The System

My most recently FB-encountered proponent of dismantling the current "system", that which has evolved over many thousands of years and which has made life gradually easier for all those who engage with it than it would be for them to scratch a living from the earth with their bare hands, was a city-dwelling DJ, one who was pictured on their profile page living in a modest but softly furnished flat, fully clothed and smoking a suspiciously large, hand-rolled cigarette.

Were it not for the current "system" they would have no electricity, food, water, flat or furnishings, they would be naked and the only psycho-active substances available to them would be mushrooms and toadstools unlikely to be found growing nearby, and if they wanted to go anywhere else they would have to walk barefoot to get there.

They really haven't thought it through. Unless, of course, what they really want is for everyone else to continue to operate the current "system" and for themselves just to freeload.

Three Little Piggies 2017

Three Little Piggies 2017

[Only the president's name has been changed]

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Across Europe houses are built of brick, stone, concrete and other durable materials.

Mediaeval houses had the stoutest of timber frames with solid infills. The timbers were connected with simple push fit joints and held in place with wooden pegs.

Even in the changing climate, at least for now, Europe does not suffer destructive typhoons and hurricanes.

Yet, in almost every photo of the aftermath of a seriously destructive storm in the USA I see a pile of wood, a bank, a pile of wood, maybe a hotel, a pile of wood, a gas station, a pile of wood etc..

I suspect even Donald Trump could be explained to that it isn’t just when big bad wolves huff and puff that houses of sticks and straw offer little protection.

Surely it is cheaper for the taxpayer to subsidise the building of strong houses that will last for generations, even in such vulnerable areas, than it is to deal with emergency evacuations and the constant rebuilding of homes just as fragile as those they must replace.

© John Barrow (Po) 2007 & 2017

The Manifestos

An unexpected postal vote form arrived so I figured I had better mug up a bit sharpish on who is offering what and how much it is going to cost. To this end, I visited official websites and cheerily downloaded documents to read from the two main contenders for government. 

I was intrigued as to why the Labour Party chose to publish their balancing of the books separately from their Manifesto so, because it was unusual, very much shorter than the manifesto and bound to be full of numbers, Funding Britain's Future was the first of the three documents I read. I was impressed. It looked like a summary profit and loss account, showing itemized policy costs being totaled and balanced against the total of itemized policy savings or additional revenue, with a little extra put aside to cover for fluctuations.

I then looked for a similar table within the Conservative Manifesto to compare it with but there wasn't one. All of the Conservative cost and saving / revenue balances were included within the body text as each policy item was outlined so I ended up reading the whole thing.

In it the Conservatives set out their policy stall across a relatively concise 88 unillustrated pages and mention costs, savings and revenues and how things balance as items arise throughout the Manifesto document. I note the policies themselves are written with a confidence one might elsewhere associate with the statement of common sense, the kind that requires no argument for because anything else would clearly be silliness. End of.

My next read was the Labour Manifesto.

WTF is it with some political parties these days feeling they have to badmouth the competition to make themselves look good? Are not their policies supposed to stand confidently up on their own as being obviously the sensible thing? The Labour Party felt the need to make derisory and at times misleading mention of the Conservatives 68 times in its 123 page manifesto, which averages out as just over a jibe on every other page!

Anyway, aside from this peculiar "we are all victims together" tone in which they were presented alongside many brightly coloured photographs, Labour's policies included no surprises, unlike the policies in the Conservative Manifesto which were a lot closer to the political Centre than I had expected them to be.

The big surprise from reading the Labour Manifesto came from their apparent hoping that no one would ever think of comparing it with their separate Funding Britain's Future publication, you know, the one where the sums balance. Well...

It seems Labour's ruse for getting the books to balance is to include only the costs arising from just enough Manifesto proposals to absorb the few savings anticipated. There are many other proposals in the Manifesto that would incur significant additional costs that are not included in the calculation in the document "Funding Britain's Future" but there are no other proposals from which savings or revenue arise.

Policies aside, the Manifesto documents tell me:

Conservative - Vote for us. We propose to do this stuff and pay for it this way because it makes sense to us.

Labour - Vote for us. Our stuff must be much better because we are not horrid Conservatives.

Labour having published Funding Britain's Future alongside but separate from their Manifesto tells me they knew they couldn't get the books to balance if they took account of all the costs that would arise from their proposals so they avoided including any of them in the Manifesto itself.

Taking into account the proposals and the presented costings for them:

If these two Manifesto packages were tenders to design and build you a house I would have to advise you to go with the Conservative bid and end up reliably warm and dry, even if it isn't in the home of your dreams.

Labour's bid promises a very comfortable and well equipped residence but their price won't cover all of it. So, unless you were able to stump up a whole bunch of extra cash, the build would run out of money before the roof went on, leaving you cold, wet and broke after a relatively short period.

As to Labour's proposed £250bn investment fund:

The idea of a government funding vast infrastructure projects to boost an economy is an outdated one. The consultation and planning period is lengthy and has to be carried out by experienced people, only a handful of contractors have the experience to undertake the work when the planning is complete and the bulk of it is undertaken using huge machines, many of which are sourced from abroad.

Infrastructure projects are a great way for a government to spend lots of money in a hurry, thus bumping up GDP, but the money doesn't filter down in to as many pockets from where it can be spent to support the rest of the economy as it used to when there were a thousand men with shovels and families to support doing the work now undertaken by one or two drivers of large and complex machines.

The rail construction industry is not one that needs such a massive injection of funds. Were these funds to be injected into the sector in the hope the activity in it would increase significantly in a short period of time that hope would be promptly dashed. There simply wouldn't be enough appropriately trained, qualified and experienced people to make it happen. By the end of the first parliament, even if the rail projects were launched on day one, there would be a huge bill for design, consultation and legal fees but no material progress whatsoever.

I don't advocate making any commitment to borrowing billions of extra pounds to spend on anything until Brexit is settled, until trade rules are agreed and the country can work out what it will be able to afford to repay.  If, however, a government were hell-bent on borrowing hugely against an unknown future, I would strongly advise them to build houses not railways.

Spending any given sum on building houses would generate more, and more varied, employment than spending the same sum on building railways and the benefit of all these new builders having money to spend in the wider economy would be felt within months and the housing market would almost immediately begin the process of rebalancing, as it adjusts to the prospect of adequate supply.

If the same pressures were applied to buying up land for housing as would have to be applied to buying up land to run railway lines across, and if the same overall budget were to be made available, it is not beyond imagine that by the end of the first parliament there would be a thriving construction industry, reduced unemployment, no housing shortage and house prices would have fallen noticeably.

I still wouldn't recommend Britain borrowing against an unpredictable economic future, that of trading under as yet undefined post-Brexit rules, because it is daft not to defer any significant borrowing until enough is known to work out what Britain will be able to afford to repay. 

At least if a government invests in housebuilding and the sums are awry and the project has to be shelved half way through there would be still be more houses for people to live in than before, just not as many as they had promised. A half- built railway is no use to anyone.

The Labour Party is falling victim to its core supporters’ failure to adapt to its own success

The history of the Labour Party movement is complex and lengthy so, other than for the satisfaction of an academic interest, it is far less wasteful of time not to study in detail this gradual evolution but instead to look only at before-and-after snapshots of the social environment in which it has taken place. It is by comparing just these two views that one can most clearly see the enormity of the cumulative effect of the myriad incremental changes that have happened since the beginning of the 20th century.

Whether by drafting independent legislation or by incorporating EU legislation into local law, successive UK governments of all shades have transformed the national workplace such that today it would be barely recognisable to anyone employed when the Labour Party won its first seat in Parliament, especially that it has become a reasonable expectation for any and every worker to remain healthy and uninjured by their work throughout the duration of their career.

Other surprises might be that rest periods are compulsory, working hours are limited, holidays, sick and maternity pay are rights of permanent employment, whether full- or part-time, equality is enshrined in law and the average Trade Union Member is in the middle income bracket.

Even when the existence of the NHS and a pretty comprehensive benefits system are added to the list of social improvements, it is still not that the status quo should be considered “job done” and that Labour should just pack up and head to the pub, but the point definitely has passed beyond which new tools are required if they are to carry on without causing damage to the work already completed.

This is not to suggest they should replace like-for-like all their steam-age structural remodelling equipment with electric versions of the same, rather that they need different tools, those with a lighter touch and which are more controllable, if they want to achieve the quality of finish that is expected in the 21st century, modern tools that didn’t exist when Labour was born because there was not yet the need for them.

Gone is the simplistic distinction between the Conservatives defending the interests of the landed, the Liberals doing the same for those in business and Labour trying to stop everyone else getting shafted along the way. Although, even as far back as 1903, Labour, the party of the employed, was doing deals with the Liberals, the party of the employers, to prevent the Conservatives from winning a general election, so things were never really as straightforward as they were made out to be anyway.

Outside of socialist doctrine, in today’s Britain there is no working class struggle because there is no working class. There are those who earn more than others and there are those who earn less or nothing, but the tradespeople the Unions were created to improve the lot of are pretty much fine now and there is no widespread circumstance placing a blanket restriction on self-betterment for anyone.

It is easier today than it has ever been for anyone to study anything they wish to. Attending a better school doesn’t actually get a child access to any more knowledge than they can get on the device they use to moan on social media about how little hope they have of ever achieving anything and to swap pictures of genitals. No adult is disenfranchised for good simply because they didn’t learn something before they left the education system, unless that is what they have grown up to believe.

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Without a genuine oppressed working class there is not only no need of traditional socialism but there is an obvious benefit that would arise were socialists to stop insisting that there is one, because the only folk who cannot take advantage of today’s truly unprecedented equality of opportunity irrespective of birth circumstance are those who refuse to acknowledge it.

It follows that the most urgent and simplest solution to a lack of social mobility is to stop anyone being taught –
 A) that there is a working class,
 B) that they are part of it,
 C) that it’s grim and
 D) that there is no way out,
 a doctrine uncannily similar to that used by worship clubs to spuriously justify their own parasitic existence and to keep the peasantry in check.

Socialism may have been, in its day, an appropriately simplistic reaction to the then current circumstance but in today’s Britain it has become a pretty straightforward hindrance to those it proclaims its key intention is to assist, spreading self-doubt by preaching the pointlessness of ambition.

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Human nature has it that all people want to be as comfortable as possible and that most people share the expectation that greater effort should bring greater reward but those who cannot provide for themselves should be supported collectively by those who can. Whether it has been the best hunters running extra quickly to take the best quarry for the village pot or a parent putting in some overtime to enable their own family to enjoy a more exotic summer holiday destination while the taxes they pay support the basic needs of others, the underlying trend can be seen to be the same, as can the inevitability of a small minority thinking it’s fine to invade a village and steal soup or to break in to and nick a telly from the home of a family while they are away.

The majority of people everywhere are naturally moderate in their political view but ultimately, if push comes to shove, they are more concerned with the wellbeing of themselves and those close to them than with anyone else, which puts them fractionally to the right of yet still within the political centre.

If Labour wants to play a more major role in government in the future it needs to recognise that the average working person in Britain today has more than they ever had before, enough that traditional socialism has become to the majority a threat to their personal advancement and not a promise of it.

Workers now do have rights, a benefits system now does exist and the NHS now is there to keep everyone in reasonable health, even under a Conservative government. So it is hardly outrageous to suggest that a nineteenth century philosophical blunt instrument devised when these things were beyond imagine is inappropriate for the political twenty-first century, just as a heavy hammer that serves well to knock a hole in a wall is useless for making good the finish around its edges.

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In 2016, the Labour Party is behaving like a worship club does when its appeal diminishes in a changing society and it becomes faced with a choice between discarding what were previously inalterable tenets promoted as edicts from its god and running out of congregation in the modern and more educated world, the officers who run the club insisting the club’s focus should be returned to the original fire and brimstone performances to boost their audiences while failing to appreciate that today’s public just want to have a bit of a sing-song and to enjoy that they no longer need to worry about burning in hell.

Tube Strike (FB 8th July 2015)

Today I find myself amused by noting how many of the moans and groans about the Tube drivers strike, particularly those mentioning the drivers' working conditions, contracts and existing remunerations packages, are coming from those whom I might describe as "under 30, something-for-nothing-socialists".

I suspect they have no idea that these and other "cushy" positions held within the rail industry are the direct legacy of the nationalised services of the 1960s and 1970s and that it is not possible in law for the "private" companies now responsible for providing the services today to get them changed.

Trade Unions, initially created to avoid workers being trampled on by their employers, didn't stop at defending their members' reasonable interests and achieving fairness across the board. Instead, they kept on improving their own members' lots at the expense of the lots of other workers, many of whom were also funded by the public purse. Collective greed is still greed.

Socialism might be wonderful in theory but it doesn't work when you apply it to real people in the real world. It never has and it never will. There will always be generous people and greedy people and there will always be lazy people and those who work hard. Any system that ignores these differences and overlooks that some people will simply cheat for their own personal gain whatever the rules are will be doomed to fail.

"Big Business" (FB 9th July 2015)

The "big businesses" I keep seeing people moan about are just as accurately described as "major employers", providing incomes for their own staff and for the staff of their supply chains and distribution networks.

The last time I did the sums relating to a relatively large company I worked for, I discovered that for every £200 I was paid by the company I contributed no more than 40p to the shareholders of the company, whose personal investment enabled the public infrastructure works we carried out to take place. This still strikes me as a pretty good deal for continuous employment.

Conversely, my greediest employer ran one of the smallest companies I ever worked for. In a single year, simply by doing my job well and managing his company better than he had, I was able to improve his gross annual income by a sustainable £125,000 yet he was reluctant to raise my salary above 10% of that figure. I made him £2000 for every £200 he paid me and I withdrew my services at the end of that year.

Whether it is fashionable or not to mention it, in the unemotional world of sums involving real world numbers, employees almost always get a fairer deal from larger companies than from small ones.

Labour Party Leadership (FB 5th August 2015)

While I have no direct interest in Party political matters and am consequently not following closely the news coverage of the Labour leadership contest, I am picking up enough in passing to establish the gist of the debates and to note how many people seem to have a misunderstanding of human nature.

The further to the left the Labour Party leadership goes the further away from potential to form government it goes.

The general electorate is naturally self-interested and the majority will always sit just to the right of centre, only voting towards their the left when the alternative is too extreme for comfort or cocks things up spectacularly, as in the 90s when New Labour was pitched left of Conservative but not by far.

Being able to eloquently present and debate a left-leaning opinion is not enough to make it work. If an Opposition proposal is too radical it ceases to be an option for the majority to consider as a viable alternative to a Government proposal and the opportunity to bring about change by diverting votes is lost.

The ideal is to return the country's direction to straight ahead, not to keep swerving it from side to side, to make steady progress rather than boom then bust. Yes, it is dull. The simple administration of an economy should be dull.