Brexit Supporters Background Facts

Just a few facts to start with; will update when further information emerges into the light.

• Nigel Farage: a privately educated former banker. Will be taking his EU pension (£73,000 per year). (And enjoyed publicly funded trips to Europe while attempting to disrupt EU business!!!)
• Nigel Lawson: has applied for French residency.
• Aaron Banks: runs off-shore tax companies.
• Paul Dacre: ex Daily Mail editor, his private estates get EU agricultural subsidies.

Sources: various.

A Better Voting System

There are a number of different political voting systems, but too often those elected do not actually reflect the views of the population who voted - and who consequently feel they have no real representation. It looks as though it is the proportional voting systems that give a voice to the widest number of views, though even here the specific version used is important. 

Mixed-Member Proportional Voting (MMP). In this electoral system, voters have two votes: one to decide the representative for their single seat constituency and the second for a political party. Seats in the legislature are filled firstly by successful constituency candidates (elected using first-past-the-post or another plurality/majoritarian system) and secondly by party candidates based on the percentage or region-wide votes that each party received (usually drawn from published party lists). On this second vote, parties may be required to achieve a minimum number of constituency candidates, a minimum percentage of the nationwide vote, or both.

MMP is used by New Zealand among others. NZ has a single-house legislature, the House of Representatives, usually with 120 members, though the number can be more due (generally) to one or two overhang seats. The 52nd Parliament (elected 2017) had 120 seats: 71 were electorate MPs, with the remaining 49 from ranked party lists.

Overhang seats. Under MMP, a party is entitled to a number of seats based on its share of the total vote. (A) If a party's share entitles it to ten seats and its candidates win seven constituencies, it will be awarded three list seats, bringing it up to the required number. This only works if the party's seat entitlement is more than the number of constituencies it has won. (E.g. If the party is entitled to five seats but wins six constituencies, the sixth constituency seat is termed an overhang seat.) (B) Individual candidates with strong local followings. A candidate may be elected with strong support in their constituency but belong to no party, or a party with very low support overall. In the case of independent candidates, their seat is guaranteed. Some countries (including NZ) have special rules that seats won by these candidates are exempted from the proportional system altogether. Dealing with overhang seats. The are four ways to deal with overhang seats. (1) Parties keep the overhang seats but then has more than its entitlement. (2) Parties winning seats over their entitlement keep them but other parties lose some of their entitlement. (3) Parties are not allowed to keep overhang seats, which requires some method to determine which seat(s) are lost. (4) Non-overhang parties are allocated bonus seats to balance the proportional representation.

[NB. Countries vary in the number of constituency MPs that make up a legislature; the NZ Parliament has just 120, with small numbers of overhang seats. The UK using a first past the post system has 650 seats (2020).]

END

What Divided 2019 British Voters Most

The 2019 UK General Election is the third in a row when the older generations played a major role in securing a Conservative victory, with a vote share of more than 60% in 2019. Labour's share of the vote fell among the over-65's from 31% in 2010, to 24% in 2017 and under 20% in 2019. This is in contrast to the period between 1987 and 2010, during which the Conservatives never scored higher than 48% among over-65's, while Labour never scored lower than 31%. 

In "red wall" constituencies in the north Labour did badly. Many are former coal mining areas that failed to find alternative sources of employment over 35 years. In those that do have high employment levels jobs often pay minimum wage or not much above. Young people tend to move away and leave older people behind. Like older generations elsewhere they did go for Brexit, but beyond this they put cultural issues higher than economic ones, plus Conservative promises of higher spending on the NHS.

Poverty and cost of living were important for young voters. In contrast, immigration was a bigger issue for over-65s (almost 20%) than the 18-24 age group (less than 5%). The dramatic rise of pensioner income over the past 30 years means that a tiny minority of older people need to worry about income.

In order to win an election majority a political party will need to look at the issues for different age groups. Climate change was the most important issue for 32% of the 18-24 age group but only 13% of over-65's. If climate change is the most important thing for a party, then policies should be designed to protect older people. And likewise for other issues.

Source: Age, not class, is now what divides British voters most by Philip Inman in The Guardian, 21 Dec. 2019

NHS Facts and Claims During Elections

During campaigning for elections, politicians make claims about their performance, the opposition performance and how they will make things better. So here are a few from recent elections from Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

BJ: Claim: We'll get 40 new hospitals. False: Tory plans for £2.7 billion for 6 hospitals over 5 years, plus £100 million for 34 hospitals to start developing plans.

JC: Claim: Cancer treatment times have risen. Correct: First treatment within 62 days of GP referral is down from 86% in 2010 to 79% now.

BJ: Claim: Cancer survival rates have increased since 2010. Correct but not due to Tories. Surviving one year after diagnosis improved from 2010 (70%) to 2016 (73%). The same increase of 3% happened between 2004 and 2010.

JC: Claim: NHS has had the largest squeeze in its history (i.e. since 1949). Correct: The NHS budget has never fallen under any government, with an average rise of 3.6% p.a. But between 2010 and 2018 it rose just 1.3% on average. In 2018 announced an annual increase over the next five years of 3.4%.

BJ: Claim: There are 17,000 more NHS doctors and nurses than in 2010. Correct.

JC: Claim: There are currently 43,000 nursing vacancies. The UK needs around 60,000 more nurses to cope with an increasingly aged population. Correct.

BJ: Claim: Missed NHS targets in Wales (Labour led government.) Correct. (JC stated that the problems in Wales stem from Conservative cuts to the Welsh budget, and in real terms spending won't return to 2010 levels until around 2023.)
JC: Claim: Missed NHS targets in England (Conservative led government.) Correct.
Both parties cherry picked which figures to publicise. The target of 95% of arrivals in A&E being seen within four hours has not been met in England since 2015, and in Wales since 2008.

Tory Pledge: Train 500 more GPs per year. (Their previous pledge was to recruit an extra 5,000! In fact there was an increase of just 272 between 2015 and 2018. and the 2019 pledge of 500 was not met in 2020.)

JC: Claim: Regarding Brexit and trade deals - fears over a Trump deal wanting access to the NHS.
BJ: Claim: Said the NHS would be protected. (My note: Why should we believe someone who has lied in the past?)

END

How Representative is the UK Cabinet Feb 2020

 In February 2020 Boris Johnson had a substantial Commons majority, which allowed him to reshuffle his Cabinet. While it had been rumoured that it would promote talented women and bring in MPs from the north, in reality this has not happened.

Diversity: Rishi Sunak replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer, so keeping the diversity level.

Education: But whereas Javid, a bus driver's son went to a state school, Sunak was head boy at elite public school Winchester. Across the Cabinet, state-school educated numbers dropped from 7 to just 5 out of 22 seats. In the real world, 93% of Britons go to state schools.

Gender: The new Cabinet has proportionally fewer women than his first, with less than a quarter of the seats.

Geography: Although 15 of 21 members sit for areas outside the home counties, only three have seats in the north of England, while Sunak's Richmond seat has been Conservative since 1910.

Source: Article How representative is Boris Johnson's new cabinet? in the Guardian, 14 Feb 2020

What Caused Brexit?

Who do I blame? Eight reasons we ended up in this Brexit mess. By Ian Jack

Who’s to blame? The problem is where to start.

1. De-industrialization. Jobs in UK manufacturing shrank from 7m to 5.1m between 1979 and 1986. More were lost in service industries. Of these losses, 94% were north of the line between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. Happening mostly during the Thatcher years, it has been wrongly attributed to government policy rather than the consequence of economic misfortune. Wealth and opportunity moved south. The social ruin was terrible. Skills were lost, traditions ended. Part of what it meant to be British disappeared. Nobody knew or seemed to care what was supposed to happen to places such as Oldham and Paisley.

2. Immigration. Both natives and immigrants need to revise ideas about where they live and the kind of people they are. As things started to settle after the 1950s influx, concerns were re-ignited with the 2004 Blair government decision to open the UK labour market to the eight new EU states, later conceded to be a mistake (only Sweden and Ireland did so as freely). In the first year 129,000 migrants turned up instead of the expected 5,000 to 13,000. “Nobody asked us!” said those who felt strongly about it (and then, in June 2016, somebody did ask.)

3. Cultural dementia. Historian Professor David Andress argues that France, the US and Britain are all engaged in “particular forms of forgetting, mistaking and misremembering the past”. As a population we are older than we have ever been, but seem to focus on daydreams of the past and along the way stir up old hatreds, give disturbing voice to destructive rage and risk the collapse of our capacity for decisive, effective and just governance. One such daydream is the belief that the nations of the old empire are “queuing up” to sign trade deals with the country that once ruled them.

4. The Dam Busters. Difficult to explain but England has a curious fascination for an Anglocentric version of WW2, which has grown even as the event has receded, perpetuating old notions of difference and moral superiority. This leads us to …

5. English exceptionalism. Sitting at the top table of nations, punching above our weight, a freedom-loving people ever ready to fight faceless bureaucracies and red tape seem to be predominantly English ideas.

6. The playing fields of Eton. Their damaging contribution to contemporary British politics includes David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg: a too-confident incompetent, an opportunist and a cartoon version of the ruling class.

7. The newspapers. While some blame poor education for the Brexit vote, and the electoral influence of newspapers may shrinking now, with their circulations, they are far more rabid (eg the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph) in England than in Scotland, and inform far more of the public debate.

8. Complacency. During the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign, some voters opted for independence because they felt that in areas like Sunderland, people want to leave Europe. Independence could allow Scotland to stay in the EU. Few were as farsighted.

Source: The Guardian, 3 March 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/03/brexit-immigration-jobs-eton-europe

Post Truth

Post-Truth: Why we have reached peak bullshit and what we can do about it by Evan Davis. Little, Brown, 2017

Why does so much exist, even when we recognise it as 'transparently drivel'? Condemning it achieves nothing and undermines trust and increases cynicism. This book asks whether it might have some other underlying purpose, beyond direct persuasion. Our culture is currently characterised by a pervasive tendency of those in authority to overstate their case, but also the bad habits of modern communication evolved for a reason.

Facts and Lies. Worryingly, public figures are happy to state facts that are not true, or talk about alternative facts. Fake news stories are shared across social media before someone notices that the original source is far from reliable. Apart from straightforward facts (the sun is shining), we have to judge whether a statement is true. Facts can be probably true, or partly true, or true only in some contexts.

• The near-lie uses the right words to give the wrong impression - the art of picking your words carefully in order to mislead. 
• Economical with the truth: the absence of relevant information.
• Spin - a favourable interpretation of the facts. How the facts are joined up, how much weight is put on certain facts, or a false interpretation of data.
• Deception through self-delusion. The facts might be untrue, but someone sincerely but unreasonably believes an alternative version. 

Nonsense and Gibberish. When a speaker attempts to get us to believe something by not giving us the full picture. These assertions are designed to create a favourable impression of the speaker, and to generate a certain reaction from the listeners.

• The empty assertion is not only untrue, but bears little relation to the facts, and there is minimal effort to tie it to the facts at all.
• Obfuscation is where you have good reason to say nothing, but you don't want to admit this so you say something. It can be useful in diplomatic exchanges (e.g. between countries) but in other cases it comes across as politicians refusing to answer the question.
• Gibberish and needlessly complex language. Wine reviews, for example, use a complex vocabulary but only convey indirect information. 

Actions can also give messages, and as with all messages can be true or false.

• Manufactured behaviour in practice: smiling for a photograph is a social convention, displays of Christmas decorations or the clothes we wear can imply status. If a government policy is not met, a review can come up with a new definition and a new target.
• The manufactured action is designed to imitate a real action, in the hope we will find it meaningful. And we can be easily misled, as we tend to assume certain things go together - a good cover implies the magazine content is also good.

Economics has a role to play. For example, a degree (which costs in time, effort and cash) implies something about the quality of the job applicant. Consumers want to know about the quality of goods they might buy, while manufacturers will always want to say quality is high.

• 'Cheap talk' has more value when there is close alignment between parties. Costly signalling is needed when interests are not aligned.
• A lot of advertising is not cheap. This signals that the product itself has quality. And it makes sense for a good product to have the best advertising - as we'll find out how good it is once we've bought it - and will make our feelings known if it doesn't perform to expectations.

Hidden messages mean that the untruthful and unclear can still be revealing.

• At a friend's dinner party the dessert is burnt, the host apologises and the guests try and reassure the host that its ok really. The host will be aware that the guests are being nice about the mess up, but still be annoyed with himself for bungling the baking. This is socially mandated lying.
• Subtle messages are often sent on occasions where diplomacy is required. They might minimise past problems and confrontations, but are important in re-establishing good relations where blunt statements would not help.
• The choice of language often conveys something about the speaker. Academic jargon is a badge of membership of a community. You can tell if a politician is simply supporting his party line, rather than believing in the position itself.

Politicians have always faced an inevitable vote-limiting quandary that by increasing their appeal to one group, they often decrease their appeal to other groups. Today they openly tailor a pitch to a selected segment of the population with fantasies or myths that particularly appeal to them. Is this someone like me? Is this someone who understands someone like me? E.g. An exaggerated claim on the level of unemployment sends a signal to the target group. You don't need to be taken in by the claim to still want to support X. A sense of tribalism is fuelled by by feelings of grievance.

Pricing items at £3.99 or £199.99 or £9,995 pays off because they look to be less than £4, £200 or £1,000, even though we are aware that the actual difference is minimal.

Emotions motivate us to respond to things very quickly. Emotional appeals are strong but can be detached from any objective evidence. Anger has become a political tool. Convincing stories (clarity, consistency and appeal) are also memorable.

The bandwagon. Our species has a herd instinct, so we tend to follow the crowd, learn from what others say or do, and avoid being socially isolated. Clever communicators exploit this. A sale of  'overstock' rather than unsold items; queues outside nightclubs indicate popularity.

Managed expectations. To make people think something is big, get them to expect something that is small. Advance news that the education budget in 2002 would rise by about £10 billion was eclipsed by the actual Budget announcement that the rise would be £12.8 billion. Communicators who are good at dropping in carefully chosen 'anchors' into conversations can affect our judgement. An unreasonable (but not a turn off) price for a second hand car makes any price below that feel like a concession.

Framing. Those in favour of gay marriage refer to equal marriage. No-one is pro- or anti-abortion, they are pro-life or pro-choice. We then judge whether the position conform to my existing views or not. 'Tax relief' implies that tax is a negative thing; renaming it 'corporate welfare tax' or 'selective tax cut' diminishes its appeal - or we might see it as a bribe. One writer sees most political debates as a subliminal competition between the 'strict father' and the 'nurturing parent'; a third or more of the audience favour one or the other, while the big remainder see both sides of the issues.

Insidious or benign? The last five techniques interact and overlap. Ideally you put your pitch in a story, preferably with positive emotional appeal, frame your argument in a favourable way and distract attention from opposite points of view. You shape the argument rather than presenting an intellectually robust case. Herd instincts mean that the more people accept it, the more people will come to accept it, and then once people believe it, they will look for evidence in favour, and so strengthen our belief.

Short-termism. Most businesses need to maintain a long-term reputation, even if this is costly in the short term, but spouting lies and exaggerations can make political sense in the short term as long as you don't are about being caught out later. The long-term approach is to consistently tell the truth and gain people's trust. Promising not to raise taxes becomes false promises when you do raise them. (On the other hand, successful diplomacy often relies on fudging difficult issues in the short-term, to allow a more measured long-term solution.) Politicians campaigning for election are focused only on this election.

Culture and Norms. Understating how long a job will take, will leave an honest quote at a competitive disadvantage. We all want our voice to be heard, but end up with a din or a 'shouty' argument on social media. Journalists have an incentive to over-write stories to grab attention. One group's intensity often provokes a reaction from another group, and a tendency for escalation. Politicians mentioning specific groups unintentionally make others feel excluded.

Limits to the power of persuasion. While it can sometimes pay to be less than straightforward, in the long term facts are important. Reputations can't be built on images. The more something is tried, the less effective it is. Once we've spotted a trick, it no longer works. Shifting opinion on issues like same-sex marriage, or building a high-speed train line can take time; if there is no case, you are unlikely to persuade a majority of the population to back you. There is what you say, what the truth is, what people are predisposed to believe, what they actually believe now, and what they believe when the evidence becomes clearer. PR won't help raise the low esteem in which finance is held; they played a big part in causing a prolonged depression in the West, and only a change of personality, culture and behaviour can help. Warren Buffet's approach to communication is more straightforwardly honest than most, speaks more casually and uses less ceremony. 'Crucially, because he is not trying to manage a message, he does not have to think about what he says'.

Better Bullshit. Relax, don't over-think and avoid coming across as too studied. Having a good story to tell, and presenting it consistently, clearly and without clutter is important. But devising a slogan and repeating it endlessly without regard to context is poor communication. Communicators should, as a default, say what they really believe in as straightforward a way as possible. It is who you are that matters, more than what you say. Jabbing fingers in a televised debate, speaking over rivals, trying to prevail on an issue that matters little to the average voter or speaking defensively, is not attractive to voters. The harder the sell, the less convincing it is. Putting a point gently can be more effective than pushing it, and open-mindedness can be more effective than certainty.

The Discerning Listener. Doctors 'read' the patient to decide how they communicate unpleasant truths. We are subject to wishful thinking and confirmation bias. We need to tell ourselves not to let optimism turn into gullibility. At fraught times in countries that are sharply divided and where people have a strong sense of loyalty to one side of an argument or another, there is perhaps an increased tendency for people to swallow a group line without questioning it. The media should not allow itself to be intimidated, nor should it pick fights for the sake of it. It should freely admit when it gets things wrong, but should never fail to point out inaccuracies, for fall for phoney impartiality (the earth is flat) as that is a disservice to the public. The facts are selected, interpreted and used; sensible media outlets can't fall for 'alternative facts'. As long as people in authority feel they will not get a fair hearing, they have an incentive to disguise mistakes and cover up consequences to their actions.

END

How to Improve Political Interviews

TV election debates have only been held in recent years, so broadcasters are still experimenting with the format. Will any be held, who will take place, how they will be organised, which topics will be included (or even the focus), and how the audience will be selected.

With controversy over all of the above, and the public view that many politicians do not acquit themselves on on such occasions, BBC's Martha Buckley gathered some tips for improving them.

Turn off the microphones
No-one likes people interrupting and talking over each other. Discussions become confrontations.
Solution: Switch off individual microphones when it is not that person's turn to speak. As soon as each person finished talking, turn them off.
Advantage: Knowing they will go silent could also stop 'filibustering' - trying to reduce the time available by others by refusing to stop talking.

Force politicians to actually debate
At present UK televised debates 'tend to feature glitzy sets, rows of podiums and heavy intervention from moderators.' Compared to other countries, they are quite short which results in emphasis on sound bites and not much substance.
Solution: Longer two person debates with candidates sitting across a table and no studio audience. Can be two intellectual heavyweights focusing on serious issues, listening to each other's points and responding reasonably or more brutal encounters trading bitter insults.
Advantage:These make for more compelling viewing and viewers are left in little doubt about who stood for what.

Robot Fact Checkers
At present it seems we can't trust politicians to get the facts right and tell the truth - so debates become meaningless in helping voters understand intentions and promises. Fact-checking (e.g. independent fact-checking charity Full Fact and BBC Reality Check) helps but during a debate you would need to be looking at online updates or read the verdicts after the debate. So politicians might not be adequately held to account.
Solution: More use of on-screen fact checked text boxes during the debate. The challenge is to do it fast enough. Full Fact is developing software that can check facts faster than humans, and training machines to spot claims and trawl for relevant data.
Advantage: This is something that audiences really want and would mean less claims would pass unchallenged.

Ban Cheering and Clapping
Today audiences are less respectful and have become more polarised and more vocal - cheering, clapping and booing.
Solution: Go back to silence and aim for an audience of genuinely undecided voters.
Advantage: This would remove the distortion of audiences and change the atmosphere in the studio.

Make the Audience More Real
Ordinary members of the public are typically asked to submit questions but this might be taken further. But politicians can wriggle out of questions and deflect more detailed scrutiny, and appear removed from 'ordinary' people.
Solution 1: Ask people to send in video clips about their lives and problems, which could be used without prior knowledge of politicians at any point in mid-debate. Ask what they specifically could do to help this person.
Solution 2: Broadcasters could use a different format and ask politicians to convince a real voter while cameras roll.
Solution 3: A conversation, not a debate with a member of the public trying to find out about the politician, and how their life influences their policies and beliefs.
Advantage: This could help politicians make emotional connections with voters and could be riveting viewing.

Regulate Them
Broadcasters and politicians come up with different rules each time, as each works for conflicting aims. (1) Politicians want to get their message across and avoid any chance of a negative clip going viral. (2) Broadcasters want to make good TV. (3) There is a need in a democracy to actually inform voters. At present, (1) and (2) dominate at the expense of (3).
Solution: Follow the US and Canada, which each have an independent commission to organise official election debates.
Advantage: They have clear rules, consistent formulas for deciding who is invited to take part in which debates, and are the same each time.

[In the UK, Sky News has a Make Debates Happen campaign. Despite more than 140,000 signatures, the parliamentary debate on the petition failed. The Government responded 'Televised election debates are a matter for political parties. The government has no plans to change electoral law to make the debates mandatory.']
My reaction: Oh well, turkeys don't vote for Christmas, do they?

Source: BBC news item by Martha Buckley: Six Ways to Improve Political Interviews on 6 Dec. 2019

RIP Great Britain and United Kingdom

The results of the 2019 General Election DO NOT properly reflect the mood of the country.

The Conservatives won because of the first-past-the-post voting system. In a transferable vote presidency,  Johnson's 43% of the poll would have lost.

In fact if national voting figures are used, the combined anti-Brexit parties (53%) got more votes, with the Tories and the Brexit party together getting a decisive lower vote (47%). If this was a 'second referendum', it was not in favour of Brexit and won by a larger margin for Remain.

There was no great Tory swing: they increased their party's vote share by just 1.2% over Theresa May's election two years ago. (While they lost votes in some areas, they gained more in other areas.)  Labour lost votes in all regions, mostly with people tactically voting Conservative. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote nationally but failed to translate this into seats.

It might have been possible for the Conservatives to be defeated if Labour and Lib Dems had done constituency deals, so not splitting the anti-Tory vote across the country. But even with this, while both Johnson and Corbyn were widely disliked and mistrusted throughout the country, it came down to who was disliked the least, which was Corbyn, who sat on the fence too many times and was seen to be ineffective in dealing with issues within his party.

The five things that helped Johnson. 1. Repeating again and again that he'd get Brexit done. 2. Focusing on a small number of promises (Labour was far more wide-ranging.) 3. Safety first in their pledges - nothing controversial (e.g. no mention of fox hunting). 4. Traditional Labour voters seem to have either stayed at home, or voted for the Brexit party. 5. Despite being unpopular, Johnson was the stronger campaigner.

Can the Tories deliver any of their manifesto promises - most based on wishful thinking and sleight of hand - who knows? No-one - least of all Johnson.

The Electoral Commission has now published how much was donated to political parties during the election campaign. (Parties are required by law to declare how much is donated.) The combined total was £30,721,998!!! (My verdict: that is serious money that would have been better donated to the NHS, social services and the prison, probation & police services.)

There were some sizeable donations of over £7,500 in the final two days of campaigning.

• Conservatives: £1.4m (including £500,000 from John Caudwell and £375,000 from Sir Ehud Shelag)
• Brexit Party: £50,000 (2 gifts of £25,000 from former Tory Christopher Harborne, who had already donated more than £3m since the summer) 
• SNP: £14,929

The remaining parties did not get any individual donations over £7,500 in the final two days. (My thoughts: Why are the rich donating such large amounts to achieve Brexit? Because they stand to gain financially. It won't be better for the country as a whole.

However, over the entire period, the union Unite gave the largest non-individual donation of £3.2m.

Interesting fact: There are more female MPs in this Parliament than ever, at 220 out of 650 (34%). The Liberal Democrats actually have more female than male MPs (7 out of 11 at 67%), Labour are next with 104 out of 202, so just slightly over 50%), then SNP with around 30% female MPs and not surprisingly the Conservatives trail with just under 25% out of 365 MPs (so less than a quarter).

Sources: various including BBC Election results analysis and General election 2019: Surge in Tory donations before polling day.

Made In Britain

Made in Britain by Evan Davis. (Little, Brown, 2011) [ED is an economics reporter.)

A thought provoking read about how all economies change over time, but does not consider ethics or fairness, nor availability of raw materials to sustain our lifestyle in other countries.

ED uses Sunderland as an illustration of how the UK economy has changed over time. At one time, Sunderland was a great manufacturing centre, the biggest ship building city in the world. Then ship-building went off-shore for lower labour costs and by the 1980's it had gone. And the local glass industry and coal mines, both around for hundreds of years, shrank and then closed. Then the very painful transition between old industries dying, followed by a gap before new industries arrive.
The result was a chain reaction of economic and social decline. Crime rose, housing estates fell into disrepair and decent people tried to escape. family life often broke down. The city lost its sense of identity and civic pride, and local morale came to depend on the performance of the local football team.

Then in 1986, Nissan opened a new car factory at nearby Washington, the biggest in Britain. New service industries also started up: call/contact centres (email as well as phones). City developers built a business park. City centre rejuvenated, university a huge presence. Attached to university is the National Glass Centre (though this struggles to get visitor numbers it needs). New football stadium 1997. But things are still a struggle. People don't feel city can survive on services alone. Service sector jobs lower wages than previous mining and manufacturing jobs.

Countries buy and sell manufactured goods, intellectual property and services, and need all three to flourish. Not everyone is suited to service work, nor able to work very productively in knowledge sectors. An efficient manufacturing sector could employ about 20% of the working population. Good manufacturing is built on intellectual property foundations, which usually requires some physical aspect. A strong service economy needs flourishing companies trading internationally.

UK has 1% of world's population (or 5% of developed world's population) but has 2 out of top 10 largest pharmaceutical companies, 9% share of global defence market, 17% share of global aerospace market and renowned banking and insurance industries.

Strikes (1970s) and banking crises and recession (2000) had long term effects. In 2011, still a need to re-balance economy away from dependence on financial services and to export more. There is a link between business activity and national identity; a focus for trade fairs.

Treasury and Bank of England fiscal and monetary policies can have enormous effect on employment levels and incomes, but they can only really entice us to save more and borrow less if spending is too high. The short term story seems more newsworthy but the long term view shows enduring trends.

END

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians

Why we get the wrong politicians by Isabel Hardman (Atlantic Books, 2019)

The House of Commons does not work either structurally or culturally (most MPs agree there are problems). Our political class has grown used to dodging important decisions (e.g. Brexit) and the crises within social care, health and other areas have grown. Politicians, researchers, think tanks and journalists inhabit the Westminster Bubble. MP's are the least trusted group - below estate agents, bankers and journalists, but while sexual indiscretions and other misconduct are most often in the press, many MPs are decent human beings.

2017 Parliament.
MPs do not reflect the UK population. While 7% of the general population went to private schools, 29% of UK-educated MPs did so (and 1 in 10 of these went to Eton). Half the population are female, but only 32% of MPs are women. 7.8% of MPs are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, from a general population of 14% and whereas 18% of the general population have long-term health conditions or disabilities, just 1% of MPs do so.

2019. The MPs in Boris Johnson's first cabinet, of whom two/thirds were privately educated (7% general population), four were Old Etonians (though this does include one black MP) and almost half attended Oxford or Cambridge universities. Source: Guardian, 28 July 2019.

2019. For comparison, BAME groups are under or over represented in other areas: from a general population of 14%, just 7% are UK high court judges, but 25% of UK prison population and 41% of those in the youth justice system. Source: Radio Times feature, 20-26 July 2019.

Many MPs are career politicians (backgrounds in local politics, political organisers and researchers). Many have dysfunctional, even if comfortably placed, upbringings. Most have university degrees (86%), as do most political researchers.

We need to open up Parliament to people who would be good MPs, not merely those who can afford to be one.

Political Parties
In 2017, 51% of party members were university graduates, 80% were in the top (ABC1) social class, and 61% were male. These are the people who select constituency candidates, and the party leader. There is no legal requirement to publish membership figures. [Some 160,000 Conservative party members will get to choose who replaces Theresa May as PM.] Party youth wings are prone to having personality cults.

Candidates
Experience in local government gives insight into issues and realistic spending, but councillors are 67.3% male and 96% white, the average age is 60.2, with 46.6% retired and only 19.2% in full time work. Council work is part-time, but takes place in normal working hours and meeting times are not family friendly.

Parties look for experience and commitment to the cause. Candidates have to raise funds for their campaign and spend time promoting themselves. At selection days, party MPs and senior party figures agree an approved list of candidates; constituency associations pick from these lists. Party members are increasingly drawn from narrow sections of society, and may have unconscious bias against LGBT, ethnic backgrounds and women with families. Parties use candidates list as a source of free labour across the country.

Parties raise money for your campaign once selected, but not accommodation or travel for being visible in the constituency; thus some candidates run into debt. Likely loss of earnings from usual employment during election campaign. (Party members often think candidates are being paid to stand.) Candidates can get hate mail, and possible impact on families. If not elected, candidates often have debts to pay and new jobs to find, and the local party may not support them in any way.

New MPs
Need to find London accommodation and decide where family lives, set up offices and hire staff. Whips allocate offices and new MPs end up in temporary offices in committee rooms. No job description, no advice on what to do each day. But in contrast to 2010, new MPs now get talks, daily meetings and briefings about votes, committees and speeches, and a buddy system in the first few weeks.

House of Commons
MPs listen to debates, meet constituents, ministers and journalists, attend receptions and campaign launches, sit on committees, table parliamentary questions, write articles for local or national press, or plot with colleagues to either influence party policy or cause internal political trouble. Parliament sits on Mon. afternoons, Tue. and Wed. 11.30am to 7.30pm, Thurs. 9.30am to afternoon, plus 13 Fridays per year. MPs can choose which which policy issues they focus on.

An MP is a legislator, making and reviewing laws and government policy, and an advocate for the constituency (as a whole or for on individual). Some are ministers or chair committees or act as party spokesperson,  campaign coordinator or policy advisor. There is no formal amount of time for each task and no formal appraisal. They have no training as legislators.

Pay
In 2005 it was revealed that MPs compensated for comparatively low salaries (far higher than national average but lower than many with similar education and punishing hours) through the expenses system. The inquiry cost £1.16m; MPs had to repay £1.1m. Should they be paid as public sector workers or as a vocation?

END

Tory Party Members Are Different

Only the 160,000 or so members of the Conservative Party (CP) will determine who is the next leader of the party, and therefore the next Prime Minister. (This is far less than the nearly 3 million members in the 1950s, and in 2017 the Labour Party had more than 550,000 members.)

Their age, wealth and where they live is not representative of the rest of the country. 

While most members of most political parties are fairly middle class, some 86% of CP members are in the top social grade (ABC1).

They are much better off than most voters, and members of other parties.
Around a quarter are or were self-employed.
Nearly half work or used to in the private sector.
Nearly 4 in 10 put their annual income of over £30,000 (1 in 20 at over £100,000)

97% are white, so ethnic minorities are heavily under-represented. (Other parties are also unbalanced.)

70% are male. (Labour, the Green Party and SNP come close to 50/50.)

Average age is 57, but 40% are over 65. (Older than members of most other parties.)

Nearly 60% live in London, the east, south-east and south-west.

On a scale where zero = very left and 10 = very right wing, average voters consider themselves in the centre. Average CP members place themselves at 7.6.

75% believe young people don't have enough respect for traditional values.

Nearly 60% support the death penalty.

33% believe ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation's wealth, and that there is one law for the rich and one for the poor.

About half believe big business takes advantage of ordinary people.

28% feel government spending cuts have not gone far enough (down from 55% in 2015).

84% oppose a new referendum on EU membership. (YouGov polling data suggest that the 30,000 or so members who joined in the past year are even more likely to be pro-Brexit.)

How else do they differ? A survey was carried out at the end of 2018.

Brexit:
Ranked most important issue: 60% of all UK voters; 75% CP members
Ranked in top three issues:     74% of all UK voters; 88% CP members

But ranking it highly does not mean everyone has the same views

If there were a Referendum on Remain or No Deal
Remain in EU:  45% of all UK voters; 18% CP members
No deal Brexit: 35% of all UK voters; 76% CP members
**
Only 18% of CP members believed that no deal would not cause serious disruption to supplies and that warnings are exaggerated or invented, but 35% of other voters thought it would and that warnings were realistic, and another 21% were not sure.

If another referendum were held and the vote went for Remain, people would feel:
Betrayed:        26% all voters; 58% CP members.
Angry:            7% all voters;   15% CP members.
Disappointed: 8% all voters;    6% CP members.

Economy: at present unemployment, interest rates and inflation (i.e. price rises) are all pretty low,  which could mean that people are relatively relaxed about it. However the survey indicates that it is still an important issue to many.
Top three issue: 36% of all voters; 45% CP members.
Redistribute income from rich to poor: 51% of all voters; 15% CP members (63% opposed the idea).

A recent survey of CP members on (a) raise the higher-tax rate threshold to £80,000, (b) abolish top rate - over £150,000, or (c) improve services instead.
Raise to £80,000: 58% CP members
Abolish top rate:  37% CP members
Improve services: 60% CP members.

Immigration
Top three issue: 27% of all voters; 31% CP members

Another recent survey of CP members indicated that 51% wanted more skilled, well-educated people looking for highly paid jobs, but low-paid, low-skilled workers and Muslim migrants were unpopular.

Crime
Top three issue:             22% of all voters; 29% CP members.
Stiffer sentences given: 67% of all voters; 76% CP members.

Health
Top three issue: 42% all voters; 19% CP members.

Other top three issues
Defence: 12% all voters; 29% CP members
Benefits and universal credit: 23% all voters; 11% CP members.
Education: 15% all voters; 7% CP members
Environment: 18% all voters; 9% CP members.

The issues that will win Conservative member votes are often not those that will go down well with ordinary voters.

Source:
Tory leadership: who gets to choose the UK's next Prime Minister? Prof. Tim Bale,Queen Mary University of London, BBC News website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48395211
Tory leadership contest: What's on the minds of party members? Prof. Tim Bale, Queen Mary  University of London BBC, News website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48854280

8 Reasons Brexit Happened

Who do I blame? Eight reasons we ended up in this Brexit mess. By Ian Jack

Who’s to blame? The problem is where to start.

1. De-industrialisation. Jobs in UK manufacturing shrank from 7m to 5.1m between 1979 and 1986. More were lost in service industries. Of these losses, 94% were north of the line between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. Happening mostly during the Thatcher years, it has been wrongly attributed to government policy rather than the consequence of economic misfortune. Wealth and opportunity moved south. The social ruin was terrible. Skills were lost, traditions ended. Part of what it meant to be British disappeared. Nobody knew or seemed to care what was supposed to happen to places such as Oldham and Paisley.

2. Immigration. Both natives and immigrants need to revises ideas about where they live and the kind of people they are. As things started to settle after the 1950s influx, concerns were re-ignited with the 2004 Blair government decision to open the UK labour market to the eight new EU states (only Sweden and Ireland did so as freely.), later conceded to be a mistake. In the first year 129,000 migrants turned up instead of the expected 5,000 to 13,000. “Nobody asked us!” said those who felt strongly about it (and then, in June 2016, somebody did ask.)

3. Cultural dementia. Historian Professor David Andress argues that France, the US and Britain are all engaged in “particular forms of forgetting, mistaking and misremembering the past”. As a population we are older than we have ever been, but seem to focus on daydreams of the past and along the way stir up old hatreds, give disturbing voice to destructive rage and risk the collapse of our capacity for decisive, effective and just governance. One such daydream is the belief that the nations of the old empire are “queuing up” to sign trade deals with the country that once ruled them.

4. The Dam Busters. Difficult to explain but England has a curious fascination for an Anglocentric version of WW2, which has grown even as the event has receded, perpetuating old notions of difference and moral superiority. This leads us to …

5. English exceptionalism. Sitting at the top table of nations, punching above our weight, a freedom-loving people ever ready to fight faceless bureaucracies and red tape seem to be predominantly English ideas

6. The playing fields of Eton. Their damaging contribution to contemporary British politics includes David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg: a too-confident incompetent, an opportunist and a cartoon version of the ruling class.

7. The newspapers. While some blame poor education for the Brexit vote, and the electoral influence of newspapers may shrinking now, with their circulations, they are far more rabid (eg the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph) in England than in Scotland, and inform far more of the public debate.

8. Complacency. During the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign, some voters opted for independence because they felt that in areas like Sunderland, people want to leave Europe. Independence could allow Scotland to stay in the EU. Few were as farsighted.

Source: The Guardian, 3 March 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/03/brexit-immigration-jobs-eton-europe

END 

Out of the Wreckage

Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis: by George Monbiot
Verso, 2017

GM shows how new findings in psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology show humans as the supreme altruists and cooperators. He then proposes how democracy and economic life can be reorganized to take back control from the forces that now dominate our society.

I found this a fascinating read and a book to re-read. The following points are my notes.

1. A story of our times. Stories are the way humans navigate the world - myth, legend and history all tell stories that help us interpret what is happening. You cannot take away someone's story without giving them a new one. We may hold information as data and figures but our beliefs about it are held in the form of stories. To understand a complex issue, we do not look for consistent and reliable facts but a consistent and comprehensible story. Even if told something is untrue we still cling to it if it is a good story and we hear it often enough: the only thing to displace it is a better / stronger story.

Values are the bedrock of effective politics. Most people prioritise intrinsic values (compassion, connectedness and kindness) and are inclined to understanding in independent thought. ; extrinsic values (a desire for self-enhancement) . The smaller number of people favouring extrinsic values (prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth) are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise.

2. A captive audience. Neoliberalism - the belief that competition and individualism are defining human features - was refined in the 20th century and still dominates our political and economic systems. A coherent alternative is needed.

3. Don't look back. Recent history can be summarised as a conflict between neoliberalism and social demoncracy. Neither is the answer.

4. Alienation. People feel loss of: control over the work they do; connection with community; trust in politicians and institutions; sense of power over their own lives. Today in two-thirds of 28 countries surveyed, fewer than half of respondents trust mainstream business, government, media and non-governmental organisations to 'do what is right'. Only 15% believe 'the present system is working'.

Alienation begins with education teaching and testing to a limited specific curriculum but intelligence is varied - analytical, language, numerical, spatial, and more. This leads to feelings of failure, followed by resentment of the professional classes (regardless of their value to society) and of the 'liberal elite'. Millions retreat into virtual worlds of fantasy and imaginary self-creation.

Activities that once drew us together (e.g. travel by public transport, walking to shops and school, hot-desking, irregular shifts, etc.)  now drive us apart. We used to make our own entertainment watching others dancing, playing sport, cooking, dancing and singing. Those following celebrity gossip are far less likely to be involved on local organisations or to volunteer. Social media is double-edged - great at both making and breaking connections.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome: we perceive the situation that we experienced in our youth as normal and natural, and use it as a baseline against which to measure change. Over generations, populations then adjust to deprivation or oppression, thinking it to be normal.

5. Belonging. State provision had reduced community life but this its now being revived at local level with community activities and opportunities. Neighbourhoods become more interesting, distinct and vibrant.

6. Our economy. Some really interesting points on how assets are taken into the hands of the few - difficult to summarise.

7. Framing the economy. More interesting stuff.

8. Our politics.
The least accountable political system is that of the USA. A "winner takes all" electoral structure deprives many of effective representation. The president, in some areas, has almost autocratic powers. Rules effectively deter parties other than Democrat and Republican from competing in elections; the entire political system results in a plutocracy financed by corporations and the very rich supporting their own interests.

In the UK, campaign spending is limited, but donors giving is unrestricted - many end up in the House of Lords. The first-past-the-post system creates two constituencies: (a) safe seats and (b) marginal seats, resulting in large numbers of people who are effectively denied representation.

Constitutional convention: this would determine the principles that govern our politics. Convention members should be based on professional politicians due to vested interests, and nor volunteering to serve due to unrepresentative sample. Instead choose most delegates by lot, within social category (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity, class and religion) to represent the character of the population. if a person refuses to serve, a replacement is also chosen by lot. There is an argument for a proportion of delegates being politicians so they can champion the convention in parliament.

While all voting systems have disadvantages, the least flawed is the Single Transferable Vote (STV).

Politics needs fair funding. For example, every party or independent candidate can charge the same small fee for membership (independents forming a supporters club) of perhaps £20, with this matched by the state on a fixed multiple. For referendums, the state should provide an equal amount for those campaigning on each side. Stop treating organisations set up for public advocacy as charities, and require them to declare all donations over a certain amount (my note: and within a set time period - e.g. all donations within a year?) When people from these groups appear in the media, the group's financial interests relevant to the discussion must be mentioned.

Having won an election, governments pushing through some manifesto policies, forgetting others and introducing some new ones. Referendums work effectively in Switzerland, around 10 per year, clustered into 3 or 4 voting days. This encourages public engagement and a sense of political ownership. Using referendums on too many small issues, however, would lose their power; properly conducted online consultations may be the answer to avoid the risk of empowering one group (the tech-savvy) over other groups.

Some countries have good programmes for providing objective materials about key political issues: Germany's Federal Agency of Civic Education materials include the online seervice Wahl-O-Mat and Switzerland has a Smartvote platform.

Other things impact on national politics. Transnational corporations push nation-states into destructive competition. The IMF, the World Bank and the UN Security Council are controlled by a minority of nations. Some issues can only be resolved by global action (e.g. climate change, nuclear proliferation, international crime).

Nation-states are a recent phenomenon, before the late 18th century there were no clear national boundaries or border checks. People's attachment was to their village or town. Conflict best avoided by giving power to the smallest appropriate unit.

9. Making it happen. Some of the policies in the book could be implemented immediately but most would need regime change. The example of how Bernie Sanders presidential campaign focused on small donations from supporters, volunteers instead of paid staff, telephone and doorstep conversations and lots of small meetings could be a way forward.

END

Bishop of Salisbury Pastoral Letter on UK-EU Vote 2016

(I originally posted this on another blog which I am now closing down. But I wanted to keep the information and the link to the full text.)

The Bishop of Salisbury wrote to all clergy in the Diocese following the UK-EU Referendum (28 June 2016). Read text of letter here. (Link still works 4th April 2018.)

It includes a breakdown of voting within the Diocese which makes interesting reading as it shows the extent of the division.

On the whole there were more voting to Leave than in the country overall. However in Wiltshire one electoral district voted 75% Remain and another in the same county voted 83% Leave.

There was a marked division by age. A survey suggests that age was an important factor.
18-24:   75% Remain
25-49:   56% Remain
50-64:   44% Remain
65+:       39% Remain

Do read the whole text.

Source: Bishop of Salisbury, 2016.

How to Reduce Council Tax Bills

East Hampshire District Council has managed to freeze its council tax rate for seven years due to the innovative policies of its council leader Ferris Cowper. While he has been in charge, his council has never put up its tax by a penny (crucially, without ever axing a 'frontline' service and without fining people for putting the wrong stuff in recycling bins) and he plans further reductions in the next three years.

His council of 200 square miles has not won the lottery or found oil or gold on its land but there has been a change of attitude together with commercial common sense and a willingness to think outside the box.

The council employs a chief executive on £120,000 a year (half the salary of some town hall CEOs, as some 2,300 town hall executives now earn more than the Prime Minister) but because she simultaneously runs the council in nearby Havant, the cost to East Hampshire is £60,000. The same arrangement applies to several other executives. Other philosophies that underpin the strategy are no fancy HQ, open plan offices, and no 'occupation of office space with personal possessions'.

Low-risk commercial property has been purchased instead of leaving the council's cash reserves in the bank earning negligible interest. The portfolio, now worth up to £100 million, ranges from a bank in the local town centre to a village branch of the Co-op, .

The council uses its staff and premises to run businesses from a printing operation to a regeneration consultancy. It rents out its planners, its traffic wardens and even its bin collection service to neighbouring councils. Having given its HQ a modest refurb, it now rents out vacant office space to the police. There are plans to regenerate the old military garrison town of Bordon with thousands of homes on old MoD land.

While councils have to play it safe with public money and most are naturally risk-averse, Mr Cowper believes you need to move from risk-aversion to balanced risk, giving you as much chance of success as failure. Councils must now follow new guidelines and take extra care with such investments, but East Hampshire has gone for rock-solid loan investments for the long term, based on yield, not capital growth.

Critics point out that a district council does not have to worry about the burden of adult social care which falls to the local county council, which is behind so many council tax rises. However, Mr Cowper sees no reason why his council should not be paying for that too, a few years in the future.

East Hampshire is a small authority with a small budget of around £30 million and 270 staff, while big councils have £1 billion-plus budgets and more services to deliver, but  maybe the same approach could work for them.

Source: DailyMail new item 14 February 2018.

NHS and the Future

Your Life In My Hands: a junior doctor's story by Rachel Clarke.
Metro, 2017     ISBN: 978 1 78606 451 6

The author worked originally as a journalist before training as a doctor. The book covers aspects of her training, and work in the NHS, together with the facts about the junior doctor's strike in 2016. I have picked out the important facts - but urge you to read this.

The UK's NHS is 'under-doctored' due to not enough funding. The OECD's 2015 Health at a Glance report showed that the UK has 2.8 practising doctors per 1,000 head of population, lower than almost any EU country, inclusing Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Per 1,000 head of population Italy has 4.0 doctors, Germany 4.1, Austria 4.8 and Greece 6.1 doctors.

The NHS is understaffed, resulting in staff covering two jobs due to gaps in rotas.

In 2015 Jeremy Hunt wrongly claimed 6,000 (later he raised this to 11,000) avoidable fatalities due to consultants refusing to work at weekends. He also claimed consultants opt out of weekend working, then offer themselves as locums with 'extortionate' rates of pay. The truth is otherwise as RC points out.

• Consultants are always there to lead the Saturday and Sunday ward rounds, and are then available by phone as and when needed - at any time of day or night.
• The weekend opt-out is only for elective care (i.e. planned operations or extra weekend outpatient clinics) - and does not apply to emergency care.
• Without additional doctors, nurses and other health professionals, the only way to roster more people at weekends is to take people off weekday duties or work longer hours overall.
• Working longer hours is unsafe. Fatigue levels at the end of a busy shift can impair mental acuity more effectively than exceeding the alcohol limit for driving.

Bed blocking is due to social services underfunding which means that home care plans and support are not available in time.

Cardiac arrests in hospital: 25% survive to be discharged. Cardiac arrests in the community: less than 10% survive to be discharged, even with prompt transport to A&E.

2016: The NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was short of over 23,000 nurses, 6,000 doctors and 3,500 midwives. Hunt likes to claim an additional 10,000 doctors since the Tories gained power in 2010, but this equates in reality to 5,000 when part-time doctors are factored in. And with a rising UK population, there is actually no increase in the number of doctors per head of population.

In 2016 around 10% of junior doctor training posts were unfilled, and the exodus of young doctors worsened after the 2010 election. In 2011 75% of doctors continued in training posts after completing the first two years of practice, this steadily declined to 67% in 2012, 64% in 2013, 58% in 2014 and 52% in 2015. Leavers have gone overseas, often to Australia or New Zealand. Some specialities (e.g. paediatrics) have a critical shortage of trainees.

Hunt wrongly claimed a minority of doctors working over 56 hours a week were paid "what's called colloquially in the NHS 'danger money' " - no doctor (working or retired has ever heard of this money.

The morning the doctors' strike ballot opened, Hunt said there would be a 'whopping 11% pay rise for junior doctors' but the 11% was in basic pay only, and was offset by huge cuts elsewhere to pay for anti-social hours. The overall effect was likely to be a pay cut for many. The result was that 98% of doctors voted to strike.

Hunt claimed that no doctor would work longer than currently, the new contract reducing overall hours from 91 to 72 per week but the new contract had to deliver 7 day services 'cost-neutrally' - which is simply not possible. (The BMA had under duress, conceded the principle of 7-day services cost-neutrality.)

Junior doctors move from job to job every 3, 4 or 6 months in order to gain experience across the range of medical specialities. This makes life difficult as rosters can be allocated without any notice due to a lack of forward planning by managers.

Women are discriminated against in the new contract. The pay of part-time doctors (80% of whom are women, is set to rise more slowly than for full-time posts. The government admitted this but proposed such doctors find 'informal, unpaid childcare arrangement for evenings and weekends'. In 2016, women made up 60% of the profession.

All of the above leads to rock bottom morale, which is linked to sickness and lower standards of patient care. NHS England estimates sickness absence costs the NHS £2.4 billion per year. If sickness absence were reduced by only one day per person per year, the NHS could save £150 million, enough to pay for 6,000 additional staff full time.

12 Jan. 2016 Junior doctors' strike. Hospital picket lines supported by other hospital staff and the public. Hunt then claimed further 'terrifying' increases in weekend mortality - all this data is contested and challenged by leading academics in the field. The extra deaths from strokes, emergency surgery and newborn babies is mostly if not entirely due to emergency admissions - and would have happened if the admission were on a weekday. Hunt ignored the finite number of doctors, nurses, porters, radiographers, lab technicians and administrators for extra weekend activity. Fantasy politics.

2017 With the state of the NHS still in crisis, Theresa May then blamed GPs for failing to offer proper 7 day services, putting pressure on hospitals and ordered practices to be open 7 days a week or lose some of their funding.

Rachel Clarke writes 'While there are, no doubt, ingenious ways of driving up NHS efficiency, merely shrinking the workforce and rationing the care the NHS provides is the opposite of clever.

Note 1. Jeremy Hunt was in PR before becoming an MP, thus has many years of practising how to spin news to a specific viewpoint.

Note 2. My daughter is a nurse working in an endoscopy clinic, shift hours are long, and every few weeks she is on call overnight and at the weekend to assist with emergency surgery - it is draining to have returned hone from one call out only to get another within the hour, and then to work a day shift the following day. Other specialities place the same demands; she previously worked in cardiac intensive care.

OECD report: Health at a Glance 2015.

END

6 out of 10 Brits want to keep EU citizenship

Six out of 10 Britons want to keep their EU citizenship after Brexit – including the rights to live, work, study and travel in the EU, with many prepared to pay large sums to do so, according to research by the London School of Economics and polling firm Opinium which surveyed more than 2,000 respondents.

85% of 18 to 24 year-olds want to retain their EU citizenship in addition to their British citizenship. Around 80% of people living in London also want to maintain the same rights. Young people in particular were “very unhappy” at the prospect of losing rights they regarded as fundamental and crucial to their future prospects.

The average sum they would be prepared to pay to retain EU citizenship was more than £400 (more than the contribution to the EU budget that UK citizens each currently make).

73% of voters would like either to protect or extend the rights that current citizens from other EU countries have to vote in the UK; 48% wanted to see the right to vote extended from local elections to general elections, while 25% wished to keep the status quo. Only 10% supported the government’s position of withdrawing EU citizens’ right to vote in local elections.

In a speech to the LSE, the director-general of the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, paints a grim picture of the impact that Theresa May’s plan to leave both the single market and customs union will have on the UK economy. “In the last 40 years, EU integration has cut through complexity, making things simpler for business. The single market means one single set of rules for the whole EU – saving Europe’s 22 million firms time and money, while the customs union lowers even more barriers to trade. Even for something as everyday as a loaf of bread, EU rules cut through the complexity – and make things simpler for business and clearer for consumers.”

Source: Poll finds that 60% of Britons want to keep their EU citizenship: The Guardian, 1st July 2017

Taxation Issues

Balancing tax levels
The Laffer curve shows the points beyond which increased taxation reduces the revenues obtained (i.e. people start finding ways to avoid payment).

Edward de Bono: I Am Right, You Are Wrong. Penguin, 2009

UK Tax system
The way our political system and national conversation are constructed make it close to impossible for a leader to say anything sane about tax.

The right claims that tax in principle is immoral, coercive, anti-enterprise, anti-aspiration and always economically destructive: this now sets the terms of discussion, policed by our rightwing media. The consequence is that our tax system is now so badly distorted that it threatens the social fabric.

The British residential property system creates unreal house prices and huge social unfairness with huge mortgages for the young, the lottery of property inheritance and high rents. Property is effectively only taxed when bought and sold. Residential property prices (on which council tax is based) was last reviewed in 1991. Generous inheritance tax thresholds, tax exemption of capital gains on homes and trivial council tax receipts, mean the property market is the world’s biggest onshore tax haven creating the world’s highest real house prices. No proposal for change seems possible.

Public services, after seven years of drastic cuts, have reached a point where severe deterioration is certain if planned reductions go ahead. The condition of Britain’s prisons is already intolerable: the stress in the NHS is apparent to all; improvements in educational standards are being reversed. All, starved of resources, can only get worse.

The “triple lock” – outlawing rises in income tax, national insurance and VAT (the major revenue streams in any tax system) constrained the ability of the government to manage the economy flexibly, and as virtually every observer notes, the triple lock is economically absurd.

Yet health and education spending – from which everyone should benefit and thus paid for by taxation – have been rising consistently for over 60 years, as they should and will. To try to turn back this growth or, alternatively, the social security system to find the necessary resources, is to ignore reality. Other cancelled proposed increases (insurance and airline taxes, national insurance for the self-employed, and probate fees) were means to raise revenue but would only have created further distortions.
 
"Britain must create a tax system that raises revenue across a broad base as fairly and with as little economic distortion as possible and it must accept that if it wants health and education to remain public goods financed by general taxation, along with a reasonable social security system, then taxation will have at the very least to remain around 35% of GDP and may even have to rise a little."

The tax take must increase, but it will need to be drawn from a much wider base than just on the “rich” – the top 5% – earning over £70,000 or from big corporations; there just is not enough potential revenue from those sources.

A smarter strategy would be to acknowledge that tax is the price for living in a civilised society and making the major tax revenue streams off-limits is crazy. We also have to go much further within a fair framework if we want decent public services and be able to manage the economy flexibly.

• The broader the tax base, the lower tax rates need to be.
• Revalue domestic residential property and overhaul council tax as part of a wider review of how local government is financed.
• A fair tax on inherited wealth.
• A broadening of the VAT base, with an extension to financial services.
• Heavier taxes on environmentally damaging activity.

Nicholas Stern has argued that these could raise some 2% of GDP, so that only marginal or very small increases in VAT, income tax and national insurance would be needed, if at all.

"Britain could have high quality public services, a great environment and a functioning housing market – and very few would notice the difference in their taxes. A country on the rise would do this in an instant. It is a declining country in thrall to rightwing ideologues that finds it impossible – that will be Britain in spring 2017."

Will Hutton: Overhaul Britain's rotten tax system or we won't be able to sustain a healthy state.  The Guardian, 22 April 2017

Brexit and the Economy

Brexiters and Remainers both fail to grasp the challenges facing Britain by Tom Kibasi

The deal to leave the EU will shape Britain for decades to come. Will we confront our problems? Or attempt to muddle through (where both sides of the Brexit divide are taking us). Britain needs fundamental changes but we must first openly acknowledge our problems.

Remain failed to understand the reality of daily life for many people and communities in modern Britain or that the current economic model is not working for many people. Free movement of labour enables the low skill, low productivity, low wage economic model imposed on much of the country, which (combined with the cultural and identity challenge of large-scale immigration) has created such discontent. It is not progressive to fail to invest in skills in this country, while plundering poor countries of nurses or doctors or carers and then approaching immigration as if people were commodities to be bought up on the open market.

Leave saw Brexit as a magical solution to all of Britain’s problems, along with fake promises on the NHS and immigration, and still argues we can enjoy all the benefits of membership, such as frictionless, tariff-free access to the single market, without any of the burdens. It has never mattered to them that leaving the EU will make it harder to confront Britain’s economic and social problems.

The Chancellor still focuses on top-line numbers, ignoring multiple symptoms of a distressed economy that stretch back for decades. Our national economic policy needs to be pro-growth and pro-economic justice.

Investment drives wealth and prosperity, but as a proportion of the economy has been declining for 25 years, lagging behind comparable countries in the west, and miles behind fast-growing economies in the east. People expect that that business will invest in order to create good quality jobs, but investment needs political stability and unfettered access to the single market of 500 million people, and Brexit undermines both.

Issues

Cheap and plentiful EU workers led firms to add more low cost jobs instead of investing in plant, machinery or new forms of automation to drive up productivity. Some businesses prefer to return more cash to shareholders than to invest. British companies have become net savers rather than borrowers.

Low investment leads to low productivity, and then to low wages. Since the financial crisis, the British economy has stalled, leading to stagnation in living standards for the majority of households.

We have a massive trade deficit. If countries are keen for a free trade deal with Britain (a debatable point) it is because we’re an importer, not an exporter. The import/export difference is now 6%, financed by expanding debt and selling off British assets.

Household inequality is high. The incomes of the richest 10% of households are 11 times those of the poorest 10%; in France and Germany, the difference is seven-fold, and in Denmark it is five-fold. Over time this creates an enormous gap in wealth as well as income.

Our economy is profoundly regionally imbalanced. London is the wealthiest region in Europe and, with the south-east of England, accounts for 40% of national output. All other UK regions lag behind most other regions of northern Europe, and have below average productivity.

These problems are all of long standing, and not temporary weaknesses in an otherwise sound model, showing that fundamental reform of the British economy is needed.

We need to prepare ourselves for a decade of disruption, as changes have the potential to reshape our economy and society – for good or for ill, depending on the quality of our response.

During the referendum campaign, Remain made no attempt to show why and how it might be easier to confront the challenges in partnership with our neighbours than alone, how Britain has shaped the EU, or how we might better influence its future. With better leadership, the EU might have been transformed into a safe harbour in an era of profound challenges from globalisation.

Drivers of change

Exponential improvements in new technologies, accelerating computing power, machine learning and artificial intelligence, automation and the “internet of things” have extraordinary power to utterly reshape how we live and work, to reorganise our social, economic and political institutions and to redistribute power and reward in society. Without deliberate policy, technological change is likely to increase the share of rewards to those who have capital, whilst diminishing the rewards that go to workers for their labour. Moreover, the rewards for the highly skilled will continue to accelerate whilst diminishing for everyone else.

Demographics. The UK population is set to become Europe’s biggest country, with more people than France by 2030, and more than Germany by 2040. At the same time it will age significantly, with a 66% increase in those over the age of 75, bringing huge challenges in housing, health and social care. By 2030, the working age population will grow by just 3%, but those over 65 will increase by one third.

Economic power continues to shift eastwards. By 2030, emerging economies will account for half of global output, up from a quarter today. Nearly 60% of global middle-class consumption will come from Asia, and 17 of the top 50 cities by GDP will be in China. The shape of global institutions is likely to shift considerably.

Human activity is the dominating influence on nature consuming resources at 1.5 times the ability of the earth to replenish them. A radical economic response is needed in the coming decades to mitigate and reverse environmental damage. The transition towards a low-carbon world is crucial to the vision of an economy fit for the future.

Do we embrace greater international co-operation? As capital flows and firms operate across borders, so there will be a greater premium on nation states working together in the future. That positive case for the EU was never really put to voters, and Brexit makes this path significantly harder.

If the fast pace of change means that it will be the ability to respond rapidly and flexibly to change that will matter, then Britain might be better placed to prosper outside the clunky framework of European regulations and institutions.

The IPPR Commission on Economic Justice

The IPPR Commission on Economic Justice brings together leading figures in British public life to address the persistent problems and ensure that Britain is ready for the future challenges, with the goal of rewriting the rules for the post-Brexit economy.

The politics of the future will belong to those leaders who are prepared to face up to our present problems and future challenges and to articulate a new destination for our economy and society.

Tom Kibasi is Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and Chair of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice

Source: Brexiters and Remainers both fail to grasp the challenges facing Britain by Tom Kibasi, in The Guardian, 11 March 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/11/brexit-kibasi-ippr-article-50-referendum-remain-leave