My favourite economics commentator, Aditya Chakrabortty, has provided some more innocent entertainment for the discerning.
Writing in G2 this morning, Chakrabortty has had another go at flaying George Osborne's economic policy. To paraphrase, tomorrow's GDP figures will show the UK is still in recession, cuts are wicked, and there is "no real reason this unprecedented schedule of pain, imposed by a coalition with scant ministerial experience, should be taken as inevitable".
I read the article - more than a dozen paragraphs - hoping to see Chakrabortty setting out the alternative to the Chancellor's policy. But there was nothing. Nada. Silence. Osborne has got it wrong. That's all.
To be fair to Chakrabortty, it's possible to infer from his previous outpourings that he sympathises with what might be called the Balls Position, namely that the government will be more successful in getting the deficit down if it spends more money. He has however been slightly coy, unlike Balls, in what this will mean. More borrowing.
To summarise, the argument runs "In order to get out of a mess caused by too much borrowing, we need to borrow more". I always hope that someone will utter this praece out loud so I can hear their voice tail off at the end of the sentence.
Actually Ed Balls is shameless enough to do something pretty close, although as a consummate politician he shows no sign of unease . Again and again we hear him saying, "Government policy is not working because the economy isn't growing and, look, they are borrowing more than they said they would". Now the second part of this sentence is true, but, awkwardly for Labour, its own policy is to borrow more than the Tories. And extra borrowing doesn't seem to be having the desired effect.
This is slightly embarrassing for the Tories too, because they said if we borrowed more the sky would fall in. Bond yields would shoot up and we would rapidly do the Mediterranean shuffle toward the abyss. Of course bond yields might well have been lower if we had borrowed less and reduced the deficit faster, but nevertheless they are quite staggeringly low.
If I were George Osborne I would, faced with this argument, point out that we have pumped well over £300 billion into the economy by way of QE and it has had no discernable effect. Just how much extra do Balls and Chakrabortty want us to borrow? Last year's deficit was about £126 billion, down from about £140 billion at its peak. Should we go back up to £140 billion? Would the extra £14 billion make any difference? £300 billion didn't get things going again after all: what price the lesser sum? And what if the markets thought, "These people aren't serious about getting the deficit down. That makes lending to them riskier. Let's charge them a bit more."
But the point of this blog is not to focus on the flaws in the Balls Position, but rather in Chakrabortty's analysis. Firstly he has asked, "Is the economy growing?", to which the answer is of course "No." QED, he says.
Well not so fast. What if he has asked the wrong question?
In a context in which Europe's banking system is teetering on the edge, in which sovereign states are on the verge of collapse, in which I can get a mortgage at a cheaper interest rate than Spain (please read that clause, astonishing but true, again), a better test of whether Osborne's economic policy is working might be to ask, "Can we actually borrow money on the gilt markets at a rate we can afford?" The answer to that is a ringing yes. And if you want another question, how about this - "Is the deficit coming down?" The answer to that is yes as well. It's coming down in real terms, in nominal terms, and as a percentage of GDP. That looks to me pretty much like success.
But what about the workers? What about the people losing their jobs and houses because of the cuts? What about the people whose lifelines from the state have been cut off? In most cases that will be a tragedy. But we have long passed the point at which fixing the problems with the UK's economy can be made without collateral damage. There is simply no magic button which can be pressed which will take us back to dry land without pain. This is particularly true as long as the Eurozone is paralysed by uncertainty and incompetence.
This is Chakrabortty's second conceptual mistake. Those like him who pretend that there is something dead easy the Government could do to make things right are not just mistaken, they are helping slow the process of dawning realisation that's required on a national scale. We have been living on massive borrowing; it can't go on forever; and what can't go on forever must stop.
The credit crunch has made fools of us all, but the Guardian's Chief Economics Leader writer more than most.
Tuesday 24 July 2012
Wednesday 18 July 2012
Barclays, cheating, and Bradley Wiggins
I have developed a man-crush on Bradley Wiggins.
It's not that the leader of the Tour de France is remotely physically attractive - bushy sideburns don't do it for me (how did bewhiskered Victorian men ever get beyond first base?) - but Wiggins is everything a Beta Male could conceivably want in a sporting hero. He looks slightly weird. He has terrible facial hair. He is a funny shape. He is clever. He is funny. He is what I might have been like if I had been cleverer and funnier. And better at riding a bike.
Specifically, he is not one of those handsome, athletic and aggressive goons who always got the girls when I was young. If Mark Cavendish, acting selflessly as one of Wiggins' super-domestiques in Team Sky, was at the front, I would still want him to win; but Cavendish is a Jock, as the Americans say, whereas Bradley looks like a misfit loser who writes maudlin ballads at the piano in his spare time.
Except that he has won several Olympic medals, and it now looks as if he might just win the Tour.
The foreign press have been reporting and fostering rumours that Bradley is cheating. This is the kind of thing guaranteed to rile a red-blooded Englishman, until this one reflects that our previous best rider, Tom Simpson (no relation) died on the Tour in the 60s with a cocktail of amphetamines in his bloodstream. Historically, cheating has been rife, and only this week one of the Schleck brothers briefly became another Famous Belgian by being kicked out for having a banned diuretic in his bloodstream (diuretics are popular with cheats because they flush other banned substances quickly out of the system). Actually I believe the Schlecks are from Luxembourg, but never mind. Several riders in the current Tour have been banned previously for doping, receiving bans for eighteen months or two years - little more than a slap on the wrist and an invitation to come back the year after next.
The Tour is probably cleaner than it was, because testing regimes are better than they were, but nevertheless cheating has always been part of cycling culture, and that raises the question of whether cheating's really cheating at all if everyone is doing it.
Now clearly taking performance enhancing drugs is breaking the rules. But that's not the same as cheating. Cheating is behaviour outwith that tolerated by your peers. If most of your peers are taking drugs, you might well do it yourself without feeling too bad about it. After all, rules are made by old men in blazers who used to be good at your sport thirty years ago.
(There is a striking parallel here with the Barclays bankers who manipulated the Libor rate - it was seen as normal by their peers. So what if it was against the rules?)
This argument works until you consider that the people who are really being cheated are the public. If everyone took whatever drugs they liked, we would applaud the winner's effort knowing that there was a level playing field. But the presence of even one clean rider amidst a field all of whom protest their abstinence means a) we don't know which one he is, and b) whether he would have beaten the others without their pharmaceutical props.
To be honest, we don't know whether Wiggins is a cheat or not. And that uncertainty has been placed in our minds by all the others - Simpson, Schleck, Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador to name but four - who got caught; now, perhaps, inevitably, the finger is at last being pointed at Lance Armstrong, the greatest Tour cyclist of all. At the moment.
But that won't stop me rooting for Wiggins, a man who lambasted British culture for being "built on people being famous for not achieving anything"; who slowed the peloton down when his closest rival Cadel Evans had a puncture to allow Evans to catch up; and who, in response to a question about how his dead father would have responded to his success, replied, "It depends if he was sober".
Go Bradley go!
It's not that the leader of the Tour de France is remotely physically attractive - bushy sideburns don't do it for me (how did bewhiskered Victorian men ever get beyond first base?) - but Wiggins is everything a Beta Male could conceivably want in a sporting hero. He looks slightly weird. He has terrible facial hair. He is a funny shape. He is clever. He is funny. He is what I might have been like if I had been cleverer and funnier. And better at riding a bike.
Specifically, he is not one of those handsome, athletic and aggressive goons who always got the girls when I was young. If Mark Cavendish, acting selflessly as one of Wiggins' super-domestiques in Team Sky, was at the front, I would still want him to win; but Cavendish is a Jock, as the Americans say, whereas Bradley looks like a misfit loser who writes maudlin ballads at the piano in his spare time.
Except that he has won several Olympic medals, and it now looks as if he might just win the Tour.
The foreign press have been reporting and fostering rumours that Bradley is cheating. This is the kind of thing guaranteed to rile a red-blooded Englishman, until this one reflects that our previous best rider, Tom Simpson (no relation) died on the Tour in the 60s with a cocktail of amphetamines in his bloodstream. Historically, cheating has been rife, and only this week one of the Schleck brothers briefly became another Famous Belgian by being kicked out for having a banned diuretic in his bloodstream (diuretics are popular with cheats because they flush other banned substances quickly out of the system). Actually I believe the Schlecks are from Luxembourg, but never mind. Several riders in the current Tour have been banned previously for doping, receiving bans for eighteen months or two years - little more than a slap on the wrist and an invitation to come back the year after next.
The Tour is probably cleaner than it was, because testing regimes are better than they were, but nevertheless cheating has always been part of cycling culture, and that raises the question of whether cheating's really cheating at all if everyone is doing it.
Now clearly taking performance enhancing drugs is breaking the rules. But that's not the same as cheating. Cheating is behaviour outwith that tolerated by your peers. If most of your peers are taking drugs, you might well do it yourself without feeling too bad about it. After all, rules are made by old men in blazers who used to be good at your sport thirty years ago.
(There is a striking parallel here with the Barclays bankers who manipulated the Libor rate - it was seen as normal by their peers. So what if it was against the rules?)
This argument works until you consider that the people who are really being cheated are the public. If everyone took whatever drugs they liked, we would applaud the winner's effort knowing that there was a level playing field. But the presence of even one clean rider amidst a field all of whom protest their abstinence means a) we don't know which one he is, and b) whether he would have beaten the others without their pharmaceutical props.
To be honest, we don't know whether Wiggins is a cheat or not. And that uncertainty has been placed in our minds by all the others - Simpson, Schleck, Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador to name but four - who got caught; now, perhaps, inevitably, the finger is at last being pointed at Lance Armstrong, the greatest Tour cyclist of all. At the moment.
But that won't stop me rooting for Wiggins, a man who lambasted British culture for being "built on people being famous for not achieving anything"; who slowed the peloton down when his closest rival Cadel Evans had a puncture to allow Evans to catch up; and who, in response to a question about how his dead father would have responded to his success, replied, "It depends if he was sober".
Go Bradley go!
Tuesday 17 July 2012
John Terry - sweeth tooth
Oh blimey: it's all kicking off.
Following John Terry's acquittal the other day of using the word "black" between "f&$%ing" and "c$%t", Rio Ferdinand has re-tweeted (think repeated) some other twitterer's description of Ashley Cole as a "choc ice".
Cole, you will remember, gave evidence on Terry's behalf at the trial.
Leaving aside the question of whether "choc ice" is an offensive term (What does it matter if you're white on the inside? Anyway can skin colour really determine interior personal characteristics? Does anyone else benefit from this row other than the BNP?), this represents a worrying escalation of the dental health aspect of the John Terry saga.
After Anton Ferdinand made a gesture implying that Terry had halitosis (or was it the other way round?), now comes the suggestion that his breath problems might have arisen because of close proximity to another Chelsea footballer with strong links to sweet chocolate covered frozen confectionery.
Some busybody has now referred the matter to Derbyshire police. Let's hope they take action. After all, calling someone a "c$%t" is small beer in comparison with this.
Following John Terry's acquittal the other day of using the word "black" between "f&$%ing" and "c$%t", Rio Ferdinand has re-tweeted (think repeated) some other twitterer's description of Ashley Cole as a "choc ice".
Cole, you will remember, gave evidence on Terry's behalf at the trial.
Leaving aside the question of whether "choc ice" is an offensive term (What does it matter if you're white on the inside? Anyway can skin colour really determine interior personal characteristics? Does anyone else benefit from this row other than the BNP?), this represents a worrying escalation of the dental health aspect of the John Terry saga.
After Anton Ferdinand made a gesture implying that Terry had halitosis (or was it the other way round?), now comes the suggestion that his breath problems might have arisen because of close proximity to another Chelsea footballer with strong links to sweet chocolate covered frozen confectionery.
Some busybody has now referred the matter to Derbyshire police. Let's hope they take action. After all, calling someone a "c$%t" is small beer in comparison with this.
Monday 16 July 2012
Edward Elgar and Wolf Hall
While the middle-classes may be reading Fifty Shades of Grey in private, in public they are devouring Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel's sequel to the much-read Wolf Hall. Mantel is engaged in a trilogy documenting the rise and subsequent fall of Thomas Cromwell, secretary (and schemer, and fixer) to Henry VIII through his disastrous marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn.
Despite its gripping story and virtuoso narrative style - a kind of intimate third person, with its protagonist almost invariably referred to as "he" rather than "Cromwell" - Mantel's portrayal has been criticised for failing to get under Cromwell's skin. We learn that Cromwell is willing to manipulate and intimidate on Henry's behalf, but not much about why. Affection for Henry? Loyalty? Greed? Lust for power? Mantel doesn't give us much of a clue.
I enjoyed both books, but I thought there was a deeper flaw, one which, oddly enough, came to mind while I was watching the opening Prom on Friday. It was an all English programme of very mixed quality - on the plus side Cockaigne and Tippett's quite wonderful Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles, and on the minus an opener by Mark Turnage which somehow managed to be boring even before its three minutes were up, Delius's Sea Drift,inflating a very average poem by Walt Whitman into a turgid half-hour for baritone, chorus and orchestra, and last - and worst - of all Elgar's quite staggeringly bad Coronation Ode, a monumental piece of jingoistic sucking-up written for the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902.
If those who have experienced the remoter corners of Elgar's work thought nothing could top (or do I mean bottom?) the execrable poem the Worcester wizard set in The Music Makers (stand up and hang your head Arthur O'Shaughnessy), the poet A.C.Benson had prepared a nasty surprise for them in the Coronation Ode.
"Crown the King with Life!", the opening number begins. "Through our thankful state / Let the cries of hate / Die in joy away / Cease ye sounds of strife! / Lord of Life, we pray, Crown the King with Life!" And so rumty-tumty on for a further six stanzas. The second movement, inserted when poet and composer realised they had forgotten to mention the new Queen Alexandra, praises "True Queen of British homes and hearts / Of guileless faith and sterling worth / We yield you ere today departs / The proudest, purest crown on earth!"
My wife, groaning into her knitting by now, said, "Just you wait, there'll be a bit about smiting Johnny Foreigner in a minute". And so there was. "Britain", demanded an aggressive-looking baritone, "ask of thyself, and see that they sons be strong / Strong to arise and go / See that thy sons be strong / See that thy navies speed, to the sound of the battle song / Then, when the winds are up, and the shuddering bulwarks reel / Smite the mountainous wave and scatter the flying foam / Big with the battle-thunder that echoeth loud and long."
"See that thy squadrons haste", he burbled, eyeing the Arena sternly, "when loos'd are the hounds of hell / Then shall the eye flash fire / and the valourous heart grow light".
Now bad words do not necessarily make bad music - I went to see Opera North's Valkyrie on Saturday, and Wagner triumphantly transcends the daft story - but Elgar padded this flannel with music in his Imperial manner, which gave the piece an air dated, sycophantic, banal and trite where not downright offensive.
Of these "dated" is perhaps the least important defect, but "dated" brings me roundly back to Hilary Mantel.
Elgar's Ode, written only a decade before the First World War, offers a view of monarchy, of empire and of war which induces gasps in the modern listener, so utterly alien is its world-view. In very short order the application of industrial methods to the battlefield made not so much "the valourous heart grow light" as scatter it to a bloody pulp on the fields of Flanders; as to Empire - it was gone within fifty years, regretted by few of the people that had to put up with it; and the monarchy is tolerated by Britons because its present incumbent has done the job with a dignity and tact that her successors will struggle to repeat. What seemed to two intelligent minds a little more than a century ago to be the natural order of things has been blown apart in a matter of a few decades.
If our outlook can change so profoundly in such a short period, what chance does Hilary Mantel have of making us see authentically through the eyes of a Royal Courtier at over four-hundred years' distance?
For me Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies make the fatal mistake of assuming that people in the 16th century behaved like we do, minus the electrical gadgets. But a society which thinks it legitimate to hang, draw, quarter and eviscerate its transgressors, whilst at the same time offering itself as pious and devotional, is not a society like ours. Moreover, its willingness to do such things must have manifested itself in other less bloody aspects. To work out what this must have been like would require authorship (and scholarship) of a very high order, producing a result that would astonish the modern reader. Actually these two novels conjure up a world that is implausibly like our own; much more like it even than Elgar and Benson's alien planet only a hundred years ago. Mantel is a very good writer, but on this score I think she has failed.
I still prefer her failure to Elgar's, mind.
Despite its gripping story and virtuoso narrative style - a kind of intimate third person, with its protagonist almost invariably referred to as "he" rather than "Cromwell" - Mantel's portrayal has been criticised for failing to get under Cromwell's skin. We learn that Cromwell is willing to manipulate and intimidate on Henry's behalf, but not much about why. Affection for Henry? Loyalty? Greed? Lust for power? Mantel doesn't give us much of a clue.
I enjoyed both books, but I thought there was a deeper flaw, one which, oddly enough, came to mind while I was watching the opening Prom on Friday. It was an all English programme of very mixed quality - on the plus side Cockaigne and Tippett's quite wonderful Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles, and on the minus an opener by Mark Turnage which somehow managed to be boring even before its three minutes were up, Delius's Sea Drift,inflating a very average poem by Walt Whitman into a turgid half-hour for baritone, chorus and orchestra, and last - and worst - of all Elgar's quite staggeringly bad Coronation Ode, a monumental piece of jingoistic sucking-up written for the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902.
If those who have experienced the remoter corners of Elgar's work thought nothing could top (or do I mean bottom?) the execrable poem the Worcester wizard set in The Music Makers (stand up and hang your head Arthur O'Shaughnessy), the poet A.C.Benson had prepared a nasty surprise for them in the Coronation Ode.
"Crown the King with Life!", the opening number begins. "Through our thankful state / Let the cries of hate / Die in joy away / Cease ye sounds of strife! / Lord of Life, we pray, Crown the King with Life!" And so rumty-tumty on for a further six stanzas. The second movement, inserted when poet and composer realised they had forgotten to mention the new Queen Alexandra, praises "True Queen of British homes and hearts / Of guileless faith and sterling worth / We yield you ere today departs / The proudest, purest crown on earth!"
My wife, groaning into her knitting by now, said, "Just you wait, there'll be a bit about smiting Johnny Foreigner in a minute". And so there was. "Britain", demanded an aggressive-looking baritone, "ask of thyself, and see that they sons be strong / Strong to arise and go / See that thy sons be strong / See that thy navies speed, to the sound of the battle song / Then, when the winds are up, and the shuddering bulwarks reel / Smite the mountainous wave and scatter the flying foam / Big with the battle-thunder that echoeth loud and long."
"See that thy squadrons haste", he burbled, eyeing the Arena sternly, "when loos'd are the hounds of hell / Then shall the eye flash fire / and the valourous heart grow light".
Now bad words do not necessarily make bad music - I went to see Opera North's Valkyrie on Saturday, and Wagner triumphantly transcends the daft story - but Elgar padded this flannel with music in his Imperial manner, which gave the piece an air dated, sycophantic, banal and trite where not downright offensive.
Of these "dated" is perhaps the least important defect, but "dated" brings me roundly back to Hilary Mantel.
Elgar's Ode, written only a decade before the First World War, offers a view of monarchy, of empire and of war which induces gasps in the modern listener, so utterly alien is its world-view. In very short order the application of industrial methods to the battlefield made not so much "the valourous heart grow light" as scatter it to a bloody pulp on the fields of Flanders; as to Empire - it was gone within fifty years, regretted by few of the people that had to put up with it; and the monarchy is tolerated by Britons because its present incumbent has done the job with a dignity and tact that her successors will struggle to repeat. What seemed to two intelligent minds a little more than a century ago to be the natural order of things has been blown apart in a matter of a few decades.
If our outlook can change so profoundly in such a short period, what chance does Hilary Mantel have of making us see authentically through the eyes of a Royal Courtier at over four-hundred years' distance?
For me Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies make the fatal mistake of assuming that people in the 16th century behaved like we do, minus the electrical gadgets. But a society which thinks it legitimate to hang, draw, quarter and eviscerate its transgressors, whilst at the same time offering itself as pious and devotional, is not a society like ours. Moreover, its willingness to do such things must have manifested itself in other less bloody aspects. To work out what this must have been like would require authorship (and scholarship) of a very high order, producing a result that would astonish the modern reader. Actually these two novels conjure up a world that is implausibly like our own; much more like it even than Elgar and Benson's alien planet only a hundred years ago. Mantel is a very good writer, but on this score I think she has failed.
I still prefer her failure to Elgar's, mind.
Thursday 12 July 2012
Dilnot, long term care and the Spanish
Two pieces of apparently unrelated news yesterday.
Firstly, the Government announces that if you need long-term care in your dotage, you'll have to pay. After your death. And no, contrary to the Dilnot proposals a year or so ago, there won't be a cap on it.
I did my best to savage Dilnot a year ago (Fudging the Dilnot report - 5th July 2011), which of course hasn't stopped the Government adopting pretty much all of the proposals. The cap was Dilnot's redeeming feature, and it has been abandoned.
Broadly, my objection to Dilnot was that it is unfair for some people to pay and others not. Much fairer for everyone to pay a little via taxation. We're all happy to fork out for the NHS even though we know we may never get cancer, and in the same way I think we would all fork out for long term care even though we knew we may never need it. We could pay for care in the same way we do for the NHS: each according to his means.
Under Dilnot, whether you pay at all is a lottery: some will need long term care, some won't. That's unfair. If you've squandered your money down the pub, you won't have to pay anything: if you've lived carefully, you'll pay down to your last penny if necessary. That's unfair as well. Dilnot is unfair twice over, and HMG refusing to put a cap on individual contributions just makes things worse.
The second item concerns Spain, where the Government is having to put in place more cuts to satisfy its Eurozone paymasters. Unlike the UK, Spain cannot devalue and cannot print money. Its only way out of the debt crisis is to cut spending and raise taxes, a.k.a. internal devaluation. That's fine (unless you happen to be Spanish), but the problem is that this internal devaluation will also cut demand. And if you cut demand the economy is less likely to grow and less likely to produce tax revenues which alone will reduce the deficit and enable Spain to finance its sovereign debt. Bond rates, remember, are rising to the 7% danger level. In this respect Mr Rajoy's VAT increase of 3% is particularly egregious. He has pretty much applied the economic handbrake.
The obvious inference from this is that once again the Eurozone is adept at sticking plaster solutions (Spain's banks are insolvent; Spain needs more money; the Eurozone will give them more money, but only if they apply austerity measures) without seeing that those solutions will end up making things worse. Spain will languish in or around recession for the forseeable future, with 25% unemployed and rising. The EZ elite either can't see that or don't care. Either way they are blinded by their devotion to The Project.
The connection between these two pieces of news is that they are both responses to the fact that both countries are skint. Andrew Lansley was quite frank about it yesterday. We know that numbers of very elderly people are going to rise enormously, he said, and we can't undertake to backstop the financial demands of their long-term care. In a way Lansley is to be applauded: it would have been much easier politically for him to do the right thing (commit the state to paying) than the wrong; but the state can't afford it. That is realism. Having waved goodbye to a fairly large sum of money last year, eaten up by a relative's care costs, I am in a position to know how galling realism can be, but when welfare budgets are being cut left right and centre there is an element of justice in the legacies of the middle-class and affluent being used up like this.
All over Europe societies are being re-shaped as expenditure is dragged slowly, kicking and screaming, in the direction of income.
Firstly, the Government announces that if you need long-term care in your dotage, you'll have to pay. After your death. And no, contrary to the Dilnot proposals a year or so ago, there won't be a cap on it.
I did my best to savage Dilnot a year ago (Fudging the Dilnot report - 5th July 2011), which of course hasn't stopped the Government adopting pretty much all of the proposals. The cap was Dilnot's redeeming feature, and it has been abandoned.
Broadly, my objection to Dilnot was that it is unfair for some people to pay and others not. Much fairer for everyone to pay a little via taxation. We're all happy to fork out for the NHS even though we know we may never get cancer, and in the same way I think we would all fork out for long term care even though we knew we may never need it. We could pay for care in the same way we do for the NHS: each according to his means.
Under Dilnot, whether you pay at all is a lottery: some will need long term care, some won't. That's unfair. If you've squandered your money down the pub, you won't have to pay anything: if you've lived carefully, you'll pay down to your last penny if necessary. That's unfair as well. Dilnot is unfair twice over, and HMG refusing to put a cap on individual contributions just makes things worse.
The second item concerns Spain, where the Government is having to put in place more cuts to satisfy its Eurozone paymasters. Unlike the UK, Spain cannot devalue and cannot print money. Its only way out of the debt crisis is to cut spending and raise taxes, a.k.a. internal devaluation. That's fine (unless you happen to be Spanish), but the problem is that this internal devaluation will also cut demand. And if you cut demand the economy is less likely to grow and less likely to produce tax revenues which alone will reduce the deficit and enable Spain to finance its sovereign debt. Bond rates, remember, are rising to the 7% danger level. In this respect Mr Rajoy's VAT increase of 3% is particularly egregious. He has pretty much applied the economic handbrake.
The obvious inference from this is that once again the Eurozone is adept at sticking plaster solutions (Spain's banks are insolvent; Spain needs more money; the Eurozone will give them more money, but only if they apply austerity measures) without seeing that those solutions will end up making things worse. Spain will languish in or around recession for the forseeable future, with 25% unemployed and rising. The EZ elite either can't see that or don't care. Either way they are blinded by their devotion to The Project.
The connection between these two pieces of news is that they are both responses to the fact that both countries are skint. Andrew Lansley was quite frank about it yesterday. We know that numbers of very elderly people are going to rise enormously, he said, and we can't undertake to backstop the financial demands of their long-term care. In a way Lansley is to be applauded: it would have been much easier politically for him to do the right thing (commit the state to paying) than the wrong; but the state can't afford it. That is realism. Having waved goodbye to a fairly large sum of money last year, eaten up by a relative's care costs, I am in a position to know how galling realism can be, but when welfare budgets are being cut left right and centre there is an element of justice in the legacies of the middle-class and affluent being used up like this.
All over Europe societies are being re-shaped as expenditure is dragged slowly, kicking and screaming, in the direction of income.
Tuesday 10 July 2012
John Terry - get some Listerine, you c&%t!
Oh Lordy. The John Terry-Anton Ferdinand case.
It apparently pans out like this. There is a dispute about a penalty. Terry calls Ferdinand a c&%t (it's an ugly word - why spread ugliness around the world by repeating it unadulterated?). Ferdinand calls Terry a c&%t in return. Terry then makes a gesture indicating Ferdinand's breath smells (what is this gesture? It would be useful to know for domestic situations). Ferdinand then says, according to his own evidence, "How can you call me a c&%t? You shagged your team-mate's missus. You're a c&%t".
Evidence then suggests that as Terry runs off he shouts, "fuck off, fuck off . . . fucking black c&%t, fucking knobhead" (also ugly words; but tiresome to redact). Ferdinand doesn't seem to have heard this, and only became aware of it when his girlfriend showed him a video on Youtube after the match, but he told the court yesterday (according to the Guardian), "being called a c&%t was fine . . . but when someone brings your colour into it, it takes it to another level and it's very hurtful".
Assuming this exchange of insults approximately represents the exchange between the two - I hesitate to call them men: let's make do with footballers - what a vista of stupidity and inarticulacy it opens up.
Terry's opening gambit is the C-word; but then he takes it to another level by implying halitotis; no doubt if relations had really broken down he might might have cried, "Oy, get some Listerine, you c&%t!", or made one of those athlete's foot related jibes guaranteed to cause mayhem in the penalty area. Ferdinand on the other hand doesn't mind being called a c&%t; it's being called a black c&%t he objects to. Because let's face it, it's the adjective black which is really offensive. Much more so than c&%t.
Anton Ferdinand didn't bring the prosecution himself, and I bet he wishes the ground would open up and swallow him.
To be clear, if anyone truly deserves the C-word here it is John Terry, a great footballer but a rather loathsome individual. I hold no brief for Terry, and clearly a healthy society cannot function properly if people can be discriminated against or abused on racial grounds. But neither can society work if people go around calling each other c&%ts. That's why the Public Order Act exists, and in particular the sections which deal with threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. If it was right to prosecute John Terry, why isn't Anton Ferdinand being prosecuted as well?
The cynical answer to this is that racism allegations trump all in Britain. A more nuanced one might be that if every footballer who used abusive or insulting words on the pitch were prosecuted, the criminal justice system would grind to a halt. Fair enough; but the Terry / Ferdinand pas de deux looks increasingly like handbags at twenty paces, a.k.a six of one and half a dozen of the other. John Terry is probably not actually a racist (how could he play football for a team as multi racial as Chelsea if he were?), and Anton Ferdinand gave pretty much as good as he got. Much better the handshake in the dressing room and no prosecution at all than Terry alone in the dock for one adjective amidst a sea of c&%ts. Prosecute both, or neither.
The unfairness, if that's what it is, of the Terry prosecution is all the more glaring when one considers what happened to Luis Suarez, found by the FA to have racially abused Patrice Evra several times during a game last season. When is the Suarez prosecution happening? Well actually it isn't. Suarez got banned for a few games, but that's all.
I never thought I'd write this, but justice might be better served by Terry getting off.
In English football the days of throwing bananas on the pitch appear thankfully to be over. But perhaps the days of chucking on toothpaste tubes are just beginning. Footballers would go the extra mile to avoid the H-word. Fans begin to floss. Better dental health all round. Everybody wins!
P.S. Three days later, Terry has just been acquitted. Probably the least unfair of the two possible results. But what we really need now is a Leveson-style enquiry into the state of his teeth. Does he really have bad breath? I think we should be told.
It apparently pans out like this. There is a dispute about a penalty. Terry calls Ferdinand a c&%t (it's an ugly word - why spread ugliness around the world by repeating it unadulterated?). Ferdinand calls Terry a c&%t in return. Terry then makes a gesture indicating Ferdinand's breath smells (what is this gesture? It would be useful to know for domestic situations). Ferdinand then says, according to his own evidence, "How can you call me a c&%t? You shagged your team-mate's missus. You're a c&%t".
Evidence then suggests that as Terry runs off he shouts, "fuck off, fuck off . . . fucking black c&%t, fucking knobhead" (also ugly words; but tiresome to redact). Ferdinand doesn't seem to have heard this, and only became aware of it when his girlfriend showed him a video on Youtube after the match, but he told the court yesterday (according to the Guardian), "being called a c&%t was fine . . . but when someone brings your colour into it, it takes it to another level and it's very hurtful".
Assuming this exchange of insults approximately represents the exchange between the two - I hesitate to call them men: let's make do with footballers - what a vista of stupidity and inarticulacy it opens up.
Terry's opening gambit is the C-word; but then he takes it to another level by implying halitotis; no doubt if relations had really broken down he might might have cried, "Oy, get some Listerine, you c&%t!", or made one of those athlete's foot related jibes guaranteed to cause mayhem in the penalty area. Ferdinand on the other hand doesn't mind being called a c&%t; it's being called a black c&%t he objects to. Because let's face it, it's the adjective black which is really offensive. Much more so than c&%t.
Anton Ferdinand didn't bring the prosecution himself, and I bet he wishes the ground would open up and swallow him.
To be clear, if anyone truly deserves the C-word here it is John Terry, a great footballer but a rather loathsome individual. I hold no brief for Terry, and clearly a healthy society cannot function properly if people can be discriminated against or abused on racial grounds. But neither can society work if people go around calling each other c&%ts. That's why the Public Order Act exists, and in particular the sections which deal with threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. If it was right to prosecute John Terry, why isn't Anton Ferdinand being prosecuted as well?
The cynical answer to this is that racism allegations trump all in Britain. A more nuanced one might be that if every footballer who used abusive or insulting words on the pitch were prosecuted, the criminal justice system would grind to a halt. Fair enough; but the Terry / Ferdinand pas de deux looks increasingly like handbags at twenty paces, a.k.a six of one and half a dozen of the other. John Terry is probably not actually a racist (how could he play football for a team as multi racial as Chelsea if he were?), and Anton Ferdinand gave pretty much as good as he got. Much better the handshake in the dressing room and no prosecution at all than Terry alone in the dock for one adjective amidst a sea of c&%ts. Prosecute both, or neither.
The unfairness, if that's what it is, of the Terry prosecution is all the more glaring when one considers what happened to Luis Suarez, found by the FA to have racially abused Patrice Evra several times during a game last season. When is the Suarez prosecution happening? Well actually it isn't. Suarez got banned for a few games, but that's all.
I never thought I'd write this, but justice might be better served by Terry getting off.
In English football the days of throwing bananas on the pitch appear thankfully to be over. But perhaps the days of chucking on toothpaste tubes are just beginning. Footballers would go the extra mile to avoid the H-word. Fans begin to floss. Better dental health all round. Everybody wins!
P.S. Three days later, Terry has just been acquitted. Probably the least unfair of the two possible results. But what we really need now is a Leveson-style enquiry into the state of his teeth. Does he really have bad breath? I think we should be told.
Monday 9 July 2012
A nation's greatness is measured by . . .
"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members".
I seem to be hearing this quote, attributed to Mahatma Ghandi but prefigured by others including Dr Johnson, just about every other week. At a time when the Tories are cutting public spending, however modestly, it is the go-to mantra for those who wish to demonstrate not only the iniquity coming from Central Office but, by implication, their own moral superiority.
Deborah Orr, a columnist I very much admire, provided some background to the idea in the Graun on Saturday when she reminded her readers of how things were under the last Tory administration "Schools were crumbling as they delivered sometimes appallingly poor levels of educational attainment. Hospitals were frighteningly dingy and under-resourced, coping with giant waiting lists and regularly generating horror stories about vulnerable people left on trolleys in corridors for days. All this happened because the state was trying to shuck off its responsibilities and the private sector wasn't taking them on. Conservatives may well condemn Blair and Brown for profligate spending. But what the Tories cannot deny is that when they were last in power, their neoliberal agenda left public services in a dreadful shambles."
It's worth pointing out that, contrary to popular myth, the 1979-97 Tory administrations never cut public spending. Spending rose consistently ahead of inflation (the figure that sticks in the mind is 1.5%, although the health service did even better). But despite this, and despite the overheated prose (crumbling, appallingly, frighteningly, giant, horror, vulnerable - Orr is after all married to Will Self) there's an element of truth in what she says. The problem for Orr and those like her who want more money spent on public services is that we cannot afford it.* Only in 5 out of the last 30-odd years has Britain actually delivered a budget surplus. Most of the time the state's income has been less (at present significantly less) than its expenditure. Funnily enough the last time we lived within our means was in the period at the end of the Major government and the beginning of the first Blair term. We lived within our means after the 1997 election because Labour, terrified of a repeat of the infamous "Labour's tax bombshell" headlines said to have dished John Smith in 1992, pledged to stick to Tory spending plans for its first couple of years in office. After about 2000, with re-election looming, Gordon Brown turned on the spending taps and never looked back.
When I borrow, I'm committing future income to repay interest and capital. That seems legitimate when I'm the person who is going to be making the repayments. But when Governments borrow long term they are committing future citizens to do the paying. What Orr is asking is that my (and her) children should pay in the future to enable us to live better today. This might be fine if the process of borrowing could be extended indefinitely into the future, that's to say if our children could ask their children to make the same sacrifice. But what events have demonstrated so eloquently in the last five years is that this process can't go on forever. The debt markets won't carry on lending ad infinitum. And what can't go on forever must come to an end.
The credit crunch has ensured that we have reached that point. In future our children are not only going to have to live within their means, but they are also going to have to get on top of the stock of debt we incurred to provide the sort of society that Orr and millions of others wanted to see. In the West we have used debt, both public and private, as a sticking plaster to cover up our chronic lack of competitiveness.
So how about this.
"A nation's greatness is measured by whether it is willing to live at the expense of its children".
Discuss.
* Yes, I know we could tax the rich more. And it might raise a bit more money. But a) the rich actually tend to have got rich by working really hard; discouraging them might be counterproductive, b) raising taxes tends to dampen spending and therefore demand, c) there are relatively few rich people compared to the vast numbers of middle earners, d) rich people tend to derive their income from assets that are easy to move around, and e) rich people tend to have accountants who can help them minimise their tax exposure. Denis Healey pledged to tax the rich "until the pips squeaked": it didn't bring in much money and Healey had to go to the IMF instead. Anyone who thinks Britain's fiscal black holes can be filled by taxing the rich is living in dreamland.
I seem to be hearing this quote, attributed to Mahatma Ghandi but prefigured by others including Dr Johnson, just about every other week. At a time when the Tories are cutting public spending, however modestly, it is the go-to mantra for those who wish to demonstrate not only the iniquity coming from Central Office but, by implication, their own moral superiority.
Deborah Orr, a columnist I very much admire, provided some background to the idea in the Graun on Saturday when she reminded her readers of how things were under the last Tory administration "Schools were crumbling as they delivered sometimes appallingly poor levels of educational attainment. Hospitals were frighteningly dingy and under-resourced, coping with giant waiting lists and regularly generating horror stories about vulnerable people left on trolleys in corridors for days. All this happened because the state was trying to shuck off its responsibilities and the private sector wasn't taking them on. Conservatives may well condemn Blair and Brown for profligate spending. But what the Tories cannot deny is that when they were last in power, their neoliberal agenda left public services in a dreadful shambles."
It's worth pointing out that, contrary to popular myth, the 1979-97 Tory administrations never cut public spending. Spending rose consistently ahead of inflation (the figure that sticks in the mind is 1.5%, although the health service did even better). But despite this, and despite the overheated prose (crumbling, appallingly, frighteningly, giant, horror, vulnerable - Orr is after all married to Will Self) there's an element of truth in what she says. The problem for Orr and those like her who want more money spent on public services is that we cannot afford it.* Only in 5 out of the last 30-odd years has Britain actually delivered a budget surplus. Most of the time the state's income has been less (at present significantly less) than its expenditure. Funnily enough the last time we lived within our means was in the period at the end of the Major government and the beginning of the first Blair term. We lived within our means after the 1997 election because Labour, terrified of a repeat of the infamous "Labour's tax bombshell" headlines said to have dished John Smith in 1992, pledged to stick to Tory spending plans for its first couple of years in office. After about 2000, with re-election looming, Gordon Brown turned on the spending taps and never looked back.
When I borrow, I'm committing future income to repay interest and capital. That seems legitimate when I'm the person who is going to be making the repayments. But when Governments borrow long term they are committing future citizens to do the paying. What Orr is asking is that my (and her) children should pay in the future to enable us to live better today. This might be fine if the process of borrowing could be extended indefinitely into the future, that's to say if our children could ask their children to make the same sacrifice. But what events have demonstrated so eloquently in the last five years is that this process can't go on forever. The debt markets won't carry on lending ad infinitum. And what can't go on forever must come to an end.
The credit crunch has ensured that we have reached that point. In future our children are not only going to have to live within their means, but they are also going to have to get on top of the stock of debt we incurred to provide the sort of society that Orr and millions of others wanted to see. In the West we have used debt, both public and private, as a sticking plaster to cover up our chronic lack of competitiveness.
So how about this.
"A nation's greatness is measured by whether it is willing to live at the expense of its children".
Discuss.
* Yes, I know we could tax the rich more. And it might raise a bit more money. But a) the rich actually tend to have got rich by working really hard; discouraging them might be counterproductive, b) raising taxes tends to dampen spending and therefore demand, c) there are relatively few rich people compared to the vast numbers of middle earners, d) rich people tend to derive their income from assets that are easy to move around, and e) rich people tend to have accountants who can help them minimise their tax exposure. Denis Healey pledged to tax the rich "until the pips squeaked": it didn't bring in much money and Healey had to go to the IMF instead. Anyone who thinks Britain's fiscal black holes can be filled by taxing the rich is living in dreamland.
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