I believe now that we stand at a point which can be very much compared to that of the mid to late 70s.
A previous epoch has run its course. In the 70s, unions and governance became too strong and old capital became too lazy to modernise economies. More than just the seeds were there for the new Epoch: it was not like Thatcher and Reagan waived a wand: their economic policies were a result of the best post-post war economists thinking up solutions in the 1970s which found voice in a former actor and a former house wife oddly enough.
As in the 70s when the unions became too powerful and hindered economic growth, and the rich too complacent and detached from managing production and value creation, we now have a stage where the bankers have become too powerful and there is still too much money locked up in property.
There has to be some tough, uncompromising decisions and one thing is certain: we do not need more anarchy! We do not need to liberalise a broken liberal banking system anymore. Like the Unions they have become arrogant and detached from the public and act in self interest. Like the unionised industries they can hold a gun to the head of government and demand money while insisting their way is essential and their members should be untouchable.
There are other areas of the markets which need to be liberalised before anyone injects more governless road maps to the banking sector; American and European agriculture for a start. Also the housing market and "real estate" : governments need to both free up ground for building but also coax the market into building affordable homes instead of the now obsolete yuppie rabbit cages which promised maximum ROI before for all concerned.
A top Norwegian economist shares some of these views, but goes further: he means like many market fundamentalists and Marxist-socialists, that the banks should have been allowed to fail. Yes it would have devastated value and savings and pensions, but it would reduce the sector to having investors who are cautious of where they place their money, and conscious that money which is nearer value creation pays better than money which is based on a house-of-cards.
Which ever way it went, we would have seen socialism: bail outs for banks and key industries, taxation for the rich (investors in Cyprus the current flavour-of-month) some more poverty for a while and then a resurgence after fundamental value creation and human interaction gets money flowing out of pockets, personal equity and the safe havens where so much money is now lingering.
We have by in large conquered high , uncontrollable inflation! Just think, we may say in our lives now for the next 20 years, that market mechanisms and judicious governance will result in less than 5% inflation. After that there will be a huge energy crisis and possibly a "perfect storm" of an unpredictable fluctuating climate coupled to the oil and coal crisis. Governments need to act to day in fundamental R&D and legislation to enable this to be a transition in 20 years time, and not a market mechanism "correction" because the market by in large so short sighted that there will be catastrophe before it adjusts the world.
That is the key point; that governments have the role to plan and tackle longer term, spread cost issues: like roads, other infrastructure, education and basic R&D. To legislate for movements to more desirable market conditions. To also create those conditions were market supply can operate to solve future problems, the two biggest being climate change and the energy crisis with other resource crises plural being a natural fall out of poor planning and a market which cannot then respond to the conditions quickly enough.
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Thatcher: The Female Führer
Looking back at the rhetoric and actions of Mrs T, one side of me and many respects the tackling of man ills in Britain and the rise of meritocracy she was both a symbol and protagonist for. The other side of me now remembers the bitterness she spoke of many landsmen and the lack of compassion for those once called " the enemy within"
"We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty"
which coupled to her middle-class-bourgeois "kulturkampf" can be easily likened to :
"Those nations who are still opposed to us will some day recognize the greater enemy within"
: from another democratically elected leader, who also chose to demonise an otherwise productive sector of society, Adolf Hitler.
So in remembering her rhetoric and lack of respect for communities which had once paved London streets with golden stock traders salaries,
I think of her also then as the Female Führer, with the miners and steel workers as her enemy within, her Jews and gypsies.
A culture of a life and family commitment to the two industries which subsidies or not, had built Britains wealth: the raw supply for value conversion which finds reward on the stock market. Only the investment-. ROI was biased. The industries weren't modernised. The ironies are abundant: we imported subsidised coal from New Zealand and from the then communist Poland during the miners strike. After the planned downsizing, the command economy of reducing world capacity for steel closed one of the most productive mills in the world, Ravenscraig, it took only a few years for there to be a shortage of steel and a protected market in the US conserving its own capacity. That the union jack waving privatisations of Rover, and the stock market freedoms lead to the Germans and Chinese raking out our brands and technologies.
In the same way as Jewish citizens in 1920s Germany were often the most productive and enterprising peoples, who made many Christian Germans wary and lead to them being an easy target, so the steel and coal workers were a productive backbone from the indsutrial revolution, through the war years and into the last great epoch of Britain as an manufacturing giant from the 50s to the early 70s. She demonised this class of workers who were dependent on their pits and mills, letting her own "
"We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty"
which coupled to her middle-class-bourgeois "kulturkampf" can be easily likened to :
"Those nations who are still opposed to us will some day recognize the greater enemy within"
: from another democratically elected leader, who also chose to demonise an otherwise productive sector of society, Adolf Hitler.
So in remembering her rhetoric and lack of respect for communities which had once paved London streets with golden stock traders salaries,
I think of her also then as the Female Führer, with the miners and steel workers as her enemy within, her Jews and gypsies.
A culture of a life and family commitment to the two industries which subsidies or not, had built Britains wealth: the raw supply for value conversion which finds reward on the stock market. Only the investment-. ROI was biased. The industries weren't modernised. The ironies are abundant: we imported subsidised coal from New Zealand and from the then communist Poland during the miners strike. After the planned downsizing, the command economy of reducing world capacity for steel closed one of the most productive mills in the world, Ravenscraig, it took only a few years for there to be a shortage of steel and a protected market in the US conserving its own capacity. That the union jack waving privatisations of Rover, and the stock market freedoms lead to the Germans and Chinese raking out our brands and technologies.
In the same way as Jewish citizens in 1920s Germany were often the most productive and enterprising peoples, who made many Christian Germans wary and lead to them being an easy target, so the steel and coal workers were a productive backbone from the indsutrial revolution, through the war years and into the last great epoch of Britain as an manufacturing giant from the 50s to the early 70s. She demonised this class of workers who were dependent on their pits and mills, letting her own "
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
What did Maggie Thatcher think of The Bank Bail Outs post 2008?
The banks suceeded where 20 years of conservative policy had prevented it: a failed industry, crippled by weak management and chaotic structuring of products was bailed out lock stocks and barrells of bonuses.
Thatcher tried to reverse propping up industries, which somehow ended up in a bizarre situation the UK finds itself in now: both the lowest unemployment rates yet the highest poverty rates of the big 3 economies.
20 Billion was the bail out to HBOS. Failure would have been unthinkable: just as the failure of the privately owned, listed company British Leyland was unthinkable in the mid 70s when in fact the private management of BMC had still wanted to market 1950s models into the 1970s. 180,000 direct employees. Toyota; VW and even BMW made mostly small, rather odd cars. BL made some turkeys but made some great cars: the maxi, the mini, the marina, the TR6, the sptifire, the MGB/C, landrover, the big SD1 so iconic of late 70s traffic police and senior managers.
Why is the "bail out" of banks not seen as the same old socialism as the "nationalisation" of BL which is what it was in fact, not really full nationalisation like the airports, and only using limited involvement in the running of BL . It was a share purchase bail out for a failing private company which made some damn good products.
Britain has such high employment and high poverty because it is in effect still a subsidy junky. Instead of letting the banks fail they bailed them out, so the casino royale can play again knowing that mummy state will wipe their bums again.
Also take housing benefit: a massive subsidy to private property developers and rachmans. Then of course working family benefits: an excuse to allow service industry to pay as little as possible to employees and let the state bail them out with indirect subsidy as opposed to trade unions offering a natural, devolved means of fighting for the balance to feed families.
Are you that proud to be British when the Germans, Indians and Chinese own our old brand and command many of the new brands ?
Is this the natural end of the bullshit show of personal credit and house price equity release which the UK has been living off for 20 years ?
Thatcher tried to reverse propping up industries, which somehow ended up in a bizarre situation the UK finds itself in now: both the lowest unemployment rates yet the highest poverty rates of the big 3 economies.
20 Billion was the bail out to HBOS. Failure would have been unthinkable: just as the failure of the privately owned, listed company British Leyland was unthinkable in the mid 70s when in fact the private management of BMC had still wanted to market 1950s models into the 1970s. 180,000 direct employees. Toyota; VW and even BMW made mostly small, rather odd cars. BL made some turkeys but made some great cars: the maxi, the mini, the marina, the TR6, the sptifire, the MGB/C, landrover, the big SD1 so iconic of late 70s traffic police and senior managers.
Why is the "bail out" of banks not seen as the same old socialism as the "nationalisation" of BL which is what it was in fact, not really full nationalisation like the airports, and only using limited involvement in the running of BL . It was a share purchase bail out for a failing private company which made some damn good products.
Britain has such high employment and high poverty because it is in effect still a subsidy junky. Instead of letting the banks fail they bailed them out, so the casino royale can play again knowing that mummy state will wipe their bums again.
Also take housing benefit: a massive subsidy to private property developers and rachmans. Then of course working family benefits: an excuse to allow service industry to pay as little as possible to employees and let the state bail them out with indirect subsidy as opposed to trade unions offering a natural, devolved means of fighting for the balance to feed families.
Are you that proud to be British when the Germans, Indians and Chinese own our old brand and command many of the new brands ?
Is this the natural end of the bullshit show of personal credit and house price equity release which the UK has been living off for 20 years ?
Monday, 8 April 2013
Thatcher: The Messiah of the Bourgeois
Maggie, the Iron Ladette, is gone.
She was most of all a Messiah for the Bourgeios. A kind of figure head against the old stodgy conservatism and inverted snobbery and a champion against the overly powerful unions.
The public had no stomach for the excesses of the unions, whose members paid a huge price
for their own arrogance. Unions now do not command the respect they deserve and de-unionisation is still seen as a goal for companies in the UK.
The first "monetarist" was in fact not a tory. It was Dennis Healy. He said infront of the labour conference, that Britain would have to balance its books and tackle inflation in order to be on a better economic footing. The former communist leaned too far to the right now, and this one speech is probably the one turning point to the winter of discontent in 1978.
It was the end for Old Labour , Old Liberals and Old School Tie Conservatives in one day at the ballot box then in 1979.
Strange that of course the Thatcher years did touch my life too, in mildly positive ways directly too.
Thatcher got lucky : first the biggest nationalist party political broadcast in history: The Falklands War, fought quite rightly and bravely. But with no Falklands war there could have been a chance, god help us, that Michael foot and Lib-Lab pact of CND duffle coaters could have got in.
The labour party fell into a CND campaign back room of a dusty oxfam shop: a rabble of former Callaghan cronies and academics. Also then, with the liberalisation of the markets in full swing, the anarchy of black monday in 1987 came with a storm on the other side of the election.
So Thatcher got lucky and eventually her extremes and personality got in the way, allowing for the wilderness years of John Major, which went full term and did little more than take teachers and nurses away from doing their jobs, and privatised the railway.
Gorbachev fell to the hawks and democracy withered in Russia to the state it is in today. The Iron curtain lifted though on eastern europe which is one very positive thing about the fall of communism. Unemployment black spots created in the 80s remain so, and inner city youff are still bored petty criminals.
The irony is how little changed after her stormy three terms in the UK. Change then was needed in 1979 and it was a hard act to follow for John Major because the big plus sides of the freedoms unleashed in the UK though the three previous terms, were done and dusted and showing some down sides already.
She was most of all a Messiah for the Bourgeios. A kind of figure head against the old stodgy conservatism and inverted snobbery and a champion against the overly powerful unions.
The public had no stomach for the excesses of the unions, whose members paid a huge price
for their own arrogance. Unions now do not command the respect they deserve and de-unionisation is still seen as a goal for companies in the UK.
The first "monetarist" was in fact not a tory. It was Dennis Healy. He said infront of the labour conference, that Britain would have to balance its books and tackle inflation in order to be on a better economic footing. The former communist leaned too far to the right now, and this one speech is probably the one turning point to the winter of discontent in 1978.
It was the end for Old Labour , Old Liberals and Old School Tie Conservatives in one day at the ballot box then in 1979.
Strange that of course the Thatcher years did touch my life too, in mildly positive ways directly too.
Thatcher got lucky : first the biggest nationalist party political broadcast in history: The Falklands War, fought quite rightly and bravely. But with no Falklands war there could have been a chance, god help us, that Michael foot and Lib-Lab pact of CND duffle coaters could have got in.
The labour party fell into a CND campaign back room of a dusty oxfam shop: a rabble of former Callaghan cronies and academics. Also then, with the liberalisation of the markets in full swing, the anarchy of black monday in 1987 came with a storm on the other side of the election.
So Thatcher got lucky and eventually her extremes and personality got in the way, allowing for the wilderness years of John Major, which went full term and did little more than take teachers and nurses away from doing their jobs, and privatised the railway.
Gorbachev fell to the hawks and democracy withered in Russia to the state it is in today. The Iron curtain lifted though on eastern europe which is one very positive thing about the fall of communism. Unemployment black spots created in the 80s remain so, and inner city youff are still bored petty criminals.
The irony is how little changed after her stormy three terms in the UK. Change then was needed in 1979 and it was a hard act to follow for John Major because the big plus sides of the freedoms unleashed in the UK though the three previous terms, were done and dusted and showing some down sides already.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
The Cost of Managerialism in Public Services
"bring in a good dose of private management" was the mantra.
That and the marketism .
Wonder how much money is spent on creating wholly artificial markets within the health and welfare sectors and what decline in front line delivery this has lead to? No doubt managerialism either
1) finds some stats to show how successful they have actually NOT been
2) change the goal posts and find new challenges and use positive buzz words, to promote more reorganising, reporting, tender process dogmatism and above all, more non delivery management
The problem is that the core delivery expertise is lacking in management and this is by design.
By all means contract out ancilliary services: Accounting, goods purchasing, personnel administration and development, management best-practic-auditing, iso9000/9003 implementation, measurement of effectiveness and of course consultants to police the actual subcontractors in terms of bids, performance and claims. But retain the core management as people experienced at the delivery end.
Render these auxiliary support functions to the private free market where administration enjoys economies of scale, qaulity-best-practice and a legacy of expertise. There will be winners and losers, but washing these people out to contract will allow for the management focus to be with the professionals who choose to go forward to manage the public services.
That and the marketism .
Wonder how much money is spent on creating wholly artificial markets within the health and welfare sectors and what decline in front line delivery this has lead to? No doubt managerialism either
1) finds some stats to show how successful they have actually NOT been
2) change the goal posts and find new challenges and use positive buzz words, to promote more reorganising, reporting, tender process dogmatism and above all, more non delivery management
The problem is that the core delivery expertise is lacking in management and this is by design.
By all means contract out ancilliary services: Accounting, goods purchasing, personnel administration and development, management best-practic-auditing, iso9000/9003 implementation, measurement of effectiveness and of course consultants to police the actual subcontractors in terms of bids, performance and claims. But retain the core management as people experienced at the delivery end.
Render these auxiliary support functions to the private free market where administration enjoys economies of scale, qaulity-best-practice and a legacy of expertise. There will be winners and losers, but washing these people out to contract will allow for the management focus to be with the professionals who choose to go forward to manage the public services.
Saturday, 16 March 2013
Electric Cars: the big polluter ?
Electric vehicles have been around a long time while not going very a long way...that is to say at an economic production cost for end price we are looking at 100km range from a mid sized car (compact )
Of course the anti-environmentalists argue that emissions or net carbon are equally bad for el'auto because the power station network is dirty, and about to get dirtier ie less nuclear and possibly less private investment in wind farms and even abandonment of uneconomic ones as happens in the USA.
However of course there are several shibboleths and outright lies.
On the strategic side: without affordable, tried and tested technology we will never reduce personal transport emissions. Already in many countries el' cars are economic to buy and run compared to the same say golf or focus. However long term battery cost may be higher, service costs will be somewhat lower though. So the ball is rolling as an alternative and the public-manufacturer-legislative-tax equation can evolve. Meanwhile, power generation needs to be tackled on an EU wide basis to reduce net CO2 and other pollutants.
Firstly quoted fuel economies are now widely seen as 'factory fiddles: which can bear shockingly little resemblance to actual fuel economy achieved. Also journey types and the average speed and importantly, idle time and acceleration are factors which help swing the pendulum to el' cars for town and medium commute. El' cars give out very much less carbon while stationary. Given a cold winter day though and you will soon need to find a plug at your office car park and already those freebie outlets are getting crowded. The solution is installation of twin phase, 430V charging which gives four times the kw per hour, thus making a 45 minute charge up while shopping or in the firms cellar while sharing a cable through the day with many other cars. It gives then a 3 hour charge which gives you roughly 40% of an average charge up for this new breed of cars currently on sale. I dont see much of this remaining free unless tax advantages for firms are extended, but a 220-240V 15A charge for 8 hours can cost as little as 2 Euros for 100km of use.
Here in Norway now there is a clear and somewhat unfair advantage for pure el' over hybrid. El cars glide through the auto road tolls scott free and in some major towns can also scurry along the bus lanes! For a local journey of 90 km per day, with six toll station passes in total this means a saving of almost 30 euros per day!! With the government having slashed vehicle sales tax for pure el cars it makes them more affordable than compareable cars on a clean capital balance sheet! Whereas the hybrids pay the tolls still, which I think is ridiculous given that they are potentially better than petrol and are better in local emissions than diesel.
The solution I think is a mixture of hybrids which have a transponder "brick" which is linked to the vehicle power management and shows that the car is running on pure el' going through a toll. Free tolls then and lower ozone etc in towns. If you charge at home, you then get another economic benefit.
Soon though the type of hybrids we see now in numbers ( small to medium, light vehicles) will be replaced by pure el' cars because the type of journeys they do are on average under 60km per day and people will find that charging is cheaper than running the engine. Then the other larger and longer range family car will be a hybrid: perhaps like the new 4x4 volvo, with other benefits of el-drive. Another thing is the spread of car-clubs and swap leasing where you get temporary access to longer range internal combustion or maybe top end expensive el cars and vans when you need them. This is problematic for countries like Norway where holidays are taken at fast times through the year and are very car dependent.
Commuter car sharing of ownership for colleagues on the same route is already a fact of life here, with some of my colleagues buying a Mu together to shoosh in along those buslanes and care free through the three tolls each way: all at 25 kr return fair!
Of course the anti-environmentalists argue that emissions or net carbon are equally bad for el'auto because the power station network is dirty, and about to get dirtier ie less nuclear and possibly less private investment in wind farms and even abandonment of uneconomic ones as happens in the USA.
However of course there are several shibboleths and outright lies.
On the strategic side: without affordable, tried and tested technology we will never reduce personal transport emissions. Already in many countries el' cars are economic to buy and run compared to the same say golf or focus. However long term battery cost may be higher, service costs will be somewhat lower though. So the ball is rolling as an alternative and the public-manufacturer-legislative-tax equation can evolve. Meanwhile, power generation needs to be tackled on an EU wide basis to reduce net CO2 and other pollutants.
Firstly quoted fuel economies are now widely seen as 'factory fiddles: which can bear shockingly little resemblance to actual fuel economy achieved. Also journey types and the average speed and importantly, idle time and acceleration are factors which help swing the pendulum to el' cars for town and medium commute. El' cars give out very much less carbon while stationary. Given a cold winter day though and you will soon need to find a plug at your office car park and already those freebie outlets are getting crowded. The solution is installation of twin phase, 430V charging which gives four times the kw per hour, thus making a 45 minute charge up while shopping or in the firms cellar while sharing a cable through the day with many other cars. It gives then a 3 hour charge which gives you roughly 40% of an average charge up for this new breed of cars currently on sale. I dont see much of this remaining free unless tax advantages for firms are extended, but a 220-240V 15A charge for 8 hours can cost as little as 2 Euros for 100km of use.
Here in Norway now there is a clear and somewhat unfair advantage for pure el' over hybrid. El cars glide through the auto road tolls scott free and in some major towns can also scurry along the bus lanes! For a local journey of 90 km per day, with six toll station passes in total this means a saving of almost 30 euros per day!! With the government having slashed vehicle sales tax for pure el cars it makes them more affordable than compareable cars on a clean capital balance sheet! Whereas the hybrids pay the tolls still, which I think is ridiculous given that they are potentially better than petrol and are better in local emissions than diesel.
The solution I think is a mixture of hybrids which have a transponder "brick" which is linked to the vehicle power management and shows that the car is running on pure el' going through a toll. Free tolls then and lower ozone etc in towns. If you charge at home, you then get another economic benefit.
Soon though the type of hybrids we see now in numbers ( small to medium, light vehicles) will be replaced by pure el' cars because the type of journeys they do are on average under 60km per day and people will find that charging is cheaper than running the engine. Then the other larger and longer range family car will be a hybrid: perhaps like the new 4x4 volvo, with other benefits of el-drive. Another thing is the spread of car-clubs and swap leasing where you get temporary access to longer range internal combustion or maybe top end expensive el cars and vans when you need them. This is problematic for countries like Norway where holidays are taken at fast times through the year and are very car dependent.
Commuter car sharing of ownership for colleagues on the same route is already a fact of life here, with some of my colleagues buying a Mu together to shoosh in along those buslanes and care free through the three tolls each way: all at 25 kr return fair!
Friday, 8 February 2013
Left Losing to the Monsters They Helped to Create...
The left across Europe are losing two battles: firstly the PR soundbite battle and secondly the economic battle at the family unit level.
These are both monsters they helped to create: firstly as Tony Robinson paraphrased, the left in the 1990s embraced the medusa og the soundbite and message over content started, and owned by the right in the 80s, and made government into an advertising and PR agency. Now that bites them again as people clasp quickly to the soundbite, "Big Society" , "stand for people who want to work hard and get on" and so on. The left has now become too intellectual in my opinion in the Scotland, England, France, Sweden and Norway at least. They align with a vague and difficult to understand set of mechanisms, largely driven now through Brussels ( like the employment agency directive). These are often to admirable goals and morals, but leave the public feeling twice removed from decision making and resultingly, euro sceptic.
The left do not just have to worry about what they say in front of their own national parties, but they have become too sensitive to the holy cow of European unity and achieving better living and working conditions through centralised European power mechanisms.
This also stems from the Left's great weakness in the 1980s: they remained with a mindset of collective-ism, a hang over from the union struggles, the establishment of modern unions and then the run away power they abused in the 1970s. Brussels and the muppet chamber in Strasbourg were seen as a natural extension of a collective, centralised view of governance and society.
However, the Left had in being the parliamentary wing for trade unions created a monster: the affluent and aspirant working classes. It was natural that better education and lower cost supply from the far east would change society away from a working class with a great deal of homogeny, to a lowest common denominator of living standard that the Left fought to better. In the UK and scandinavia, more people just became middle class and this is a kind of natural evolution away from collectiveness into individual choice over a lowest common, agreed denominator.
How are these two related in today's post sub prime catalysed credit disaster ?
Well they are very much related because the electorate is far more individualistic than any message from the new Left could pander to. Remote control government by Brussels and back room pacts is removed from the sense of nation, what people vote for and their pay packet.
The Right have created this recession: it was the very freedoms and lack of "interfering" with the strange deriviative and loan linked money markets which allowed the Right's types to basically break the law. Now the banks get bailed out to billions while it is the poor and the public worker who has to pay the bill. Yet the Tories in the UK and the Germans want to blame the Left.
The left then too tried to pander to their new monster of the choice-oriented, family and aspirant individual populations in affluent countries in the EU and further afield, by delivering more pay and career development to the public sector, more infrastructural renewal to contracters, cater for assylum seekers and the poor immigrant sectors of society, deliver better education, and of course the plain delivery of a basic national health service to an ageing population. In effect they just made the age old mistake of thinking a recession could not happen in their parliamentary period, and the economic cycle was in a perpetual "no-line-on-the-horizon" ie no cycle just up!
This was a greed: not the Gordon Gekko type we saw stacked on the sub prime market, but a general low simmering greed that crept up on us all and was clearly not sustainable.
Why was this not sustainable ? Well as David Cameron and his muppet show now conclude, the economy should be based on fundamental value creation, like the German economy. That is why the German economy has survived to this stage, selling above average quality cars to above average quality design æsthetics. Also keeping just at the highest quality end of the mechanical and electronic markets and at the larger capital item end of other markets. In fact far from the Tory model for success of a nation of small shop keepers.
Through the rest of Europe, reselling chinese wares with a large number of your consumers dependent pretty much directly on public money was a recipe for disaster. Countries as a whole to use an analogy, put more on more on the Visa Card, the "never-never" as old Scot's housewives call credit you get and forget about.
This is where Thatcher and her cronies were effective, but not as effective or rather instrumental as they take credit for: the changes in society towards a better educated workforce and for instance the digitisation of the stock markets were just as instrumental in the turn around as fighting the unions and replacing subsidy to coal, steel and eventually rail with dole payments and housing benefit.
Britain though in the last ten years has been allowed to become a sick student with a big visa bill. More and more value adding businesses who employ skilled workers have gone to China where their wares have been down graded in quality or absorbed only for German competitors to come back in at the quality end. "metal bashing " became a dirty word and the stock market didn't like it and the rich didnt want to own it.
These are both monsters they helped to create: firstly as Tony Robinson paraphrased, the left in the 1990s embraced the medusa og the soundbite and message over content started, and owned by the right in the 80s, and made government into an advertising and PR agency. Now that bites them again as people clasp quickly to the soundbite, "Big Society" , "stand for people who want to work hard and get on" and so on. The left has now become too intellectual in my opinion in the Scotland, England, France, Sweden and Norway at least. They align with a vague and difficult to understand set of mechanisms, largely driven now through Brussels ( like the employment agency directive). These are often to admirable goals and morals, but leave the public feeling twice removed from decision making and resultingly, euro sceptic.
The left do not just have to worry about what they say in front of their own national parties, but they have become too sensitive to the holy cow of European unity and achieving better living and working conditions through centralised European power mechanisms.
This also stems from the Left's great weakness in the 1980s: they remained with a mindset of collective-ism, a hang over from the union struggles, the establishment of modern unions and then the run away power they abused in the 1970s. Brussels and the muppet chamber in Strasbourg were seen as a natural extension of a collective, centralised view of governance and society.
However, the Left had in being the parliamentary wing for trade unions created a monster: the affluent and aspirant working classes. It was natural that better education and lower cost supply from the far east would change society away from a working class with a great deal of homogeny, to a lowest common denominator of living standard that the Left fought to better. In the UK and scandinavia, more people just became middle class and this is a kind of natural evolution away from collectiveness into individual choice over a lowest common, agreed denominator.
How are these two related in today's post sub prime catalysed credit disaster ?
Well they are very much related because the electorate is far more individualistic than any message from the new Left could pander to. Remote control government by Brussels and back room pacts is removed from the sense of nation, what people vote for and their pay packet.
The Right have created this recession: it was the very freedoms and lack of "interfering" with the strange deriviative and loan linked money markets which allowed the Right's types to basically break the law. Now the banks get bailed out to billions while it is the poor and the public worker who has to pay the bill. Yet the Tories in the UK and the Germans want to blame the Left.
The left then too tried to pander to their new monster of the choice-oriented, family and aspirant individual populations in affluent countries in the EU and further afield, by delivering more pay and career development to the public sector, more infrastructural renewal to contracters, cater for assylum seekers and the poor immigrant sectors of society, deliver better education, and of course the plain delivery of a basic national health service to an ageing population. In effect they just made the age old mistake of thinking a recession could not happen in their parliamentary period, and the economic cycle was in a perpetual "no-line-on-the-horizon" ie no cycle just up!
This was a greed: not the Gordon Gekko type we saw stacked on the sub prime market, but a general low simmering greed that crept up on us all and was clearly not sustainable.
Why was this not sustainable ? Well as David Cameron and his muppet show now conclude, the economy should be based on fundamental value creation, like the German economy. That is why the German economy has survived to this stage, selling above average quality cars to above average quality design æsthetics. Also keeping just at the highest quality end of the mechanical and electronic markets and at the larger capital item end of other markets. In fact far from the Tory model for success of a nation of small shop keepers.
Through the rest of Europe, reselling chinese wares with a large number of your consumers dependent pretty much directly on public money was a recipe for disaster. Countries as a whole to use an analogy, put more on more on the Visa Card, the "never-never" as old Scot's housewives call credit you get and forget about.
This is where Thatcher and her cronies were effective, but not as effective or rather instrumental as they take credit for: the changes in society towards a better educated workforce and for instance the digitisation of the stock markets were just as instrumental in the turn around as fighting the unions and replacing subsidy to coal, steel and eventually rail with dole payments and housing benefit.
Britain though in the last ten years has been allowed to become a sick student with a big visa bill. More and more value adding businesses who employ skilled workers have gone to China where their wares have been down graded in quality or absorbed only for German competitors to come back in at the quality end. "metal bashing " became a dirty word and the stock market didn't like it and the rich didnt want to own it.
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