Jock's Place...ramblings of a Geo-Mutualist Liberal Democrathttp://www.jockcoats.org.uk/atom/feed2008-07-09T11:50:36+01:00Is this Oxford Labour's "double devolution"?http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/oxford_labours_double_devolution2008-08-06T19:41:23+01:002008-08-06T21:06:09+01:00Jock
Area planning decisions to be recentralized? Area committees disbanded? Is this Labour in Oxford's response to near universal calls, in political terms (not least from their own Communities Department), for greater devolution and localism in our government structures?
They're pretty much already committed to the Stalinist recentralization of all planning decisions, slightly modified now to have two wider area based development control soviets as well as a supreme soviet committee in case even these two go against the Politburo's diktat or predilections. All because Labour councillors seemingly cannot work out how they could possibly "lobby" for their constituents wishes on some applications whilst helping decide on neighbouring wards' local applications.
I prefer the Danish system I believe it is, where areas more or less the size of streets have small committees purely dedicated to development control.
But in the absence of that a much more open system of area committee planning hearings would be a step forward rather than Labour's regressive centralizing power grab. Colleagues in other authorities received different legal advice to Oxford's and hold open discussion at their area committees where parish council members usually attend en masse and they claim get better decisions, more local acceptance of decisions and an all round feeling of compromise giving the better solutions for all. The rationale is that it doesn't matter how much time objectors and applicants spend at any individual stage of the process as the applicant in particular can have all the time they like to argue their case at appeal - that it's the entire process from start to finish that has to be fair to both sides.
Despite an initial increase in time spent in planning as everyone wanted to have their say, in practice, area planning meetings are now quite sophisticated - nobody feels the need to fill five minutes because can because they know anyone else could raise questions and so few are repeated. Good chairing of course helps, something also sadly lacking in Oxford City Council in my experience.
But centralizing planning is one thing, now there are rumours that Labour wants to disband area committees entirely. I hope one of them is reading this and will assure me this is not the case, or that something better will be put in their place. I have long argued that Oxford should reparish the city, shrink the city council effectively to an executive committee and have much more local control through parish or town councils. It's really not that long ago (in its history of over a thousand years) that Headington was administered by the Headington Urban District Council for example. Parish and Town Councils can actually have quite a lot of power - indeed more or less anything a higher level authority wishes to delegate to them.
I was at Thame Town Council a few months ago doing a presentation on Community Land Trusts, and I got the great feeling that this body was one that was prepared to fight its community's corner against the district level council when it mattered. Much moreso than where the committee is really a "branch meeting" of that district and collective responsibility trumps representing your constituents. In other parts of the county parishes precept as much as the district in council tax. Even in the few parts of Oxford where there are parishes it's more like 10% of the district level rate. Headington - or rather the current North East Area Committee area - is half as big again as Thame; easily able to support a stronger more local decision making body if the City Council took its claws out by at least as much!
But again, if the nirvana of local parish councils is not available to them for some reason, there are ways in which area committees can be given real power. Again, colleagues elsewhere only appoint a handful of central portfolio holders on their executive board, and then appoint one member of each area committee as ex officio executive members. Bound by collective responsibility each area committee executive representative can take a decision on a local issue, but which would normally fall under the competence of the executive board, there and then at the area committee meeting, advised by the open discussion amongst councillors and interested public at the area committee. Further, when they are at the executive committee, these area representatives can carry a majority, so if they are mandated by their areas in respect of a proposal by one of the core portfolio holders, they can overrule the core portfolio holders; effectively giving real positive control to those local community meetings collectively.
So, Oxford Labour, I'm sure there's more than just me out there, even if we do not often attend your City Council branch committee meetings, who appreciate the fact that they exist for us if we want to have our say on something, who will be very disappointed if you dismantle this structure and, Jack Straw like, leave it half reformed and more centralized.
Who wants to join a campaign to parish Oxford city then?
]]>
Area planning decisions to be recentralized? Area committees disbanded? Is this Labour in Oxford's response to near universal calls, in political terms (not least from their own Communities Department), for greater devolution and localism in our government structures?
They're pretty much already committed to the Stalinist recentralization of all planning decisions, slightly modified now to have two wider area based development control soviets as well as a supreme soviet committee in case even these two go against the Politburo's diktat or predilections. All because Labour councillors seemingly cannot work out how they could possibly "lobby" for their constituents wishes on some applications whilst helping decide on neighbouring wards' local applications.
I prefer the Danish system I believe it is, where areas more or less the size of streets have small committees purely dedicated to development control.
But in the absence of that a much more open system of area committee planning hearings would be a step forward rather than Labour's regressive centralizing power grab. Colleagues in other authorities received different legal advice to Oxford's and hold open discussion at their area committees where parish council members usually attend en masse and they claim get better decisions, more local acceptance of decisions and an all round feeling of compromise giving the better solutions for all. The rationale is that it doesn't matter how much time objectors and applicants spend at any individual stage of the process as the applicant in particular can have all the time they like to argue their case at appeal - that it's the entire process from start to finish that has to be fair to both sides.
Despite an initial increase in time spent in planning as everyone wanted to have their say, in practice, area planning meetings are now quite sophisticated - nobody feels the need to fill five minutes because can because they know anyone else could raise questions and so few are repeated. Good chairing of course helps, something also sadly lacking in Oxford City Council in my experience.
But centralizing planning is one thing, now there are rumours that Labour wants to disband area committees entirely. I hope one of them is reading this and will assure me this is not the case, or that something better will be put in their place. I have long argued that Oxford should reparish the city, shrink the city council effectively to an executive committee and have much more local control through parish or town councils. It's really not that long ago (in its history of over a thousand years) that Headington was administered by the Headington Urban District Council for example. Parish and Town Councils can actually have quite a lot of power - indeed more or less anything a higher level authority wishes to delegate to them.
I was at Thame Town Council a few months ago doing a presentation on Community Land Trusts, and I got the great feeling that this body was one that was prepared to fight its community's corner against the district level council when it mattered. Much moreso than where the committee is really a "branch meeting" of that district and collective responsibility trumps representing your constituents. In other parts of the county parishes precept as much as the district in council tax. Even in the few parts of Oxford where there are parishes it's more like 10% of the district level rate. Headington - or rather the current North East Area Committee area - is half as big again as Thame; easily able to support a stronger more local decision making body if the City Council took its claws out by at least as much!
But again, if the nirvana of local parish councils is not available to them for some reason, there are ways in which area committees can be given real power. Again, colleagues elsewhere only appoint a handful of central portfolio holders on their executive board, and then appoint one member of each area committee as ex officio executive members. Bound by collective responsibility each area committee executive representative can take a decision on a local issue, but which would normally fall under the competence of the executive board, there and then at the area committee meeting, advised by the open discussion amongst councillors and interested public at the area committee. Further, when they are at the executive committee, these area representatives can carry a majority, so if they are mandated by their areas in respect of a proposal by one of the core portfolio holders, they can overrule the core portfolio holders; effectively giving real positive control to those local community meetings collectively.
So, Oxford Labour, I'm sure there's more than just me out there, even if we do not often attend your City Council branch committee meetings, who appreciate the fact that they exist for us if we want to have our say on something, who will be very disappointed if you dismantle this structure and, Jack Straw like, leave it half reformed and more centralized.
Who wants to join a campaign to parish Oxford city then?
]]>ID Cards: BT Homehub supplier gets first contracthttp://www.jockcoats.org.uk/id_cards_bt_homehub_supplier_gets_first_contract2008-08-01T20:52:24+01:002008-08-01T20:57:56+01:00Jock Thales, the successor to Thomson CSF, has won the first contract to start the design process for the National Identity Register which will be the more sinister side of the whole ID card system. For those of us committed to opposing ID cards and the NIR at every opportunity and wanting a way to boycott suppliers this presents a challenge. Many of the possible suppliers of course are not ones with big "brand names" you can easily boycott. Thales itself is mostly a government contractor, making war machines. And they are nearly a quarter owned by the French state. Both of these in my opinion make their appointment even worse (not because it is French, per se, but because it is partly controlled by a foreign state, however currently friendly that state may be).
But they do make, through their Thomson media subsidiary, a few things we can target. They are, for example the largest or perhaps sole supplier of the BT Homehub kit (and its equivalent from Orange). They also do an awful lot of facilities stuff for film, advertising and television (they own the Thorn EMI filming facilities firm), but it will always be quite difficult to find out which programs, films or advertisers are using them.
So the main real consumer product they can be identified with is Homehub. So, if you happen to be a BT subscriber and use one of those sexy boxes, maybe it's time to switch your communications provider?
(They also make set-top digital TV boxes and DVD equipment if you want to do some more digging around).
]]> Thales, the successor to Thomson CSF, has won the first contract to start the design process for the National Identity Register which will be the more sinister side of the whole ID card system. For those of us committed to opposing ID cards and the NIR at every opportunity and wanting a way to boycott suppliers this presents a challenge. Many of the possible suppliers of course are not ones with big "brand names" you can easily boycott. Thales itself is mostly a government contractor, making war machines. And they are nearly a quarter owned by the French state. Both of these in my opinion make their appointment even worse (not because it is French, per se, but because it is partly controlled by a foreign state, however currently friendly that state may be).
But they do make, through their Thomson media subsidiary, a few things we can target. They are, for example the largest or perhaps sole supplier of the BT Homehub kit (and its equivalent from Orange). They also do an awful lot of facilities stuff for film, advertising and television (they own the Thorn EMI filming facilities firm), but it will always be quite difficult to find out which programs, films or advertisers are using them.
So the main real consumer product they can be identified with is Homehub. So, if you happen to be a BT subscriber and use one of those sexy boxes, maybe it's time to switch your communications provider?
(They also make set-top digital TV boxes and DVD equipment if you want to do some more digging around).
]]>Today is the centenary of the Old Age Pensions Act, 1908http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/today_centenary_old_age_pensions_act_19082008-08-01T07:25:01+01:002008-08-01T11:12:18+01:00Jock
On 1st August 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act completed its parliamentary stages, the first step in the development of the modern benefits and welfare system by Asquith's Liberal government and the culmination of several decades of debate and lobbying for some provision to be made for the "deserving" poor in their old age. An alternative to the Poor Laws. On 1st January 1909 half a million or so people over 70 years old became entitled to a 5 shillings a week non-contributory payment administered via the Post Office.
It was not universal; only 5% of people lived beyond 70 in any case - and most were women. It was kept deliberately quite low in order to encourage as many as possible to make their own savings arrangements to top it up.
The BBC has a useful little comparison of then and now pensions arrangements, and you can read the whole act here.
According to an article I dug up last year Lord Roseberry described the Act as the most important piece of legislation since the Great Reform Act of 1832.
I'll refrain from a rant about how it's been a hundred years of mostly Tory and Labour government since and we still have 20% of pensioners living in poverty and dependent on additional means tested benefits and how we can solve this by continuing the legacy of liberal economic reforms those pioneers started. Let's just enjoy the birthday shall we?
]]>
On 1st August 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act completed its parliamentary stages, the first step in the development of the modern benefits and welfare system by Asquith's Liberal government and the culmination of several decades of debate and lobbying for some provision to be made for the "deserving" poor in their old age. An alternative to the Poor Laws. On 1st January 1909 half a million or so people over 70 years old became entitled to a 5 shillings a week non-contributory payment administered via the Post Office.
It was not universal; only 5% of people lived beyond 70 in any case - and most were women. It was kept deliberately quite low in order to encourage as many as possible to make their own savings arrangements to top it up.
The BBC has a useful little comparison of then and now pensions arrangements, and you can read the whole act here.
According to an article I dug up last year Lord Roseberry described the Act as the most important piece of legislation since the Great Reform Act of 1832.
I'll refrain from a rant about how it's been a hundred years of mostly Tory and Labour government since and we still have 20% of pensioners living in poverty and dependent on additional means tested benefits and how we can solve this by continuing the legacy of liberal economic reforms those pioneers started. Let's just enjoy the birthday shall we?
]]>Glasgow East, Safe Seat - why Labour lost and the SNP didn't really win it.http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/glasgow_east_safe_seat_why_labour_lost_and_snp_didnt_really_win2008-07-31T21:17:36+01:002008-08-01T07:02:05+01:00Jock
I know - it's a week late. But I picked up a snippet the other day that tells you why Labour lost in Glasgow East...
Apparently voter contact had been absolutely zero for years. David Marshall had done virtually nothing for years (apart from perhaps collecting money from us for his carefully chosen constituency staff). He supposedly didn't even venture into the constituency much and held few if any surgeries. When they started the by-election campaign they were starting voter identification from scratch with no reliable previous data at all.
Utter bonkers. They absolutely deserve to have lost with the level of contempt towards the constituents that smug inactivity over the years demonstrates.
On the other hand, it puts the SNP victory in some context - were they any better than, say, the IWCA in Oxford whose only reason for existing as a force on the council was Labour's contemptuous attitude in their "safest" wards.
UPDATE: And I see from Dan Paskins that there is a motion in to conference saying much the same .
]]>
I know - it's a week late. But I picked up a snippet the other day that tells you why Labour lost in Glasgow East...
Apparently voter contact had been absolutely zero for years. David Marshall had done virtually nothing for years (apart from perhaps collecting money from us for his carefully chosen constituency staff). He supposedly didn't even venture into the constituency much and held few if any surgeries. When they started the by-election campaign they were starting voter identification from scratch with no reliable previous data at all.
Utter bonkers. They absolutely deserve to have lost with the level of contempt towards the constituents that smug inactivity over the years demonstrates.
On the other hand, it puts the SNP victory in some context - were they any better than, say, the IWCA in Oxford whose only reason for existing as a force on the council was Labour's contemptuous attitude in their "safest" wards.
UPDATE: And I see from Dan Paskins that there is a motion in to conference saying much the same .
]]>Calling councillors whose authorities use the "Uniform Public Access" planning application system...http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/calling_councillors_whose_authorities_use_uniform_public_access_planning_application_system2008-07-31T17:40:02+01:002008-07-31T18:00:01+01:00Jock
...I know we do in Oxford, and I also notice that at least three of the surrounding councils use it, so I presume this is de facto the "market leader" in public access planning application systems on the web. At least at Oxford City, very little appears to have been done to the system since they implemented it six years ago - and that MAY be the council's fault for not upgrading or whatever. However I have two big issues with it that I would like as many councillors from as many authorities as possible to complain about in the hope that their authorities will start to pressure for these changes, one of which would be an enhancement but the other definitely a fix for a non-compliant system in my opinion.
1. It has never worked properly with any browser other than Internet Explorer. In particular, the mapping system does not work in Firefox (2 or 3) or Safari. It may load the first, whole borough map, but if you want to start zooming in to the site you want to look at it refuses to play. In my opinion whilst IE may be the most frequently used browser, it limits users to Windows operating systems now. It will not work properly on any other type of machine - Mac or Linux for example. If yours does work correctly, perhaps you could let me know so I can continue to nag Oxford City Council to get updates or whatever would be needed to get it working. As far as I am concerned by excluding anyone other than Windows users it does not comply at least with the spirit of e-Government.
2. RSS feeds please! At the moment the closest you can get to a regular list is a weekly application list by going through several pages of the site. Here in Oxford apparently they are planning on piloting an e-mail alert system which will necessarily involve people submitting yet more personal information to the council in order to get alerts, and it will no doubt be difficult to change the alert you want (it may for example simply mean sending out the weekly applications list for a ward or some such simple response).
RSS feeds would be far better. They can be made infinitely variable - some people might only want applications in a post code, others for telecoms masts only but borough wide, others for a ward or area committee bundle of several wards. All this should be possible with RSS feeds. Also, many councillors like to keep their constituents in touch by copying "long hand" the weekly list applicable to their ward onto their websites. RSS feeds would allow them to automate this tedious process. I myself am planning a non-council local website, ox2online.net, to complement the area's e-democracy forums and so on, and RSS feeds would be ideal.
So please, if you are reading this and work or are a councillor in any authority that uses this system for public access to planning applications, can you think about these and have a nag at your planning/IT/eDemocracy officers and see if we can't get these changes.
(Oxford City Council appears to be on "Version 7.4")
]]>
...I know we do in Oxford, and I also notice that at least three of the surrounding councils use it, so I presume this is de facto the "market leader" in public access planning application systems on the web. At least at Oxford City, very little appears to have been done to the system since they implemented it six years ago - and that MAY be the council's fault for not upgrading or whatever. However I have two big issues with it that I would like as many councillors from as many authorities as possible to complain about in the hope that their authorities will start to pressure for these changes, one of which would be an enhancement but the other definitely a fix for a non-compliant system in my opinion.
1. It has never worked properly with any browser other than Internet Explorer. In particular, the mapping system does not work in Firefox (2 or 3) or Safari. It may load the first, whole borough map, but if you want to start zooming in to the site you want to look at it refuses to play. In my opinion whilst IE may be the most frequently used browser, it limits users to Windows operating systems now. It will not work properly on any other type of machine - Mac or Linux for example. If yours does work correctly, perhaps you could let me know so I can continue to nag Oxford City Council to get updates or whatever would be needed to get it working. As far as I am concerned by excluding anyone other than Windows users it does not comply at least with the spirit of e-Government.
2. RSS feeds please! At the moment the closest you can get to a regular list is a weekly application list by going through several pages of the site. Here in Oxford apparently they are planning on piloting an e-mail alert system which will necessarily involve people submitting yet more personal information to the council in order to get alerts, and it will no doubt be difficult to change the alert you want (it may for example simply mean sending out the weekly applications list for a ward or some such simple response).
RSS feeds would be far better. They can be made infinitely variable - some people might only want applications in a post code, others for telecoms masts only but borough wide, others for a ward or area committee bundle of several wards. All this should be possible with RSS feeds. Also, many councillors like to keep their constituents in touch by copying "long hand" the weekly list applicable to their ward onto their websites. RSS feeds would allow them to automate this tedious process. I myself am planning a non-council local website, ox2online.net, to complement the area's e-democracy forums and so on, and RSS feeds would be ideal.
So please, if you are reading this and work or are a councillor in any authority that uses this system for public access to planning applications, can you think about these and have a nag at your planning/IT/eDemocracy officers and see if we can't get these changes.
(Oxford City Council appears to be on "Version 7.4")
]]>It depresses the hell out of me...http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/it_depresses_hell_out_me2008-07-29T23:17:42+01:002008-07-29T23:21:35+01:00Jock
...to think that, in a few short weeks , it looks possible that party activists of all political colours will be expected to trudge the streets once again asking people to believe a lot of spin, unachievable promises and heartfelt apologies and vote for for a "change", or maybe that should just be "vote, for a change".
Actually, I tell a lie, it doesn't completely overwhelm me. Sometimes there is a little frisson of excitement at the possibility that the people of Britain might just once collectively call time on this comfy carousel of political clap-trap. Just say no! as the song went...
No, Gordon! No, Dave! No, Jack, Hillary, Harriet or whoever! No, not even you Nick!
We've had quite enough for these past decades, nay centuries, of being shunted up the gary glitter by folk who think they know better than us but whose ambitions so clearly exceed their abilities.
What would happen if we all got up one "Good Morning" Polling Day and simply voted "no"? At what point would the Westminster clique conclude they had completely lost our confidence and call a halt to their corruption and crookery? Or at what point can we refuse, with impunity, to submit to their authority?
And then, how do we create a new, bottom up, rather than up its own arse, democracy? This has much to commend it.
]]>
...to think that, in a few short weeks , it looks possible that party activists of all political colours will be expected to trudge the streets once again asking people to believe a lot of spin, unachievable promises and heartfelt apologies and vote for for a "change", or maybe that should just be "vote, for a change".
Actually, I tell a lie, it doesn't completely overwhelm me. Sometimes there is a little frisson of excitement at the possibility that the people of Britain might just once collectively call time on this comfy carousel of political clap-trap. Just say no! as the song went...
No, Gordon! No, Dave! No, Jack, Hillary, Harriet or whoever! No, not even you Nick!
We've had quite enough for these past decades, nay centuries, of being shunted up the gary glitter by folk who think they know better than us but whose ambitions so clearly exceed their abilities.
What would happen if we all got up one "Good Morning" Polling Day and simply voted "no"? At what point would the Westminster clique conclude they had completely lost our confidence and call a halt to their corruption and crookery? Or at what point can we refuse, with impunity, to submit to their authority?
And then, how do we create a new, bottom up, rather than up its own arse, democracy? This has much to commend it.
]]>Quelle Surprise: if you're a rich influential crackhead...http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/quelle_surprise_if_youre_rich_influential_crackhead2008-07-29T17:40:42+01:002008-07-29T17:50:41+01:00Jock
I don't suppose they were referred to the local DAAT (Drug and Alcohol Action Team), or SMART (Substance Misuse Arrest Referral Team), nor will the "formal warning" likely include a Drugs Testing and Treatment Order (DTTO). They're unlikely to have a probation officer who needs to send their details to the Employment Service to get their benefits stopped, but what the hell - they've got off basically...
Drugs charges against Tetra Pak heir and wife are dropped Elizabeth
Stewart and agencies guardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 29 2008 Article
history Drugs charges against the heir to the multi-billion dollar
Tetra Pak fortune and his wife have been dropped, it was announced
today. Prosecutor Martha Godwin told a hearing at City of Westminster
magistrates court that the charges would be dropped as part of an
arrangement that will see the couple given a formal police warning
...one rule for the few, and one for the many. Britain's drugs laws...useless, counterproductive and deadly...but usually only if you are poor.
]]>
I don't suppose they were referred to the local DAAT (Drug and Alcohol Action Team), or SMART (Substance Misuse Arrest Referral Team), nor will the "formal warning" likely include a Drugs Testing and Treatment Order (DTTO). They're unlikely to have a probation officer who needs to send their details to the Employment Service to get their benefits stopped, but what the hell - they've got off basically...
Drugs charges against Tetra Pak heir and wife are dropped Elizabeth
Stewart and agencies guardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 29 2008 Article
history Drugs charges against the heir to the multi-billion dollar
Tetra Pak fortune and his wife have been dropped, it was announced
today. Prosecutor Martha Godwin told a hearing at City of Westminster
magistrates court that the charges would be dropped as part of an
arrangement that will see the couple given a formal police warning
...one rule for the few, and one for the many. Britain's drugs laws...useless, counterproductive and deadly...but usually only if you are poor.
]]>Gordon Brown: no mere human?http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/gordon_brown_no_mere_human2008-07-29T17:25:52+01:002008-07-29T17:48:24+01:00Jock
I've often thought how extraordinary a person must be to be able to feel competent to "run" a country of tens of millions of people. Of course, personally, I don't believe anyone can. The cult of leadership is unhealthy for society. The notion that one person is somehow supremely capable above all the rest of us to make decisions affecting us all as comprehensively as the tentacles of government reach into our lives is repugnant to me.
But clearly blogging John Prescott buys in to this cult of leadership:
I’ve been honoured to work very closely with the last three leaders -
John, Tony and Gordon. I’m also proud to have worked with all of
Labour’s cabinet ministers since 1997. We have undoubtedly some very
talented men and women. But with respect, none of them at the present
moment, has anywhere near the skills and experience, nationally and
internationally, to lead this great party and country as we tackle
these unprecedented major global problems.
So, wait a second; we have a former postie in charge of a £100bn plus budget, including, ultimately, decisions of life and death importance and he's still lacking a certain "je ne sais quois". We have a trained lawyer who's held more of the great offices of state, and cabinet posts traditionally associated with the senior minister - Lord Chancellor, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Secretary of State for the Home Department - and still hasn't the "skills and experience"?
Of course we can all see that the incumbent whom Prescott holds in such esteem has been promoted beyond the level of his competence anyway. But the idea that there is some step change in skills and experience between Prime Minister and other ministers is just bonkers. Don't get me wrong, I hate the man with a passion, and this is a backhanded complement at best, but at least Tony Blair had the skills and helpers to spin his way through, to sound convincing and to persuade people, but he had no practical ministerial experience at all.
Of course, nobody has such skills, and perhaps especially those who have surrounded themselves in the political system for most of their adult lives. As the concentration of power into the hands of the Prime Minister in the UK has continued apace ever since Walpole was first in office so the world has become immeasurably more complex and fast moving, making it all the more ridiculous to expect one person to be an adequate representative for so many of us in so many aspects of governance and diplomacy. I daresay that, when the House of Lords in 1741 decried the idea that any minister should have primacy over others' departments, the daily work of those departments probably could have been handled by one person. Now, it is completely impossible and we should ditch the whole edifice.
]]>
I've often thought how extraordinary a person must be to be able to feel competent to "run" a country of tens of millions of people. Of course, personally, I don't believe anyone can. The cult of leadership is unhealthy for society. The notion that one person is somehow supremely capable above all the rest of us to make decisions affecting us all as comprehensively as the tentacles of government reach into our lives is repugnant to me.
But clearly blogging John Prescott buys in to this cult of leadership:
I’ve been honoured to work very closely with the last three leaders -
John, Tony and Gordon. I’m also proud to have worked with all of
Labour’s cabinet ministers since 1997. We have undoubtedly some very
talented men and women. But with respect, none of them at the present
moment, has anywhere near the skills and experience, nationally and
internationally, to lead this great party and country as we tackle
these unprecedented major global problems.
So, wait a second; we have a former postie in charge of a £100bn plus budget, including, ultimately, decisions of life and death importance and he's still lacking a certain "je ne sais quois". We have a trained lawyer who's held more of the great offices of state, and cabinet posts traditionally associated with the senior minister - Lord Chancellor, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Secretary of State for the Home Department - and still hasn't the "skills and experience"?
Of course we can all see that the incumbent whom Prescott holds in such esteem has been promoted beyond the level of his competence anyway. But the idea that there is some step change in skills and experience between Prime Minister and other ministers is just bonkers. Don't get me wrong, I hate the man with a passion, and this is a backhanded complement at best, but at least Tony Blair had the skills and helpers to spin his way through, to sound convincing and to persuade people, but he had no practical ministerial experience at all.
Of course, nobody has such skills, and perhaps especially those who have surrounded themselves in the political system for most of their adult lives. As the concentration of power into the hands of the Prime Minister in the UK has continued apace ever since Walpole was first in office so the world has become immeasurably more complex and fast moving, making it all the more ridiculous to expect one person to be an adequate representative for so many of us in so many aspects of governance and diplomacy. I daresay that, when the House of Lords in 1741 decried the idea that any minister should have primacy over others' departments, the daily work of those departments probably could have been handled by one person. Now, it is completely impossible and we should ditch the whole edifice.
]]>Land Tax and Citizens Income - further discussion...http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/land_tax_and_citizens_income_further_discussion2008-07-26T02:00:03+01:002008-07-26T04:36:26+01:00Jock
Again, I'm starting a new post to respond to some very interesting comments by Tim Carpenter. My inept attempt at a Drupal template means it's almost possible to follow a thread of comments and especially given this is going to be another long response I think it deserves an airing on its own.
For anyone coming new to this debate, it follows on from my original "three point plan" for equity and economic justice and some clarifications and responses I gave yesterday to comments on that original by Tim Carpenter, Head of Policy at the Libertarian Party UK.
Tim, thanks for taking the time to respond. However I think we are, as a colleague used to say to me "talking past each one another". Paul Lockett has put it all a deal more eloquently than myself , and for that, and if I have caused any confusion, apologies.
I am a geo-libertarian (of the "geo-mutualist" variety if you will). The main thing you seem not to have appreciated is that in calling for the "Single Tax" I mean just that - the community/state can only take economic rent on the land resources within its jurisdiction and has no call on incomes or trade. As I understand it this is the "purist Georgist" position.
The ideal 'state' would be limited to collecting the rent and distributing it all as a dividend to citizens for the reasons Paul outlined. "Commonwealth" - you are right, it's lazy, I should put a space between "common" and "wealth"! Economic rent from the finite natural resources we all require to share is "common wealth" and should be collected as such and distributed as fully as possible whilst every other tax is a tariff.
Tim: "1. When I say who defines the value of your land, you say "why does anyone need to decide", yet immediately go on to talk about collecting the tax! Someone DOES decide the taxable value and that affects the actual value. Can you not see that?"
No, the market sets a location's value. It does it all the time at the moment. And it will continue to do so in an LVT system. Even in a "100% LVT" system. If a location is appreciating in value, buyers will be prepared to pay a premium over last year's rent bill and vice versa, in a falling market sellers will effectively have to be prepared to pay someone to take the rent bill off them. The following year's rent bill will reflect that premium or discount by going up or down respectively.
Tim: "2. As you should know, we aim to eradicate income tax., so the comparison does not hold."
See above - I'm a single taxer. No income tax here either. It is a tariff on employment and trade. Though I would say that if a local community decided mutually to have a local tax on incomes or sales to finance some mutually agreed local project it would be doing so in competition with neighbouring communities that perhaps were not or were charging a different rate or a different tax. Tax competition is good, in itself, isn't it? Also I am aware of some "single" taxers who would justify retaining some income tax at least temporarily in order to try to address the "embedded" historical advantages of monopoly ownership. I don't.
Tim: "The problem comes when some local area under the influence of whomsoever, adjusts taxation on land they wish to gain access to because a new development is coming. So, building a road, whack up the value of land next to it. Farmer has no CAPITAL to develop it, so has to sell it for a knock-down price because he HAS to sell to meet the tax bill. If this does not concentrate land into a few hands, I do no know what would. This is just one example of the potential risks."
This appears to be Churchill's "market gardener" bogey, or, to others, the "poor widow" bogey. If you look at it under the current system, that same farmer, in similar circumstances is perfectly able, regardless of the squalor growing around, to sit on that land, not paying anything and watch its value "ripen" until the value, created merely by excluding others from what they need to use, is so great it becomes irrational not to sell. That process is outright extortion.
In fact, under an LVT system, land values at the margin would tend to move much more incrementally in any case. In the absence of other restrictions - zoning, green belts etc (it is your policy to remove those restrictions once an LVT system proves practical isn't it?) - you would not get these large leaps in hope value. I would actually retain green belts and such like for a while after LVT was implemented so that it can have its greatest effect in turning existing urban land to its most efficient use before going for sprawl. But I am prepared to be convinced on that. After all, we know that at relatively low densities compared with what planning guidance seeks nowadays, it would take up less than three quarters of one per cent of the non urbanized land in England to build the three million new homes predicted to be necessary over the next twenty years.
But once a point of equilibrium was reached between supply and demand rents at the margins of production would move slowly and via the democratic influence of the market. If that market and the community that makes up its participants eventually get as far as that farmer's land and all that remains to bring it in from the margin to profitable development is to develop a road, the farmer will have had plenty of opportunity to see it coming long before the tax bill becomes an issue for him.
Tim: "3. Living costs - if you have CBI as described you would still keep the most expensive parts of the Welfare bureaucracy - the entire means-testing apparatus. Housing benefit would probably remain in all but name."
I disagree. But I don't think what you understand me to have described is what I think I have! ie, in particular, that I am not paying for CBI out of income taxes, but out of the community collected rent on economic land. Land at the margins tends as I said towards a nil value. More people will be able to own their home because they will not be borrowing twice as much as the value of the capital good (the building) in order to pay the land value in up front capital. Renting a basic home at the margins ought to be achievable out of the Citizens Income.
With so many pulled out of poverty anyway by not having punitive benefits withdrawal regimes that reduce the marginal value of doing even the smallest amount of paid work and by the reduced costs of living owing to tariff eradication and the better off keeping more of their own money, the capacity of private charity or local mutualism to assist the much smaller number of people that would be needing top up hand outs above their CBI would be much increased.
Tim: "4. Income. You need to clarify here - are you saying that COMPANIES have 40% more or that wage earners do? Be under no illusions, if you have CBI, income tax will be enormous. I worked out once that if we went for CBI with no other tax changes but a cull of QANGOs, income tax would need to be about 64% flat from the very first penny (IT is currently £140bln, 7k x 50m = £350bln pa). A HUGE disincentive to working especially at the lower end. Result: black economy, unproductive citizens, more companies shutting down and a growth in imports (and do not say "cheap imports make us richer" because that only holds if we are simultaneously exporting a greater amount of higher value exports)."
I hope you'll agree that that objection is moot given I am not talking about income taxes at all. My calculation of the CBI cost at £5200 pa for adults and a decreasing proportion for under-18s to 20% for 2 year olds is around £285bn. £245bn if only the adults. I reckon there was about £200bn a year's worth of economic rent in residential land alone at the recent peak of the market. I don't think it is beyond belief that there's another £85bn in commercial, industrial, retail and, possibly, agricultural economic rents.
Tim: "5. Movement to low tax areas: A company will consider workforce supply as a prime consideration, not just rental costs. If that were not the case, expensive London would be empty. People pay top dollar for London rents because of a massive pool of labour - they can gain access to many cheap or more chance of snaring the best. To think LVT would make a company move out to a depressed area? Those places are already cheap. Why doesn't it happen now? Limited skilled labour pool. As you say the Government does it now and did it in the past (remember the Hillman Imp?) and it creates quasi-soviets. If LVT has an influence, it might IMHO move a few companies, deter some from even setting up where they need to and the rest of the companies will be bled paying higher rates just to keep near the labour pool they require. In the case of London, the move will be to New York or Hong Kong and we all lose out."
There are so many issues in this paragraph I can only assume again that I have failed adequately to have explained my position. At the moment businesses pay rents, yes? In an LVT system they will still pay rents. The only difference is that whereas currently the entire rent, that which accrues to both the building and the site or location goes to the current landowner, ie it is enclosed, privatized. Under an LVT system, the same rent is due (assuming they were paying the market rent originally), only the portion of it that accrues to the location goes to the community and that attributable to the building to the building owner. There's no corporation taxes, no more employee taxes. There's no increasing of rent or rates; there's no bleeding anyone. Except those, as landowners, who have bled the rest of us for centuries.
Areas of low land value will also be areas in which it is cheaper for employees to live (lower LVT for them too). For a business operating at the edge of profit it would seem to me to be quite an attractive move. But one that remains in London because their key skills are there is not penalised by that. Indeed, if sufficient other businesses do it who do not need to be in London for optimal profitability do move, costs will also likely fall for those left behind, increasing their profit, distributable to capital and labour.
I think there is, in particular, one form of LVT that could have a significant effect in this regard...the auctioning of air-space, via "landing slots" at airports. Making more efficient use of regional airports would draw business into those areas. I'm likely to propose this to our regional conference this autumn as part of an "anti third runway at Heathrow" motion. Interesting choices of examples though - Hong Kong of course is famous for having state owned land - everything except the Anglican Cathedral is leasehold and that has been used to raise revenue in a form of LVT and keep income taxes low. Modern valuation tracking and billing systems would make that far more efficient and not prone to some of the problems Hong Kong suffered by having too infrequent valuations.
In China before Mao took over, I understand that Chiang Kai Chek's regime looked into LVT as a way of staving off the rise of Mao's totalitarian collectivism. And in the former Soviet Union, Gorbachev I believe looked into LVT as a way of capturing the value of natural resources and in not implementing it allowed the so called "oligarchs" (really "kleptocrats" in my opinion) to enclose the revenue from that vast pool of common wealth.
I'm getting a bit tired here! I'm going to call it quite at this point and maybe think some more about the issue of mutualism. I think Paul answered the point about the "state as landlord" objections quite satisfactorily and there's no need for me to repeat it. But for fairness, other readers can read Tim's further points in the comments on the previous post.
Tim: "p.s. your page has a script that my browser asks me to kill due to risk of resource hogging."
Yes - I only notice this on older machines or slower network connections - I never experience the problem at home or at work. I think it must have been an advertising panel I have just removed, but if others still experience the problem let me know and I'll have another look.
]]>
Again, I'm starting a new post to respond to some very interesting comments by Tim Carpenter. My inept attempt at a Drupal template means it's almost possible to follow a thread of comments and especially given this is going to be another long response I think it deserves an airing on its own.
For anyone coming new to this debate, it follows on from my original "three point plan" for equity and economic justice and some clarifications and responses I gave yesterday to comments on that original by Tim Carpenter, Head of Policy at the Libertarian Party UK.
Tim, thanks for taking the time to respond. However I think we are, as a colleague used to say to me "talking past each one another". Paul Lockett has put it all a deal more eloquently than myself , and for that, and if I have caused any confusion, apologies.
I am a geo-libertarian (of the "geo-mutualist" variety if you will). The main thing you seem not to have appreciated is that in calling for the "Single Tax" I mean just that - the community/state can only take economic rent on the land resources within its jurisdiction and has no call on incomes or trade. As I understand it this is the "purist Georgist" position.
The ideal 'state' would be limited to collecting the rent and distributing it all as a dividend to citizens for the reasons Paul outlined. "Commonwealth" - you are right, it's lazy, I should put a space between "common" and "wealth"! Economic rent from the finite natural resources we all require to share is "common wealth" and should be collected as such and distributed as fully as possible whilst every other tax is a tariff.
Tim: "1. When I say who defines the value of your land, you say "why does anyone need to decide", yet immediately go on to talk about collecting the tax! Someone DOES decide the taxable value and that affects the actual value. Can you not see that?"
No, the market sets a location's value. It does it all the time at the moment. And it will continue to do so in an LVT system. Even in a "100% LVT" system. If a location is appreciating in value, buyers will be prepared to pay a premium over last year's rent bill and vice versa, in a falling market sellers will effectively have to be prepared to pay someone to take the rent bill off them. The following year's rent bill will reflect that premium or discount by going up or down respectively.
Tim: "2. As you should know, we aim to eradicate income tax., so the comparison does not hold."
See above - I'm a single taxer. No income tax here either. It is a tariff on employment and trade. Though I would say that if a local community decided mutually to have a local tax on incomes or sales to finance some mutually agreed local project it would be doing so in competition with neighbouring communities that perhaps were not or were charging a different rate or a different tax. Tax competition is good, in itself, isn't it? Also I am aware of some "single" taxers who would justify retaining some income tax at least temporarily in order to try to address the "embedded" historical advantages of monopoly ownership. I don't.
Tim: "The problem comes when some local area under the influence of whomsoever, adjusts taxation on land they wish to gain access to because a new development is coming. So, building a road, whack up the value of land next to it. Farmer has no CAPITAL to develop it, so has to sell it for a knock-down price because he HAS to sell to meet the tax bill. If this does not concentrate land into a few hands, I do no know what would. This is just one example of the potential risks."
This appears to be Churchill's "market gardener" bogey, or, to others, the "poor widow" bogey. If you look at it under the current system, that same farmer, in similar circumstances is perfectly able, regardless of the squalor growing around, to sit on that land, not paying anything and watch its value "ripen" until the value, created merely by excluding others from what they need to use, is so great it becomes irrational not to sell. That process is outright extortion.
In fact, under an LVT system, land values at the margin would tend to move much more incrementally in any case. In the absence of other restrictions - zoning, green belts etc (it is your policy to remove those restrictions once an LVT system proves practical isn't it?) - you would not get these large leaps in hope value. I would actually retain green belts and such like for a while after LVT was implemented so that it can have its greatest effect in turning existing urban land to its most efficient use before going for sprawl. But I am prepared to be convinced on that. After all, we know that at relatively low densities compared with what planning guidance seeks nowadays, it would take up less than three quarters of one per cent of the non urbanized land in England to build the three million new homes predicted to be necessary over the next twenty years.
But once a point of equilibrium was reached between supply and demand rents at the margins of production would move slowly and via the democratic influence of the market. If that market and the community that makes up its participants eventually get as far as that farmer's land and all that remains to bring it in from the margin to profitable development is to develop a road, the farmer will have had plenty of opportunity to see it coming long before the tax bill becomes an issue for him.
Tim: "3. Living costs - if you have CBI as described you would still keep the most expensive parts of the Welfare bureaucracy - the entire means-testing apparatus. Housing benefit would probably remain in all but name."
I disagree. But I don't think what you understand me to have described is what I think I have! ie, in particular, that I am not paying for CBI out of income taxes, but out of the community collected rent on economic land. Land at the margins tends as I said towards a nil value. More people will be able to own their home because they will not be borrowing twice as much as the value of the capital good (the building) in order to pay the land value in up front capital. Renting a basic home at the margins ought to be achievable out of the Citizens Income.
With so many pulled out of poverty anyway by not having punitive benefits withdrawal regimes that reduce the marginal value of doing even the smallest amount of paid work and by the reduced costs of living owing to tariff eradication and the better off keeping more of their own money, the capacity of private charity or local mutualism to assist the much smaller number of people that would be needing top up hand outs above their CBI would be much increased.
Tim: "4. Income. You need to clarify here - are you saying that COMPANIES have 40% more or that wage earners do? Be under no illusions, if you have CBI, income tax will be enormous. I worked out once that if we went for CBI with no other tax changes but a cull of QANGOs, income tax would need to be about 64% flat from the very first penny (IT is currently £140bln, 7k x 50m = £350bln pa). A HUGE disincentive to working especially at the lower end. Result: black economy, unproductive citizens, more companies shutting down and a growth in imports (and do not say "cheap imports make us richer" because that only holds if we are simultaneously exporting a greater amount of higher value exports)."
I hope you'll agree that that objection is moot given I am not talking about income taxes at all. My calculation of the CBI cost at £5200 pa for adults and a decreasing proportion for under-18s to 20% for 2 year olds is around £285bn. £245bn if only the adults. I reckon there was about £200bn a year's worth of economic rent in residential land alone at the recent peak of the market. I don't think it is beyond belief that there's another £85bn in commercial, industrial, retail and, possibly, agricultural economic rents.
Tim: "5. Movement to low tax areas: A company will consider workforce supply as a prime consideration, not just rental costs. If that were not the case, expensive London would be empty. People pay top dollar for London rents because of a massive pool of labour - they can gain access to many cheap or more chance of snaring the best. To think LVT would make a company move out to a depressed area? Those places are already cheap. Why doesn't it happen now? Limited skilled labour pool. As you say the Government does it now and did it in the past (remember the Hillman Imp?) and it creates quasi-soviets. If LVT has an influence, it might IMHO move a few companies, deter some from even setting up where they need to and the rest of the companies will be bled paying higher rates just to keep near the labour pool they require. In the case of London, the move will be to New York or Hong Kong and we all lose out."
There are so many issues in this paragraph I can only assume again that I have failed adequately to have explained my position. At the moment businesses pay rents, yes? In an LVT system they will still pay rents. The only difference is that whereas currently the entire rent, that which accrues to both the building and the site or location goes to the current landowner, ie it is enclosed, privatized. Under an LVT system, the same rent is due (assuming they were paying the market rent originally), only the portion of it that accrues to the location goes to the community and that attributable to the building to the building owner. There's no corporation taxes, no more employee taxes. There's no increasing of rent or rates; there's no bleeding anyone. Except those, as landowners, who have bled the rest of us for centuries.
Areas of low land value will also be areas in which it is cheaper for employees to live (lower LVT for them too). For a business operating at the edge of profit it would seem to me to be quite an attractive move. But one that remains in London because their key skills are there is not penalised by that. Indeed, if sufficient other businesses do it who do not need to be in London for optimal profitability do move, costs will also likely fall for those left behind, increasing their profit, distributable to capital and labour.
I think there is, in particular, one form of LVT that could have a significant effect in this regard...the auctioning of air-space, via "landing slots" at airports. Making more efficient use of regional airports would draw business into those areas. I'm likely to propose this to our regional conference this autumn as part of an "anti third runway at Heathrow" motion. Interesting choices of examples though - Hong Kong of course is famous for having state owned land - everything except the Anglican Cathedral is leasehold and that has been used to raise revenue in a form of LVT and keep income taxes low. Modern valuation tracking and billing systems would make that far more efficient and not prone to some of the problems Hong Kong suffered by having too infrequent valuations.
In China before Mao took over, I understand that Chiang Kai Chek's regime looked into LVT as a way of staving off the rise of Mao's totalitarian collectivism. And in the former Soviet Union, Gorbachev I believe looked into LVT as a way of capturing the value of natural resources and in not implementing it allowed the so called "oligarchs" (really "kleptocrats" in my opinion) to enclose the revenue from that vast pool of common wealth.
I'm getting a bit tired here! I'm going to call it quite at this point and maybe think some more about the issue of mutualism. I think Paul answered the point about the "state as landlord" objections quite satisfactorily and there's no need for me to repeat it. But for fairness, other readers can read Tim's further points in the comments on the previous post.
Tim: "p.s. your page has a script that my browser asks me to kill due to risk of resource hogging."
Yes - I only notice this on older machines or slower network connections - I never experience the problem at home or at work. I think it must have been an advertising panel I have just removed, but if others still experience the problem let me know and I'll have another look.
]]>Response to some comments on "Unconditional Benefits"http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/response_some_comments_unconditional_benefits2008-07-24T20:52:49+01:002008-07-25T00:20:26+01:00Jock
In my last post I set out what I considered to be the three necessary reforms to create a more equitable society - Land Value Tax (or "The Single Tax"), Citizen's Income and Ownership for All.
In the comments, Tim Carpenter, Head of Policy at the Libertarian Party UK had several objections that I would like to address:
Tim: "LVT can seem fine and dandy at the first off, but over time who decides the future value of your land?"
Why does anyone need to decide the future value of your land? In any case, even if that were necessary the market does that anyway even at present - what people pay for a property reflects their view of what it's worth into the future - they are, literally paying up front, to the previous owner, the rent for a number of years into the future. I agree there are issues with a "100% Land Tax" where the community attempts to collect 100% of the rent (as I and other geo-libertarians would advocate). This would make the capital land value tend toward zero and how would you know whether it's moving up or down over time? Well, the answer I believe is that it would trade at a discount or premium reflecting the buyer's and seller's view of whether the "passing rent" (ie the LVT bill) was set too high or too low.
Tim: "It is fraught with risks, opportunities for corruption and chaos. If you think compulsory purchase was bad..."
As I understand it several of the big RICS member firms have discussed this and have proposed a valuation regime that they would be comfortable bidding for and would expect to be able to handle things like appeals. The Oxfordshire pilot study showed that on average there was only a need to value about one site in ten - ie that that many nearby sites would share the same land value. And there are developing ever more sophisticated data and models for modelling things like "landvaluescape" and how it changes in reaction to things like new infrastructure.
I only don't believe it is as daunting a task as taxing incomes in the multitude of ways we currently do.
Tim: "If CBI is only half what is needed to live on, then surely we will still need welfare."
The Joseph Rowntree report I mentioned included a lot of things that go much further than the "basics needed to survive" (and the headline figure of £13,400 was "pre-tax". Not that I claim that would halve the bill. However the removal of the deadweight loss created by the other taxes that would be repealed, and the ending of subsidies, particularly on agricultural land and other tariffs on the necessities of life would make them cheaper. Two ways to be wealthier - have more money or make everything you need cheaper. As Frank Gallagher in "Shameless" says "Make poverty history; cheaper drugs now!"
Tim: "Removing the minimum wage is fine but be under no illusion, the CBI will be factored into that wage (or lack of)."
But, first, they would also be factoring in the lack of payroll taxes and income taxes - they'd have nearly 40% more in their "wage bill" to play with in many cases. Second, the CBI has two purposes in my mind - one of them is to give people enough to survive, just, day to day, but the intentional beneficial effect of that is that people have a cushion that empowers them to say "no" to a coercive deal from an employer. If the marginal benefit from working x hours for y pay is not worth it and you know you can survive until you get another, hopefully better, offer, this changes the balance of power between employer and employee. And, because it is the same for all workers, and not just the ones currently stuck in the benefits trap, the employers are more likely to have to listen and produce decent remuneration. Though I do concede that there would be hundreds of thousands of currently civil servants in the job market to depress wages...:)
Tim: "It will be no solution to poverty AFAICT and your assertion that it would eradicate x y or x is not explained. I think parish provision is an interesting one, but frankly, look at places like S Wales and you will find that parishes will have little or no wealth creation so no money to spend on their army of dependants - central funding will be needed in precisely the places where people say it causes problems of unconditionality - for once the parish is spending other peoples' money the problems are right back with you again."
However, the LVT is more likely to move economic activity to areas where companies, and employees, and therefore also companies as employers, will pay less tax, which is turn will raise the economic activity in poorer areas and tend to level out regional disparities of economic activity. It cannot be any worse than the current situation where some regional economies make up more than half of their regional GDP from state handouts and subsidies to individuals and businesses.
Tim: "As another person has mentioned, the mutualist company can occur NOW. What is to change here? The fact that it does not happen now should either make you ask what stops it legally/financially or regulatory OR that it is actually a factor of how humans are socially, in that it takes certain individuals the gumption to kick start a company (and that is NEVER to be underetimated) and once they do so, why would they then let a whole load of strangers take just as much out of it as he/she does?"
I certainly don't underestimate the setting up of a company. I have been an employer for precisely one month in my life and it was a bloody nightmare. But it would certainly be less troublesome if I was not burdened with all those damn tax calculations! But again, I refer the honorable gentleman to the answer I gave a moment ago - the "cushion" that empowers the employee to say "no" a bit more; to hold out for a better share of the total returns to a business. This of course goes to the core of mutualism as I see it, as opposed to the anarcho-capitalist type of libertarianism. Mutualists believe that the current capitalist system is lop-sided, "toxic" and that it is itself a coercive and damagingly hierarchical system. Empowering labour to hold out for a better deal, making use of new corporate forms like limited liability partnerships and so on, will accelerate this change.
...and finally...
Tim: "Monetary reform and changes to fiat issuance will not happen by itself. The problem is coming up with something to replace it that actually works. I have seen many attempts and none appear to work or are just a cover operation for hatstand ideas like "social credit"."
As I think I said in response to another comment, I'm actually quite agnostic about how monetary reform should happen and what direction it should take. Personally I like the Hayek idea of fully privatised commercially competing currencies. I am told that the legislation actually already exists to allow commercial "complementary" currencies run by corporations. Air miles, Nectar and Kit-Kash are but early examples.
But consider this - if you collect 100% land rent and the capital value of land falls towards zero, the structure of the money system is bound to change - a large proportion of our broad money is lent into existence to pay for land in the form of mortgages. At the very least banks are going to need to have to adjust to that.
Actually I believe the real question is what lengths states will go to to prevent what I see as inevitable change if we allowed it. I haven't played there for a long time, and the hype about it seems to have died down a lot, but "Second Life" and "Kiva" are but a glimpse of what might be to come.
Incidentally, I presume I've been linked to in a discussion on the Libertarian Party forums (link will only work if you are a member and registered on their forums). And that, now they have closed the public forums that were accessible to non-members, I am unable to see what people are saying. I believe that none of these three policy areas step outside the bounds of libertarianism. In fact that they address more inequities that create coercive human relationships than, say, anarcho-capitalist flavours of libertarianism do. It would be nice to get the jist of what you are saying, if anything, over there!
]]>
In my last post I set out what I considered to be the three necessary reforms to create a more equitable society - Land Value Tax (or "The Single Tax"), Citizen's Income and Ownership for All.
In the comments, Tim Carpenter, Head of Policy at the Libertarian Party UK had several objections that I would like to address:
Tim: "LVT can seem fine and dandy at the first off, but over time who decides the future value of your land?"
Why does anyone need to decide the future value of your land? In any case, even if that were necessary the market does that anyway even at present - what people pay for a property reflects their view of what it's worth into the future - they are, literally paying up front, to the previous owner, the rent for a number of years into the future. I agree there are issues with a "100% Land Tax" where the community attempts to collect 100% of the rent (as I and other geo-libertarians would advocate). This would make the capital land value tend toward zero and how would you know whether it's moving up or down over time? Well, the answer I believe is that it would trade at a discount or premium reflecting the buyer's and seller's view of whether the "passing rent" (ie the LVT bill) was set too high or too low.
Tim: "It is fraught with risks, opportunities for corruption and chaos. If you think compulsory purchase was bad..."
As I understand it several of the big RICS member firms have discussed this and have proposed a valuation regime that they would be comfortable bidding for and would expect to be able to handle things like appeals. The Oxfordshire pilot study showed that on average there was only a need to value about one site in ten - ie that that many nearby sites would share the same land value. And there are developing ever more sophisticated data and models for modelling things like "landvaluescape" and how it changes in reaction to things like new infrastructure.
I only don't believe it is as daunting a task as taxing incomes in the multitude of ways we currently do.
Tim: "If CBI is only half what is needed to live on, then surely we will still need welfare."
The Joseph Rowntree report I mentioned included a lot of things that go much further than the "basics needed to survive" (and the headline figure of £13,400 was "pre-tax". Not that I claim that would halve the bill. However the removal of the deadweight loss created by the other taxes that would be repealed, and the ending of subsidies, particularly on agricultural land and other tariffs on the necessities of life would make them cheaper. Two ways to be wealthier - have more money or make everything you need cheaper. As Frank Gallagher in "Shameless" says "Make poverty history; cheaper drugs now!"
Tim: "Removing the minimum wage is fine but be under no illusion, the CBI will be factored into that wage (or lack of)."
But, first, they would also be factoring in the lack of payroll taxes and income taxes - they'd have nearly 40% more in their "wage bill" to play with in many cases. Second, the CBI has two purposes in my mind - one of them is to give people enough to survive, just, day to day, but the intentional beneficial effect of that is that people have a cushion that empowers them to say "no" to a coercive deal from an employer. If the marginal benefit from working x hours for y pay is not worth it and you know you can survive until you get another, hopefully better, offer, this changes the balance of power between employer and employee. And, because it is the same for all workers, and not just the ones currently stuck in the benefits trap, the employers are more likely to have to listen and produce decent remuneration. Though I do concede that there would be hundreds of thousands of currently civil servants in the job market to depress wages...:)
Tim: "It will be no solution to poverty AFAICT and your assertion that it would eradicate x y or x is not explained. I think parish provision is an interesting one, but frankly, look at places like S Wales and you will find that parishes will have little or no wealth creation so no money to spend on their army of dependants - central funding will be needed in precisely the places where people say it causes problems of unconditionality - for once the parish is spending other peoples' money the problems are right back with you again."
However, the LVT is more likely to move economic activity to areas where companies, and employees, and therefore also companies as employers, will pay less tax, which is turn will raise the economic activity in poorer areas and tend to level out regional disparities of economic activity. It cannot be any worse than the current situation where some regional economies make up more than half of their regional GDP from state handouts and subsidies to individuals and businesses.
Tim: "As another person has mentioned, the mutualist company can occur NOW. What is to change here? The fact that it does not happen now should either make you ask what stops it legally/financially or regulatory OR that it is actually a factor of how humans are socially, in that it takes certain individuals the gumption to kick start a company (and that is NEVER to be underetimated) and once they do so, why would they then let a whole load of strangers take just as much out of it as he/she does?"
I certainly don't underestimate the setting up of a company. I have been an employer for precisely one month in my life and it was a bloody nightmare. But it would certainly be less troublesome if I was not burdened with all those damn tax calculations! But again, I refer the honorable gentleman to the answer I gave a moment ago - the "cushion" that empowers the employee to say "no" a bit more; to hold out for a better share of the total returns to a business. This of course goes to the core of mutualism as I see it, as opposed to the anarcho-capitalist type of libertarianism. Mutualists believe that the current capitalist system is lop-sided, "toxic" and that it is itself a coercive and damagingly hierarchical system. Empowering labour to hold out for a better deal, making use of new corporate forms like limited liability partnerships and so on, will accelerate this change.
...and finally...
Tim: "Monetary reform and changes to fiat issuance will not happen by itself. The problem is coming up with something to replace it that actually works. I have seen many attempts and none appear to work or are just a cover operation for hatstand ideas like "social credit"."
As I think I said in response to another comment, I'm actually quite agnostic about how monetary reform should happen and what direction it should take. Personally I like the Hayek idea of fully privatised commercially competing currencies. I am told that the legislation actually already exists to allow commercial "complementary" currencies run by corporations. Air miles, Nectar and Kit-Kash are but early examples.
But consider this - if you collect 100% land rent and the capital value of land falls towards zero, the structure of the money system is bound to change - a large proportion of our broad money is lent into existence to pay for land in the form of mortgages. At the very least banks are going to need to have to adjust to that.
Actually I believe the real question is what lengths states will go to to prevent what I see as inevitable change if we allowed it. I haven't played there for a long time, and the hype about it seems to have died down a lot, but "Second Life" and "Kiva" are but a glimpse of what might be to come.
Incidentally, I presume I've been linked to in a discussion on the Libertarian Party forums (link will only work if you are a member and registered on their forums). And that, now they have closed the public forums that were accessible to non-members, I am unable to see what people are saying. I believe that none of these three policy areas step outside the bounds of libertarianism. In fact that they address more inequities that create coercive human relationships than, say, anarcho-capitalist flavours of libertarianism do. It would be nice to get the jist of what you are saying, if anything, over there!
]]>Unconditional benefits: now is the time to smash that "cosy consensus"http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/unconditional_benefits_now_time_smash_cosy_consensus2008-07-23T14:57:15+01:002008-07-23T15:41:41+01:00Jock
Nick Clegg, upon his election as Lib Dem leader, said that he wanted to break what he called the "cosy consensus" between Labour and the Tories that has impoverished Britain's political discourse. With Labour now nicking policies on welfare from the Tories, and both vying to be "tough on the work-shy", now is surely the time to offer a radical alternative.
It is not just their approach to benefits that is backwards in vision, but the whole assumption that "full employment" is the thing we should be aiming for. Such a policy actually highlights even more starkly the difference between being independently wealthy on the one hand and having to work for the basics of life on the other. In an era in which more and more of our tasks can be automated or even exported we should be aiming more to live off the financial assets that past productivity has created.
Liberals have, for a century, harboured the secrets of changing all that. Shamefully, over the past quarter of a century we have dropped every one of those secrets from our policy platform, presumably so we could compete in that "cosy consensus". We are only just on the cusp of really rediscovering the oldest of these...
Three key policies in particular would end this cycle of dependency once and for all. A bold claim for sure, but why not? We have gone through sixty years of the welfare state and are still arguing about the outcomes of welfare, health, housing and education, just as Beveridge was trying to address in his report.
The Single Tax - the one policy we are slowly re-engaging with. Though we seem to be stuck on the idea that LVT is simply an alternative tax, we need to get beyond that and understand that it goes to the very core of our relationship with the planet. Land, economic land that is, "everything in the material universe not created by the application of labour and capital" (so basically the things of nature that we all have to share between the 6bn of us born here), is the third factor of production. David Ricardo pointed out nearly two hundred years ago now that land, especially where it is a monopoly, such as with a physical location or site in the built environment or, say, a section of EM Spectrum that can only be used by one wireless operator at a time, tends to absorb the surplus value created by the labour and capital expended around it that makes it a popular location. Ground rent is created where there is more than one potential occupier that could make good, productive use of a site. It creates a massive transfer of wealth from those who don't own a popular site to those who do, through no effort on the part of the owner of that site.
As a non-land example, the UK government has auctioned off the part of the EM spectrum that carries the new WiMax wireless network signals to a single enterprise, Freedom4 for the whole of the UK. They now hold a monopoly on something that is a gift of nature that anyone else wanting to develop WiMAX networks have to use. They can therefore charge more or less what they like for licenses to others to use that part of the spectrum whilst doing precisely nothing to develop the services that would run on it.
Creating so called "free land" by capturing the value of these natural assets for the common wealth rather than having to tax economically beneficial processes like work and trade is absolutely essential to achieve equity. And the best time to do it would be the bottom of a property cycle. Hint. Hint!!
Citizen's Income - this is the real challenge to the "cosy consensus" that has emerged in the past few days on welfare. It was, I believe, Lib Dem policy up until around 1991. At the top of the recent property cycle there would have been enough land tax (on residential locations alone, setting aside what might be available through commercial, industrial, central business disrict or agricultural locations, airspace, EM spectrum or other forms of economic land) available to pay a citizen's income of about £100 per week per adult and a proportion of that for children depending on age. Further reforms, for example on seignorage - the extraordinary "profit" that creating money as debt gives to the banks that is rightfully part of the common wealth (since the money they "create" is denominated in our national currency) - would enable us to pay for the current health or education budgets if we wanted to, or to add around another £1,000 to the adult Citizen's Income.
People seem to have a problem with the idea of giving everyone an unconditional and non-withdrawable payment like a Citizen's Income because, they say, it will entrench the work-shy in their bad habits, maybe even create more of them. But let's face it, if Joseph Rowntree's lot reckons you need £13,400 to live a basic but comfortable life in the UK, less than half that is hardly going to be comfortable. And it's not meant to be comfortable. It is meant to be hard enough to persuade anyone who wants anything more than the basics of life to do something to earn some additional money. Minimum wage would be scrapped so people would be free to choose to accept a job for whatever they like - just to be able to top up their citizen's income to whatever level they want, but crucially, it would not be withdrawn when people start earning, so there is every incentive for all that nearly ten per cent of the population trapped on various benefit systems to work, even if only a little.
Yes, in the light of campaigns by the tabloids against "benefits scroungers" and the "something for nothing culture" it will be a difficult alternative to sell, but we should be prepared to do it. Think of it the other way around - if we all contribute to the value of locations by our activities around them, why should the dividend from that only go to those who can't work, say? Why not to all of us. It creates a cushion to fall back on in hard times and the ability, even if only for a short while, to be more choosy about the work we accept. No longer do we have to accept the lowest job just to survive. Instead of only the very wealthy gaining financial independence by privatising the collection of land rents, everyone gains a measure of financial security from the common wealth we all contribute to creating.
You could then say that any additional "benefits" must be provided locally, through locally raised taxes and much more accountably than at present. The "parish rate" would have to be used to provide say a basic education for those who were not earning anything more than their Citizen's Income and A&E type health services. But remember, much of the illness in society is because of the sort of poverty that both the Single Tax and the Citizen's Income would eradicate. And not having to pay several taxes on incomes - employers' and employees' NI, income and capital gains taxes - would enable more people to save more of their incomes in productive financial assets for their old age reducing the reliance on a crumbling state pensions system. And, apart from say the armed forces, the troughs at Westminster could be emptied and everyone sent home (and James Purnell would have to find a real job, or discover how life is on the dole perhaps!)
Ownership for All - this third plank of Liberal "redistributive" policy came to the fore in the middle decades of the twentieth century, this is crucial to creating more financial independence for more people. I'm not talking about the sort of free for all sale of state companies as in the eighties, which became in effect a gambling opportunity for anyone who had a few quid stashed away - "Let's have a flutter on Sid" type thing. This is about creating structures in which the workers can share in the success of their employers by becoming part owners. Much more like, say, John Lewis, or, in the seventies, the National Freight Corporation. And things have moved on even since then. New corporate forms such as limited liability partnerships enable different types of partners entitled to different proportions of the profit, not just the providers of the capital.
Again, with the Citizen's Income behind them enabling people to turn down work that does not offer optimum returns to the worker, more and more employers would have to offer the sort of package of benefits that enables ordinary workers to build up a financial stake for the future. These financial assets are fairer than putting all your capital assets in the single basket of one's home, which is not really "net wealth" in any case. More liberal than both socialist style "common ownership" and ownership solely by the capitalist, such partnerships would generate real wealth that can produce an income when you no longer want to work for whatever reason.
-------------------------------------------------
These three measures are, I believe, essential to a truly economic liberal platform. They share, equitably, the common wealth created by us all, and distribute more fairly the ownership of financial assets between those who provide capital and those who provide labour to an enterprise. They would reduce the cost of the basics of life by removing tariffs, subsidies and the private collection of rents and so instantly make people better off. They would leave a vanishingly small number of people genuinely unable to fend for themselves and the "parish rate" system would enable localities to support them while the work-shy would have a hard time surviving only on their Citizen's Income and those who are currently trapped on benefits have every incentive to take up even small amounts of work to top up their Citizen's Income.
It is time for such a revolution, for the Liberal Democrats and for the country. You don't have to be the first country on the planet to do this, but whoever does will instantly become the most liberal and economically just country on the planet and a magnet for international trade seeking to avoid damaging tariffs. We have gone sixty, a hundred, even, if herbert Spencer is to be believed a hundred and fifty years tinkering with redistributive policies involving moving incomes that people have worked to achieve around and still have not achieved the "greater good". The recent press coverage of the Welfare Green Paper shows that the politics of envy and "deserving and undeserving" are still alive and well. It is time to try these different strategies instead of "more of the same" attempts to be tough on the undefined undeserving.
And the biggest prize of all - it would enable us to get rid of vast swathes of bureaucracy and get those state employees into real productive work generating real additional wealth for the country instead of pushing other peoples' around the corridors of Whitehall.
]]>
Nick Clegg, upon his election as Lib Dem leader, said that he wanted to break what he called the "cosy consensus" between Labour and the Tories that has impoverished Britain's political discourse. With Labour now nicking policies on welfare from the Tories, and both vying to be "tough on the work-shy", now is surely the time to offer a radical alternative.
It is not just their approach to benefits that is backwards in vision, but the whole assumption that "full employment" is the thing we should be aiming for. Such a policy actually highlights even more starkly the difference between being independently wealthy on the one hand and having to work for the basics of life on the other. In an era in which more and more of our tasks can be automated or even exported we should be aiming more to live off the financial assets that past productivity has created.
Liberals have, for a century, harboured the secrets of changing all that. Shamefully, over the past quarter of a century we have dropped every one of those secrets from our policy platform, presumably so we could compete in that "cosy consensus". We are only just on the cusp of really rediscovering the oldest of these...
Three key policies in particular would end this cycle of dependency once and for all. A bold claim for sure, but why not? We have gone through sixty years of the welfare state and are still arguing about the outcomes of welfare, health, housing and education, just as Beveridge was trying to address in his report.
The Single Tax - the one policy we are slowly re-engaging with. Though we seem to be stuck on the idea that LVT is simply an alternative tax, we need to get beyond that and understand that it goes to the very core of our relationship with the planet. Land, economic land that is, "everything in the material universe not created by the application of labour and capital" (so basically the things of nature that we all have to share between the 6bn of us born here), is the third factor of production. David Ricardo pointed out nearly two hundred years ago now that land, especially where it is a monopoly, such as with a physical location or site in the built environment or, say, a section of EM Spectrum that can only be used by one wireless operator at a time, tends to absorb the surplus value created by the labour and capital expended around it that makes it a popular location. Ground rent is created where there is more than one potential occupier that could make good, productive use of a site. It creates a massive transfer of wealth from those who don't own a popular site to those who do, through no effort on the part of the owner of that site.
As a non-land example, the UK government has auctioned off the part of the EM spectrum that carries the new WiMax wireless network signals to a single enterprise, Freedom4 for the whole of the UK. They now hold a monopoly on something that is a gift of nature that anyone else wanting to develop WiMAX networks have to use. They can therefore charge more or less what they like for licenses to others to use that part of the spectrum whilst doing precisely nothing to develop the services that would run on it.
Creating so called "free land" by capturing the value of these natural assets for the common wealth rather than having to tax economically beneficial processes like work and trade is absolutely essential to achieve equity. And the best time to do it would be the bottom of a property cycle. Hint. Hint!!
Citizen's Income - this is the real challenge to the "cosy consensus" that has emerged in the past few days on welfare. It was, I believe, Lib Dem policy up until around 1991. At the top of the recent property cycle there would have been enough land tax (on residential locations alone, setting aside what might be available through commercial, industrial, central business disrict or agricultural locations, airspace, EM spectrum or other forms of economic land) available to pay a citizen's income of about £100 per week per adult and a proportion of that for children depending on age. Further reforms, for example on seignorage - the extraordinary "profit" that creating money as debt gives to the banks that is rightfully part of the common wealth (since the money they "create" is denominated in our national currency) - would enable us to pay for the current health or education budgets if we wanted to, or to add around another £1,000 to the adult Citizen's Income.
People seem to have a problem with the idea of giving everyone an unconditional and non-withdrawable payment like a Citizen's Income because, they say, it will entrench the work-shy in their bad habits, maybe even create more of them. But let's face it, if Joseph Rowntree's lot reckons you need £13,400 to live a basic but comfortable life in the UK, less than half that is hardly going to be comfortable. And it's not meant to be comfortable. It is meant to be hard enough to persuade anyone who wants anything more than the basics of life to do something to earn some additional money. Minimum wage would be scrapped so people would be free to choose to accept a job for whatever they like - just to be able to top up their citizen's income to whatever level they want, but crucially, it would not be withdrawn when people start earning, so there is every incentive for all that nearly ten per cent of the population trapped on various benefit systems to work, even if only a little.
Yes, in the light of campaigns by the tabloids against "benefits scroungers" and the "something for nothing culture" it will be a difficult alternative to sell, but we should be prepared to do it. Think of it the other way around - if we all contribute to the value of locations by our activities around them, why should the dividend from that only go to those who can't work, say? Why not to all of us. It creates a cushion to fall back on in hard times and the ability, even if only for a short while, to be more choosy about the work we accept. No longer do we have to accept the lowest job just to survive. Instead of only the very wealthy gaining financial independence by privatising the collection of land rents, everyone gains a measure of financial security from the common wealth we all contribute to creating.
You could then say that any additional "benefits" must be provided locally, through locally raised taxes and much more accountably than at present. The "parish rate" would have to be used to provide say a basic education for those who were not earning anything more than their Citizen's Income and A&E type health services. But remember, much of the illness in society is because of the sort of poverty that both the Single Tax and the Citizen's Income would eradicate. And not having to pay several taxes on incomes - employers' and employees' NI, income and capital gains taxes - would enable more people to save more of their incomes in productive financial assets for their old age reducing the reliance on a crumbling state pensions system. And, apart from say the armed forces, the troughs at Westminster could be emptied and everyone sent home (and James Purnell would have to find a real job, or discover how life is on the dole perhaps!)
Ownership for All - this third plank of Liberal "redistributive" policy came to the fore in the middle decades of the twentieth century, this is crucial to creating more financial independence for more people. I'm not talking about the sort of free for all sale of state companies as in the eighties, which became in effect a gambling opportunity for anyone who had a few quid stashed away - "Let's have a flutter on Sid" type thing. This is about creating structures in which the workers can share in the success of their employers by becoming part owners. Much more like, say, John Lewis, or, in the seventies, the National Freight Corporation. And things have moved on even since then. New corporate forms such as limited liability partnerships enable different types of partners entitled to different proportions of the profit, not just the providers of the capital.
Again, with the Citizen's Income behind them enabling people to turn down work that does not offer optimum returns to the worker, more and more employers would have to offer the sort of package of benefits that enables ordinary workers to build up a financial stake for the future. These financial assets are fairer than putting all your capital assets in the single basket of one's home, which is not really "net wealth" in any case. More liberal than both socialist style "common ownership" and ownership solely by the capitalist, such partnerships would generate real wealth that can produce an income when you no longer want to work for whatever reason.
-------------------------------------------------
These three measures are, I believe, essential to a truly economic liberal platform. They share, equitably, the common wealth created by us all, and distribute more fairly the ownership of financial assets between those who provide capital and those who provide labour to an enterprise. They would reduce the cost of the basics of life by removing tariffs, subsidies and the private collection of rents and so instantly make people better off. They would leave a vanishingly small number of people genuinely unable to fend for themselves and the "parish rate" system would enable localities to support them while the work-shy would have a hard time surviving only on their Citizen's Income and those who are currently trapped on benefits have every incentive to take up even small amounts of work to top up their Citizen's Income.
It is time for such a revolution, for the Liberal Democrats and for the country. You don't have to be the first country on the planet to do this, but whoever does will instantly become the most liberal and economically just country on the planet and a magnet for international trade seeking to avoid damaging tariffs. We have gone sixty, a hundred, even, if herbert Spencer is to be believed a hundred and fifty years tinkering with redistributive policies involving moving incomes that people have worked to achieve around and still have not achieved the "greater good". The recent press coverage of the Welfare Green Paper shows that the politics of envy and "deserving and undeserving" are still alive and well. It is time to try these different strategies instead of "more of the same" attempts to be tough on the undefined undeserving.
And the biggest prize of all - it would enable us to get rid of vast swathes of bureaucracy and get those state employees into real productive work generating real additional wealth for the country instead of pushing other peoples' around the corridors of Whitehall.
]]>Iris Robinson, parliament and the Standards Boardhttp://www.jockcoats.org.uk/iris_robinson_parliament_and_standards_board2008-07-23T01:00:49+01:002008-07-23T01:27:03+01:00Jock
If a councillor almost anywhere in England at least made the sort of statements Iris Robinson's been coming out with about homosexuality, I would have thought that a complaint to the Standards Board would at least be entertained and investigated. Even her "retraction" is disgusting and compounds her guilt:
Democratic Unionist MP Iris Robinson issued a statement yesterday denying that she thought gay sex was worse than paedophilia. She was reacting to a Hansard report of her comments in the Commons when she said during a debate on managing sex offenders: "There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing children." Through the DUP's press office, Robinson later said: "I clearly intended to say that child abuse was worse than even homosexuality and sodomy ... At no point have I set out to suggest homosexuality was worse than child sex abuse."
When the Good Friday agreement was developed into a constitution for Northern Ireland, it had, I seem to remember, quite exemplary equalities provisions. Northern Ireland was, for example, as a result, the first place in the UK to equalize the age of consent for gay and straight sex.
I realise she has parliamentary privilege when in the House of Commons, but her last outburst was on the public radio in Northern Ireland and should have landed her in trouble in my opinion. If a similar remark had been made in the commons about almost any other minority (I suspect not if it were "immigrants"), I'm sure it would have engendered a formal censure of some kind.
I am sure she does indeed represent some religious bigots in her constituency, but I am equally sure that not everyone who has voted for her can be tarred with that same brush. I do believe in democracy, so I am not calling for some interfering twerp from some QUANGO investigating her remarks - that's her consitutents' job when she next runs for office. But people should know that she's an evil bigoted bitch whose personal conviction renders her unable to represent her constituents properly.
UPDATE: As "Scribo Ergo Sum " reminds us, our psychopathic unelected "leader" Gordon Brown prefers to do business with her and her party than his own revolting members. Iris would no doubt love the idea of locking up homosexuals for 42 days without charge or reason.
]]>
If a councillor almost anywhere in England at least made the sort of statements Iris Robinson's been coming out with about homosexuality, I would have thought that a complaint to the Standards Board would at least be entertained and investigated. Even her "retraction" is disgusting and compounds her guilt:
Democratic Unionist MP Iris Robinson issued a statement yesterday denying that she thought gay sex was worse than paedophilia. She was reacting to a Hansard report of her comments in the Commons when she said during a debate on managing sex offenders: "There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing children." Through the DUP's press office, Robinson later said: "I clearly intended to say that child abuse was worse than even homosexuality and sodomy ... At no point have I set out to suggest homosexuality was worse than child sex abuse."
When the Good Friday agreement was developed into a constitution for Northern Ireland, it had, I seem to remember, quite exemplary equalities provisions. Northern Ireland was, for example, as a result, the first place in the UK to equalize the age of consent for gay and straight sex.
I realise she has parliamentary privilege when in the House of Commons, but her last outburst was on the public radio in Northern Ireland and should have landed her in trouble in my opinion. If a similar remark had been made in the commons about almost any other minority (I suspect not if it were "immigrants"), I'm sure it would have engendered a formal censure of some kind.
I am sure she does indeed represent some religious bigots in her constituency, but I am equally sure that not everyone who has voted for her can be tarred with that same brush. I do believe in democracy, so I am not calling for some interfering twerp from some QUANGO investigating her remarks - that's her consitutents' job when she next runs for office. But people should know that she's an evil bigoted bitch whose personal conviction renders her unable to represent her constituents properly.
UPDATE: As "Scribo Ergo Sum " reminds us, our psychopathic unelected "leader" Gordon Brown prefers to do business with her and her party than his own revolting members. Iris would no doubt love the idea of locking up homosexuals for 42 days without charge or reason.
]]>Sarkozy's scheme two years behind Jock's!http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/sarkozys_scheme_two_years_behind_jocks2008-07-23T00:01:14+01:002008-07-23T00:06:38+01:00Jock
Would someone give me a job developing ideas for the future. Here's another one I prepared earlier:
Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy.
It seems that the transmission loss problem is a little less daunting using High Voltage Direct Current - I work out that southern Morocco to London would involve about a 7% transmission loss in a more or less straight line over land. Sounds like it has potential to me.
]]>
Would someone give me a job developing ideas for the future. Here's another one I prepared earlier:
Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy.
It seems that the transmission loss problem is a little less daunting using High Voltage Direct Current - I work out that southern Morocco to London would involve about a 7% transmission loss in a more or less straight line over land. Sounds like it has potential to me.
]]>Beginning of the end for VAT?http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/beginning_end_vat2008-07-21T18:33:53+01:002008-07-23T01:51:22+01:00Jock
...well, perhaps not quite but this is interesting, if blindingly obvious in a sort of a "why didn't we think of that" way:
Customers at HMV stores will be able to avoid paying VAT by ordering CDs and DVDs through digital terminals. The "HMV Delivers" kiosks are being installed across the chain's 240 UK branches over the next two years. T
Thales, the successor to Thomson CSF, has won the first contract to start the design process for the National Identity Register which will be the more sinister side of the whole ID card system. For those of us committed to opposing ID cards and the NIR at every opportunity and wanting a way to boycott suppliers this presents a challenge. Many of the possible suppliers of course are not ones with big "brand names" you can easily boycott. Thales itself is mostly a government contractor, making war machines. And they are nearly a quarter owned by the French state. Both of these in my opinion make their appointment even worse (not because it is French, per se, but because it is partly controlled by a foreign state, however currently friendly that state may be).