Back in March, the Deep End featured a post about ‘human trafficking’ entitled Here’s a real challenge for Theresa May: End slavery in Britain.
This is how it concluded:
As you may have seen in the weekend press, the Home Secretary, backed by the Prime Minister, has shown that leadership – and is taking action to deal with an evil that has been tolerated for far too long. Writing for Daily Telegraph, Fraser Nelson comments on the latest developments:
This is a major breakthrough for the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), whose report It happens here, documents the reality of modern day slavery in 21st century Britain. Fraser Nelson explains why it is so important that we recognise this crime for what it is:
Of course, these abuses are already serious offences under British law, so why is the response of the British state so deeply inadequate? Drawing on the CSJ’s report, Nelson outlines the basic weaknesses of the existing system:
Thankfully we have a Home Secretary who has shown herself willing and able to get a grip of the situation:
In this era of austerity, it is right that we should root out the waste caused by bureaucratic inefficiency. But it is even more important that we should concern ourselves with the evil that creeps in when authority fails.
Until shale gas came along, nuclear power was the form of energy most associated with rightwing politics. This is odd when you consider just how dependent the nuclear industry is on the state for its continued existence.
Technologically and economically, nuclear is too risky for the private sector to go it alone. Though some private businesses may be involved, the industry is and always will be a project of the state (the French state in particular).
Solar power is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Indeed, it is the only significant technology that enables ordinary consumers to generate their own electricity. For that reason it shouldn’t just appeal to environmentalists, but also to those of a libertarian mindset.
In the Guardian, Giles Parkinson reports from America, where parts of the Tea Party movement are starting to see the attraction:
But isn’t solar power ridiculously expensive – costing much more than wind or nuclear, let alone gas-fired generation?
The thing to remember with energy cost comparisons is that the situation is never static, it moves with developments in the relevant technologies. In the case of solar, the pace of change is dramatic:
Furthermore, because photovoltaic panels can be installed at the point of use, solar doesn’t have to compete with the wholesale price of electricity. Rather it is the much higher retail price that is the relevant benchmark. In cool and cloudy Britain, we're still a long way from this so-called 'grid parity'. But in sunnier parts of the world – like the southern United States – solar is closer to being competitive. Needless to say, the local utility companies are less than thrilled at the prospect:
Solar, of course, has an Achilles’ heel: it only produces power when the sun is shining. Further improvements in battery technology will be required before consumers can independently compensate for the intermittent supply provided by their panels. For this reason, the utility companies are still in a position to kill off the competition.
Whether they are allowed to do so is down to the politicians:
This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. It’s a eye-opening piece by Jacob Shapiro for Foreign Affairs, on the petty-minded, nit-picking mindset of your typical terrorist supremo:
An over-zealous approach to cost control may be the least of al-Zawahiri’s faults, but it is of relevance to the war on terror:
Shapiro argues that terrorist groups have no choice but to be bureaucratically-minded:
Terror bosses face some tricky personnel management issues too:
Contrary to what one might imagine, disciplinary options are limited:
Therefore, with staff you can neither easily trust nor punish, top-down micromanagement is the only way to keep things under control.
Of course, there is another explanation for why terror-bosses tend to be such control-freaks – which is that they enjoy it. Most terrorists are totalitarians, and totalitarianism and bureaucracy go hand in hand. From Joseph Stalin to Adolf Eichmann, history's greatest monsters do like a spot of paperwork.
These days almost anything can be described as a tax. The leftwing campaign against the ‘Bedroom Tax’ – actually a reduction in benefits – is a prime example. From the other end of the political spectrum, the Daily Mail pulls a similar rhetorical trick, portraying the Government’s policy of low interest rates and above-target inflation as a tax on savers.
Nevertheless, there is much to pay attention to in James Coney’s report:
The purpose of this raid is to help the country pay off its debts. Both high inflation and low interest rates help debtors – therefore when this combination forms the basis of government policy, it can certainly be seen as a form of redistribution:
It’s worth noting that the state is not the sole beneficiary of this redistribution. Private sector debtors also benefit – as do the banks:
One could argue that given the vast overhang of public and private sector debt the Government has no choice but to keep interest rates artificially low. If that is the case, then we should turn our anger on the policies that allowed our debts to mount up to such a level in the first place.
One can – and should – blame the last Labour Government for inflating the biggest credit bubble in British history. But Britain was hardly the only advanced economy to go for broke. Rightwing governments, as well as those of the left, used debt – both directly and indirectly – to fund their tax cuts and spending rises.
Conservatives should, of course, favour expenditure savings and/or measures to boost genuine growth as the main tools for managing the public finances. But to the extent that such measures fall short, taxation should be preferred over borrowing – because while the former is unpleasant, it is at least transparent: a proper account is made of the winners and losers. Borrowing, by contrast, is a great political deceiver – not only deferring the cost of government policy, but also exacting it with the minimum of honesty.
Back in June, the Deep End featured an article about Google 'Glass' – a lightweight computer which you wear like a pair of glasses. Among various other features, Glass enables you to covertly record everything you can see and hear as you go about your business (or as stick your nose into somebody else’s).
In a fascinating piece for the Kernel, Greg Stevens explores the implications of a police force kitted out with Google Glass or a similar device.
In effect, it would mean turning every officer on patrol into a walking, talking CCTV camera – and surely we’ve got enough electronic eyes watching us as it is. But Stevens’ argument is that the prime target of such surveillance would be the person wearing the device:
The key difference between CCTV and police-worn cameras is that the latter create a public record of what law enforcement officials do and say while on duty:
This brings to mind the case of the former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell who was accused of verbally abusing a police officer on duty in Downing Street. If the officer in question had been wearing Google Glass, then the truth about who said what to whom could have been easily verified.
Stevens makes a further interesting point on the issue of privacy:
Because a uniformed police officer is regarded as a public figure, most people would also regard their face-to-face interactions with the police as taking place ‘in public’. This stands in contrast to the existing situation in which conventional CCTV cameras record us as we go about our private business (albeit out on the street). In any case, the direct encounters that we have with the police will often be recorded in some fashion as a matter of procedure, and it would be better for us if the record was a complete and objective one, unfiltered by the memory of the officer(s) in question.
There are exceptions, of course. When dealing with witnesses to – and victims of – crime, privacy and confidentiality can be of crucial importance. Clear guidelines for the use of Google Glass and similar devices by the police are therefore required.
Just for once, it would be good if the political response to these possibilities stayed one step ahead of the technology. So, this time, let’s have the public debate before the operational decisions are made.
Until recently, German house prices were remarkably flat. In fact, it wasn’t until the collapse of property bubbles elsewhere in Europe that investors began to look to the German market. There are various explanations as to why the Germans should be so out of step on this matter. These range from a comparatively low rate of home ownership to the accommodating nature of local planning policies.
There’s another possible cause – in Britain there aren’t enough houses for people to live in, but in many parts of Germany there aren’t enough people to live in the houses. Reporting for the New York Times, Suzanne Daley and Nicholas Kulish describe the impact of depopulation in the town of Sonneberg:
This isn’t an isolated example. The cause is a national decline in fertility rates, a problem which Germany shares with several other European countries:
For once, Germany has failed to set an example for the rest of Europe to follow:
Daley and Kulish identify cultural factors as a big part of the problem. Germany is a country that has “long glorified stay-at-home mothers,” they say. What they don’t mention are the inflexibilities of the German labour market. Workers enjoy strong employment protections, but that can make it very hard for women to get back into the jobs market after having left it to have children.
It is a similar story in southern European countries like Spain and Italy – only here there is a big additional threat to fertility rates:
This doesn’t quite add up to the “demographic death spiral” that some commentators foresee. But to a large extent demography really is destiny. Europe’s future can only be diminished by the shrinking size of each new generation.
Andy McDonald, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough, has an article in the New Statesman about Britain’s economic divide. It's pretty partisan stuff, but it does contain an interesting idea.
McDonald takes the constituencies of the 21 MPs who are full members of the Cabinet and combines them into a single entity called “Cabinetland”. His point is that the Government is led by people who don’t really understand how bad things are, because they represent parts of the country which have dodged the worst of the economic downturn:
Because MPs with safer seats can afford to spend more time on national politics, they tend to climb higher up the greasy pole than colleagues in more marginal constituencies. For this reason, most of Cabinetland is situated deep within the Tory heartlands (the five Lib Dem seats being the obvious exception).
To win a majority at the next election the Conservatives must win over the swing voters of ‘Middle England’. It is an evocative name, redolent of thatched cottages and country lanes, but it gives a misleading impression. Middle England and the Tory heartlands are not the same place at all. By and large, senior Conservatives do not represent the communities they most need to reach out to.
In a related piece for the New Statesman, Rafael Behr expands on this theme. He warns that ministers risk being led astray by their constituency mail bags:
It’s easy to dismiss the need for new development when you already have what you want from life:
This is, however, a rather over-simplified argument. The implication that it’s only comfortable commuters who object to new development is incorrect. Furthermore, typical Tory voters are hardly immune to the effect of the economic crisis – anyone who relies on interest from their savings could tell you that.
Nevertheless, Rafael Behr does deliver some home truths:
It is a sad fact that, in Britain today, the rate of home ownership is falling. It is hard to see how this trend can be reversed with house prices on the rise and housebuilding at historically low levels:
So that's the economy sorted, then.
Jobs, growth, investment, exports – all on the up! Of course, the usual caveats apply, all that stuff about long-term challenges, underlying weaknesses and so on. Still, the next two years are looking good – and for shallow political types, that’s all that really matters.
There is one cloud on the horizon, though – the remnant of a storm that most people think has blown itself out. Simon Johnson, writing for Bloomberg is not so sure:
What could possibly go wrong? The answer to that is Italy:
Unfortunately, the Italians have a long-standing problem with growth as well as debt:
A lot of this is down to regional variations within Italy:
Thus it could be recovery, not recession, that tears the Eurozone apart.
According to James Surowiecki in the New Yorker, low pay is a now is big issue in US politics:
Why the sudden interest? It’s not as if there’s anything new about low-paying jobs. Furthermore, “low-wage earners have long been the hardest workers to organize and the easiest to ignore.” Also, with so many people still out of work, you’d think that any kind of paid employment would be gratefully accepted.
Nevertheless, there’s a very good reason why we should be more concerned about this issue than we used to be:
Whether working in supermarkets or fast-food outlets, the low-paid were usually supplementing not supplying the main household income. Or, to put it another way, burger flippers and breadwinners were different people. That, however, is changing:
Surowiecki describes “a tectonic shift in the American economy” – with clear parallels to our own economy:
One might think that the rapid growth of high-tech companies like Apple and Google would have compensated for the loss of heavy industry. And, in some ways, that is indeed the case:
But here's the kicker:
Because most of the jobs are provided in one part of the economy and most of the profits made in another, Surowiecki argues that a “higher minimum wage can be only part of the solution”, which leaves redistribution as the obvious alternative:
The trouble is that by using tax credits and other redistributive measures to prop up the living standards of low-paid workers, the state is, in effect, subsidising low-profit, low-wage business models, thus further skewing the shape of the economy.
As Surowiecki concludes, “it isn’t enough to make bad jobs better. We need to create better jobs.”
The shale gas revolution has brought down energy prices in America. It is said by many that the same would apply to Britain if we develop our own shale resources. Regional markets make that a questionable assumption, but if it’s right, then the economic case against renewables (and nuclear) would be strengthened.
Still, it doesn't matter how cheap gas gets in this country, there's no source of energy that's cheaper, cleaner or more secure than the energy we stop wasting. Therefore, shouldn’t we be at least as excited about energy efficiency as we are about shale gas?
Well, there’s an argument deployed by those who’d prefer to keep efficiency on the sidelines of energy policy (where, sadly, it still remains). It’s called Jevons’ Paradox and in a post on his Undercover Economist blog, Tim Harford takes up the story:
Jevons became famous when in 1865 he predicted that Britain’s “economic prosperity was at risk because the country would run out of viable reserves of coal.” Posthumously, he was proved right – about the coal, if not the prosperity:
That, however, is not what he is remembered for today. Rather it was his rebuttal to the notion declining coal production wouldn’t matter because steam engines were becoming more efficient:
This, then, is Jevons’ Paradox – efficiency increases demand for energy, because it increases the affordability of using more of it:
There are natural limits to this effect. For instance, after a certain point higher room temperatures become uncomfortable. Another example is vehicle fuel efficiency, where getting more miles to the gallon doesn’t mean that you’ll want to drive more miles than you have to:
On the other hand, you might spend those savings on increasing the quality not the quantity of what you consume. You only have so many hours in the day to use them and, after your basic needs have been met, the purpose of consumption is to maximise enjoyment not energy use.
Therefore in a developed economy, efficiency measures not only promise to save us money, but to meet our energy needs too.
The unveiled threat to religious liberty
23 Sep 2013 08:00:00 20 Sep 2013 06:55:26Time for a grown-up debate on early years education
19 Sep 2013 07:10:03Centralisation plus complexity: a fatal formula for welfare reform
18 Sep 2013 06:43:43The sinister purpose of academic jargon
17 Sep 2013 08:00:00The German economic model is a poor alternative to Anglo-Saxon capitalism
16 Sep 2013 08:00:00Heresy of the week: The case for abolishing patents
13 Sep 2013 06:01:27Journalists not politicians are the real masters of spin
12 Sep 2013 06:38:37Our banks behave like a bunch of toddlers – but the naughty step of regulation won’t restore order
11 Sep 2013 06:24:21Third world schools provide a stark lesson on the need for pupil testing and league tables
10 Sep 2013 06:43:35The real reason why we won’t act on gender-specific abortions
9 Sep 2013 08:00:00Heresy of the week: What if fat people people aren’t responsible for the obesity epidemic?
6 Sep 2013 08:00:00David Goodhart: Confessions of a liberal heretic
5 Sep 2013 08:00:00Germany’s eurosceptics dare to be different
4 Sep 2013 08:00:00How quantitative easing in the West screws up the rest of the world
3 Sep 2013 08:00:00