Liberal Vision

Token Justice

The guilty verdict against Lord Taylor today, and against Illsey and Chaytor previously is a very British conclusion to the expenses scandal. Lots of damn nice chaps and female chaps who do a lot of good work and are awfully decent folk who didn’t mean any harm have been spared embarrassment by the token defenestration of the most technically guilty.

The abuse of public money by Parliamentarians in both Houses however was far more widespread than these handful of prosecutions. The line between criminal abuse and behaviour that would merit quiet dismissal from regular employment is as thin as staying a night in a second home bought for no purpose other than to fleece the taxpayer.

In the Commons the process of elections and party discipline has largely removed the worst offenders. In the Lords Taylor will be it. Until the second chamber is replaced by a democratic body, peers who transferred tens of thousands from the public to themselves will remain.

The behaviour of that Chamber this week, filibustering to avert the ending of Labour’s rotten boroughs in the north and delay AV, is rather indicative of the contempt in which this body can hold democracy. The worth the Lords do provide, adding expertise to the scrutiny and development of policy is not in short supply outside, and does not merit a job for life. Far to much of the patronage in the Lords is about party management.

The lack of reform in the Lords though is also a very British compromise. A throwback to the consensus settlements of history that have kept the country largely free of civil strife, whilst suitably financed to cause strife elsewhere.

It is though beyond an anachronism and anyone worth their ermine is free to stand for election should reform take place. That though might prove unattractive to those, who in standing for public election, would be open to question about how lucky they were to escape prosecution.

It will be interesting then to note the correlation of opposition in the House to Clegg’s reform agenda and the amount those individuals claimed for infrequently visited ‘main residences’ in the last Parliament.

Growth balls

Today’s preliminary GDP figures showing a 0.5% contraction in growth has seen all the usual suspects come out of the woodwork demanding more government action to avert disaster.

At one level, given government spending is a part of the GDP calculation there is truth in the notion, that all other things remaining equal, increasing spending will increase short-run GDP.

The issue is the long-term. If a UK growth strategy were as easy as printing money, redistributing, or inflating public sector wages, we wouldn’t have had a recession in 2008 and 2009. What matters in the long-run is the supply side, the parts of the economy that make things, service people, improve productivity, competitiveness, innovate or provide infrastructure necessary for any of the rest to happen.

Real economic growth, perhaps unsurprisingly, requires a real economy. 

Without that, pumping up demand through spending just creates inflation. Not to mention the damage to growth and jobs caused by the higher taxes to fund it.

Borrowing to inflate demand  moves problems into the future. The more that has been borrowed the more expensive it becomes to service the debt and secure new debt. Eventually you get a sovereign debt crisis. Morally it is akin to borrowing money from your children.

Borrowing to invest, i.e. spending on projects that facilitate future growth (for example the national electricity infrastructure) is better (and the basis of the Golden Rule that Gordon Brown abandoned in office), but does not improve GDP today and requires fine judgement to avoid crowding-out, cost inflation, and waste.

For example if the return on investment and risk profile of a project is good, private companies will do it anyway. If it isn’t, there has to be quite a compelling hidden social benefit case to infer government finance might be necessary. In the case of Sheffield Forgemasters for example it’s  unclear what case there was for public intervention. Building Schools for the Future was delivering little at high cost without there always being a compelling need.

The central problem in a programmes of cuts then is not the proper process of deficit then debt reduction, but how it is done. It is politically easier to cancel an anonymous or unpopular infrastructure projects like Heathrow’s third runway, than reverse a decade of pay inflation without productivity gains or ideological redistribution schemes. Unbuilt airports don’t vote.  

Labour’s outbursts then are focusing on the wrong things. Largely their anti-cuts agenda has focused on easy issues of popular outrage. To be credible they need to identify cuts that hurt the supply side and can’t be delivered otherwise. To be really credible they need to be review their record and decision to build on borrowing more critically.

I strongly suspect though that all we will hear from Balls is more attacks on cuts, memory lapses, and tractor statistics.

So who is in charge of the BBC these days?

Just how many people does the BBC employ in its online business? A lot, it would seem.

Director-general Mark Thompson has announced that BBC online will cut 360 jobs, as its’ budget is cut by 25%.

What is baffling is Mr Thompson’s admission that BBC online had been allowed to grow “like Topsy”. So who, one wonders, was in charge? Not Mr Thompson by the sound of it.

Naturally the immediate reaction from the NUJ is one of rage at the BBC over the announced job cuts and the almost de rigeur talk of strikes. Sigh. I always rather welcome strikes at the BBC myself. No one really gets harmed (except those striking of course) and the prospect of the people of this nation waking up to the fact that life without the BBC is possible and that the licence fee is an odious tax, well past its sell by date. So NUJ – bring it on.

Men lie to get laid shock…

So what’s new about that?! You may ask… Well, what we didn’t know until now is that it is allegedly the official policy of the Metropolitan Police. Undercover police have permission to bed activists upon whom they are spying!!.

Or so say some of their ‘victims‘, who now appear to be demanding officers should require warrants to enter their premises…

“Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of “promiscuity” with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years… with women in very, very, very promiscuous groups such as the eco-wing, environmental movement, leftwing, or the Animal Liberation Front…

Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists…

He said undercover officers, particularly those infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners “as part of the job”….

You cannot not be promiscuous in those groups. Otherwise you’ll stand out straightaway…

Female activists converge on Scotland Yard tomorrow to demand that the Met disclose the true extent of undercover policing. The demonstration is also, according to organisers, designed to express “solidarity with all the women who have been exploited by men they thought they could trust”…

The part of me that would normally be unsurprised in these circumstances is cancelled out by the part of me that projectile vomits at the thought of fornication involving two of my least favourite sub-groups. All those un-washed, hemp-wearing, deeply misinformed hippie activists and people who work for the state.

*shudders*

The long term consequence of this expose is likely to be a large number of desperate men attempting to join left-wing groups, and not just Guardian journalists. For now, a second protest outside MI6 was cancelled when it was explained that James Bond is a fictional character and tends to aim a little more upmarket.

Officer Mark Kennedy – aka what passes for *hot* in your average ‘left-wing activist’ group…

Scrumptious…

Anti-war what it is good for?

Sadly, only for making partisan political points it seems. A theme of foreign policy debates recently has been: ‘where did the anti-war movement go?’. The protests and venom aimed at George W. Bush’s foreign policy have all but nearly disappeared. The anti-war movement was political motivated, however, just because an action is politically motivated doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong. ReasonTV makes an interesting point: