David Boyle's Blog, page 97

The lamps are going out all over Europe - if we let them

Yes, a new European treaty that will enforce effective fiscal union may save the euro - and save our economies for a while.  Certainly the alternative is a frightening prospect.  But the consequences of tightening the euro screw in the euro zone may also be terrifying and far-reaching, because - although a common European currency is a civilised and importat idea - a single currency was always a flawed concept:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/12/07/the-lamps-are-going-out-all-over-europe-if-we-let-them

Whe we need to build homes - and give them away

Is it possible that Mrs Thatcher was half right about housing?  Whether she was or not, the current price of homes condemns both partners in many couples to 25 years of indentured servitude, cut off from their families, working at jobs they despise.  The time has come to build new homes and then give them away:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/11/21/why-we-need-to-build-homes-again-and-give-them-away

Are there better kinds of efficiency?

And while we are about it - on the 200th anniversary of the start of the Luddite campaign - was there anything we might learn from the Luddites before we consign them to another century of oblivion?  Fro example: the critical importance of real human beings in our public service systems.

That is what I said at the recent RSA debate with Halima Khan and John Seddon, and this is the audio of the debate:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/11/18/audio-is-there-a-better-kind-of-efficiency

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What to do in the case of economic armageddon

Policy-makers have ben talking about economic armageddon.  That is strong stuff.  Of course, we don't need to worry because David Cameron has asked the Treasury - the high priests of There Is No Alternative - to look at contingency plans.

Luckily, I had some time on my hands so I've given them a little help:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/11/14/how-to-prepare-for-economic-armageddon

The missing explanation for public service failure

Because New Labour 'reform', in practice, meant excising the human element, imposing sclerotic and centralised IT systems and driving out the most effective people from front line positions:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/david-boyle-writes-the-missing-explanation-of-public-service-failure-25847.html#comment-187949

Can Europe survive a Napoleonic euro?

I'm one of those Liberals who was sceptical about the euro from the start.  Not because I was sceptical about Europe - quite the reverse: it seemed to derive and encourage Europe's darker side.
I even said so in a speech to the Lib Dem conference in 2000.  I can't find that now, but just over nine years ago, I gave the New Economics Foundation's Alternative Mansion House Speech at the Old Bank of England pub in Fleet Street, warning that the euro was like the disastrous 1925 return to the Gold Standard – an illusion that currencies were based on real, objective values.

We at nef warned then, and in our pamphlet that same year, that the euro could lead to fascism in the outlying areas of Europe.
This is what I said in 2002:

Let me say quickly that I'm a convinced European. I am not a Europhobe, still less a xenophobe. But there is still a fundamental problem at the heart of the euro, and any currency based on the idea that money's the same everywhere, like gold. And it's this: single currencies tend to favour the rich and impoverish the poor.

They do so because changing the value of your currency, and varying your interest rate, is the way that disadvantaged places can make their goods more affordable. When you prevent them from doing that, you trap whole cities and regions - the poorest people in the poorest places - without being able to trade their way out.

Now of course the USA has one currency. So does Britain. But if we're honest about it, we know that hasn't been satisfactory either - because central banks set their interest rates to favour their capital cities. Eddie George admitted as much on the Today programme just before Christmas.

Look at the great gulfs between rich and poor in the USA. Look at the plight of cities like Detroit or states like West Virginia. And over here, look at the way interest rates are set to suit the City of London, while the manufacturing regions of the north struggle as best they can.

Across a continent, the effects are so much worse. That's why Ireland's economy has been overheating, while east Germany's is languishing in poverty. That's the danger of the euro as presently arranged, and don't underestimate it. It means success for the cities that are already successful. It means a real struggle for the great reviving cities like Newcastle and Sheffield. It means a potent recruiting ground for Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Different cities, different communities, value different aspects of life. And single currencies are not the universal measuring rods they claim to be.

So common currencies, yes – that is the logic of European integration. But single currencies are Napoleonic projects which inevitably require iron control if they are not to spiral out of control, as this one is doing.

The real question, now that the euro is being re-organised, is this: can a civilised and peaceful Europe survive that kind of Napoleonic control where the rich countries are so favoured by the currency?Read more...

How the campaign is growing against defunct economics

Something is going on out there.  The death knell of our current narrow and useless version of economics seems to be tolling - when economics students walk out of their lectures in Harvard, you know something is up.

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/11/07/how-the-campaign-against-defunct-economics-is-growing

Why the protesters are going to win - in the end

Because neither Labour nor Conservatives now represent the middle classes, and - although the middle classes may not identify with the Occupy protests - they do feel furious, not just with the banks but with our extractive financial system. 

Labour and Conservatives - and let's face it - much of the Lib Dems remain trapped in the old paradigm, that somehow wealth must trickle down, when it quite patently trickles up.  No political force is prepared to take on the financial system and hammer out ways of making it humane and effective.

But what the middle classes want, they tend to get:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/11/02/why-the-protesters-are-going-to-win

Why the St Paul's protest is significant

The vote on Any Questions on Friday night, broadcast from Newcastle, suggested that at least half the chattering classes are in favour of the protests in so many cities now against the disastrous financial status quo – including the one next to St Paul's Cathedral in London.

I certainly am, despite the pompous dismissal of them by both the Labour and Lib Dem representatives on the Any Questions panel (sorry, Jeremy, but you were).

That doesn't mean that I am somehow against the Church of England or the cathedral authorities, who – sticking to the terrible advice they have been given – have now given the go-ahead for eviction.

So we felt that the best way we could demonstrate this was by visiting the camp and also going to choral eucharist in the cathedral. I don't suppose anyone on either side understood the significance of my family, and my two small boys, being present in the cathedral, but there we are.  It felt good at the time.

Seen side by side, there is no doubt that St Paul's wins the battle for beauty. The tent city outside, though it is scrupulously well-organised, clean and litter-free, is not beautiful. Nor did I get much encouragement from the deadly discussion on political correctness from the camp's 'assembly' on the steps.

But I did get to hear the excellent sermon, suggesting – in a distinctively Anglican way – that the real question is not what Jesus would have done, but what is he doing now? I don't know the answer that that, of course, but suspect that he will be providing challenges from unexpected directions and people that will jolt us out of our complacency.

That is why I believe the camp represents an important challenge. Not just the one at St Paul's, but the one in Denver which was pepper-sprayed by police over the weekend, not to mention the protests in Syria which this movement is part of – confronting the tyranny of finance over life.  The Arab Spring was always about economics at least as much as it was about democracy.

Also on the steps of St Paul's, I ran into one of the great names of the new economics, who I won't quote by name because I haven't asked him. But he set me thinking about what Gandhi would have done, and suggested it would have been to encourage camps everywhere outside churches.

This is not to confront the churches. The churches are not the enemy. But it would be to challenge them to show the leadership they should be showing, understanding the urgency and overwhelming nature of the issue. It is a challenge to the churches, like Luther's 95 Theses, to take their rightful place in the lead of the campaign against usury.

Will they rise to the occasion?  On present evidence, probably not.  But this is just the beginning.

At last, Carey speaks a little sense

There are always one or two people in public life who are a kind of touchstone.  They only have to open their mouths and you find you disagree with them.  Michael Howard, for example, and don't let's forget Polly Toynbee.

Former archbishop George Carey was another.  But, would you believe it, he has said something which I emphatically agree with, in his article about the St Paul's protest, and the moment when the cathedral gave sanctuary to the protesters.  He wrote:

"For countless others, though, not least in the churches, this was a hopeful sign that peaceful protests could indeed take place at a time when so many civil liberties have been eroded. Furthermore, it demonstrated that the Church is willing to play a sympathetic role in the lives of young people who are drawn to a movement calling for economic justice.

"However, after their initial welcome to Occupy, the cathedral authorities then seemed to lose their nerve. In daily-changing news reports, the story see-sawed between a public debate about the merits or otherwise of the protest, the drama of internal disputes at St Paul's over lost income from tourists, and the ill-defined health, safety and fire concerns that caused it to close its doors to worshippers.

"One moment the church was reclaiming a valuable role in hosting public protest and scrutiny, the next it was looking in turns like the temple which Jesus cleansed, or the officious risk-averse 'elf 'n safety bureaucracy of urban legend. How could the dean and chapter at St Paul's have let themselves get into such a position?"

Good question.  Sadly, Carey gets almost as muddled as the cathedral authorities as the article continues, talking about 'anarchist protesters threatening the right to worship'.  For goodness sake, how does he work that one out?

But I absolutely share Lord Carey's frustration with the church over this issue, and especially when it comes to the Bishop of London's intervention, claiming that the protests are a 'distraction' from the cathedral's own role in building a dialogue with the bankers and financial world.

It is fine, and right, that the Church of England should have a dialogue with the financial world.  But if this is the only tone of voice they are prepared to use against the tyranny of finance over life - the most important and urgent threat to civilisation - then they are not living up to their role of the body of Christ in the world.

Worse, Dr Chartres implies somehow that the church is some kind if ineffable BBC, endlessly balanced and unbiassed on every issue, however desperate.  As Churchill once said to the BBC: how can you be unbiassed between the fireman and the fire?