Missing Observations

 

My computer has been malfunctioning for the past two weeks: hence a dearth of comments on  the several dire problems facing the world

 

The Space flight.

 

There has been a rather pathetic attempt by the BBC to generate excitement about this project. I know it is very clever but it was successfully done  fifty years ago, when technology was much less advanced, and flights to and from the International Space Station have become routine since. So why be thrilled with this one, even if it is a little bit further and we get new pictures of the other side of the Moon? 

There’s been  talk of looking for water on the Moon.  In the past ten days I’ve received a circular from Water Aid, for which I used to be an accredited speaker.  They are proud  that 90% of the World’s population now have access to safe clean water.  But 10% still don’t and even more don’t have the facilities to defecate in private and with dignity, with the waste hygienically disposed of.   It would be much more sensible  to divert resources  to helping them. 

The BBC

I find it embarrassing, and irritating, that the BBC feels it necessary to waste its resources and our time by telling us how wonderful and varied it is.  That should be a given.  The signs are that the government  is now prepared to give it a permanent Charter.  Good.  So it won’t have to fight for its existence every ten years.  But what the government gives with one hand it takes away with the other: the BBC’s funding is continuing to be reviewed every ten years.

 The financing of the World Service should be taken away from the Foreign Office and returned to the BBC, a generous allocation for the entire Corporation should be made and at the very least with guaranteed increases in line with inflation,  the “fee” should be based on the use of the internet (as I believe is the case in France) and not on the possession of a TV set.

Regulation of the other broadcasters (especially GB News) should be beefed up.

The War against Iran (and Gaza)

I am ashamed that 99% of the media reportage of the US war against Iran concerns the effect on trade and the cost of living.  There’s hardly any mention of the innocent Irani children, women and men being terrified, maimed, or killed.  The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have their priorities right: our politicians and media should follow.

 It is clear that President Trump is delusional and probably technically deranged yet the Americans have elected and re-elected him as their leader.  There is no room of we British to feel superior or complacent: our system placed the equally delusional Johnson  and then the incompetent Truss in charge.  But in our system there was  a “facility” that when a leader became  way too incompetent for the nation’s good “men in grey suites “ would appear to inform her/him that it was time to go.  This worked for Mrs Thatcher, though much too late The most obvious equivalent n  in the US are the supreme court Judges, but they are mostly creatures of Trump and have nothing to lose by his continuance in office. Maybe some of the Republican leaders will done their grey suits and persuade Trump to go in order to try to avoid their parties’ decimation in November.  But if Trump goes the replacement is Vance, whose views are equally evil, though he is probably more sane.

Prayer on the Papal/Cantaur  lines seems to only solution.

Global Heating

Our right wing, including  Mrs Badenock and the official Conservative Party, cannot resist  a populist call to authorise more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, regardless of the fact that doing so would do little if anything at all to reduce their prices.  But it would, of course, add a little to the possibility of increasing the frying of the planet and future generations, the ones they’re so (mistakenly) anxious not to burden with debt. If we really want to behave responsibly with regard to fossil fuels we should use the crisis  impose a 50mph speed limit (as we had in the 1970s crisis.)  But that might upset  the motorist lobby and infuriate the oil companies and their client  press so Labour lacks the courage.

We would all wallow in affluence if we shared more equitably.

 In the early 1950s the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Richard Austin Butler (arguably the best conservative prime minister we never had) told us that if the British  economy grew at an annual rate of 3% we would double our standard of living in 25 years. In other words, be twice as rich. 

Butler didn't spell it out, but if we continued that rate for another 25 we would double it again, thus becoming four times as rich as in the early 50s.

 Well, we never quite made a steady rate of 3%.  Other countries did, some by much more, and that is why we have fallen behind in the world league tables -  27th in a world of nearly 200 countries (some of those ahead of us on that list are very small, such as Macau, and San Marino and some such as the  Isle of Man would not normally be counted as countries.)  

So we're still holding our own in the "big league."

Just to spell it out, in 1948, the year the NHS was founded, our per capita income was £228.43.  In 2023, the latest year for which figures for both years were available on the chart I consulted, it was ££39,315.08. 

Adjusting for inflation, I calculate that, 70+ years later rather than 50 we are indeed just a whisker short of being four times as rich as we were then,

The evidence is not just in the figures but all around us.  

Then most houses didn't have an indoor lavatory of bath: now all but a few do, and central heating to boot. 

 Then only a tiny minority of families had cars: now a majority do, and many of them several.

 Then the standard holiday was a week at Blackpool if you were lucky: now not one but several holidays abroad (the Grand Tour?) are common.  

Then secondary education for all had just been introduced and the school leaving age was fifteen: now it is effectively 18, and  more than half go on to further or higher education.  

Then the expectation life was 66 for men and 71 for women:  today's new- born can expect to live into their 80s.

 If in those post war years you had asked the average family how they would feel if they were twice as rich they wold have been delighted.  Four times as rich would be beyond the dreams of average.

 Yet here we are: most of us wallowing in affluence, and with the resources to make that almost everybody if we shred  more equitably 

And it is high time we recognised it. 

 The comment by my anonymous interlocutor  in the previous post:

   "The idea that Britain is an affluent country is definitely 'fake news'. Britain hasn't been a rich country for a while, and is rapidly slipping down the global ladder towards abject poverty."

is obvious nonsense. 

 In the much more difficult circumstance  of the 1940s and fifties our government created the NHS, introduced universal secondary education, family allowances, and attempted to provide care "from the cradle to the grave" in order to abolish poverty.

To claim that we can't afford that same aim now is an obvious con: "fake news" indeed disseminated by the "haves" in order for them to have yet more.

 It is high time our political leaders had the guts to tell us the truth, and our voters (on the Finnish model described in the previous post) had the sense to recognise it.

 

 

 

Austerity and Media Studies

The most obvious manifestation of the government austerity which has been imposed on us in the past quarter century is the potholes in the roads.

However, an article in last Friday’s (6^th March) Guardian by Aditya Chakrabortty claims that a much more serious consequence, largely ignored by the media, is a fall in our life expectancy. and especially our expectations of a health life.  He writes:

Our healthy life expectancy has been dropping for years; it is now the lowest since 2011, when records began.

For most of the past 100 years, the UK and other rich countries have made outstanding progress on life expectancy. Year after year, decade after decade, the outlook has just kept getting better. Whereas a century ago the average life expectancy was about 50, today you can hope to live into your 80s. And now in Britain one of the great success stories in human history is going into reverse. Over the past 15 years, improvements in life expectancy have essentially stalled, while our allotment of healthy life is getting shorter.

Mr Chakrabortty lays the blame firmly on the shoulders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition from 2010 and writes:

The fact our healthy lives are now  getting shorter is also a political choice.    Much of the choosing was done by George Osborne and David Cameron,  by Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander. . .Tory and Lib Dem policies  effectively killed ordinary Britons.”

Sadly, it cannot be denied.

However, what Mr Chakrabortty fails to mention is that their policy of austerity was also shared by the Labour Party.  Here’s a section of the Manifesto which Gordon Brown and  Alistair Darling presented to the electorate for the 2010 election

The Manifesto reflects the tough choices that we will make to secure Britain’s future in a way that is fair to all:

·       * Tough choices for £15 billion efficiency savings in 2010-11

  * Tough choices on cutting government overheads: £11 billion of further      operational efficiencies and other cross-cutting savings to streamline government will be delivered by 2012-13.

·       * Tough choices on pay: action to control public-sector pay including a one per cent cap on basic pay uplifts for 2011-12 and 2012-13, saving £3.4 billion a year, and new restrictions on senior pay-setting.

·       * Tough decisions on public sector pensions to cap the taxpayers’ liability – saving £1 billion a year.

·       * Tough choices on spending: £5 billion already identified in cuts to lower priority spending.

*T*Tough choices on welfare: our reforms will increase fairness and work incentives, including £1.5 billion of savings being delivered.

* *Tough choices on assets: £20 billion of asset sales by 2020.

*T•Tough choices on tax: a bonus tax, reduced tax relief on pensions for the best off, a new 50p tax rate on earnings over £150,000 and one penny on National Insurance Contributions.

If you don’t believe it see for yourself on the original: https://manifesto-cymru.cavendishconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf

It’s on Page 0.6*

The truth is that the mistaken belief that “savage cuts” in government  expenditure  were essential was “group think” held by most of the political establishment and commentariat.  Cries of outrage from minor social liberals such as myself and even major voices  such as the eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz and others, that to cut public expenditure as we entered a recession was to ignore the teachings of Keynes (along with the welfare tradition of Beveridge) made no impression, and so we all suffer.

 Our problem is that we have a hugely biassed press, largely owned by the rich, some whom don’t even live in this country, who find the neo-liberal doctrines of low taxation, low government expenditure, privatized public services  and minimum regulation highly convenient –  for themselves and their financiers. The pretence that that this will result in prosperity that will “trickle down” to the masses, goes unchallenged.

Which brings us to Media Studies, which that same media, and a large part of the political establishment, ridicule as a “Micky Mouse” area unworthy  of being  regarded as a serious  academic discipline.

 In his 2025 account of “Baltic: the future of Europe” Times journalist Oliver Moody points out that Finland, long subjected to “fake news” from the Soviet Union, takes a different view.

“ Finland was the first country in Europe  to introduce compulsory media literacy classes in schools, building on decades of experience. ‘It starts from kindergarten, and then it’s part of the official curriculum, first of all to learn how to use media and how to differentiate advertising  from other media content’  says Anneli Ahonen, a Finnish expert on information warfare . ‘Then in recent years concepts like fake news and disinformation  were added there as well.  I had it as a kid – I was born in 1981 – and now my kids have had it too, right from first grade.’  (Page 65)

Given that even the Guardian** can’t be relied on for balanced reporting, and the party led by the gifted communicator responsible for most of our present  economic woes is stubbornly ahead in the polls, we desperately need it here.

 *Full disclosure: The original has only (sic) seven “bullet points” itemising the areas destined for Labour's “Tough choices.”  The “cut and paste “ device I used to transfer them to this blog  has translated them into eight.  I don’t know why and can’t manage to correct it.

** To be fair, the Guardian did publish, yesterday (11th march) my letter pointing out Labour's complicity in this mistaken policy. 

Gorton and Denton

 In his "Brexit Blog" last week Chris Grey referred to the "giggling fatuity of the BBC's political editor Chris Mason."  There has been plenty of fatuity, by Mason and others, in the media's reporting of Thursday's by-election in part of Manchester and I suppose this post may only add to it. However, here goes....

To me the most striking part of the result is that the Conservatives received only 1.9% of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats even les, 1.8%.  Who alive a hundred yeas ago (and there are still some) could have foreseen  that these two great parties, led respectively by the massively authoritative Disraeli and Gladstone among others, and which had vied for power for most of the previous century, could possible be reduced to such insignificance?  

 So lesson one is that the structure of British politics can change.  But lesson two is that it can take a long time.

 Lesson three is that there are many false alarms  in the process, at least a couple of dozen in my politically active lifetime. Torrington (1958) and Orpington (1962) spring to mind.  Although Gorton and Denton may be more than yet another flash in the pan, I don't see the Green Party forming the government any time soon - though they could, along with the Liberal Democrats, soon be part of one.

Not before time. 

 Two pieces of good news are that neither Reform nor Labour won.  

A Reform victory wold have been most unfortunate.  We can see in the  United States the horrors which their bigoted, divisive, racist, sexist and scapegoating politics can produce and it is a relief to know that they are, as yet, far from mainstream here.  In spite of all the ballyhoo, Farage's charismatic communication skills, press support and foreign funding, along with  people's bitter discontent with the "established system" Reform received only 29% of the vote.  This,  given the turnout of just short of 50% (good for a by-election) amounts to fewer that one in seven of those entitled to vote.  Farage has borrowed  from  Donald Trump;'s playbook and blamed fake voting.

 A Labour victory would have given Sir Keir Starmer’s government an excuse  to carry on as usual, trying to match the far right at their game.  

Sadly from the yesterday's announcement of Shabana Mahmood's proposals to further harass  present and  future migrants, it seems the lesson has not yet sunk in. But surely Labour MPs will ensure  that it does and Sir Keir's government wilt start doing the things a Labour Government is excepted to do: higher but fairer taxation to improve the lot of the weak and vulnerable, and repair the public realm.  

The reforms will be top-down rather than the bottom up initiatives we Liberals would  prefer, but, as a recent letter to the Guardian pointed out, Starmer's approach may be clumsy but his intentions are good and he has as yet done nothing like the damage wreaked by Thatcher and Cameron. 

 A third piece of good news is that the successful Green candidate, Hannah Spencer, is a qualified and practising plumber, gas engineer and plasterer  It  is  a great achievement, even in these enlightened days, for a woman to achieve success in these trades and we must wish her well in her parliamentary career - an MP who,can actually do something useful as well as talk about it.  That must have been part of her attraction as a candidate.   

But she also has the eye for the telling phrase, as her victory speech showed. "We defeated the parties of billionaire donors."  We need more of that frank speaking.

 It is galling that, in spite of our record number of 72 MPs, the third largest party in parliament, we Liberal Democrats hardly get get a mention nowadays when the future of British politics is discussed. 

But, rather like the swans floating serenely on water but paddling furiously underneath,the party is quietly working  hard at improving the lives of constituents where we have the opportunity.  

 Measured by real polls rather than opinion polls, since last May we have gained a further 54 councillors in major council by-elections.  That is more than Labour, the Conservatives and Greens put together.  By contrast, through resignations, defections  and defeats Reform has lost 61.

Liberal Democrats are firmly present and I  both believe  and expect  that our influence will increase in spite of, maybe even because  of, the neglect of the chattering classes  and their "giggling fatuity."

 I do, however, have a fear that there is developing  a political divide in  England, in which  in the affluent suburbs, prominently in the South,  the competition  will be between the Liberals and Conservatives (possibly allied to Reform), and in the Northern Heartland   between Labour and the Greens.

Both Liberals and Greens need to be active in all parts of the country, including Scotland and Wales, for a truly healthy democracy.

 That means PR.

 Maybe, just maybe, that is the direction in which enlightened Labour MPs will push their government.