26th November 2015

What on earth is going on?

A recent exchange of emails with my MP resulted in his repeating the Low Tax, Low Welfare, High Wage economy mantra.

My response:

Your reply to  my recent email is both patronising and wrong in all aspects.

We are now being subjected to the most ill considered social experiment, conducted by Millionaires , as though it were a set test at Eton.

How can you destroy 70 years of social progress in one parliament?

This Government, of which you are a part, is taking us back to the 1930's whilst protecting your friends the bankers and tax dodgers.

This is even more than the Grantham Grocer's daughter dared to imagine in her wildest dreams.

I suggested that we might meet and he responded with an invitation to meet him at one of his surgeries, even suggesting dates before Christmas.

But now it seems that with a further £27 Billion, a hypothetical £27 Billion as various commentators have noticed, being found behind a hypothetical settee or Green Bench, we are it seems being offered a high welfare, high tax (especially if you are a second home owner or buying to let) economy with wages still below the level that they were in 2008.

This Autumn Statement was a breathtaking act of legerdemain, with rabbits in hats, silk scarves being waved to deceive the eye and the political trickery outshining the economic sense and coins materialising out of thin air.

Where was the investment in the future?

Now nurses lose their grants and are offered loans.

Young people are discouraged at all levels.

A social housing programme which is ultimately without meaning.

There is little evidence of research in technology, science, engineering what we have in fact to look forward too in the light of this budget is a low investment, low return, client economy, with the investment such as its is being made by foreign governments.

The shadow chancellor's reference to Mao's little red book may have been a ham fisted but it contained more than a kernel of truth which, unfortunately the China loving chancellor was able to capitalise on.  But the long view that is contained in Mao's vision of the struggle to defeat capitalism and introduce socialism continues to inform the Chinese Government in its global strategy.

What could be smarter than taking a leading share holding in Britain's energy supply in the years ahead?

As the Red Book says:

We communists never conceal our political views.

As for imperialist countries, we should unite with their peoples and strive to co-exist peacefully with those countries, do business with them and strive to prevent any possible war, but under no circumstances should we harbour any unrealistic notions about them.

Even, I imagine, whilst drinking beer and eating fish and chips in a Cotswold pub.

The autumn statement was a series of sound bites designed to capture headlines and in this it was a triumph, but what will happen next?

The building industry has shortages not only in raw materials, from steel to bricks, but also a shortage in skilled workers, from bricklayers to site managers. It is doubtful whether, beyond the headlines, the houses will be built but in the anti revolutionary fervour which underpins the small state society and economy toward which the Tories seek to lead us that won't matter because as 2020 comes around, as the music stops in the game of musical chairs played at the Tory Party Conference, he will blame him or him or him or they will all blame her.

The mantra of high wage, low tax, low welfare is a smokescreen to cover the obvious and barely concealed shifting of the social and economic landscape as greater inequality is achieved through enormous and unjustifiable bonuses for bankers and huge and salary hikes for CEO's.

Alongside the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction leading to the invasion of Iraq, Peter Mandelson's comment about being relaxed about the rich contributed hugely to Tony Blair's undoing.

So there should be, in any decent, contemporary society, a relationship between the earnings of those at either end of the wage spectrum, views about what that relationship should be vary but a recent suggestion was a range of 1-20 with 1 being the lowest and 20 being the highest.

Whilst there is no evidence at all that the Tory Party shares this view, of course not! The evidence published by The Equality Trust plus other commentators is that a more equal society is a society that flourishes socially, educationally, and in the physical and mental health and well-being of its citizens.

In today's newspaper's the left suggested that there had been a U Turn and whilst welfare will still be reduced, (the devil in the detail) nevertheless the age of austerity is officially over, whilst the right decried the budget as 'socialist' more or less what Ed Miliband might have done if the public had been foolish enough to return him to power.

My view when I see Chancellor and Prime Minister side by side enjoying the joke of having caused such discomfort to the opposition, that this is simply an exercise lifted almost entirely from the edition of a Tom Brown's Schooldays that I missed.

I wrote some years ago in the Church Action on Poverty newsletter that if you replaced the word 'Victorian' with the word 'Dickensian' then the effect of Tory policies in the 1980's becomes clearer.

Victoria we are told 'was not amused' and neither should we be ........

9th November 2015

I have just finished reading Jane Smiley's trilogy in which she follows a family for a hundred years, from 1920 to 2020.

The research that went into this novel was comprehensive and is evident in the narrative as it unfolds.

Each chapter, and there are a hundred spread over three books, is titled with the year that it covers.

The novel unfolds with family members being born and dying, experiencing tragedy and success, loving and being loved, but all the time being shaped and changed and challenged by external events.

The historical chapters faithfully reflect the events as they occurred in each respective year but as 2015 gives way to 2016 and through to 2020 there is a fascinating and subtle change to the events described and their impact on the family.

Smiley did not anticipate the outcome of the elections in Canada and quite sensibly did not reflect on the impact of the anti-austerity movement in Europe probably because it had little consequence in America.

But two geo-political phenomena dominate both the historic developments as the author describes their effect on her families and their possible effects from 2016 onwards.

These phenomena are Global Warming and the political strength of China.

As I read the final chapters I began to develop a deep pessimism about the future as it is emerging under the current British Government, as Global Warming reaches a tipping point beyond which it becomes irreversible and as we sign deals with the Chinese Government whilst apparently severing our links with Europe so the list of discontents, not just with Globalisation a la Stiglitz but with our own elected government and the outcomes of austerity as it impacts on individuals and families, lengthens.

Inequality increases as manufacturing declines, as the service sector enlarges and financial services are freed from control or supervision so wealth flows towards the rich increasing inequality and limiting the life choices of those without resources.

A recently published OECD Report indicates that income inequality has risen (is rising) in Britain faster than in other rich nations.

The reason for this increase in inequality is given as the rise of a 'financial services elite' concentrating wealth into the hands of a tiny minority.

Peter Mandelson may well have been relaxed about individuals becoming extremely wealthy but it is becoming clearer and clearer that the outcome of money flowing into the pockets of the wealthy and somehow mysteriously replicating itself is a deeply unjust and unequal society, a society that is not at ease with itself, a society that could be described as broken.

Changing things is not easy when the manicured hands of those with the money and the power rest on the levers which can make change happen.

In my neighbourhood I notice that the balance of ownership and renting is changing, those who own the asset hold on to it, better to rent than sell, better for whom? But that is the equation. As house prices rise it makes all kind of sense to hold on to the asset and through letting to derive an income from it.

And as social housing is sold off through right to buy so choice becomes more limited for those households seeking to access the market and the private sector adjusts itself accordingly.

And what is happening at the local and community level is reflected at the global.

Public ownership is rejected in favour of private except that the so called private investors are themselves publicly owned so as China signs an agreement to build our nuclear energy future we hand over our energy dependency to the Government of China.

We can march, campaign, write letters to editors, blog, protest, pray and with luck, in five years time, vote for change.

But the damage will have been done.

The low paid will be paid even less, inequality will be deeper.

Affordable houses will remain unbuilt.

We may no longer be part of Europe.

The coastline of the UK may start to look very different as the oceans rise and the storm blowing outside my window will if anything be blowing more fiercely.

I buy my energy and telephony from energy and telephony co-operatives they are successful but if the   economic and political climate changes who knows?

Even more scarily, although apparently I read in today's Guardian that someone under eighty should not be referred too as elderly, nevertheless I will be older and possibly more reliant on health care being available free at the point of  need.

In her novel Jane Smiley asks through one of her characters 'have we lived through a golden age?'

That is indeed the title of the third book.

I was born before the NHS was founded in 1948, I was a baby boomer, I lived and grew up in a welfare state that I learnt to take for granted whilst appreciating and valuing the real benefits that it provided for me and my family, I can say that in my lifetime I have lived through a golden age.

It is however hard to imagine what future generations will experience.