David Boyle's Blog, page 100
July 26, 2011
The real Murdoch scandal
I'm beginning to think we need to get the hacking scandal into some perspective.
I certainly don't want to diminish the seriousness of hacking into people's private phones and messages, especially when they have been bereaved in the most tragic circumstances. These are clearly against the law, which is perhaps why they are getting the attention worldwide they are currently getting.
But in the whole gamut of journalistic excess - taking photos of ailing stars on their deathbeds, or a dying Princess Diana - they are not unique. They also seem to be overshadowing some very serious allegations indeed and I don't quite understand why this is.
The Observer reported on Sunday that some very explicit threats were made to individuals in the government, or connected to it, about what the Murdoch papers would do to them if their bid for the BSkyB bid was not supported. That is a corruption scandal that really justifies the current humbling of the Murdoch empire, if it is true.
But is it? Who are the executives, still unnamed, who made the threats? Why is this not being pursued? Is it because of fears that it would lead to the destruction of the remaining Murdoch newspapers in the UK? If so, are we not still in thrall to Murdoch, but in a different way?
I certainly don't want to diminish the seriousness of hacking into people's private phones and messages, especially when they have been bereaved in the most tragic circumstances. These are clearly against the law, which is perhaps why they are getting the attention worldwide they are currently getting.
But in the whole gamut of journalistic excess - taking photos of ailing stars on their deathbeds, or a dying Princess Diana - they are not unique. They also seem to be overshadowing some very serious allegations indeed and I don't quite understand why this is.
The Observer reported on Sunday that some very explicit threats were made to individuals in the government, or connected to it, about what the Murdoch papers would do to them if their bid for the BSkyB bid was not supported. That is a corruption scandal that really justifies the current humbling of the Murdoch empire, if it is true.
But is it? Who are the executives, still unnamed, who made the threats? Why is this not being pursued? Is it because of fears that it would lead to the destruction of the remaining Murdoch newspapers in the UK? If so, are we not still in thrall to Murdoch, but in a different way?
July 18, 2011
Why Murdoch's agony points to the future of business
You cannot seek to bribe nor twist,
Thank God, the British journalist;
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
Humbert Wolfe's rhyme suggests that the News International Hacking Scandal – let's call it by its proper name – is not a new phenomenon, but an extreme version of British journalistic excess.
What has been less commented on is that the serious inability of News International to get to grips with the problem or the scandal is also a very old pattern. It is about the sclerosis of narrow hierarchies.
News International is a classic narrow hierarchy. Its chairman is the son of its founder. It rules by fear, by its fearsome influence over public life, just as its rules its staff. It is not the kind of organisation where people find it easy to 'speak truth to power'.
Ever since the liberal philosopher Karl Popper's two volume sequence, The Open Society and Its Enemies, we have known that 'open societies' – where people find it easy to challenge from below – are more effective, less wasteful, more imaginative and faster moving than 'closed societies'.
It is the classic argument for localism in government, just as it is the classic argument for flat hierarchies in business. It explains that leaders tend to be insulated from the truth they need to know in narrow hierarchies. That is why News International is in crisis.
It is also a harbinger of the future. This lesson is a slow one to learn for our lumbering organisations, public and private, but it is the organisations that are owned or controlled by those who work there which will in the end sweep aside the old hierarchies with their mega-salaries and bonuses. Because they move faster and see things clearer.
Thank God, the British journalist;
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
Humbert Wolfe's rhyme suggests that the News International Hacking Scandal – let's call it by its proper name – is not a new phenomenon, but an extreme version of British journalistic excess.
What has been less commented on is that the serious inability of News International to get to grips with the problem or the scandal is also a very old pattern. It is about the sclerosis of narrow hierarchies.
News International is a classic narrow hierarchy. Its chairman is the son of its founder. It rules by fear, by its fearsome influence over public life, just as its rules its staff. It is not the kind of organisation where people find it easy to 'speak truth to power'.
Ever since the liberal philosopher Karl Popper's two volume sequence, The Open Society and Its Enemies, we have known that 'open societies' – where people find it easy to challenge from below – are more effective, less wasteful, more imaginative and faster moving than 'closed societies'.
It is the classic argument for localism in government, just as it is the classic argument for flat hierarchies in business. It explains that leaders tend to be insulated from the truth they need to know in narrow hierarchies. That is why News International is in crisis.
It is also a harbinger of the future. This lesson is a slow one to learn for our lumbering organisations, public and private, but it is the organisations that are owned or controlled by those who work there which will in the end sweep aside the old hierarchies with their mega-salaries and bonuses. Because they move faster and see things clearer.
July 13, 2011
Goodbye to John Sweet
I am very grateful, as I so often am, to Jonathan Calder's blog. This time for the sad news that Sergeant John Sweet has died at the age of 95:
http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2011_07_03_archive.html
John Sweet, as fans of Powell and Pressburger films will know, was the American army sergeant who played the role of Bob Johnson in their wartime classic The Canterbury Tale. Like Jonathan, it is one of my favourite films. It manages to combine an amazing Chaucerian simplicity with a sense of such depth and feeling that I am never absolutely sure what the film is trying to tell me. I only know that it is about England and it makes me feel good.
Sweet was spotted at an amateur dramatic performance, roped into doing the film while he worked at SHAEF headquarters on the D-Day plans, but never acted again after he went back to America. It is an absolutely beautiful film and I thoroughly recommend it.
http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2011_07_03_archive.html
John Sweet, as fans of Powell and Pressburger films will know, was the American army sergeant who played the role of Bob Johnson in their wartime classic The Canterbury Tale. Like Jonathan, it is one of my favourite films. It manages to combine an amazing Chaucerian simplicity with a sense of such depth and feeling that I am never absolutely sure what the film is trying to tell me. I only know that it is about England and it makes me feel good.
Sweet was spotted at an amateur dramatic performance, roped into doing the film while he worked at SHAEF headquarters on the D-Day plans, but never acted again after he went back to America. It is an absolutely beautiful film and I thoroughly recommend it.
July 8, 2011
Corporate vandalism and the News of the World
Watching the news last night left more than a nasty taste in the mouth (well, it often does, actually). This morning I knew what it was - the closure of something 168 years old, in this case the newspaper the News of the World.
What looked like an act of sacrifice by News International is a rather cynical ploy to speed up what they were intending to do anyway, which is to shed the staff of one newspaper and run a seven day a week operation from the Sun. Achieved now at a stroke.
But what really bothered me was closing an institution of that age. If it was a building that dated back to the 1840s, there would be an outcry if it was demolished at a stroke (well, yes, that does happen). But because it is an institution, and great men are supposed to be able to shut and merge and generally gut the institutions they control, nobody complains - beyond the lost jobs. Governments do it all the time - lost hospitals, libraries, courts, all of them small tragedies and impoverishing.
But institutions are important. They are part of what makes life civilised. When the sociologist Robert Putnam hailed the Emilia-Romagna area of Italy as one that has unprecedented social capital, part of the reason - he said - was institutions that dated back to the twelfth century.
When institutions go wrong, they need to be cleansed, cleared out and reformed. They need to be cut down to size and forced to be effective - because they matter. They should not be just discarded. Yes, the News of the World has clearly become corrupted, but to destroy anything that has lasted so long is an act of vandalism. Don't obliterate, reform.
What looked like an act of sacrifice by News International is a rather cynical ploy to speed up what they were intending to do anyway, which is to shed the staff of one newspaper and run a seven day a week operation from the Sun. Achieved now at a stroke.
But what really bothered me was closing an institution of that age. If it was a building that dated back to the 1840s, there would be an outcry if it was demolished at a stroke (well, yes, that does happen). But because it is an institution, and great men are supposed to be able to shut and merge and generally gut the institutions they control, nobody complains - beyond the lost jobs. Governments do it all the time - lost hospitals, libraries, courts, all of them small tragedies and impoverishing.
But institutions are important. They are part of what makes life civilised. When the sociologist Robert Putnam hailed the Emilia-Romagna area of Italy as one that has unprecedented social capital, part of the reason - he said - was institutions that dated back to the twelfth century.
When institutions go wrong, they need to be cleansed, cleared out and reformed. They need to be cut down to size and forced to be effective - because they matter. They should not be just discarded. Yes, the News of the World has clearly become corrupted, but to destroy anything that has lasted so long is an act of vandalism. Don't obliterate, reform.
July 4, 2011
Why the Ratio matters so much
The bad news: chief executive pay in the FTSE 100 increased by 55 per cent last year alone, accelerating the creation of an inflationary class of ubermensch, with huge consequences for social cohesion.
The good news: a more effective, imaginative and flexible corporate form – the mutual – increased by 25 per cent in the UK economy last year.
Both these facts are relevant to The Ratio , the new report by myself and Andrew Simms, which suggests forcing companies – and especially those bidding for public service contracts – to reveal the ratio between their bottom and top pay levels.
We may not be able to legislate to drag the ratio back down to 1:20, which John Pierpoint Morgan said was the maximum reasonable level. But we can make sure the crucial ratio is published on the front of annual reports, were they might motivate shareholder activists who can do something about it.
But it is also time to be more positive about this. For too long, campaigns against corporate greed and ever-widening pay ratios have tended to be defensive and negative. They have been campaigns against rather than campaigns for equity, or anything else.
This needs to change partly because having a compressed pay ratio is not just a good thing ethically. Nor is it just a better way of motivating staff and providing greater equity in society, with all the economic benefits that will bring.
It is also a sign that a company is sensitively, fairly and imaginatively run, that its management and board understands the role that all their staff can play, and that collaboration inside and outside the company is as important to their success as competition.
It is a sign of a company that is more flexible, faster moving, more imaginative and more successful.
It is our contention that a more effective corporate form is emerging based on these ideas. Many of these will be co-operatives, but some will simply have a more co-operative spirit that understands the need to include staff and use their resources more effectively.
In time, these companies will push aside the kind of corporate dinosaurs that minimise the pay of their lowest and maximise the pay of their highest echelons, a sign of fatal inflexibility and short-term thinking.
They will do so because these companies will earn more money, waste less on leadership fantasies and will be more successful.
But this is not yet widely understood, either in the corporate or policy world, and there needs to be a campaign to speed the process along. The faster this process takes place, the more successful and imaginative UK business is going to be.
To get there we need to encourage shareholders to use their power to encourage more equitable pay structures, to vote down unacceptable remuneration packages and to use their power to remove, where necessary, the chairs of remuneration committees.
The transparent ratio and the Charter of Responsible Pay which we suggest in our report are both means towards this objective.
They need to take place within the context of a wider debate about corporate behaviour that emphasises the benefits and inevitability of change, rather than simply complaining about the injustice of the current situation.
The good news: a more effective, imaginative and flexible corporate form – the mutual – increased by 25 per cent in the UK economy last year.
Both these facts are relevant to The Ratio , the new report by myself and Andrew Simms, which suggests forcing companies – and especially those bidding for public service contracts – to reveal the ratio between their bottom and top pay levels.
We may not be able to legislate to drag the ratio back down to 1:20, which John Pierpoint Morgan said was the maximum reasonable level. But we can make sure the crucial ratio is published on the front of annual reports, were they might motivate shareholder activists who can do something about it.
But it is also time to be more positive about this. For too long, campaigns against corporate greed and ever-widening pay ratios have tended to be defensive and negative. They have been campaigns against rather than campaigns for equity, or anything else.
This needs to change partly because having a compressed pay ratio is not just a good thing ethically. Nor is it just a better way of motivating staff and providing greater equity in society, with all the economic benefits that will bring.
It is also a sign that a company is sensitively, fairly and imaginatively run, that its management and board understands the role that all their staff can play, and that collaboration inside and outside the company is as important to their success as competition.
It is a sign of a company that is more flexible, faster moving, more imaginative and more successful.
It is our contention that a more effective corporate form is emerging based on these ideas. Many of these will be co-operatives, but some will simply have a more co-operative spirit that understands the need to include staff and use their resources more effectively.
In time, these companies will push aside the kind of corporate dinosaurs that minimise the pay of their lowest and maximise the pay of their highest echelons, a sign of fatal inflexibility and short-term thinking.
They will do so because these companies will earn more money, waste less on leadership fantasies and will be more successful.
But this is not yet widely understood, either in the corporate or policy world, and there needs to be a campaign to speed the process along. The faster this process takes place, the more successful and imaginative UK business is going to be.
To get there we need to encourage shareholders to use their power to encourage more equitable pay structures, to vote down unacceptable remuneration packages and to use their power to remove, where necessary, the chairs of remuneration committees.
The transparent ratio and the Charter of Responsible Pay which we suggest in our report are both means towards this objective.
They need to take place within the context of a wider debate about corporate behaviour that emphasises the benefits and inevitability of change, rather than simply complaining about the injustice of the current situation.
June 30, 2011
Blair and Cameron Liberals? They just talked liberal
Julian Astle, Centre for Reform's intellectual-about-town, has launched a hugely important debate in the Guardian. It is a critical question for all of us in liberal politics. But I don't think he's got it right.
He suggests that, for most of the period between 1997 and today, Britain has been governed by liberals – which is why the coalition agreement was so easy to hammer out.
There are certainly elements of truth about this thesis, rather as Ian Bradley's 1985 book The Strange Rebirth of Liberal Britain argued that Mrs Thatcher was a liberal too. Liberalism is the prevailing philosophy of the age – it would be strange if there wasn't some overlap here.
But it is a slightly short-sighted view, in the sense that the outlines and the vision is blurred and fuzzy.
There is no doubt that ambitions like choice and competition, which drive Blair and Cameron (I am assuming that Julian's brief hiatus without liberal leadership refers to Gordon Brown), are both liberal in their objectives. Cameron's Big Society is a liberal idea.
Cameron's basic philosophies are not clear yet, but I share Julian's suspicion that some version of liberalism beats somewhere in his heart, even if it is actually Liberal Unionism.
But I know the argument refers above all to the public service reform agenda, and – since we are theoretically about to get a glimpse of the Public Service Reform White Paper – let me set out why I think Julian is wrong, at least as far as the Blair years are concerned.
Because despite the liberal rhetoric, what we actually got – and what looks as if we will be offered again – is something fundamentally illiberal, because it is:
1. Centralised: the Blair years gave us huge public service institutions that were beyond any kind of local control and increasingly unresponsive. The 'choice' rhetoric about schools transformed parents into pathetic supplicants to the schools. Of course, you might say that this was Brown's creation not Blair's, but a quick glance at Michael Barber's books reveals that Blair was behind the disastrous and wasteful targets regime. Liberals are localists.
2. Outdated: in practice, public services were handed over to the McKinsey conception of efficiency. As a result, we have – not liberal services – but increasingly impersonal ones, huge and hugely expensive call centre silos, competition from great lumbering corporate monoliths which leached the service ethos out of the system. Liberals put thrift and effectiveness ahead of narrow 'efficiency'.
3. Inhuman: despite the rhetoric about personalisation and choice, our services are now less personal, more bureaucratic, less responsive and less human than they were a generation before, and the white paper looks set to offer more of the same. Liberals are above all believers in human scale.
Yes, Cameron and Blair use the language of liberalism. Cameron's record remains ahead of him, but generally since 1997 we have had liberalism without the radicalism, liberalism without the people power, and – especially important this is going to be – liberalism without the humanity.
Whiggery, yes. A kind of old-fashioned social democracy, yes. But Liberalism, no – not even liberalism. How can anyone who deferred to power as much as Blair did, who failed to confront the issues that faced us – from Bush to the banks – possibly be described as a Liberal?
He suggests that, for most of the period between 1997 and today, Britain has been governed by liberals – which is why the coalition agreement was so easy to hammer out.
There are certainly elements of truth about this thesis, rather as Ian Bradley's 1985 book The Strange Rebirth of Liberal Britain argued that Mrs Thatcher was a liberal too. Liberalism is the prevailing philosophy of the age – it would be strange if there wasn't some overlap here.
But it is a slightly short-sighted view, in the sense that the outlines and the vision is blurred and fuzzy.
There is no doubt that ambitions like choice and competition, which drive Blair and Cameron (I am assuming that Julian's brief hiatus without liberal leadership refers to Gordon Brown), are both liberal in their objectives. Cameron's Big Society is a liberal idea.
Cameron's basic philosophies are not clear yet, but I share Julian's suspicion that some version of liberalism beats somewhere in his heart, even if it is actually Liberal Unionism.
But I know the argument refers above all to the public service reform agenda, and – since we are theoretically about to get a glimpse of the Public Service Reform White Paper – let me set out why I think Julian is wrong, at least as far as the Blair years are concerned.
Because despite the liberal rhetoric, what we actually got – and what looks as if we will be offered again – is something fundamentally illiberal, because it is:
1. Centralised: the Blair years gave us huge public service institutions that were beyond any kind of local control and increasingly unresponsive. The 'choice' rhetoric about schools transformed parents into pathetic supplicants to the schools. Of course, you might say that this was Brown's creation not Blair's, but a quick glance at Michael Barber's books reveals that Blair was behind the disastrous and wasteful targets regime. Liberals are localists.
2. Outdated: in practice, public services were handed over to the McKinsey conception of efficiency. As a result, we have – not liberal services – but increasingly impersonal ones, huge and hugely expensive call centre silos, competition from great lumbering corporate monoliths which leached the service ethos out of the system. Liberals put thrift and effectiveness ahead of narrow 'efficiency'.
3. Inhuman: despite the rhetoric about personalisation and choice, our services are now less personal, more bureaucratic, less responsive and less human than they were a generation before, and the white paper looks set to offer more of the same. Liberals are above all believers in human scale.
Yes, Cameron and Blair use the language of liberalism. Cameron's record remains ahead of him, but generally since 1997 we have had liberalism without the radicalism, liberalism without the people power, and – especially important this is going to be – liberalism without the humanity.
Whiggery, yes. A kind of old-fashioned social democracy, yes. But Liberalism, no – not even liberalism. How can anyone who deferred to power as much as Blair did, who failed to confront the issues that faced us – from Bush to the banks – possibly be described as a Liberal?
June 24, 2011
The genius of the bank share giveaway
Is it just me, or have the Lib Dems had a better week? There is a sure-footedness about the party that suddenly seems to be more apparent, culminating in Nick Clegg's proposal that the government should distribute shares in the failed banks to every member of the public.
Now, there has been some predictable moaning about this idea. It is true that it may get in the way of a radical division of the failed banks into their constituent parts, but there is no logical reason why that should be inevitable. The City is sceptical of course. But there have been other comments that it is too reminiscent of the big Thatcherite privatisations which ended with everyone selling off their stake as soon as possible for a quick profit.
I don't think that is true. There are three major advantages about the plan that I can see.
First, it bypasses the City and their exorbitant fees, which they would normally earn in a privatisation. That is almost enough reason to be in favour in itself.
Second, unlike the BT privatisation, people will not be able to sell their shares off quickly, because their value will need to reach a floor price to cover what the government paid out for the banks in the first place. That might be some considerable time.
Third, these shares will be available to everyone and not just a wealthy minority. The combination of the time lag and the large numbers of people who will suddenly have ownership rights over the banks could - though it will not necessarily - provide for popular democratic movements to use those votes to rein in excessive pay and other risky behaviour.
The Thatcherite privatisations involved a minority who did not exercise their ownership rights. This plan will involve a majority and the possibility of popular control.
Now, there has been some predictable moaning about this idea. It is true that it may get in the way of a radical division of the failed banks into their constituent parts, but there is no logical reason why that should be inevitable. The City is sceptical of course. But there have been other comments that it is too reminiscent of the big Thatcherite privatisations which ended with everyone selling off their stake as soon as possible for a quick profit.
I don't think that is true. There are three major advantages about the plan that I can see.
First, it bypasses the City and their exorbitant fees, which they would normally earn in a privatisation. That is almost enough reason to be in favour in itself.
Second, unlike the BT privatisation, people will not be able to sell their shares off quickly, because their value will need to reach a floor price to cover what the government paid out for the banks in the first place. That might be some considerable time.
Third, these shares will be available to everyone and not just a wealthy minority. The combination of the time lag and the large numbers of people who will suddenly have ownership rights over the banks could - though it will not necessarily - provide for popular democratic movements to use those votes to rein in excessive pay and other risky behaviour.
The Thatcherite privatisations involved a minority who did not exercise their ownership rights. This plan will involve a majority and the possibility of popular control.
June 21, 2011
Longing for authenticity
I've just been on the Radio 3 programme Night Waves – there was also a fascinating interview with Margaret Drabble and feature on the revitalised Watts Gallery; I'm going to listen more often. But my task was to play the sceptic about the idea that anonymous online relationships and blogs somehow more allow for more authenticity.
I was invited because of my book Authenticity, which is eight years old now but still relevent (well, I would believe that).
And I was also happy to do it, because this debate is part of the cultural zeitgeist at the moment – yet it is ever so important to retain some distinction between virtual and real. Otherwise the powerful corporate world will try to fob us (or at least the poorer among us) with virtual teachers and doctors, claiming that there is really no difference.
One of my fellow contributors said to me afterwards that, even in the online world in the mid-1980s, they had resorted to 'burger nights' where everyone got together in the flesh, so to speak.
"In a virtual world, people will long for reality even more," said the philosopher Robert Nozick, and he was right. Thank goodness.
I was invited because of my book Authenticity, which is eight years old now but still relevent (well, I would believe that).
And I was also happy to do it, because this debate is part of the cultural zeitgeist at the moment – yet it is ever so important to retain some distinction between virtual and real. Otherwise the powerful corporate world will try to fob us (or at least the poorer among us) with virtual teachers and doctors, claiming that there is really no difference.
One of my fellow contributors said to me afterwards that, even in the online world in the mid-1980s, they had resorted to 'burger nights' where everyone got together in the flesh, so to speak.
"In a virtual world, people will long for reality even more," said the philosopher Robert Nozick, and he was right. Thank goodness.
June 16, 2011
Why the NHS reforms are not radical enough
I know I should feel excited, even vindicated, that the Lib Dems have exerted their influence to make the NHS proposals a little less terrifying. And I do - don't get me wrong - I do. But I am afraid that the result looks far too like the status quo, when the NHS desperately needs a little radicalism if it is going to survive.
This is what I wrote on the New Economics Foundation's blog.
This is what I wrote on the New Economics Foundation's blog.
June 7, 2011
Localism and the machines of loving grace
The first documentary by Adam Curtis (All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace) a couple of weeks ago was fascinating and timely. It went from the novelist Ayn Rand, via Alan Greenspan, to the doctrine that everything can reach a self-correcting ideal if it is just left alone, watched over by "machines of loving grace".
The trouble is that the whole idea is being misinterpreted (see Rachel Sylvester's column today in the Times, behind a paywall) as somehow the philosophy of localism. Not Liberal localism, it isn't.
The hands-off approach described by Rachel Sylvester and Adam Curtis is more like Woodstock meets Milton Friedman. In practice, it is precisely what New Labour believed in all areas of life and tried to organise, the loving machines watched over in turn by McKinsey consultants and provided by a range of IT consultants, hard men who did well out of the New Labour years.
Lib Dem localism does not mean laissez-faire. It doesn't mean doing nothing. It means doing a great deal, but doing it locally where it is more likely to work. It doesn't mean hands off; it means a great deal of work.
The question is then, what is the role of the centre? Because Whitehall and Westminster without enough to do soon get into a panic and feel they need some levers to pull, as they are doing now. The answer is that the role of the centre is to inspire, to catalyse, to lead, to regulate what can destroy local life.
This is precisely the opposite of their current skills. Westminster and Whitehall have few leadership skills and a great deal of regulatory ones, which they inevitably bring to bear on the wrong things – light touch regulation for the big banks; great rafts of rules for people who want to run a local barbecue.
So don't think that localism means doing nothing. Quite the reverse. It means shaping the world, but in a more effective way than has been done so far.
The trouble is that the whole idea is being misinterpreted (see Rachel Sylvester's column today in the Times, behind a paywall) as somehow the philosophy of localism. Not Liberal localism, it isn't.
The hands-off approach described by Rachel Sylvester and Adam Curtis is more like Woodstock meets Milton Friedman. In practice, it is precisely what New Labour believed in all areas of life and tried to organise, the loving machines watched over in turn by McKinsey consultants and provided by a range of IT consultants, hard men who did well out of the New Labour years.
Lib Dem localism does not mean laissez-faire. It doesn't mean doing nothing. It means doing a great deal, but doing it locally where it is more likely to work. It doesn't mean hands off; it means a great deal of work.
The question is then, what is the role of the centre? Because Whitehall and Westminster without enough to do soon get into a panic and feel they need some levers to pull, as they are doing now. The answer is that the role of the centre is to inspire, to catalyse, to lead, to regulate what can destroy local life.
This is precisely the opposite of their current skills. Westminster and Whitehall have few leadership skills and a great deal of regulatory ones, which they inevitably bring to bear on the wrong things – light touch regulation for the big banks; great rafts of rules for people who want to run a local barbecue.
So don't think that localism means doing nothing. Quite the reverse. It means shaping the world, but in a more effective way than has been done so far.
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