The raison d’etre of the Tories is to ensure the state runs smoothly in the interest of the 1% of the population who own 70% of the wealth. Blair made sure New Labour had the same objective, the only purpose of the party structures now being as career ladders for the likes of Blair to join the 1%.
The Tories have learnt the lesson of Thatcher, that if you keep 42% of the English happy and feeling economically secure, and advantaged over the rest, then you can stay in power through the first past the post system. This needs an inflated housing market, a few tax cuts, and a rhetoric identifying and excluding the outsiders, be they immigrants, benefit claimants or other groups. Osborne has this political truth down to a fine art, as his budget showed. If you are a middle class family able to spend 10,000 a year on childcare, you can now in effect get 2,000 a year from the government. It is complex to administer, but most of the families who benefit much will be the kind who have accountants. Similarly the pensions plan liberalisation will not mean a great deal to the poorest in society, although not wrong in itself. Meanwhile endless benefit cuts are the lot of the needy.
New Labour are left spluttering on the sidelines because the differences in what it would do are so marginal as to be pointless. What the country needs is massive state intervention to extract funds from the financial services industry and from those with obscenely accrued capital, and put them in to infrastructure in transport, energy efficiency, renewables, housing and high tech manufacturing, areas in which economic benefits are broadly spread in society including through employment. There are legitimate areas of debate about how you do that – I favour tax incentivisation, or rather heavy tax disincentivisation of non-productive use of capital, rather than direct state agency, although you would need a mix.
Anyway, there is no radical economic choice of any kind on offer to the electorate, and the Tory/Labour divide is one of tribal adherence rather than real policy difference. But for what it is worth, with New Labour only leading in the polls by 4% just a year before the election, all precedent suggests that the Tories will easily recover that within the final year and there will be at least six more years of Tory government.
I do hope that Scots are quite clear-eyed about that before September. The choice on the ballot is simple: Scottish independence, or Tory rule from South East England for the forseeable future. The rest is smoke and mirrors.
“Regulators have fined a trader more than £660,000 for deliberately manipulating the UK bond market.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26665974
This is of course fraud and involved £1.2billion but no jail, not even a criminal charge.
The same happened with the Libor fraudsters.
The 1% always seem to get away with their crimes.
Daniel
“The problem is there is no method that I’m aware of which would enable the weeding out of the feckless that doesn’t already adversely impact upon those who are in genuine need.”
______________________-
You raise a good question. But I find it difficult to believe that it couldn’t be done (albeit imperfectly). A first step in that direction might be to get away from the hysteria that’s generated the moment people go public with the idea that although many are in genuine need, the feckless do also exist.
“When he was a lad he was an SNP member btw…..”
I’m glad that he has finally grown up.
Little Chloe Smith, Con MP Norwich North and CFoI, has just been piping up in the HoC giving her full support to Gideon’s budget proposals. It is called ‘Budget 2014 Debate’, a misnomer if ever there was one. They are all reading partei set pieces and are being time limited.
“…how would Mr Goss define a “worker”?”
That’s actually not a bad question – no doubt John has his own answer. But doesn’t someone cease to be a worker when his or her wage is replaced by a salary?? Ok, nurses are paid ‘salaries’. The term certainly needs redefinition or abandonment. How about, say, for the sake of discussion, an income of £25K? Or the entry point to the 40% tax bracket, which defines where the government agrees that someone has a bit more money than they need, as opposed to just enough after losing 20%?
Maybe, after wondering whether I would rather a nurse or an investment banker came to my aid after being knocked down by a car/macho cyclist, I’d define a worker as someone who does something of actual value for someone who actually needs it. The low pay goes with the definition, I think.
“You raise a good question. But I find it difficult to believe that it couldn’t be done (albeit imperfectly). A first step in that direction might be to get away from the hysteria that’s generated the moment people go public with the idea that although many are in genuine need, the feckless do also exist.”
Removing the debate away from the hysteria you claim exists at the mere mention of of fecklessness, is essentially moot.
What the debate ought to be about is offering potential policy solutions that relate to the underlying problematic culture associated with welfare dependency that fecklessness implies.
The most effective way to deal with this problem is to root it out at source through the augmentation of specific target related policies as opposed to adopting the broad brush approach of welfare cutting.
It is my view that benefit fraud is a major contributory factor in the creation of fecklessness and it’s this that first and foremost needs to be tackled.
In their attempts to undercut fraud, the government would be better redirecting resources to front-line operations.
Instead, in their crude attempts to appease middle England, politicians’ of all shades cynically grandstand against those on benefits for electoral gain.
We should instead be arguing for a two-pronged approach – the consolidation of existing benefits on the one hand, and increased resources on the ground to tackle fraud on the other.
Ba’ar Zevul
“That’s actually not a bad question – no doubt John has his own answer.”
____________________
But I doubt he’ll be giving it – too difficult, I suspect.
But I’ll take yours as offered in loco parentis, so to speak, and say the following.
1/. Agree with you about “salary” needing refinement.
2/. As an illustration of the difficulty of basing it on a given amount of money, and re your last para:
Let’s take the example of someone working on an oil-rig (quite a topical example, actually, since this blog is also discussing the economics of Scottish independence). Even if he was a non-specialist, he would probably be earning a lot more than £25.000. Probably more than the entry point to the higher incpme tax bracket. So – is he a “worker” or not?
Re your last para: that para seems to base itself on the notion of “proximity” – “doing something of actual value for someone who actually needs it”. The results of the oil-rig person’s work are not proximate, but is he not doing something of value (ie, ensuring the availability of oil) for someone who needs it (given that we all need oil, directly and indirectly)?
So the definition is difficult and I would still – despite your kind intervention – be interested to hear MR Goss on the subject. He could pretend he’s replying to you. 🙂
Where have all the school deeds gone?
To the …… every one.
http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/gove-nicked-our-schools-and-handed-them.html?spref=tw
‘Now the reality is Michael Gove has set up Southern Cross For Education – where
Academy companies have the title deeds for schools – they can sell them – and then sign extortionate leases to rent them (and the money goes offshore to the Cayman Islands as “excess funds”)
Now Gove changed the law to say Academy’s (sic) don’t have to publish their accounts publicly – unlike every other charity in the country.
And Gove changed the law to say No Academy trustee can be held liable for any losses
And Gove is currently trying to change the Academies bill to say instead of the title deeds going to ” the proprietor of the school” – to “someone associated with the school”.’
What crooks. What thievery.
Brian Wilson – now I had a lot of time for him thirty years ago. That was before he became addicted to the dirty cash from the nuclear power industry.
Daniel
“What the debate ought to be about is offering potential policy solutions that relate to the underlying problematic culture associated with welfare dependency that fecklessness implies.
The most effective way to deal with this problem is to root it out at source through the augmentation of specific target related policies as opposed to adopting the broad brush approach of welfare cutting.
It is my view that benefit fraud is a major contributory factor in the creation of fecklessness and it’s this that first and foremost needs to be tackled.”
____________________
As a quick first reaction, I’d probably agree with most of that. Of course the “how” – or better “through which concrete actions” – is more difficult.
I should also apply your idea to the other group, ie those in genuine need. And therefore say that ensuring that our young people are better educated (formal, moral and civic education) should be one of the concrete actions.
I can agree with the oil rig worker. Throw in long hours and hazardous conditions to provide an essential product with actual value – his wage is determined by a fairly free market, and I’m not saying that a fixed value for workerdom is necessarily the way to go.
But the investment banker is simply manipulating the market, with money freshly printed by a bank, to ensure that his client (on the client’s yacht) receives a cut from the oil rig. Without him, the actual producers could well be paid more…and without him, the oil would still be produced. In any case, he would be deeply offended to be called a worker.
I see, incidentally, that derivatives traders are still in demand. As are static data analysts, whatever they are. Whose average wage has doubled in the last year.
What a sensible and far seeing man Michael Rosen, the children’s author, is. He has Gove’s number.
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Big push to make education the next big market.
Because of the way education has become a matter of what any Secretary of State for Education wants, it’s become very hard to keep up with what’s really going on.
So, think back to NewLab who bustled into power shouting, ‘Education, education, education’ and turned this commitment into a parody of nineteenth century hospital, asylum, prison and school regimes, with every minute of every day laid down. Whether this was good for children or good for teachers doesn’t seem to have been debated. It was, in truth, an electoral ruse, cooked up by David Blunkett. He thought that it out-Toried the Tories with its authoritarian, prescriptive and ‘disciplined’ way of going on, thereby leaving NewLab untouchable, unimpeachable by the Daily Mail (NewLab’s criterion of success). That was the theory.
Bit by bit, we figured out that this method and this model wasn’t based on any educational principles but was a direct transfer across to education of a business model of training and production. The child was to be ‘produced’ by the same systems that were being used to produce the labour-power (‘skills’) of a ‘trained’ labour force or indeed the same systems used to produce a mass produced car or biscuit: in a sequence of tiny, separate processes enacted on to the trainee or raw material. The fact that human beings (ie the children and school students) are not ‘raw material’ and that learning doesn’t proceed in this tiny step by tiny step way, was irrelevant. It was, supposedly, Daily-Mail proof.
/..
http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/big-push-to-make-education-next-big.html
~~
He has an anti-Zionist stand and is onside for the Palestinians.
http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/the-simon-round-interview/interview-michael-rosen
“Brian Wilson – now I had a lot of time for him thirty years ago. That was before he became addicted to the dirty cash from the nuclear power industry.”
Even then (1974 election) he was a shifty little sod. Despite all the Gaelic noises, no Highland constituency would have him.
(I’ll give him the credit he deserves for founding the WHFP, but even that moved on from its original principles, and was frequently his free publicist)
No, there is no choice, economic or other wise on offer to the electorate. When was the last time anything actually changed? No, I can’t think of when it was either. Yet governments come and go, so though “they’re all alike” is an irritating cliché, it is nonetheless true.
I’m not too sure about “the rest” being smoke and mirrors, though. I would have thought that it was pretty much all smoke and mirrors. I’m a Unionist by instinct, but I really wouldn’t really put my trust in any of them, whatever dogma or ideology they pay lip-service to.
Re benefit fraud, fecklessness etc. An interesting summary here …
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/06/welfare-britain-facts-myths
and lots of analysis on the Rowntree Foundation site. Not quite the same picture as Benefits Street is it?
The ordinary people have no choice when it comes to elections and who to vote for; they are all the same. A lot of people don’t bother to vote. This makes no difference. The only real choice we have is to vote but spoil the ballot. If enough people do this then it will have some effect. The problem with this is that most people are so badly brain-washed that they will consider such an option sacriligious.
“Would that be such a tragedy? Most continental European healthcare systems work on the compulsory insurance principle and I think you’d have to be a particularly insular and blinkered Brit to claim that healthcare in France, Germany, Belgiumn, Switzerland and so on is works worse than healthcare in the UK. Or that outcomes are worse.”
Fukin dribble – Remember AQP – Any Qualified Provider. New legislation means businesses can bid to run all but the remaining cherry picked ‘core’ services your GP currently offers. And if a proposed EU US Free Trade Agreement is ratified this year, these providers could be UK, EU or US healthcare companies. American health companies, running NHS services, for profit.
Profit destroys hearts and minds, period.
From Mary
“What a sensible and far seeing man Michael Rosen, the children’s author, is. He has Gove’s number.”
_________________
Michael Rosen read English at Oxford at the end of the 60s. Active in student journalism (Isis and Cherwell).
Mark Golding
““Would that be such a tragedy? Most continental European healthcare systems work on the compulsory insurance principle and I think you’d have to be a particularly insular and blinkered Brit to claim that healthcare in France, Germany, Belgiumn, Switzerland and so on is works worse than healthcare in the UK. Or that outcomes are worse.”
Fukin dribble – Remember AQP – Any Qualified Provider. New legislation means businesses can bid to run all but the remaining cherry picked ‘core’ services your GP currently offers. And if a proposed EU US Free Trade Agreement is ratified this year, these providers could be UK, EU or US healthcare companies. American health companies, running NHS services, for profit.”
_____________________
Is that supposed to be an answer?
The various elements of healthcare on the Continent are run by both public and private providers and doesn’t seem to suffer from that. And, by the way, who provides healthcare services is not the same point as the one we started with, which was how health care is funded (compulsory health insurance systems)
****************
At the risk of pulling a “John Goss” on you, I’m not sure it’s very profitable to engage with someone who starts his reply with “fukin dribble”. Try to do better.
Statistically across the board benefit fraud by claimants is insignificant. Serious fraud and tax evasion, theft and worse by the wealthy add up to staggering sums. I think New Labour’s child Daniel’s silly buzzword two-pronged approach could be simplified and rationalised, surely such an extravagance of prongs must be wasteful. I think that this ‘first and foremost’ we need to tackle with an economical efficient and particularly sharp one-pronged approach. You’ll find that one such prong requires substantially less force applied than any two. You two-prongers lack any scientific basis for your wildly inaccurate mis-targeted ‘pronging’ of the sick and the unemployed the elderly and the poor, the excluded and the disenfranchised the generationally poor who’ve never shared and never desired to share in the spoils of the looting and self-enrichment carried on by a nasty selfish sharp-elbowed treacherous few, the stealing from the common wealth of the nation which has characterised this country’s descent into utter corruption and ruin.
Your view that benefit fraud is a major contributory factor in the creation of fecklessness is informed by what exactly, it certainly isn’t facts as we know them. You offer -indeed have no definition of fecklessness, but you’ve plucked it out some tabloid rag non-story, spun from some Tory or Labour attack dog’s slavering lips over an expensive taxpayer expenses-paid lunch, with their journo chums as honoured guests only too glad to pay the heavy price of their self-respect to clutch at the coat-tails of such egotistical maniacs consolidating their illegitimate hold on power and stolen wealth. Together they plot their joint savaging and wounding of the most vulnerable but also most talented, most creative, most intelligent in our society who’ve opted out of the spectacle of the rat race and left it to the rats just described and those who emulate them or sadder still, dream they just might if they lick enough arse. It’s hilarious to see right here attempts to scapegoat these economic out-castes, born to lose, but not born losers for the spectacle of this country’s political dysfunction and for each wave of economic collapse that predictably results from such criminal misrule. Few left now defending the indefensible, just you now Daniel, a child of Thatcher no doubt, never known, never imagined anything else.
Go home to your constituencies and prepare your panic rooms. You’ll need them.
Here’s an outline of the four main types of healthcare provision.
Take your pick.
You can be sure though that the Tories will be looking to one which provides most profit to its corporate friends.
That’s why all are agreed that the US system is such an expensive nonsense.
“The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people. All the other countries have settled on one model for everybody. This is much simpler than the U.S. system; it’s fairer and cheaper, too.”
http://www.pnhp.org/single_payer_resources/health_care_systems_four_basic_models.php
As a quick first reaction, I’d probably agree with most of that. Of course the “how” – or better “through which concrete actions” – is more difficult.
I should also apply your idea to the other group, ie those in genuine need. And therefore say that ensuring that our young people are better educated (formal, moral and civic education) should be one of the concrete actions.
Many voters – mainly those from the tory heartlands – who argue for cuts to welfare, do so on the misguided premise that benefits are too high. But when questioned, these mainly tory voters often grossly overestimate the amount of benefits recipients receive. This, I think, is rather telling.
To be able to live on around £70 a week for any sustained period – particularly in London and the south east – is virtually impossible. This suggests that fraud is widespread, albeit far from being endemic.
Essentially, many of the poorest in our nation – both the working and non-working poor – are faced with three choices/eventualities: working legally within the system for poverty wages supplemented through working tax credits, remaining idle in return for poverty benefits or working illegally cash in hand while claiming benefits.
Given the objective available choices, many of the poor are rationally choosing the latter for pragmatic reasons.
So what’s the potential answer to this unsustainable problem?
One could limit the approach to the kind I previously outlined. Or alternatively, one could combine it through government intervention by way of the introduction of new and radical socioeconomic policy initiatives that create non-punitive incentives.
The introduction of a national minimum living wage set at around £10 an hour is one example. Specific policies designed to curtail the overblown property market is another. A massive affordable house-building programme akin to the post-war period is a third.
Ba’al Zevul (15h41)
If course, but I only threw in the investment banker – who is a worker in the sense that he works a certain (or even uncertain) numbers of hours a week)- to illustrate, perhaps too indirectly? – the difficulty of defining a “worker”. I wasn’t commenting on his usefulness or otherwise – although I suppose you could say that since the job exists, in a free market, there must by definition be some utility in it.
Let’s leave him aside if you like, and also the aristocrats in the world of essentially manual/physical work (the oil rig worker, if you like). You mentioned nurses – as examples of workers. Is a junior hospital doctor a worker? Or a GP? How about the manager of your local high street bank or an estate agent? A teacher or a headmaster?
BTW, your post hovers at the edge of a discussion on pay relativities and what different jobs are worth, doesn’t it. That would be an interesting discussion.
Finally, since the originator of all this was Mr Goss, with his talk about “workers”, I remain interested in knowing how he would define a worker. Failure to do so could just lay him open to the charge of being someone who “posts and runs”.
Mark. I do not reply so why bother. On a different planet. Has nothing in common with most here but disrupts, diverts and wastes people’s time. Out of touch with the reality. No visits to food banks or job centres. No worrying about the bedroom tax. No worries about paying for gas and electricity. No worries about health or getting a sick child seen by a doctor. etc etc. It’s just more of the ‘them and us’ divide.
http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php
John Lister – one of the founders of KONP – Health Policy Reform:Global Health vs. Private Profit
Much has changed since John Lister’s first book was published, but the pressure for the introduction of market-based approaches has remained undiminished.
Now, in a revised and restructured analysis, Health Policy Reform: Global Health versus Private Profit, John Lister brings his critique of health policy up-to-date. He continues to question whether the major ‘reforms’ which have been, and are still being, introduced are driven primarily by the health needs of the wider population or, in fact, by the financial and political concerns of governments and global institutions. The global economic recession at the end of the first decade of this century adds even more urgency to the need to understand the implications of these trends.In Global Health vs. Private Profit, asks if the ‘reforms’ which are being introduced are driven by health needs or by financial and political concerns of governments and global institutions …
Them and us
An Oxfam report released today, reveals the scale of growing inequality in Britain. The wealthiest five families in Britain hold the same amount of wealth as the poorest 12.6 million. As Osborne prepares for another ‘budget for business’ this week, isn’t it about time we had a budget for the people?
Mind the Wealth Gap
Incomes of the top 0.1% of Britons are rising four times faster than those of the lower 90%, according to Oxfam’s report ‘A Tale of Two Britains’.
The richest families in Britain are:
• Duke of Westminster, Grosvenors (Wealth: £7.9bn)
• Reuben brothers (£6.9bn)
• Hinduja brothers (£6bn)
• Cadogan family (£4bn)
• Mike Ashley (£3.3bn)
And here is how their wealth compares to the rest of the country:
• The poorest 20% have on average £2230 each
• Top 0.1% have seen incomes increase by £24,000/year since mid 90′s
• Bottom 0.1% have seen an increase of £147/year since mid 90′s
• 95% of Britains have seen a 12% drop in disposable income since 2003; top 5% have seen income increase.
• The Grosvenors have as much wealth as the poorest 10% of the population.
Britain is becoming a tale of two nations – a wealthy elite, and a cash strapped majority – and it is mostly the hard work of the latter group that is generating the wealth the former enjoys. But, who cares?
/..
http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2014/03/17/britains-5-wealthiest-families-richer-than-poorest-12-6-million-its-time-for-a-peoples-budget/
Remember Gerald Grosvenor 6th Duke of Westminster – the recent host for the two princes’ blood sports in Spain?
Daniel
Thanks for that and I promise to come back to you just a little later. Interesting discussion, also the one with Ba’ar Zevul on workers.
(I wouldn’t be Habbabkuk, would I, if I resisted the temptation to tell Herbie that I shan’t be responding to his posts on either of these two topics. He would be wiser not to intervene, and to confine himself to the subject he’s an expert on, ie Russia/Crimea/Ukraine/West-bashing. So it is in the spirit of fraternal affection that I say to Herbie : bugger off from this thread, boyo! 🙂
Mary (16h41)
You don’t actually know what I worry about, so I’ll break my own golden rule and ask you, very politely, to fuck off.
Tony M
I think you underestimate the extent to which benefit claimants work for cash in hand wages. It’s often a pragmatic choice and I certainly don’t blame people for taking this option.
Thanks for the invitation, habby.
Regrettably, I must decline.
Learnt the difference yet?