Events in Birmingham suggest an Islamist plot to take over state schools. I'm not a natural supporter of anything concerning Islam, a religion which I think on the whole treats women pretty poorly, but I would like to spare a thought today for the beleaguered men of Allah.
In the first place, pressure groups of all kinds are at liberty to try and get themselves elected onto school governing boards. It's a thankless job done generally by the middle-class great and good (my wife does it). Why shouldn't Islamists have a go? There's nothing, as far as I'm concerned, preventing any organisation - boy scouts, naturists, the Woodcraft Folk, Morris dancers et al - from trying to do the same thing.
No, my objection lies with the people who are surprised that this is happening. In the first place, how dare they object when people try and get involved with local democracy. That's their right! Second, the objectors - Labour councillors who run Birmingham Council - are precisely the kind of people whose open door immigration policy invited the Islamic hardliners in to start with.
If you allow in an awful lot of people from a relatively small rural part of Pakistan (surprisingly, most of them from the area surrounding the town of Mirpur), you are going to find that population will pretty quickly start demanding that political and social rules come to reflect the mores and norms of the society they've left behind. Who can blame them?
And what norms those are. Muslims, extremist or otherwise, have radically different views about the role of religion in society, about the extent to which religion should dominate the individual's life, about the extent to which an individual should be free to marry whom they choose, about whether people can have sex before marriage, about whether women can go out to work or interact freely with other British people, about the way women should dress, about relations between husbands and their wives, about which legal system should govern their affairs, about women's right to enjoy sex without being hacked about, and even about the right of women to inherit money.
The idea that Muslims, extremist or otherwise, might want these cultural practices to be reflected in some way in the kind of things children should be taught at school seems to have come as a shock to some people. Not to me. It's inevitable, and all the more so when you dish out quite large sums of money to "community" groups, encouraging migrants to regard themselves as a self-contained pocket of the Asian sub-continent rather than New Britons.
I don't blame the Islamic fundamentalists for having a go. It's the people who brought them to Britain who need to have a look in the mirror.
Wednesday 23 April 2014
Tuesday 22 April 2014
RIP David Moyes
Just like one of those old cowboy stories where the hero knows from the circling vultures up ahead that something bad has happened - the homestead sacked, the stagecoach waylaid - we the public have been able to tell from the sententiously regretful newspaper articles about the Manchester United manager's debut season that something bad was going on behind the scenes at Old Trafford. And now we have ridden around a bend in the draw to find the denouement laid out before us - yesterday David Moyes was "to be sacked"; today the tense has changed to "has been". The owners announced it on Twitter.
So United turn out to be just like any other club. The illusion fostered during the long years of Fergie's success that Man U were somehow different - the trope that the boardroom had stuck with the irascible Glaswegian during three years of mediocrity, had reaped the benefits of that stability and were going to pursue the same policy with the new man - is now gone. As is glassy-eyed Fergie Lite. Now United are going to be scrabbling around for someone with the Midas touch just like everyone else. How Jose Mourinho must be laughing this morning.
Whose fault is all this? Not much of it is David Moyes'. He inherited a squad whose young players (many of them fostered by Ferguson) weren't good enough, and whose good players were getting too old. Rio Ferdinand is so slow now that Moyes himself could probably run faster. The fear that used to inhibit opponents and referees went when Ferguson did. There have been perhaps more injuries than usual. Some players haven't stepped up, which is unprofessional and an insult to the fans.
None of these things could be laid at Moyes' door.
There have no doubt been individual decisions Moyes got wrong, although no-one will ever be able to prove that. The summer failures in the transfer window might be partly to do with him, although surely the board must take some responsibility for failing to spend big when it was so evidently needed. But that's been true for several years now.
Which brings us to the Glazers. The Americans borrowed massively against the security of the club in order to buy it, and have transformed it from one with negligible debt to one massively in hock to the banks. It beggars belief that that change in ownership had no effect on United's ability to buy world beating new stars.
Actually David Moyes inherited a club that desperately needed an infusion of new talent. That's the fault of its owners. The same people who sacked the manager this morning. As I was saying, that's the vultures you can hear Twittering.
PS - As for the much-hyped managerial credentials of the journalists' darling Ryan Giggs, I would bet a hefty sum that when he turns to management he'll be as rubbish as so many other former stars. Giggs strikes me as a bit thick, which won't help, but doesn't preclude success in the dugout. No, the reason I think he'll fail is for the simple statistical fact that most people do. Individuals like David Moyes, humiliated as he now is, are exceptional in being able to do the job at all. People like Mourinho and Ferguson are rare as hen's teeth.
So United turn out to be just like any other club. The illusion fostered during the long years of Fergie's success that Man U were somehow different - the trope that the boardroom had stuck with the irascible Glaswegian during three years of mediocrity, had reaped the benefits of that stability and were going to pursue the same policy with the new man - is now gone. As is glassy-eyed Fergie Lite. Now United are going to be scrabbling around for someone with the Midas touch just like everyone else. How Jose Mourinho must be laughing this morning.
Whose fault is all this? Not much of it is David Moyes'. He inherited a squad whose young players (many of them fostered by Ferguson) weren't good enough, and whose good players were getting too old. Rio Ferdinand is so slow now that Moyes himself could probably run faster. The fear that used to inhibit opponents and referees went when Ferguson did. There have been perhaps more injuries than usual. Some players haven't stepped up, which is unprofessional and an insult to the fans.
None of these things could be laid at Moyes' door.
There have no doubt been individual decisions Moyes got wrong, although no-one will ever be able to prove that. The summer failures in the transfer window might be partly to do with him, although surely the board must take some responsibility for failing to spend big when it was so evidently needed. But that's been true for several years now.
Which brings us to the Glazers. The Americans borrowed massively against the security of the club in order to buy it, and have transformed it from one with negligible debt to one massively in hock to the banks. It beggars belief that that change in ownership had no effect on United's ability to buy world beating new stars.
Actually David Moyes inherited a club that desperately needed an infusion of new talent. That's the fault of its owners. The same people who sacked the manager this morning. As I was saying, that's the vultures you can hear Twittering.
PS - As for the much-hyped managerial credentials of the journalists' darling Ryan Giggs, I would bet a hefty sum that when he turns to management he'll be as rubbish as so many other former stars. Giggs strikes me as a bit thick, which won't help, but doesn't preclude success in the dugout. No, the reason I think he'll fail is for the simple statistical fact that most people do. Individuals like David Moyes, humiliated as he now is, are exceptional in being able to do the job at all. People like Mourinho and Ferguson are rare as hen's teeth.
Thursday 10 April 2014
Maria Miller - brazening it out.
So Maria Miller has gone. Predictable enough I suppose. I don't have any feelings either way about Ms Miller, who seems neither to have behaved desperately badly nor terribly well. Most of the general public will greet the news with a shrug - another politician who may or may not have had her snout in the trough. She was cleared of the charges brought against her, but found to have been unco-operative with the investigation. "Legalistic" was the term used. That's what happens when your husband is a solicitor.
The real reason Ms Miller has resigned however is that, rightly or wrongly, she became the subject of a rolling news story. You can see the way it works. Journalists have 24 hour news programmes to fill, and no journalist ever made a reputation by saying, "You know what, I don't think this is a very big story". The news is full of "Growing pressure on Mrs Miller to quit", omitting to say that the pressure is coming from journalists themselves. Eventually someone from No.10 rings up and says, "You know what Maria, I think it would be better if you went".
The next phase is that journalists then reflect on the process they themselves have put in train (I saw a feature on Sky news yesterday in which Kay Burley went through a timeline of David Cameron's supportive pre-resignation utterances; and of course disgruntled back-benchers are always happy to put in their two penn'orth, on or off the record, to keep things spicy).
So journalists win at both ends of the story. They win by rehashing stories about the hapless politician, thus applying pressure which generally forces a resignation. Then when the resignation has happened they run another series of stories about the political processes involved and the fault lines it reveals in the MP's party.
Most fatuously of all, a few years down the line the politician makes a come back. Look at Peter Mandelson. Look at David Laws, who resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2010 over an expenses scandal, spent two years on the backbenches and has now returned as a minister in the Department of Education. Where was the outcry in the press at Laws's return to Government? Curiously, the press isn't anything like as interested in the returning sinners. And Maria Miller will be back herself, I'd bet my last penny.
This is pretty much the acme of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
At PMQs yesterday Ed Miliband laid into David Cameron. Perhaps because the TV in the gym had the sound turned down, my attention was drawn to the figures on either side of Mr Miliband. One was Ed Balls. The other was Harriet Harman. It was Harman, you will remember, who was under the media spotlight not long ago because in her capacity as Legal Officer of the NCCL she associated with an organisation which thought it was OK for adults to have sex with children. And yet there she was, nodding sanctimoniously along with her leader. Now that's how to brazen it out.
The real reason Ms Miller has resigned however is that, rightly or wrongly, she became the subject of a rolling news story. You can see the way it works. Journalists have 24 hour news programmes to fill, and no journalist ever made a reputation by saying, "You know what, I don't think this is a very big story". The news is full of "Growing pressure on Mrs Miller to quit", omitting to say that the pressure is coming from journalists themselves. Eventually someone from No.10 rings up and says, "You know what Maria, I think it would be better if you went".
The next phase is that journalists then reflect on the process they themselves have put in train (I saw a feature on Sky news yesterday in which Kay Burley went through a timeline of David Cameron's supportive pre-resignation utterances; and of course disgruntled back-benchers are always happy to put in their two penn'orth, on or off the record, to keep things spicy).
So journalists win at both ends of the story. They win by rehashing stories about the hapless politician, thus applying pressure which generally forces a resignation. Then when the resignation has happened they run another series of stories about the political processes involved and the fault lines it reveals in the MP's party.
Most fatuously of all, a few years down the line the politician makes a come back. Look at Peter Mandelson. Look at David Laws, who resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2010 over an expenses scandal, spent two years on the backbenches and has now returned as a minister in the Department of Education. Where was the outcry in the press at Laws's return to Government? Curiously, the press isn't anything like as interested in the returning sinners. And Maria Miller will be back herself, I'd bet my last penny.
This is pretty much the acme of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
At PMQs yesterday Ed Miliband laid into David Cameron. Perhaps because the TV in the gym had the sound turned down, my attention was drawn to the figures on either side of Mr Miliband. One was Ed Balls. The other was Harriet Harman. It was Harman, you will remember, who was under the media spotlight not long ago because in her capacity as Legal Officer of the NCCL she associated with an organisation which thought it was OK for adults to have sex with children. And yet there she was, nodding sanctimoniously along with her leader. Now that's how to brazen it out.
Thursday 27 March 2014
The Moral Maze - meritocracy and class
On a long drive back from a Scottish mountaineering trip the other day I channel-hopped into an episode of the Moral Maze, in which Michael Buerk and his chums crossed swords on the subject of class with, amongst others, hard-left cheeky chappie Owen Jones and right-wing loud mouth James Delingpole.
I don't know enough about other countries to have a view on whether Johnny Foreigner is as obsessed by class as we are (although one academic contributor said that all human societies - and some animal - are similarly stratified), but like most Brits I'm at least averagely interested in the subject. Of course part of the fascination arises from the nuance that, although it clearly has something to do with it, money isn't everything.
My aunt, poor as a church mouse throughout most of her life and by today's standards hardly educated at all, nevertheless contrived to be as upper middle class as they come, with a deep interest in all things cultural and a patrician drawl that lingered long over the a in the middle of pasta. Language, attitudes to food, art and education are all part of the mix too.
But that's not the only reason Owen Jones was totally wrong to say that "class defines who has wealth and power and who doesn't . . . working class people work for others and lack autonomy over what they do". I know plenty of builders, butchers and window cleaners who are - in some cases defiantly - working class, but who don't work for others and enjoy an autonomy over their job which my middle class doctor friends can only dream of.
The funniest exchange in the programme came when leftist policy wonk Matthew Taylor sparred with James Delingpole about meritocracy. "Why is it", Taylor wanted to know, "that the best schools are almost completely monopolised by the middle classes?" Delingpole waffled something about believing in meritocracy. Taylor, smelling blood, snapped, "So you believe the middle classes have got more merit? Why are the middle classes more able?" Delingpole, who has sent his son to Eton, replied that selective schools have an obligation to pick the best. "And they just happen to be overwhelmingly middle class", sneered Taylor.
My opinion of Delingpole, not sky-high to start with, went south about here. Because the obvious riposte to Taylor is that the best schools get the best results because they are monopolised by the middle classes. It's the quality of the intake, stupid. Taylor seemed to want Delingpole to say this too, if only so he could knock him down, but it's true.
If you have a meritocracy, or something like it, for a century or so, the bright and industrious will tend to rise up the social ladder. They will meet and marry other bright and industrious people, and their children will not only tend to be bright and industrious but will have the benefit of being brought up by parents who believe in academic achievement and who tend not to have the social problems associated by being lower down the socio-economic scale. This isn't to say that all middle class kids are bright and all working class kids stupid, but of course the middle class taken as a generality will tend to be brighter. It's not difficult to grasp.
I am no great friend to meritocracy. It will in the end produce a stratified society with low social mobility (some will argue that's a destination we have already reached), but at any rate that seems fairer than one in which there are no means of breaking out of the bottom percentages. Ironically, grammar schools, the means by which working class children traditionally did so, were abolished by Matthew Taylor's political fellow-traveller Anthony Crosland in the Wilson government of the mid 1960s.
As with so many things you can end up arguing over words and what they mean. People like me tend to be interested in the social and cultural complexities of class, whereas Owen Jones wants class to relate to an economic struggle, and economic inequality in particular.
But just as Labour's abolition of grammar schools is embarrassing for Taylor, it's inconvenient for Jones that inequality rose in the boom years of the Blair / Brown governments, as the availability of hundreds of thousands of East Europeans increased labour supply and depressed wage inflation at the bottom end of society, while those at the top end forged ahead.
Affluent people like me enjoyed (and are still enjoying) the cheaper access to the service industries mass immigration brought with it. My breakfast in the Braemar hotel the other day was served by a smiling Romanian called Bogdan Ionescu. Every other member of staff I spoke to was East European.
People like Owen Jones lament the low wages of the working class, blind to the possibility that the open door immigration policy they supported helped wages stay low, and is helping to keep them that way still. When is the light going to dawn?
I don't know enough about other countries to have a view on whether Johnny Foreigner is as obsessed by class as we are (although one academic contributor said that all human societies - and some animal - are similarly stratified), but like most Brits I'm at least averagely interested in the subject. Of course part of the fascination arises from the nuance that, although it clearly has something to do with it, money isn't everything.
My aunt, poor as a church mouse throughout most of her life and by today's standards hardly educated at all, nevertheless contrived to be as upper middle class as they come, with a deep interest in all things cultural and a patrician drawl that lingered long over the a in the middle of pasta. Language, attitudes to food, art and education are all part of the mix too.
But that's not the only reason Owen Jones was totally wrong to say that "class defines who has wealth and power and who doesn't . . . working class people work for others and lack autonomy over what they do". I know plenty of builders, butchers and window cleaners who are - in some cases defiantly - working class, but who don't work for others and enjoy an autonomy over their job which my middle class doctor friends can only dream of.
The funniest exchange in the programme came when leftist policy wonk Matthew Taylor sparred with James Delingpole about meritocracy. "Why is it", Taylor wanted to know, "that the best schools are almost completely monopolised by the middle classes?" Delingpole waffled something about believing in meritocracy. Taylor, smelling blood, snapped, "So you believe the middle classes have got more merit? Why are the middle classes more able?" Delingpole, who has sent his son to Eton, replied that selective schools have an obligation to pick the best. "And they just happen to be overwhelmingly middle class", sneered Taylor.
My opinion of Delingpole, not sky-high to start with, went south about here. Because the obvious riposte to Taylor is that the best schools get the best results because they are monopolised by the middle classes. It's the quality of the intake, stupid. Taylor seemed to want Delingpole to say this too, if only so he could knock him down, but it's true.
If you have a meritocracy, or something like it, for a century or so, the bright and industrious will tend to rise up the social ladder. They will meet and marry other bright and industrious people, and their children will not only tend to be bright and industrious but will have the benefit of being brought up by parents who believe in academic achievement and who tend not to have the social problems associated by being lower down the socio-economic scale. This isn't to say that all middle class kids are bright and all working class kids stupid, but of course the middle class taken as a generality will tend to be brighter. It's not difficult to grasp.
I am no great friend to meritocracy. It will in the end produce a stratified society with low social mobility (some will argue that's a destination we have already reached), but at any rate that seems fairer than one in which there are no means of breaking out of the bottom percentages. Ironically, grammar schools, the means by which working class children traditionally did so, were abolished by Matthew Taylor's political fellow-traveller Anthony Crosland in the Wilson government of the mid 1960s.
As with so many things you can end up arguing over words and what they mean. People like me tend to be interested in the social and cultural complexities of class, whereas Owen Jones wants class to relate to an economic struggle, and economic inequality in particular.
But just as Labour's abolition of grammar schools is embarrassing for Taylor, it's inconvenient for Jones that inequality rose in the boom years of the Blair / Brown governments, as the availability of hundreds of thousands of East Europeans increased labour supply and depressed wage inflation at the bottom end of society, while those at the top end forged ahead.
Affluent people like me enjoyed (and are still enjoying) the cheaper access to the service industries mass immigration brought with it. My breakfast in the Braemar hotel the other day was served by a smiling Romanian called Bogdan Ionescu. Every other member of staff I spoke to was East European.
People like Owen Jones lament the low wages of the working class, blind to the possibility that the open door immigration policy they supported helped wages stay low, and is helping to keep them that way still. When is the light going to dawn?
Friday 21 March 2014
FGM, aliens and Arnold Schwarzenegger - all in one post
Just very occasionally I have cause to think of that little celebrated Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero, in which a young fan is thrust into the world of his screen idol, a daredevil steroid-pumped bicep-flexing meat head with a dubious Austrian accent.
This film was not well received by Schwarzenegger's fan base, being too long and developing an unhealthy film buff's interest in the philosophical niceties of cinematic reality (as opposed to car-chases and shoot-outs); the climactic scene, as I remember, takes places in a theatre showing a re-run of Bergman's The Seventh Seal, with Ian McKellen playing the scythe-wielding Death figure. But there were moments to treasure (other moments to treasure), one of them in a video store where a poster advertises The Terminator, featuring Sylvestor Stallone. Yes, you read that right. And I always liked the police station scene where a special unit pairs up, this being a movie, oddball detectives - the couple I particularly remember were a stripper and a Hasidic Jew.
Which brings me, circuitously I admit, to female genital mutilation. And aliens. To be exact, the Raelians, the world's largest UFO religion. To explain about Raelians I can do no better than quote from Wikipedia, which states that "The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestials, which they call the Elohim". The movement was founded by a former motor racing journalist, Claude Vorilhon, who claimed that in 1973 he came upon a UFO on a hilltop in France.
If you are bored or need cheering up, it is well worth reading about the Raelians. I particularly enjoyed the revelation that the Raelians "frequently use the swastika as a symbol of peace, which halted Raelian requests for territory in Israel, and later Lebanon, for establishing an embassy for extraterrestials". For them that would have been a no shit Sherlock moment, one would hope. It can't have helped their Israeli ambitions that "the religion also uses the swastika embedded on the Star of David".
More alert readers will have noticed that two paragraphs ago I mentioned female genital mutilation. What does this have to do with the Raelians? Well, like many a cult - sorry, religion - the Raelians are quite keen on sex, particularly a woman's right to go topless, as the following picture of South Korean Raelians makes clear:
So keen are they on sex, that the Raelians, for all that their eyes must perforce often be turned skywards in search of further UFOs, are laudably enthusiastic about extending its charms to all. Including Muslim women who have been hacked about by evil co-religionist killjoys. And the Guardian reports this morning that Raelians are now putting their money where their - but I see I'm treading on thin ice - they are putting their money, shall we say, into a hospital project in Burkina Faso which will specialise in genital repair.
The Raelian backed NGO which is to pay for this facility is called Clitoraid.
FGM is a desperately awful thing, but amidst the lowering stench of human meanness and stupidity emanating from this story, comes a joyfully unlikely pairing, too implausible even for the writers of Last Action Hero. FGM and aliens. Thank God we can laugh.
This film was not well received by Schwarzenegger's fan base, being too long and developing an unhealthy film buff's interest in the philosophical niceties of cinematic reality (as opposed to car-chases and shoot-outs); the climactic scene, as I remember, takes places in a theatre showing a re-run of Bergman's The Seventh Seal, with Ian McKellen playing the scythe-wielding Death figure. But there were moments to treasure (other moments to treasure), one of them in a video store where a poster advertises The Terminator, featuring Sylvestor Stallone. Yes, you read that right. And I always liked the police station scene where a special unit pairs up, this being a movie, oddball detectives - the couple I particularly remember were a stripper and a Hasidic Jew.
Which brings me, circuitously I admit, to female genital mutilation. And aliens. To be exact, the Raelians, the world's largest UFO religion. To explain about Raelians I can do no better than quote from Wikipedia, which states that "The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestials, which they call the Elohim". The movement was founded by a former motor racing journalist, Claude Vorilhon, who claimed that in 1973 he came upon a UFO on a hilltop in France.
If you are bored or need cheering up, it is well worth reading about the Raelians. I particularly enjoyed the revelation that the Raelians "frequently use the swastika as a symbol of peace, which halted Raelian requests for territory in Israel, and later Lebanon, for establishing an embassy for extraterrestials". For them that would have been a no shit Sherlock moment, one would hope. It can't have helped their Israeli ambitions that "the religion also uses the swastika embedded on the Star of David".
More alert readers will have noticed that two paragraphs ago I mentioned female genital mutilation. What does this have to do with the Raelians? Well, like many a cult - sorry, religion - the Raelians are quite keen on sex, particularly a woman's right to go topless, as the following picture of South Korean Raelians makes clear:
So keen are they on sex, that the Raelians, for all that their eyes must perforce often be turned skywards in search of further UFOs, are laudably enthusiastic about extending its charms to all. Including Muslim women who have been hacked about by evil co-religionist killjoys. And the Guardian reports this morning that Raelians are now putting their money where their - but I see I'm treading on thin ice - they are putting their money, shall we say, into a hospital project in Burkina Faso which will specialise in genital repair.
The Raelian backed NGO which is to pay for this facility is called Clitoraid.
FGM is a desperately awful thing, but amidst the lowering stench of human meanness and stupidity emanating from this story, comes a joyfully unlikely pairing, too implausible even for the writers of Last Action Hero. FGM and aliens. Thank God we can laugh.
Tuesday 18 March 2014
Oxfam, inequality and the bitter truth about tax
The other day Oxfam shocked the world by reporting that, amazingly, a very small number of people in the UK own an awful lot of its assets. To be specific, five of Britain's richest families "own more wealth" than the poorest 20% of the country put together.
I don't doubt that Oxfam are broadly right, and that there are some terrificly rich people out there. I do however rather doubt the conclusions Oxfam and its political allies draw. In his Budget tomorrow Oxfam calls on George Osborne to launch "a fresh assault on tax avoidance and introduce a living wage . . . and explore the possibility of a wealth tax".
Firstly, I very much doubt whether Oxfam understand the way statistics work. When you take any group of data, almost all the results tend to clump around the middle. Away from the middle, there are outliers. Any statistician will tell you that in a graph of asset distribution there will be a few people at the rich end who are are enormously rich (and a few at the poor end who are terrificly poor). It's not news. It's called a bell curve.
Secondly, when it calls for "a fresh assault on tax avoidance" Oxfam makes a revealing mistake. Tax avoidance is legal. Anyone who puts some money in an ISA is engaging in tax avoidance. What Oxfam is really asking for is tax rises, which is fair enough. But you can't have a "fresh crackdown" on something that's perfectly lawful. It's like calling for a fresh crackdown on cycling.
Thirdly, by calling for a "living wage" Oxfam is effectively calling on employers to sack staff. It works like this. Employers have to put up wages. They put up prices in order to cope. People buy fewer goods. The company's turnover falls. Employees get laid off.
(Incidentally, inflation goes up too, so interest rates have to be higher. Some people can't afford to pay their mortgages and some of them lose their houses. Happy now, Oxfam?)
Fourthly, a "wealth tax" is essentially confiscation. That's to say, you earn money and pay tax on it; the Government thinks it might not have taxed you enough, so it then takes some of that money away. Some people hate the rich so much that they would be happy to see the Government just confiscate the assets of the wealthy. Personally I prefer to live in a society where the Government tells you when you'll be taxed, taxes you and then leaves you alone.
The five richest families identified by Oxfam fall into two categories. The first is the hereditaries, one of whom, the Duke of Westminster, owns a good deal of land in Central London. I don't have much sympathy with the Duke, who will have inherited property from his parents and whose contribution to his continuing good fortune has probably been limited to putting his affairs in the hands of competent experts. However he will have paid very large sums in inheritance tax when he came into his money, and I'm absolutely sure he will have an annual tax bill that would make you and I gulp (Think he's not paying enough? Fine. Put rates up and see what he does).
The other category includes businessmen, including the Hinduja brothers and the owner of Newcastle United FC, Mike Ashley. Ashley is a particularly interesting case, because he started a business from nothing , risked his own money and made a fortune, along the way employing many thousands of people, providing the public with a product that they apparently want to buy, and creating dividends for thousands of people with savings they need to invest.
That isn't to say that people like Ashley couldn't endure higher tax rates (although as I've pointed out that isn't what Oxfam is asking for), but nevertheless to portray people like him as rich parasites bleeding society dry is a very, very partial and misleading portrayal of someone, who, given capitalism's limitations, on the whole benefits a lot of people. I couldn't be bothered to go about trying to acquire riches on the Ashley scale, but I'm quite glad to live in a society where people are free to do that if they want, partly because I know a lot of other people, including perhaps myself, will benefit on the way.
The difficulty with Oxfam's analysis of Britain's problems of inequality is not that they're wrong to pinpoint that inequality per se. It is that their prescription is economically illiterate.
Wage growth happens because companies need to compete with each other to attract staff. That happens best when an economy is growing and the labour force isn't. Inequality increased dramatically under New Labour because the pool of available workers increased dramatically from 2004, as Britain took on the best part of a million East Europeans. The consequences of this intake, depressing wages, depressing inflation, depressing interest rates and thereby increasing private borrowing and pushing up house prices, are incalculable. Those who really dislike inequality should now be thinking wistfully about what might have been if the Blair government, like those of all the other richer EU countries, had not suspended the right to work for new immigrants.
The bitter truth about taxation is that if we want to increase the overall take in a way which will take pressure off those at the bottom end, those in the middle will have to pay a lot more. There aren't enough very rich people. Their assets generally take a form which is easy to move around. They have ingenious accountants who recognise that a hurdle is there to be circumvented. Some of them also benefit society by creating wealth for others. Why would we want to discourage them?
I don't doubt that Oxfam are broadly right, and that there are some terrificly rich people out there. I do however rather doubt the conclusions Oxfam and its political allies draw. In his Budget tomorrow Oxfam calls on George Osborne to launch "a fresh assault on tax avoidance and introduce a living wage . . . and explore the possibility of a wealth tax".
Firstly, I very much doubt whether Oxfam understand the way statistics work. When you take any group of data, almost all the results tend to clump around the middle. Away from the middle, there are outliers. Any statistician will tell you that in a graph of asset distribution there will be a few people at the rich end who are are enormously rich (and a few at the poor end who are terrificly poor). It's not news. It's called a bell curve.
Secondly, when it calls for "a fresh assault on tax avoidance" Oxfam makes a revealing mistake. Tax avoidance is legal. Anyone who puts some money in an ISA is engaging in tax avoidance. What Oxfam is really asking for is tax rises, which is fair enough. But you can't have a "fresh crackdown" on something that's perfectly lawful. It's like calling for a fresh crackdown on cycling.
Thirdly, by calling for a "living wage" Oxfam is effectively calling on employers to sack staff. It works like this. Employers have to put up wages. They put up prices in order to cope. People buy fewer goods. The company's turnover falls. Employees get laid off.
(Incidentally, inflation goes up too, so interest rates have to be higher. Some people can't afford to pay their mortgages and some of them lose their houses. Happy now, Oxfam?)
Fourthly, a "wealth tax" is essentially confiscation. That's to say, you earn money and pay tax on it; the Government thinks it might not have taxed you enough, so it then takes some of that money away. Some people hate the rich so much that they would be happy to see the Government just confiscate the assets of the wealthy. Personally I prefer to live in a society where the Government tells you when you'll be taxed, taxes you and then leaves you alone.
The five richest families identified by Oxfam fall into two categories. The first is the hereditaries, one of whom, the Duke of Westminster, owns a good deal of land in Central London. I don't have much sympathy with the Duke, who will have inherited property from his parents and whose contribution to his continuing good fortune has probably been limited to putting his affairs in the hands of competent experts. However he will have paid very large sums in inheritance tax when he came into his money, and I'm absolutely sure he will have an annual tax bill that would make you and I gulp (Think he's not paying enough? Fine. Put rates up and see what he does).
The other category includes businessmen, including the Hinduja brothers and the owner of Newcastle United FC, Mike Ashley. Ashley is a particularly interesting case, because he started a business from nothing , risked his own money and made a fortune, along the way employing many thousands of people, providing the public with a product that they apparently want to buy, and creating dividends for thousands of people with savings they need to invest.
That isn't to say that people like Ashley couldn't endure higher tax rates (although as I've pointed out that isn't what Oxfam is asking for), but nevertheless to portray people like him as rich parasites bleeding society dry is a very, very partial and misleading portrayal of someone, who, given capitalism's limitations, on the whole benefits a lot of people. I couldn't be bothered to go about trying to acquire riches on the Ashley scale, but I'm quite glad to live in a society where people are free to do that if they want, partly because I know a lot of other people, including perhaps myself, will benefit on the way.
The difficulty with Oxfam's analysis of Britain's problems of inequality is not that they're wrong to pinpoint that inequality per se. It is that their prescription is economically illiterate.
Wage growth happens because companies need to compete with each other to attract staff. That happens best when an economy is growing and the labour force isn't. Inequality increased dramatically under New Labour because the pool of available workers increased dramatically from 2004, as Britain took on the best part of a million East Europeans. The consequences of this intake, depressing wages, depressing inflation, depressing interest rates and thereby increasing private borrowing and pushing up house prices, are incalculable. Those who really dislike inequality should now be thinking wistfully about what might have been if the Blair government, like those of all the other richer EU countries, had not suspended the right to work for new immigrants.
The bitter truth about taxation is that if we want to increase the overall take in a way which will take pressure off those at the bottom end, those in the middle will have to pay a lot more. There aren't enough very rich people. Their assets generally take a form which is easy to move around. They have ingenious accountants who recognise that a hurdle is there to be circumvented. Some of them also benefit society by creating wealth for others. Why would we want to discourage them?
Monday 17 March 2014
Losing your shirt on Liverpool
My friend Mark the butcher offered me a couple of quid on United to beat Liverpool on Sunday. In a rare fit of prescience I refused. "We're going to get battered", I said. And thus it came to pass.
Amidst the distressing signs that Liverpool, having been knocked off their effin' perch by Alex Ferguson, are intent on climbing right back on it again, there is one consolation for United fans.
Liverpool's away strip is terrible.
There. That makes me feel a lot better.
Amidst the distressing signs that Liverpool, having been knocked off their effin' perch by Alex Ferguson, are intent on climbing right back on it again, there is one consolation for United fans.
Liverpool's away strip is terrible.
There. That makes me feel a lot better.
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