Cause of Death

On That Matter of The Coming Cuts

No one should be allowed an opinion on ' state functions we can do without' (TM), or, indeed, what we should protect, until they have read and thoroughly digested James Heartfield on the background:

Is the State being privatised in Britain, or is it taking over the private sector? The answer is that both are true, and neither. What we have is not a new private sector boom, but a growing state-dependent economy of concessions. Companies like Qinetiq and Capita only exist because of the way the state contracts out its services. Government's loss of faith in its own ability to organise production leads to an astonishing abandonment of its authority to chaotic and destructive shell companies...

All the time the established boundary between ‘state' and ‘civil society', between ‘public goods and private benefits', is being redrawn, or broken down altogether. What emerges is neither an enhanced private sector, nor coherent state provision, but rather a hybrid, dependent on public finances to survive, and increasingly operating according to a mixture of political, administrative and business models that makes little sense.

We Shall Not See His Like Again

"Rocking Robin"; "Beat It";"Billy Jean";"Thriller" - all that creativity and he still found time to be Chief of Staff of the British Army and Deputy to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Polymath or what?

I think Jim's Donkey blog best captures the popular mood.

What's My Line?

A comment in the post below has just reminded me that the single most convincing outline of an alternative 'what-to-do-about-the-banks' policy was provided by Richard Murphy, back in October but no one, absolutely no one as far as I can see, ever took up the idea and ran with it. &, on the net, last October might as well be neolithic times, as we've all got the attention span of goldfish. So go read it now and see what you think.

It's not a strategy for socialism tomorrow. But it is a strategy for structural reform, for breaking the hold of Big Finance on our economy. It is, to use that well worn phrase, a 'modernization' strategy of the Left. (Remember when the Left used to think it knew how to surf the wave of the future? Ah, such memories....)

Now, think about it, what is the Left without a vision of a future? It is a group of people who fight, and quite often lose, defensive battles. Battles to stop things changing for the worse rather than battles to make things change for the better. & I've had a lifetime of it and I'm feeling really, really sick at the prospect of doing it over again when the cuts come after the election.

So let's have Richard's network banking; let's have Boffy's and Chris' self managed organisations (which are more productive anyway); let's have an industrial programme of arms conversion; let's have a Greening of the economy; let's have a different way of looking at public service value In short: let's have some reason to live through the economic pain. Let's have a future.

It is true that the Tories and their allies are trying to log roll the country into the default assumption that cuts must come, and must come quickly and severely after the election whoever wins it. No doubt all those Keynesians are right to say we should wait till the upswing to cut, but the gilt markets might turn at any point and give us very little choice. & whilst I agree with Duncan's newly discovered Texan Post Keynesian that it's about income and wealth equality in the long run, I detect no enthusiasm for an equality of national decline.

It ain't enough for the Left to say 'it-was-the-rich-wot-broke-it-so-they-should-fix-it'. We need a programme. A new AES.

Best Comment on £9.6million p.a. to run RBS

The ever reliable Blood and Treasure:

"It was probably wrong to say that various banks were nationalized over the past year. It would be more accurate to say that after working for the banks as a regulatory contractor for a number of years, the government agreed to be taken over directly by them in a deal funded by the taxpayer. The new financial-political entity is now free to divest itself as much as possible of loss making non-core functions like education and health, freeing up money to remunerate Mr Hester and his friends"

Who Owns the Sun (No, It's Not Murdoch...Yet)

See that image to the right? I've no idea who it belongs too: I've just typed the word 'Sun' into Google and chosen one of the thousands of images offered. Perhaps someone has it copyrighted. Prove that and I'll take it down from this blog with fulsome apologies - because I don't want to pay.

But the idea that anyone who does own it might care that much as to find this obscure blog and ask for some money is unlikely. After all even the multi-billion pound music and cinema industries are fighting a losing battle to retain any enforceable property rights. Ask Sweden's Pirate Party. If I were dreadfully old fashioned I might argue that this is a classic case of the emergence of a conflict between the forces of production and the social relations of production. But perhaps that would be trying to shoehorn a widely recognised cultural and economic change into some much loved heirloom intellectual categories

But Potlatch isn't old fashioned at all and asks a much more unusual and thought provoking question : who owns the Sun? & if we're really going to move into a post carbon powered future, my that really does matter, as he points out. Go read him.

Housing Associations Are 'Hybrid-Public Authorities'

Big stuff in the housing world - and potentially in the world of government strategy for 'choice and the small state' as well. Housing Associations, it seems, are 'hybrid-public authorities' according to the Court of Appeal. So they have obligations under the Human Rights Act. Why? Because:

• Their significant reliance on public funding.
• Their close working relationship with local authorities in the allocation of their stock.
• Their provision of subsidised housing should be properly regarded as a governmental activity.
• They act in the public interest.
• They are regulated by a Government agency in such a way as to promote governmental policy objectives.
• They have some functions of a public nature e.g. in relation to anti-social behaviour.

Which strikes me as potentially also being true of quite a lot of other charities and so called third sector organisations in other fields, such as social care or even health and education. A world of Judicial Review against such bodies might be about to emerge. ( Perhaps with Mr. Coates leading the charge?)

At least as interesting to me, however, is the link that the Housing Associations own trade body make to a 'separate, but allied, cause for concern': are they public bodies? Because, if they are, then their borrowing will count against public sector borrowing requirements - and their relative attractiveness compared to Councils as agents of housing development will lessen to governments of any colour. The NHF say:

"...it seems likely that carrying out a “function of a public nature” for the purposes of the Human Rights Act does not necessarily give rise to reclassification as a “public body”. However, it is stressed that classification as a “public body” does not depend on any single factor, but it based on the totality of an organisation’s relationship with the state. In this context a decision such as Weaver is certainly unhelpful even if not determinative in itself."

But its getting closer by the day, you can feel it can't you?