us

Public sector cuts