I don't remember much of the 1960s (because I was too young, not because I was off my face all the time), but I know that until 1968 theatre productions in the UK were regulated by the Lord Chamberlain's office. That's to say, if you wanted to put on a play, you had to get a licence. This seems extraordinary now, but it's all of a piece when you consider that Penguin books were prosecuted for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover as recently as 1960.
How freedom of speech has come on! Now you can say - or show - pretty much anything you like. Hard core pornography is available at the touch of a button, and Channel 4 puts on a show called Sex Box which, apparently, features couples having it off and then talking candidly about it on screen.
Oh that D H Lawrence should have lived to see this hour! Oh Mariella Frostrup that your career should come to this!
Well not so fast. I wonder whether in fact we have not reached the high watermark of liberty, and whether the tide is now ebbing. It was depressing to read that at the weekend a Spurs fan was arrested for being one of thousands of Spurs fans shouting the word "yid" at White Hart Lane. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Y-word is not a racist slur, and in the football context it is not even anti-Semitic. Now a yobbo from Kent gets prosecuted for posting on Facebook a picture of a burning poppy captioned with the words, "Take that you squadey (sic) c---ts". Now UKIP's crappy Godfrey Bloom gets booted out of the party because the media wilfully misunderstands his use of the word "slut" and Nigel Farage won't stand up for him.
We live increasingly in a world where you cannot say what you like, or at least not if you say something the chattering classes (people like me, in other words) find unacceptable. The sad irony is that advances in freedom of speech were driven by the Liberal Left - the Conservatives lost that argument comprehensively around the time prosecuting counsel Mervyn Griffiths-Jones asked the Chatterley jury, "Is this a book you would want your children or servants to read?" - but it is the Liberal Left which is leading the charge back to censorship. It sometimes seems to me that there is a range of opinions which it is legitimate to hold, and within that range you can say what you like. But should you stray outside, woe betide you.
Too many people in Britain fail to understand that there is no right not to be offended. And that true freedom of speech involves other people being able to say things you really don't like. That's a freedom worth having because it gives you the right to say things they don't like either. That the decline from this ideal should be driven by the same political group that was instrumental in giving it to us in the first place I find desperately sad.
P.S. A couple of days ago at the LSE freshers week two students from the University's Atheist Secularist and Humanist Society were told to cover up "Jesus and Mo" T-shirts (you can read the satirical online cartoon here), on the basis that they were "offensive" and might be considered "harassment". Yes, that's right. The LSE founded by George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, forefront of 60s student radicalism, telling a pair of students what they can and can't wear. The wearing down of freedom of expression goes on and on.
Tuesday 8 October 2013
Wednesday 2 October 2013
Life cycles
A couple of weeks ago some toerag broke into our garage and stole the family bike. Eventually its loss began to be felt and I was sent to Halfords to buy another one.
Having dashed his hopes of selling me a £1,000 model, the young sales assistant and I fell to discussing the cheapest and second cheapest instead. Pressed about the difference, he said, "Well this one's got 21 gears, whereas that one's only got 18". I had to laugh. "When I was your age", I said, "we had Sturmey and Archer three-speed and thought we were lucky", shocked to find myself sounding, and not for the first time, exactly like one of the Four Yorkshiremen.
The shop assistant wouldn't have been thinking this, because he was far too young to know who the Four Yorkshiremen were.
The other day my son went away to University. I don't remember much about my first experience of going away to school, aged 11, except there were many moments when having to hold it together was almost overwhelming; and some when it actually was. But I do remember going away to University, less traumatic for the experience of boarding school, and I am therefore all the more bemused to be in the same situation thirty five years later, except this time playing the role of Father instead of Son.
Truly I have become my Dad.
What to make of this? Life is not exactly a circle. If it were, I'd be the Son still. Perhaps more like a shallow spiral, where, having come all the way round, you find yourself tantalisingly close, unreachably close, to where you were decades previously.
No doubt these thoughts, perhaps true, are cliches. But being cliches none the less true.
Having dashed his hopes of selling me a £1,000 model, the young sales assistant and I fell to discussing the cheapest and second cheapest instead. Pressed about the difference, he said, "Well this one's got 21 gears, whereas that one's only got 18". I had to laugh. "When I was your age", I said, "we had Sturmey and Archer three-speed and thought we were lucky", shocked to find myself sounding, and not for the first time, exactly like one of the Four Yorkshiremen.
The shop assistant wouldn't have been thinking this, because he was far too young to know who the Four Yorkshiremen were.
The other day my son went away to University. I don't remember much about my first experience of going away to school, aged 11, except there were many moments when having to hold it together was almost overwhelming; and some when it actually was. But I do remember going away to University, less traumatic for the experience of boarding school, and I am therefore all the more bemused to be in the same situation thirty five years later, except this time playing the role of Father instead of Son.
Truly I have become my Dad.
What to make of this? Life is not exactly a circle. If it were, I'd be the Son still. Perhaps more like a shallow spiral, where, having come all the way round, you find yourself tantalisingly close, unreachably close, to where you were decades previously.
No doubt these thoughts, perhaps true, are cliches. But being cliches none the less true.
Tuesday 1 October 2013
George Osborne and balancing the books
One striking thing about George Osborne's Tory conference speech yesterday was his pledge to run a budget surplus in the next Parliament. You would imagine no Chancellor would have to say such a thing. It would be the obvious aim of anyone in control of the purse strings, just as it would be the obvious aim of any footballer to try and win a game. And yet years when budget surpluses actually happen are as rare as hen's teeth. Since 1963 British governments have only managed it seven times. It's a measure of how used we have become to living on debt that Osborne can make this announcement and people act surprised.
I hope Osborne can make it happen, amongst other reasons because it will flush the Keynesians-lite out of the woodwork. Since the financial crash it's surprising how many people who remained silent on economics during the Brown boom have been telling us that they were Keynesians all along, and that the solution to our problem is Keynesian deficit spending. They forget that there are two parts to Keynes, the easy and the hard part. The easy part is the spending bit. The hard part is saving money during the good times so that when recession comes the Government can pump-prime the economy. Where was Ed Balls during the Brown boom? At Gordon Brown's right hand, is where. Running a deficit, year after year. How dare he urge deficit spending now.
It was an aide of Ronald Reagan who delivered the surprising apercu that what cannot go on forever must stop. Deficits can go on for a long time, but unless the economy is growing dramatically the aggregate of debt to GDP balloons as well. When Labour came to power in 1997 the ratio was 40%, widely regarded as manageable. But because of the credit crunch and Labour's spending it has risen to about 90%, considered by economists to be not far below the level from which it becomes impossible for a state to recover, as rising interest payments increasingly dominate a government's spending. Don't forget that QE money has been poured into buying up UK gilts, keeping the prices down.
Osborne was right to warn yesterday of the risk of another recession - considerable, if the wheels come off the Euro wagon - and the consequences this would have for the UK's debt stock. In a recession we would be running a deficit again, like it or not, with an effect on debt-to-GDP which can only be imagined. As I've said repeatedly, I think Labour will win in 2015. I don't expect Chancellor Balls will be aiming for a budget surplus. The rest of us had better hope we don't have another recession.
I hope Osborne can make it happen, amongst other reasons because it will flush the Keynesians-lite out of the woodwork. Since the financial crash it's surprising how many people who remained silent on economics during the Brown boom have been telling us that they were Keynesians all along, and that the solution to our problem is Keynesian deficit spending. They forget that there are two parts to Keynes, the easy and the hard part. The easy part is the spending bit. The hard part is saving money during the good times so that when recession comes the Government can pump-prime the economy. Where was Ed Balls during the Brown boom? At Gordon Brown's right hand, is where. Running a deficit, year after year. How dare he urge deficit spending now.
It was an aide of Ronald Reagan who delivered the surprising apercu that what cannot go on forever must stop. Deficits can go on for a long time, but unless the economy is growing dramatically the aggregate of debt to GDP balloons as well. When Labour came to power in 1997 the ratio was 40%, widely regarded as manageable. But because of the credit crunch and Labour's spending it has risen to about 90%, considered by economists to be not far below the level from which it becomes impossible for a state to recover, as rising interest payments increasingly dominate a government's spending. Don't forget that QE money has been poured into buying up UK gilts, keeping the prices down.
Osborne was right to warn yesterday of the risk of another recession - considerable, if the wheels come off the Euro wagon - and the consequences this would have for the UK's debt stock. In a recession we would be running a deficit again, like it or not, with an effect on debt-to-GDP which can only be imagined. As I've said repeatedly, I think Labour will win in 2015. I don't expect Chancellor Balls will be aiming for a budget surplus. The rest of us had better hope we don't have another recession.
Saturday 28 September 2013
Ed Miliband - a rising tide of folly?
"Now the rising tide just seems to lift the yachts", said Ed Miliband in his conference speech. It marks another step in the progress of Labour's criticism of Coalition economic policy. First austerity would kill growth; then when growth returned it was the wrong sort of growth; now it is growth which is making the rich richer but not the rest of us. Living standards are not rising, goes the complaint, gilded with a little class war to get the faithful's juices flowing.
There are several things to say about this. Firstly, the economy has only been growing modestly. Secondly, it's only been growing for about six months or so. Thirdly, real living standards haven't been growing for some time, and in fact for young workers started to fall about ten years ago, when Labour was in power.
But it's the fourth point that's the most important. Why does Miliband (and everyone else) assume that living standards must rise inexorably?
If we have learned anything from the credit crunch it is surely that the West has used debt to plug the gap left by reduced national income. In Britain, manufacturing industry went overseas - more than a million jobs in manufacturing lost during the Blair years - to people that were willing to work for a dollar a day. These people had far, far lower living standards than we did (although, interestingly, they still thought it better to live in poor conditions and work in a sweat-shop than labour in the paddy fields all day - Apple's critics please note).
Here, our living standards carried on rising, defying gravity, but only because government, house buyers and consumers took on eye-watering quantities of debt. In Britain the level of personal debt when Labour came to power was about £500 billion. In the following fifteen years it trebled to £1.5 trillion. That's £1,500,000,000,000. There is a limit to how much more we can take on (although surely we will try).
Actually it's possible to argue that we got into difficulties precisely because we wanted higher living standards. In the post-war years this demand made our wage costs higher, and our industries less competitive. The newly rich economies of the Far East, looking for somewhere to park their money, were happy to lend it back to us so we could carry on buying their goods.
So I don't expect to see living standards rising much any time soon. And I wonder whether they would be a good thing anyway. Consumerism is shallow, and its devotees boring. I used to think that prosperity would make people cultured and civilised, but it actually just makes them go out and buy the stupid tat they fetishised before they had money. Perhaps that's capitalism's fault.
Moreover, the higher wages are in Britain, the more difficult it will be for us to keep the manufacturing jobs we have and perhaps even make new ones. I would much rather see living standards stagnate but more people have jobs, and I sometimes think the best hope for us is that people in the Far East have living standards which gently rise while ours gently fall to meet somewhere in the middle. It might mean that people would turn their faces away from consumption a little.
But falling living standards is the cri du jour. Expect to see many more cries for higher wages from the economically illiterate before 2015.
There are several things to say about this. Firstly, the economy has only been growing modestly. Secondly, it's only been growing for about six months or so. Thirdly, real living standards haven't been growing for some time, and in fact for young workers started to fall about ten years ago, when Labour was in power.
But it's the fourth point that's the most important. Why does Miliband (and everyone else) assume that living standards must rise inexorably?
If we have learned anything from the credit crunch it is surely that the West has used debt to plug the gap left by reduced national income. In Britain, manufacturing industry went overseas - more than a million jobs in manufacturing lost during the Blair years - to people that were willing to work for a dollar a day. These people had far, far lower living standards than we did (although, interestingly, they still thought it better to live in poor conditions and work in a sweat-shop than labour in the paddy fields all day - Apple's critics please note).
Here, our living standards carried on rising, defying gravity, but only because government, house buyers and consumers took on eye-watering quantities of debt. In Britain the level of personal debt when Labour came to power was about £500 billion. In the following fifteen years it trebled to £1.5 trillion. That's £1,500,000,000,000. There is a limit to how much more we can take on (although surely we will try).
Actually it's possible to argue that we got into difficulties precisely because we wanted higher living standards. In the post-war years this demand made our wage costs higher, and our industries less competitive. The newly rich economies of the Far East, looking for somewhere to park their money, were happy to lend it back to us so we could carry on buying their goods.
So I don't expect to see living standards rising much any time soon. And I wonder whether they would be a good thing anyway. Consumerism is shallow, and its devotees boring. I used to think that prosperity would make people cultured and civilised, but it actually just makes them go out and buy the stupid tat they fetishised before they had money. Perhaps that's capitalism's fault.
Moreover, the higher wages are in Britain, the more difficult it will be for us to keep the manufacturing jobs we have and perhaps even make new ones. I would much rather see living standards stagnate but more people have jobs, and I sometimes think the best hope for us is that people in the Far East have living standards which gently rise while ours gently fall to meet somewhere in the middle. It might mean that people would turn their faces away from consumption a little.
But falling living standards is the cri du jour. Expect to see many more cries for higher wages from the economically illiterate before 2015.
Friday 27 September 2013
Why I love . . . #10 Jennifer Aniston
I know you're expecting me to come up with something trite about Jen's turn as Rachel Green, the sexy girl next door in Friends. And for a while in the 90s my wife and I did watch the show religiously, splitting a bottle of wine on a Friday night and hoping two very young children would stay asleep upstairs. It was well written, for all its fakeness (no blacks, no drugs) and for all that it told you as much about TV production values at the end of the American century as it did about human nature.
But no. I love Jen because I think she is a really good comic actress. Last night, during the two hours we had to kill while our daughter - not even born in Friends' heyday - was in a rehearsal, we went to see We're The Millers. The fact that Aniston's name was on the poster was off-putting rather than the reverse, because she has repeatedly appeared in the dreckiest rom-com rubbish opposite sleazeballs like Vince Vaughan. But We're The Millers was really good (if you are amused by people being bitten on the testicles by a large spider; I am).
Aniston plays an ageing stripper (she's 44) who is lured into taking part in a drug deal by a small-timer who needs the cover of an All-American family to get a trailer full of cannabis across the Mexican border. An awkward teenage boy is recruited to play the awkward teenage son; a homeless girl is the rebellious daughter. The film riffs on their burgeoning attempts, being alone in the world, to form family ties of their own. It could have been excruciating, but it's very funny (very crude) and actually quite touching; and a lot of this is down to Aniston.
Surgery or no surgery, her face has worn well. It lacks the freshness of the sit-com years, but Aniston uses the certain gauntness which has now set in to good effect. I never noticed before that she has rather a mean mouth; actually she probably doesn't have a mean mouth; she probably made it look mean; but it works for the character. And as always in Friends, her timing is impeccable. For those who doubt whether We're The Millers is quite the thing (and it isn't), the moment in the closing credits when the crew surprise Aniston with the Friends theme tune is by itself worth the price of admission.
It's an enduring mystery to me why someone so famous, for whom all Hollywood doors must have opened, could have ended up making so many turkeys. Bad judgment? Bad advice? If you're reading this, Jen, take it from me - Shakespeare is the way to go. I would pay good money to see you as Beatrice in Much Ado. Or Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Come to England. Do some theatre. It worked for Kevin Spacey.
But no. I love Jen because I think she is a really good comic actress. Last night, during the two hours we had to kill while our daughter - not even born in Friends' heyday - was in a rehearsal, we went to see We're The Millers. The fact that Aniston's name was on the poster was off-putting rather than the reverse, because she has repeatedly appeared in the dreckiest rom-com rubbish opposite sleazeballs like Vince Vaughan. But We're The Millers was really good (if you are amused by people being bitten on the testicles by a large spider; I am).
Aniston plays an ageing stripper (she's 44) who is lured into taking part in a drug deal by a small-timer who needs the cover of an All-American family to get a trailer full of cannabis across the Mexican border. An awkward teenage boy is recruited to play the awkward teenage son; a homeless girl is the rebellious daughter. The film riffs on their burgeoning attempts, being alone in the world, to form family ties of their own. It could have been excruciating, but it's very funny (very crude) and actually quite touching; and a lot of this is down to Aniston.
Surgery or no surgery, her face has worn well. It lacks the freshness of the sit-com years, but Aniston uses the certain gauntness which has now set in to good effect. I never noticed before that she has rather a mean mouth; actually she probably doesn't have a mean mouth; she probably made it look mean; but it works for the character. And as always in Friends, her timing is impeccable. For those who doubt whether We're The Millers is quite the thing (and it isn't), the moment in the closing credits when the crew surprise Aniston with the Friends theme tune is by itself worth the price of admission.
It's an enduring mystery to me why someone so famous, for whom all Hollywood doors must have opened, could have ended up making so many turkeys. Bad judgment? Bad advice? If you're reading this, Jen, take it from me - Shakespeare is the way to go. I would pay good money to see you as Beatrice in Much Ado. Or Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Come to England. Do some theatre. It worked for Kevin Spacey.
Thursday 26 September 2013
Ed Miliband minds the energy gap
We are learning more every day about how Ed Miliband's Labour Party will approach the 2015 general election.
In his conference speech two days ago he set out plans for a 20-month domestic energy price freeze. What populist larks! I too would like lower prices. What about a petrol price freeze while we're at it?
Of course it's more complicated than that. The time to announce a price freeze is the day you impose it. Otherwise suppliers will just put prices up beforehand. Moreover, suppliers will try and protect their positions by buying more gas in advance. This increased forward buying will push wholesale prices up. Miliband's announcement might actually have an effect the reverse of what's intended: we could be paying higher energy prices long before his freeze comes into force.
The Labour leader's critics suggested yesterday the policy might lead to blackouts. If this seems fanciful, it did happen in California in 2000. There the freeze coincided with a drastic increase in wholesale prices, which energy companies couldn't pass on to consumers. As a result the Pacific Gas and Electric company went bust and blackouts ensued.
But short-term blackouts are the least of our worries. As Britain's ageing power stations have to be taken offline this country desperately needs new energy investment. How can energy companies be expected to take the long-term decisions needed to secure future supply if there is a reasonable prospect of a government in 2015 which is hostile to their interests? At a stroke Miliband's announcement will depress power companies' share prices and make it harder and more expensive for those companies to raise capital. Guess who will end up paying for that?
Even if there are no power cuts in 2015, Labour's announcement has made them more likely in future. The Torygraph quotes one Peter Atherton, an energy industry analyst, as saying, "Labour would be naive in the extreme to think that industry can absorb the cost of a price freeze while at the same time making significant new investments. Even if Labour don't win the election, it will stop anyone making any decisions. It kills investment stone dead."
To be clear, the energy industry is a shambolic mess. The domestic industry lacks proper mechanisms for fair competition - degree qualifications in statistics and probability are required to determine which is the cheapest tariff for your usage - and energy companies concentrate on returning maximum value for their shareholders rather than equipping the UK for the 21st century (you can't blame them for this - it's what they're supposed to do).
How has this come about? The consequences of the Tory privatisation are becoming more and more apparent, as what requires a national strategy is left to the self-interested tactics of the market. And Labour hasn't helped. Its energy review in 2002 (five years after returning to power!) concluded, "The immediate priorities of energy policy are likely to be most cost-effectively served by promoting energy efficiency and expanding the role of renewables. However, the options of new investment in nuclear power and in clean coal (through carbon sequestration) need to be kept open, and practical measures taken to do this."
In his conference speech two days ago he set out plans for a 20-month domestic energy price freeze. What populist larks! I too would like lower prices. What about a petrol price freeze while we're at it?
Of course it's more complicated than that. The time to announce a price freeze is the day you impose it. Otherwise suppliers will just put prices up beforehand. Moreover, suppliers will try and protect their positions by buying more gas in advance. This increased forward buying will push wholesale prices up. Miliband's announcement might actually have an effect the reverse of what's intended: we could be paying higher energy prices long before his freeze comes into force.
The Labour leader's critics suggested yesterday the policy might lead to blackouts. If this seems fanciful, it did happen in California in 2000. There the freeze coincided with a drastic increase in wholesale prices, which energy companies couldn't pass on to consumers. As a result the Pacific Gas and Electric company went bust and blackouts ensued.
But short-term blackouts are the least of our worries. As Britain's ageing power stations have to be taken offline this country desperately needs new energy investment. How can energy companies be expected to take the long-term decisions needed to secure future supply if there is a reasonable prospect of a government in 2015 which is hostile to their interests? At a stroke Miliband's announcement will depress power companies' share prices and make it harder and more expensive for those companies to raise capital. Guess who will end up paying for that?
Even if there are no power cuts in 2015, Labour's announcement has made them more likely in future. The Torygraph quotes one Peter Atherton, an energy industry analyst, as saying, "Labour would be naive in the extreme to think that industry can absorb the cost of a price freeze while at the same time making significant new investments. Even if Labour don't win the election, it will stop anyone making any decisions. It kills investment stone dead."
To be clear, the energy industry is a shambolic mess. The domestic industry lacks proper mechanisms for fair competition - degree qualifications in statistics and probability are required to determine which is the cheapest tariff for your usage - and energy companies concentrate on returning maximum value for their shareholders rather than equipping the UK for the 21st century (you can't blame them for this - it's what they're supposed to do).
How has this come about? The consequences of the Tory privatisation are becoming more and more apparent, as what requires a national strategy is left to the self-interested tactics of the market. And Labour hasn't helped. Its energy review in 2002 (five years after returning to power!) concluded, "The immediate priorities of energy policy are likely to be most cost-effectively served by promoting energy efficiency and expanding the role of renewables. However, the options of new investment in nuclear power and in clean coal (through carbon sequestration) need to be kept open, and practical measures taken to do this."
The review went on, "Because nuclear is a mature technology within a well established global industry, there is no current case for further government support . . . the decision whether to bring forward proposals for new nuclear build is a matter for the private sector."
It's that last statement which is the most astonishing. The Government, with a duty to make sure Britain's energy needs are met, had no plans to do anything at all in respect of nuclear power.
I vividly remember how hopping mad this review made me. Not because I am a nuclear enthusiast, but because it was evident even then we were going to have to have more of it, and, above all, because it is the Government's responsibility to plan, not just to leave it to the markets and hope something will turn up.
An energy white paper the following year concluded, "This white paper does not contain specific proposals for building new nuclear power stations . . . we do not rule out the possibility that at some point in the future new nuclear build might be necessary if we are to meet our carbon targets".
Not ruling it out, not ruling it in. In fact, doing nothing.
Not ruling it out, not ruling it in. In fact, doing nothing.
Another review in 2006, making more favourable noises towards nuclear power, was challenged by Greenpeace in the High Court in 2007. The High Court ruled that the review was "unlawful". The Government tried again. In its Review that year it expressed the 'preliminary view is that it is in the public interest to give the private sector the option of investing in new nuclear power stations'. The words "luke" and "warm" spring to mind; not to mention "dither", "indecision", "lack of leadership", and "you have been in power now for ten years, you wallies."
The cherry on this cake of indecision was placed there by Gordon Brown in 2008, with the appointment to the newly created post of Secretary of State of the Department of Energy and Climate Change of one of Labour's rising stars. Step forward Ed Miliband.
His only contribution to Britain's energy industry was to raise the target for emissions cuts.
Successive governments have fiddled while homes burn Britain's dwindling gas supplies, and Vladimir Putin's finger twitches next to the Trans-Siberia pipeline's "off" button. Labour hated the idea of nuclear power. The Tories are hamstrung by the dog's-breakfast of a system they created. Meanwhile the former Energy and Climate Change Secretary (2008 to 2010) Ed Miliband comes up with populist gems such as a price freeze, counterproductive tinkering when the whole system needs reform.
It's the kind of policy which might just get him elected though.
The cherry on this cake of indecision was placed there by Gordon Brown in 2008, with the appointment to the newly created post of Secretary of State of the Department of Energy and Climate Change of one of Labour's rising stars. Step forward Ed Miliband.
His only contribution to Britain's energy industry was to raise the target for emissions cuts.
Successive governments have fiddled while homes burn Britain's dwindling gas supplies, and Vladimir Putin's finger twitches next to the Trans-Siberia pipeline's "off" button. Labour hated the idea of nuclear power. The Tories are hamstrung by the dog's-breakfast of a system they created. Meanwhile the former Energy and Climate Change Secretary (2008 to 2010) Ed Miliband comes up with populist gems such as a price freeze, counterproductive tinkering when the whole system needs reform.
It's the kind of policy which might just get him elected though.
Wednesday 25 September 2013
Labour's missing billions and the privileged few
I don't know if Ed Miliband actually used the phrase "privileged few" in his speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday, but he's come out with it several times recently, as have other members of the Party's front bench team. Clearly Labour's spin doctors are trying to get the idea into the public consciousness.
The message is simple. A privileged few were responsible for the financial crisis but have been largely untouched by it. They must be made to pay more to put things right.
Some of the flaws with this analysis are blindingly obvious and have been touched on too many times here to warrant a full exposition. The financial crisis happened because Western economies increasingly used debt to plug an income gap caused by lack of competitiveness. The bankers got rich enabling the rest of us to borrow. Even they hadn't been so keen to help us get in debt, a financial slow-down would have happened anyway, and probably sooner.
But that's by the by. A close family member of mine is one of the "privileged few" and so are quite a lot of my friends. Almost without exception they are people from very ordinary backgrounds who were bright, worked hard at school, at university and on pretty much every day since, including evenings and weekends. They are aware how lucky they are to be in their present position - essentially, having a good job - but I think that is the only privilege they would acknowledge.
Their affluence has been earned, not handed to them on a plate, as Miliband's slur calculatingly suggests. The cry often goes up for "the rich" to pay their fair share. And yet "the rich" are paying top rate income tax at 45%, and if they buy a house for half a million they will pay Stamp Duty at 4% rather than the 0% a cheap flat attracts. To be clear, they'll pay HMG £20,000 just for "the privilege" of buying a house. But apparently this isn't fair. How much tax would the "rich" have to pay, one wonders, before it would be fair? Advocates of fairness never say. For them fairness is on a ratchet. Onwards, but never back.
Miliband is I think preparing the ground for significantly higher taxes for "the rich". Leaving aside the uncomfortable fact that "the rich" are often self-employed, and higher taxes tend to make them phone for their accountants, taking money from them also reduces their spending power and thus tends to slow economic growth. According to a report prepared for HM Revenue and Customs published in 2012, the yield from Labour's increase of the top rate of tax to 50% "is much lower than originally forecast . . . and that it is quite possible that it could be negative". Yes, that's HMRC, who love money more than any institution I have ever come across, suggesting that Labour's 50% tax hike may have actually cost the taxpayer money.
But the real problem with higher taxes lies elsewhere, and I was wondering whether Miliband really understands the difference between a million and a billion. There are a relatively small number of people earning over £150,000, and, even if taxing them more brought in a few million, it takes an awful lot of millions to make a billion. One thousand to be precise. And our debts are measured in billions, not millions.
Last year the Government's deficit was about £120 billion. That is a gap which is not going to be plugged by taxing "the rich" a bit more. It is going to be plugged by keeping a lid on public spending, encouraging enterprise and getting the economy to grow. Higher taxes makes these things less likely, not more.
I sometimes think Labour has learned absolutely nothing from the debacle of 2008 and from their years in opposition. The people who palpably have - Alastair Darling springs to mind - have been marginalised.
None of this means Labour won't win in 2015. In fact I think they will. There are an awful lot of other people in Britain who think the clock can be turned back to the heady days before 2008, if only "the privileged few" shoulder their fair share of the burden.
The message is simple. A privileged few were responsible for the financial crisis but have been largely untouched by it. They must be made to pay more to put things right.
Some of the flaws with this analysis are blindingly obvious and have been touched on too many times here to warrant a full exposition. The financial crisis happened because Western economies increasingly used debt to plug an income gap caused by lack of competitiveness. The bankers got rich enabling the rest of us to borrow. Even they hadn't been so keen to help us get in debt, a financial slow-down would have happened anyway, and probably sooner.
But that's by the by. A close family member of mine is one of the "privileged few" and so are quite a lot of my friends. Almost without exception they are people from very ordinary backgrounds who were bright, worked hard at school, at university and on pretty much every day since, including evenings and weekends. They are aware how lucky they are to be in their present position - essentially, having a good job - but I think that is the only privilege they would acknowledge.
Their affluence has been earned, not handed to them on a plate, as Miliband's slur calculatingly suggests. The cry often goes up for "the rich" to pay their fair share. And yet "the rich" are paying top rate income tax at 45%, and if they buy a house for half a million they will pay Stamp Duty at 4% rather than the 0% a cheap flat attracts. To be clear, they'll pay HMG £20,000 just for "the privilege" of buying a house. But apparently this isn't fair. How much tax would the "rich" have to pay, one wonders, before it would be fair? Advocates of fairness never say. For them fairness is on a ratchet. Onwards, but never back.
Miliband is I think preparing the ground for significantly higher taxes for "the rich". Leaving aside the uncomfortable fact that "the rich" are often self-employed, and higher taxes tend to make them phone for their accountants, taking money from them also reduces their spending power and thus tends to slow economic growth. According to a report prepared for HM Revenue and Customs published in 2012, the yield from Labour's increase of the top rate of tax to 50% "is much lower than originally forecast . . . and that it is quite possible that it could be negative". Yes, that's HMRC, who love money more than any institution I have ever come across, suggesting that Labour's 50% tax hike may have actually cost the taxpayer money.
But the real problem with higher taxes lies elsewhere, and I was wondering whether Miliband really understands the difference between a million and a billion. There are a relatively small number of people earning over £150,000, and, even if taxing them more brought in a few million, it takes an awful lot of millions to make a billion. One thousand to be precise. And our debts are measured in billions, not millions.
Last year the Government's deficit was about £120 billion. That is a gap which is not going to be plugged by taxing "the rich" a bit more. It is going to be plugged by keeping a lid on public spending, encouraging enterprise and getting the economy to grow. Higher taxes makes these things less likely, not more.
I sometimes think Labour has learned absolutely nothing from the debacle of 2008 and from their years in opposition. The people who palpably have - Alastair Darling springs to mind - have been marginalised.
None of this means Labour won't win in 2015. In fact I think they will. There are an awful lot of other people in Britain who think the clock can be turned back to the heady days before 2008, if only "the privileged few" shoulder their fair share of the burden.
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