Friday 29 April 2016

It snowed this morning - a comment on "normal politics in Bradford"


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It snowed this morning. Not an unusual occurrence in Bradford as the massive grit pile at Denholme attests but late April is pushing it for snowstorms. Because I chose to stay in rather than head into town, I found myself reading a piece in the Independent by the writer, Ben Judah where he - with some justification - tears into the politics of Bradford:

Were you shocked by Naz Shah’s outbursts on social media? Were you baffled that an aspiring MP would call to “relocate” (that is, destroy and deport) Israel to America? Did you baulk, wondering why on earth a self-respecting politician would ask supporters to vote in an online poll because “the Jews are rallying”?

Don’t be. Because Naz Shah, and everything she said, is normal politics in Bradford.

Ben goes on to recount his experiences of visiting Bradford including a terrifying and terrible racist assault. The picture painted in the article is a pretty bleak one filled with references to the poverty, depression and segregation of the City. I bridled a little at the suggestion that all politics in Bradford is shaped by events in Israel and Palestine and, as a result, got into a spat with Ben on Twitter.

Nevertheless, the view about Bradford's politics that Ben put across is understandable when all outsiders see of that politics is this:

I contacted all the candidates vying to replace him. Most had photos exhibiting themselves at pro-Palestine rallies. One Labour hopeful responded, rather bizarrely, to my request for an interview with a video of herself speaking at a pro-Palestine rally.

From the sectarian mania of George Galloway - he would be a comedy act had his words and actions not damaged Bradford so much - through to the recent reports of anti-semitism, the public face of Bradford politics is exactly as Ben Judah describes. As another writer recently asked of me - "does everyone have to say this sort of thing to get elected in Bradford?"

My answer to that writer was that, in 20 years as a Councillor, I've never found the need to make inflammatory, racist statements in order to get elected. And I'm sure the same goes for many of my colleagues from across the political parties in Bradford. It is indeed depressing that the picture painted by Ben Judah is painfully close to the truth but it is only part of the truth. And it's that other truth about Bradford that still gives me hope.

This is the truth about the men from Bradford Council of Mosques who helped raise the funds to repair Bradford synagogue. This is the truth of a City that's not simply a Muslim enclave in a non-Muslim Yorkshire but is a varied, interesting and at times exciting place. Muslims make up little more than a quarter of Bradford's population yet the public discourse about the City is almost completely captured by the issues that minority are focused upon.

As I said, it snowed this morning. So there weren't any horses clip-clopping along the bridleway behind our house. But there will be tomorrow. This is the other Bradford, the place that visiting writers never see, the place that isn't described in comments like this from Nigel Farage:

What has happened, and I think what has happened in Bradford, is that left-wing support and sympathy for anti-Israel/anti-Israeli views has now become allied to a very big growth in the Muslim vote in this country.

"I think what you have in Bradford is sectarian politics and I loathe it because if we think about the other part of the United Kingdom that has been plagued by sectarian politics, it is called Northern Ireland with Protestant v Catholic and look where that has got us."

When I've talked to Muslim audiences during this year's election campaign, I've stressed that this is a local election, I've told them that the Labour Party takes their votes for granted, and I've told them that we need to focus on getting the basic services right if we want a better City. What I haven't mentioned is foreign policy, the familiar litany of other places grievances that have infected politics in Bradford - Palestine, Kashmir, Syria.

That message is the same one we put out everywhere - make savings, deliver good services, help improve schools. And that everywhere includes the World Heritage Site at Saltaire, it includes the village of Thornton where the Brontes were born and Haworth where they lived. It includes a City centre with a nightlife of bars and restaurants that's starting to thrive again. And it includes Cullingworth where I live. Bradford is a great place filled with many fantastic people and I'd love for Ben Judah to visit again so we can, by way of asking for forgiveness, show him the good side of the City to balance the bad side he experienced.

I hope that my message - that you don't need to be a racist sectarian bigot to get elected in Bradford - is the right one. And rest assured that, if the only way to get elected in Bradford is by being anti-semitic, then I'd rather not be elected.

As I said, it snowed on Bradford today.

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Thursday 28 April 2016

The new vaping regulations are wrong. We shouldn't introduce them next month.

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I could turn this post into something of a rant about the iniquity of the EU and all its works. After all the new vaping regulations are contained in the 2015 Tobacco Products Directive (TPD for short) steered through the European Parliament by Yorkshire MEP Linda McAven and then ignorantly - quite literally as she'd no idea what she was voting on - agreed to by the UK's Public Health Minister (then Anna Soubry MP) at the Council of Ministers. In the latter case after the amendments removing some of the anti-vaping provisions of the TPD were ignored by the European Commission in its recommendations to that Council.

But given there's a debate about our membership of the EU going on out there, I'm going to hold fire on all that for another post nearer the June 23 referendum date. Instead I think that the UK Government has sufficient grounds - evidential grounds - for saying to the European Commission and our EU partners that it would be a mistake to enact the regulations. Not only does the UK Government have the independent report produced by Public Health England that demonstrated how vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking but today we also have a comprehensive report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) building on this evidence:

The RCP report, published yesterday, acknowledged the need for proportionate regulation but said rules should not be allowed to significantly inhibit the development and use of harm-reduction products, such as e-cigarettes.

The RCP said the long-term negative effects from vaping were ‘unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco’.

The regulations under the TPD - bans on advertising, product strength limits, volume controls for e-liquids and an onerous product approval process - in effect put e-cigarettes into the same position as smoking with the result that smaller producers and many retailers of vaping products will simply close. Only the biggest producers and the e-cigarette brands owned by tobacco companies will be able to survive. Vaping is, in effect, denormalised in the same manner that public health has approached the control of smoking. It's true that vaping will still be cheaper (although the EU is discussing imposing taxes on vaping products) but it will no longer have a visible high street presence as a much safer alternative to smoking.

The Government should simply say to the EU that the evidence is that, while the TPD as a whole will benefit public health, it would be even more of a benefit if vaping was allowed to develop freely as an alternative to smoking. Indeed the Department for Health's own impact assessment says just this:

Its impact assessment (pdf) on EU rules to be enshrined in UK law also acknowledges that higher costs for e-cigarette manufactures could lead to price increases and reduction of choice for consumers, leading people to switch back to smoking, which public health experts regard as far more dangerous.
It recognises too that regulations might create new barriers for small- and medium-sized companies, a concern that comes as public health doctors warned of possible consequences from tobacco giants becoming more involved in making e-cigarettes.

The TPD effectively leaves the vaping market to be captured by large companies able to deal with the cost of approval and regulation, which amounts to capture by either or both of the pharmaceuticals industry or big tobacco companies (far be it from me to suggest that this might just explain the enormous investment from these two sectors in lobbying the EU, MEPs and Governments over the TPD). This is not in the interests of public health, small businesses trading legally now but unable to once the regulations arrive or the two-and-a-half million former smokers now getting pleasure from vaping.

I hold out little hope here. But it would be a sensible government that saw when something is wrong and changed what it is doing accordingly.

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Wednesday 27 April 2016

A funny old week....anti-semitism, suspension and the problem with social media



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Was always going to be quiet on the blogging front - there being a local election and all that jazz. But it has turned out to be a most peculiar week. It started with this:

A Labour MP has argued Israel should be “relocated” to America and praised the “transportation costs” of deporting Israeli Jews out of the Middle East. Naz Shah, who defeated George Galloway in Bradford West, shared a highly inflammatory graphic arguing in favour of the chilling “transportation” policy two years ago, adding the words “problem solved”.

Three days later it resulted in this:

“Jeremy Corbyn and Naz Shah have mutually agreed that she is administratively suspended from the Labour Party by the General Secretary. Pending investigation, she is unable to take part in any party activity and the whip is removed.”

As I said, a strange old week. Not only is it a lesson (again) about social media but it reminds us that hatred is easy to get sucked into - from putting 'hates Tories' on your Twitter profile to posting anti-Semitic tropes. A sense of injustice about Palestine is entirely understandable as is criticising the Israeli government but the next step, depersonalising Jews is a problem. I suspect Naz Shah knows this and knows what she posted was wrong - not because some people might be offended by those posts but because anti-Semitism itself is wrong.

There may yet be more to come on this story, I don't know who trawled through Naz Shah's social media, but whatever the personal cost I hope that the result is that my fellow politicians challenge anti-Semitism more strongly wherever it rears its ugly head.

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Sunday 24 April 2016

Free range chicken isn't healthier or more sustainable. It's just tastes better and costs more.



I'm prepared to accept that free range chickens taste better. I also know that the way those chickens are bred means they cost a whole lot more than the chickens produced in batteries or other intensive farming methods. But this argument is wrong:

Despite the fact that sustainable poultry production systems deliver huge benefits to the environment and public health, the producers using these methods have no option but to compete on an unlevel playing field. Worse, we are paying for the damage caused by industrial food production in hidden ways, through taxes, in the form of misdirected subsidies from the common agricultural policy, through water pollution clean-up costs and through national health service treatment costs.

Firstly there's no evidence that intensive farming is more damaging to the environment than traditional or organic methods. In fact the reverse is true - traditional and organic methods are less environmentally-friendly:

Agricultural economists at UC Davis, for instance, analyzed farm-level surveys from 1996-2000 and concluded that there are “significant” scale economies in modern agriculture and that small farms are “high cost” operations. Absent the efficiencies of large farms, the use of polluting inputs would rise, as would food production costs, which would lead to more expensive food.

So far from there being an environmental benefit from moving away from agricultural intensification, the reverse is true - if we want a less polluting agriculture then intensification is the right choice. This is quite simply because that supposedly "sustainable" system is less efficient. We get expensive food and a more damaged environment.

The public health issues are equally misplaced. There is no evidence at all that organic methods are healthier than methods using modern pest control or fertilisers. - it's just that all those healthy looking chickens scuttling about in feels give us the impression that eating them will be healthier.

So when the Sustainable Food Trust tell you their methods are healthier and have less environmental impact they aren't telling you the whole truth. And, when they call for the system to be skewed to support their methods, what they are doing is making you pay more for food with the only benefit going to the organic farmers' bank balances.

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Millionaire migration...

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When we think of people moving, we tend to focus on the traditional sort of economic migration or the terrible consequences of war, oppression and terror. There's another collection of mobile people who don't get talked about - millionaires.

In a fascinating article for New Geography, Joel Kotkin looks at where there millionaires are moving to and from. And he starts by reminding us how important the spending power of the rich people is to many urban economies:

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has suggested that today a successful city must be primarily “a luxury product,” a place that focuses on the very wealthy whose surplus can underwrite the rest of the population. “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend,” Bloomberg, himself a multi-billionaire, said toward the end of his final term. “Because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else.”

You don't have to be comfortable with this dependency on the very rich to understand the realpolitik of Bloomberg's observation. And Mayor Mike knew it is an issue because the very rich aren't moving to places like New York, nor are they moving to London:

The biggest winners are not the elite global cities, like New York or London, but ones that are comfortable, and boast pretty settings and world-class amenities. The leading millionaire magnets in 2015 were Sydney and Melbourne, gaining 4,000 and 3,000 millionaires, respectively, many from China. In third place is Tel Aviv, a burgeoning high-tech center which is attracting Jews fleeing Europe, notably from France.

Dubai ranks fourth, luring many Middle Easterners seeking a safer, cleaner business locale. Then comes a series of some of the most attractive cities on the planet, including Seattle (seventh) and Perth (eighth). In many cases these cities are gaining from “flight capital” from Asia and the Middle East.

Kotkin observes that the migration of millionaires seems driven by two factors - the safety of money and the safety of the millionaire. As a result millionaires leave Russia and China where property rights are weak and leave France because they don't feel safe (the big French exodus is of Jews and it's striking that they feel safer in Tel Aviv than they do in Paris).

Countries and cities need to worry about the exodus of millionaires - here's the impact of just one individual switching US states:

The movement for example of one billionaire — hedge fund manager David Tepper — from New Jersey to Florida could leave the Garden State with a $140 million hole just from his change of address. Overall New Jersey depends for 40 percent of its revenue of income taxes, one-third of which is paid by the top 1 percent of the population.

And the two top destinations for millionaires? The USA and Australia.

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Quote of the day - tax fraud as a thought crime

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Quite amazing:

Despite this new evidence providing the artist had paid his taxes, Nerdrum was sentenced in June 2014 to one year in prison for tax fraud after the case had been appealed twice “because he had admitted to considering evading his taxes,” says Molesky.

All-in-all a strange story involving Icelandic citizenship, allegations of state corruption and the mixing of paint by an artist with the splendid name, Odd Nerdrum. Plus an arcane "when is a painting a new painting or an old painting" debate. It does appear that the artist paid his taxes in full through a scheme that could be used to avoid taxes.

Governments, dontcha just love 'em!
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Saturday 23 April 2016

Officials are officious - which is one reason why we have politicians

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I know, I know. We're a shower. Useless. Self-seeking. Incompetent. But you really do need us. Really, you do. And here to illustrate is an example of what happens when politicians don't have a say:

"I fully understand that nowadays people are interested in what goes on at the count and those who attend would like to share their experiences on social media.

"However, I have a duty to uphold the national legislation, which is in place to ensure the confidentiality of the count process.

"This is why I am not allowing the use of electronic devices on the count floor.

"I do not want those responsible for counting to be distracted or intimidated by photography or filming. We all have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the count.

"Electronic devices may be used in other areas at count venues, but at the discretion of local returning officers."

So let's unpick this. The Returning Officer has decided that she will ban us having 'electronic devices' in order to uphold the 'national legislation'. Now I can't imagine that it has changed much from the guidance at the 2015 General Election. Which says:

You should also decide on a policy for the use of mobile phones in the verification and count venue.

That's it. The guidance also says that the count is not 'confidential' as it should be conducted in full view of those 'entitled to ' watch the count. The Returning Officer and her officials already have the ability - again the guidance is pretty clear - to remove anyone from the counting floor who is interfering with the counting process or distracting those conducting the count.

The decision taken here is, frankly, overkill. Officials have all the powers needed to deal with any interference with the count and this decision is merely for the convenience of the Returning Officer. It is officials being officious.

And this is always the case. Public officials will always prefer blanket bans, restrictions and controls to accommodation and flexibility. In my experience much of this officiousness gets blocked by politicians applying common sense.

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Friday 22 April 2016

In which alcohol researchers discover something called a "party" - and want it stopped


Intrepid Alcohol Researcher learn about the Party

John Holmes the neo-puritan who runs the Alcohol Research Group at the University of Sheffield has stepped away from his usual reliance on using computer modelling as his source or evidence to look at actual human behaviour. And our intrepid researcher approaches this study with the arrogance of a 1950s social anthropologist describing the marriage practice of some previously unknown jungle tribe.

However, we also see occasions that are commonplace but attract less attention from policy makers and public health advocates. For example, 14% of drinking occasions involved domestic gatherings of family and friends, perhaps at house parties and dinner parties or to watch the football. On average people drank the equivalent of a bottle of wine or four pints of beer on these occasions and, in many cases, they consumed more than this. Yet such occasions are rarely discussed when identifying the kinds of drinking problems that need to be tackled.

The discovery that people have parties must have been pretty shocking really. Who knew? And what a delightfully neo-puritan statement concludes Holmes' discovery of the party - "...identifying the kinds of drinking problems that need to be tackled". You and your friends and family chilling round a barbeque (assuming we actually get some sunshine), celebrating a new job or maybe just getting together to share a drink and have a laugh - these events, my friends, are "drinking problems that need to be tackled".

Holmes goes on to fret a little more. You see the neo-puritan fussbuckets at Sheffield have been the main advocates of minimum unit pricing as a means of stopping people (in particular poor people) from drinking. This advocacy was almost entirely based on the torturing of Holmes' computer model plus some very creative interpretations of price elasticity. At no point did the Sheffield researchers ever consider actual drinking behaviour by real people. And now, having seen how real people consume alcohol, the conclusion is that something else must be done to stop all this partying, pleasure and drunkenness:

Introducing a minimum price for alcohol and providing drinking guidelines for those deemed lower risk might reduce habitual alcohol consumption, but these policies might do less to tackle heavy drinking where getting intoxicated and letting the hair down is the main motivation and where the location, company and timing are all conducive to sidelining concerns about price and long-term health.

You see the problem don't you. When we get in a few bottles, cook up a big chilli and invite folk round to celebrate a new job, a big win or a graduation, we're not thinking about our health or how much all that lovely booze is costing. We're just planning on having a damned good night and waking up in the morning with a hangover. This is, of course, exactly how parties work - unless of course, you're working in an Alcohol Research Group where, presumably, celebrations are more muted featuring only tap water and decaffeinated coffee.

The sad thing is that, now these researchers have discovered that people like to have a drink at parties, they'll be working overtime to develop 'strategies' intended to stop this happening. We'll get the usual finger wagging fussbucketry - ad bans, turgid lectures about drink, more licensing restrictions - and to this will be added new wheezes like limiting how much booze you can buy at a time. Of course what these neo-puritans actually want is prohibition and they plan on introducing it by stealth.

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Monday 18 April 2016

Drink, smoke, vape, eat fast food? You're not welcome in the Labour Party



Mr R. McDonald - Labour Membership refused

I don't know about you, dearest reader, but I'm not at all surprised to read that the Labour Party has turned down the request from McDonalds to open a 'pop-up' restaurant at the Party's annual conference. I am slightly surprised that the Party hasn't issued a lengthy, slogan-ridden justification for the refusal but this leaves us open to speculate as to the reasons.

Top of the list of reasons will be some sort of ideological objection to Ron and his burgers. After all the modern Labour Party does ideology, near everything is washed through the sieve of adopted political constraints. And, as a massive multinational fast food retailer, McDonalds is going to be pretty far removed from adherence to the Party's virtuous views on employment rights, public health, taxation, advertising and, of course, the children.

Right now, however, Labour is hiding behind it being the sort of 'commercial' decision they don't discuss in public. Meaning that we can tell the truth about the party - it's run by a bunch of right-on, snobby hippies who are just a bit uncomfortable with the sort of eating habits that those ordinary voters get up to. Especially the fat ones.

As we discovered from some 'research' by lefty politics professors, the left in Britain is no longer a party of the people who drag themselves bleary-eyed from bed in the morning to go and work in a regular sort of job - whether answering the phone in a call centre, making interminable cups of coffee for slightly rude people or flipping burgers for other ordinary people to eat. The sort of people who are active in the Labour Party simply don't do these sorts of jobs, they work doing public health campaigns or equalities monitoring in the public sector and third sector. Labour's enthusiasts are filled with righteous passion for banning fatty, sugar-filled and meat-ridden food (for the sake of the children, of course) and find the persistent preference of the regular worker for fast food, cigarettes and cheap lager slightly distasteful.

Here are those professors on who the left are today:

"People like us academics and the London elite just shrug off concerns about immigration, they shrug off concerns about the decline of Britain as a military power.

"This is where I think some of animosity is coming from and the electorate is saying we count too."

These are the people who Labour leaders will turn to ahead of tuning their ears to the worries of people with regular sorts of job in the private sector. For sure there's shouting about 'zero-hours contracts' that most working folk aren't on. There's stuff about trade union recognition that was relevant in 1880 but isn't today. And there's a load of cant about 'local economic strategies' that just means fewer of the shops those working people want and more for the well-paid, caring, gentrifying Labour supporter. Those Labour fans think they're sticking it to the man by going on protest marches, signing petitions and sending affirmatory messages to each other about Evil Tories or their own self-righteousness.

Truth be told, most people - let's call them the working class - don't have the time or money to spend on marching through London waving badly written banners about saving the NHS or banning tax havens. And even if they did have the time and money, I'm pretty sure they'd rather spend it taking the children into town for a film and a meal out (perhaps at a McDonalds) or, for those who've managed to offload the kids, a couple of pints and a burger somewhere disapproved of by the sort of judgemental snobs who sit on Labour's NEC.

Although there's a tenuous connection between today's Labour Party and the old unionised working class, the Party hasn't made the slightest effort to connect with the new working class - the one's who're working (and eating) in McDonalds, blowing vapour and buying the biggest, cheapest pizza in the supermarket. The Conservative Party at least has an excuse (not a good one but, nevertheless, an excuse) as it's always had a tendency to see the working classes as, well, a bit common. What's happened is that the same slightly disdainful attitude is now a dominant ideology in the Labour Party - the habits of these people need to be changed for their own good (and, one guesses, so they can be allowed into the sort of 'polite society' inhabited by the typical Labour activist).

People who drink beer (the cheap session beer they sell in working mens' clubs and discount supermarkets), smoke, vape and enjoy fatty burgers or sugary sweets, these are the people who aren't welcome in today's Labour Party. Indeed, it's hard to think of anywhere that these people - millions of them - can find a political place that doesn't treat them like some sort of pariah. It's a sad state of affairs when the persistent lobbying of a few - a tiny few - fanatics has resulted in the lifestyle choices of millions being condemned as unhealthy, unsightly and unfavoured.

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Friday 15 April 2016

Political scientists discover a previously unknown political view - conservatism


Political Scientists announcing the shocking discovery that most ordinary folk are conservative

Picture the scene. A modest chain hotel somewhere in the south is hosting an academic conference - "Politics and Social Class in the 21st Century" or something along those lines. And it's filled with the sort of people who go to these sorts of events - sociologists, political scientists, social policy researchers. At the end of a long day listening to bias-affirming presentations and virtue-signalling slide shows from fellow left-wing academics, a few settle down for a nice glass of wine and a chat in one of the hotel's comfortable bars. On the table - flotsam from the previous week's 'Winning Sales and Marketing Strategies' event - is a copy of The Daily Mail. In the interests of science our brave academics plunge into the newspaper.

"If we're to research political attitudes, we have to see what right-wing people are thinking even if it means holding our noses" giggles one of our professors.

A chorus of affirmative chortles from the assembled lecturers leads to a rambling discussion about right-wing views.

"They don't like immigrants, do they?"

"What was that Thatcher thing - 'roll back the state'"

"Lots of stuff about soldiers - our brave heroes and all that nonsense"

"Human rights - they don't like human rights."

"They're always on about free markets."

"And the EU - they're opposed to the EU too."

"Bunch of neanderthals reading the Daily Mail - research has shown that right-wing people are more stupid".

From this confused analysis fuelled by cheap wine and prejudice, our academics hatch a plan - they'll write down a list of 'authoritarian views' (by which they mean 'things that right-wing people think that we don't'), get hold of some opinion polling data and look at how many there are of the sort of people who read the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph.

So it is done:

As much as half the adult population may share a political world view researchers describe as "authoritarian populist".

They favour rolling back the state and are negative about immigration, human rights and the EU, a study claims.

It concludes these views are set to have a "huge effect" on decisions voters make at the EU referendum.

Many more people share this outlook than the four million voters who backed UKIP at the election, the work says.

Academics at the Universities of Essex and Exeter say theirs is the first attempt to analyse what they call "authoritarian populist" views in the Britain.

Shocking! Half the population think free markets are a good idea, that we might be better off with a smaller state and that perhaps cuts to our military capacity have gone too far. What's even more shocking is that these academics - supposed experts in politics - had never noticed. And the real corker is that they consider free markets and smaller government to be "authoritarian".

I've been a politician for twenty years, elected by people a long way from the 'metropolitan elite' these professors say they represent, and these views - often confused and contradictory - are commonplace. They're the views of people who quite like things as they are right now (or sometimes as they were a few years ago when 'things were better'), people who really don't want trendy folk from somewhere else telling them what they should or shouldn't think or say.

And these people are 'authoritarian' is as much as they think criminals should be punished, that the people who volunteer to serve in the forces deserve our admiration and that the idea of human rights is exploited by lawyers to stop us deporting rapists and murderers back to where they came from. When they say they want smaller government, it's because they look at their wage slip every month to see nearly half of it disappearing in taxes. It's because they see endless parades of clipboard wielding public officials getting in the way of ordinary people living their lives in peace. And it's because they see enormous waste in government - everything from politicians feathering their own nests through to thousands of pointless non-jobs created to satisfy either the EU or the politically correct (or both).

What these people don't want is sneering academics peering down their noses at them while suggesting that they're semi-intelligent numpties who are waiting on their chance to elect an English Donald Trump to supreme power. These views aren't "authoritarian populist" or any other sort of lefty made-up description, there's a well-known and commonly used word that describes this political position, one that's hundreds of years old - conservative. And in that description there's a multitude of different views - from 'Blue Labour' working-class patriots with sons in the army to the vast array of ordinary middle-class folk who do a job, have a mortgage, take an annual holiday and want the government to leave off nannying, fussing and, to pay for that nannying and fussing, taking all their money.

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Thursday 14 April 2016

How doctors strikes save lives...

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It's OK dear reader, I'm not getting all soft in my dotage, I still think that doctors - give the oaths they swear and the moral high ground they inhabit - shouldn't go on strike. But, slightly ironically, the strike may save a few lives:

Curiously enough, it has been shown that patient mortality typically falls during doctors' strikes, a finding replicating on a number of occasions across different nations. Cunningham et al's meta-analysis is the most notable recent review of this peculiar fact. In one of the most entertaining studies in the literature, the researchers interviewed the directors of major Israeli burial societies, who seemed slightly disgruntled at the loss of business associated with a major doctors' strike in 2000.

One, bemused, reported a 39% drop in funerals as compared to the same month in 1999. Another, much more confidently, was sure that his loss of custom was due to the striking doctors, because he had been in business long enough to see the exact same phenomenon occur in 1983, the last time Israeli doctors had walked out.

As they say - most peculiar. And it raises the question of whether it's all that expensive medicine stuff that's driving our longer, healthier and happier lives or something else.

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Wednesday 13 April 2016

Quote of the day - the 'kumbaya' school of leadership...

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Politics matters. Even your much maligned office politics. Learn it.

“I was universally liked across the company, a team player who put in more hours than anyone else,” she said. “I was heads down on delivering results, shared my inner self and built trust…everything I was trained and even coached to do.”

With those words, I recognized what had happened immediately. Jill was one more victim of what I call the “Kumbaya” school of leadership, which says that being open, trusting, authentic, and positive — and working really hard — is the key to getting ahead. The Kumbaya school is doing the Jills of the world a great disservice, leading them to often act in ways that are detrimental to their careers.

Depressing I know. But true.

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Tuesday 12 April 2016

It's not so long since we held the same views as Muslims about gay rights

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However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed. Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.

A great deal will be made of this finding. Some of it from bone-headed pundits will be straightforward 'bash the muslims' stuff but there will be more considered discussion along the lines we've seen from Trevor Phillips - 'Muslims aren't integrating'. Now there are a couple of comments to make here - firstly the conservative Muslim position on homosexuality isn't really much different from that of many Christians and Jews. I'm pretty sure that a survey of African Christians in the UK would provide a very similar result.

The second point is that we forget just how far we - both as a society and as individuals - have changed on the issue of homosexuality. In my lifetime we've moved from a society where homosexuality was illegal to one where we welcome gay marriage and have begun to wrestle with the question of transgender and 'gender fluidity'. Many people are still uncomfortable with homosexuality - just the other day I was told of someone still estranged from his family because he 'came out' some thirty years ago. And let's remember that in the 1980s polls told us well over half of people questioned thought gay people shouldn't be employed as teachers.

It has taken decades for us - at least formally through our laws if not always socially - to recognise that homosexuality is perfectly normal. And for many of us the personal journey is just as important - we've moved from 'condemn the sin but love the sinner' to deciding that being gay isn't a sin at all. Not everyone has made that journey but I'm confident that the coming generations - regardless of their parents' faith or ethnicity - will make that journey to tolerance faster than we did.

In the meantime we need to understand the difficulties faced by gay people growing up in Muslim communities (or for that matter those conservative Jewish or Christian communities) and be prepared to support both communities and gay people. Here's a quote from a poignant article by a gay Muslim:

That's why so many gay British Muslims choose to stay in the closet. This leads to a secret double life with dark consequences, such as the gay Muslims living in straight marriages. I’ve seen countless examples of marriages built on a bed of lies, frustration and the unrelenting pressure to conform. It’s not just the closeted individual that suffers. There’s a knock-on effect for the next generation of children who end up finding out that their parents’ marriage isn’t at all what it seemed.

It's only a few decades since this was true for the English so if we start sounding off about how Islam is 'medieval' or prejudiced let's remember that we were just the same a short while ago (and plenty of us still are). Our first task is to help those who want to live an open, happy life not to attack their community or the faith of their parents.

I live in Bradford and have, on several occasions, questioned whether the Council's - and by inference, the City's - agenda and 'action plan' around equality and equal rights is too geared towards matters of race and race quality to the exclusion of other concerns, in particular gay rights. It's not that there's nothing done at all - there's plenty of great work going on - but that we seem too one-eyed on these issues. Perhaps it's time to change the emphasis a little - in the interests of those gay people struggling in the dark within orthodox faith communities in our city?

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Monday 11 April 2016

You want less corruption? You need smaller not bigger government for that.



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This is what we must guard against yet is exactly what those who take the 'who will build the roads' line on government.




Government must be limited - in its size and in its powers - to prevent it becoming a protection racket for the select few, for the connected and powerful. I am always aghast when I see those concerned with corruption who see the solution in giving more power to politicians and the officials they appoint. They attack those like me who believe in small government and are blind to how the rules, taxes and controls they love are meat and drink to the powerful.

If you want a fairer society, if you want a less corrupt society then you should reject the idea of big government, high taxes and constricting regulation. Support freedom not authority folks.

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Saturday 9 April 2016

So you're fat? It's not your fault you know.

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Or so says the Government's obesity 'tzar', Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford:

"Obesity has increased so greatly over the last few decades. That's not a national collapse in willpower. It's something about our environment that has changed," she said.

"You need in some cases a superhuman effort to reduce your food intake. Is that their fault? I don't think it is."

Let's get one thing out of the way. This isn't complete bollocks but the environmental change that Professor Jebb thinks is the problem, isn't the cause. No-one is disputing that there are genetic differences in propensity for weight gain, we've known that for decades. Nor is anyone disputing that some people have less (or more) willpower than others, that socialisation - typically parental attitudes and diet - is important and that there is a mountain of misinformation about health and diet.

The problem is that our increased rates of obesity didn't take place in an environment of rising calorie consumption. And whatever fad or fancy you subscribe to in this debate, it is indisputable that the reason for weight gain is consuming more calories than you use. Any sort of calorie, your body doesn't make any distinction between sources. There isn't such a thing as an unhealthy food, just unhealthy diets.

Two things have changed. Firstly (and we'll get this one out of the the way) we are, on average, older and older people are, again on average, fatter than younger people. This isn't a problem (unless you see sub-optimal birth rates as a problem).

The other change is that we live a vastly more sedentary life than we did three or more decades ago. Coca-cola even ran an ad featuring these differences (and, as ever, ad men were spot on). And the environmental change is striking:

In 1970, 2 in 10 working Americans were in jobs requiring only light activity (predominantly sitting at a desk), whereas 3 in 10 were in jobs requiring high-energy output (eg, construction, manufacturing, farming). By 2000, more than 4 in 10 adults were in light-activity jobs, whereas 2 in 10 were in high-activity jobs. Moreover, during the past 20 years, total screen time (ie, using computers, watching television, playing video games) has increased dramatically. In 2003, nearly 6 in 10 working adults used a computer on the job and more than 9 in 10 children used computers in school (kindergarten through grade 12). Between 1989 and 2009, the number of households with a computer and Internet access increased from 15% to 69%. Other significant contributors to daily sitting time—watching television and driving personal vehicles—are at all-time highs, with estimates of nearly 4 hours and 1 hour, respectively

This isn't about whether we do that half hour of 'physical activity' we're encouraged to partake of - that's a red herring. This is about the totality of our lives, about the elimination of activity from more and more tasks. Think about putting a screw in - we've now replaced the screwdriver requiring a vigorous physical act with a power tool. Multiply that across everything from beating eggs through to buying a weeks groceries and we've a striking picture of decreased activity.

We can't deal with this problem (although it isn't really a problem, is it) by taking up jogging. Nor can we wind back from the efficiency and productivity gain - in every aspect of life - that technology brings. And we can't force people to take up a sport, go for bracing country walks or sign up to a gym - not when there's a great Netflix box set just out. We can begin to design environments that promote movement - not just at work bearing in mind that this takes up less than a fifth of a typical week. Plus we can (since we're talking about weight here) reduce our total calorie intake.

Indeed we have reduced how much we eat:



So, if we want to do something about the 'obesogenic' environment, we don't do it by banning fast food shops, taxing sugar or forcing children to eat almost completely nutrition-free salads for dinner. No, we do it by designing in physical movement - stairs instead of escalators, public transport instead of cars, proper going-out-of-the-office lunchtimes. A thousand and one little bits of change that mean people move a bit more.

It might just work. What I know for sure is that Professor Jubb's anti-food, anti-pleasure agenda won't make a jot of difference (except to raise the ire - and blood pressure - a people who want a little pleasure in their lives). And, remember, you all have agency - you can choose. You don't have to be fat. If you are, it really is mostly down to your choice.


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Friday 8 April 2016

Quote of the day - on mortality

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Sage advice - we should live just for the sake of living, we should live for fun:

It is time to turn the clock back to a more dangerous era, but only we crumblies have the authority to advocate it. I am not obviously proposing a life of foolhardiness and debauch; but I am uncomfortably aware that as I look back, it is those moments when I went too fast, dared too much, fell too far, drank too deep which bring a smile to my lips, an ache to my heart.

My advice to young people is simple. Eat, drink, even smoke, and be generally merry, because that way you might be spared too many days of misery for yourself and your friends and family. Live short and prosper.

Public health people, fussbuckets, nannies and health facists - stick this in your pipe and smoke it!

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Housing and inequality

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It's a truism to say that housing costs are one cause of inequality in developed societies and that some places - London, San Francisco, Auckland, Sydney and New York for example - have reached the point where housing unaffordability is undermining growth and development. It's also resulting in exploitative landlord practices, higher levels of homelessness, overoccupation and 'sofa surfing'.

We also know the reasons for this unaffordability - restrictive planning and land use policies. Every study tells us that this is the case yet politicians in all these places claim that can wave some sort of magic wand and build loads of extra housing without changing zoning policies or other restrictions on land availability and development.

One result of this restrictive policy environment is that poorer people are moving to less well of places - against the historic (and beneficial) direction of travel away from poorer places:

It used to be that poor people moved to rich places. A janitor in New York, for example, used to earn more than a janitor in Alabama even after adjusting for housing costs. As a result, janitors moved from Alabama to New York, in the process raising their standard of living and reducing income inequality. Today, however, after taking into account housing costs, janitors in New York earn less than janitors in Alabama. As a result, poor people no longer move to rich places. Indeed, there is now a slight trend for poor people to move to poor places because even though wages are lower in poor places, housing prices are lower yet.

The result of this - plus the evidence that internal migration to richer places has slowed - is that geographical inequalities are heightened, social mobility is reduced and economic growth is slowed.

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Thursday 7 April 2016

So is it democracy or a chimera of democracy?



The EU's approach to decision-making that is?

As I understand it, the European Commission is the bit of the EU that proposes the legislation. It does this on the instigation of either or both of the Council of Ministers or the European Parliament. And off its own bat.

The Commission doesn't make the decision. That is for the EU's weird bicameral system - a majority in the Parliament plus, usually, a qualified majority in the Council of Ministers is necessary for the Commission's proposals to become law. The Parliament is elected and the Council of Ministers (again usually) consists of elected people although those people are not elected to the Council.

It's a little more complicated than this because, as vapers discovered, the Council of Ministers can (and does) amend the proposed legislation approved by Parliament. This process is call 'trialogue' and is described by Transparency International:

As we pointed out in our EU Integrity Study, the meetings are a major transparency black hole where large concessions are won and lost with very little oversight and without public disclosure. In the vast majority of cases, Parliament’s plenary vote serves only to rubber stamp the deals secured by a handful of negotiators from each institution, side-lining 99% of MEPs in the process. Even the Parliament’s own internal strategy document recognises that transparency has been traded off against efficiency and there is need for reform.

In theory this is about ironing out the process but, as we saw with the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), it can be used to put back into the legislation things that the Parliament has removed. And remember that the parties to these discussions do not automatically include the proposers of amendments approved by Parliament. In practice, what the Council of Ministers and Commission wants gets passed regardless of Parliament's wishes.

The final part of all this is whether 'we the people can kick the bastards out' - does the public voting bit of the system allow any change. It's clear that the Commission and Council of Ministers are only affected by a series of domestic elections in individual member countries as they are entirely - albeit for different reasons - appointed structures. And while the Parliament is directly elected so could be subject to change, it is pretty clear that not only is it a fairly unchanging body but it also has little or no power to affect institutional change since it cannot propose laws, does not have the final decision on those laws, and cannot insist that its democratic mandate takes precedent.

The inability of Parliament to enforce democracy or transparency (even assuming this was something it desired) demonstrates that the EU is not recognisably a democracy. This is compounded by most members of the European Parliament (MEPs) perceiving their role as being European courtiers fluttering round the grandees of the EU. Access to this decision-making process for non-corporates - again as vapers discovered - is extremely difficult since the entire system, typical of a court, is geared towards engaging with organised corporate representation whether that is business, NGO or professional lobbyist.

So in summary we have a system that lacks transparency, where the decisions of democratic (or seemingly democratic) bodies can be overturned in secret, where access to power is restricted by the lobby and by organisational gatekeepers, and where there is no mechanism for removing our rulers or prospect of those rulers introducing such a mechanism.

At university I recall studying the political regimes of The Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and pre-Communist Cambodia. My politics lecturer, Dr Oey Hong Lee, described these polities as 'pseudo-democracies' - places where elections are held, where there are all the trappings of a democracy (parliaments, votes, prime ministers, opposition) but where this is all window dressing for business-as-usual cronyism. The same politicians remain in power either because of a rigid ethno-politics as in Malaysia, because the ruling party is endorsed by monarchy (Thailand, Cambodia), or because the system is designed to look like a democracy without actually being one (Phillipines, Indonesia).

This is, without question, what we see with the European Union. It has all the symbols of a democracy, indeed that word is seldom far from the lips of political and corporate leaders, but the system is geared towards either processing agreement between 28 individual nations - a sort of rolling treaty programme - or else serving the needs of influential groups and especially sectoral lobbies with powerful corporate backing (farming, industry, banking, health). But what the EU is not, is what most folk see as democratic. The Union falls down on the very basics - that people we elect make the decisions, that decisions are transparent and open to challenge, and that the people have the collective power to change our rules.

It is not democracy. It is a chimera of democracy.

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Wednesday 6 April 2016

When you buy from a big business...




Let's consider this message. Its sentiment is lovely, it speaks of the effort the small business makes to succeed, of the hours of struggle, the nights wading through paperwork, the early mornings racing to collect stock and still get back to open the shop. We've all got a great regard for the shopkeeper, their work (as Napoleon knew) is deep in the English psyche.

But the words on the board are still wrong. Not because there isn't some distant chief executive wanting a second yacht but because when you shop in a big store you're helping to pay the wages of the woman on the checkout, the lad stacking shelves, the folk in the back doing the banking, the warehouse staff, the drivers, the trolley boys and the smiling ladies in the cafe. And those people have daughters who want dance lessons and sons who want a football shirt. These employees of the big shop have school uniforms to pay for, mortgages, gas bills, bus fares and loan repayments.

The portion of your shopping bill that goes to pay the chief executive is tiny - in the case of big bad Tesco it's less than 0.001% of the company's turnover. And the proportion of each pound of sales going in profits is also pretty small - less than 5% even in good years. Most of the mark up goes on paying the wages of ordinary employees who have exactly the same struggles paying their way as do the owners of those lovely local shops.

Don't stop shopping in those indie stores but do so for the right reasons - great service, interesting products, high quality and good value. Don't shop there because you think you're sticking one to some bloated plutocrat because you're not.

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Tuesday 5 April 2016

'Growth for The North' - taking local ownership of the Northern Powerhouse



At a recent LGA meeting we heard from Lord Adonis, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission and former transport minister. It was interesting, not just from the insight he gave into the work published on Crossrail Two, Northern transport connectivity and energy connections but for the context he have for decision-making. It is that context that is relevent to any discussion about the 'Northern Powerhouse'.

Much of the debate around the Northern Powerhouse is characterised by either negativity (witty statements like 'Northern Poorhouse' or 'Northern Powersham', for example) or else by an emphasis on devolution to 'metro-mayors' in the 'core cities'. It seems to me that this misses the point and worse reinforces two unwanted images of The North - as supplicants arriving cap in hand at national government's doors asking for more, and as a bunch of rivalrous, squabbling places unable to get their act together on priorities for economic growth. I would add that the capture of the agenda in some of those cities - Manchester especially - by the idea of 'inclusive growth' drags The North still further away from the place it needs to be to deliver on a Northern Powerhouse.

Lord Adonis made the observation that Crossrail Two got the green light for two reasons - the planning, costing and economic impact work was undertaken and sound, and Transport for London (TfL) as well as the London Mayor were committed to provide 50% of the scheme's funding. The result is that a £16 billion scheme will actually cost central government less than half that amount releasing the economic benefits (that show up in GDP figures and growth) to the whole nation. This is the sort of deal any national government wants to see - regardless of politics.

Right now there is not only no agreement or consensus in The North about infrastructure investment priorities but there is no mechanism for business in The North to do what's happening in London and fund 50% of that investment. There are any number of schemes and projects - ranging from the lunatic (a trans-Pennine tunnel under the High Peak) through to the sensible (reducing rail travel times east to west). And although Transport for the North has made a start with sifting these options and alternatives, it has made only a little progress and it isn't clear how its governance or administration functions. Crucially there is no means for The North to capture business contribution (for example via a business rates supplement) as national government is reserving this supplement for those places who take George Osborne's shilling off the drum and accept a 'metro-mayor'.

If, to use an eminently sensible idea, Transport for the North were to propose a new motorway linking the M56 to the A1(M) North of Bradford and Leeds, the expectation is that central government - through its agencies - would stump up all the cash. And the same would go for HS3, widening the A64, a rail link to Leed-Bradford International Airport and an upgraded Pennine crossing from Newcastle to the M6. We have to find a mechanism for local contribution and pooling that potential business rate supplement should be the best approach - assuming national government can set aside its obsession with Heseltine's rewarmed core city focus and the idea of 'metro-mayors'.

The essential requirement if we are to deliver the infrastructure elements of a Northern Powerhouse is cooperation between Merseyside, Manchester, Leeds-Bradford, Teeside and Tyneside (and the rest of The North) rather than the creation of competing entities based on travel-to-work geography in regional cities. This isn't to reject city devolution or even the idea of mayors but rather is to say that a Northern Powerhouse is best served by a bigger vision encompassing the whole of The North rather than a set of visions focused on the challenges of city government.

We're talking here about infrastructure - indeed specifically transport infrastructure - but there are other areas where The North needs to collaborate rather than compete - our education system underperforms compared to London and the South East, our urban mass transit (where it exists at all) is limited and not focused on economic growth, our cultural sectors lack bite, arts funding is London-centred, and we still experience a steady trickle of the bright and best to elsewhere in the world.

The problem, however, is compounded by the approach of city leaders and Northern Labour politicians to the problem - the Northern Powerhouse may not be a reality as yet but it's only going to become one if you get behind the idea and make it work. Simply shouting a lot about The North's problems and blaming all of this on central government isn't especially conducive to getting any commitment - let alone momentum - behind the idea of working together with that government to improve The North's economic performance. If the only approach is to stick a begging bowl under the treasury's nose and say 'fill it up please' then we will never have the growing, self-reliant and powerful North of England that surely everyone up here wants.

It is possible for leaders in The North to make this work but we won't get there if all our time is spent waiting for someone else to jump, fussing about how too much of it is about Manchester (or Leeds, or Newcastle), or making sad noises about how badly done to we all are. The work of Transport for the North, albeit quite tentative, suggests that wider collaboration on a similar basis around the whole economy not just transport is far more important than the geography of a 'combined authority' in Yorkshire or the list of 'asks' in a city devolution scheme. We need to take the idea of Transport for the North - cooperation, collaboration - and create something like 'Growth for the North' that's prepared to fund the feasibility and prepare the ground for more central government investment in The North alongside similar investment in growth from The North's businesses and residents.

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Monday 4 April 2016

The Tale of Peter Who Thought Things Weren't Made In Britain

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The alarm rings and our economic nationalist awakes - we'll call him Peter. Rising from slumbering in his Silentnight bed (made in Barnoldswick in that bit of Lancashire that used to be Yorkshire), Peter stumbles across the room to the shower to conduct his morning ablutions.

Peter's a traditional sort of chap and likes good old-fashioned soap - Imperial Leather (made by Cussons in Manchester). It's the day of the week for hair washing and Peter lathers up with Head & Shoulders (from those nice Proctor & Gamble folk in Newcastle) and then shaves with products developed in Reading for Gillette.

His ablutions complete, Peter dresses in clothes nicely washed and pressed by his attentive wife. She uses an Ebac machine (made in Newton Aycliffe up in County Durham) and the washing powder is made by Unilever in the delightfully named Port Sunlight on Merseyside (as is the conditioner that makes everything soft and pleasantly odoured).

Coming downstairs Peter smiles as he ponders today's incisive commentary - a paen to a lost past of British manufacturing. But first it's breakfast - coffee (from Kenco at Banbury in Oxfordshire) with milk and sugar (from British Sugar's plant in Bury St Edmunds), a bowl of cornflakes (made by Kellogg's at Trafford Park) all followed by toast (Warburton's bread from Bolton) with butter (Country Life fresh from Nuneaton) and Baxter's jam (made by the eponymous family business in Moray).

Before leaving the house, Peter sits in the living room (on a sofa made by DFS in Leeds) and flicks through the papers, tutting all the while at the demise of Great Britain as a manufacturing nation. Slipping on his Church's brogues (from Northampton of course) he walks down the garden path and gets into his shiny Jaguar (made at Castle Bromwich in the lovely city of Birmingham) to drive into town.

Arriving at his desk, Peter nurses another coffee (from Nescafe's UK factory at Tutbury in Derbyshire) and gazes out the window (a PVC unit made for Everest in Sittingborne, Kent) trying to get the right combination of words for a corruscating and telling article about how Tory government means Britain no longer makes anything. Peter breaks off for a couple of meetings across the corridor in the big room. There are biscuits (made by United Biscuits up in Carlisle) and more coffee (Nescafe again from Derbyshire) which is served on the fine table (made by Hands in High Wycombe).

Peter returns to his desk - he knows the words he'll use now:

How I miss the old names of trusted brands, and the knowledge that these things had been made for generations by my fellow countrymen.

It is a terrible thing indeed that Britain no longer makes anything except for sale in "absurdly expensive luxury shops".

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Sunday 3 April 2016

What links Peter Hitchens, John McDonnell and Donald Trump?

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The answer is a hatred of free markets, free trade and free enterprise plus a belief that the solution to our supposed economic problems is economic nationalism. All these fine men promote nationalisation, speak of the evils of foreign investment, and play to the fears of workers about foreigners, big business and the bankers.

I considered heading this article with some like "In which Peter Hitchens goes full Fascist" but that would be a little polemical. Hitchens has, for over twenty years now, conducted a one man hate fest directed at the Conservative Party. On more than one occasion he has used his pulpit to pray for the Party's destruction so it must be a cause of deep and personal pain that this organisation he despises so much got it self elected with an overall majority in the UK parliament.

It shows:

I am so sorry now that I fell for the great Thatcher-Reagan promise. I can’t deny that I did. I believed all that stuff about privatisation and free trade and the unrestrained market. I think I may even have been taken in by the prophecies of a great share-owning democracy.

And more along these lines, not based on any actual facts or anything as mundane as research, just Hitchens' absolute belief that the Conservative Party and all its works is a thing of great evil. So what we get is an advert for Hitchen's Conservatism - one essentially indistinguishable from that of Donald Trump. It's a sort of admission of defeat, a belief that inside a cosy little barrier built from tariffs, bans and protections we will be reborn as a 'great nation' filled with horny-handed sons of toil bashing away making things. I can see the posters lifting the spirits of our nation now, images of those workers looking to a noble future arm in arm with their families.

Britain, for the Hitchens of this world, is crying out for a new direction - a New Party - that rejects globalisation, foreign investment, free trade and the idea that running a restaurant is as noble a pursuit as pouring molten steel from British blast furnaces. The world conjured up by Hitchens and Trump is a dystopia where foreigners, drug dealers, shadowy businessmen and venal politicians conspire to do down the decent, honest working men of Britain and America. It is a fearful place where only a powerful state with a strong leader can protect what little is left of our greatness.

This is the dark side of conservatism, the place where nationalism and a sense of national injustice push aside the hopeful and aspirational conservatism that yearns for people to be free, for them to be able to make their own choices and live their own lives. This is the consequence of an obsession with security - national security, community safety, energy security, food security, local resilience - that acts only to justify the longer reach of the state, that fools people again into thinking that our telephone services before privatisation was in any way at all better than the service we enjoy today.

This is the world where the intervention of government in industry, supposedly driven by some sort of 'industrial strategy', is determined by political considerations, by the imminence of elections and the influence of union barons or the media. Billions of our taxes are splurged on bailing out industries, mountains of tariffs are built and, before we know it, prices are being fixed and markets set in stasis with the result being decline, poverty and economic collapse.

It'll look so fine at the start as Hitchens' New Party winds back the liberalisation of the Thatcher years. Vital national industries are defined, plans and strategies are written, solid, broad-bottomed men are set onto the boards of the industries - Great Britain is reborn. And then it doesn't work - small exporting manufacturers close because they can't compete, the higher taxes needed to pay for the intervention mean less investment and billions of foreign investment gets relocated to places that are more friendly, more likely to provide a return on those billions.

It's easy to talk of a lost age of 'making':

A journey across the heart of England, once an exhilarating vista of muscular manufacturing, especially glorious by night, turned into archaeology. Now, if it looked like a factory, it was really a ruin.

But this covers over the deeper truth - that we are so much richer and happier than we were when those industries were booming. It's a myth that we are poorer for the loss of dirty, unpleasant dangerous jobs down mines, in foundries and in factories. We are not poorer - the children of those workers are mostly doing better paid and safer jobs of offices and will live to be 80 or older rather than dying painfully in their sixties of industrial diseases. Even Hitchens reluctantly hints at this betterment with his talk of luxuries, better coffee and better restaurants.

These are not fripperies but things that - in Hitchens' golden age - used only to be there for the rich and powerful. The miners, steel workers and factory hands of that age of glory didn't have a decent car (if at all), never went to restaurants and couldn't afford a foreign holiday. Today's equivalent worker has all those things plus a bewildering array of new stuff - smartphones, digital TVs, ice-makers, microwave ovens, power tools and fridge freezers. And their children - our children - will be even richer, having things we can only imagine right now.

But we'll only get those things if we cling to the revolution for which Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are rightly praised - free trade, free markets and the celebration of free enterprise. Building walls - real or regulatory - isn't a route to poverty not a salvation. And economic nationalism - whether it's sold to us a 'socialist' by a Labour shadow chancellor or 'conservative' by a Daily Mail columnist - always, everywhere, gets worse results than the free trade it forces out.

The evidence from approaching four decades of neoliberalism, of our embracing a global economy, is that it has led to the biggest, sustained improvement of well-being in human history. To throw all this aside to indulge in an orgy of self-pitying nationalism would be an act of monumental folly. Yet that folly is just what Peter Hitchens, John McDonnell and Donald Trump are offering.

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Saturday 2 April 2016

Quote of the day - "Just get off our backs"

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From Clive Bates (via Dick Puddlecote):

"You told us to quit smoking. You taxed the pants off us; you've bullied us with your public information campaigns; you've racked up the stigma that we felt. You've tried to stop us using these products wherever we can. You've hit us with massive societal disapproval. Tobacco companies haven't done that, government and public health have done that.

So we've done the right thing. We've got off smoking; we've protected our health; we produce a vapour which doesn't harm anyone; most people aren't troubled by it.

Just leave us alone! Just get off our backs!"

Absolutely right.

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