The weather, dear boy, the weather

One of the most frequently heard quotes in British politics is the one attributed to Harold Macmillan (who was our Prime Minister more than fifty years ago): events, dear boy, events.  It is not known for certain that he ever uttered those words, but they are words that anyone who is interested in politics needs to learn about at some point.

As I write, the coalition government is in a mess.  The Conservatives  and Liberal Democrats have both seen their vote share fall in the recent by-election in Greater Manchester.  Both parties were outpolled by UKIP who took second place, and the Liberal Democrats failed to reach the five percent threshold needed to recover their deposit.

There will be a general election next year, and it is looking very much as though the Conservatives will lose a lot of seats, while the Liberal Democrats could realistically lose all of their seats.  The next big test of public opinion in this country will be the local elections and the European Parliament elections, both of which are expected to take place late in May.  UKIP are expected to poll well in the European Parliament elections, and so the Tories and LibDems will presumably be hoping for a favourable outcome in the local elections.

There are a number of factors which influence the popularity of the ruling party, but right now the floods are a major factor.  Much of Britain is affected by flooding, notably the south coast, the south west, and the Thames valley - and yet the weather still refuses to improve.  Rain and high winds are forecast for many areas.

The government cannot control the weather, although a lot of politicians clearly expect us to think otherwise.  What governments can do is to take seriously the likelihood of severe weather.  A lot of the victims of the recent flooding have been protesting that the government failed to dredge rivers.  While dredging rivers can make a difference though, the difference is often minimal.  It can reduce the severity of flooding, but is unlikely to prevent it altogether.

There have been calls for money currently being spent on overseas aid to be used instead to help flood victims, and yet the government offers us platitudes instead.  Then again, I wonder how many of the flood victims voted at the last general election for a political party which sought to abolish overseas aid so that the money could instead be spent in this country to the benefit of our own people.

I strongly suspect that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are doomed to fare very badly in the elections in May.  Even if the weather were to take a turn for the better in the next day or two, they would probably be on course for a setback.  Every day the severe weather continues is likely to translate into an extra dozen or so Conservative or Liberal Democrats losses in the local elections - not that I care of course.

Relate previous posts include:
The politics of flooding
Somerset matters more than Sochi
The road to Wythenshawe

Are private school fees a waste of money?

For a nine-year-old, my daughter Matilda has very clear and precise ambitions. ‘When I grow up I’m going to marry a rich man,’ she declared last week. 'Then I’m going to have six children, two dogs and some ponies, and I’m going to live on a farm with a cottage for you in the garden.'

So writes Rachel Ragg in The Daily Mail today.

It appears that like so many people today Rachel Ragg and her husband are living close to the edge of their finances.  Yet while many people do so because they are genuinely short of money, this couple are struggling with the cost of sending their two children to fee-paying schools.  Their hope is that their son will one day be able to earn enough to allow him to support a non-working wife, and that their daughter will one day meet and be able to marry a man who will earn enough to support her as a non-working wife.

I will say nothing against women aspiring to be stay-at-home mothers, but I cannot help but wonder to what extent it makes sense for people to struggle with money.

Take the Kercher family for example.  They struggled to meet the cost of putting their four children through private schools, and yet one of those children is famous for drowning in her own blood in Perugia.

While it is unusual for ex-public school pupils to be murdered at a young age, it is far more common for people - including graduates - to struggle to find work.  It is also common for people who do find work - including graduates - to struggle with money - even if they do not put their children through expensive schools.

Let us consider some hard facts.  Your chances of earning a large salary are perhaps improved by going to an expensive school, but they are also dependant on the state of the job market when you graduate.

If you graduate when the economy is doing well, then you might well be able to find work, even if you do not have a particularly good degree, and then perhaps be in full employment for life.  By contrast, if you graduate during a recession, then you might struggle to find work, even if you have a good degree.

If you are lucky enough to find work, then you might struggle to afford somewhere to live, especially given that a lot of jobs tend to be in the overcrowded south east of England.  It is therefore unsurprising that very few women graduates nowadays end up as stay-at-home mums.  Far too many of them need to work because their husbands do not earn enough to pay all of the bills.

It is common for people to make money through entreprise, and almost anyone can achieve - or fail - in business.  Having a public school education and a good degree are unlikely to be of much use to you if you are running a restaurant or a shop or a property development company.

Instead of squandering money on school fees, Rachel Ragg and her husband could save up money so as to help their children to be able to start up in business when they leave school at the age of sixteen.  Their school fees appear to be £3000 per term, which for two children is presumably £18,000 per annum.  Over twelve years of schooling - reception through to year eleven - that's in the region of £200,000.  You could do a lot with that sort of money at the age of sixteen.

Also, Rachel Ragg and her husband could perhaps make a donation of maybe a few hundred pounds each year to a political party whose policies include running the economy so that everyone can have a job and so that every family with children can afford to buy a house with just one salary coming in.

I don't expect they will.

Related previous posts include:

What exactly is affordable housing?

Micro-life

Has immigration killed the middle class dream?

A large family versus private landlords

A couple on benefits are being pursued by three private landlords for unpaid rent.

Amanda and Derek Finnigan, both 35, have seven children.  In recent years they have lived in a four-bedroom house (seven children share three bedrooms), a seven-bedroom house (seven children share six bedrooms), and a five-bedroom bungalow (seven children share four bedrooms).

I will not pretend to know the truth of the matter, but the Finnigans claim that at least one of their former landlords failed to carry out maintenance.  This I fear is a common failing of private landlords.

The fourth episode of Benefits Street shows the interior of the house formerly occupied by the man known as Fungi.  (He has since left the street.)  The house was in a dreadful state of disrepair.

Fungi was in receipt of housing benefit, but his landlord was the true beneficiary of that money.  In other words, the landlord is a huge benefit scrounger, who laps up taxpayer’s money while forcing his tenant to live in misery.

It is possible that Fungi’s landlord was Paul Nischal, who according to The Daily Mail owns houses on James Turner Street.  They quote one of his tenants (who works in a factory) as saying that his house is so damp that a cupboard fell off the kitchen wall, and so cold that his children have to go to bed fully dressed.

The Finnigans have predictably attracted a lot of bile from people who object to families raising children on benefits.  A common argument is that people should not have children unless they can afford to support them, but it is fair to say that according to that logic almost no one outside of the royal family should ever have children.  After all, a family who earn a large salary today might be living on benefits tomorrow.   Prosperity is seldom carved in stone.

Britain needs children.  Any society does.  Children today provide the work force of tomorrow.  Do we really want people not to have children?  Generally speaking, making nasty remarks about families on benefits is akin to stupidity.

An interesting feature of the Finnigans’ case is that it appears that their housing benefit was sometimes paid to them rather than directly to their landlord.  The government is currently in the process of bringing in a new benefits system known as Universal Credit.  So far as I can make out, one aspect of Universal Credit is that housing benefits will normally, perhaps invariably, be paid to the benefit claimant rather than to the landlord.

Maybe the government should amend the rules to ensure that housing benefit can still be paid directly to the landlord - but only if the landlord actually maintains the property.

Related previous posts include: 

Two hundred evictions

Is it legal to hate private landlords?

A rent arrears crisis in London

Somerset matters more than Sochi

The newspapers are reporting that the Winter Olympics in Sochi have been something of a disaster.  Apparently the building work was not completed in time for the opening, and lots of people have been inconvenienced as a result.

On the home front, the flooding misery continues, with the Somerset levels still among the worst hit areas.  A lot of people are saying that the Environment Agency could and should have done more to minimise the impact of the floods.  According to Wikipedia:

The Environment Agency is the principal flood risk management operating authority.  It has the power (but not the legal obligation) to manage flood risk from designated main rivers and the sea.

One Tory MP has even gone so far as to make nasty remarks about the chairman of the Environment Agency, who as it happens is a former Labour MP and government minister who was installed as chairman in 2008 when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.

It is fair to point out however that this country has had a Conservative Prime Minister for nearly four years now, and that the successes and failures of the Environment Agency are ultimately the responsibility of the Secretary of State for the Environment - who happens to be a Conservative politician by the name of Owen Paterson.

I don't suppose many of the people who are victims of the flooding in Somerset care that much about the Winter Olympics.  It is easy to take an interest in sporting events when you are not trying desperately to keep foul water from seeping under your front door, but not everyone enjoys that luxury.

The people of Somerset will of course enjoy the luxury of being able to vote for the Conservative Party at the general election next year, but they might want to forego that particular pleasure.

Related previous post:
The politics of flooding

Fat cats in Cambridgeshire

The case of Paul Kingsman has prompted me to write once more about fat cats.  Before I look into the details of his recent criminal prosecution, let me explain where I am coming from.  This country has a minimum wage law.  If someone is paid significantly more than the minimum wage, then I feel entitled to ask why.

If I interpret the facts of the Kingsman case correctly, then the story began with a young woman called Sophie Kingsman living in social housing with a young child.  One day she reported her neighbour, Charlene Vernall, to the RSPCA for mistreating her pet dog.  Miss Vernall retaliated by subjecting Miss Kingsman to a campaign of intimidation which lasted for five months.  Miss Kingsman contacted both the police and the housing association, but neither of them took action against Miss Vernall.  Eventually the stress became to severe that Miss Kingsman's father drove a Cherokee Jeep into the wall of Miss Vernall's home.  He has recently been handed down a suspended prison sentence.  He has also been ordered to reimburse the housing associaton for the cost of rebuilding the damaged house.

The persecution of Miss Kingsman could have been resolved by the intervention of either the police or the housing association, and yet neither was prepared to take appropriate action.  Some might argue that the police and the housing association both have limited resources, but I suspect that the chief constable of Cambridgeshire Police earns rather more than the minimum wage, and I suspect also that the chief executive of the housing association might also earn rather more than the minimum wage.

If I am correct in assuming that the chief constable and the chief executive earn significantly more than the minimum wage, then what exactly do their salaries achieve?  It should be obvious to anyone that money spent on salaries above the minimum wage is money that cannot be spent on anything else.  If the chief constable of Cambridgeshire earned less money, then maybe the police would have had sufficient resources to allow them to confront Miss Vernall about her behaviour.

I strongly suspect that Mr Kingsman is a victim of fat cat Britain.  Maybe one day he will have the option of voting in a general election for a political party which has realistic policies for tackling the fat cat mentality.  But would he vote for such a party?  Would you?

Related previous posts include:
Bedroom tax fiasco
We get monkeys anyway
Fat cats and commies
The cats stay fat

What is libertarianism?

Loosely speaking, libertarianism is the belief that the government should not interfere with how we choose to live our lives.  Very few people identify themselves as libertarians, but almost anyone will adopt a libertarian stance on occasions.

It has been argued that there is not one libertarian society anywhere in the world, although that is a subjective statement.  For example some people might regard Taiwan or Singapore as libertarian societies.  It is also fair to say that every country in the world – with the possible exception of North Korea – is libertarian to some extent.  I am free to make a lot of choices about how I spend my time and my money.

Libertarian economics tends to hold that governments should not regulate employers, that there should be no nationalised industries, that taxes and government spending should be minimal, and that there should be no government debt.  One of the champions of libertarian economics was John Cowperthwaite, who was the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971.  Cowperthwaite was unwilling to agree to any increase in government spending or government intervention, and the economy of Hong Kong expanded rapidly during his time in office.

Many libertarians also oppose state intervention in other areas.  For example, many libertarians hold that there should be no illegal substances.  While many of us would find that point of view offensive, the libertarians do not find it hard to argue their case.

We live in a country where anyone can buy satsumas legally, and many people do.  Suppose that the government outlaws satsumas.  People still want to eat satsumas, and so a black market develops.  Some people smuggle satsumas into the country, while other people grow satsumas in greenhouses deep in the countryside.  Nevertheless the people who engage in this black market risk prosecution and imprisonment, and so the supply of satsumas is not as abundant as it was when satsumas were legally available.

The prices charged for satsumas has to reflect their scarcity as well as the danger inherent in producing or importing them.  Potentially there is a lot of profit to be made, and yet there is a downside which is that people who are involved in the supply of satsumas effectively put themselves outside the protection of the law.  If you are selling satsumas illegally, and someone steals your money, then it would be unwise to report the theft to the police.

The logical next development is that violent criminal gangs arise and take control of the supply of satsumas.  Gangs control certain areas through violence and intimidation so that they alone can enjoy the illegal revenues of the satsuma industry.  When people find out about the violent crime, some of them may choose not to buy satsumas so as not to contribute to the crime situation, but not everyone will be so public-spirited.

An obvious solution to the problem would be to legalise satsumas once more.  We need only replace the word satsumas with the word alcohol in the above three paragraphs, and we could be describing the prohibition era in the USA which lasted from 1920 to 1933.  Replace the word satsumas with the word cannabis (or heroin or cocaine or MDMA) and we could be talking about the United Kingdom in the present day.

A critical difference between satsumas and illegal drugs however is that illegal drugs are dangerous in themselves – that is they would be dangerous even if they were legal.  Let me rephrase that.  They are dangerous when they are legal, as evidenced by recent events in Colorado.

The libertarian point of view has much to recommend it, but they are wrong about the legalisation of drugs.

Whenever someone adopts a libertarian point of view – regardless of whether or not they regard themselves as libertarian – they will often urge you to accept that you should not impose your belief system on other people.  It is important to be aware however that libertarianism is as much a belief system as communism or vegetarianism or national socialism.  Therefore the libertarian who urges you not to impose your belief system on other people is seeking to impose his (or her) belief system on you.

Anyone who is interested in politics should have an awareness of libertarianism, but that is not the same as to say that everyone should adopt a libertarian stance on every conceivable issue.

A related previous post:  The story of King Ed

Update: since writing this, it has emerged that a famous actor who recently died after abusing drugs was not, despite earlier rumours, in possession of a particularly deadly form of drug.  This surely is another reason to be suspicious of the  libertarian argument.

Dyson wants immigrants

The inventor Sir James Dyson has spoken out against Britain's strict immigration rules.  Some readers might want to point out that our immigration rules have been as watertight as a sieve for more than fifty years, but apparently not so.  The Daily Express reports that:

Sir James Dyson, the brains behind the iconic vacuum cleaner brand, believes excessive paperwork and strict visa rules are encouraging foreign engineers who have been trained in the UK to take their skills abroad.

It seems perverse that it is very easy for people to come to the United Kingdom from Romania and Bulgaria, regardless of whether or not they are convicted criminals, and yet it can be hard for a law-abiding graduate to stay here.

But then I have to wonder why Sir James Dyson should want to recruit foreigners when he could recruit British people.  Maybe the answer is that the number of home-grown engineering graduates is insufficient, but whose fault is that?

Britain is a country which encourages large numbers of people, mainly school leavers, to go to university and study for degrees.  It does not however offer much encouragement for people to study what might be described as core vocational subjects.  Obviously graduates in core vocational subjects tend to earn more than graduates in other disciplines, and yet far too many young people seem to opt for the path of least resistance when choosing what to study.

Maybe the British government should take more steps to encourage our school leavers to study core vocational subjects such as engineering instead of subjects which are of little relevance to employers.  I can dream.