I am not sure I have the energy to do a review of 2017. Let's just say May blew it, with Trump running her a close second. Does much else need to be added?
So what of 2018? I know no better than you. But here are some questions about the year to come, reflecting a somewhat personal viewpoint on some issues. There are doubtless other, better ones, that will occur to you.
1 Will Trump push the big red button in 2018? And will the military obey him if he does?
2 Will the Tories finally lose their credibility?
3 Will the Tories survive as a party?
4 Will Labour offer a meaningful Brexit strategy?
5 Will the honours system survive Nick Clegg?
6 Oh, Jeremy Corbyn?
7 Is this the year people will realise there is a Magic Money Tree, after all?
8 How many countries will be left in the UK?
9 How many of the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories will be listed as tax havens by the EU?
10 Which public service will finally crack under the strain of austerity?
11 Will a UK local authority declare itself unable to deliver the services demanded of it by law rather than impose more cuts in social care?
12 Will Scotland embrace its ability to tax?
13 If it becomes clear that Brexit is for one day, if at all, and certainly not for 2019, where will people turn politically?
14 Will Farage return?
15 How many peers will the Tories create in an attempt to get their legislation passed?
16 Will the civil service throw in the towel if Hard Brexit looks likely?
17 How many unnecessary deaths will there be as the NHS fails to recruit the staff it needs?
18 What chance peace in Northern Ireland?
19 Will the English far right turn to guerrilla tactics in the face of soft Brexit?
20 A wedding and? There's got to be more than Markle, so what other events will shape the year and distract the media?
21 Will we finally get public country-by-country reporting?
22 How many cases will Jo Maugham win?
23 Will Uber declare bankruptcy in the face of its VAT bills now owing?
24 HMRC will announce that the tax gap is £34bn in October (+ or - £2 billion, that's the only thing that can be predicted with certainty)
25 Will the accountancy institutes finally realise that accounts are for more than shareholders?
26 When will stock markets crash?
27 Will corporate America pass on their tax savings as pay rises? And to whom?
28 Will tech company money in Bermuda go home to the USA? Or is any tax bill enough to prevent that?
29 Is the Double Irish off the menu?
30 Will Ipswich Town maintain their record a# the longest running team in the Championship? (No need to answer that: the answer is ‘yes')
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No Bitcoin??
Or was that wrapped up in stock markets?
Not worth bothering with
Fools and their real money are already being parted
I don’t think Bitcoin is going to go away, Richard.
As John says it’s a ‘marker’ for the blockchain technology .
At the very least it’ll outstrip the slightly, royal wedding in column inches 🙂
Re Trump pressing the button: I think the boot is on the other foot. Trump isn’t driving. He’ll do what he’s told to do. In the meantime ramp up the pressure, and keep the rhetoric going until they can ‘justify’ a pre-emptive ‘defensive’ strike.
His stated agenda has now evaporated totally. He’s now in the tent pissing out.
“Not worth bothering with”?
I think the deeper concept of blockchain currency is worth worrying about; because in the end the “reality” of currency is not physical, but ultimately – psychological.
Bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing
I appreciate that (see past discussion on earlier threads); but it is the only representative of the concept most people are familiar with; it is a ‘marker’. I made the observation lest anyone conflate the two ideas, which I submit is very easy to do …. …. and dismiss them both.
Hoping 1) No and 7) Yes
The rest we will have to see, oh and Liverpool to beat City on the 14th.
Happy Hogmanay!
For the avoidance of doubt, I argued in an earlier thread that the real significance of Bitcoin was the blockchain that underpinned it; and suggested that this may have serious implications; perhpas representing the first faltering steps in the rise of the Gold Standard of Global Neo-liberalism – a currency free of all government.
Blockchain is a ledger
It is not a currency
Finally, but worth emphasising; HBR pointed out:
“Blockchain–a peer-to-peer network that sits on top of the internet–was introduced in October 2008 as part of a proposal for bitcoin, a virtual currency system that eschewed a central authority for issuing currency, transferring ownership, and confirming transactions. Bitcoin is the first application of blockchain technology.”
Notice blockchain began with an idea about currency.
I term it ‘blockchain currency’ because it has the potential, at least theoretically, to free currency from current, standard, conventional constraints. The fact that it is also appropriately termed a ‘ledger’ is important only in what this term “ledger” actually means; for it is not fully understood by what we may traditionally consider to be the capacity and uses of a “ledger”. I am therefore trying to explore a new terminology that exposes the issues best. I am asking for a little imagination here. According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), this is what the blockchain ledger offers:
“With blockchain, we can imagine a world in which contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in transparent, shared databases, where they are protected from deletion, tampering, and revision. In this world every agreement, every process, every task, and every payment would have a digital record and signature that could be identified, validated, stored, and shared. Intermediaries like lawyers, brokers, and bankers might no longer be necessary. Individuals, organizations, machines, and algorithms would freely transact and interact with one another with little friction. This is the immense potential of blockchain.”
THe HBR goes on to argue that the full economic prospects are not immediate, because blockchain is a “foundational technology: It has the potential to create new foundations for our economic and social systems.” The HBR stresses the time this will require to change the foundations.
I do not entirely share the HBR perspective on how long this will take because it may underestimate the speed of technical change, or the purposes of those that will seek to exploit it, or global reach of those who wish to do so; or the resources avaiable that may be called on. I do not know the answer, but I am cautious about the complacency of conventional wisdom.
I see the potential of blockchain
Tell me why it needs a new currency?
Are you the poster “Hugh Jarce” re-incarnated LOL
But of course currency isn’t legitimised without government so I fear you don’t get far….
I am not quite sure what “legitimised” invokes here; a portmanteau word that, however capaciously interpreted, and however ‘legitimate’ it wishes or claims to be, may not not cover all the implications of a change in foundational technolog;, to say nothing of the breadth and ingenuity of human purposes (for good or ill). Tax havens are ‘old school’ and look at the swathe they have cut through ‘legitimate’ taxation.
Modern currencies only work because they are backed by a government proms3 to pay
As is modern banking
Blockchain includes no such promise
It will fail as a result
You need know nothing more to reach that conclusion
I do not agree. In the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin (Q4, 2014), following a brief review, the Bank concluded “Digital currencies do not currently pose a material risk to monetary or financial stability in the United Kingdom, given the small size of such schemes. This could conceivably change, but only if they were to grow significantly. The Bank continues to monitor digital currencies and the risks they pose to its mission.”
In 2016 there was a report that the Bank had experimented with a digital currency, RSCoin.
Today (December, 2017), the Telegraph website reports that the, “Bank of England plots its own bitcoin-style digital currency”; no later than 2018.
The Bank is not leading, but following. It is in a hurry. It does not know where this technology will lead; it is trying to keep-up. As the Bank said in 2014, the “material risk” could change, but only if the schemes “grow significantly”.
The “schemes” are just beginning; bitcoin is just a preliminary experiment; the schemes will grow; they will grow significantly. Then what? I do not know, but I can realistically hypothesise a threat. I suspect the Bank can as well: the Telegraph now suggests that the intervention proposed by the Bank may lead to a new structure that will replace the need for retail banks. This is because this is a “foundational technology”; or is, at least thought to be so.
You response is: “[Blockchain] will fail as a result [of making no Government-backed promise]. You need know nothing more to reach that conclusion”.
I do not have 20/20 foresight, but I think you are wrong to be so confident about the nature of reality, when it is so rich in contingency.
But block chain is a record system
It is not a currency
I am now repeating myself. It is the blockchain, and only the blockchain that could make any current (known) digital or crypto-currency secure, reliable, and usable as a safe store of value and transaction, that can be made commonly acceptable. Traditionally this could only happen with currencies at the level of the nation state, but globalisation, instant communication, fluid domiciles, tax avoidance (or evasion) is changing the dynamics of doing transactions through and across the world, in a fundamental way. The boundaries are now being tested by people and organisations with the resources to test them.
Your statement seemed to imply that it was a government ‘promise’ that gave the currency its unique status as a currency (an internal necessity). Notice however that the Bank of England does not follow your logic, or dwell on the supposed necessary connection, but in exploring the nature of the monetary or financial stability threat (to the UK financial system) from digital currencies that are blockchain-dependent; the concern of the bank was quite different – the Bank of England focused solely on the scale of the schemes that had been used. This is a simple empirical test; either it works or it doesn’t – but the outcome is not determined ‘a priori’, as you proposed.
I believe we are at an early stage of blockchain currency development (we are just at the outset of “scheme” formation), and it is at least possible, if not probable, that at some stage in the future (perhaps not so very far off) heursitic reiteration of the concept by determined and well-resourced organisations, a “scheme” that works at a “significant” level, sufficient to meet the Bank of England’s criteria for a “threat” will be discovered and applied.
The BoE does not have to restate the bleedin’ obvious
They, and we all, know only government guarantees kept our economies going in 2008
You are denying the reality that underpinscall banking and all currency
What is your aim in doing so?
“But blockchain is a record system
It is not a currency”
I’m struggling with this. The banking system isn’t a currency either. It merely carries one. And it’s extremely volatile and unstable as we discovered in 2008. The accounting system is apparently not fit for purpose it allows fairytale transactions.
If people can trade with Bitcoin isn’t it de facto a currency? ignoring the fact that it is presently not a very effective currency what is there to stop its use increasing?
You can trade with anything – barter is permitted
That does not create currencies
“You can trade with anything — barter is permitted”
Yes, but Bitcoin isn’t intended as, nor indeed is it a commodity. It’s a token; ostensibly of worth and an intermediary in a transaction in the way a currency is. Current speculative market activity is about attempting to put a value on it – and the usual speculative activity about making money from market movement in which there are winners and losers and most of that becomes zero sum trading – nothing to see there.
Currently its notional value is relative to fiat currencies (if you can liquidate it, which I believe you can currently), but if in the longer term you are going to to be able to buy things with it (like pay your elderly care bill) then it doesn’t any longer relate directly to fiat currency. So it has ‘worth’. Doesn’t it?
Part of the problem we have with conventional ‘money’ in recent times is that it has become a tradeable commodity in itself. Has it always been so? – or is this a ‘feature’ of floating exchange rates where there is no datum line to establish ‘worth’ ?
I’m wondering what will happen to the Bitcoin price when the stock markets ‘correct’. I share your contributor’s (Hui Hohoe) earlier doubts about how long this may take to happen – could be next week it could be next year, or the year after, but without serious intervention in demand the prices will have to fall.
The traditional expectation would be a hike in the gold price as investors seek a haven. If they do that gold will go ballistic because there isn’t enough to go round, but what if the trend continues and the money piles into Bitcoin instead of gold and we really do get ‘digital gold’.? If people and businesses can trade with it is currency, by definition. Isn’t it ?
You and John ignore the fact that in the modern era no currency has sustained value without the promise to pay being backed by government, in turn backed by the promise of future taxation and the acceptabiliuty if the currency in settling that liability
Without that (and it will not be forthcoming for bitcoin because i belongs to no government) this will always be a speculative tool marginally use for trade
Remarkably like gold then, these days. We don’t have to look far for precedents to explain it
“Remarkably like gold then, these days. We don’t have to look far for precedents to explain it”
When the excrement hits the extractor would you prefer to be holding gold or bank notes?
“You and John ignore the fact that in the modern era no currency has sustained value without the promise to pay being backed by government, in turn backed by the promise of future taxation and the acceptability if the currency in settling that liability”
Yes, but are we still in this ‘modern era’? And where will be this time next year?
Bank notes
The have a promise to pay attached
Yes, May blew it, unless the pinnacle of her ambition is mere survival.
Trump… Blew off the things he ought to have done; but that’s not the same as saying he blew the things he wanted to do.
He’s still President, and he’s getting richer; and the House Republicans are still solidly behind him. I doubt that they will turn on him, as long as the bluster and buffoonery, the constant distractions and the blizzard of lies provide cover for them to do far worse he can.
Which is an observation worth expanding on: beware of pointing at failures that villains measure as successes. Better, I think, to look at all their ‘failiures’ and ‘successes’ with equanimity and ask: “How can we use this to weaken them?”
Belief in “A meaningful Brexit strategy” is akin to a belief in unicorns in my book, but who is to stop people believing hey?
People seem to always need their opium.
I unfortunately only believe what I see.
At the moment I only see people young and old struggling, a dis-united country losing their grip on reality and common decency, NHS slowly failing, trade borders being planned(badly), hope for a meaningful future being taken away from our ordinary youngsters (though the Priviledged are spared,as usual), media moguls controlling policies, EU’s tentative efforts to repatriate evaded/avoided tax money avoided through Brexit,meaningful or not.
Meaningful Brexit….for the few,not the many for sure.
Marie Thomas,
I wish I thought your prognosis was unduly pessimistic.
Perhaps the best hope is for ‘creative destruction’?
I don’t see much will to produce a consensus between the divided factions, rich and poor, right and left, younger and older.
But Hey! Tomorrow is a new year. Maybe….just maybe…..
Magic money tree indeed exists until lenders demand too much in interest as they fear a default in repayment
You can go to the printing presses until the currency depreciates in value and then you have the problem of importing inflation and higher interest rates – and a universally disgruntled electorate
You are ignoring taxation
A fundamental error in your part
You also assum a government must borrow
No government with its own currency ever needs to
Your second fundamental error
To put it another way
If you could get it wrong, you did
DC makes the same mistake as practically every other economist who has ever lived in thinking that the idea that taxation could ever counter the rampant inflation which results from wantonly turning on the money printing presses is childishly naive.
Richard, your reply to Dc
“You are ignoring taxation” But the government has to use taxation properly or it doesn’t work properly. If government is working to the wrong script then Dc’s objections become valid surely?
“A fundamental error in your (Dc’s) part” Not if the government doesn’t know what it’s doing.
“You also assume a government must borrow” Well they sort of do and they definitely do if that’s what they think they are doing.
“No government with its own currency ever needs to” But do they understand that? No.
“Your second fundamental error
To put it another way
If you could get it wrong, you did” Yes but…..if the government f**ks it up isn’t this what is going to happen ?
It’s no use applying rational analysis when the people running the show don’t.
How is it useful to know ‘Trickle Down’ doesn’t work if that is the prevalent economic orthodoxy? How does one survive it?
So we say what is wrong it right because people persistently get it wrong?
I don’t think so….
“So we say what is wrong is right because people persistently get it wrong?
I don’t think so….”
It depends what you are predicting…… what should happen or what will happen.
The ‘market’ assumes rational players, but we don’t do rational. Governments don’t seem to have cottoned on to the idea that the market is a tool – a system, not a divine ordinance. So they will be played by it.
And we have to react to what is, not what what we’d like it to be.
Unless we can actually change perceptions sufficiently to alter outcomes – and I know that’s what you’re trying to do. But influence is very slow power.
I don’t agree Andy
And I am not sure what the logic of your position is
You appear to say let’s accept the status quo
Why?
“You appear to say let’s accept the status quo
Why?”
I don’t want to accept it, but it is where we are and therefore where we have to go from, and it’s going to take some shifting.
As remarked here somewhere, Labour are working from the confines of a neoliberal framework. We don’t actually have a new narrative on offer. Without it I don’t think it’s going to be easy to change direction.
As an example, I think the guru who suggests that a uranium miner is going to be a good financial investment is probably right. But I think he’s right despite the fact that I think nuclear power is a dead end. If the politicians think Nuclear is the future then uranium miners will do the business. In some respects what I think, is immaterial to outcomes.
But, tomorrow is another year.
Point no11 is well made. My county council, Cumbria, comes in for constant criticism in the local press but never fights back with the truth about government cuts. I wish they would, so that people who only read the local media would see the real picture
Ditto; Highland Council, with the added twist of blaming the Scottish Government for the year-on-year shortfalls. Fake news (inadequate news) seems to be the order of the decade.
I’ve never understood why all these (often vastly overpaid) CEOs in local government behave like middle managers and just do what they are told.
Is it because they are middle managers who are vastly overpaid?
Professor Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, was interviewed after the Bonn negotiations [democracynow.org/2017/11/15/scientist_kevin_anderson_our_socio_economic].
Here is some of what he said about the current economic paradigm:
European Union nations can burn gas and other fossil fuels at the current rate for only nine more years before these countries will have exhausted their share of the earth’s remaining carbon budget necessary to keep the average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.
The EU has plans for an enlarged network of new gas pipelines from Azerbaijan and elsewhere and new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. If implemented these structures will lock us in to a high-carbon future so that the Paris objectives cannot be attained. Many have said 2°C would be extremely dangerous so we have to achieve these goals, not simply try to achieve them.
Every nation wants to emit more than its share of carbon dioxide but together that will be more than the total available. That much CO2 would create between 3 and 4 degrees of warming – utterly devastating at a global level. These temperatures have massive regional repercussions, whether droughts, floods or heat waves.
The EU is planning to use billions of Euros of public money, to subsidise fossil fuel development that will lock the EU into the use of very high carbon gas for the next 30 or 40 years.
Some refer to methane as a bridging fuel or even a low-carbon fuel. They are wrong. Methane is a very high-carbon energy source – not quite as bad as coal, but it’s still very high-carbon.
Since the first IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report in 1990, we’ve known everything we need to know about climate change in order to do something about it. And yet now, in 2017, emissions are 60 percent higher. Nothing we have put in place has made any meaningful difference to our emissions.
I haven’t flown since 2004. Avoiding flying sends a strong signal that you can still be a university professor–and not fly. Almost every airport in the world is expanding. And the airlines are buying more and more planes. By flying we are locking in a high-carbon infrastructure that is completely incompatible with our Paris commitments.
There are no historical parallels. We’ve dealt with ozone pollution and with much of acid rain. Climate change is not going to be the same because it’s in everything we do. Nothing has been so pervasive and we have to remove all our carbon dioxide emissions in just a handful of decades.
It is a massive challenge. At the moment, I am not sure we’re up to it. We have all the skills and tools but we don’t appear to have the courage and the innovative capacity to push it forward.
The current economic paradigm — of growth and more growth – is completely incompatible with our climate change objective. If we don’t achieve this, then the climate impacts that we will suffer will make growth impossible. So, either way, the future will not fit with the current economic paradigm.
Joe Burrington is spot on.
Growth is not compatible with a habitable world. Our economic models are not fit for the purpose of delivering a humane future. Sadly climate change is apparently proving to be too big a challenge, other than as a stick to beat Trump, thereby letting spineless politicians conveniently the hook.
If Naomi Kline gets it with her book “This Changes Everything” I am sure, (other than free market evangelists), lots of thinking people should be chomping at the bit to contribute to possible solutions.
In 2017 I lost my job, my mum and greatest of all, hope. 2018…I long for real hope, not useless political promises that can’t deliver.
Bernard, Sounds like 2017 was a shit year for you.
It might be consoling to say everyone has them, but it wouldn’t be true I suspect. A lot if people do have shit years though, so you aren’t entirely alone.
Best wishes for 2018 and I hope you can find some kindred spirits who will help you to make 2018 better…. and maybe the world better in the process. It won’t bring your mother back, but what you have with your mother will never go away. Nobody can take away the memories
They belong to you. They are yours. In the final analysis that’s what really is important.
If you are suffering depression and want to talk to someone who knows what it’s like,first hand, (no clinical expertise) ask Richard for my personal email. Richard, please supply if asked.
It gets better. I promise you depression it isn’t a terminal condition. Or at least doesn’t have to be. But it is f**king ‘orrible.
Is your reference to Uber going “bankrupt” another example of your journalistic laziness or your lack of knowledge?
The VAT bill could be colossal
I think it plausible it could bankrupt the company in some countries at least
Will you be supplying your own answers to your own quiz? It would be most interesting to see how accurate you are.
I’ll make my one prediction. You will predict a stock market crash at least two more times this year. And three or more times in 2019. And three or more times in every year that follows until the stock market inevitably dips just far enough for you to point to your most recent prediction and claim you were right all along.
re the magic money tree – we assume sterling will weaken as we print money and as we are not a closed economy and certain goods that we import are inelastic (oil for e.g) then we import inflation – the fall in sterling post brexit has given us a taste for this..so the idea is we tax more to prevent inflation?.. clearly this is recessionary but I presume we print more money to boost the economy.. so the end game presumably is central govt spending via the printing of money replacing the real disposable income of the individual?.. that’s one way to reduce inequality I suppose.
A Happy new Year to all, however:
I doubt we can expect anything new (except for what we manage on a personal/spiritual level):
1) Expect child homelessness and general homelessness to increase (particularly amongst the young).
2) Expect Universal Credit to create random and purposeless suffering (adding to one above).
3) Expect those on benefits to carry on being treated as social pariahs and pitted against the ‘in-work’ poor.
4) Expect low levels of social housing to be built so that the housing market can keep bubbling and keeping the rentiers in business.
5) Expect Brexit nonsense to obscure the real discussion about underlying economic ideology.
6) Expect Brexit to break up the Labour vote, thereby playing into the hands of the neo-liberals yet again.
7) Expect the real issues of the EU’s monetary system and austerity obsession never to be explained properly.
8) Expect Theresa May et al to compare Labour spending plans to ‘Venezuela’.
9) Expect Labour to respond inadequately to 8) above and not bother explaining why the UK can never be like Venezuela.
10) Expect the Bank of England to continue talking rubbish about interest rates and maintaining the status quo with FPC members supporting mainstream ideology ( see: for an egregious example from November : http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2017/richard-sharp-ucl-economics-and-finance-society).
11) Expect more opportunistic guff from Trump, whose tax cuts won’t make America Great Again!
12) Expect Trump (sinner but vehicle of ‘God’) to curry favour with the religious right.
13) Expect people to go on about Bitcoin when it is an irrelevance and a scam.
14) Expect Labour to carry on using neo-liberal frames of reference when they don’t need to.
15) Expect the Tories to keep lying about ‘low unemployment’ which is nothing of the sort.
16) Expect nothing significant to be done about climate change while we wait for the market to sort it all out which, as we know, the market will always do!
17) Expect wages to stagnate or fall in real terms.
18) Expect absurd rentier bonuses to be payed.
19) Expect the BBC to still employ useless economics reporters who bolster the status quo.
20) Expect the media to pump out garbage as usual and maintain the mass sleeping sickness.
21) Expect support for the Tories to oscillate close to 40% and not shift regardless of the incompetence evidenced.
Good luck to all and keep fighting and challenging.
“16 Will the civil service throw in the towel if Hard Brexit looks likely?”
Interesting question.
I’m not sure what towel they have to throw and if they did throw it in what the implications would be.
I also realise I have no idea how coherent a body the civil service is. My impression of the civil service is based largely on ‘Yes Minister’. It is alleged that Margaret Thatcher enjoyed it, but I’m not sure whether she regarded it as a comedy or a training manual.
Adonis seems to think my question appropriate
I am not saying that proves anything
It says my question may be appropriate
Hmmm…..
1. No. Most White House insiders know Trump is a head case. They would sooner let Kim Kardashian have access to the Red Button
4. Absolutely not. Corbyn & McDonnell know this one can destroy Labour. They also know that as long as they’re in opposition they can keep kicking it down the road.
7. Probably, since the DUP fiasco, but probably too late. Trumponomics is going to mean a massive global crisis & we won’t be able to do anything to avert it.
10. I see this as a 2 horse race. The Police & Prison Service have both been starved of funds to an unprecedented degree. The situation in a lot of prisons i s getting unbearable. The police have more or less given up on nicking ‘new-fangled’ criminals. Who would be mug enough to stop someone on the street, with a knife, for their money, when they can obtain the details & empty their bank account from the comfort of their own home?
16. No, they’re getting paid to do this. Political pressures are likely to mean they can’t do it well, if at all, but they’ll keep plugging away
20. Well, there could be a baby before end of 2018. Expect some rather unpleasant remarks on its likely complection.
21. Yes, its such an obviously right idea.
22. about 50%. I’m not aware of any league tables for barristers
25. Absolutely not. You know that!
These are all good questions for 2018.
Simon Cohen’s list – I have nothing to disagree with there.
I am concerned that as we start a new year, politics in this country remains in a very parlous condition. It is no longer fit for purpose. It just stymies what needs to be done in the name of fairness and justice.
I contend that too many politicians know too little about the job but are well aware of the benefits to them as a career. This problem seems to disproportionately affect those in the 3 main parties. However at my local PR group I get those from other parties telling me that they do not know anything about economics. And my answer to that is – then please either learn or piss off and do something else because you are no use to me or anyone else until you sort that out.
I maintain that the key question to any politician or would be politician is don’t tell me what you believe – tell me what you know. Macro economics as practiced by a pro-active state is a lost art – and we need to find it again.
I remain convinced that the only way to deal with any ideological lock on Government action is to water down the problem through PR. Yes I know we may get more far right parties, but the same principle that would curb excessive ideology for say the Tories would also curb those tendencies in such parties too. There are too few parties running the country. The art of politics is about balancing needs and interests . I don’t see that any more – it is more about enabling powerful minority needs to take precedence over others.
Parliament seems to increasingly look like a state within a state at the moment. It needs a kick up the arse – a big one.
As for Adonis – if even an unprincipled centrist like him walks away from a joint project then it may tell us just how bad things are. I’ve also seen some form of contrition from him about his former ‘work’ in education. However, he and other Blue Labourites were warned of the possible consequences of these policies. But it is still hard to tell if this is just a form of the political opportunism that people like Adonis and Blair and the rest of New Labour are renowned for. And look at how the Tories have yet again brushed this off.
One thing is for sure: a mean, and austerity abused, inward looking country like this one is not a fecund place for progressive thinking. Outside of the public sector where I work I find increasingly hardened views about life – that this artificially created situation that we are in is seen as the natural state of things.
I for one feel dwarfed by the task of convincing people otherwise.
I’m having 3 Weetabix this morning – that’s for sure!
As long as the Weetabix keeps turning into directed anger that is fine