The Extra Bold Blog

The problem with the EU is that it is the same as the UK

2011-10-19T13:55:00.004+01:00

Endorsing and responding to this and this.

Do not throw at me the policies and structures of the EU. I want the EU to have better, more liberal policies and better, more democratic structures. This is the same as what I want for the UK.

The reason the EU doesn't have these things is because it is dominated by socialist and conservative politics; the same as the UK.

And yet I will not cry and take my ball home, and demand secession from the UK and the EU. Our interests lie in engaging with the politics of both and working to make them better.

Yet just as my support for the localism agenda in the UK does not make me a secessionist, it should be possible to have a sober debate about EU competencies without it becoming a proxy for the hare-brained withdrawal agenda.

Our best interests are served by a strong and democratic EU, acting on trade, the environment, cross-border crime, security and in the international community. The entrenchment of democracy in Eastern Europe is unlikely to have happened without the EU. And much of it might easily have fallen back into Russia's sphere of influence. A quadrillion pounds of defence spending could not have achieved this kind of progress for democracy and the rule of law, which is in all our interests.

This should not be taken to imply support for any particular socialist or conservative policy adopted by the EU at the behest of the conservative and socialist national governments that control it. Given this political dominance it is a small miracle that the policies of the EU (or UK) are as good as they are.

No. The demands for localism and democratic reform are not predicated on the belief that liberals will suddenly win all the arguments and all the elections under a more democratic system. Rather that politicians of whatever party will be more accountable to the people and will therefore make better decisions.

Eurosceptics of left and right, in common with the SNP have a very quaint belief that the political challenges they face can be attributed to some evil outside force, and if only "they" could be got rid of then "we" can put things right. The use of "they" and "we" is pure emotional button-pushing, and quite arbitrary. Yet the challenges in Scotland are not that different to those in the rest of the UK, nor those in the UK very different to the rest of the continent. Scapegoating the other is cheap and dangerous politics.

So what I am advocating here is not a compromise between the Europhiles and Eurosceptics. I am uncompromisingly in favour of the EU, and of a particular liberal democratic vision of it, and against the policies of socialists and conservatives that stand in the way of that vision; against those policies when they are implemented at the EU level just as much as when they are implemented elsewhere. This means campaigning against the EU "government of the day" in the same way that we would campaign against a similarly wrong UK or local government.

Axe the fat tax

2011-10-09T14:37:00.006+01:00

The idea of an extra tax on high-fat foods has been in the news lately, since David Cameron suggested that the idea was worth looking at. Now I've argued before against activism through the tax system. I think most of the time it creates too much administration cost and avenues for avoidance for any good that it does. And I am skeptical of the psychological value of small incentives to do the right thing, which it turns out can often be counterproductive.

In this case the fat tax is intended to tackle the "epidemic" of obesity. But it is not a tax on fat people, but on selected foods deemed to contribute to obesity. Why? I'm pretty sure that it is possible for a thin person to eat doughnuts, and for an obese frame to be maintained with sufficient quantities of muesli and semi skimmed milk. More specifically the argument is precisely that fattening foods are a problem, because it is a problem that people are fat. So a tax on fat people would surely be much more to the point. Yes, there are practical difficulties with a tax on fat people. All that weighing. But let's park that for now and just consider the principle.

The problem is that a tax on fat people would be grossly unfair, offensive and discriminatory. Thus the attempt to levy an extra tax on fat people by proxy, in the hope that we thereby don't notice that the policy is grossly unfair, offensive and discriminatory.

I've had some feedback on this argument from @IanEiloart, @beccaet and @MsNoeticat, which I will address here without attributing particular views to any one person. Thanks for your comments, by the way.

First is the question of whether a fat tax would produce a social benefit by incentivising food manufacturers to change their recipes in a lower fat direction, i.e. to make their regular products more like "diet" products. You know diet coke, diet yoghurt, diet ready meals. All the bulk of the regular product with little of the flavour. There's a reason I don't buy diet products: they are horrid. Making food in general more horrid is not something I would count as a social benefit. Just as starving sailors lost at sea would fill their bellies with sawdust to quell the hunger pangs, the modern body-image conscious person is supposed to fill their belly with a modern food-sciencey equivalent such as cellulose (which may be made from sawdust in fact).

Second is the point that pushing diets in the right direction will benefit everybody. Will it really? Will it benefit people who are underweight? How many borderline anorexics will be pushed over the borderline because they are eating food with more cellulose and less food in it? The problem here is that we are looking at the average person - who may be overweight - and imposing a food policy for everybody, as if everybody was the same as that average person. Many people eat too little fat or too little cholesterol, or too little proper food of any kind. Should they be sacrificed on the altar of the average? Top down, one-size-fits-all policies fit very few.

Finally the suggestion that revenue from a fat tax could be help people who are struggling with weight issues. This is true. And it is fair to say that weight is a very big problem for some people, causing a great deal of distress and poor health outcomes. I do think a fat tax would have to be very high indeed in order to help everybody in this kind of need, which raises the question of why isn't this kind of health support more of a priority anyway? Why should it rely on a hypothecated tax? We don't hypothecate tobacco and alcohol taxes to particular health interventions, and nor should we.

And I would say that a large part of the distress surrounding weight issues is a result of social pressures to conform to a perceived weight ideal. Now what is the fat tax, but another kind of pressure to conform to that same perceived ideal? On the one hand we are campaigning against unrealistic body images in the media; do we really want to turn round and try to impose unrealistic bodies on people through the tax system?

Update: see also freakonomics.

Ed Milliband's little big idea

2011-09-29T17:14:00.006+01:00

While it is easy to lampoon Ed Milliband and the speech he gave to his party conference, he had one big idea that is worth looking at: that of bringing moral values into government's dealings with business, to reward the good and punish the bad.

On the face of it, what could possibly be wrong with that? It is better to have more training, more R&D, better cared for workers, a social conscience, environmental sustainability. Let's reward the companies that go the extra mile to deliver these things, and punish those that merely follow the rules. Companies that merely tick all the boxes and play the rules to their advantage are not giving back to society in the way they should.

Ed was subsequently challenged to give some examples of what he is talking about and failed abysmally. Southern Cross was mentioned as a company that wasn't giving back, but of course that was in the process of it failing as a business. Let's punish failure with higher taxes? The problem is that it isn't obvious who the good guys and the bad guys are. If you can't even say which companies you think ought to be punished for existing, how are you ever going to write laws to fairly judge the predators from the producers?

The challenge here is to turn good intentions into good policy. Ed's project has been tried before with almost no success under the banner of stakeholderism. Stakeholderism held that workers, suppliers, consumers, the wider community and the environment all had a stake in a business, not just the shareholders, so businesses should be run with all these stakes in mind. But put workers, suppliers and consumers on the board and you get big conflicts of interest. So little policy was ever developed to implement this vision beyond saying "you really ought to think about this stuff". I have written about stakeholderism before, and it all still applies to Milliband's new compact.

While it is possible and necessary to regulate for such things as environmental standards and workers rights, it is logically impossible for a regulation to meaningfully say that you must go the extra mile, beyond ticking all the boxes, because every regulation is precisely one of the boxes to tick. So you can't legislate for virtue.

And while tax breaks for R&D, support for apprenticeships and so forth are reasonable attempts to improve incentives, they don't reward virtue, they are attempts to steer self interest towards more public spirited goals. If Ed's vision means another avalanche of schemes and tax loopholes aimed at rewarding virtue, it will be met head on by an avalanche of tax accountants for whom virtue is not the pressing concern. This is no new vision, this is very much Gordon Brown's signature move of trying to micromanage behaviour through the tax system, giving us one of the most complex tax codes in the world and record levels of tax avoidance.

And let's not forget that creating jobs and providing goods and services are a positive contribution to society. We might like more training and R&D, but there are few businesses that could exist without ever doing any of either. Is Labour just too uncomfortable with the fact that business generally makes a big positive contribution to society even without being tinkered with by government?

So Ed, I hope you enjoyed telling your conference that you will stand up for what is right and oppose what is wrong. It is a fine and noble ambition, albeit somewhat unoriginal. But if you can give it any substance at all, that will be an achievement. Failing that, a mountain of regulation motivated by good intentions is the best and worst we can expect.

That Ed Milliband speech in full (2)

2011-09-27T13:40:00.009+01:00

In a big scoop for the Extra Bold Blog, I have again obtained an early draft of Ed Milliband's speech.

For copyright reasons, I won't release this until after the actual speech has been delivered.

[check against delivery]

Friends, comrades, it is great to still be here. A generation ago a Labour leader condemned Labour in Liverpool. Today, Liverpool has been put right, by someone.

Ask me the three most important things I've done this year, and I'll tell you. They're all about my family. Which is nice.

But let me talk about my nose for a while. You'd be surprised how many unfunny jokes it can inspire.

Conference, let's get down to business. This is a dangerous time. This is not the time for the same old answers to the challenge of growth. People need to know where I stand. We lost trust on the economy, and I am determined to restore that trust.

We will only spend what we can afford, we will live within our means, but not yet. The next Labour government won't be able to reverse any of the cuts we purport to oppose today.

We will set new fiscal rules [like the "Golden Rule"? - Ed]. But I have a disagreement with this government. They believe the government should live within its means, but they are wrong. [Didn't you just say the opposite? - Ed]

Of course the world economy is suffering, but our government is making it worse by following our legacy of debt and austerity, albeit slightly more effectively.

I say to David Cameron, put politics aside and look at the facts. I am going to tell it straight. That's a lesson I have learned over this year. [Insert actual straight talking here later.]

Milly Dowler, Milly Dowler, Milly Dowler. What kind of country have we become where political parties such as this one would suck up to Rupert Murdoch? That's why, once opinion had turned against him, I was willing to change. I'm not Tony Blair (he wouldn't have done this) - a great man, I am my own man, that's what it means to lead. Nobody ever changed things by being nice.

My message to the public is simple... Technical Fault.

... the Labour Party lost trust on the economy. [Haven't we already had this bit.]

... people looting shops, burning cars. But thousands came to help with the clean up. That is what we mean by the big society, I mean Blue Labour, I mean Purple Bookery, I mean refounding next new Labour.

Citizens and public servants alike are truly British, I think. We are great people in a great country, ready for the Olympics. So with such great people, how did we end up here. It is because of the way we have run the country for decades.

There are hard lessons here for our party. Some of what happened in the 80s were right, but too much of it was based on the wrong values. Wrong values that we did not do enough to change.

You believe you deserve more, but bankers are getting more instead.

You believe in the long term, but the fast buck, short termism, borrowing and debt bubbles have been the rule.

You believe in responsibility, but big vested interests like the unions have for too long been able to get away with anything.

Who do we blame for all of this, apart from the last Labour government? Why the fat cats in industry of course. Oh except for the good fat cats, we like them, they create jobs and value. But often the bad fat cats earn more than the good ones. I'm sorry our wages policy didn't crack that one.

Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity. Children, children, children. Sad puppy expression.

Values, values, values. You know what your values are. Celebrity culture, gangs, life on benefits, chavs.

People who have paid into the system all their lives find the safety net full of holes. We need a new bargain. Let's confront head on the new challenge of values, wealth creation, you know what your values are, values, values, China, India and Brazil, the kind of economy we have now, we can't pay our way in the world, confront head on.

Not credit default swaps but creative industries etc.

Now not all business is the same. Who knew? All parties must be pro-business today, but we can distinguish between wealth creators and asset strippers like the Phoenix Consortium; I learned this from a hollywood movie from the 80s.

We must learn the lesson that growth is built on sand if it is built on debt, I mean predators, not producers. This is the pro-business choice because really there is not much asset stripping going on these days, but it makes a good soundbite.

This is why our new industrial policy will stick government fingers deep into the hearts of businesses seeking contracts.

But lets get more competition in energy supply, despite all that.

The wealth of our nation is built by the hands not only of the elite few, but also the proletarian masses.

Just think of our young people going into higher education facing a graduate tax in all but name style repayment. We would cut the amount that a few top earning graduates would have to pay by cutting the headline notional fee to £6000.

Schools, schools, schools, children, children, children.

Have you noticed how uncomfortable David Cameron is when talking about responsibility at the top of our society. When you have had to pay, it is always our fault, our toxic legacy of debt and austerity. Yet at the same time the government is taxing top earners more than Labour did. [Sure you want to say this? - Ed] How dare we say they're all in it together!

If you think putting things right means reforming welfare then you're wrong, but at the same time you're right, work must pay. I'm prepared to make the tough decisions to make the welfare reforms to make work pay a reality, seeing as it will already have been done by 2015. But that won't stop us scoring points along the way.

Decency, fairness, helping those who do the right thing. These are values we are learning from the coalition. And with these values we will make welfare work again.

Millions of public servants deliver a fantastic public service every day and every week. But public services can become unaccountable, and need reform. Patients, victims, standing in the queue, computer says no. We need to sign up to the government's reform agenda, in the hope people think we thought of it. We need to stand up to the vested interests, except the unions, who own me.

Why does Britain care so much for the NHS? Because it's really good. And free, mostly, at the point of use. And when I look at everything the government is doing, I try really hard to find a way in which that will change. That reform agenda I spoke of a moment ago; if the government does it, we will scaremonger as if our lives depended on it.

I'm not finished. Yet. If you want someone who will rip up the old rules, new rules, old rules, new hat, old hat. You know Britain needs to change, kids, mum and dad, a fight for a new bargain, your values, pay our way in the world, values, break open closed circles, a new bargain, a long pause, a new bargain, kids, mum and dad.

I promise to promise the promise of each so we promise the promise of Britain. Thankyou.

Cuts and opportunism

2011-03-31T10:29:00.009+01:00

Ed Milliband was again emoting if not explaining his alternative economic strategy on radio 4 this morning. If only we were to borrow and spend more money, that would be good for growth, and therefore good for debt in the long run. It has enough plausibility for people who want to believe it to give Labour cover to proclaim themselves anti cuts, to go on ukuncut demos where by rights they ought to be lynched.

The reality is that Labour's plans are to cut the deficit more slowly: in 8 years rather than 5. That is reaching the midpoint in 4 years rather than 3. (The coalition reaches the midpoint of deficit reduction in 3 years, rather than 2.5 because the first year (this last one) saw only token cuts.)

What this means is that whenever Labour score political points by "opposing" a cut, they have a policy that would demand that same cut is made, on average, only 1 year later. Not "save our libraries" but "keep our libraries open for one more year then close them" would be an honest slogan. Ditto every other cut.

More could be done by raising taxes of course, but when Evan Davies put the question about not capping council tax, Milliband rejected the idea, saying, rightly that an increase in council tax would squeeze many at a difficult time. (An apology for Labour's record on council tax might have been in order, particularly to pensioners, who didn't even have an earnings link as they do now.)

And that story is repeated. Despite having the policy of somewhat higher taxes and therefore fewer cuts, no tax increase is supported or proposed, save the "jobs tax" that would have raised only about 2% of the deficit.

We are told that Labour's plan would be better for growth. Growth is the answer to everyone, even the Greens it seems, confusingly enough. Of course I would hope they do think their plan better for growth, rather than adopted just for the cheap point-scoring value of pretending to have an alternative to cuts. But believing your plan to be better is one thing. Spending the difference is quite another.

Borrowing to spend is right during a recession to blunt the hard edge of the downturn. It will temporarily boost growth, but at the cost of a long term deadweight of debt dragging the economy down. So as Keynes said, such debts should be paid back when times are good. Now the recession ended in 2009, and we are still borrowing. We will still be borrowing 5 years after the recession, hitting balance in the 6th. Labour's plan is to still be borrowing 8 years after the recession. This is not Keynsianism, just borrowism. Borrowing not just during recession, but all the time, hoping some other party will be in government when it has to be sorted out.

So on the one hand we have lower corporation tax, enterprise zones, apprenticeships, university technical colleges, cutting red tape, part of a comprehensive strategy for growth in the private sector. On the other hand the strategy to borrow and spend in the public sector for 8 years, creating a massive long term dead weight of debt, and neglecting the private sector that could actually bring us the tax revenues we need.

All this for an average 1 year delay to cuts, and the chance to play the good guys.

Caroline Lucas' U-turn on taxes

2011-02-04T01:38:00.004Z

Channel hopping between Question Time and 10 O'clock Live, I caught the following exchange...

David Mitchell: The key is that ultimately, surely to save the environment things have to be made more expensive - the things that are destroying the planet have to be made as expensive monetarily as they are to the environment and that's going to involve a lot of sacrifice, don't you have to be honest about that?

Caroline Lucas: Well I will be honest about that, what I think it needs is a shift in taxation, not an overall increase in the burden of taxation, but if we taxed carbon instead of taxing income so much for example that would be a very good thing, we'd get more people into jobs, we'd also tackle the environmental crisis, so it's not rocket science...

This is a far cry from the Greens' general election manifesto that called for massive tax increases to close the deficit.

Whatever happened to "left wing plus"? Don't get me wrong here, I agree with the policy - but it is not a left wing one - the left much prefers taxing income to taxing consumption. I also agree with the question - if the Greens can't be honest about the sacrifices they expect, it is a bit rich to accuse other parties of being all talk and no trousers.

But more significantly, whatever happened to the Green Party being the last bastion of big tax and spend politics, appealing to the disaffected left? Is it really quite so shallow as to switch its whole politics from the hard left to the centre now it thinks there might be more mileage in attracting disaffected Lib Dems?

And has this monumental step really happened in an interview on a comedy news and politics show? Does the rest of the Green Party know anything about this? What do they think?

I am feeling a little stunned here.

Coalition FAQ

2011-02-01T11:11:00.004Z

Why are you in coalition with the Conservatives rather than Labour?

Throughout the election campaign, we said that in the event of a hung parliament that we would talk first to the party with more votes and seats, and we spelt out our four policy priorities on fair taxes, schools, the economy and political reform. It was also clear that the country would need a stable government willing to take the tough decisions to tackle the deficit. The Conservatives won more votes and seats than Labour, they were more willing than Labour to support our policy priorities, and they were more willing than Labour to take the necessary decisions to tackle the deficit. And because Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined did not have enough seats for a majority in parliament, a coalition with Labour would not have been stable.

Do the two parties now agree on everything?

No. The coalition is a constructive relationship between two parties with differing values and priorities but willing to work together in the national interest. It would be extremely difficult to make this work if ministers were publicly arguing with their own government. We saw how damaging the conflict between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was, and we are determined not to let our disagreements lead to rancour. However, we recognise that there have been problems of message and tone, and it has now been agreed that, in future, Lib Dem ministers will be freer to express distinctively Lib Dem views.

What influence are the Liberal Democrats having in government?

We are delivering on our four key policy priorities: reforming the tax system so that low earners pay less than they did under Labour; supporting the most disadvantaged children in schools through the ‘Pupil Premium’; investing in the green economy and reforming bank regulation; and fixing our broken political system with the right to recall MPs, fairer votes, and elections to the House of Lords.

We are engaged in all areas of government policy, with much of our manifesto being implemented, and the more extreme elements of the Conservative manifesto blocked. For example:

This government is rebalancing the tax system so that low earners pay less and high earners pay more. Rather than lower Income Tax for low and middle earners, under a Conservative government we would have seen Inheritance Tax cuts for the richest.
The coalition takes a moderate position on the European Union. It's likely that a Conservative government would have headed for a major confrontation with the EU, damaging the national interest.
A Conservative government would have shown less commitment to civil liberties, and no interest in constitutional reform. This government has strong programmes for rolling back Labour’s encroachment on our freedoms and making our democratic institutions fit for purpose.

Is there a coalition between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in Sheffield?

No. There are no Conservative councillors in Sheffield, and the Liberal Democrat councillors follow Liberal Democrat policy. They have a good working relationship with the coalition but are not part of it, and are not influenced by Conservatives. In Sheffield there is a simple choice between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Will the coalition parties merge?

No. Nor will there be any pact between the two parties at the next General Election. The two parties have not changed their values and priorities: we have simply found a way to work together. But there is no guarantee we will need or wish to work together, or be able to find so much common ground, after the next election. We would be just as willing to work constructively with Labour in the future if the circumstances were right.

22 Days in May - my reaction

2010-12-13T00:25:00.005Z

David Laws account of the coalition negotiations and his few days of ministerial office is a must read. Learn the difference between a traffic light coalition and a car crash coalition. Find out exactly where the hand of history was squeezing. David's account is most politically relevant for its description of how willing the Conservatives were to negotiate in good faith and compromise on policy, and how unwilling elements within the Labour party were to do the same. Shockingly the Labour negotiators didn't seem to agree among themselves, or have the authority to negotiate for the party. I'm shocked enough that they included Ed Balls at all - that really isn't trying to make a deal work is it?

Of course this account is disputed by Labour figures, who want to portray the outcome of the election as Lib Dem decision. (Along with the existence of the deficit.) Naturally I believe David Laws' account and Labour supporters believe the opposite. Of course it is true, as David says, that a deal with Labour would have been much harder to operate because of the parliamentary arithmetic. But you might have thought that sort of difficulty would inspire Labour to greater not lesser efforts than the Conservatives.

The credibility of Labour's version of history falls apart when we get to Appendix 5 of Laws book: Labour's 10th May policy proposals for a Lib Lab coalition. If this had been a serious attempt to reach agreement, if the Lib Dem negotiators had capriciously rejected it, then this document would be waved in the face of every Lib Dem MP, councillor and grassroots member up and down the country with the refrain "this is the radical, centre-left government you could have had". It would be in all the newspapers. Every government policy would be compared to it. You Lib Dems have chosen that when you could have chosen this. And surely enough Plaid and Irish MPs could be found to say the same.

Why has this not happened? Because the document is pathetic. All major disagreements on policy between the parties seem to be met, at best, with a review. Labour know they are right and their review will confirm it. The Lib Dems should be grateful for this sharing of wisdom.

If Ed Milliband has really been won round by the Lib Dem position on student fees, he might have said so on the 10th May when he could have done something about it. But no. There will be a national debate and a full consultation. We know what that means.

Oh you can have the pupil premium, so long as we can dictate what it gets spent on, because government knows best.

Yes, you can have a personal tax allowance of £10,000, wait for it, only for pensioners. Was that an attempt to be funny? Labour doubled income tax for many low earners when they abolished the 10p rate, and this is how they treat the opportunity to put right that injustice.

No. Labour knew the next government would be unpopular because of the state of the public finances. We've all seen Labour's joy at seeing both their opponents suffer the consequences of the £150bn per year fiscal turd they left behind. We've heard senior Labour figures brief against a Lib Lab deal and talk of 'principled opposition' - as if there were any principle that should cause a centre-left politician to reject a centre-left deal in favour of a centre-right one. Although to be fair, this government is better than the last one even by centre-left standards.

Laws talks of Labour's lost opportunities from 97 to 2010 to attempt to forge any kind of closer links with the Liberal Democrats, that might have paved the way for a different outcome, and of Gordon Brown's deathbed conversion to pluralism, at a minute past midnight.

I look at it differently. Labour have been in a coalition with the Conservatives, almost as along as they have existed. But it is the kind of coalition where you take turns enjoying untrammelled power rather than sharing power. They have been quite happy to maintain this closed political system despite the fact that it led to frequent Conservative governments that did more harm to the interests of people who Labour purport to protect, than Labour could ever undo when it was their turn. The party has every reason to be terrified that a different kind of politics might work better. Voters with Labour values on the other hand have every reason to welcome it.

Lefty firebrands demand a better deal for top earners

2010-11-24T12:42:00.003Z

I was on the radio this morning debating with Max Brophy of the Education Activists Network - the group linked to the Millbank incident. While iPlayer lasts you can find it here, starting 1h05mins in.

As always it is a shame I didn't get to respond to some of Max's points directly. The fairly preposterous line that there is an ideological attack on the public sector - when the share of national income spent by the government is simply returning to the level it was in 2006. And it is a little bizarre that something called the Education Action Network is rioting, when education is relatively unscathed in the adjustment this country is making to the fact that it has a great deal less money to spend.

But my main point, which I almost managed to get across is this. While clearly we are in a coalition, and in no position to deliver on our original policy, it is worth noting that student debts are becoming very undebtlike indeed. There is no commercial loan you could take out that you would be let off altogether if your earnings were below £21000. For people on these incomes, there are essentially no fees and free education, before we even consider the new bursaries and maintenance provision. This is a big improvement on the status quo. The fees pledge is honoured, and in spades, for low earners. They pay no fees, nothing.

For people on middle incomes, repayments will be limited by income, and not by the size of the debt, which therefore becomes a notional debt not a real one. Payments defined and limited by income are usually called taxes, and this differs from a graduate tax in name only. Of course a pure graduate tax would keep the pledge. If this policy breaks the pledge for middle earners, it does so entirely because of what the payments are called. Toby Foster, the host, asked if the protest was really all about semantics, and it almost is.

But not quite. There are still the top earners - the top third or so - those who will end up paying £6000 fees, or in exceptional cases £9000. That's the full cost of their education in the chalk and talk subjects, and a little less in the more expensive subjects. These are the people we have let down in compromising on fees. So effectively what leftwing firebrand Max was demanding was a better deal for top earners. It's a funny old world isn't it.

Young's Gaffe

2010-11-19T15:34:00.004Z

Lord Young is in trouble and has apologised for a gaffe stating that most people have never had it so good.

Specifically, if you have a mortgage and you still have a job, then with interest rates lower than ever, you have more money to spend that you did in normal economic times.

There are two big problems here. One is that "a job and a mortgage" accounts for a minority of households. So the remark, while true of the hypothetical middle-Englander Young probably had in mind, is not true of "most people".

The second is more telling. There seems to be something implicit in ever saying "most people" that pushes people's irrational tribal-brain buttons. Because if most people are X and a minority are Y, are you saying, and am I hearing that X matters and Y doesn't?

If, in a democracy, you say most people want better railways, that kinda suggests that support for better railways matters politically, and democratic governments ought to represent that interest group.

On the other hand if you say that most people want a heterosexual relationship, that doesn't imply any kind of political demand for priority or favour for heterosexuals from the government. Or does it? Why did you bring up the question of what kinds of relationships people want? Is it a dog-whistle? Are you framing some question as straight v gay?

Young's remarks, we are told, are insensitive to those who have lost their jobs, or fear they will. Is this really the problem? The government's institutions for dealing with unemployed people show total crass disregard for their feelings and always have done. Having been entirely forgotten about by some Lord is probably something of a mercy by contrast.

No, the problem here is the politics of framing an analysis in terms of, say the better off 60% versus the worse off 40%. It might not even be intended, but those are the buttons that are pushed. And many - particularly on the left, and the far right - see politics entirely as an exercise in identifying or creating, promoting and exploiting tribal divisions in society. They get very upset if you pick the wrong dividing line to exploit. I get upset even if you pick the right dividing line. Politics should not be about dividing people into groups, but respecting them as individuals.

And it is a fact of recessions that most of the pain falls on relatively few people. Surely it is more insensitive to deny this than to mention it.

The dawn of a new kind of politics?

2010-09-30T13:45:00.006+01:00

So I had a bit of fun the other day with Ed Milliband's speech, but there is much in there to be welcomed. In particular, rather than attacking the Liberal Democrats - Labour's favourite pasttime for the last few months - he almost sounded like one of us at times.

Let’s be honest, politics isn’t working.
People have lost faith in politicians and politics.

And trust is gone.

Politics is broken.

Its practice, its reputation and its institutions.

I’m in it and even I sometimes find it depressing.

This generation has a chance - and a huge responsibility - to change our politics. We must seize it and meet the challenge.

So we need to reform our House of Commons and I support changing our voting system and will vote Yes in the referendum on AV.

Yes we need to finally elect the House of Lords after talking about it for a hundred years.

Yes we need more decisions to be made locally, with local democracy free of some of the constraints we have placed on it in the past and frankly free of an attitude which has looked down its nose at the work local government does.

This could easily be from one of Nick Clegg's speeches.

Let’s be honest, changing our institutions won’t be enough to restore trust on its own.
Look in the end, it’s politicians who have to change.
We've got to reject the old ways of doing politics.

...

Some of the political figures in history who I admire most are Keynes, Lloyd George, Beveridge, who were not members of the Labour Party.

Frankly, the political establishment too often conducts debate in a way that insults the intelligence of the public.

We must change this for the good of the country.

I will be a responsible Leader of the Opposition.

What does that mean?

When I disagree with the government, as on the deficit, I will say so loud

and clear and I will take the argument to them.

But when Ken Clarke says we need to look at short sentences in prison

because of high re-offending rates, I’m not going to say he’s soft on crime.

When Theresa May says we should review stop and search powers, I’m not going to say she is soft on terrorism.

I tell you this conference, this new generation must find a new way of conducting politics.

If the rest of the party listens, this represents the most radical change of direction since the New Labour project. New Labour was defined as much by its posturing - and outdoing the Conservatives - on crime, on terror, on throwing away our hard-won civil liberties, as by anything else. New Labour since the election has done nothing but opposition for its own sake - if only because it was easy and they lacked a leader who might have the authority to do anything more difficult.

Of course there are dangers to our party if Labour were suddenly to agree with us too much, but it is still something to welcome. That we have comprehensively won the arguments on civil liberties, crime, Iraq, political reform and the culture of political debate, is a huge cause for celebration.

I hope Ed can take his party with him. It will be very difficult to engage in constructive opposition, particularly on the deficit. As John Maynard Keynes famously said:

"A public sector deficit of 10% of GDP should be halved in 4 years not in 3."

...or something like that. This means the honest opposition to every cut is either: a) we would do this same cut 6 months or a year later, or b) we would cut somthing else or raise a tax instead, with specifics.

But I am optmistic. I think there is a demand for a better kind of politics. Politicians are so much more beholden to the media these days. We're not even allowed to be old - Ming Campbell was destroyed for that crime - lest the pecking order between journalists and politicians might become less clear. We live or die by their praises or damnation, and they are untouchable. But judging by the way we conduct politics, we deserve no better.

Of course the media's desire for a good scrap has often shut down serious debate of the issues, and this is not going away. I am talking about how politics now responds to the situation we have. Playing the infantile games - spin, smear, and opposition for its own sake - has given some quick wins and will continue to do so. But being more grown up will better serve us, will be truer to the passions that brought us into politics - to make the world a better place - freedom and fairness.

It is not easy to leap first into a more grown-up kind of politics, but with the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives already co-operating, Labour need only leap last. Good luck.

That Ed Milliband speech in full

2010-09-28T15:21:00.001+01:00

In a big scoop for the Extra Bold Blog, I have obtained an early draft of Ed Milliband's speech.

For copyright reasons, I won't release this until after the actual speech has been delivered.

[check against delivery]

Friends, comrades, it is 72 hours since I became leader of this party. I want to say how incredibly honoured I am that you have chosen me over my brother to lead our party. David that'll teach you to nationalise my train set.

And let me pay tribute to two colleagues who are standing down. Alasdair Darling: you kept cool while Mandelson and Brown were overriding you. And Jack Straw you were always good as the butt of my unfunny jokes. Like this one.

The gift my parents gave to me and David is what I want for every child in this country: an indoctrination into the revolutionary road to socialism.

We have a responsibility to leave this world in a better state than we found it, except when it comes to public debt.

Freedom and opportunity are precious gifts. This is something I learned not to be true from my dad's books.

But lets face facts we had a bad result. Every day out of power is one where we can blame the coalition for the consequences of our deficit. So lets resolve to be back in power when the deficit has been removed, er, hopefully just 5 years.

Remember the spirit of 1997. But by the end of our time in office we had lost our way. Tony and Gordon took on conventional wisdom and lost. Let's do that again.

The old way of thinking said that public services would always be second class. And they still are. I'm proud of, er, something. But we saved the National Health Service, apparently.

The old thinking was that the world was too big and this country too small to make a difference. But look at our wars!

So Tony and Gordon took on established institutions until they became them.

But we also have to understand where we went wrong. How did we lose 5 million votes? A party taking on old thinking became trapped by its own dogmas. We became friends of the city, insufficiently racist on immigration, corrupted in the expenses scandal, and piling the debt on students.

But this week we embark on the journey back to thinking. We don't know all the answers yet. Dis generation wants to rule the nation with version. This generation wants to change our foreign policy so that we don't always start wars when we have the chance.

As we emerge from the global economic crisis we need to reduce the deficit. We are in no position to oppose what the coalition does because we would have had to do much the same. The fiscal credibility we earned in 1997 was hard won, and Ed Balls has being doing his best to throw away the last shreds of it.

But I'm now going to pretend I didn't say any of that, and have a go at all the cuts we would have had to have done anyway.

This government has no 5 year plan for growth, and no 5 year economic plan is no way to a planned economy of any kind.

I have a much bigger vision - to emerge from the financial crisis learning to listen to Vince Cable next time.

I want our businesses to benefit from the globalised economy. But not if it means hiring foreigners. Except people like my dad. We didn't listen on the doorstep to complaints about immigration. [camera cuts to some black people in the audience]

We want to win an argument about the danger the coalition government poses to our party. So let's have no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of strike action. Labour would have had to do the same. In case that sounds evil, I'll talk a bit about caring for children.

This is one of the hardest issues for our party - but those who can work should do so. Reforming our benefits system must not be about stereotyping everyone out of work, like it was under Labour, but a genuine plan to make sure those in need are protected, and those who can work do so, like under the coalition.

We are a generation that yearns for things business cannot provide - green spaces and family. We were right to introduce markets, but naive about them. We shouldn't have closed all the post offices. We shouldn't have put all those pubs out of business with the smoking ban.

We stand for these things not because we are social conservatives, but because we are just conservatives.

Family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family.

So as we rebuild our economy, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family.

But government can itself become a vested interest. I know the value of a good school, and I know that many parents are frustrated that they don't have them. But we wouldn't let them set up their own schools.

I believe individual freedom and liberty matter and should never be given away lightly. [Do I need to duck for cover at this point? Ed] Locking up innocent people undermined the good things we did like the database state.

We, me and my brother are the new generation. And we need new thinking in foreign policy.

Troops, troops, troops, troops, troops, troops, troops, troops, troops, troops, troops.

I've got to be honest with you about Iraq. Iraq divided our country. I'll say it divided our party, although we didn't show it at the time. But we were wrong.

Politics is basically broken. We have a huge responsibility to reform it. I support changing the voting system and will vote yes on AV. And we need to elect the house of lords. And we need more decisions to be made locally. I am so happy we have a government that understands all this unlike the last lot.

Hooray for Red Ken being our candidate for London Mayor. We can be the Red brothers. Sorry David.

Wisdom is not the preserve of any one party. Keynes, Lloyd-George and Beveridge are among my heroes. When Ken Clarke wants to review short sentences, I won't call him soft on crime, sorry Jack. Let's have a more grown up kind of politics. [Do make sure this early draft of the speech isn't leaked.]

We are the optimists, the new generation, the optimists and the new generation. Hooray for us.

What's wrong with the electoral college?

2010-09-26T13:29:00.000+01:00

So Ed Milliband has been elected Labour leader, winning the unions big, and losing the members and MPs. Are the system and result wrong in some way? Does it matter that not all votes are equal? I don't think so.

There's nothing inherently unreasonable about having a ballot just of MPs or just of members, or just of some wider constituency, like an open primary. So what can be wrong with a heterogenous compromise between these homogenous ballots?

And yes, there is something wrong with representing the interests of unionised workers over and above everybody else - lower paid non-unionised workers, the unemployed, the self-employed, etc - but it is a wrong that is at the core of the Labour party identity. If the Conservatives had an electoral college with such a wider constituency, it would include all the already privileged and powerful people. Well perhaps not all of them - they might make a point of leaving out Trades Union bosses.

And if the Liberal Democrats had an electoral college including non-members, it would include everybody, or at least all self-identified supporters, reflecting our belief in not dividing people up arbitrarily by class or some other aspect of identity.

And we're not so far off an electoral college. Nick Clegg had the support of many more MPs than Chris Huhne, and this fact alone doubtless influenced some members to support him. And a leader should enjoy the support of MPs, so perhaps this could be recognised in the ballot rather than relying on the power of endorsement. On the other hand MPs are perhaps more likely to back the winner, so a ban on endorsements would be a good complement to an MPs section in an electoral college. And for deputy leader MPs vote and we don't. And it's not an outrage.

The Conservatives also have something like an electoral college, but cleverly have the MPs reducing the contenders to 2, and then the members making the final choice. I say cleverly, because this process is designed to enjoy all the benefits of AV while looking as little as possible like it.

Ah yes, AV. Did I mention that Ed Milliband only won on transfers, and that David was leading not only on first preferences but in every round but the last one. But of course supporters of Diane Abbot and Andy Burnham deserve to have some say in the final outcome. It's not a gerrymander to let them transfer their votes to one of the Millibands. Ed had more support than David in the electoral college as specified, and the FPTP result would have been a travesty.

So it is good to see the importance of transfers in proving the winner is better supported than the runner-up, is not just supported, but taken for granted by the Labour Party. Amen to that.

Mediocrity in the shadow of a tyrant

2010-09-24T13:40:00.002+01:00

Mike Smithson has called it for Mr Ed (Milliblair). Charlotte Gore is relieved because he is a clear loser.Much like the other 4.

But why haven't Labour got somebody with a bit more about them? It reminded me of the post-Thatcher years in the Conservative party. John Major rose without trace. William Hague was known only for being a pompous schoolboy. IDS - well I can't think of anything to say about him. And each time they rejected better-known party heavyweights.

Strong leaders like Thatcher and Blair it seems instinctively create the wrong environment for the nurturing of their successors. The same goes for their contemperaneous rivals, the Browns and Heseltines.

So, again, hooray for coalition. With genuine debate happening for once behind the mask of collective responsibility, more than one politician is at last thinking more about how best to govern, rather than just about how best to get to the top. Cameron's position is much weaker, and the Conservatives will be better off for it. Ditto Clegg and the Lib Dems.

As for Labour, I will reserve judgement a little longer. Will their new leader have a vision beyond "more borrowing"- which is all the party seems to stand for at the moment. I doubt it.

Labour Campaign for Deeper Cuts

2010-07-29T19:30:00.001+01:00

Yes you read that right. With the Labour leadership contenders still in deficit denial. With Ed Balls blaming Darling for losing the election over his (limited) honesty in admitting the extent of cuts that would be necessary, it is worth reminding ourselves what borrowing means.

The longer we take to balance the budget, the more money is borrowed on the way, and the bigger the national debt we end up with. A bigger national debt means more spending on interest instead of public services. So if your policy leads to a bigger debt than the other lot, the in the long run you are the attacker not the defender of public services.

Now this is an "all other things being equal" kind of argument. A bigger debt might be worth suffering if it came with a sustained boost in economic growth. But growth was already 1.1% in the last quarter. To practise deficit denial today is not to argue for a fiscal stimulus during a recession, but for heavy borrowing through much of the economic cycle.

The tragedy is the New Labour came to power in 1997 on a manifesto of fiscal prudence in the face of a Conservative government that was borrowing during boom times. (Borrowing heavily we might have said, but peanuts compared to today's borrowing.) It was a good policy, and a tragedy that they forgot it after a term and a half.

Now Labour expect another government to take the hit of raising taxes to pay for their splurge of public spending. Any other government would be within its rights to cancel the lot rather than raise taxes - and an ideologically small state government would cancel it all, and some, and cut taxes. That isn't happening. Taxes are going up so that some of the unpaid for spending can be maintained, and by 2015 there will still be higher spending than there was in the Blair years.

What's more after decades of flip flopping between Labour stealth taxes on everyone (particularly the poor), and Tory tax cuts for the better off, we are finally seeing movement on the personal allowance, shifting a little of the burden away from low earners. Labour never did anything like that. Remeber the 10p tax rate? However much the Labour leadership candidates froth about public services and progressive values, we know them by their deeds.

And Labour's cuts begin

2010-06-22T03:04:00.003+01:00

Yes Labour cuts. These cuts were inevitable when Labour spent all of this government's money during the last government. Tax rises are also Labour's fault - they have already spent all the money any new taxes will raise.

Yet to hear them, you'd think this was all unnecessary. We could keep spending. Deficits don't matter. Cuts are ideological. Well maybe they are for some, but it is hardly a criticism you can make when you have £44bn of cuts in your own fiscal plans.

To be clear, Labour do not have a leg to stand on when they criticise the first £44bn of cuts. Their objections are cynical duplicitous cant.

And if £44bn were the limit of their ambition for deficit reduction, they would be avoiding some cuts now for much greater cuts in the future as debt continues to balloon.

Some "opponents of cuts" will refer to Krugman, as if to say "look, borrowing is OK". If you are one of these, I ask you this: how much borrowing is OK? Why bother collecting taxes at all? Where does Krugman say that borrowing 10% of GDP year on year is a good idea? If we previously thought that a deficit of 2% of GDP were sustainable, then Krugman might convince us that 3% or 4% would be OK. Fine. All parties went into the election planning merely to halve the deficit, more or less, anyway.

The next defence is that huge reckless spending was necessary to maintain the economy at a time of crisis. Well yes and no. The need to spend money wisely was as great as ever, but I agree that the cuts shouldn't have started in earnest in 2008 or 2009. The problem is that Labour had already abandoned prudence and the golden rule, and was already borrowing over £80bn in 2008/9. Prudence in the good years would have left a lot more room for fiscal expansion during the banking crisis without leaving such a massive debt.

The last gasp defence is about the timing. Make us prudent, Lord, but not today. But the fact is that economic data is never clear or timely enough for the best timing of a fiscal change to be known with any certainty. All we can do is eschew dogma and respond as best we can to the economic data we have. But why do that when there is a rallying cry of "stop the cuts" to be sounded?

Is this sort of cynical opportunist politics inevitable? Won't governments always spend before an election because they might not have the chance afterwards? And won't this always condemn us to higher debt than we might rationally incur?

Well no, there is good news. The evidence suggests that sounder public finances do seem to be a consequence of (not just our) coalition government. Of course this makes sense. If there are two or more parties in a government, it is more likely that one of them will be in the next government, and will therefore be opposed to a scorched earth policy today. Three cheers for the new politics.

Government can do more harm than good

2010-05-11T16:17:00.002+01:00

There's something fanciful about protests coming from Labour sympathisers about a possible deal with the Tories, and vice versa. Labour and the Conservatives have for decades conspired to keep each other in power - untrammelled power - about half the time. They do this by maintaining an electoral system that frequently hands absolute power to their supposed opponents on a minority of the vote.

But what goes around comes around, doesn't it? There is a quid pro quo for Labour and the Tories isn't there? No. Your co-conspirator-opponent can always do more harm in government than you can make up for when you are in government. The Tories can make a complete hash of privatising the railways, and it is beyond Labour's power to fix it. Labour can spend so wildly there is a deficit of £170bn. Could the Tories as easily generate a £170bn surplus? This is not just a pendulum swinging, it is actually, slowly, dragging the country backwards.

It is as if I were happy to lend my Ferrari to my wildly reckless neighbour, half the time, if in return he would lend his Aston Martin to my similarly reckless self.

It would not be so bad if our constitution had rudimentary checks and balances, if we had reasonable separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary, but here too we are still in the Dark Ages. Successive governments feel the need so badly to be "strong" to overturn the harm done by their predecessors, that they give their successors the power to do it all over again. Spare us more strong government.

One might almost expect the Tories to understand this when they start talking about small government and the big society. Small government should imply weak government and strong government is necessarily big government. But they don't.

Three cheers and three boos for Nick Clegg

2010-05-01T13:03:00.002+01:00

The press and the impartial BBC were wetting themselves with excitement yesterday at the boos mixed in with the welcome applause for Nick Clegg from the Crucible snooker crowd.

See this just proves, they might have said, that the Liberal Democrats don't enjoy support from 100% of voters.

What we really want to see, they might have said, is party leaders speaking only to tame hand-picked audiences, like the other two do all the time.

The fact that there is any surprise at a party leader receiving a mixture of boos and applause just shows how rarely they face real audiences. Kudos to Nick for having the gumption. I wonder if either of the other party leaders would dare.

And it was all applause at the end.

Bigotgate: In pictures

2010-04-28T18:50:00.002+01:00

Not everybody who is concerned about immigration is a bigot. This may seem an easy point to grasp, but to help I offer this illustration

In reality there is a continuum of concern and relaxedness, but we can take some moderate point on that scale to define the boundary of the green set.

Now it can be (and is) argued, particularly by people who are relaxed about immigration that by being concerned about it - going in the green circle - you are allying yourself with the bigots - blue circle. This is an effective argument for many people because it pushes buttons in the brain relating to tribal instincts not to ally with the enemy. The consequences of using this sort of argument is that it squeezes the green space in the above diagram, driving people who are swayed either out of the green circle or into the blue one. That is to say, it polarizes opinion. This, then is a very double-edged tactic.

I think it is high time we all did more to depolarize this issue, which in turn would make more room to listen to people's genuine concerns and preferences - whether justified by the facts or based on tabloid hysteria - and less room for the nazis.

Update: I should have mentioned that Mrs Duffy complained that "you can't talk about immigration". This is absurd - everybody is talking about it, including Mrs Duffy. However the sense that you shouldn't talk about it is real, and is a direct consequence of the squeeze on the green circle that I discussed above. The squeeze is intended to shrink the green circle by creating this sort of discomfort. Rather than being snotty about Mrs Duffy's complaint, we should recognise that she is feeling, but quite reasonably resisting, this divisive argument.

...

We can also show the set of lifelong Labour voters on the diagram.

Mr Brown and Mrs Duffy as far as we know both lie in the brown area - the overlap of the red and green circles. Given therefore their proximity, it is a disgrace for either to damn the other. This will cost Gordon Brown, and rightly so.

There you have it. But let's have one more picture.

Hung parliament: Markets don't care after all

2010-04-19T10:24:00.005+01:00

I almost feel sorry for the forces of Labservatism. The more they U-turn from #iagreewithnick, into attacking with all guns blazing, the more they reveal themselves to be utterly shallow and opportunistic. The best they could probably do is take the Lib Dem phenomenon on the chin and carry on as normal. But psychology demands otherwise.

Anyway I took a look at the FTSE 100 this morning to see what effect the increased odds of a hung parliament might have on share prices when markets open, after all the excellent polls of the weekend. This is what I saw.

OMG shares have fallen back to last Monday's prices. If this is "markets fear a hung parliament" it is a magnitude of fear that is indistinguishable from background noise. The Tories and their pet press are just scaremongering of course.

Greenpartywatch: the manifesto

2010-04-17T01:15:00.006+01:00

Recently I blogged on the difficulty Greens have reconciling their disdain for economic activity with their policies on public services that seem to involve unlimited public spending. I concluded that by failing to support economic growth, the Greens would have to be, before too long, the biggest cutters of public services of all.

Their manifesto has now been published, so let's see if it challenges what I said.

In contrast, the Green Party is open about what we would cut, what we would defend, and about the fact that we need to raise taxation from 36 per cent of GDP in 2009–10 to around 45 per cent in 2013. This would halve the gap between Government expenditure and revenues by 2013–14 (as the Labour Government proposes) and progressively close the gap thereafter.

Wow. It's different, I'll give them credit for that. Increasing taxes overall by 20% is courageous, minister. Is it true that this would halve the gap between expenditure and revenues? Yes, if economic growth happens as forecast. Government forecasts, remember, rely on future increases in tax revenues due to economic growth.

But would that growth still happen under the Greens plan? Or would the 20% tax hike dampen it? Would the Greens' disdain for growth kill it off altogether before they even implement any policies? Is in fact a 20% tax hike designed to reduce growth? That would make some sense in a parallel universe of strange priorities.

And even if growth was unaffected, is this the right idea?

Unlike Labour, we would not focus on encouraging consumption but protect public services, spend on investment in the new green economy and create greater quality. Labour’s approach will sow the seeds of future crises by encouraging crippling debt and unsustainable consumption.

What seems to be said here is that money in your pocket is consumption and therefore bad, whereas public spending brings equality and is therefore good. And yet this consumption, we commit with the lucre in our pockets, is how we feed, clothe, and house ourselves. A tough challenge for millions of hard working people, who would pay more taxes under the Greens, however much they aim the bulk of their tax rises at the better off.

It's an understandable position. The Greens, like all parties, are pretty much middle class, and don't really get this, just as Paxo wasn't impressed at a tax cut of £300 for somebody on £8000 under Lib Dem policies.

And a lot of people on £8-20,000 don't use a lot of public services, face high food and fuel bills, can't afford housing, and aren't getting an awful lot for the taxes they pay. Equality through public spending can ring very hollow. The problem is a lack of consumption.

Now let's look at a few of these new taxes:

End the zero-rating of VAT on new dwellings, putting them on a level with conversions and renovations of existing dwellings, raising £5bn in 2010 and £7.5bn by 2013.

Oh, but won't this reduce the supply of housing when we could do with more housing really? (Although there is a policy to increase social housing.)

No longer offer zero VAT rating to financial services and betting duties, which are of limited value to the real economy, raising £5.6bn by 2013.

Gradually increase alcohol and tobacco taxes by about 50% to match anticipated increases in expenditures on the NHS, raising £1.4bn in 2010 rising to £5.6bn by 2013.

Ouch. Gambling, smoking and drinking all to be hammered. Won't the effect of this be just a tiny bit regressive? Not that the Greens are joyless puritans or anything.

Levy eco-taxes on non-renewables or pollutants, in particular pesticides, organo-chlorines, nitrogen and artificial fertilisers and phosphates. [amount not specified]

Tax on food. Who'll that hit most? Not all of these things are even big environmental problems.

I've not added up all the other tax increases but you can probably guess the sort of thing. I dare say the numbers add up to the promised(!) increased tax take, but ignore the economic impacts of all these extra taxes.

So was I justified in saying the greens would be the biggest public service cutters of all? Certainly if my reading of the economic chicken entrails is correct - and if it isn't the Greens should come back and fully explain their attitude to economic growth and its role in deficit reduction. And even if not they may be something even worse - the biggest ever cutters of consumption at all earnings levels.

That's not to say the manifesto is all bad. Some of the eco-taxes hit important environmental problems, and some of the extra public spending would be useful to many people. On the other hand a lot of it is more based on the Greens' peculiar sense of what is virtuous than any concrete environmental or social impact.

They are making a strong pitch for the hard left tax-and-spend vote. I expect this to fall flat because they do not understand the aspirations of the left, for working people to earn more, not less. Greens celebrate that wind creates many times more jobs per TWh/yr than other similarly priced forms of energy. That's almost equivalent to celebrating that those jobs are much lower paid. And the idea of economic progress through abandoning labour-saving technology would end with us all as dirt poor peasants. Would we peasants then still enjoy great public services? Nope.

Greenpartywatch: Supporting the stabbing industry

2010-03-19T09:55:00.005Z

Caroline Lucas was on Question Time yesterday, taking a fairly straightforward pro-Union line on the BA strike. It can be seen here on iplayer, starting about 13 minutes in (until the next episode replaces it).

"...I deeply regret that the dispute has been allowed to escalate to such a point that we are now looking at a strike..."

Is this the same Caroline Lucas, who considers flying to be as bad as stabbing? (Yes it is.)

This raises the obvious question - why would you not want the stabbing industry to be hit by strike action?

As I said on Twitter at the time. "Lucas pretends to back the workers though she would really have them all out of a job. #bbcqt" (Thanks for the retweet @bbcquestiontime). I got a response to this suggesting that under the Greens, there would be jobs for these cabin crews on the railways. But it is hardly supporting the workers to suggest that you can just get another job! That is basically supporting the management: take what you're offered or clear off.

This reveals what is probably the most fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Green Party's thinking these days. One day they try to put the environment first: flying is evil, economic growth is wrong, etc. On another day they are pro-Labour (!), pro-Union, pro-worker, socialist, "defending jobs", "avoid the double-dip recession".

So one day it is make do and be happy with less. The next day it is supporting one group or another demanding more for their members, even if those members are engaged in trashing the planet.

One day it is "prosperity without growth". The next it is opposing cuts to public services. Yet without growth to reduce the deficit, cuts to public services will have to be so huge, it would position the Greens way to the right of the Tories. Yes, the Greens would be the biggest public service cutters of all.

I wrote earlier about the Green New Deal policy of the Green Party which becomes a little preposterous when you notice that they haven't agreed or can't say whether they want the economy to grow or not.

There may yet be some merit in either of the Green Party's two faces, but they had really ought to pick one and run with it if they want to make any sense. Socialism or the environment -they're not compatible.

Change that works for you: Building a fairer Britain

2010-03-17T23:12:00.002Z

What does it mean? Change that works for you. There have been grumblings over this choice of slogan - the Liberator has even printed on its front page 'change that offends no one - building a blander Britain'. But I ask you, when did you last meet a slogan you did like? The liberator demands clear gold water, but doesn't offer an alternative slogan. What could a party say to clearly and immediately distinguish itself from its rivals? Property is theft? Greed is good? There is no such thing as society? No taxation without representation? Deutschland uber Alles? Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité? But liberté is so much apple pie these days, so bland; everybody says they support it.

The problem with the slogan "change that works for you - building a fairer Britain" is that it needs to be explained in terms of the substance behind it, that is the 4 steps to a fairer Britain that the Liberal Democrats are campaigning on. Those 4 steps do represent change that works for you, not just for the few, and are a path to a fairer Britain.

They are fair taxes - a personal allowance of £10,000 paid for by closing loopholes at the top and a mansion tax. Not the Tory policy of tax cuts for millionaires, but tax cuts for millions. For generations, tax cuts under Labour and Conservative have benefited the better off, and tax rises have hit everyone. This is a radical policy, Messrs Liberator, which at any other time would have had the rich screaming about incentives - as if incentives didn't work for everyone else.

A fair start for children - extra money for schools that take on disadvantaged children, to begin to give some of the same chances in life to children from all backgrounds that are currently the preserve of the better schools in the nicer areas.

Vince Cable - reforming the banks - the other parties are shying away from this - a credible plan to tackle the deficit as the economy improves - and investment in the green jobs of the future.

Political reform - it is not our society that is broken, but our political system. The political system has lost the confidence of the people, and they're not wrong. Get rid of big money and safe seats. A freedom bill and real decentralisation. The other parties have no stomach for a fraction what is necessary.

This is change that works for you, and they are steps to a fairer Britain.

Sure the Tory slogan has the word change. They want us to think that they are Barack Obama. But of course Obama is a Liberal and a Democrat. And where is their change? And who is it for?

Sure the Labour slogan has the word fairness. But they've been in government for what seems like 30 years, and where is this fairness?

So maybe it sucks to have a slogan that must be explained. At least - unlike the other parties - we have one that can be explained.

Libertarian tropes #2: The Homestead Principle

2010-03-03T22:40:00.001Z

It's been a while since I promised a demolition of libertarianism in a handful of blog posts. Sorry about that.

I hesitate a little now because, as it stands, the homestead principle (wiki) - that ownership of unowned land is properly initiated by working that land - is probably the best and most honest way ever of initiating ownership of something previously unowned. Yet this is only because all the other ways are crimes against humanity. Proudhon had a point when he said that "property is theft". Whoever first owned or enclosed a piece of land arbitrarily restricted the right - the liberty - of others to walk across it and use it.

Yet property rights are vital to our prosperity. Societies that don't respect property are dirt-poor. Counter-intuitively, failing to recognise property rights doesn't enrich the poor at the expense of the rich. It enriches only gangsters and warlords at the expense of everybody else.

So doesn't this mean that we need a kind of founding principle of property, and that the homestead principle is good because it is the best of these? No. Property is justified by its consequences, not by some fiction. Unfortunately there is a breed of libertarian that cannot admit that western governments ever legislate in the common good, even by accident, and therefore cannot give credit where it is due.

And it is worth adding that the homestead principle is a lot more useless than it appears. If there were a lot of unoccupied land lying around, it would have some value, but there isn't. And more to the point there wasn't during the spiritual home of the libertarian: the settlement of the American West. The previous occupants were being killed. We are told the "indians" didn't deserve the land because they had no concept of property, or something. No it doesn't make sense.

But where it gets ugly is when this "principle", this triumph of dogma over real life consequences for people, is used to justify an absolutist and all-encompassing view of property that would crush individual liberty. How so? Whenever there is a conflict between your freedom and mine, the libertarian will say "whose property is it?" So every public space must be privatised, so that the owner may make the rules. If we are in conflict over some abstract thing that is not property then that thing must become property, so that disputes over it may be resolved. Every homesteader is a tyrant in their own domain and an abject slave in any other. It could work, I suppose, if we were never to deal with other human beings.

And let's not forget that while homesteading may be a pragmatic initiation of property claims, it certainly isn't a fair one. Those at the front of the queue get land and those at the back don't. The landless classes would be subject to the arbitrary rules of others wherever they go, because everywhere belongs to somebody else. Libertarians argue that prudent entrepreneurs would be benevolent on their land to attract labour; landlords, to attract tenants, etc, but this is wishful thinking.

It is quite breathtaking that anybody dares call this doctrine libertarian. It is an assault on the rights and freedoms of workers, tenants and anybody who spends time on land they don't own. This is in the name of property, justified by the homestead principle, justified by self-ownership. Yes you read that right. Self-ownership is used to justify virtual slavery.

Back in the real world, where landlords and employers don't always feel the need to be benevolent, property rights are more limited - they are balanced against human rights. But this is not a scandal: property, remember, is a useful invented concept. But it is something we rightly legislate to protect because to do so serves the common good. Ditto human rights, the natural environment, voting, and most other things that libertarians scoff at. Counting a grotesque of one as a trump card over the others is just irrational.

An Enemy of the People

2010-02-26T15:45:00.001Z

Spolier alert

The Crucible Theatre has re-opened with a production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, a battle between truth, freedom and justice on the one hand, and politics, the media and the solid majority of public opinion on the other.

Dr Stockman knows he is right - he has the evidence, and initially he has supporters, but when the cost to the town in money and reputation is understood his supporters desert him. Driven close to madness by his unwillingness to deny the truth in the face of public opinion and financial ruin, he makes what he calls a remarkable - and to our ears disturbing - discovery. A society that would lie to protect its interests is utterly rotten. The common man, the radical press and the political establishment are not the backbone of society but its chief ill. They would suffocate superior free-thinking people like himself. Were they to succeed in this suppression of their moral superiors, they would deserve to be exterminated: the whole town, the whole country if necessary. And yes there was a bit of dalek voice for this line.

Yes, the fighter for truth and justice (in this adaptation, if not in Arthur Miller's) is not just called an enemy of the people by the authorities, he really is one. And perhaps the people deserve to have enemies such as him.

The majority is not always right. (Stockman says 'never right'). And while Stockman's descent into quasi-fascist elitism is disturbing, it is perhaps a salutory reminder that if we regard democracy merely as a device for fulfilling our desires, without regard to truth or justice as higher authorities, then we will deserve to have enemies like Stockman. Instead, bringers of uncomfortable news, back up by evidence, should be respected not vilified.

I've not touched on the bumbling and self-importance of the mayor, or the faux radicalism of the press, but both are frighteningly relevant comments on our society, for a play written in 1882.

Do we still shoot the messenger today? I fully expect many crusaders for truth to identify with Stockman, even if most of them actually have their facts wrong - the pattern is much the same. I'm sure the chiropractics and homoeopaths are smarting a little at the moment. Global warming deniers and global warming hysterics are widely ridiculed.

But mostly we ignore uncomfortable truths. Proportionate science-based action on climate change just isn't getting off the ground. Drug policy seems determined (to fail) to build compelling myths to fight the drug culture.

So while we still prefer to live in denial, since Ibsen's time we have introduced the new crime of not really caring what is true and what is not. Stockman would I think have been even more horrified at that.

An Enemy of the People runs until 20th March 2010.

Is the bag for life an improvement?

2010-02-13T22:24:00.000Z

I've been wondering for some time whether the 'bag for life' that you can buy from many retailers is, environmentally speaking, actually an improvement on the disposable bag. This would seem to depend on how they are actually used - as opposed to the intention that they will actually be used 'for life'.

Rather than guesstimate away as usual, I thought I would be a little more scientific and try to gather some evidence. So please fill in my survey: 5 quick questions on your baggage habits.

Tories beg for more recession

2010-01-27T16:06:00.000Z

What makes my day is the sweet sound of Tory fury on the economy. It may only be 0.001% growth, but it is too early dammit. "We are badly prepared for recovery" grimaces Osborne. Too right you are, the last thing you want is any recovery before the election.

Now Osborne may have a point that this government deserves no credit. Governments don't fix recessions, they sit them out. It wasn't exactly a grand achievement of Brown to inject a fiscal stimulus - it is no hardship for a government to spend all of the next government's money as well as your own. It is some hardship for the rest of us of course, carrying that extra debt, but that has to be balanced against the benefits of the stimulus.

There is a fine economic judgement to the question of how much a government should borrow during a recession to keep the economy going. But this is swamped by the crude political judgement - spend the money now on Labour priorities: ID cards, dodgy IT, tax credit fiascos, harassing photographers, etc, so there is less for the Tories to spend later on their political priorities: rich, married, dead people.

Let's face it, the public sector deficit is breathtaking, and Labour is to blame. Gordon Brown way before the credit crunch had become less like, er, Gordon "prudence" Brown and more like Ken Clarke. The Tories are quite justifiably furious about it, as we all should be. But they'd rather we didn't think too hard about the difference between the state of the public finances and the state of the economy.

New Labour New Highs

2009-11-03T00:12:00.002Z

In a masterful and courageous move, Labour has decreed that you do indeed get higher on cannabis than you do on mere class C drugs. Not as high as you would on a class A drug, of course, that is some serious shit, but if you find you only get a class C high, then I think you can report your dealer to trading standards.

At least that is, presumably the message Gordon Brown is trying to send. This is all about message after all, rather than inconvenient reality.

Unfortunately the message actually sent is that government drugs policy is arbitrary and not to be trusted. Science, it turns out, has a higher duty to the truth than it has to the tabloids, which makes it unsuitable as a guide to policy.

It gets worse. Had the message worked as intended, it would have implied that class C drugs are all broadly safer than cannabis and class B drugs about as dangerous as cannabis. That is to say the government wanted to send a message that it was soft on all drugs but cannabis - and softer indeed than the evidence would demand.

I am genuinely suprised that they do not reclassify all class C drugs as class B, all class B as class A, and all class A drugs as class A*. Grade inflation does the job in education, why not here. And it would prove that they are being tougher than ever on drugs.

Sign the petition.

Strange angle on road deaths

2009-10-22T13:58:00.004+01:00

In the news today is a report showing that children in deprived areas are four times more likely to die in road accidents than those in wealthier locations, and that therefore deprived areas should get priority in funding for speed bumps, cameras etc.

On the face of it that sounds fair enough, but actually it is deeply confused and offensive. Funding for traffic calming should go to where it has the greatest benefit. If this correlates with poverty, then more of it will go to poor areas, as it should. But where there are accident hotspots in prosperous areas these should be dealt with on an equal basis.

The idea that poor areas should get priority just because poverty correlates with risk, is a bit like saying you should hire tall people when you want smart employees because height correlates with intelligence. (You shouldn't, you should test your applicants' intelligence.)

The suggestion here is that the life of a richer child is worth less than the life of a poor child, and that is grossly offensive. The implication is that reducing child deaths is not the policy goal, but rather equalising child deaths across the social divide, as if this were a front in the class war.

Greens and Keynes: total muddle

2009-10-20T17:13:00.001+01:00

You'd think it would be a simple question. Do the Greens support the fiscal stimulus to get the economy growing again, or do they, like the Tories, consider it more important to balance the budget sooner?

Logically, as the Greens are not supposed to be that keen on economic growth anyway, you would expect the latter answer. But that has to be weighed against visceral knee-jerk opposition to the Tories.

So I've been intrepidly commenting on Green blogs trying to get to the bottom of this. Natalie Bennett at Philobiblon was cheering the return of Keynes but wouldn't explain whether she wanted the growth that Keynesianism is thought to deliver.

When Jim Jay attacked Cleggy over the "savage cuts" remark, I asked whether opposing growth won't mean even savager cuts in the long run. And I get some vague guff about a "paradigm shift away from a capitalist economy", which is a rather vague answer to quite a specific question.

And now Rupert Read adds mud to the water with a pithy condemnation of growth. So is he against the fiscal stimulus? He wouldn't say.

This muddle is all the more surprising when we consider that it would actually be quite easy for no-growth Greens to come up with a clear and consistent position. If you think that the Tories are correct that balancing the budget now is better for prosperity in the long run, then go with Keynsianism. And if you think the Keynsians are right that a fiscal stimulus now is better for prosperity in the long run then go with balancing the budget. You'd have to half agree with the Tories either way, and I guess this is the problem.

Now it turns out that growth figures are about how much the goods and services we supply each other are worth to us, and not about how much environment is destroyed, and so the greens really ought to be a bit more specific and focus their attentions on the actual destruction of the environment rather than on an aggregate statistic like GDP that includes a great many good and unobjectionable things.

But no. Far from being more specific, their solutions just get vaguer. Paradigm shifts. Alternatives to capitalism, as yet unspecified. Read's suggestion of a stimulus to stabilise the economy is at least specific, but suggests that his green new deal should stop dead as soon as growth figures go positive.

Often on specific policies the Greens sound like what is simply a high tax-and-spend party. And this too, would make sense particularly if you want to strangle the economy. But ask them about economics or political philosophy, and they will never say this. Why choose this vague waffle over a simple policy that meets your objectives? Is some deeply held contradiction at work here?

This is a breathtaking shortcoming for what claims to be a serious political party. What have they been thinking about for the last 20 years?

Why MPs should stop complaining and pay up

2009-10-13T22:19:00.000+01:00

Various MPs are disputing the fairness and legality of Thomas Legg's retrospective application of limits to cleaning and gardening expenses. They shouldn't. Their argument is that if you employer approved your expenses, they shouldn't later change the rules and ask for it back.

The problem with this picture is that the parliamentary fees office isn't the MPs' superior, it is their subordinate. You cannot pass the buck to a subordinate. This is not a case of your boss saying "you can claim for this". It is more like your secretary saying "oh yes I'd claim for that if I were you".

If the rules failed to specify appropriate limits for such things as cleaning then it is quite right for Legg to invent them. The rules are also MPs' property, and their flaws cannot be blamed on anyone else.

This is not to say that Legg has got it right. He seems to have ignored the real money-spinner of subsidsed mortgages. I'd rather my taxes pay for cleaning and gardening than for mortgages which fund capital gains that go straight into an MP's pocket. (Although having said that, surely you generate no more dirt by living in two places, so cleaning costs in one should be largely offset by savings in the other.)

Is it unfair? Perhaps if you are one of the noble few who tried to reform this system sooner. But if you're that noble, you can live with it. You can welcome the slow approach of sanity.

The tyranny of the harm principle

2009-09-20T10:09:00.003+01:00

So I and possibly half a dozen other people voted against the ban on airbrushing, which was not surprising given the one-sided nature of the debate, and the near-universal, it seems, misunderstanding of JS Mill's harm principle. With hindsight I should have tried to speak myself.

The harm principle is a prohibition on banning things that don't cause any harm to others. It is not a sufficient justification for banning anything. Some bans are worse than the harms they would prevent. And many bans are wrong because they are ineffective at preventing the harms they are intended to prevent.

The problem is that it can be difficult to be seen to agree completely that a cultural meme like body fascism is a big problem causing considerable harm to many people, while at the same time rejecting a particular social engineering solution to it. Speaker after speaker spoke of the harm done by unrealistic expectations of plastic beauty, as if this were the point of dispute.

Sure, there are those - the libertarians - who would interpret harm in the narrowest possible way - the initiation of force - in order to delegitimise almost every law. At the other extreme communists might argue that competition causes harm - which it does to those who lose - and reject economic liberalism. Both may claim, wrongly, to be good Millians.

The error both are making is in looking for a rules-based formula for when something ought to be banned or not, and then arguing over the interpretation of the rules. And if you misunderstand the harm principle as saying what must be banned, rather than what must not be banned, it is understandable that you might want to adopt a narrow concept of harm, to minimise the assault on liberty.

I suggest that the harm principle should be seen in the context of Mill's utilitarianism. Specifically, that goods or ills have to be weighed up against each other. Some precious liberty against some moderate harm? It's a judgement call, and the answer is often a boring compromise: 70mph; no parking between 9am and 6pm; hotels must have fire alarms...

And the most useful liberties - such as the freedom to compete in business - are thus justified in spite of the legions of bankrupted suicidal failures.

So the communist has a broad concept of harm and prohibits a great deal. The libertarian has a narrow concept of harm and prohibits little. I agree with the broad concept of harm, but I would still prohibit only a little, understanding that the harm principle does not demand a prohibition.

So back to the airbrush ban. I suggest that the correct and healthy attitude to have towards advertising, celebrity culture and so on is a skeptical one. What you are seeing is not real. The danger is that an airbrush ban might make you think it is real, compounding the negative impact of the image. I don't see a prohibition intended to increase the confidence you might have in the fidelity of body fascistic images in the media as worth any loss of liberty.

Meanwhile I am looking forward to the men's policy paper. I continually find my self-esteem undermined by the portrayal in the media of men who are richer and more powerful than I am. I worry about all the boys facing these impossible comparisons. Something must be done.

Libertarian tropes #1: self-ownership

2009-08-12T20:35:00.005+01:00

This is going to be a thorough demolition of libertarianism in a handful of blog posts. Today self-ownership. What does it mean?

Devil's Kitchen, in a comment here, explains it to us.

a fundamental—actually, the fundamental—principle of libertarianism is that you own your body (and your life): it is your property (to claim otherwise is to claim that someone else has a higher claim on your life).

Any property which you have legitimately come by is as much yours as your body is—because it is by your body’s efforts (and your mind’s talents) that you have earned said property.

The idea of property, then, is being used to justify liberty. Nobody should interfere what is owned by another, and you own your body, therefore you are free.

It is a bit churlish to disagree because it is a good conclusion, as far as it goes. Although property - even the libertarian's absolutist view of property seems rather weaker than necessary. Self-something-much-stronger-than-ownership, would be closer to the mark. You can after all be sued for your property in settlement of a debt. The suggestion that "property which you have legitimately come by is as much yours as your body" therefore raises the spectre of slavery (for debtors) contrary to the first half of the argument.

More to the point, why argue that liberty is a kind of property at all? Why not argue, say, that property is a kind of liberty? Which it is: the liberty to stop somebody else using some stuff that is considered yours. So it is a liberty and a restraint on liberty at the same time.

Well to be fair, the appeal of the libertarian argument is precisely that property is a kind of liberty. If you are against slavery, you should be in favour of this notion of property of ours that is also against slavery. Other concepts of human rights aren't as much against slavery as ours is, so there. Ultimately we see this is circular thinking. But if you don't notice the circularity, everything seems very well established.

It is much better to argue for property and liberty on their merits, which are manifold. Why does it matter whether one is notionally based on the other? If A is good and we extend an analogy from A to get B, does this mean B is good? No.

The trouble is, that if you argue for liberty and property on their merits, then similar merits also support human rights and democracy, and other good liberal principles, which libertarians would like their concept of property to trump every time. The reason they bang on so much about something so obvious and uncontroversial as opposition to slavery (self-ownership) is that their particular formulation is opposed to a broader sense of human rights and democracy. It is tragically mistaken of course - democracy and broad human rights make slavery less not more likely.

And isn't there also something a little odd about deducing your beliefs about diverse questions of policy from a handful of very particular principles such as opposition to slavery? Would you deduce your position on free trade from your position on embryo research?

Time for an illustration from the comment thread I linked to earlier.

I said

DK, if your relationship to your body is merely ownership, and nothing stronger than that, does that mean if you owe me money, and have no other assets, I can sue you for your body. To feed my dogs or something.

DK replied

Well, in theory, yes;

(splutter) YES??!?!?! That's got tea all over my keyboard.

or, indeed, I could rent you my labour until the debt is repaid.

Well I'm glad its not the only alternative.
But, if there is a hierarchy in the principles, that of life is sacrosanct—thus, you may claim my labour to repay the debt, but you may not kill me.
IF??? So you're not sure whether I may kill you in redemption of a debt?

There is a philosophical principle at work here - a mistaken on in my view - called foundationalism. The idea is that knowledge is something that is deduced from obvious axioms. By this standard is it seen as principled rather than brutishly stubborn to stick to the conclusions you draw from your axioms, no matter how absurd or evil they seem. If anybody disagrees with those conclusions, then they are pro-slavery evil communists blah blah blah. More on this from James Graham.

It is better, I suggest, to reassess those axioms and that reasoning. Self-ownership is a poor relation of liberty.

Apologies are due to the other kinds of libertarians out there to whom this might not all apply: anarchists, geo-mutualists, etc. If there is a less ambiguous term available for the kind of libertarian I am talking about I would be happy to use it. "Right-wing libertarian" perhaps?

Further tropes are planned for non-initiation of force, and for the homestead principle. And I am open to requests.

The make-believe world of consultation

2009-07-23T18:32:00.003+01:00

Last weekend I was invited, along with 70 odd other random members of the public, to a consultation event with the local PCT over the priorities for future healthcare in Sheffield. As usual I could not refuse an opportunity to put the world to rights. A free lunch and £50 "expenses" was only icing on the cake.

But what did the PCT get for its, er, your money?

After the introductory speeches and getting-to-know-you gubbins, session 1 was on the subject of improving the patient experience.

On my table, the three main issues raised were i) the difficulty of making appointments ii) access to the latest high-tech medicine and iii) cleanliness. Our discussion had to be distilled into a top three, then a top one bullet point, which would be fed to the factilitators to be further distilled, along with summaries from other tables, and then voted on with radio keypad things.

Our demand, to be able to make appointments at all/reasonably soon/without having to argue with receptionists even when the doctor has told us we will need to make an appointment for such and such a symptom - was thus "distilled" into a demand for Saturday surgeries - that none of us had asked for - but was clearly already on the PCT agenda.

Session 2 was about how to measure patient satisfaction. What sort of surveys should the PCT be sending out to everyone, or should they be listening to complaints instead? Or perhaps clinical follow-up is better. Again our main points - that not everything needs to be measured, and that clinical outcomes are more important than more subjective measures - did not get past distillation. Of course PCT officials know how to interpret a survey whereby a patient reports 'very satisified/satisfied/neither satisfied nor dissatisfied/...' on each aspect of a service. It is something they can do. They don't know how to judge clinical outcomes. They might know how to measure less, but what would that do to the feeling of being in charge of a process you don't understand?

Session 3, after lunch, was probably the worst of the lot with various unrelated issues lumped together under the heading of patient safety! Should we address patient safety with more staff training? (So they don't make mistakes.) Or should we beef up building security? Or put better labels on drugs? Most bizarrely, IT systems were listed as an issue here - because of a potential threat to the safety of patient data - but the IT issue mutated into a rival positive claim for safety dollars.

Positive suggestions from the group: help for people who can't remember whether they've taken their pills or not, and measures to keep infectious swine flu sufferers out of waiting rooms, didn't make it through distillation. Instead we had a pointless debate over whether staff training was more important than properly maintaining the lifts.

The last session was on the criteria for deciding spending priorities. Not, please, anything specific, like mental health, or hip replacements, but general criteria. So we had the usual suggestion that smokers and drug users should be penalised, and that sort of thing. I suggested that clinical effectiveness should be the main criterion, thus cutting funding for chaplains, homoeopathy, ritual circumcisions, etc. I could have but didn't include PCT bureaucracy this time. And I suggested that we probably have too much campaigning for healthy living - that people who haven't got the message by now, probably won't.

This was the most useless distillation of all - it resulted in the following six options, which we then had to vote on:

1. Quality of Life

2. Education/prevention

3. Based on need

4. Improving efficiency

5. The cost of long term care

6. Value for money

What do these mean? Even the facilitator introducing the vote didn't understand quite what a vote for each would mean, although he graciously explained that every £1 spent on education would save £10 later. And so education won 45% of the subsequent vote. Apocryphal as it is, the £1/£10 figure may be right, although it is clearly an average and not a marginal cost - which means that any cuts or increases in education at the edges would have far far less impact.

But frankly every option but education/prevention was so abstract that we had could have no idea quite what would be cut and what would be funded if we supported it. Given one option that seems good, and 5 that don't mean anything concrete, it is not surprising that it scores highly.

The voting on the outcomes of session 2 was also pretty shocking. The idea of measuring less hadn't made it through distillation, and the prime importance of clinical outcomes wasn't offered as a clear option, and instead we had a choice of seven ways of measuring soft outcomes. The faciliator gave a patronising little speech about how you might think this was obvious - if you are treated and get better that is a good outcome - but now you realise there is a lot more to it than that. Next time I will interrupt and demand a vote on hard v soft outcomes.

Not that I'm saying soft outcomes don't matter - they just shouldn't be used to justify much expense or paperwork.

So the session is wound up with speeches telling us how useful this has been. We even voted on whether it was it a good idea to hold this consultation (97% yes) and would you come again (100% yes). We were told by one PCT official that the next time he was in a meeting arguing some corner or other he could say that the people of Sheffield were in agreement with him. Just look at the figures. This is what the PCT gets for your money. Ammunition.

Buses v Dogma

2009-06-29T20:51:00.007+01:00

We know that state provision of services is generally inefficient and unresponsive to customers' needs compared to the private sector. So if a service can reasonably be provided by the private sector, then it should be. This is why buses were deregulated in the 1980s and it was a disaster. Unlike, say, water or rail, there was no regulation of fares and these went through the roof, and are still rising year on year above inflation. Instead of profitable routes cross-subsidising unprofitable routes, extra public money had to be found to subsidise these routes. A very few routes enjoy competition, high frequencies and occasional discount fares. But the majority of profitable routes are not worth fighting over, and the customer is treated as a captive cash cow.

So why this discrepancy between theory and practise? Free markets are competitive, but attempts to introduce them so often seem to bring uncompetitive rip-off practises instead. We (rightly) aren't willing to stand the withdrawal of the only mobility option from millions of vulnerable people, so we try markets plus subsidies, which inevitably corrupts the markets. And for this, the publicly owned asset - the right to run buses on profitable routes - was given away for nothing.

Today government wants more people to take the bus instead of driving, and PTEs up and down the country will spend money on better bus stops and better bus lanes, and more subsidies. And up and down the country bus companies say "thanks very much, and by the way we're putting up the fares again, and cutting services", and there isn't a sausage that can be done about this but to offer even more subsidies.

Yes, my local service, the 86 is facing the axe. The government closed our post office earlier this year, many pensioners expected to walk miles uphill to another, or to catch the, er, bus. An angry local has postered the bus stop calling this cut barbaric, quite rightly. So we have a campaign of leaflets, petitions, complaints to the council, the PTE, the MP. The PTE write back offering an hourly daytime-only service, which is pretty miserable. When you can never entirely trust a bus to turn up at all, an hourly service is hardly worth using - with a 15 minute service such unreliability is not such a big deal.

The government has flirted a little with largely unusable powers for PTEs to take on regulation of fares and timetables, so there is some recognition of the problem, but clearly no determination to bring it to a resolution. It's another Labour failure and we know the Tories - the original culprits - will do nothing. And both will probably blame the Lib Dem council. This is a vital issue for millions of people, and for the environment, that we should be taking a strong lead on.

And all parties should learn the lesson that involving the private sector, and giving away public assets to the private sector, is not the same thing as introducting competition and markets; it doesn't bring any of the benefits, and if we're not careful we end up paying way over the odds for inferior services.

AV would be brilliant

2009-06-10T10:44:00.008+01:00

Not so brilliant for the Lib Dems, but good for democracy. Not as good as STV of course, but let's face it, what is?

First Past the Post is the cornerstone of the brokenness of our politics. It has the power to subvert all your campaigning efforts for a good cause, making that cause weaker instead of stronger.

Support the environment? Vote Green where the Lib Dems could win and you do more harm than good.

Support Euro-nihilism? Vote UKIP where the Conservatives could win and you have the opposite effect.

Support socialism? Vote Socialist Labour, where Labour could win, and, well maybe the pattern breaks down there.

Want to stand as an independent? The problem is that whichever party it is you consider least bad, you will take more votes from them than from the others. So unless you can be very confident of winning, you will only make things worse.

AV fixes all this. It lets you stand and campaign for what you believe in without damaging the causes you support. It lets you vote for what you believe in without having to second guess what the result will be and support the lesser evil.

Sure, it's not proportional. That stinks. But proportionality is not the only important feature of an electoral system. If it were we would support list systems rather than STV. And this is the worst time of all to hold a referendum on a proportional system, when the BNP have just won seats.

If Brown and his few friends plump for AV, we will probably get it. We could even have it for the next general election - it is the only reform that won't require years of boundary commission work. And it may be a stepping stone to STV or AV+, but not towards party lists.

If they plump for PR, the whole thing will be quietly dropped, "after considered reflection", the next time Griffin gets some publicity. Or, even worse, we have a referendum on it after weeks of the Tory press giving publicity to the BNP at every opportunity in order to get a "no" vote. It would then be off the agenda for decades. This is the single worst time for a referendum on PR. Give it a few years when a couple more nazi MEPs won't have brought the world to an end.

See also: Anthony Hook, Mark Reckons, Himmelgarten Cafe, Jock Coats, Sunder Katwala, and Duncan Borrowman (already linked)

What you should have voted to keep the BNP out

2009-06-08T02:27:00.004+01:00

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but too many people have been stupidly talking up the BNPs chances to the point of self-fullfilling prophecy - often in a genuine attempt to keep them out, but sometimes to frighten their own disillusioned supporters into turning out. The one thing the BNP had none of the resources to do - a get the vote out operation - was done for them by their opponents.

But what I want to do here is look at who, with the benefit of hindsight, the anti-BNP voter should have voted for. Mostly to shame everybody else who claimed it could only be them.

So in Yorkshire, that is Labour, who could have beaten the BNP to the last seat with an extra 10270 votes. The Greens would have needed 15684, UKIP 26528 and others more.

In the North West, UKIP would have needed only 2448 more votes to beat the BNP, the Greens 4961 more, the Lib Dems 28549 votes, and others more.

In regions where the BNP failed we can see who took the last seat, and see how many votes ahead of the BNP they were.

In East Midlands, this is the Lib Dems 45109 votes to the good of the BNP.

In East of England, this is UKIP, second seat 59947 votes ahead of the BNP.

In London, the Conservatives are 73259 ahead of the BNP with their 3rd seat.

In the North East, the Lib Dems are 50944 ahead of the BNP.

In Scotland, Labour (2nd seat) are 87779.5 ahead of the BNP.

In the South East, the Lib Dems (2nd seat) are 63401 ahead of the BNP.

In the South West, the Conservatives (3rd seat) are 95358 ahead of the BNP.

In Wales, UKIP are 50471 ahead of the BNP.

In the West Midlands, UKIP (2nd seat) are 28268 ahead of the BNP.

What can we learn from this? Mostly that it is guesswork, and you are best off just voting for whoever you actually support. But perhaps these things can be predicted. To vote otherwise just because somebody is only 50,000 ahead of the BNP seems unreasonable. But could the results in Yorkshire and the North West have been predicted and prevented? Not without vastly more accurate polling, region by region, than we had. Who would pay for such polling, and would we trust it? Based on the polling we had, my calculations suggested that the Lib Dems, Labour or the Tories would be the best bet to beat the BNP in the North West, not, as it turned out, UKIP and the Greens.

And the best tactical voting strategy in the world wouldn't compensate for another 0.5% vote going to the fascists.

So maybe instead our non-fascist political class just needs to get out on the streets and argue its corner a bit more. To make a case for liberty, tolerance and human rights. To think twice about adding more layers of distance, obfuscation and technocracy between the people and their public services. Not just to tell people that they don't have to be evil to have a voice and a stake in society, but to make sure that it's true. And when people choose to be evil anyway, to oppose and defy them at every turn.

Greenpartywatch: Greens admit their policies are weak

2009-06-03T18:08:00.002+01:00

Anders Hanson picks up a story in the Times covering some blogging covering the various parties positions on science related policy questions, and generally bemoaning the Greens' medieval denialist attitude to any science that doesn't support their agenda.

Anders quotes Green MSP Patrick Harvey, and it is worth repeating

I recognise that the Green movement has taken some time to develop from a single issue group, and perhaps in some areas we’ve some way to go yet… The best way of supporting our continued development is to subject us to parliamentary scrutiny, so that our policies can be tested alongside the rest.

Oh dear. And Adam Ramsey [Edit: not Adrian Ramsey, a Green PPC in Norwich]

I am an active member of the Green Party, but this policy is frankly moronic. It is not a manifesto commitment, so MEPs elected this year will not be pushing for it. Please consider what Greens parties are going to prioritise rather than some out dated policy the party hasn’t got round to changing.

Oh dear. Make some allowances please, for a movement in its infancy. Except that it isn't. Founded in 1973, with policies of nuclear deterrence, anti-immigration, women should stay at home, etc, etc, it has clearly been a long road to here.

Let's put that aside. Let's regard the Green Party as beginning with that big 15% vote share they got in the European elections of 1989. By then they had more or less the policies they have today. Perhaps they would support some roadbuilding, but not very much. That's 20 years ago. Since then there will have been 40 party conferences, and therefore probably around 80 to 100 major policy papers agreed.

Now the body of "outdated" policy that Ramsey refers to is called the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society and can be found here. This is where those 80 to 100 policy papers will have ended up. How many sections does it have? 37. So each of them has been updated on average 2 to 3 times since the party's coming of age in 1989.

Riiight. And you've still got some way to go. OK. What could possibly be the problem?

Well, I suggest that the problem is a great deal of incoherence at the heart of Green Party thinking. The core value, that economic activity is the cause of all our ills, is not reconciled with the desire for increased public spending on everything. The demand for social justice is not reconciled with their opposition to the economic and technological innovations that have freed or will free millions from serfdom and servitude. Their demand for a whole different kind of economic system is not tempered by any kind of detail on what that system would look like - not least because they can't agree.

Denialism on science, denialism on the benefits of free trade, wishful thinking on energy; they may not understand what is wrong with the world, but at least they have their comfort zones.

Conservatives launch barefacedness commission

2009-05-26T21:00:00.003+01:00

This is from the text of the Conservative leaflet that came through the door of my home in Sheffield today:

Conservatives have launched a Transport Commission for the North of England to find out the transport priorities for South Yorkshire. The Commission was launched by William Hague and will examine how to improve all forms of transport including rail services. Conservatives have announced plans for high-speed rail links between Yorkshire and London taking just over an hour and a half.

What's wrong with this picture?

1. The proposed high speed rail runs from London to Leeds via Manchester, bypassing Sheffield completely. They should not for shame breathe a word of it round here.

2. This will be paid for by cutting to the bone maintenance and upgrades on the rest of the rail network, so we will see a degradation of our rail services.

3. The Midland Main line from Sheffield to London can run trains in 2 hours - the Master Cutler does this. But usually the trains stop everywhere, adding half an hour. Not great, but still not too bad. With upgrading and fewer stops this could be improved further.

The Conservatives have adopted a policy which is bad for Sheffield, and for most of the country, and shown no understanding of our transport situation - the real weaknesses are rail to Leeds and road and rail to Manchester. Trains to Manchester were quicker in the 1920s than they are now.

So they paste South Yorkshire into the text of a policy for Leeds, and hope nobody notices. This comes under the headline Working for you in South Yorkshire. No kidding. I dread to think what will happen when they start working against us, like Tories usually do.

Cameron's shoddy shallow election call

2009-05-19T15:22:00.002+01:00

David Cameron was on radio 4 this morning, demanding a General Election, to sweep out the old, corrupt House of Commons and bring about a fresh start and a new dawn.

What is wrong with this picture? Of course opposition leaders must call for a general election, every day during the lame duck 5th year of a parliament. That's textbook. Of course they must use any issue that comes up to justify this call. That's obvious.

But this particular call is shabby and shameful. Firstly, it tries to identify in the public mind a cross-party scandal with the government. Yet his party is just as guilty. (As is UKIP.)

Second, do we really think the Telegraph is finished with us? Let the bright light of scrutiny shine on every corner of this issue before we jump to conclusions regarding how to deal with it, and who to elect or re-elect.

Third, let's give the parties time to deselect their wrongdoers. It would be absurd to hold an election so quickly that major culprits go unexposed or undeselected, and get to serve (themselves) a whole extra parliament.

There is a public mood that politicians are "all the same", based on a handful of serious concrete cases. Over time, we can but hope a distinction will be drawn between the guilty and the innocent, whatever party each is found in. Is that what Cameron wants to pre-empt?

Put the boot in harder, and aim better

2009-05-16T14:15:00.001+01:00

It is difficult to put the boot in, to demand prosecution of expenses fraudsters, when you are in a grey area vulnerable position yourself, and the whole house is being condemned for the normal use of expenses, as if that were the same kind of thing as fraud. It is bothering me now that the frauds - of whom there have been a handful - are getting lumped together with those who are merely making use of the allowances they have been given as part of their job.

However I am not in a grey place so I can spell it out.

Having an allowance for buying TVs, hiring cleaners, etc, and using it is not fraudulent or corrupt. Asking whether you can buy item X on expenses and doing so if you are told you can, is not fraudulent or corrupt. If the allowances cover moats, swimming pools and chandeliers, then they are stupid, but that does not make using them fraudulent or corrupt. Waiving your expenses is a superogatory act, not a moral duty.

However claiming for a mortgage you have already paid off is fraud. An MP couple claiming 2nd home allowance on both their homes is fraud. "Flipping" to maximise allowance spend is fraud. Telling the tax office something different to the fees office is fraud.

These MPs should be expelled from their parties, deselected, and prosecuted, in no particular order. So far Labour have "suspended" two, and the Tories merely kicked one off the front bench. Luckily no frauds in the Lib Dems, so far.

The rest of them are not frauds. But giving yourself an allowance system more generous than it ought to be is corrupt. So judge them not by what they claim, but whether they voted to reform it or not. Whether they voted for transparency - or for the exemption to the Freedom of Information Act. Large numbers have voted both ways on this, but even those who voted the wrong way, may honestly think the package is not too generous.

People of similar seniority in the private sector are on 6 or 7 figure salaries, with bonuses and expense accounts that will make your eyes water. MPs could vote through the same for themselves, but they don't. Because it would be corrupt.

So this is what I want to see from the party leaders. Rather than being caught between trying to defend what is reasonable and condemn what is wrong, let's throw the handful of fraudsters to the lions, condemn the system, and condemn those who have voted to keep it secret and unreformed. And three cheers to the Telegraph, and the Freedom of Information Act for making reform possible. And shame on Cameron and Brown for ignoring the big money spinner of property speculation on the back of subsidised mortgages.

Labour: where can it go from here?

2009-05-06T10:45:00.003+01:00

Labourology seems to be the rule at the moment. This excellent piece by Alex Wilcock is particularly pointed. "They won’t listen to your complaints. They won’t listen to your concerns. Now they’re telling you to clear off if you don’t agree with everything they ever do." Their sense of frustration is palpable. 12 years of Labour! Surely everything should be all right by now?

Speaking to Labour activists on occasion, what is most remarkable is this disconnect between what they percieve the Labour Party as being about, and what the government does. However much some of them disagree with the government, the Labour Party still has some hidden magical essence that is different. Total cobblers of course. The best way to judge the party is by what it does in government. That is what defines it. The rest is comfort food.

The 50p rate signals the end of the Blair project, which was to get the party to shut up about what it believed in, because that was largely wrong, and adopt a centrist position, or conservative or neo-con as necessary, to be elected and achieve the core agenda of pushing through big public spending, much of which has done some good, albeit inefficiently.

The problem with this was not where the party was moving away from, but where it was moving to. Labour instincts of opposing the bosses and capitalists at every turn had to be suppressed, but there was no real debate of these new centrist/neo-con values. Loyalty matters more than debate anyway. So now the project is ending the unresolved conflict re-emerges: between the moral superiority of socialism and the practical necessity of rejecting socialism. This is a dead debate, but I don't think the Labour Party knows how to have any other. It knows no other values by which it might criticise the rights and wrongs of a policy, but socialist values, and it knows it cannot trust itself to speak these values.

So when a party/government has a culture of a) no debate, or b) if there must be debate, a futile left-right one, it should be no surprise that it cannot listen, that it must become out of touch. Just as the Tories ignored all the sane advice on the mess they were making of railway privatisation, Labour cannot understand the mess of the tax credits system. Political good intentions trump any constructive criticism. And if a policy is wrong because it is illiberal, the same applies. They have put their values away because they are left wing and so can't be trusted.

And this value-free, debate-free politics leads naturally to the cult of managerialism. We know how to run public services, they said. But they didn't. Chris Dillow's book The End of Politics is good on this, where I have dipped into it.

So we have an autocratic value-free government/party incapable of listening, and that is enough - any such party would have to go badly wrong sooner or later. But that's only half the problem. They've also run out of money. In 1999 Gordon Brown was crowing about how he'd fixed the structural budget deficit that the Tories had left. But even before the financial crisis, the golden rule had gone and prudence was dead. Having no money means that New Labour deal - switch off your values and we will give you big public spending - can no longer work. So the party will descend into infighting as both sides renege.

12 years. Where did it all go wrong? The New Labour deal - you can't have socialism, but you can have a bigger state - could only last so long. The working class may have been abandoned, but I don't think the class struggle mentality, or the Hegelian dialectic was. So centrist/neo-con Labour needed enemies and scapegoats as much as Old Labour did. But I suggest most of the problems our society faces are organic, spontaneous, not the result of a clash of interests, and so top-down confrontational answers do not work.

Even a party starting from a good place, which made a virtue of loyalty over debate, would inevitably go wrong over time. Add to that a belief in top-down micromanagement from a position of ignorance; an internal compromise that demands ever-ballooning state spending; adherence to some of the philosophical errors underpinning socialism, if not socialism itself; preference for a value-free attitude to business, rather than admitting your values were wrong; having no regard for liberalism; willingess to go to war on a lie;... etc, etc.

Frankly, it is amazing that things are not already much much worse than they are. Where should Labour go? What should it change? Or is the question: what on earth should it keep the same?

Emote with me!!!

2009-04-28T08:50:00.004+01:00

I've been meaning to say this for a while - since attending the Social Liberal Forum meeting at the last Lib Dem conference. But it ties in nicely with Charlotte's revelation about the nature of the "progressive" and conservative debate, and how each side thinks they are doing what is right.

Speaker after speaker at the social liberal forum said how deeply they cared about the plight of underprivileged people, so much that the mood of the event could be described as a collective subvocal chant of emote with us! Having been a churchgoer (charismatic) in the past, and therefore having done that sort of thing in another context, I am deeply suspicious of it. It doesn't work for me. Yet these are important emotions to have. Empathy for the poor is better than contempt. It is still only a pale caricature of what the left - the Labour movement - was meant to be about, which was working people asserting themselves, not, as it is now, working people being patronised by the middle classes. I would attribute much of the BNP success to the way that where Labour seem to say "We care about you", the BNP say "We care about us."

But back to the Forum. A speaker goes "We care. We care. We care. 50p tax rate!" to a cheer. I can see how that policy absolutely feels right to people, but I am still left wanting the analysis that it would do any good. "It's a symbol" we are told, as if that were a good thing.

But of course it is not just the left that emotes like this. Only when Conservatives do it, it is something way nastier. Europe: boo. Foreigners: boo. Single parents: boo. I remember the Conservative election broadcasts in the 80s pushing the fear button over nuclear disarmament. Fear leads to hate and hate leads to the dark side. Conservative emoting is all dark side of the force stuff.

Charlotte points out that Conservatives believe they are doing the right thing, and I would agree for the most part. But lets not slip into relativism here - just because people disagree over what the right thing is, it doesn't mean there is nothing to be said about it. Charlotte is right that politics would be better if it were more rational, but rationality alone doesn't give us values. Libertarians of the Ayn Rand school like to portray themselves as driven purely by reason, but this is based on sophistry, and Rand had no answer to David Hume's is-ought gap.

I've written before about the 2 or 5 foundations of morality in evolutionary psychology. These 5 instinctive traits do exist in us, and we can apply reason to ask the question: what are the consequences if we reinforce this instinct or suppress that one in the language that we use - the metaphors we choose - the buttons that we push - to explore and advance our political ideas.

So liberalism as I see it involves a recognition that promoting the wrong foundations - the deference to authority for example, or the ingroup (class/race/etc) - has bad consequences, and promoting the right foundations - reciprocity, no harm, etc, has good consequences. This relies on an assessment of the consequences of freedom or tyranny, class war or class peace, etc. Is this or that a consequence that I want? How do I feel about it? It is an emotional question.

Ways to Save the Planet 3

2009-04-13T00:04:00.008+01:00

We've reached the end of the series with two more ideas for fighting global warming.

First up, solar panels on satellites. The idea being that there is twice as much light up there as down here, and, if concentrated by fresnel lenses, many times more. Then the energy would be transmitted back to earth by microwaves, SimCity style.

This episode left many obvious questions unasked and unanswered:

1. How effficient is this microwave transmission of energy? Get twice as much energy from your solar panel, and lose half on the way down, and you haven't gained anything by being in space.

2. How many solar panels could we have on land for the price of putting one in orbit? My guess would be a number in three figures. Maybe less if you have to buy the land, but this world - even much of the West - is hardly short of deserts.

3. Launching objects into space is highly energy intensive, as is any subsequent maintenance. So what is the embedded carbon cost of one of these satellites? Compare this to a similar device, on land, albeit generating half the power, during daylight. It can't be good. How long will it have to last?

Of course you don't get answers to "how long will it last" while the whole project is at a mere proof of concept stage. But it seems to me very hard for these numbers to add up.

Finally we had a design for an active scrubber of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Air blown into the device at one end would flow against a caustic soda solution, reacting with it, removing the carbon dioxide.

True to form, much was made of building the prototype - welding the blades on to the fan, setting the thing up in a football stadium, and staying up all night to see if the numbers - on the stadium scoreboard - indicated success, which they did. Success was defined as extracting more CO₂ than is generated by the energy required to run the thing. A modest goal and clearly not the limit of ambition for efficiency.

What was less clear was how it could possibly be more efficient to extract CO₂ from the air, where it is sparse, rather than from the exhausts of power stations where it is abundant. My understanding of CCS technology, such as it exists, is that it substantially diminishes the fuel efficiency of the plant, because the CCS process takes a lot of energy to run. Extracting CO₂ from a lower concentration in air, the energy cost is surely even bigger.

The other issue ignored by the programme was where we get all this caustic soda (NaOH) from. All the machine is doing is stirring the reagents in this reaction:

CO₂ + NaOH -> NaHCO₃

Now - we are not told - the caustic soda can be reclaimed from the sodium bicarbonate by reacting with lime (CaO).

NaHCO₃ + CaO -> NaOH + CaCO₃

What's that we've got now - CaCO₃ - calcium carbonate (calcite/chalk). OK , the lime can be retrieved from this for reuse and the CO₂ extracted for storage, by heating to 825 degrees C.

CaCO₃ + heat -> CaO + CO₂

Whew. But hang on there's a lot of processing here. A lot of energy, surely, required to heat the calcium carbonate, to compete the cycle. This sort of chemical cycle necessarily requires an energy input, even though the outputs are identical to the inputs. We are just using chemistry to move CO₂ from A to B. And this, presumably, is why CCS has a high energy cost.

Finally, there is the issue of whether and how CO₂ can be safely stored. This being the Discovery channel, the idea they tested was fabricating torpedos out of raw solid CO₂ - dry ice - and dropping them into the ocean where they would embed themselves in the sediment of the ocean floor and stay there for a good long time. In theory. So we have a delivery mechanism that is cool and probably works, but nobody checked whether the CO₂ actually stays put. There wasn't even a picture of the torpedo hitting the ocean floor. It wouldn't be difficult to drop a number of these torpedos, and then to dive down and dig one up every month and see how much it has shrunk. Actually it would be difficult and expensive, but it is the critical question.

And even if it works, this is another energy intensive step in the process. It is the whole process that has to cover its whole footprint, preferably many times over, not just one step or another.

So where does this leave us? From the whole series I quite liked the wave powered pumps - although they may end up doing more for fish stocks than for global warming. But eating more fish may free up land for biofuels or renewables, so that could work. And I liked the cloud albedo management idea. The rest seemed just too weak. They stack up very poorly against existing renewable technologies, transport options, nuclear power, best energy efficiency practise and so on.

Maybe some of these ideas will come good. Further research should be encouraged, but banking on any would be madness. Our policies today should be based on technology that already exists.

Ways to Save the Planet 2 - if it isn't beneath you

2009-03-25T16:20:00.002Z

We've had two more episodes of the series Ways to Save the Planet, that I discussed earlier. And, surprisingly topical for once, the Greens' spring conference has unanimously passed a motion condemning geo-engineering.

For the full text see page 30 of this pdf, but I will bring you some edited highlights.

Ocean-fertilisation poses an unknown but potentially serious threat to marine biodiversity, which plays an essential role in regulating the global carbon cycle, as well as putting fishing communities at risk.

Pity they didn't see episode 1 of Ways to Save the Planet which fertilised the top layer of ocean with deep water nutrients, causing a previously empty bit of ocean to fill with life. Remember that much of the Pacific is desert-like already in its lack of biodiversity. These wave-powered pumps, if they work in earnest, are a means to greatly increase biodiversity. It deserves better than knee-jerk opposition. There's more...

Climate geo-engineering by increasing the earth’s albedo poses a major and unknown new threat to the climate system, to biodiversity and to people.

Er, how do you know the threat is major, if it is also unknown? We have a major and known threat of global warming, and that means - why do I feel like I am talking to a 4 year old here - it would be good to have a controllable system for global cooling.

Sure, the future is unpredictable if we control the amount of cloud cover or its reflectivity to manage the global temperature. But here is the thing. The future is unpredicable full stop. And it is rather more predicatable if we deal with global warming than if we don't.

So, as I was saying, two new episodes. The first was about a design for a tethered high altitude helium balloon wind turbine. Strictly this is renewable energy rather than geo-engineering, but the ends are much the same. They built a scaled down prototype which worked after a fashion. It would take a full size prototype to test whether such a turbine would have the output predicted. If so, 9.5 million of them could generate all the world's electricity. They would need 2500 times the global annual production of helium, which might be an issue.

In the same niche, there's a video on TED, suggesting kites can be used to generate power.

The second new episode was on increasing the reflectivity of clouds - stratocumulus over oceans - by spraying micron-size droplets of sea water at them. As usual there were some problems. First they insisted on unmanned radio-controlled low carbon boats to deploy the equipment, and so went for the somewhat oddball Flettner rotor propulsion system. Plenty to build and test there, and it worked surprisingly well. It's not clear how much power the rotors would need, or where it would come from. There were solar panels on the CGI ships, which wouldn't be much good under cloud - but then if it is cloudy, the ship is already in the right place, right?

There was less success actually making the droplets small enough, but you can't have everything.

But what I thought was most telling about this episode was the objections. At the end of each episode a handful of experts - presumably - in lab coats are asked why the proposal is a bad idea or wouldn't work. Usually, they have given sound objections. 16 trillion lenses in space, are you kidding? But this time, they were stuck. All they had was vague objections to the principle of geo-engineering, much like the stuff from the Greens. But unlike blankets on icecaps, robot ships could be turned off at the first sign of trouble.

Unlike, indeed, a massive tree-planting operation, if that is done for geo-engineering purposes. Come on people, show some sense of perspective. I know you can hug a tree more easily than a robot ship, but that is no guide to how best to save the planet.

Ways to Save the Planet

2009-03-13T00:22:00.002Z

Is there anything we can do to combat global warming other than reduce greenhouse gases? Actions which seek to cool the planet down directly, or sequester carbon from the atmosphere come under the heading geo-engineering. The little bolds and I have been following a series on the Discovery channel on this subject, called Ways to Save the Planet.

There are three basic responses to geo-engineering ideas:

1. Noooooo. Mucking about with the planet got us into this mess.

2. Aaaahhhhh. You see all we need is a little ingenuity, and everything will be back to normal. Global warming will be solved, if it is even happening at all anyway, which I doubt.

3. OK, will that work then?

I am firmly in camp number three. There is no reason in principle to reject geo-engineering. The planet is not God, and if it decides to kill us we are entitled to disagree and fight back. Even if global warming were halted by reduction in greenhouse gas emissions alone, we would probably need geo-engineering technology sooner or later anyway - nature has the power to turn nasty without our help. But any project has some enormous hurdles - that the earth is basically very very big, and any solution has to do an awful lot, and without using monumental amounts of energy.

There have been 4 episodes so far, all, unfortunately a little underwhelming. They follow the usual Discovery channel formula of injecting tension by having some mechanical thing go wrong, or threaten to do so, to dramatic background music and interviews with anxious engineers. Gripping.

And what were the ideas? A wave-powered pump bringing nutrient rich deep ocean water closer to the surface. Dangerous mucking about with the ecosystem? Not really - much of the Pacific is like the Sahara desert. Deep water nutrients would make an oasis - they would create an ecosystem where there is currently next to nothing. Greater plankton growth would mean faster carbon sequestration, and some of this carbon would find its way to the ocean floor for a reasonably long time.

Did it work? Briefly. But despite falling apart after a few hours, the location of the pump a week later was found teeming with life. So it looks like this idea could work. It's not going to do enough to change the nature of the challenge significantly, but can make some difference at a reasonable cost.

Next up covering the icecaps with reflective material to lower the albedo and thereby prevent melting and keep the earth's albedo lower. This one kinda puzzled me a bit. Surely you'll get more albedo bang for your buck covering something that isn't alraedy white. What I remember of the programme was an hour spent struggling with the practicalities of airlifting big rolls of white stuff to the arctic and unrolling it. Would it work? No idea.

Third was scattering the light from the sun with lenses in space. Discovery is in its comfort zone here with high tech lenses, rockets and so on. How many 60cm lenses are we going to need? 16 trillion! That's a whole lotta lenses. Well maybe if we make them 1 micron (0.001mm) thick, they'll be light enough that we can launch lots into space. Cue an hour of testing rockets and guns that might launch squillions of extremely fragile lenses without shaking them to bits. What fun. Did the rocket work? No.

Clearly reducing the amount of light reaching the earth would reduce warming. A big lens in space - what could be simpler. But this idea involves a monumental space programme. How much, if it ever works at all, are 16,000,000,000,000 lenses going to cost to make and launch? Keep thinking, and lets not bank on this one.

Fourth was planting large numbers of trees by dropping seeds from an aircraft. Take a tree seed, in a lump of compost, wrap in a layer of wax, hard enough to break the ground surface, but which shatters on impact so doesn't impede the growth of the tree. Take 1000 of these in a cargo net under a helicopter and drop from a height and speed calculated to give a good spread pattern.

Again this was great fun, because the experiments involved aircraft, and dropping things out of them. The methods were ingenious, but I couldn't help wonder if - given the work that must be put into sourcing the seeds and assembling the wax canisters, and round tripping the helicopter (it would still take hundreds of trips to seed a square kilometre), whether it might not be easier to hire a few people with spades to plant the trees properly.

So we get to the dramatic final test of the idea. Did the seeds bury themselves in the ground at the right depth and the right distance apart from each other? Yes. Did they actually grow? No. Why not? Er, maybe the soil pH was wrong. Sigh. And maybe the guy with the spade would have known that.

Well that's all we've had so far. There's another 4 episodes, to come, and I hope they plan to end on a high note with some more promising ideas. Some geo-engineering ideas can be double-edged. If you lower the earth's temperature by controlling light or albedo, you do nothing for acidification of the oceans. So if it turned out that global warming wasn't a preeminent threat to us after all and was in fact no more serious than ocean acidification, then we may have to modify our strategy with this in mind. Much geo-engineering is diplomatically problematic. Whatever the global effect, there are likely to be local effects, that the locals may not like. Nonetheless, I think a common cause would be good for our diplomatic relations.

Yet I suggest this all has little significance yet for policy. Potential geo-engineering projects are much like potential technologies to save or generate energy. Some will work one day, some won't; we don't know yet which is which. Meanwhile we should apply the technologies and policy options we have. We are hardly at risk of doing more to combat climate change than might later prove to be necessary.

Gaining Faith in Twitter

2009-03-09T12:27:00.002Z

Back from the Lib Dems spring conference in Harrogate, the greatest revelation for me was the use of twitter to comment on live proceedings. The 'back-channel' is the technical term for this kind of electronic muttering at the back of the room instead of paying attention to teacher. It has long been said about conferences that the main point is getting to meet people and talk to them, rather than the official speeches and whatnot. Twitter, it seems, brings some of the benefits of being able to talk, to a medium in which you are expected to sit, listen, and clap politely.

I signed up to Twitter a couple of years but didn't really see the point and didn't use it. And I still don't really - I probably won't use it again until the next conference. But during the debate on faith schools - and is this really yet another Lib Dem first? - I had to do what I could to sway the vote, and I had access probably to a handful of other delegates following the #ldconf tag.

I was energised by supporters of Amendment 3, including Vince Cable and Tim Farron, calling the original motion an attack on faith schools - which it was not - and calling for support for Amendment 3, as a "compromise". In fact the original text was a compromise - it respects parental choice of a faith school, and even allows new faith schools, but it demands of faith schools the same high standards of non-discrimination, tolerance and inclusivity, that are expected of all other taxpayer-funded schools. Extremists on both sides will argue that you can't trust the other lot to run schools at all. But that is prejudice. This position does not prejudge a school by the faith, or not, of its leadership, and is supported by a broad coalition of liberal believers and liberal atheists. This coalition is exactly the kind of initiative that is vital in today's society that is at risk of having walls go up between believers and unbelievers.

Rabbi Jonathon Romain spoke at the fringe meeting in support of this compromise, saying

I want my children to go to a school where they can sit next to a Christian, play football in the break with a Muslim, do homework with a Hindu and walk back with an atheist - interacting with them and them getting to know what a Jewish child is like. Schools should build bridges, not erect barriers.

A Rev Chad of St Chad's (no relation) also spoke at the fringe explaining that he felt the christian ethos was about reaching out to the community, not erecting barriers to keep it out.

It is hard to credit then, the arguments for amendment 3. I suppose if somebody comes to you and says "I represent Jews, or Catholics or Hindus..., and I say this policy is an assault on our faith schools", it is difficult to disagree. But it remains the case that opinion among believers is as divided on these questions as opinion always is, and anyone claiming that a faith speaks with one voice is being a little mischeivous.

Amendment 3, then, sought to maintain selection by faith, that is in Romain's words, to erect barriers not bridges, in part 1, and in part 2, to allow discrimination in employment against senior teachers (eg a head of chemistry) who were of the wrong faith, or who suffered a crisis of faith or the failure of a marriage. Part 1 passed, thanks to the the wrong "assualt on faith schools" hyperbole - that I can't blame delegates for buying in to. Part 2 fell, thank, er, Providence.

Overall I am satisfied with the outcome. I raised this whole issue a year ago on Lib Dem Voice, at a time when many in the party blogosphere were holding pointless and destructive arguments over the existence of God and the merits of religion. And even then I thought the selection by faith issue would be too tough to crack and suggested a compromise on it. It is a shame perhaps that my compromise wasn't put to conference. It allowed selection by faith, but insisted that a declaration of faith be considered sufficient. This addressed the problem of people having to go to church under false pretences, of believers missing out because some cleric or other thinks they don't believe well enough or objects to their lifestyle/social class, etc. It reflects the fact that faith is simply not visible to somebody outside one's own head, and does not justify giving unelected clerics, or anyone else, a gatekeeper role to public services that we have already paid for through taxation.

But the win, as far as I am concerned, is this coalition of liberals. I joined the Lib Dems to make common cause with other liberals, not with (or against) other atheists. The religion and faith schools questions seemed to threaten to divide this party. Blair and Bush might be mocked and condemned for their pro-war faith, but really it doesn't matter. Non-believers can be just as hawkish. What matters is your politics.

I hope you understood all that from my tweets.

Greenpartywatch: GP candidate faces axe for trying to save the planet

2009-02-25T16:53:00.000Z

A storm is brewing in the Green Party over an article by Chris Goodall, their PPC in Oxford West and Abingdon, arguing that nuclear power will be necessary as part of the solution to climate change.

He goes where Mark Lynas and Stephen Tindale have gone before. Many leading environmentalists now take the view that nuclear is just too useful a source of low-carbon energy to do without; that concerns over nuclear waste, while valid environmental concerns, pale into insignificance compared to climate change.

Opponents frame the debate as "nuclear v renewables", but this is just framing. Let's take as read support for renewables and efficiency. Then what? Where is the rest of our energy coming from?

Realistically, what nuclear is up against is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). A good idea, but not yet, and perhaps not ever, a technology ready to be deployed. If you are convinced that CCS will work, then you can probably afford to be anti-nuclear. But why would you be so convinced?

Here is a question I put to Steve Webb MP, in a Lib Dem Voice webchat way back.

Do you agree that we should be looking to make progress on carbon emissions, primarily with techonlogies that exist, such as wind, nuclear, CSP, CHP, rail, and smart meters rather than gambling on technologies that might never exist, such as CCS, much better PV, and particular road transport solutions? Where technologies look promising, but don't yet work, rather than buy inferior versions of them, supporting that inferiority, why don't we offer prizes to companies that bring them to viability?

And he responded

We should certainly use readily available technologies such as CHP and smart meters as far as possible. But Carbon Capture is essential to the planet. China and India are rolling out new unabated coal-fired power stations at an alarming rate. Unless those emissions get captured we are all in trouble. So investing in CCS research has got to be a priority. In terms of prizes for companies that bring forward new ideas, in a world of carbon rationing and carbon markets, there ought to be strong economic 'prizes' for green technology - the key is to remove the barriers which prevent them getting to the commercial viability stage.

The position on nuclear - too little too late - had been given previously.

To support this policy it seems necessary to believe that CCS will actually work, and to be willing to gamble the planet's future on it working. Carbon capture is essential to the planet? Nuclear is too little too late. One could just as well say the opposite. Nuclear is essential to the planet, and CCS is too little too late. The second position has the advantage that nuclear is known to work, and building CCS-ready plant actually means building dirty coal plant.

So we face the same questions the Greens do, and we will continue to debate them, just as the Greens, er, oh...

Mr Goodall’s remarks had left many party members “seriously concerned”, the Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, MEP, said last night. “It is of great concern to me that a candidate should be promoting a policy which is at odds with the party manifesto, and I shall be taking that forward,” she said. ... Asked if this would include disciplinary action and possibly even de-selection as a candidate, Ms Lucas would only say: “We will be taking appropriate measures.”

What really bothers me about this - because of course parties should be able to remove candidates who reject their values - is that Goodall's position is being seen by the Green party not as a contribution to the debate on how to save the planet, but as a rejection of the idea that we should be saving the planet - as a rejection of the party's values.

And this way madness lies. If you happen to believe that technology A will do a job better than technology B, for empirical practical reasons, this says nothing about your political values. If, when you explain your reasons, people invoke disciplinary procedures, that does suggest a deliberate attempt to keep heads in the sand and protect sacred cows from any kind of criticism.

But as I have said in the past, it is only by debating these questions openly, by taking evidence on the chin when it hurts, that we stand any chance in the long run of getting the right answers.

Chris Goodall, if you're listening, have a look as well at some of the benefits of trade, enterprise, and science.

Principal Components of Principles

2009-01-22T13:11:00.003Z

Alix and Jennie have resurrected the peculiar fascinating 2005 political compass, the one that suggets some odd-looking criteria for defining left and right.

I come out pretty close to Alix: left on the main axis of internationalism/rehabilitation, and right on the minor axis of free trade and war. I was against the war, so I must be really keen on free trade.

OK the fascinating thing about this survey is these axes were not chosen by the authors, but arose as a statistical outcome of the actual answers actual voters gave to the questions. Let me try to explain this a little bit.

Lets say you have a 1000 responses to a survey of 20 political questions with simple for/against type answers. What the principal components analysis does is find a formula for a number that would let you predict the answers to one survey, given no other information, with the greatest possible accuracy.

And it turns out that this number reflects opinions on hanging/flogging and nationalism. So this is the principal principle axis. What this means is that if you know somebody is, say -4, on this axis, you can predict their answers to the whole survey with, say, 80% accuracy.

Nobody chose hanging/flogging/internationalism - it is just that this formula and this number gives you the best predictive power. Some other formula might reflect different priorities, but only give 75% accuracy.

It gets a bit more complicated with two axes, but the principle (the principle of the principal principle?) remains the same. With a second formula and a second number, you can raise the predictive power to, say, 90%. A number reflecting views on war/free trade does this better than any other.

What does this mean - well it means that the data is telling us that views that belong together on an axis are highly correlated with each other. Supporters of hanging and flogging tend to be nationalist, and supporters of free markets tend to be pro-war. It also tells us how much the parties overlap, and therefore how difficult it is for any party to position itself clearly without alienating a lot of supporters.

OK that's the good and interesting. What's wrong with this picture? Well for starters, there were only 1 or 2 questions on war and 6 on economics. Having 6 similar questions means that those 6 are 30% of the data and will almost certainly be reflected in a principal component. War may have found itself tacked on as a statistical artefact but I suggest there should be 6 questions on war too before we read too much into this correlation.

Similarly there were 6 questions on inter/nationalism - another 30% of the data - and two on crime. So nationalism is going to come out of the analysis, picking up one or two more questions in the same way.

So I think a safer interpretation is that there are two components or groupings by which answers are predictable: 1. nationalism and 2. economics, in a survey where a third of the questions are on nationalism, a third are on economics, and the last third are an assortment of other topics.

Oh. That's not exactly surprising is it? If we had a survey with 6 questions about electoral reform, 6 about income tax and 8 assorted others, I wonder what the two axes would be labelled then?

On libertarianism and public goods

2008-11-11T00:56:00.001Z

I have noticed an article in Tristan Mills' shared links defending libertarianism from the objection that the free market would undersupply public goods.

If that's all Greek to you, some explanation.

Shared links - a bloggers tool for sharing articles read elsewhere that might be interesting. My most recent shared links are listed on the right under the imperative read this too. A bit like libdig for one.

Libertarianism - an ideology that holds that a) property is more important than liberty, and b) that everything the state does is evil. At least those seem to be the priorities. If you are interested in libertarianism, I strongly recommend reading this, detailing one liberterian's escape after seeing the flaws in the ideology. In fact it is a more worthwhile read than the rest of this blog post. You can skip the stuff about the minimum wage. You may ask why I show so much interest in such a fringe ideology: it is partly based on that article that I believe libertarians are usually redeemable. (And while the arguments are specifically about the Ayn Rand flavour of libertarianism, most are applicable to saner flavours.)

Public goods - (wikipedia) goods that we benefit from, like air, science and free software, that we don't use up by enjoying, nor can we be effectively prevented from using.

OK, so what does this article say? There's a certain amount of reference to prior arguments, so pay attention. I should add that the author, ka1igu1a, appears to be one of the better kinds of libertarian, so I may be making some unfair assumptions.

[quoting] Underproduction of public goods is inevitable in the presence of 1) the ability to free-ride (i.e. non-excludable goods) and 2) rational self-interest.[end quote]

Knapp attacked this position by claiming "underproduction" to be subjective measure, a measure typically proclaimed by fiat by the central planner. Holtz's rejoinder to Knapp was that Knapp didn't understand "higher mathematics" and that economists have in their toolbox mathematical measures of optimality, including such measures of Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks Efficiency.

However, ... In Public Choice theory, the "Redistribution Problem" is recast as "Government Failure." Government Failure more or less holds that public goods will be systematically over-produced. It should be noted that "over-production" violates any algorithmic standard of optimality just as under-production does; and,in fact, the violations can be much worse.

I have used the ellipsis to cut out what is presumably a carefully constructed argument, which I will take for granted. Ka1igu1a's retort boils down to this. Free markets may underproduce public goods (although I'm not necessarily accepting this), but governments overproduce them. This is of course no contradiction. I think it is probably true that markets underproduce public goods and governments overproduce them. This is hardly a compelling argument for the abolition of governments, but it is one for not letting them get too big.

The classic example of a public good supposedly is "national defense." Of course, it's difficult to justify why the US needs to spend roughly a trillion dollars a year on national defense. National Defense is Exhibit A of "government failure." The government failure is not in providing the public good of "defense," but that the overproduction of this public good is orders of magnitude more inefficient than any "market failure" could ever possibly be.

A good example. I agree that the US defence budget is too large. On the other hand I'm not sure that all defence budgets around the world are always too large. There are times, aren't there, when rearmament is a necessary evil? The 30s come to mind.

If you seriously believe that the US military industrial complex, with all it's stockpiles of WMD, is somehow a legitimate consequence of meeting a "public good,"

A US focus is fair enough on a US blog - but how does this argument apply elsewhere in the world?

Holtz seems unaware that human instrumental rationality, point (2), has been debunked by experimental economics, sociology, and game Theory for some time now.

No no no. If the problem is that it is irrational to produce public goods, it misses the point to assert that people aren't particularly rational anyway. Any rationality will lead to underproduction of public goods and any irrationality will lead to, well it could lead to anything, but there is no way you can predict it would lead to a systematic balancing overproduction of public goods. This is a very sloppy argument.

I should point out that Freedom Democrats utilizes Drupal Open Source Software. According to Holtz, I really shouldn't be even posting on this site, because Open Source Software should have long ago been killed by the non-excludable, free-rider problem. Yes, Open Source Software satisfies the definition of a "public good," however no one seriously would even dare to make a Pareto-optimality argument against it's under-production. Holtz's "inevitably argument" is empirically debunked.

If only Holtz had said that no public goods would be freely produced, ka1igu1a would have a point, but he didn't and he doesn't. My guess is that production of more, better open source software would be closer to Pareto optimal. Not that I think the state can do much to help.

OK, so where does this leave us. Public goods will be underproduced by free markets. There is a real dearth, I suspect, of very useful information. Trivial information you can put in a magazine or something and sell, but anything really important people will hear about, and you can't copyright the truth. In some respects governments do OK here - they pay for scientific research for example. But I guess if they did the same with software, it would be a disaster.

But drawing to a conlcusion, there seems to be a desperation among libertarians to come to the right conclusions however sloppy the arguments used to get there. To me this suggests that we are not dealing with the real reasons somebody has for supporting libertarianism. It suggests an approach which claims to know the answer before the question has been asked. This is not principled or rational, but arbitrary and dogmatic.

Tax: Labour to copy the Lib Dems; Tories to lose the plot

2008-11-10T12:26:00.006Z

We hear that Gordon Brown (not Alasdair Darling - what is his job, again?) is thinking about tax cuts as part of a fiscal stimulus package. This is something that the Lib Dems have been advocating for some time, particularly that taxes on people on lower and middle incomes are particularly good candidates for lowering to stimulate the economy. Such people are most likely to spend the extra money, and, if they are homeowners, to keep their homes as a result. This sort of stimulus also has the advantage over extra public spending in that it benefits the private sector directly, not just indirectly. More from Nick Clegg and myself on this here.

Some will doubtless feel offended at Labour stealing our policies, but I rather like it. They are admitting to the world that we were right all along, again, and that if you want the right policies on the economy without months or years of dithering first, then vote Lib Dem.

The Tories on the other hand, well, what can I say.

The Tories unveil their own plans, aimed at dealing specifically with unemployment, on Tuesday.
They say they would fund tax cuts through existing spending and not - as they suspect the government would do - through borrowing.

The Today programme was suggesting this means tax cuts targetted at people "likely to lose their jobs." Huh? What? How can you measure who is likely to lose their jobs, in a systematic enough way to include this concept in tax law? Or perhaps they just mean tax cuts for bankers. That could be it. But incorporating this kind of nebulous concept in tax law is even worse, and will lead to far more pointless complication of the tax system, than even Gordon Brown's insufferable tinkering. Whatever happened to a simpler tax system?

Bizarre as this is however, it is not the worst of it. They would fund these cuts "through existing spending" [cuts], not through borrowing. So this is not going to be a fiscal stimulus at all. The Tory response to the economic climate is to do nothing. Whoopee.

The Nick Clegg interview

2008-11-04T17:40:00.002Z

I've been well scooped on this by Charlotte, but I don't mind at all. Sharp and lithe, she said I was and I still can't decide which is the more gratifying. Charlotte was smoking like a chimney - with carbon capture and storage - throughout on her e-cig, and none of us noticed. Ditto in the cafe afterwards, until she 'fessed up. It looks like technology has thoroughly solved the problem of nuisance smoke. But I digress.

So, given the chance to grill Nick Clegg, what I wanted to do was deal with some of the recent criticism, not all from enemies, that our policy of tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes doesn't stand up to scrutiny so well after the latest phase of the financial crisis - or at least that it is no longer so clear exactly what we are proposing. I was hoping to steer the conversation towards how we might restore the discomfort our policy had been causing the Tories, but it didn't turn out like that.

So here it is, and I'm working more or less from Charlotte's transcript, so thanks for that. Nick is in italics.

If you go back to before the latest tranche of the financial crisis, our policy of tax cuts for the poor was causing all sorts of discomfort for the conservatives and their policy of the cupboard was bare was looking a bit foolish. I don't think that's working quite so well now. A lot of people are saying you can't offer tax cuts to people at the moment, and the osbourne attitude to business appears to be picking up a bit. is that fair? is it harder for us now to capitalise on teh position we had?

I think it's exactly the reverse. The one thing people instinctively know you can't do as you head into a recession is jack taxes up. If you look at the number of now serious commentators in the press, who are now saying that if you want to stimulate growth, which is something you desperately need to do if you're heading into a very serious recession, one of the ways, not the only way, but one of the ways is by cutting taxes. in a way - and this is the crucial caveat - in a way which can stimulate spending. Every economist will tell you that if you provide top down tax cuts to people at the top as the tories have done with their only tax proposal on inheritance tax, it doesn't help the real economy because they just salt away the difference. bottom up tax cuts do, they're socially just, they're clear and so helps stimulate spending on the hight street because people on low incomes can have the money to spend it, so the economic logic has got greater. Meanwhile people like [?] saying that tax cuts are now necessary, that puts us on the right side of the argument.

Look at the Tory position:I think the Tories have backed themselves into a disastrous cul-de-sac. There's no evidence that the Osbourne thing is filtering though. They've plummeted in the polls in terms of economic competence - hardly evidence of a message getting through to the public. What they're doing, which I think is a fascinating but from their point of view a disasterous strategic decision,is they have basically said to themselves, clearly, that their only purpose is to blame it all on Gordon, and that to do that they need to constantly go and on about how's he's spent too much in the past, therefore that allows us no flexibility to do anything now. I think it is a disasterous solution - firstly it's economically illiterate, because they're going on about government debt when the real issue in the British eoncomy is astronically high levels of private debt. I'm not pretending it's easy to make that distinction in public debate, but if you want to get down to the economic fundamentals - and you can argue it's a couple of percentage points to high or too low, but comparitarively speaking it's approximately 40%, it'll probably shoot up to 60% because of the automatic stabilisers and because of the bank bailout thing. Italian debt, if you want an extreme example is above 100%, French and German debt is about 20% higher and it's much, much lower than American debt. It's only, as any columnist will tell you - Government debt is - a compariative science. How are you compared in your Government debt to other government debts is often the crucial thing, because that's what leads to runs on currencies. So I think they're wrong economically, they're picking the wrong target, they're fighting over the wrong bone - government debt. The real problem is private debt. People have got themselves into terrible, terrible trouble. One of the ways you help people get out of debt is putting money back in their pockets.

Why this has been such a strategic disaster, is because their strategy is one of blame and inaction. They have no proactive menu to give the british people. they've got nothing to say on tax cuts, they've got nothing to say on interest rates. They say piffling stuff on small business, council tax - it's all smoke and mirrors and not serious. so i think they've got themselves into serious trouble. They can't do that for the next two years. "It's all your fault and there's nothing we can do" That council of despair is not going to work with the voters.

This is breathtakingly good stuff, and I am somewhat thrown off course by it all. Go back and read it again.

On a specific aspect of this, they're saying you shouldn't loosen fiscal policy at this sort of time...

They're not even saying that! Osbourne's remark was that he accepted borrowing going up.

The Keynesian line is that you do loosen fiscal policy because it keeps things going. I can see why they're trying to [oppose] that [loosening], because they're trying to reclaim a reputation for being sensible on the economy, which they'd lost to Labour.

I'm not sure about the transcript here, but what I am getting at is this. Osborne seems to be saying (I caught the first 5 minutes of one of his recent speeches), that you shouldn't loosen fiscal policy beyond the automatic stabilisers, because this does more harm than good to eventual recovery. So I am looking for our response to this specific point.

My feeling is that Osborne's point is over-simplified. There is a danger that if you expand the state to make up a shortfall in economic activity during a recession, then there will be no slack for the private sector to expand into, and so the recession will grind on. But to say that there should be no intentional expansion of state activity makes sense only if you do - as Osborne seems to - regard all state activity only as a deadweight drain on the productive economy; whereas if the state also has, through infrastructure, education and security for example, a positive effect on the private sector economy, then some expansion here, during a recession, seems much more reasonable.

Of course, as Nick has said, tax cuts for the poor are also an effective fiscal stimulus, and one that boosts the private not the public sector.

Anyway, onwards...

Of course you need to be fiscally responsible. But you do that over the cycle. As we're heading into what might be the worst recession in a generation, it is recipe for masochism and greater recession if you spend all the time fighting over actually miniscule differences in government debt. You've got to get growth going. If you don't, there's no revenue there, [...]. That is a priority now. I think what's interesting about the Tories is that they don't understand the enormity of what we're up against. They certianly don't understand the enormity of the knock to the legitimacy of their own prejudices in favour of deregulated financial services and so on, and the don't undrstand the risks of their 'do nothing' strategy - which is what they are, in effect, advocating.

I change tack at this point

Well, Labour on the other hand have already spent all of our £20 billion, therefore we had a policy that was agreed before the latest crisis. To carry on, seemingly unchanged, seems like we're not accepting what's happened, that in two years we're going to have to start again.

First of all, you don't rewrite every pound and pence of your public spending plans in the middle of a vertical decline in the national econonmy. Clearly That's something you resolve, finally, when you go the country before the general election. Whether you like it or not it's a moving target - it's part of the art of politics. what you can do, and what we're rightly doing, is saying at precisely the time when how you spend pulbic money is more important than ever before, because in addition to value for money, and accountability to the taxpayer, you've also got to work out how the money you spend on behalf of the public is helping to stimulate the economy or not.i think we are quite right in saying that in those circumstances, the arguments we've always levelled against certain forms of public spending, 5 billon on id cards, 13 on nhs it system which doesn't work, 2 billion on a whitehall inspection regieme, 12 billion on a new it survilance scheme, that is not intelligence use of money. we object to those allocations of money on reasons of principle and policy, but they are especially daft at at time when you are hoping public is going to stimulate the economy, and so should be spent in different ways.

I think this is a very important point. Some people who didn't particularly like Make it Happen (pdf), were saying that it should be thrown out as soon as economic circumstances seemed to change. But the same arguments would apply to any spending policy they did like.

And I think this is a good answer to some of the complaints that we are not clear enough. Any package will have to be adjusted to point in the economic cycle we find ourselves in at election time - not the point we find ourselves in today - but that by making our views on fiscal policy clear, we can indicate today what kinds of adjustments those will be in a recession - largely that the spending/tax cut side will be maintained, but that revenue side will not be expected to fully deliver yet.

Nick senses what I have been groping for

There's a slightly wider argument lurking behind your question - is public spending the right way to stimulate the economy? It is one way to stimulate demand, but it's not the only way, and crucially it's a delayed way of doing it. It has a chronology to it. The idea that brown should be become a latter day Anglo-Saxon version of Francois Mitterand , creating huge public projects around the country and this'll put us on the economic straight and narrow is a nonsense. Clearly public spending plays a role, borrowing goes up as the automatic stabilisers kick in, tax revenues go down, benefit payments go up.. i think what we need to do is maintain, as I tried to encapsulate in this week's prime minister's questions, that at precisely the times when millions of British families are tightening their belts, how government spends our money should be subject to even more scrunity than before. They need to be spending it on the right kinds of things. That seems to me more valid now than before.

Oh, so I was just asking the usual Keynsian v Austrian kinda question. Bit of a wasted opportunity perhaps. In the back of my mind there was a particular political angle to this, some way to pin down what the Tories actually stand for on something. Is Osborne a hardline Austrian, and would this be politically damaging? But Nick, in full flow, is a force of nature, and we didn't get there. Perhaps just as well as I was sitting next to a renowned libertarian who is probably sympathetic to the Austrian school.

Jonathan, Charlotte, Alex, Mat and Millennium Dome himself went on to ask their questions. I needed a rest.

Credit crunch: atheism to blame?

2008-10-23T14:12:00.003+01:00

I wouldn't normally bother with the vomitings of Mad Mel Phillips, but this one has been noticed for her quite touching explanation of the current financial turmoil. Touching, that is, in an everything-is-about-my-pet-hates kinda way.

She writes:

I see this financial breakdown, moreover, as being not merely a moral crisis but the monetary expression of the broader degradation of our values – the erosion of duty and responsibility to others in favour of instant gratification, unlimited demands repackaged as ‘rights’ and the loss of self-discipline. And the root cause of that erosion is ‘militant atheism’ which, in junking religion, has destroyed our sense of anything beyond our material selves and the here and now and, through such hyper-individualism, paved the way for the onslaught on bedrock moral values expressed through such things as family breakdown and mass fatherlessness, educational collapse, widespread incivility, unprecedented levels of near psychopathic violent crime, epidemic drunkenness and drug abuse, the repudiation of all authority, the moral inversion of victim culture, the destruction of truth and objectivity and a corresponding rise in credulousness in the face of lies and propaganda -- and intimidation and bullying to drive this agenda into public policy.

Wow. Clearly, according to Mel, atheism is, more or less, a rejection of all values and virtues. I would defy anybody to see that in the work of, to pluck one out of the air, Robert Ingersoll.

And Mel is wrong about unprecedented levels of violent crime. The past was much much more violent than today. See Pinker (text or video). I'm not sure what she means by the 'moral inversion of victim culture', presumably it is something to do with her desire to blame the victims of any injustices perpetrated by her in-group. The rest of the rant seems to be a complaint that people don't agree with her bile so much any more. Diddums.

Alonzo Fyfe likens this hate-speech against atheists to the hate-speech against Jews that was common in the 1930s, in the wake of another crash.

People seeking political power for themselves named Jews as the culprit, either through the corruption of their influence and their values on (otherwise) 'good' Christians, or as a part of a conspiracy to take over the world – or, at least, the global economy.

That vilification of the Jews had some very ugly consequences.

Today, blaming the Jews for economic bad news is not as popular as it used to be. Consequently, bigots need to find a new target group – one that can be effectively blamed where the people might actually believe the hate-mongering that the writers engage in.

I guess here in the UK we don't get quite as upset as this, but maybe we ought to. There is something compelling in the idea that if you have special access to knowledge of truth, beauty, and goodness, then those who disagree with you are on the side of lies, ugliness and evil. It is not just unthinking bigotry, but something that seeks to make bigotry a virtue, and the virtuous, bigots. Yet, you can find the best and the worst of humanity in virtually every faith-related or other identity group. Liberals included. Remember this if you are tempted. Conservatives and socialists alike seek a tyranny of the good, and differ only in their notions of the good. Liberals recognise that this is an intellectual trap - that we should focus not on the virtue of a would-be tyrant, but on the tyranny.

Which brings me to the real point of this post. Some of Mel's themes are not entirely unfamiliar closer to home. How's this:

Thus the inevitable decline in church attendance and religious belief, indicating the continued secularisation of British society, marches on. Religion, whilst clearly not the panacea for all the world's ills, at least has pretensions to a code by which it's devotees are to live and behave.

or this

such is the emerging animus towards religion, and such is the underlying utilitarianism of our political culture - that any statements about belief that are not utilitarian, including what we believe about right and wrong, are being similarly sidelined. This has brought with it something of a crisis of values inside the forces of liberalism.

These are quotes from Reinventing the State, the chapters by Lynne Featherstone and David Boyle respectively.

Luckily what Lynne and David are doing is arguing an ideological point. Mel, on the other hand attacks an entire faith-identity group (atheists), indifferent to the actual, diverse values and practises of the members of this group. It is easy to miss the distinction. Indeed for writing this post, I went back to Reinventing the State, and failed to find the juicier, more prejudiced quotes I thought I had remembered reading.

There is still a danger - that many will not distinguish between disagreeing with secularists and attacking atheists, just as it is often hard to distinguish between disagreements with islam and attacks on muslims. But we have to live with this danger because the debate must be had.

Mad Mel, meanwhile, isn't interested in the debate. She regards people like myself, much like many regarded the Jews of the 1930s. We have corrupted society, because we apparently have no values. What is to be done about us?

How not to destroy socialism

2008-10-16T22:44:00.008+01:00

Charlotte Gore has kindly offered to destroy socialism for us, explaining that it is wrong for the state to force us to do things that it think are good for us. Who could disagree with that? The question becomes a little muddier when it is not force but taxation, and not what is good for us, but what is good for other people.

When libertarians equate taxation with force, it seems to be because they have a good presumption against the initiation of force, and want to use it again. And they are not their brothers' keepers.

The comments have thrown up something that I tend to take for granted when evaluating or justifying policies.

I asked Charlotte this: Do you object to socialism because it is justified in terms of the greater good? Or do you object to the idea of the greater good, because it is used to justify socialism?

and she replied

I think the point is that you can use 'The Greater Good' as a moral justification to commit almost any act. Socialism - both terrible ends and terrible means - is justified in the same way.

So yes, I am against both the act and the moral justification that 'permits' the act. I am not against things just because they're justified by 'the Greater Good' - I just see it as a warning flag.

Now that you're asking, I think debating with people about whether or not Socialism would serve the Greater Good would, in effect, be to accept the premise of their argument - that the Greater Good can be a legitimate moral justification.

There's something in this I agree with. It is probably true that appeals to the greater good usually merit a reaction of horror.

And yet, I think a liberal society is a good one, in a way that a socialist or conservative society is not. Am I committing the same crime? So I responded along these lines:

I would agree that the "greater good" is a dangerously nebulous concept. So let's forget about the "greater". You are arguing, aren't you, that a smaller state is better than a bigger state? Some people will argue the opposite.

I say "X is good" and you disagree, do you say

"No, X is bad"

"No, 'X is good' is not a legitimate moral justification."

Adding that I find it hard enough to work out sometimes what is good and what is bad, never mind what makes a "legitimate" moral justification.

The trouble for arch libertarians, as I see it is that they are saying that it is wrong to use certain kinds of argument as moral justifications for political action. This is itself a moral claim very much of the kind that it itself condemns.

It seems to me that libertarianism, like Marxism, is full of the kind of implicit moral claims that are also condemned. Respect property. Don't initiate force. Anything the government does is evil. If these are not moral claims, then what are they?

So what alternative do I offer?

It seems to me there are two phases to the evaluation of a policy. 1, a prediction of the policy's effects, and 2, evaluation of those effects according to our values, that is whether it has good consequences.

This does seem inescapably to rely on a notion of the good. Frankly, no other standard makes any sense to me, than that a policy should have good consequences. What else might I possibly want to care about? Good intentions? Purleeeze. The road to hell, etc.

So it is a struggle to understand Charlotte's perspective that certain kinds of argument are dangerous and therfore cannot be used. Of course it is true they are dangerous. Prediction is never perfect (and so policy should be risk-averse) and some people have pretty warped values, and so some very bad policies could seem good after a process of prediction and evaluation.

But what is the alternative? To say that we don't care about the consequences? Yet even libertarians don't fail to claim that the libertarian society will be freer, happier, richer, and better in all sorts of ways. Do they say this just because they think it matters to us, when it really doesn't matter to them?

No. There are bad policies because there are bad predictions and bad evaluations, not because we shouldn't be trying to do either. And it is interesting how a confusion of prediction and evaluation is behind so many bad policies. Socialists are bad at prediction because of Marx. They liked his evaluation - although he couched it, like libertarians do, in apparently amoral rational terms - and so didn't subject his philosophy to the rigour that has blown it away. Greens are trying to reinvent economics - because they don't like the predictions it gives about their well-intentioned policies - by trying to add "moral" values to it, rendering it a hopeless tool of prediction.

We hone our tools for prediction with scientific skepticism, free debate and a respect for evidence over tradition. This is liberal of course, but what really defines the liberal are the values. That you know what is best for you, better than I do, and therefore I should respect your freedom. That I have no way of knowing whether my hopes and dreams are better or more important than yours are, and in this sense we are equal. That despite and because of our differences we have to get along. Liberty, equality and community. Not really fundamental values, but abstractions reflecting as best as possible the diverse inarticulable fundamental values in each of our heads.

Whew.

Ok, a final thought and a slight digression if you have not had enough already. I very much liked oranjepan's comment:

If we stop thinking of liberalism as an ideology and start thinking of it as a tendency which incorporates differing ideologies in different contexts then all the problems and inconsistencies dissolve away into compatibility.

All ideologies are great if you are rich and can control the circumstances in which you apply them, but if you're not rich it's a different matter. If you're not rich ideology becomes a way to explain the world which provides excuses for your lack of material success and prevents you from taking the opportunities to rise out of your situation.

Its much better not to dispute the truth or applicability of any ideology but to dispute the universality of its truths and define the limits of its application.

It provoked the retort

I think what you've said there sums up modern politics - especially our party. A pragmatic, managerial approach to politics

The response is that skepticism with regard to ideologies is pragmatic and therefore unprincipled. (Unprincipled? Is that like lacking an appreciation for the greater good? What a thing to suggest!)

Pragmatism is considering what works - it is calculating the actual effects of a policy. So it is consistent with - indeed essential to - a sound values-based judgement of those effects and therefore of the policy.

But I read in oranjepan's comment skepticism more than pragmatism. Don't get carried away with your ideologies. That is the sort of thing that leads to atrocities.

Greening the sprouts

2008-10-08T18:41:00.000+01:00

Charlotte and Steph have been telling us about the greenness of their school education. Now when I was at school, while I would bore my fellow students and any teachers who would listen, senseless, with the wisdom of EF Schumacher, I certainly never got any encouragement in return. My physics teachers were pro-nuclear of course, although one also signed me up to Amnesty International.

It never occurred to me that we might learn about something quite so intensely political as the environment, at school. Rather, I took it as my mission to bring this wisdom to my peers, along with that of any other hard-left causes I came across as a member of a poor middle class minority in a working class area.

Clearly all that changed, more or less as soon as I left school. I was shocked to see my daughter's Y3 school play about the rainforest, complete with evil loggers, noble savages and talking animals. Not that it was entirely, or even largely, wrong. Simplistic, black and white, saccharine, yes, of course it was all of those, what do you expect. But it seems that environmental values - not just environmental science - is now on the syallabus.

What should we make of this? Despite the special claims of faith schools, all schools are beacons of values, they all teach good behaviour, reponsibility, self-respect and so forth. So it makes sense to add environmental consciousness to the list. Yet there are legitimate political debating points that are necessarily brushed aside by this clarity of moral purpose.

And the more specific we get, the more problematic it becomes. Environmentalism is replete with received wisdom of variable quality, largely defined by the mass media, and therefore not a few contradictions. We wouldn't teach physics from articles in the Sunday papers, so why environmentalism? Surely the question of whether expanding nuclear power is an appropriate response to the threat of global warming, shouldn't be taught. Investigated, yes, debated, yes, but taught?!

Environmentalism also bears some of the scars of its years in the wilderness: a focus on the personal above the political, even when the personal is utterly symbolic; a tendency to blame corporations or profit for everything; a normal human tendency to evaluate evidence on the basis of where it comes from, and whether it fits the answers you are already proposing.

Still, clearly a whole generation of people has decided to teach the next the importance of doing something it wouldn't do itself. The only axe-grinders I remember teaching me were an anarchist, a Conservative and a Christian. Yet unlike those three, we have something nearing a consensus that environmentalism is the way forward. And when did that happen? Somehow, without my noticing, my views went from cranky to mainstream, without changing much.

All we need now is to do something about it. So what could be better than teaching our kids how to save the planet? (Other that doing it ourselves of course) Well how about teaching them how to crtically evaluate evidence and arguments? Include in that examining values and evaluating ethical arguments. Yet how many schools study philosophy and ethics? We need to learn to ask the right questions, not just be given what others think are the right answers.

David Cameron blames spelling reform for social breakdown

2008-10-01T17:25:00.004+01:00

In the context of talking about social breakdown, violence on our streets, and so on, Cameron offered three planks of policy to begin to tackle the problem: Families, Schools and Welfare.

Under schools there was the usual complaint about standards, and then this:

Listen to this. It's the President of the Spelling Society. He said, and I quote, "people should be able to use whichever spelling they prefer."

Isn't that shocking, that the Spelling Society doesn't stand up for correct spelling? Well no. The Spelling Society is a campaign for the simplification of English Spelling. They have slogans like

Why don't

comb
tomb
bomb

rime?

Why do

they
say
weigh

rime?

The point being that illogical spelling makes it harder for children to learn to read, leads to lower educational achievement, and contributes, presumably, in the long run, to, er, social breakdown.

This is not a campaign of trendy educationalists to take over our schools, but a campaign aimed at us, and in particular publishers, to spell words in a sensible way.

You might not agree of course, you might find the ossified spellings of a some particular previous century - I forget which - "quaint". Fine, but by putting that first you are the agent of social breakdown, not its opponent.

Cameron has taken the opposite view - saying that only by failing to reform English spelling are we going to staunch the tide of social breakdown. Or something like that. The full speech is parodied here, at Dave, nice but knave. (Which is me, really. Plug plug)

But perhaps I am reading too much into what Dave said. Perhaps it was just a pathetic retreat into a Tory comfort zone when faced with a difficult problem.

Update: more from Alix

With apologies to William Mcgonagall

2008-09-30T10:12:00.002+01:00

Profuse apologies to the world's best worst poet.

Twas in the year of 2008 in the month of September

Which the bankers of the world will long remember

For they did not act, as one would to a brother

In refusing to extend credit, one to another

For fail it did, the Bradford and Bingley

And we began to fear the banks would not go singlely

And collapse like a great house of cards

Or shatter like a mirror into millions of shards

Citigroup bought out the failing Wachovia

But that was not the last emergency takeover

The Halifax Bank of Scotland it had to be rescued

And the passage of the bailout plan by the US congress badly miscued

The Germans paid 35 billion Euros to Hypos Real Estate

And Glitnir was nationalised by the Icelandic State

Fortis of Benelux met, partially, with the same fate

All with little time for debate

This should never have happened according to some

Taxpayers will be paying for years to come

We must better regulate the banks, if only we are able

And next time we must listen to Vince Cable

Conservatives U turn on decentralisation

2008-09-29T21:31:00.009+01:00

The Tories are calling for a centrally-imposed freeze in council tax, as part of their commitment to localism.

I thought I might refer to their previous announcement on the subject of localism, and found that the page had been removed.

Luckily google cache comes to the rescue

All fine-sounding stuff of the type tories say when they are behind in the polls.

And google gives us the date:

It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 21 Sep 2008 05:51:27 GMT.

That's 8 days ago. This page seems to have been "lost" suspiciously close to the date of the announcement of this new policy.

The old Dave said:

So I hope that in 2008 the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party will join us in putting pressure on the Government to decentralise power, and that together we can create a new progressive alliance to decentralise British politics.

And the Conservatives, Dave, don't forget the Conservatives.

Hat tip: Quaequam blog!

Moral hazard in banking

2008-09-28T14:23:00.004+01:00

Banking as we know it is an industry largely made possible by regulation and deposit protection. There are unregulated savings schemes around, like FairPak, and unregulated borrowing, like from loan sharks. But with or without such protection, there is always a danger in having somebody else look after your money. Bankers and bank shareholders can profit from risk taking, but their losses are limited to their own stakes in the bank. This is moral hazard. The hazard is minimized if shareholders are left with nothing after a bailout, as they should be, but it is still there.

So the regulatory framework we have would seem to reflect the view that the sort of banking industry we have is worth having, that confidence in banks is worth protecting, and that depositors should be largely protected from the bad luck of a bank failure.

Clearly not everybody agrees. Some view banking as parasitical on the real economy, that without debt and credit we would all be better off. Banking, in this view should be essentially nationalised, so that the profits from credit creation goes to the public purse and so that investment favours public goods.

Others argue that the problem here is that the banking system is effectively already too much like a nationalised industry, with private banks merely agents of a state-controlled currency. Thus lighter regulation, private currencies, and banks being allowed to fail, are the answers. If depositors had more cause to care about the soundness of their banks, they would seek out and reward truly sound banks.

Both these camps are cheering the present crisis and pointing out how this proves that they were right all along. And in some small ways they are right.

Banking is parasitical in the sense that it does need to be bailed out from time to time. In the long run, it is therefore a subsidised industry, and seen in this light, public anger at overpaid failing bankers is entirely justified. Insisting that none of the bailout money goes on dividends or bonuses rather misses the point - the bailout money is socialising the loss. The profits mostly occur in another part of the cycle. I would favour an insurance pool paid into by the banks to fund the next bailout whenever that might occur. It would be in the banks interest that this fund is not called upon, and this might hopefully encourage them to engage constructively with regulators to help minimise systemic risks.

The other camp is right that interdependence of the banks and the central banks does give the system the characteristic of a monolithic monpolistic bank to which there is no alternative. Some risks are pooled rather than avoided, so instead of frequent bank failures hurting only a few, we have rare systemic threats that affect us all. But I, for one, would have even less confidence in an unregulated bank or a private currency, and I suspect only the real enthusiasts for those things would disagree. The moral hazard, of being able to profit from risks taken with the money of others, is just as great, or greater, in an unregulated bank as in a regulated one.

It may be dull, and we have overdone it lately, but credit is important. It makes all sorts of choices possible, and only some of them are unwise. And the banking system does a decent job of offering credit, better, certainly, than many state banks around the world have done - they tend to end up bullied by politicians into propping up failing state industries, and failing themselves. Better certainly than loan sharks, who we would be more beholden to if legal credit was greatly restricted. Better than LETS schemes, which are generally failures for reasons too many to go into here. The best alternative is perhaps the Building Society, and yet when many of them converted into banks, it hardly made much difference to their customers, except that they could suddenly get current accounts.

So it is important to maintain a banking system not unlike the one we have. The challenge is to do that while minimising moral hazard and the risks of failure, bailouts, and what amounts in the long run to a public subsidy to overpaid failures. Less regulation won't do this. More regulation won't necessarily do it either, and can increase risks. We need smarter regulation. Perhaps we need to revisit the reserve requirements abolished by Thatcher. But the details of this smarter regulation are beyond my competence.

I have one last possibly unworkable suggestion: that bank bonuses and dividends in future should be staged over, say, 10 years, the balance being held in a fund. If a bank fails, then it has a fund of effectively 5 years worth of bonuses and dividends which can be used to meet its obligations, those responsible for that failure paying a greater price than they would otherwise do. But banks could still pay as much as they like for success. Ideally banks would do this voluntarily, to show that they have the right incentives in place to be more reponsible with other people's money.

The moral difference between liberals, conservatives, socialists, etc.

2008-09-25T12:09:00.005+01:00

There's a good talk by Jonathan Haidt examining the differences in moral thinking between liberals and conservatives. This is American usage of course, but particularly focussing on social rather than economic issues, so it is not too inaccurate.

Haidt identifies what he calls the 5 foundations of morality by which he means 5 traits in evolutionary psychology (touched on here), connected with questions of moral behaviour. These are:

1. Harm/Care. We are disposed to bond with others and care for them, and have strong feelings about those who cause harm.

2. Fairness/reciprocity. This is associated with the golden rule ("Do unto others as you would be done by.") Also, I dare say, there is a fairness/reciprocity basis to both support for a social safety net, and for free trade. Both are reciprocal, but are often associated with opposing ideologies.

3. Ingroup/loyalty. We have a powerful instinct for forming tribes, mostly to oppose other tribes. More on this shortly.

4. Authority/respect. The anarchists' lament. Stop taking orders, they might say. Just listen to me and stop taking orders!

5. Purity/sanctity. Not just sex, but also attitudes to food for example.

So while we have the brain wiring to be guided by all of these consideration, there are differences of opinion as to which are moral. According to the video, conservatives tend to recognise all 5 as moral, and liberals just the first 2. In contrast to ingroup/loyalty we celebrate diversity; in contrast to deference to authority, we question it; in contrast to purity, we celebrate the freedom to be impure.

Haidt makes some sweet bipartisan point about the conservatives having a point, using all the tools in the toolbox to maintain order (yuk! stability, perhaps, please?) and that libs and cons therefore exist in some wonderful symbiotic dynamic harmony like yin and yang. But I will move swiftly on from there by looking more closely at the 5 foundations and British politics.

Harm/Care

Disagreements here a generally over what constitutes harm, and the extent of our duty to care for our neighbour. Mill, in On Liberty, argues, for example, that there are duties of care - to throw a line to somebody drowning for example. I see little disagreement on this except from libertarians. Am I right?

But while I disagree with libertarians who say that the state should not seek to do good, I agree that it should not try to (and can't) make us good. Socialists on the other hand don't seem to see a problem with that. (Do other liberals agree with me?) Conservatives can be found in both camps, I guess.

Greens generally apply harm/care thinking to the natural world, which, it can be argued, means a failure to apply it properly to human beings.

Fairness/reciprocity

Socialists believe that the poor deserve more, conservatives that the rich deserve more. Greens believe that everybody deserves less. I, frankly, don't know who deserves what, but I bet it isn't a function of class identity. Fairness in the sense of equal rights is still opposed by many Conservatives, but otherwise is largely agreed.

Both free trade/freedom of contract, and the social safety net and public services can be seen in terms of reciprocity. Socialists and greens are against half, and conservatives and libertarians against the other half; liberals support both halves.

Ingroup/loyalty

I agree that liberals are not greatly moved by this (except obviously as political partisans, like everybody else). Socialists and conservatives represent ingroups based on social class.

Socialists have struggled politically from the numerical decline of the unionised working class. Labour, therefore has had to expand its ingroup suffering much pain in the process.

This has left the working class feeling justifiably aggrieved that nobody represents them, creating opportunities for the BNP. The BNP being of course the epitome of the evil of ingroup/outgroup thinking.

Having your ingroup taken away, or being betrayed by it, can be an utterly crushing experience. Politics would perhaps be much healthier if there were an old-fashioned working-class socialist party. As long as it never won any power. We may have the best policies for millions of poor people, but we don't represent their interests against those of the middle classes.

Authority/respect

Clearly this issue separates liberals and libertarians from conservatives and fascists. Socialists appear in both camps and in the middle ground.

I think Greens have a complex relationship with this one. I know many would post them firmly in the authoritarian camp, but they also have a strong anarchist influence. In any case this is not so much about whether strong authority is necessary, or even helpful, in saving the planet - a question we will all have to face; but whether an attitude of deference to authority is a good thing, on which point I think they are largely with liberals.

Purity/sanctity

This is not so clear as in the US with its big religious right, although the same trend is apparent.

However I think the biggest on purity/sanctity are the Greens. Organics, GM, alt meds, being close to nature. Support for such "natural" things, often out of proportion to the benefits (if any), seems to be a purity thing.

In Haidt's surveys everybody recognised Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity as moral instincts, but conservatives did tend to rate them lower than liberals. Understandable: these different factors must be weighed against each other. And yet libertarians also seek to diminish the scope of considerations of harm/care and fairness, reducing them to "no initiation of force" and free trade. I think this explains why they are seen as right wing, with some justice, even though they don't agree with conservatives on foundations 3 to 5.

So this just illustrates yet again the error of lumping any of these ideologies with any other. A five dimensional compass would not sort these babies out. It is no good lumping greens with fascists or communists, or lumping libertarians with conservatives, as if this could end the debate. Both must be opposed for what they actually say, unless, of course, on occasion, they are right.

Lynas and Lucas on nuclear power

2008-09-23T11:33:00.004+01:00

Environmnental writer Mark Lynas and Green Party leader(!) Caroline Lucas debated nuclear power on the today programme this morning. It brought what I thought was the most astute question I've heard for a while on Today:

[Is there something] almost dogmatic in the theological sense about where the Green movement stands on this question, in that people are perhaps looking at the facts through lenses tinted by the historic opposition of the green movement to nuclear power?

Lucas didn't entirely disagree, but argued her point nonetheless in the usual way:

"Nuclear would lock us into a centralised energy system...." which is largely cod. They are all good ideas that come under the "decentralised energy" agenda, but the agenda itself is simply a way of packaging all carbon-saving technologies except for nuclear for the purposes of promoting them. By all means do that if you have already decided that nuclear would be a mistake, but it doesn't work as an argument against nuclear.
"Nuclear is not necessary..." - perhaps not. Arguably wind is not necessary either, or coal or gas or even energy efficiency. What is necessary is the generation of enough low-carbon energy, and we cannot afford to let dogma get in the way of this.
"Nuclear delivers too little too late." - that all depends on how much of it we build and how quickly. As Lynas pointed out, Germany built more coal fired power stations after the Greens had their nuclear plant shut down. That is an undeniable harm to the climate.

On their own these arguments might sway some but seen together they are horribly weak. We don't oppose wind farms because they deliver very little as a percentage of our total energy needs. We don't dismantle the interconnector to France's nuclear electric riches on the grounds that that is too "centralised", nor should we. We maintain spare generating capacity so that no single plant is "necessary". Lucas' objections are paper thin when stood against the need for large amounts of low-carbon energy.

Now maybe nuclear is just too expensive. Perhaps filling a percent of a percent or two of the Sahara with CSP, and linking to it with HVDC would be a better investment. But my guess is that we should do both - that we are a long way from being in a position to turn down feasible low-carbon energy sources. It is madness to frame the debate as nuclear v renewables and efficiency, when we are still building coal-fired plant.

And in any case the unknown factor in the cost of nuclear is the underwriting of the decommissioning cost, which is some time away. This would represent off-books liability that puts PFI to shame. No other low-carbon energy source can defer its costs like this. I don't think that our descendents whose climate will have been saved will mind that much the decommissioning cost. It is not as if they would be better off suffering climate change.

So with that in mind, it seems that nuclear capacity is almost certainly probably worth building, and probably probably worth building in sufficient quantity to replace all our coal-fired plant. (Gas, on the other hand, complements wind well.) I realise that my party, the Lib Dems, is opposed. I guess this is due to a desire to do the right thing for the environment, but with too much deference to the environmental movement. But environmentalists should heed Lynas:

We are no longer living in the 1970s. Today, the world is more threatened even than it was during the Cold War. Only this time nuclear power – instead of being part of the problem – can be part of the solution.

In defence of trickle-up economics

2008-09-17T13:12:00.002+01:00

Today saw a great speech from Nick Clegg at the Lib Dem conference, arguing for tax cuts for low and middle income earners to help meet rising food and fuel costs. The left don't like this because it doesn't involve veneration of the state, and the right don't because they focus their occasional tax cutting efforts at the better off - which is not to suggest that they cut taxes overall in the long run.

The left shouldn't object of course, because they should recognise that fuel and particularly food are even more basic and important than public services like ID cards and wars. But now I want to address why the right shouldn't object either, because this policy will benefit the rich too in the long run.

According to trickle-up economics, what happens when the low and middle income earners have more money in their pockets is that they go out and buy more of the things they need, so that money eventually gets recycled into executive bonuses, dividends, and so forth. So tax cuts for the poor benefit us all in the long run.

Now it should be said that not everybody agrees with trickle-up theory. Some argue that it is just spin for the doctrine that what is good for the poor is good for the country, a doctrine that should be resisted because, er, they aren't poor, or something.

But seriously, "supply siders" argue for cuts in taxation on profits to encourage investment. But as post-tax profits drive investment, these can also be boosted by boosting pre-tax profits, by leaving ordinary people with more in their pockets to spend. The difference is who gets the direct benefit and who merely gets trickled on, er, or trickled under.

The perils of genetics

2008-09-12T10:17:00.006+01:00

Laurence Boyce at Lib Dem Voice offers us a good argument that genetics is not irrelevant to the way we turn out, but that this raises fears, particularly on the left.

So why all the discomfort? Pinker sets out four “fears” that might make us hesitate in the face of what the science is increasingly telling us. These are the fear of inequality, imperfectibility, determinism, and nihilism. I can’t possibly do justice to all of these – you’ll have to read the book – but the fear of inequality is probably the one which most offends left-wing sensibilities.

There is a great deal of heat over the suggestion that genetic differences between groups would justify discrimination on the basis of group membership. It is clear to me that political equality is a moral principle, not a consequence of us being "born equal" in any sense. Clearly we are not born equal - genetic variation within groups is not disputed. Don't base a good princple on a false premise unless you are trying to oppose it.

But it is vital, one opponent of discrimination would argue, that we oppose the idea that groups may differ genetically one from another, because this would justify prejudice.

So far, so wrong. It is frankly stupid to judge any individual based on group memberships (sex, race, class, shoe size, which group do you choose?) whether there are group differences or not, because all group differences are swamped by individual variation within groups.

However, beneath this, there is some substance in the warning. If there is a genetic difference on average between two groups, this may explain different outcomes on average. This explanation may even be - or seem - sufficient to account for the whole difference of outcome, suggesting that there is no discrimination at work.

So what theories of genetic difference between groups threaten is not the moral principle that people should be treated equitably and on their own merits; rather it is the evidence that disadvantaged groups are indeed discriminated against.

How do we respond to this? Well I would argue that this evidence was never terribly good in the first place. It doesn't, for instance, deal with the likelihood that people with different group identities may make different choices on average. Buddhists may choose to become monks with no possessions and this does not mean that the economic system discriminates against Buddhists.

Much better evidence comes from blind controlled trials; from differences in hiring and marking rates where the name and picture of the candidate are not available. Unfortunately this is not always possible. Still, it is not as if it is any secret. I have heard an employer admit that he won't hire women because they might get pregnant. Others have said that they won't hire disabled people because they might get sued for some technical breach of a complex accessibility law. Is there really such a lack of evidence for discrimination that we must die in a ditch over the weakest of it? No.

Inequality of outcomes between groups is a red flag, it warns us that discrimination is likely to be afoot. We should then find that discrimination and try to stop it. In every case it is a crime against some individual - and if we begin to see it more like this and less as a crime against some group identity, so much the better. Ultimately, groups identities are artificial, and group outcomes don't matter, so long as all individuals are respected and not discriminated against.

Anti-anti-anti-anti-american

2008-08-22T18:57:00.005+01:00

There is a little fuss brewing over at Lefty Conspiracy about the America in the World blog. Frankly the sound of repeated comfort-zone positions is pretty deafening, with neither side addressing the arguments of the other much.

So the conspiring lefties complain with some justification about being lumped in with the Taleban, when all they are doing is criticising a government. America in the World complains also with some justification that the USA is misunderstood, that it is good for the world, in a world where so many forces and powers are pretty heinous and do not attract the same condemnation.

Of course everybody knows that the USA, even when under the Democrats is a terribly conservative country, and this does seem to be a large part of what is behind why AitW's Conservative founder thinks it is so great, and the lefties think it is so awful. This seems to me to be a very narrow perspective. Compared to most of the rest of the world, there is little difference between the values of the USA, EU, and the rest of the democratic world. When, for example, one country is left holding out against action on global warming, that country will be Russia.

But actually what is so great about the USA is not its conservatism but its liberalism, if only they knew what the word meant. The USA is still a beacon of freedom and democracy. It's prosperity benefits the rest of the world through trade. Its contributions to science are enormous. And even its military and intelligence services have played some positive roles alongside their various crimes.

It is too easy to forget all this in the face of a few disagreements over policy. Among political people, political disagreements tend to loom large. So it is a shame that this vital cause of opposing anti-Americanism has been conducted in such a partisan way. It is foolish to big up the USA, as AitW does, with snide remarks about the EU. The USA and EU are on the same side, and will have to stand together in the future.

It is utterly bonkers, as AitW does, to offend those who most need to be reached by this message - those with the greatest political disagreements with American people and governments - by lumping them with racists.

Yet the anti-anti-anti-Americans on Liberal Conspiracy should not get a free ride. It is too easy to focus on the comfortable and justifiable: our right to disagree with a government. Beneath the cheap attack on the left and liberals, that few Conservatives could resist, AitW is largely correct about the USA and its other detractors. And we should say so.

Still alive

2008-08-02T23:15:00.002+01:00

...and back from the beaches of north Wales. I will resume putting the world to rights as soon as I get round to it, etc.

Actually I did pop in to the David Lloyd George museum in Llanystumdwy. I learned that Lloyd George was the greatest statesman of the 20th century; the man from whom Churchill learned everything he knew (except, presumably, disastrous naval tactics); a man without flaws, at least none worth mentioning.

It impressed me how much he did for ordinary working people - pensions and national insurance and more, and yet he and the party were brought down effectively by the rise of the Labour Party. How does that event look today? What is the Labour Party for? A class war movement winning power has to either represent this new elite, and invent new class enemies, or become a cipher, or a bit of both, as it happened. We have been out of power for 100 years for this? What a stinker.

Green taxes' place in the big picture of climate change

2008-06-04T02:55:00.007+01:00

I hope you've all read Charlotte Gore's avalanche of posts against green taxes. I have defended the idea a little in the comments section, finally reaching the point that green taxes need to be seen as an effective part of a bigger picture of how we combat climate change. So here goes.

The insignificance of the individual

Does it matter what I do, whether I drive or fly or explore outer space? Does it matter what or when this or that minister or MEP drives or flies? Honestly? No, not really. My carbon emissions are a drop in the ocean. If everybody did the same as me it would matter enormously what I do, but they don't and it doesn't. Immanual Kant suggested that we should do only what we would have as a universal law, or something like that, which was a jolly good idea at the time, a leap forward in our understanding of ethics as being more than about what might make baby Jesus cry. But the ethics of example-setting is perhaps of limited use in a free and diverse society. But what, I hear you ask, if everybody had my attitude, wouldn't it be awful? Yes, I suppose it would. It is so much better only 95% of us being like this.

Let me be clear - people who go out of their way to minimise their impact on the environment are doing good. They should be applauded and not sneered at. But this 5% will only do about 5% of what is needed. The other 95% will have to come from political action, by which I mean measures like international agreements, green taxes, and promoting investment in renewable energy, rather than lecturing. Governments should not be telling individuals that what they choose to do really matters in the big scheme, because it doesn't. See above.

The environmental movmement believes in individual responsibility, largely I think because it was politically out in the cold during all its formative years. It gave us the chance to feel we were at least achieving something. Today politics has woken up and we should have some political ambitions.

The insignificance of the UK

The next reason for doing nothing is that whatever the UK does will be lost the tide of rising emissions from that villain du jour China. And this is quite true - if we were trying to stop global warming on our own, we might as well forget it. In a world population of a few dozen significant countries, the Kantian argument is a little better than it is among individuals. Most countries are doing something, and very few are doing a lot. China is not the worst and the UK is not the best and so that choice of contrast is more than a little snotty. However the feeling we ought to do our bit, the effects on national pride, and so on are still nowhere near strong enough, and will not deliver the measures needed.

What we need are international agreements to cut carbon emissions and make various land use reforms. This is more or less the bottom line. But to make such agreements possible we need a number of things. We need more precise predictions of the effects of global warming. Fortunately, these are getting better all the time, and it is getting harder for people who prefer to believe it will all be fine to cling on to that.

We need ever better ways of generating energy. Fortunately, these exist and they are becoming more economic all the time. Uptake may be driven as much by increasing fossil fuel prices, and energy security considerations, as much as anything else and this is more good news. As Stern commented, energy counts for a tiny fraction of our costs, and so if we have to pay much more for it, while this will hurt, it is not pain on any kind of revolutionary scale.

Finally we need to show that we can do without some of the more marginally useful energy uses without becoming significantly worse off. A large part of this is improving energy efficiency, but we might also make different choices, if the full environmental costs of each choice were included in the price. Again, technology is key here to improving efficiency and giving us more choices.

So green taxes....

Charlotte asked me if there wasn't a better way to combat global warming, and the sort of thing you hear suggested is technology or international agreements. But I am convinced that this is completely the wrong way of thinking about it. Technology and international agreements are not alternatives, they are complementary, because the agreements won't be reached until it can be shown that they will not hurt too much (and that it will hurt a great deal not to make them). Similarly green taxes and technology are not alternatives, they are complementary. Green taxes blend into market signals (and market signals work) to buyers and innovators to make better products and better choices.

If green tax revenue is used to cut income tax, then - within reasonable limits - this shouldn't harm the economy and may even benefit it. It is much like the case for Land Value Tax: taxing things that are intrinsically limited in supply (land, carbon) in preference to those where more can be produced (labour, goods) will reduce the drag and distortion to the economy. The intrinsic limits are of different kinds for land and carbon, but I don't see why the argument shouldn't apply, and doubtless someone will tell me that carbon emissions are a kind of land anyway.

I think Charlotte is right about the political difficulty with green taxes. People are feeling got at and there is a backlash. The other parties may dump green policies altogether. I think there are two reasons for this that we need to challenge. First that there is despair in the face of China, etc, because green taxes are not seen as part of the bigger picture I have painted here. Second is that we are pretty sick of being told what to do all the time and it seems that green taxes are another kind of lecturing and another kind of punishment. We need to convince people that this is not the case - that green taxes are a necessary evil, just like other taxes, albeit one with an extra silver lining. And we need to convince them that we are not trying to tell them what to do, rather that it is after all their job as voters to tell us as politicians what to do. With green taxes in place there is less need to worry about the environmental consequences of a choice, not more. So maybe we can all relax a bit, and backlash against something else this week.

Reinventing the State Chapter 22: Communicating Social Liberalism

2008-05-07T01:16:00.007+01:00

The "at least three brains" team of Steve Webb and Jo Holland has made a noble attempt to bring together this disparate collection of essays. As much as I would like to go with the flow I found much of the language and argument grating.
"Relying exclusively on unfettered market mechanisms to deliver a liberal and democratic society is doomed to failure."

This looks like a straw man to me. Markets do not deliver a society, they deliver goods and services. Relying on markets to deliver a cutthroat dog eat dog society would be doomed to failure because it is a society and not a product. Of course I know what Steve and Jo are getting at, that laissez faire is freedom only for the few. But then this is hardly a shocking statement or a distinctive position - even the Tories won't disagree with this, publicly at least.

"There are many areas in society - such as educational or health outcomes - where such inequalities [as arise from unfettered markets] would be totally unacceptable'"

And what about the inequalities we have already? How unacceptable are they? Personally it is not the inequalities I have a problem with. Health and education are good things and nobody deserves less of them, however much they have already. What is unacceptable is how little some people have of each. We all agree that we want more access to health and education, particularly for those who have the least access at the moment. But I am bemused by this emphasis on what seems to be an straw man position: instead we should look at where the country is and consider what direction to move it in.

Anyroad, this is the first part of Steve and Jo's argument: "the failures of unfettered markets".

Markets fail due to a lack of competition. Tim Farron's example of milk suppliers is referred to - although how agriculture can count as unfettered while subject to trade barriers and the CAP, is a mystery.

In part 2 of the argument, markets fail when the price of something does not reflect its true cost. This failure can be corrected by Pigouvian taxes and subsidies "in some cases". Now I am a big fan of Pigouvian taxes, particularly green taxes, yet I find myself disagreeing with the conclusion.

"Whether we are dealing with social costs or social benefits, both need to be fully reflected in market prices if the market is to deliver socially optimal outcomes, and only the state can ensure that this happens."
No... Social benefits are largely unmeasurable. You want to keep post offices open because they have a real social benefit, subsidise them, call it a Pigouvian subsidy if you like because that benefit is real. But it is a political judgement what that benefit is worth, not a matter of number crunching. And it should be a simple formula, not a "full reflection" of the value of a pensioner's opportunity to gossip while buying stamps.

In part 3 of the argument, markets fail because of inequalities in income and wealth. Markets, you see, are only geared up to providing things to people who can pay for them. At least that's how I would have put it, and it might be what the authors are getting at with that stuff about horse races and redistributive taxation, I'm not sure.

Again it is so uncontroversial as to be hardly worth saying that we would rather have a national health service than leave the sick dying in the streets. Why is the point so laboured? I don't know. A real dilemma is almost addressed at one point:

"However, the King's Fund recently found that the middle classes were likely to choose the best hospitals, while those who were less well-educated tended simply to go to the local hospital."

They are right that there is a danger of widening inequality here, but, at the same time, isn't it good that more people use better hospitals? Patients choosing a better hospital are increasing the size of the pie, not taking a larger slice of the same pie. This should be commended not bemoaned.

"While Liberals are instinctively in favour of 'choice' ... these examples clearly demonstrate that unfettered markets can simply lead to a beggar-my-neighbour form of choice, akin to the biggest and strongest barging past other people in the queue."

Er, no they don't. For one health and education are not examples of unfettered markets, they are examples of near state monopoly. There are beggar-my-neighbour forces at work in public services - selection of pupils by schools is one (it should be the other way round) - but this has nothing to do with markets.

"Unfettered markets" here seems to be used to mean so-called "market based reforms" of public services. By all means make that case, and I would probably agree with most of it, but do try to call things by recognisable names. "Unfettered markets" would probably also fail, I guess, but we don't seem to have been talking about that.

Moving on, Steve and Jo make a case for intervention when markets fail. This is the natural follow up to the previous section - anti-trust laws, pigouvian taxes and so on - but noting that such intervention should not be knee jerk: some failures are not as bad as the intervention that would be necessary to correct them. So far so good.

They refer to Duncan Brack's argument on inequality as persuasive. (Er, no).

"...that inequality of outcome in and of itself can undermine society to the detriment of all. This would seem to imply a greater amount of redistribution than we have sometimes advocated."

No, That implication is not sound. It may well be that more redistribution is justified, but saying "X is bad for society" only works as an argument in an all-else-being-equal kind of way, yet putting up taxes makes all else very unequal. Brack's argument would be equally applicable to a society with half as much or twice as much inequality as ours, and this is a sign that it is failing to address the nub of the issue.

Inequality may be bad, but I am pretty sure that poverty is worse. Perhaps I benefit from living in the north and not having swaggering bankers on my doorstep. Or perhaps I have taken the stoicism of Featherstone and Boyle to heart to the point of not being so bothered by other people's status - in which case why didn't I agree with them?

At this point Steve and Jo admit that the foregoing arguments "could also be espoused, to a greater or lesser extent, by a socialist." Or a Social Democrat I suppose. And they are right - socialists love attacking markets, especially straw man positions on markets.

The difference is that the state should do as little as possible, as locally as possible and as accountably as possible. While I agree that this is a difference I don't think it is quite good enough. Many socialists will support localism and democracy quite sincerely. Socialism may naturally tend to paternalism and centralism, often in ways I fear this anti-market so-called social liberalism may also do so. If social liberalism is just localist social democracy, why not call it localist social democracy and we can all understand each other better. I don't take the view that something must be called liberalism to be worth supporting, rather I will listen to arguments for any -ism, and be suspicious of anybody trying to shift the meaning of an existing -ism to include what they don't want to bother arguing for.

This is a little unfair of me because Steve and Jo do say that the state should only what needs to be done and no more, although that is the one point of the three they don't expand on. Personally, I support a few things the state does that don't strictly need to be done, so perhaps I am not so extreme a classical liberal as they are. Yet even this principle is empty if it is not proved by example: the state should stop doing this, or that.

Localism too, while I agree we could do with a great deal more of it, is an argument with problems. The same abstract arguments would apply in a country ten times as decentralised already which again suggests that the arguments are missing the nub of the issue. State intervention must be "as local as possible", we are told. But why? This is just dogma. It would be possible, but pointless, to set VAT rates street by street. Surely what we should be saying is that the optimal level for much if not most state activity is more local than the present level.

The chapter and book concludes with a section on communicating this idea of social liberalism. Having not really got the idea myself I have little to say on how to communicate it. But I will have a go at explaining what I mean by social liberalism and how I might communicate it in a later post.

Looking back on the whole book (or rather the Brack-Featherstone-Holmes-Farron-Webb-Holland thread within it) perhaps it works better as a vehicle for communicating liberalism to socialists and social democrats; for saying to them: we share your concerns, come admire our values. A noble project worth a few cheap pot shots at markets. Clearly it is an attempted response to the Orange Book, although it has many of the same authors. I might draw together some of this if I can remember how it started - I started this review in September.

Still, it has been fun. Buy the book, and read the chapters I have said are good. Or better still pass off my views on it as your own to seem better read than you are. Better again, continue the argument. We may yet reinvent the state.

Reinventing the State Chapter 21: A Rational Defence Policy

2008-03-22T23:01:00.007Z

Well it has been a while, but my copy of Reinventing the State has turned up again, so here I am.

Tim Garden offers a useful primer on the issues behind defence expenditure, and I can do little but endorse some of the key points.

Defence is a world of escalating costs and overstretched forces. Procurement necessarily has very long lead times that equipment coming into service was commissioned when demands were very different. Recruitment and training decisions have similarly long term effects.

The Eurofighter was concieved during the cold war, and while a very capable aircraft it doesn't not have enough of a role to justify its cost; although as far as I can see it is much too late to cancel to see any worthwhile savings.

Inevitably new equipment is more capable and expensive than its predecessors. And wages also have to rise faster than inflation, leading to cutbacks even when funding is maintained in real terms. (Much the same, it has to be said, can be observed in healthcare, and perhaps much of local government.)

While the military can surge its effort to meet an emergency, it cannot sustain surge levels year after year - attempts to do so affect retention and equipment, causing a deterioration in quality and capacity over time.

Faced with this, Tim charactersises three options for our contribution to international tasks:

a. Punching above our weight
b. Matching national commitments to resources
c. Sharing the burden more equitably internationally

Punching without funding above our weight is the cause of overstretch and a decline in the quality of the armed forces.

Matching our commitments to our spending would mean a big cutback in our commitments. While we would like to get out of Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan is more finely balanced. And there are operations we do wish to support such as UN-sponsored humanitarian operations.

Better multinational co-operation is clearly the way forward. Tim contrasts well the 4 principle multinational agencies: the UN, NATO, the EU, and the ad hoc US-led coalition. The UK "has a special position with respect to all four multinational actors. This compounds the problem of over-tasking as we try to show continuing commitment to each." And each merits different handling.

We should look to the EU and NATO to find economies of scale and pooled capabilities where appropriate. It should raise eyebrows that arms suppliers are national champions rather than competing on merit for custom, even within the EU.

What we can't afford to do, in either sense of the word, is stand alone in the world.

In defence, perhaps more than any other policy area, we need to reinvent the role of the state by accepting that the sovereignty of the state can be most effectively exercised through international collaboration.

Extra Joe Elsewhere

2008-03-10T15:18:00.002Z

I have a post up on Lib Dem Voice arguing that guarantees of choice and respect within schools for believers and non-believers alike is a good way to address the problems of faith schools, while recognising that many are good schools that people want to use. Feedback much appreciated.

So, yes, I went to the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool. Met some marvellous people and elephants. If I had known I was in shot here I might have closed my mouth (5th photo), but then I notice Nick Clegg seemed to have his mouth open for all the photos in the conference agenda, so maybe that is the done thing.

Continuing the theme of comparing myself to the party leader, the local paper seems to think it fitting here - the second thumbnail has the correct caption.

Facebook and real panto

2008-03-02T22:51:00.009Z

What does facebook have in common with pantomime? I suppose it is that when you get something wrong, it is in front of 200 people.

It has been a real pleasure to play the character of Simple Simon in this year's Hallam Players panto Jack and the Beanstalk, alongside Nick Clegg and Richard Allan and many other talented locals.

So I discover the hard way, during the final show of the run, that, having met one's co-star on stage that forgetting a line can sometimes give the next line added comic poignancy. "I'm awfully glad we bumped into each other" I said to her. Then a pause... under my breath... "I'll remember why in a minute". The prompt came to the rescue: "My name's Simon". Ah, yes, I am introducing myself. "My name's Simon. People think I'm simple. But I'm not really." I'm afraid to admit that after having forgotten my own name, it was difficult to deliver the rest of the line with conviction, or a straight face.

Ah well, worse things happen at sea. So I was talking to another member of the cast at the after show party about Mitch Benn, and how he admired Tom Lehrer. "Tom Lehrer?" "I'll send you a link to something on YouTube."

Of course sending links by email is so 90s. No I'll post it on your facebook funwall. Well that was the plan. ~~Actually I posted it on the facebook funwall of all my friends....~~ [Update: actually maybe I didn't. Notifications, right, that's just spamming some feed that tells other people that I have sent someone, not them, a video. What will they think of next.]

I will get back to Reinventing the State at some point.

Greenpartywatch: Anarcho-communists ... wooo

2008-02-18T17:26:00.004Z

Nicholas Blincoe turns up again with a fairly bizarre article on the Greens. The Tories, it seems are quite green because they are mates with some of the right people and some of the Green Party's founders were of a barking right wing bent.

I agree of course that the Lib Dems are greener than the Greens, when we consider what might actually work. Blincoe is even lighter on the detail here, and this is not really why I bring this up.

Réponse de resistance goes to Green blog the Daily Maybe. He quotes Blincoe on the new Green Left faction
"Their anti-capitalist, anarcho-communist ideas, found in their founding manifesto, the Headcorn Statement, make them the Wombles of green politics."

And here's the rebuttal:

Sounds alright doesn't it?

More greens queue up in the comments to endorse the sentiment.

I'm not going to rehash the arguments again - they are in this blog's history. But there is something tragic about what should have been the pre-eminent environmentalist political party being side-tracked into flawed and failed political ideology. Mind you Marx would never have stomached their irrationalism.

Blincoe meanwhile seems to attach some significance to the formation of the Green Left faction in 2006, as if this was anything new. "The Way Ahead" was formed in the early '90s, (the 1890s?) with much the same agenda. These groups are not born out of a change in the party's ideology, but out of a frustration the vanguardists have with the rest of the party not being able to articulate a non-communist position without sounding pro-capitalist. That sounding remotely pro-capitalist is such a no-no indicates where the party as a whole is at, and has been at for a decade.

As for being entryists... no, to be an entryist you must have an agenda that the organisation you are joining does not already share.

Reinventing the State Chapter 20: To be a Briton - The Citizen and the State

2008-01-07T22:45:00.000Z

William Wallace gives us a fine essay on the history of Britishness and of our relationship with the state. I have little to add or oppose, apart from bemoaning his occasional use of "economic liberals" as a swear word. I might complain that references to Roosevelt's post-war international order may leave me wondering which Roosevelt - I think he means FDR.

And, topically, to his list of emancipated religious minorities - Catholic and dissenters 1829, Jews 1858 - I might add atheists: it was 1886 that radical liberal Charles Bradlaugh was finally permitted to take the seat that he had been elected to in 1880 and several times in between.

Anyway, not being entirely qualified to nipick the content, I will at least endorse the conclusion.

The sense of national community still needed to support democratic government and redistributive welfare can be maintained only by a transmitted commitment to shared institutions and values, rooted in shared understandings of their origins and rationale. Those shared institutions, values and understandings are at present confused, even contested. It is a Liberal task to clarify them.

Well perhaps endorse with one qualification. I am not convinced that disagreement over the origins of our shared values is necessarily a problem. I submit that the belief that respect for human rights and tolerance arise from the Judeo-Christian tradition, can co-exist happily with the belief that those values arise from the Enlightment and the casting off of religious shackles: so long as we agree that these are values we support.

Reinventing the State Chapter 19: Tackling Terrorism: A Liberal Democrat Approach

2007-12-18T00:19:00.000Z

In this chapter, Nick Clegg

"seeks to move beyond the infantile stand-off between those who see terrorism as an expression of multiple grievances and those who regard any engagement with extremists as a form of appeasement, towards a policy of 'critical enagement'."

In a nutshell he nails the two wrong positions between which this debate is typically polarised. While grievances make good recruiting sargeants, this is about ideology - we face terrorist threats from those who reject democracy, human rights, gender equality, the non-violent contest of ideas, constrained government, the liberating potential of science and the separation of church and state. While some on the left would like to blame it all on the USA, I will suspect that they are not too committed to these values themselves. The right (eg Melanie Phillips), often happier to recognise the ideological angle are shown no mercy:
"But winning an ideological battle is not possible if the battle is not joined in the first place. That is why it is so curious that those who have rightly sought to delineate the nature of the ideological threat have then advocated a highly introverted strategy in which the sole purpose of public policy appears to be to ignore, exclude and ostracise those individuals and organisations who might provide some insight into the threat we face."

So, we should assert liberal values and not lapse into relativism. Liberalism is what the terrorists are trying to destroy: belligerent political rhetoric and 90 days detention in Siberia, are short cuts to giving them victory on a plate.

And here is the challenge:
"how to divorce the widespread grievances of large numbers of large numbers of British Muslims from the activities of Islamist extremists, in order that the former can actively help to expose and defeat the latter"

Some key elements to our response to this challenge are laid out. We must engage with specific communities, not "the Muslim community" which does not exist as a single entity.

We must engage with 'fence-sitters', and listen to their grievances.

"An unholy alliance of Tony Blair's stubborn refusal to admit any errors in his decision to invade Iraq, and the breathless accusation of appeasement bandied about by hardline commentators against anyone prepared to acknowledge ommunity grievances, has led to a self-defeating defensiveness in government. Instead, a self-confident government should have the strength of purpose to listen, and where justified, refute the ... grievances of many mainstream Muslim communitites."

And we should recognise the divisions, typically generational, within some Muslim communities: that young men in particular are most at risk of radicalisation, and we might look for ways we could help community leaders (and parents?) deal with this challenge. This is perhaps my only question mark on the whole chapter - I am a little wary of deference to community leaders, it seems to deny the huge diversity of views within any community, and may reinforce a position of authority that might not be popular or deserved. But it would have been a digression for Nick to have gone into this.

These three themes, and another three I didn't mention "are by no means exhaustive". But they add flesh to the policy of critical engagement, indispensable to starving extremists of the support of their non-violent neighbours.

Nick goes on to talk about more structural issues, MI5, MI6, the police, an integrated border force and securing the ports. All good stuff we should be familiar with. And finally, under the heading of legal reform, rather than ever more draconian detention without charge, Nick advocates reforms to give us an effective process without abandoning judicial oversight. The threshold test allows a suspect to be charged in the expectation of further evidence coming to light. Post-charge questioning would remove one of the obstacles to charges being brought early. Admission of telephone intercept evidence would bring us into line with almost the rest of the world. None of these are simple quick fixes; each must be done with care. But they show that there is scope for increasing the effectiveness of the fight without trampling on liberty.
"In the past the government has appeared to hasty in side-stepping due process in a rush to meet the terror threat, whilst overlooking a host of practical reforms... As the national debate on terrorism matures, our aim should remain steadfast and simple: to protect both our lives and our liberties"

Reinventing the State Chapter 18: Rebuilding Trust in the Criminal Justice System

2007-12-17T00:20:00.000Z

Where the Orange Book focusses on offenders and the tough love of training and work, Tim Starkey barely mentions this and talks instead about the system.

So we hear about policing, anti-social behaviour, community justice, and honesty in sentencing: all good themes. But we should not leave behind the earlier themes under Mark Oaten's cloud, whether he wrote the chapter or not.

That said, there is nothing wrong with this chapter. Posturing on toughness should not longer be allowed to get in the way of effectiveness. ASBOs should be more of a last resort. Victims of petty criminals who are up for it should be entitled to face them and see them face the music and make restitution. Honesty in sentencing is better than micromanaging the judges. Etc, etc.

Reinventing the State Chapter 17: Reforming the NHS - a Local and Democratic Voice

2007-12-09T21:33:00.000Z

Richard Grayson helpfully summarises his own argument:

Without [a democratic authority], it will always be possible for everyone to blame somebody else without taking responsibility. Ministers can blame local bureaucrats, when those ministers have give the bureaucrats very little independence. Health care bureaucrats can point to rigid central controls, but can also blame the public for making supposedly unrealistic demands, when the bureaucrats have little incentive to engage with the public. The public can blame 'them' - usually the government or bureaucrats - despite the fact that the system allows the public to make demand after demand for high levels of local service without ever having to face their real cost.

The suggested solution is local democratic accountability.

Crucially, these elected local people need to have the power to raise [or lower] funds for the NHS so that any demand made by the public for higher quality [or lower taxes] can have a real price attached.

I have been a little mischeivous with my additions there. But I am not clear to what extent Richard is arguing that local accountability will make higher taxes more palateable. This is not such a useful line at the moment, when the NHS has just seen a massive cash input, much of which has not led to noticeable improvements. It would seem sensible to pursue efficiency gains to at least pre-splurge levels before seeking higher funding.

Anyway, Richard is at this point about to launch into an advocacy of adopting something like the radically decentralised Danish health system. However, it turns out that the Danish system has only just been reformed - January 2007 - and is now somewhat less decentralised than it was, although still one of the most decentralised systems around.

I must say that for me this leaves something of a question mark over the proposal. Shouldn't we give a new system some years to bed in before we praise it or emulate it? And why did the Danes centralise, even if only a little? But this is just a question mark.

The idea is to turn PCT duties over to county/city/unitary councils or elected health boards covering the same boundaries. Small authorities might choose to set up joint health boards. This seems sound enough.

I am a little puzzled still, because in the section on funding, Richard talks about a new tax - the NHS contribution - almost identical to, and partially replacing Income Tax, which would, along with NICs comprise NHS funding. Suddenly there is no mention of the locally raised share of NHS funding. This along with my loathing of hypothecation and of extra complexity in the tax system, made this a very disappointing conclusion to a good chapter.

And while localism is a big idea and a good idea, I don't think it is as big or as good as the expectation we have of it. Many people will be unimpressed with a policy that doesn't on the face of it change anything. What do we expect the different bunch of politicians to do differently? Are there no more ideas? Richard's pamphlet with Nick Clegg on education (pdf) was full of ideas.

This is a good retort to the Orange Book simply by opposing social insurance. And yet could not a local health board choose social insurance? It is pretty half-baked localism if it can't.

Reinventing the State Chapter 16: The State and Education

2007-12-04T22:23:00.000Z

There is perhaps not much to say about John Howson's contribution. Simply by existing, it is a retort to the Orange Book which did not have a chapter on Education - although that book was half as long and half as costly as this one. And we should be talking about education more, as Nick Clegg has been saying.

There is much good, if not sparkling, analysis here, largely along the lines of our existing policies, and few big ideas to disagree with, or to agree with for that matter. Vouchers are rejected. Schemes to cut out the community rather than the government - such as foundation schools are criticised. The unfairness arising from faith schools admissions policies remarked upon, David Boyle take note. There is even, shock horror, a suggestion that some sort of market for training places might work better than the current, centrally planned, system. Do we have an Orange Booker in our midst?

Intriguingly John asks

To answer these questions it is also necessary to decide to what extent education is a private or a public good: investment for the individual's benefit or for the common good?

A fascinating question I think, particularly if you adopt a class analysis. Should schools serving largely working class areas focus on training contented workers, schools in middle class areas focus on the professions and management, and private schools focus on instilling the maximum ~~smugness~~ self-confidence in those born to lead? This will serve the common good most efficiently, as focussing on the odd child in the "wrong" school will use resources less efficiently.

On the other hand a policy of giving every child what is best for them is clearly uncommunautaire.

As far as I can tell John only answers a different interpretation of his question, which is a pity.

Anyway, in conclusion, ho hum, all very good, but avoids the really tough questions. We have a system that closes down schools which are failing because of difficult children, and those children move to another school which fails in turn. Should difficult children be shared out between all schools? (No!) That would give us a more equal system, but this more equal system would also suffer more disruption in total. More children's education would be damaged.

I wonder if we can't develop a system where the children who are willing to behave and work hard, irrespective of their ability, will always have an undisrupted learning environment found for them - in the next school if this one can't do it - irrespective of whether their parents are pushy enough to make it happen. And this opportunity might encourage a few more children to make an effort. This is not to suggest that I am assigning fault for disruptive behaviour, I am just looking for practical ways to minimise the damage that it does.

It is much easier just to talk about localism, isn't it.

Reinventing the State Chapter 15: The Case for Localism - the Liberal Narrative

2007-12-04T00:21:00.001Z

The problem with reviewing Chris Huhne's second chapter, making the case for localism in public service provision, is that it is by now an argument we are very familiar with. And one which I entirely support.

Peter Welch takes a thorough look at this issue in the context of the leadership election here. To paraphrase (or perhaps invent) Peter's question to Chris, it is this: Is localism the end of the story?

And would we rule out localities being permitted to introduce insurance or vouchers? Chris doesn't say, but if so the power of his own argument defeats him. And if not, it was strange of him to make such a fuss about ruling them out during the leadership election.

And finally, although I agree localism is the right policy, I am not entirely satisfied with having to say 'localism is the answer' on the doorstep. Why? For two reasons. Firstly, because there is no more confidence in the ability of local government than there is of any other level, there is a vicious cycle of insignificance and second-rateness about local politics, and rarely (at least round here) much local press scrutiny of local issues. Perversely it may seem easier to hold national politicians to account because at least they appear on Newsnight or the Today programme.

The second reason is that we are local politicians too. A policy worthy of the name must say what we would actually do locally, once localism was in place. Headlining the localism can sound evasive.

But these are questions about the completeness and presentation of the policy, not objections to it. Anyway I will pick up on a couple of points in Chris's text...

I have considerable doubts about whether there is really such a close parallel
between markets in the private and public sphere: if you buy more or fewer
oranges you are unlikely to affect in any material way anyone else's options.
But if you take your child away from a failing school, you may worsen the
outlook for the children left behind. One person's exercise of choice may limit
anothers.

I have great difficulty with even a slight suggestion that a parent shouldn't take their child away from a failing school. Actually Chris's school example does seem to have a private sphere market analogue: that of positional goods. If you buy Van Gogh's sunflowers, nobody else can. Positional goods have some (intrinsic?) limit on their supply, and a good question might be why do schools appear to be like this. I suggest that the extent to which they are like this is due to the influence of the peer group. There are so many talented and hard working children and so many difficult ones, and we all want our children educated with the former.

Quality peers are a positional good, and this explains much of the heat over private schools, admissions policies, selection, etc. Policies which address funding and governance may be good but largely ignore this issue.

The other aspect of Chris's argument I find unconvincing is the section explaining why more localism would not increase inequality. Now I agree with the conclusion, but I think the argument is cod statistics. Chris shows a graph plotting inequality (the Gini index) against the proportion of taxes raised locally. This shows little or no correlation. Meh.

It is, for example, entirely possible that more equal countries are willing to tolerate greater decentralisation, but that they become less equal as a result. It is possible that there is a correlation here, positive or negative, but hidden by some other variable that is also correlated. It is certain that we are comparing numbers that are not strictly comparable. No, it is nice to have the odd graph, but it is bad statistics to base firm conclusions on it.

But I am nitpicking. Chris has an easy win with the case for localism. He brutally mocks the rewards for failure that went to Margaret Beckett and David Milliband.
It is as if we were implicitly admitting that the system is so big and so
complex that it would be unfair to hold anyone to account for its
failures.

Amen.

Reinventing the State Chapter 14: Repoliticising Politics: The case for Intervention

2007-12-03T21:26:00.001Z

Of Paul Holmes' chapter I said that if you read "profit motive" for "markets" the arguments are quite good. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Tim Farron's effort.

When the promising, fun diatribe against the sameness of Labour and the Conservatives and the shallowness of Cameron and Blair under the slogan "I can't believe it's not politics" reaches it's point, that point turns out to be that neither is sufficiently Old Labour. Yes Cameron and Blair are shallow, although Blair largely got his policies from the deep but wrong Gordon Brown. I imagine that Cameron, should he get the chance, will get some policies to implement from a deep but wrong sidekick of his own.

Fundamentally they agree on a non-interventionist approach to the market and are opposed to anything more than a gesture in the direction of redistributing wealth.

Hmmm. Frankly, no party is proposing big changes in the amount of redistribution that goes on. Although Duncan Brack argued at length in his chapter about the need for more equality, he offers nothing concrete to the poor.

I have noticed a tendency in some quarters to talk abstractly about inequality as a substitute for having policies to tackle poverty. Abstract principles do little heavy lifting in determining policy priorities, and being a subscriber to the (vague) notion of relative poverty by no means guarantees you will give fighting poverty a higher priority than someone who considers poverty only in absolute terms. I would like to see higher simpler benefits with less means testing, because poverty stinks, not for any abstract reason; although I haven't yet found the money.

As for the point on intervention, Farron seems to consider it intrinsically virtuous. In fact the Tories and Labour have long been willing to intervene on behalf of their interest groups, and strip away the interventions of the other lot - arguing liberalism while practising class war. Labour are still fighting the class war, although they are no longer sure what side they are on.

I am quite happy to consider proposed interventions on their merits - expecting those merits will be less than they appear - but I find Tim's enthusiasm terrrifying.

And why should we not ... consider placing restrictions so that certain categories of property cannot be transferred from the owner-occupied to the rental market?

Because that would drive up rents and further enrich property owners at the expense of tenants.

Tim rails against Adam Smith, suggesting that great harm is done by free markets. These are some of the examples he gives:

The state of British farming [as subsidised]
The outrageous exploitation in world trade [barriers and subsidies]
NHS outsourcing [guaranteed incomes for contractors]
PFI [virtually devoid of competition]
Capita being let off a £1m penalty [i.e. the state giving our money away]

If I was asked to think of some examples of reasonably free markets, I would probably look at something like computer hardware or furniture or restaurants. And where are the comparable disasters in these lines of business?

Intervention is the only course of action open to a true liberal ...

Wow. Dripping with no sense of irony.

Reinventing the State Chapter 13: The Limits of the Market

2007-12-02T18:14:00.000Z

And at last we have the manifesto of the left of the party: not the manifesto of social liberals - we are all social liberals here. You could probably skip straight to this chapter. Paul Holmes apologises for straying beyond his remit, but it would have been interesting if more of the authors had done this. Many incomplete manifestos don't necessarily make a complete one.

My problem here is that Paul doesn't seem to distinguish between the effects of free markets on the one hand, and the worst excesses of right-wing governments and corporate greed on the other. He talks about water privatisation in the third world. But when people who cannot afford mains water are prohibited from collecting rainwater under laws sweetening the privatisation, this is not a free market situation in any sense. Involving the private sector does not necessarily involve markets. The title of the chapter "the limits of the market" should perhaps read "the limits of private-public rent-seeking deal-making to prevent free markets and screw ordinary people".

Failing to make this distinction leaves Paul making the same soggy compromise that defines Labour: "markets" are a necessary evil that we can't do without but must fight against most of the time. Or as Labour morphs into the Conservatives, this becomes "markets" (still meaning corrupt rip-off rent-seeking) usefully make money for those whose interests we represent and oil the wheels of politics.

Well this isn't what markets are. This evil is not a necessary one, it should be opposed with clarity and vigour. PFI is not a market mechanism, quite the opposite, it is a relationship almost completely devoid of competitive pressures. Markets on the other hand are a necessary good, always rough at the edges and reliant on peace, law, sound regulations, quality information and so on, but the greatest force there is for enabling opportunity and prosperity.

Paul defends the role of democratic politics as the only way to put health, the environment, public goods, monopoly prevention etc, above the profit motive. He is right. The rules of the game have to be set according to the common good, and not bought - as Adam Smith warned against - by special interests. If the rules of the game allow profiteering which destroys more value than it creates, then value will be destroyed, and the few will prosper from the suffering of the many. A simple example of this would be that if theft were permitted: a few bandit barons would be fairly rich, and the rest of us would be in grinding poverty. If you make money destroying the environment - stealing it from the rest of us - this is much like being such a bandit baron. A market system, in contrast, is one in which we only give up things of value voluntarily in exchange for things we value even more.

Democratic politics and markets are brothers. They are both expressions of the principle of power to the people. It does not upset me that one typically works better than the other for a given kind of decision - it is not enough to make me want to pit these allies one against the other.

So when Paul says, of desirable social outcomes that

The hidden hand of the profit motive in the free market, left to itself, will deliver the opposite of all these outcomes.

The key driver of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is the profit motive based on success or failure in cutthroat competition - not motives of fairness, humanity or the common good.

I must refer to Adam Smith too:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love...

Smith is of course not saying that people should not be humane, fair or pursue the common good - just that it would be unwise for us rely for our dinner on these sentiments in others, when self-interest can be turned to the good.

The left's objection to Adam Smith - which is a valid objection to right-wing interpretations of him - is that he is saying that we ought to pursue profit and ignore the good. Both left and right are guilty of very selective reading.

And so for most of the chapter Paul rails against "unfettered markets" or "markets on their own" largely in reference to policies which involve the private sector but not markets. If you read "the profit motive" for "markets", the arguments are quite good.

I am confirmed in my view that the left of the party, the social liberals who question economic liberalism, have misunderstood the rest of us, and not understood Adam Smith. Far from retorting to the Orange Book, this chapter confirms its importance.

Supporting Nick Clegg

2007-11-28T13:19:00.000Z

Having maintained this blog as a beacon of untopicality for some time now, I am going to mention the leadership election. I have so far resisted doing this. Although I have supported Nick from the beginning, I'm not the sort to present my conclusions at the beginning of a campaign and expect other people to follow them. It is better form to be undecided for the duration of a campaign, follow the debates, and decide at the end. I don't live up to this standard myself, so crucify me.

First let me say that Chris is a capable candidate and would make a fine leader. His desperation to make the contest about policy was right up my street - I am the sort of person who would be happy to talk about nothing but policy. That it drove him to invent differences was unfortunate, but perhaps it was worth trying. As I have an interest in environmental policy, I particularly appreciate Chris's input and sharp elbows in that area. We disagree on a few details, but if we damned people for getting any policy details wrong, we would end up praising only those who say nothing about policy at all. On the other hand, if you make policy detail your selling point, you really ought to get it right. Perhaps this is a reason not to make policy detail your selling point.

And yet, even on this core issue Chris doesn't appeal to me more than Nick. As I said in the comments at the People's Republic of Mortimer

Chris, the charge isn’t that we aren’t scoring higher than other parties on our environmental policy.

The point here is that the environmental narrative is stuck in a rut - of too much that is small and symbolic, and not enough that will make a big difference - and frankly the preference for hair shirts and gloom over optimistic determination.

Now the zero carbon paper was quite good on these points, although I do have my problems with it, and I don’t think the measures proposed would add up to zero.

I think part of the environmental fatigue is down to governments passing the buck back to individuals, when there are a few simple, if expensive, measures that could be taken to significantly reduce carbon emissions, and that it is not individual sacrifices, but successful low carbon economies that will persuade the developing world to follow suit.

A well developed message along these lines will persuade more people to vote for the party with the better environmental policies.

This is much closer to Nick's position, when he talks about the frustration people feel when they try to do their bit, and government doesn't pull its weight.

What more could we ask of a leader than that he is like us, shares our interests, and advances our ideas more capably than we can? Doesn't Chris fit this mould best? I think it would be self-indulgent to prefer Chris to Nick. Yes, Chris is like us, but not always in the best way. Similarity to oneself has a halo effect on our judgement of people. Nick, on the other hand, is less like me, and more like what I aspire to be. He doesn't let his inner politician entirely take over his brain. He really listens, really thinks, and really engages. This is better (honestly) than fishing out a relevant quote from some US president or liberal philosopher. I think - and maybe this is a quirk of my personal philosophy - that it is a slight misapplication of values to always ask "how do my settled beliefs and values tell me to respond in this situation"?

To put it another way, Mill does not justify what we say in a political discourse. Rather, what we say should be justifying Mill. The former style ossifies our beliefs, and creates a distance between us and an interlocutor. Part of Nick's magic is breaking down that distance. While I've not discussed the finer points of this angle with either candidate, I find Nick's approach far more satisfying and refreshing than Chris's.

And where policy differences have appeared, I find myself agreeing with Nick. A pupil premium, yes. Effectively take that premium away from those presently most ill-served by giving it to everyone? No. As an aside, I wonder which of these policies is supposed to be the more left-wing. Nick's which explicitly addresses unfairness, or Chris's which just spends more public money overall. While obviously more money for education would be good, budgeting is difficult, and it would add more heat than light to a leadership debate for candidates to start promising more for this cause or that.

Don't renew Trident now? Yes. Develop a new nuclear weapon? No. I am still waiting for somebody to explain to me why developing a new nuclear system is better than buying one off the shelf, or, if you are buying one off the shelf, why you would tell the salesman in advance that you are not buying some alternative. If you are going to make an issue of a disagreement you have with party policy, I would expect it to be on something a little more substantial.

I doubt policy will have much impact at the end of the day on this contest; there are some differences, but no clear water of any colour. What I suggest makes a compelling reason to vote for Nick Clegg, and for that matter, to vote for the Liberal Democrats, is the chance to reach out and build a coalition around liberalism. I quite like the talk about "British liberalism", this is in many ways a very liberal country. When we see a schoolteacher in Sudan arrested for how her children wanted to name a teddy bear, this should remind the whole country of the vital importance of liberalism, and we need to be up there with the rallying cry. It is under attack, from Labour, from the Greens, from Conservatives, from tyrants and protectionists worldwide. This is where we stand and fight.

Child benefit data: Making the simple expensive

2007-11-21T22:29:00.000Z

One thing that particularly appals me about this fiasco, on top of all the things that appal us all, is the revelation, here, that

Mr Leigh said the reason given for turning down the NAO request was that desensitising information would require an extra payment to data services provider EDS.

Have we really surrendered so much control over government IT to consultants, that simple operations on the data are now impossible?

A colleague of mine was working a few years ago, on a job which involved having customer information on a laptop, which he would carry about with him. One simple step he took before leaving the building was issue a command to his copy of the database, such as

UPDATE Customers SET BankAccountNo = '12345678'

This obliterated all the bank account numbers, replacing them with 12345678, thus rendering the laptop rather less sensitive. It would probably take 30 seconds to type and run. And it is not rocket science: you could learn sufficient SQL for this sort of operation on a 1 day course, if you were not smart enough to get it from the manual.

Even this, of course, was not good enough. The company should have had a security policy and a security system that prevented the bulk capture of this sort of data. He didn't need these bank account numbers in the first place - it was just simpler to copy the whole database.

The idea that such a simple operation might involve a significant cost is breathtaking. I can understand that if a consultant has to be called in, even for 30 seconds work, there are many ancillary costs, and a fairly hefty bill may be reasonable. But this just emphasises the importance of having some basic competence over your core activities. By all means outsource development projects, but don't outsource control or understanding.

Reinventing the State Chapter 12: The Economy and Climate Change

2007-11-19T22:51:00.000Z

As expected, Chris Huhne delivers the goods on this. He

advocates a package that can be constructed without hurting the poor or even compromising on redistribution.

Which is overselling a little - there is real competition for spend between social and environmental projects, and even if the green taxes levied are largely progressive or neutral, they will have knock on effects on product prices and the cost of living.

However, I can forgive Chris for getting a little carried away. (Hmm, change of house-style there. First names from now on.)

We start with a nice go at the Green Party's "eco-Marxist" or anti-growth position

Since growth is, in one view, the end result of so many other actions freely undertaken by individuals and companies, albeit within a framework set by government, this implies that we must abandon the principle that we are free to do as we will so long as the activity is not forbidden by law. It implies a process of licensing and permission that is deeply antithetical to liberal values. It would, indeed, be reminiscent of the Soviet Union's economic planning by Gosplan.

this is something I have been trying to say on this blog for some time, but Chris has put it better.

Most of the arguments that follow will be familiar to those who have read the zero carbon paper agreed at Brighton 2007. Carbon trading and green taxes are extolled. More direct measures are advocated in areas like home energy efficiency where many are locked to the assets they have and so pure price signals would generate much pain and little movement. We go on to such things feed-in tariffs, LVT, and leapfrog funds for developing nations.

The overall picture here is that we can decarbonise the economy, with technology that largely exists already, at not to great a cost, and that by doing this we can end any dilemmas about supporting development in the third world. This is a position I wholeheartedly endorse.

However, I do have a few issues with some of the details.

First Chris seems unduly keen on cap and trade and the EU ETS. He even suggests it comes before green taxes in the hierarchy of liberal economic instruments. I find this pretty breathtaking. Trading never beats taxation - sure it sounds better - but the two are equivalent in theory: a price is put on something that must be limited, to allow the market to place those limits in the most efficient places. In practise it is easier to calculate the right level for a pigovian tax and let the market find the level than calculate the right level and let the market find the price. A more stable price, futhermore, is a clear political signal and a better guide to investment that might be scared off by volatility.

The EU ETS goes further wrong in giving permits away, which is effectively giving public money away for nothing. And what does this mean? Windfall profits as the "opportunity costs" of not reselling these free permits is passed on to consumers. And new entrants to the market - just what we need to maximize innovation - are virtually kept out as they don't get these grandfathered freebies.

Finally, I would suggest that international agreements on national carbon limits and carbon trading will be vastly more difficult to reach - because it implies a divvying up of the climate commons - than an agreement that each country will simply tax its own emissions and keep the revenue. A lower rate for developing countries if they want, fine. Political transparency for which countries are pulling their weight, and which are freeloading? Yes, please.

Moving on. Chris advocates a legislative requirement on energy companies to sell less energy from one year to the next, hoping this would incentivise them to provide energy efficiency grants to customers. I find this pretty barmy. As long as the power is connected it is the consumer who chooses how much to use. Rather than legislate a duty on suppliers they don't have the power to meet, why not tax or ration or otherwise seek to influence the person with their finger on the switch. And any scheme like this inverts the normal incentives to sell your product with penalties and incentives will be highly gameable. There'll be more windfall profits here and no gains. A better insulated home is a public good and a good for the occupants. Why should an energy supplier (who we might rotate every 3 months) pay for this at all?

Feed-in tariffs are another measure, widely advocated for domestic microgen, but on which I am fairly cautious. I fully support the idea for big wind and so forth, where a couple of pence per unit will make all the difference. Chris suggests a feed-in tariff of 4 times the feed-out rate for domestic microgen. At that rate I could buy, or build, a flywheel and sell grid electricity back to the grid on a slight delay. We shouldn't feel such a need to pay for something - like tiny amounts of domestic microgen electricity - what is clearly a great deal more than it is worth. We should be doing the cheapest first, and will probably never get to give-away feed-in tariffs for domestic microgen. I dare say this position may be unpopular but it is part of my crusade to promote what is practical at the expense of what is symbolic.

These problems all exist in the zero carbon paper, which, furthermore didn't seem to propose enough to bring emissions down quite that far. Chris has his questionable zeros here too. I didn't seek to oppose or amend the paper because I think it has basically the right approach, as does this chapter.

Answering the Hung Parliament question

2007-11-16T19:12:00.000Z

Our frustration at a quarter of Question Time being spent on the hung parliament question was palpable. Yet at the same time I think there is understandable frustration that neither candidate gave a what would seem to a non-party observer to be a straight answer.

This would be my 'straight' answer:

It is most unlikely that we would end up in a coalition with either party after the election, because I can't see either of them offering to implement anywhere near enough of our manifesto for it to be worth the grief and shame of having to support chunks of their manifesto in return.

However, it is absolutely vital not to rule anything in or out, not to publish any of our 'red lines', because to do so will diminish our leverage should there be any bargaining after an election, and would therefore be a betrayal of our voters and our values. We have no more duty to prop up a minority government than any other party, and we would be just as demanding as any other party in that situation.

There's no point asking us which of the other parties we are closer to, because we don't know what they stand for any more. Frankly, we doubt that they know what they stand for. We are not trying to win votes as a kind of indirect support for one of the other parties - if you support another party, then vote for it, but if you share our vision of a freer, fairer and greener Britain, then vote for us.

A bit painful to say? Perhaps. Might it stem the flow of this question a little? Perhaps. What's the worst that could happen? What am I missing here?

A Tory-Labour coalition might be the most logical, but too much tribal instinct is against it. So while we should suggest it as a natural outcome, it is not a likely outcome. And it is, still, a little evasive not to say more than this.

Reinventing the State Chapter 11: Globalisation and the Role of the British State

2007-11-13T22:10:00.000Z

David Hall-Matthews revisits and refers approvingly to the topic of Chris Huhne's chapter of the Orange Book. He makes many very good points that globalisation's detractors ought to be aware of. For instance, globalisation is largely enabled by governments, not imposed upon them.

...anti globalisers' fears about the loss of state control are exaggerated, but have political significance. On the other hand, the far more serious threat of future global recession, as part of normal - if unpredictable - economic cycles is arguably not discussed enough in political treatises on globalisation.

This is an important point. We must not let fear of the political consequences blind us to the benefits of trade. Nonetheless Hall-Matthews has some suggestions for achieving a balance between the promotion of trade and protecting people and the environment. Largely, they are familiar Liberal Democrat ideas: democracy, transparency, localism, protection of the vulnerable and so forth.

Only occasionally is the neck stuck out...

As Nicholas Stern showed in his analysis of the impact of climate change, it is possible - and politically necessary - to estimate the economic costs of failing to spend now to prevent future calamity. Calculating what is needed to maintain a motivated and adaptable workforce should therefore take priority over the desire to cap public spending as proposed by Vince Cable.

A slightly odd example, perhaps, since the production and exchange of more expensive low-carbon energy might all happen in the private sector, and not impact the size of the public sector at all. Let's not slip into the lazy error that good can only be done by the state. In any case Hall-Matthews is not addressing Cable's argument. Of course there are a great many compelling demands on public money - if there weren't we could talk about reducing taxes. Listing them does not address the need for discipline, if not at 40% then at some (what?) higher figure.

I am a little unsure of the tone of this chapter, that maybe it talks up the power of governments a little too much in distinguishing globalisation from anarchy. Perhaps there are some good ways in which governments are less powerful too. Still, the thrust is correct, that we do not need to surrender the good things that governments do.

Reinventing the State Chapter 10: The Politics of Parenting: Confronting the F Word

2007-11-12T22:10:00.000Z

Matthew "two chapters" Taylor returns with a chapter about how marvellous parents are for children.

In terms of policy it is crucial that welfare provision does not punish couples in relation to lone parents, but given the advantages to children of two-parent models [3 would be greedy], the state must take pains to ensure that tax and benefits do not discourage it, and that we do not allow the idea that children do just as well when mum is on her own. The fact is that on average they do worse and we need to admit it.

I will credit Taylor that when he says "do not allow the idea" he means "disagree with the idea", otherwise, ouch, this is suddenly all about crimethink.

The whole tone of the chapter is that this is a daring kind of position. The F word of the title is not fuck or federalism, but family. As if this couldn't be said without attacking single parents, which is nonsense. But I must say that I am utterly oblivious to the outrage that Taylor clearly expected this chapter to generate. Whether it is families, or "moral issues" or immigration, I am sick of people complaining that they "must be allowed" to talk about it. Stop bleating and just get on with talking about it, will you?

Taylor rightly attacks the Tory focus on marriage not children. The Labour determination to send single parents to work is a more difficult target. There are swings and roundabouts to working for a single parent, depending on many factors, and generalised judgements fail.

But the real problem with Taylor's argument, the conflict which he fails to address, is that if the system rewards the two-parent family, then by contrast it punishes those families most in need: the single-parent families. Yes, it is absurd that two parents on benefits will be better off if they split up, and much better off if one was working. It is also absurd to talk about the most disadvantaged children while targetting assistance at the more fortunate. There's a nettle here to grasp one way or the other - not of a moral assault on single parents, but a financial one.

Taylor rightly observes that we seem, as a society, to have low expectations of fathers when it comes to bringing up their children. So I am a little surprised that there is no discussion of the trend in Colorado family courts and elsewhere to award equal parenting time (duty) to each parent, and a presumption against deeming either parent 'absent'. This would seem to reflect the change in attitudes towards fathers that Taylor advocates. Perhaps there are problems with it too, but it is surely worth a mention.

Instead of tackling these difficult questions head on, the chapter spends most of its time on the safe and easy ground of the widely recognised crises in childhood and parenting: parent(s) always working, kids in front of the TV/Space Invaders, etc. And so often the answer lies in saying the f word, breaking the taboos that prevent governments addressing these problems, rather than what would be rather more useful: policy suggestions for actual interventions that might do some good. If you can't think of any such interventions, then perhaps what you are calling a taboo is in fact a sound division of labour between the family and the state.