Those happy years of Ted Heath

The above graph appears in the Gummer-Goldsmith report.  It is used to support the recommendation that Britain uses measures of well-being in addition/ as a replacement for measures of economic performance.

The ISEW (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) takes account of domestic labour, income inequality, costs of environmental degradation and non-defensive public expenditures as well as personal consumer expenditure.  It would appear that Britain did a lot better during the Heath years than it ever did during the Thatcher-Major years and Blair-Brown have gotten a lot closer to those happy Heath years than Margaret Thatcher ever did.

How many other gifts does this 547 page report contain for Labour?

The overall balance of the policy groups has been excellent but I hope David Cameron will distance himself from much of this report very quickly.

I've just returned from the press conference - came back in a cab with Oliver Letwin (the conversation was lively) - and the green groups there were very enthusiastic.  Most of the questions from the press focused on air taxation.  John Gummer declined to answer a question about how many flights he and the other policy group members had taken in the last year.  He simply said that he needed a 4x4 because of the nature of his constituency and that he offset all of his carbon footprint.

Comments

[Common Sense]

There's so much really good stuff in the report. It's a serious Tory contribution to some of the biggest issues facing us as a nation and a planet.

The report doesn't attack strivers or advocate slapping taxes on poor people. It's so sad that all some people here can do is engage in sour, vicious class warfare that wouldn't be out of place on a Socialist Workers website. Even sadder that the Editor is happy to let through such bile (even when anonymous).

[Sean Fear]

I think that anyone who actually lived through the period 1973-75 would give a hollow laugh at the idea that this represented the best of all times in this country.

The three day week, 20%+ inflation, a shrinking economy, the Cold War at its height, a quadrupling or oil prices, a horrendous IRA bombing campaign, and industrial strife hardly add up to the good life.

[Jonathan Sheppard]

Can someone please explain how carbon offsetting works. I understand the fundamentals - yet surely all it does is allow individuals, groups or even companies to carry on doing what they have always done. Their carbon footprint has not been reducued, but they can feel like they have done their bit by throwing money at an offset scheme.

[Radical Tory]

This is absurd. I'm not some old tory member who wants to return to the past, I'm a 21yo student who is fed up with the party being hijacked by eco-socialists who are hypocrites. Gummer was wrong on BSE and he's wrong on this. Goldsmith is out of touch it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Who are they to dare to dictate to us? Who are these people? Sack them now.

Lions led by donkeys - how true.

[Moral minority]

So Gummer has a polluting 4x4. Why am I not surprised? Hard-working families cannot afford the luxury of off-setting.

Does Gummer use Climate Care like David Cameron. I repeat the expose of Climate Care's eco-enslavement on Spiked Online.

"The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide ‘treadle pumps’ to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like ‘step machines in a gym’, according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland (1). These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today."

Truly disgusting!

[TomTom]

Now Sean you are being very critical. I recall having newspaper sheets pinned to the wall listing the power cuts rota. We would get 4 hours on and four hours off. The candles induced nostalgia for the early Victorian era, and visiting a department store in small groups by candlelight was really intimate.

In the odd moments before TV closedown at 10.30pm you could catch Joe Gormley or Mick McGahey having a little rant about miners' wages and in case you issed 1972 you could always get the repeat in 1974.

And the empty autobahns in Germany; and the Arabs cutting off oil supplies to the US 7th Fleet so NATO had to supply it from Rotterdam....and the issue of rationing coupons for petrol and shortages of food supplies.

Yes, I cast my mind back to those halcyon days as I think of Goldsmith and Gummer - they were a preparation for Britain's green future if Cameron was ever elected. It is enough to make you break out in a cold sweat what these Heirs to Heath could do to this country.....

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

Poor Ted. I think history will be slightly kinder to him, than many on here hope/suggest.

[Moral minority]

Sean forgot the 3-day week. Perhaps Gummer and Goldsmith approved of the miners' strike as way of reducing CO2 emissions. The country did not and gave Heath two election kickings in 1974!

The rampant inflation, up to 25% under Heath, destroyed the savings of millions. My father's company could not afford to keep his salary in line with inflation. We had to holiday in Britain rather than Spain, Ibiza and Mallorca. Gummer and Goldsmith probably see that as a green benefit of rampant inflation and included it their index.

This is a classic example of what Ancram identified as the Cameroons trashing of Thatcherism.

[Graham Checker]

I've seen a graph of Britains GDP long-term growth like this before.

If it is true, it implies that the long-term average annual growth rate has been exactly the same for 50 years and governments have very little - if any - effect on the rate of GDP growth, no matter what they do, other than to create temporary blips.

Somehow, I just find this impossible to believe :-?

[johnC]

I well remember doing prep by candlelight during the three day week. I still have a singed Latin Course for Schools Book 2 as a souvenir.
I think the age which gave us decimal currency, stupid new counties, the metric system, membership of the Common Market, more comprehensive schools and the destruction of many town and city centres by concrete-crazed 'planners' can safely be consigned to the dustbin of history.

[Mike A]

The report is talking about sustainable growth and shows an index which suggests the 1980s were not a period of sustainable growth. That seems quite likely, all things considered. It was a period of total, brutal reform. It was neccessary, but it was also horrible for vast swathes of the country. An effective index such as they propose should show that. Why would they hide that?

It's like looking at the national accounts for the 1940s, noting how Churchill damaged the public finances and therefore claiming that we should refuse to publish national accounts ever again.

Ted Heath was a Tory who managed to get us into the EU (which is a benefit). The hatred on this site for one of our own PMs is nothing short of ridiculous.

[MH]

Look, I have stomached a lot of crap emanating from the Conservative Party in the last year about how as an investment banker I should pay more tax, drive a second hand Skoda and live in a teepee on a commune in Zac's Richomd Park constituency. So now wealth creation is a bad thing. Guys, just give up. You are no longer a serious political party of the 21st century. This undermining of the private sector and wealth creation was buried by Reagan-Thatcher-Blair. Too many Trustafarians with too much time on their hands now run the Conservative Party.

[Conservative Man]

My fear has for sometime been that a good deal of the moderniser agenda was semi reconstructed Heathism, accepting the welfare as unreformable and not needing any such reform in any case.

Now we have proof I was wrong. The modernisers in the form of Goldsmith (the 70’s really were a golden age for his family, that is when his father made his billions) and Gummer really do see nothing wrong Heath: there is no semi about it, the 1970’s are the model.

We really do need a debate income inequality (or dispersion as it should less contentiously be called). 1979 represents a high point in the compression of incomes in the UK, it is that date, not more recent developments which are the anomaly. Let us not forget the 1970s were a decade of pitiful wealth creation, trades unions dominated pay bargaining and high end taxes were heinous. That is what is needed to move back to the halcyon days of low income inequality, let’s stop pretending otherwise.

[Bill]

The only good things about the 70s were the music (yes i mean it) and the the summer of 76.

[TomTom]

about how as an investment banker I should pay more tax, drive a second hand Skoda and live in a teepee on a commune in Zac's Richomd Park constituency.

I can see the attractions....a Skoda Fabia would be ideal and a commune with his sister might not be too bad....though I do wonder why an I-Banker isn't more concerned about airports than cars

[Traditional Tory]

John Gummer said that he needed a 4x4 because of the nature of his constituency and that he offset all of his carbon footprint.

Is 'offsetting' the 21st century version of the Papal indulgence?

[Traditional Tory]

So Gummer has a polluting 4x4.

Don't tell me. He turned up at the press conference on a pushbike with the 4x4 - full of his telephone directory sized reports - bringing up the rear.

The publicity so far has been so dreadful, it wouldn't have made a scrap of difference if he had.

[ivan the yid from bradford]

Any party which publishes a report stating that the Heath years were good news for this country is INSANE.

[TomTom]

John Gummer said that he needed a 4x4 because of the nature of his constituency and that he offset all of his carbon footprint.

I thought that was David Maclean's line !

[Tony Makara]

I'm interested that the report makes a special point about children being under stress. These days children are under so much pressure to own the latest cellphone, the latest Ipod, etc, they are exposed to the very worst elements of humanity on the internet from sexual predators to shock-culture with videos of beheadings etc. Children have complicated and demanding lives. Stressful lives and unhappy lives. We need to understand this. We need to address this.

[lucillerau]

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