Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 181
March 3, 2015
A King In The Making
Prince William’s visit to China has been an impressive success for the young man who will one day be King. Without his wife at his side he has stood on his own and stood firm with an outstanding performance of tact, humour and a clear sense of mission. This has been good for Britain and a clear success for the beleaguered foreign office. Indeed the effort to cultivate trade, cultural and diplomatic links with modern China is an achievement in sharp contrast to the blundering which has driven Russia back into isolation from which, feeling threatened, it is beginning to pose a threat.
It is impossible for this blog to unravel the mismanagement which has let to the crisis in relations with the Kremlin other than to say I have been predicting it for years unless we changed course. I think at the heart at the failures to read the signs and the errors of judgement which followed was an assumption that because Russia is a democracy it would all work out, whereas China remains a one party communist state and was seen to require more effort. One can only be left wondering if the FO (and the State Dept.) would have made a better fist of it if the Soviet Union had remained intact, decoupled from eastern Europe and reformed itself from within. President Putin certainly thinks so.
March 2, 2015
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Housing For Votes
All three of the main parties have announced house building programmes, none of which measures up. The Tories want to build too few with too many to buy, Labour will build more and will focus more on affordable rather than subsidised housing but how it will work is not yet clear, the Lib Dems want to build loads including new towns all over the place, but they probably are not going to a a big player in the next government. The Greens are the most ambitious and the best focussed in their plans to build half a million affordable social houses to rent, but sadly their leader’s brain crashed when she was asked to explain how this would be paid for, by whom and at what cost.
This all serves to demonstrate how gravely short is the political class of the skills needed for the hour in which the nation now stands. We are in the midst of a recovery driven by another housing bubble in which house price inflation roars ahead while inflation itself goes negative and if steps are not taken on a dynamic scale to correct all this, the whole thing will bust apart.
The Queen’s New Head
An attractive but traditional design is to be introduced for new coins showing a contemporary engraving of the Queen’s head. It is apparently the fifth edition to be issued during her long reign. During Queen Victoria’s even longer (so far) reign there were as I recall only two editions and both were still in circulation when I was young. There were also coins in circulation for King Edward VII, George V and George VI as well as Elizabeth II. The others finally disappeared with the advent of decimalisation. It seems long ago when we had twenty shillings to one pound, twelve pence to a shilling, twenty-one shillings to a guinea and coins with name like thrupenny bit, florin, sixpence, farthing, halfpenny and half a crown. The sovereign was before my day.
March 1, 2015
Moscow: March Of Mourning
The assassination of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has caused shockwaves around the world. The Kremlin denies any involvement; it would be a spectacular own goal were that not the case. But it is likely that the origins of the contract to kill this outspoken critic of the direction in which Russia is headed lie in the nationalist right wing which grows more strident as Russia comes under diplomatic and economic pressure from the West. The size of the march now taking place indicates that, while there is no doubt that President Putin enjoys majority support, there is a significant minority who are not so happy.
This is good news because you cannot have a democracy without an opposition and the reaction to the murder of a popular political reformer at least proves that Russia considers itself a democracy notwithstanding all its faults. It is important for the West to take note of this. Even the most virulent critics of Putin’s rule recognize that some accommodation will have to be found to restore relations to a more constructive model and it is in the interests of both the West and Russia that this happens. The most important lesson from the past is not to isolate Russia for not conforming with Western demands, because to do so will simply embed and strengthen the nationalist extremists who hark back to the old days of Soviet power. There was no shred of democracy then.
BROWSE MY BOOKS WITH THESE LINKSFebruary 28, 2015
Russia: Is She A Threat?
It depends how you look at it. Sir John Sawers, ex-head of MI6 said some very wise things in his interview with BBC Radio 4, which makes it all the more inexcusable for the blighted foreign office to have got it so wrong. Among Sir John’s comments were his disappointment that the West and Russia had not drawn together at the end of the Cold War. I have been saying exactly this for years, but the West made no real effort and made the fatal assumption that they should wait until Russia became a western style democracy. This was never going to happen.
Russia became a democracy for the first time in its history, but a democracy in its own style with a good deal of autocracy and state coercion in the mix. Russians, most of them anyway, do not see democracy as a road to political freedom; they see it as a route to a strong state which can provide reliable services, jobs and above all security from attack by enemies. There is a type of mysticism about Mother Russia and about being Russian which few other nations emulate or share. Its culture leans west and copies a lot that the west does, but it is not and never will be western.
As soon as the mob took to the streets in Kiev and overthrew the properly elected government by violent protest, having been encouraged and egged on by western politicians, Russia saw a serious threat to its security. It looked around the chaos caused by western military interventions and decided to give up on a bad job. From now on Russia will conduct itself as on its guard and a rival in the political arena of the world to what has become the tarnished leadership of the US and the German dominated diplomacy of Europe. It is engaged on a programme of updating its armed forces and of reminding the world that its nuclear forces are more than a match for those of the US. That we have blundered into this state of affairs at all is a signal defeat for whatever it is that diplomacy is supposed to do. It is every bit as much the fault of the West as Russia.
But it is not too late to talk and work out a settlement which will last. The common interests of Russia and the West far outmeasure the issues of disagreement. It is not too late but there is no time to waste. It should be a priority of any incoming government in May.
Public Investment Without Borrowing
Politicians do not like to talk about the fragile nature of the UK’s Economic Recovery. Yet it remains rooted in borrowing, asset inflation, housing costs which are out of control and a housing shortage which continues to grow. It is consumption based in a country which no longer makes things for shoppers to buy, so jobs are exported and things are imported. Wages are at near historic lows, requiring subsidy and support from the government, even for those in work. The list goes on and on and you know it well. If you are a politician you never talk about it because you cannot see any other way forward. If you are in the top 10% you have never had it so good. If you are young and unemployed you are close to despair.
Yet it does not have to be like this. There is another way. Dynamic Quantitative Easing. It is only 2500 words in easy read format. To turn this original paper into a booklet, the January 2015 posts of this blog have been added. This bold new idea for economic growth will empower you with a greater understanding of what is happening in our economy and how we can change things for the better.
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Tuition Fees: Has Labour Tripped Up?
This blog is mystified by the announcement that Labour is going to reduce tuition fees to students then pay for it by raising taxes on pensions. The two are not connected. Moreover money raised in taxes goes straight into Treasury coffers and can easily be grabbed for any number of alternatives.
In principle students do not like the idea of having to take on a debt, although many will probably never have to pay it back. But the policy has provided a proper income stream for universities and the quality of the courses on offer has improved. More students than at any time in the past are going to university and the numbers from poorer backgrounds is going up. So everything is working well for the first time in decades. Why screw it up?
The answer is it cannot be right to set young people up in debt even before they start to earn in a country over burdened by debt in every direction and by every measure. But to put that right all you need to do is change the student loan to a grant and introduce a graduate tax on higher earners to recover the costs. The policy would be cost neutral both to the public purse and to the students, universities would continue to be funded properly and the shadow of debt at the start of life would be lifted.
The Labour plan was attacked not only by their opponents but also by a host of neutral columnists and commentators when it was announced in a great fanfare yesterday. Then it turned out that the only ones who will actually benefit financially (rather than emotionally) are the better off graduates who become lawyers and bankers. But they were never going to vote Labour anyway.
At present this does not look like a vote winner. Milliband and co must hope it is not a vote loser. It just might be.
February 27, 2015
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