Wednesday 15th April

[StephenDolan]

The Long Read at the Guardian.

The making of Ed Miliband

http://gu.com/p/47g3z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[utopiandreams]

Morning. I caught this press release from Reuters earlier. 'David Cameron Kidnapped On Way to Television Studio'. They also advised not to be overly concerned as a further press release shall soon follow: 'David Cameron's Heroic Deeds Engineer His Own Escape. The Whole Nation Expresses Its Admiration and Relief'.

[utopiandreams]

In addition to the furore concerning Right to Buy, we must not forget that housing associations have already suffered at the hands of this government's policy over the bedroom tax and UC. I have found this from the National Housing Federation dated January 2015, Welfare reform impact assessment: Final report: http://www.housing.org.uk/publications/ ... al-report/.

The report itself: http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/pub.h ... report.pdf

The final survey of housing associations found that almost half (47%) of associations reported an increased difficulty in rent collection and three in ten (29%) associations said that arrears had increased as a result of the bedroom tax. However, almost half (47%) of those associations with more than 10% of tenants affected reported that arrears had increased as a result of the policy...

The number of tenants affected by the bedroom tax who are in arrears has fallen since autumn 2013. However, for those who are in arrears, their situation has worsened. It is estimated by associations that almost two-thirds (64%) of currently affected tenants in arrears are in arrears due to a failure to pay the bedroom tax, compared to an estimated 52% in autumn 2013. Two thirds of affected tenants (67%) reported they were finding it difficult to afford to pay their rent, compared to less than a third of non-affected tenants (31%). Affected tenants are also nearly four times as likely to say that they have needed to borrow money to help pay the rent since 1st April 2013 (46%) as before 1st April 2013 (12%)..

Evictions

Given the complexity of eviction proceedings and the timescales involved, the research was unlikely to pick up any rise in evictions happening as a direct result of the bedroom tax. Associations report that very few affected tenants (an average of 1% of those affected and in arrears) have been evicted.However, of those tenants currently affected by the bedroom tax and in arrears, almost three in ten (29%) have been issued with a notice of seeking possession (NOSP), the first stage of the eviction process..

Conclusion

It is clear that the greatest impacts have so far been felt by the tenants who are directly affected by the bedroom tax. There is strong evidence of the negative effects the policy has had on tenants’ household finances and overall wellbeing. To date, the impact on housing associations has been less severe. Associations have coped well with the challenges; it would seem that the significant investment made in supporting tenants and preparing their businesses has helped to mitigate the worst of the impacts.

However, associations have always believed that Universal Credit and the introduction of direct payments to tenants would prove to be the biggest challenge. In the baseline survey 81% of housing associations thought that direct payments would significantly impact their business, compared to 61% who though the same of the bedroom tax...

[SpinningHugo]

The Long Read at the Guardian.

The making of Ed Miliband

http://gu.com/p/47g3z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is a very good profile. It is unbiased, I think, and allows people who don't think he is very good as leader (eg me) to nod along, as well as those who take a different view. It has genuine access and insight I think.

My prejudice comes in part from my attitude towards Stewart Wood. Wood is Miliband's intellectual soulmate, and shares his analysis of what should be done. I strongly disagree with Wood, who I think just re-heats ideas from the 80s. I think he is a disaster. Wood is the (Labour) father of pre-distribution. I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name. I think we should help the poorest by giving them more money (the approach of the last Labour government).

I want a return to the last Labour government. I am not going to get it. I'll have to settle for the Tories being out (which is much better than nothing).

[Edited to remove a 'not']

[rebeccariots2]

The Long Read at the Guardian.

The making of Ed Miliband

http://gu.com/p/47g3z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Very good piece and read. I get a real sense of someone who is in it for the right reasons and for the long term. 'Principled resilience' is a pretty good quality to have IMO.

[yahyah]

Morning.

UKIP are appealing to ex soldiers, hitting two of their birds with one stone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 76853.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yesterday was tiresome, with the Tory twaddle and the Green pie-in-the-sky complete with Bennett refusing to do facts & figures. But today will be as bad, UKIP & the Lib Dems setting their little stalls out.

Clegg has already been quoted talking about the negative aspects of the SNP in coalition, which may start resonating with people, particularly as the Tories & UKIP will be pushing it too, and their voices are well represented in the media.

The SNP are a Marmite party, love them or hate them, and if non-Scottish voters think a vote for Labour means Salmond will be sniffing around No. 10 surely it could depress the Labour vote.

If you are talking to friends, family, work mates, social media pals etc. don't forget to remind them; if they don't want a Tory government then Labour need the most seats/and or and the highest % vote to get to No 10.

Voting with your heart, fine and dandy - who doesn't like the sound of the Green's giggly, smiley world, it's a lovely cuddly thing, but people must remember the brutal reality of Westminster politics and deal making.

[TechnicalEphemera]

The Long Read at the Guardian.

The making of Ed Miliband

http://gu.com/p/47g3z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is a very good profile. It is unbiased, I think, and allows people who don't think he is very good as leader (eg me) to nod along, as well as those who take a different view. It has genuine access and insight I think.

My prejudice comes in part from my attitude towards Stewart Wood. Wood is Miliband's intellectual soulmate, and shares his analysis of what should be done. I strongly disagree with Wood, who I think just re-heats ideas from the 80s. I think he is a disaster. Wood is the (Labour) father of pre-distribution. I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name. I think we should help the poorest by giving them more money (the approach of the last Labour government).

I want a return to the last Labour government. I am not going to get it. I'll have to settle for the Tories being out (which is much better than nothing).

[Edited to remove a 'not']

Your analysis is completely and utterly flawed.

New Labour, like Thatcherism, was a product of its time. There was strong growth, in part due to a massive banking fraud. This growth allowed Labour to let the market rip and use the tax raised to fix market inequalities. In effect the state was subsidising society to the benefit of business.

Miliband analysis is quite correct, the economy has changed. This route to a prosperous society is closed, to quote Byrne - there is no money (or more accurately rather less money than there was).

However society is still broken, and left to free market capitalism we are heading to ingrained poverty, rigged elections (Cameron has started down that road) and eventually something that looks a lot like a police state to increasingly the majority on the margins.

This has to be fixed, since the state can no longer fund a just society business must be forced to. This is the brutal logic of pre-distribution.

Now given your world no longer exists I suggest you might want to do some deep thinking.

[rebeccariots2]

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 11m11 minutes ago
Tories promise 30 hours a week free childcare if reflected. But when is 30 hours not really 30 hours - our story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sh ... 99685688e9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

[yahyah]

Adrian Bott @Cavalorn · 23h 23 hours ago
Private Eye: 'this is the 8th election in a row where the Conservative party has said it will extend #righttobuy to Housing Assoc tenants'

Is that true ?

[SpinningHugo]

The Long Read at the Guardian.

The making of Ed Miliband

http://gu.com/p/47g3z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is a very good profile. It is unbiased, I think, and allows people who don't think he is very good as leader (eg me) to nod along, as well as those who take a different view. It has genuine access and insight I think.

My prejudice comes in part from my attitude towards Stewart Wood. Wood is Miliband's intellectual soulmate, and shares his analysis of what should be done. I strongly disagree with Wood, who I think just re-heats ideas from the 80s. I think he is a disaster. Wood is the (Labour) father of pre-distribution. I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name. I think we should help the poorest by giving them more money (the approach of the last Labour government).

I want a return to the last Labour government. I am not going to get it. I'll have to settle for the Tories being out (which is much better than nothing).

[Edited to remove a 'not']

Your analysis is completely and utterly flawed.

New Labour, like Thatcherism, was a product of its time. There was strong growth, in part due to a massive banking fraud. This growth allowed Labour to let the market rip and use the tax raised to fix market inequalities. In effect the state was subsidising society to the benefit of business.

Miliband analysis is quite correct, the economy has changed. This route to a prosperous society is closed, to quote Byrne - there is no money (or more accurately rather less money than there was).

However society is still broken, and left to free market capitalism we are heading to ingrained poverty, rigged elections (Cameron has started down that road) and eventually something that looks a lot like a police state to increasingly the majority on the margins.

This has to be fixed, since the state can no longer fund a just society business must be forced to. This is the brutal logic of pre-distribution.

Now given your world no longer exists I suggest you might want to do some deep thinking.

Well, that seems to me to be long on critical analysis and rhetoric, very short on practical solutions (the same as Wood's oeuvre). The opposite was true of the Labour government from 1997-2010.

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

[yahyah]

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 11m11 minutes ago
Tories promise 30 hours a week free childcare if reflected. But when is 30 hours not really 30 hours - our story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sh ... 99685688e9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

Isn't there a way of accessing it via one of the news gathering thingies ?

Also, where are all those right wingers screaming 'if you can't afford to care for your children, don't expect me to pay for them' on this ?

[PorFavor]

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 11m11 minutes ago
Tories promise 30 hours a week free childcare if reflected. But when is 30 hours not really 30 hours - our story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sh ... 99685688e9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

I'd be interested to know if "when is 30 hours not really 30 hours" is also applicable to the minimum wage tax move, too (which is already a bit iffy).

It seems as though they're already fiddling about with the fine print and the ink's not yet dry. I don't have access to the "Times" but, as are you, I'm interested to learn more.




Good morfternoon, everyone.

[utopiandreams]

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 11m11 minutes ago
Tories promise 30 hours a week free childcare if reflected. But when is 30 hours not really 30 hours - our story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sh ... 99685688e9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

LadyCentauria made mention of it in the early hours, rebecca. She seemed to imply that the full 30 hours only apply when all parents are working. Presumably single parents are considered as such should they work, but you never know with all this talk of hard-working families.

[TechnicalEphemera]

It is a very good profile. It is unbiased, I think, and allows people who don't think he is very good as leader (eg me) to nod along, as well as those who take a different view. It has genuine access and insight I think.

My prejudice comes in part from my attitude towards Stewart Wood. Wood is Miliband's intellectual soulmate, and shares his analysis of what should be done. I strongly disagree with Wood, who I think just re-heats ideas from the 80s. I think he is a disaster. Wood is the (Labour) father of pre-distribution. I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name. I think we should help the poorest by giving them more money (the approach of the last Labour government).

I want a return to the last Labour government. I am not going to get it. I'll have to settle for the Tories being out (which is much better than nothing).

[Edited to remove a 'not']

Your analysis is completely and utterly flawed.

New Labour, like Thatcherism, was a product of its time. There was strong growth, in part due to a massive banking fraud. This growth allowed Labour to let the market rip and use the tax raised to fix market inequalities. In effect the state was subsidising society to the benefit of business.

Miliband analysis is quite correct, the economy has changed. This route to a prosperous society is closed, to quote Byrne - there is no money (or more accurately rather less money than there was).

However society is still broken, and left to free market capitalism we are heading to ingrained poverty, rigged elections (Cameron has started down that road) and eventually something that looks a lot like a police state to increasingly the majority on the margins.

This has to be fixed, since the state can no longer fund a just society business must be forced to. This is the brutal logic of pre-distribution.

Now given your world no longer exists I suggest you might want to do some deep thinking.

Well, that seems to me to be long on critical analysis and rhetoric, very short on practical solutions (the same as Wood's oeuvre). The opposite was true of the Labour government from 1997-2010.

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

Well if the analysis is wrong, feel free to explain where.

Pre-distribution isn't really about fixing prices, it is about regulating markets. However well regulated markets in my view are essential in a functioning democracy.

[frightful_oik]

I think the 30 hours is only for 38 weeks of the year as well.

[mikems]

I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name.

Yes, the biggest problem poverty-pay workers face is the risk of regulated markets, isn't it?

[mikems]

What should we do when 'markets' fail? Let them? and bugger the consequences, because regulation is an affront to the Gods or something?

Reverence to market freedom is the same as letting the rich and powerful do what they want in their own interests.

And TE is right : the fraudulent boom years earned money for the government, but it can't be repeated without allowing crime to flourish again. We don't need that, surely.

Instead, a complete change is required. End reverence of markets, stop protecting the rights of the powerful over everyone else and set about establishing a mixed, regulated economy which works for the majority. After that, we can start talking about progressing to more a socialist society where everyone's freedom from the power of the rich is guaranteed.

[citizenJA]

Good-morning, everyone.

[mikems]

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

It's an easy thing to say, but no so easy to show, I would think. In fact prices are fixed all the time, not by the variations of supply and demand - or even by government, which I suspect you are referring to - but by monopolies and cartel practices that seek to extract super-profits from the economy.

That is how our economy works. It is a complex mixture of large, cartelised, partial or full monopolies in nearly every sector. It is not a free market as described by ideologues. They simply ignore what they don't want to see : five or six companies control food sales and distribution, four or five banks control the retail banking sector, monopoly utility and service suppliers in almost every sector. All these extort rents from the overall economy, but because the people getting the dividend income are the same as those prating endlessly on about 'free markets', these obvious facts are completely excluded from the 'debate' etc.

The only sectors that aren't cartelised and monopolised are those that can't be : like hairdressers, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, small business service providers etc.

Bandying around the ideological catchphrases that have allowed the erection of this far-from-free market will do us no good. We need clear sight about what our economy really is, not waffle or posturing.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Morning all.

Seventy years ago today the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British and Canadian troops. Shortly after that liberation one of the BBC's war correspondents, Richard Dimbleby, broadcast from the camp:

...Here, over an acre of ground, lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.

The discoveries at that camp, and the thousands of other camps across Europe, were among the reasons that the European Convention on Human Rights was necessary; the actions of this Coalition government, their persistent erosion of people's rights, their desire to accelerate that process, the casual way in which they can talk of people as stock or suggest coloured wristbands as an easy way to identify certain groups suggest that it is still necessary. If the Tories get back in, especially if that is with the assistance of UKIP, I genuinely fear for the people of this country.

I heard a UKIP spokesman speaking on the radio this morning and now I have these words going around in my head:

The sun on the meadow is summery warm.
The stag in the forest runs free.
But gather together to greet the storm.
Tomorrow belongs to me.

[ohsocynical]

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 11m11 minutes ago
Tories promise 30 hours a week free childcare if reflected. But when is 30 hours not really 30 hours - our story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sh ... 99685688e9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

Isn't there a way of accessing it via one of the news gathering thingies ?

Also, where are all those right wingers screaming 'if you can't afford to care for your children, don't expect me to pay for them' on this ?

Maybe they've finally caught on that Conservative promises never come to fruition.

[RogerOThornhill]

Morning all.

This tells us everything one needs to know about both the original tweeter and re-tweeter...

Toby Young retweeted
Sarah Vine @SarahVine · 10h 10 hours ago
Ed Miliband is the Kim Kardashian of British politics. He thinks he's amazing - but all anyone can see when they look at him is a giant arse

[SpinningHugo]

Predistribution and price fixing.

The classic examples of predistribution that Labour has (tentatively) put forward that were not the policy of the last Labour government, are.

(i) The energy price freeze.

(ii) A rail price freeze for a year, with a fare cap to come.

(iii) Tax rebates to employers paying the living wage,

(iv) Banning 'excessive' rent rises, with 3 year contracts the norm.

None of these are sensible in my view (the Tories have copied the second, and on one view gone even further),

As with cutting tuition fees, most of those are populist policies that, when you look at the detail, turn out to be regressive. Fixing energy or rail prices doesn't just help the poorest: it benefits all those who consume these things, rich and poor alike. By capping them below market you incentivise the consumption of the goods you have now underpriced. That isn't sensible with fuel and travel.

The third is particularly daft. If we have a *national* 'living wage' (and politically I think it will have to be national) you'll have to give a tax break to employers who already pay it. That means Goldman Sachs. And employers in the South East. And relatively higher taxes for employers in the North Eat of England (where employees paid below the Living Wage is more common). That is the opposite to the kind of incentives we want to introduce.

The fourth will put up starting rents. There is a strong case for preventing landlords exploiting the inequality of bargaining power that arises when they have a tenant in situ (the tenant is prepared to pay more so as to not have to move out). But by both making tenancies longer by law, and fixing what rent rises there will be, initial rents will go up, sharply.

There were and are good reasons why the last Labour government did not do things like this. I do understand how it is arguable that there is no real 'market' for say electricity or rail travel, but the uncomfortable truth is that there is precious little evidence that consumers are paying above the odds for these things (indeed for rail travel, the price is subsidised, and is too low. We are incentivising long commutes into London, and businesses that are based on that).

There is, in my view, no sensible alternative to dealing with poverty other than through giving the poor more money. Do that using a progressive tax regime. Unlike many, I am much more concerned about helping the poorest than I am about inequality per se.

Predistribution is, for me, free lunch politics. The kinds of distortions I talk about above are commonplace whenever you try and fix the rice of anything. Predistribution holds out the prospect that in times of austerity we can achieve the things we the left want without facing up to the uncomfortable reality that this costs money. So, we end up with policies like the above, coupled with a commitment not to raise social security spending (when it is far too low now). There is no such thing as a free lunch. Wood is peddling rubbish, in my view.

Put another way.

I remember reading somewhere a thing Wood wrote about Teddy Roosevelt and how great he was. I think Wood thinks that the problems we face today are somehow like those faced by Roosevelt in 1902, and that we need to introduce a bit of trust busting as he did.

I think that is stupid in the extreme. It simply ignores the fact that the world we live in in the UK in 2015, suffuse as it is with competition regulation and a vastly larger state (in proportionate terms) compared to the US federal government before WW1, is just not like that. He is a romantic, thinking there are still Standard Oils to slay.

[2015, not 2014].

[LadyCentauria]

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 11m11 minutes ago
Tories promise 30 hours a week free childcare if reflected. But when is 30 hours not really 30 hours - our story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sh ... 99685688e9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

LadyCentauria made mention of it in the early hours, rebecca. She seemed to imply that the full 30 hours only apply when all parents are working. Presumably single parents are considered as such should they work, but you never know with all this talk of hard-working families.

I did get a little carried away in that post but here's exactly what the Tory manifesto says on the subject:

And because working families with children
under school age face particularly high childcare costs,
in the next Parliament we will give families where all
parents are working an entitlement to 30 hours of free
childcare for their three and four year-olds

p.27 (my bold)

And for those who want to read my late-night/early-morning ramblings on the topic, here goes (edited for punctuational errors):

So, not for all parents of three and four year-olds nor for all three and four year-olds? Just the ones with (at least two?) working parents? Why couldn't they have said 'both' parents? Might the eye not have skipped so easily past it, as mine did on the first couple of readings?

Or, do they intend ensuring that a child with a mother, father, and step-father – or mother, step-mother, and father, can't benefit from this if the absent parent is out of work? Or, perhaps, they're thinking of biological and adoptive parents, sperm-donors, or....

I'm sorry. That sketch was getting silly

Having re-read that, I realise a question-mark was in the wrong place, and another couple were missing, so have corrected that with bold ones. And it is very (more?) possible that they meant households rather than 'families', which would allow single-parents the 30 hours but couples would only get it when both parties work.

[mikems]

There are none so blind...

[LadyCentauria]

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

It's an easy thing to say, but no so easy to show, I would think. In fact prices are fixed all the time, not by the variations of supply and demand - or even by government, which I suspect you are referring to - but by monopolies and cartel practices that seek to extract super-profits from the economy.

That is how our economy works. It is a complex mixture of large, cartelised, partial or full monopolies in nearly every sector. It is not a free market as described by ideologues. They simply ignore what they don't want to see : five or six companies control food sales and distribution, four or five banks control the retail banking sector, monopoly utility and service suppliers in almost every sector. All these extort rents from the overall economy, but because the people getting the dividend income are the same as those prating endlessly on about 'free markets', these obvious facts are completely excluded from the 'debate' etc.

The only sectors that aren't cartelised and monopolised are those that can't be : like hairdressers, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, small business service providers etc.

Bandying around the ideological catchphrases that have allowed the erection of this far-from-free market will do us no good. We need clear sight about what our economy really is, not waffle or posturing.

Thank you @mikems. That's the clearest explanation I've seen for what I've been trying to sieve out of my often incoherent thoughts.

[mikems]

Cheers, LC!

[PorFavor]

Sounds as though yet another of their big manifesto pledges is not all it seems and unravelling. Anyone got access to the Times who can tell us what the nub of the story is?

LadyCentauria made mention of it in the early hours, rebecca. She seemed to imply that the full 30 hours only apply when all parents are working. Presumably single parents are considered as such should they work, but you never know with all this talk of hard-working families.

I did get a little carried away in that post but here's exactly what the Tory manifesto says on the subject:

And because working families with children
under school age face particularly high childcare costs,
in the next Parliament we will give families where all
parents are working an entitlement to 30 hours of free
childcare for their three and four year-olds

p.27 (my bold)

And for those who want to read my late-night/early-morning ramblings on the topic, here goes (edited for punctuational errors):

So, not for all parents of three and four year-olds nor for all three and four year-olds? Just the ones with (at least two?) working parents? Why couldn't they have said 'both' parents? Might the eye not have skipped so easily past it, as mine did on the first couple of readings?

Or, do they intend ensuring that a child with a mother, father, and step-father – or mother, step-mother, and father, can't benefit from this if the absent parent is out of work? Or, perhaps, they're thinking of biological and adoptive parents, sperm-donors, or....

I'm sorry. That sketch was getting silly

Having re-read that, I realise a question-mark was in the wrong place, and another couple were missing, so have corrected that with bold ones. And it is very (more?) possible that they meant households rather than 'families', which would allow single-parents the 30 hours but couples would only get it when both parties work.

Yes - I was just thinking that. It has, to make any sort of sense (to the family - as distinct from to the Conservatives) to mean households. But it doesn't actually say that - so who knows?

[mikems]

The point about Teddy Rooseveldt was that he was a capitalist himself, yet could see that the overwheening power of the industrial moguls was throttling enterprise and 'free markets' for everyone else.

Of course the idea that we again have a monopolised nexus of economic/political power weilding an unhealthy and undemocratic influence over the lives of the citizens is simply waved away because the world, apart, crucially, from in economics, where exactly the same impetus for capital to concentrate and centralise is evident now as it was then, is a very different place in other ways.

It's not serious argument, it is the usual bluster and avoidance of reality that, deployed as propaganda for nearly fifty years, has led us back to exactly the situation TR had to deal with, by design.

[RogerOThornhill]

LibDem manifesto if anyone's interested.

https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/l ... 1429028133

[SpinningHugo]

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

It is not a free market as described by ideologues. They simply ignore what they don't want to see : five or six companies control food sales and distribution, four or five banks control the retail banking sector, monopoly utility and service suppliers in almost every sector. All these extort rents from the overall economy, but because the people getting the dividend income are the same as those prating endlessly on about 'free markets', these obvious facts are completely excluded from the 'debate' etc.

The only sectors that aren't cartelised and monopolised are those that can't be : like hairdressers, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, small business service providers etc.

Bandying around the ideological catchphrases that have allowed the erection of this far-from-free market will do us no good. We need clear sight about what our economy really is, not waffle or posturing.

Food sale and distribution is a nice example, one that was often used about 10 to 15 years ago to make the point you are making.

It turned out not to be true. It turned out that in the UK we have a fiercely competitive food retail sector driving prices down (ask a dairy farmer). Aldi and Lidl undercut the big five who had been coasting for too long. The market worked.

Retail banking in the UK makes almost no money. A bank will lose money on things like current accounts (these are loss leaders to try and get you into the bank to buy other things like insurance). That is a sector (unlike supermarkets) where it would be good to have more competition, but that problem is created by regulation itself. The barriers to entry are now such that trying to start a new bank is nearly impossible.

Monopoly utility and services providers are regulated already. Nobody, including Tories, thinks we should abolish Ofwat, Ofgem, or Ofcom.

You are presenting a false dichotomy between free market libertarians and sensible people like yourself.

I'm not. I am just saying why the specific policies that are new, and the product of the predistribution thinking of Wood, aren't very good.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am a Labour voter. If you want a reason why, I only have to cite yesterday's insane Tory policy on housing, which was far worse than any of the not sensible policies I criticise here.

[citizenJA]

NHS stress: a third of GPs plan to retire in next five years

A poll [BMA/ICM] of 15,560 GPs by the British Medical Association (BMA) has found that 34% intend to stop working by 2020, with many others going part-time, moving abroad or even abandoning medicine altogether.

...the NHS is already failing to persuade enough newly qualified medical graduates to opt for a career in general practice. The NHS’s own GP taskforce warned last year that although ministers want to see 3,250 trainee GPs being recruited every year, “GP recruitment has remained stubbornly below this target, at around 2,700 per annum, for the last four years” – a shortfall of around 2,200 new doctors.

...Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP). “Highly trained and experienced GPs are leaving the profession in growing numbers because of the intense and increasing pressures that we are facing, and not enough medical students are entering general practice to replace them. This is a genuine danger to patient safety...

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015 ... five-years

(my bold)
'Intense & increasing pressures' GPs are facing result in loss of staff, lack of recruitment.
What else, if anything, is specifically preventing GP recruitment & fewer medical students from entering general practice? Is training too costly for students? Is the seven year time commitment for training & expense exacerbate the problem? Does the UK have enough medical schools to train GPs? Are those medical schools accepting enough students? Are medical school entry requirements so difficult it prevents many people from becoming GPs? Does this demonstrate a need for pre-med career tutorial prior entry to medical schools? Are GPs in the UK valued enough for their work in the NHS overall given the time, expense & difficulty of becoming a GP?

I may be asking the wrong questions. Please don't hesitate to let me know your thoughts.
Tory, Labour & LibDem party leadership plans to address the loss & lack of new GPs in the NHS briefly mentioned in the article.

[RogerOThornhill]

I see the LibDems take a dim view of Gove's Regional Commissioners too.

Ensure there is an effective, democratically accountable, ‘middle tier’ to support and intervene in schools where problems are identified. We will encourage local head teachers with a strong record to play a key role in school improvement through a local Head Teacher Board, working with schools and Local Authorities. We will abolish unelected Regional Schools Commissioners.

and

Give democratically accountable Local Authorities clear responsibility for local school places planning. We will only fund new mainstream schools in areas where school places are needed, and repeal the rule that all new state funded schools must be free schools or academies. We will allow Local Authorities to select the school sponsor, where this is not the Local Authority itself.

They have far more in common with labour on this than with the Tories.

My suspicions about leaving a leading LibDem (Paul Marshall - co-writer with Laws of the Orange Book) while having a leading Tory leave the DfE Board may well be correct.

[utopiandreams]

LibDem manifesto if anyone's interested.

https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/l ... 1429028133

Thanks Roger, I suppose I should read it out of interest and seeing how much overlap there may be with Labour. However as long as there are Orange-Bookers who can consider coalitions with Tories it all seems rather meaningless. So speaks an ex-LibDem.

[mikems]

The supermarkets were declared not to be a cartel by the captured regulator.

How can any sane person see three or four large companies dominating high percentages of total trade and not see monopoly? That's the blooming definition, fgs!

Also, we used to have a powerful Monopolies and Mergers commission which made sure cartels and monopolies were broken up before they could dominate sectors. Of course, that has been 'reformed' so that it no longer presents a threat to dividend incomes.

[TechnicalEphemera]

Interesting comments from Hugo, will respond (much) later.

[utopiandreams]

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

It is not a free market as described by ideologues. They simply ignore what they don't want to see : five or six companies control food sales and distribution, four or five banks control the retail banking sector, monopoly utility and service suppliers in almost every sector. All these extort rents from the overall economy, but because the people getting the dividend income are the same as those prating endlessly on about 'free markets', these obvious facts are completely excluded from the 'debate' etc.

The only sectors that aren't cartelised and monopolised are those that can't be : like hairdressers, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, small business service providers etc.

Bandying around the ideological catchphrases that have allowed the erection of this far-from-free market will do us no good. We need clear sight about what our economy really is, not waffle or posturing.

Food sale and distribution is a nice example, one that was often used about 10 to 15 years ago to make the point you are making.

It turned out not to be true. It turned out that in the UK we have a fiercely competitive food retail sector driving prices down (ask a dairy farmer). Aldi and Lidl undercut the big five who had been coasting for too long. The market worked.

Retail banking in the UK makes almost no money. A bank will lose money on things like current accounts (these are loss leaders to try and get you into the bank to buy other things like insurance). That is a sector (unlike supermarkets) where it would be good to have more competition, but that problem is created by regulation itself. The barriers to entry are now such that trying to start a new bank is nearly impossible.

Monopoly utility and services providers are regulated already. Nobody, including Tories, thinks we should abolish Ofwat, Ofgem, or Ofcom.

You are presenting a false dichotomy between free market libertarians and sensible people like yourself.

I'm not. I am just saying why the specific policies that are new, and the product of the predistribution thinking of Wood, aren't very good.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am a Labour voter. If you want a reason why, I only have to cite yesterday's insane Tory policy on housing, which was far worse than any of the not sensible policies I criticise here.

Okay SpinningHugo, I appreciate some of your argument but you appear to be forgetting a major factor, i.e. ease of entry to a market. Where it's difficult or requires huge start-up costs then you're likely to see cartels. Even in more easily entered markets larger corporations are prone to undercut until they can squeeze out the small players.

As for being a Labour voter, I'd never realised at the G and only learned as much from your early posts here.

Edit: I suppose I could add buy smaller players out, especially innovative ones.

[mikems]

Monopoly utility and service monopolies are not properly regulated. They are simply not allowed to extort beyond reason. If they were subject to proper regulation, based on the public and national interest, they would be broken up. If they were anything but a means of channelling money from the wider economy into dividend income for the minority of shareholders, they wouldn't have been set up as they were, and left to behave as they have ever since.

There is no reason why these things shouldn't be in public ownership, if they cannot be broken up. That's not socialism, that's capitalist theory.

[SpinningHugo]

The supermarkets were declared not to be a cartel by the captured regulator.

How can any sane person see three or four large companies dominating high percentages of total trade and not see monopoly? That's the blooming definition, fgs!

Also, we used to have a powerful Monopolies and Mergers commission which made sure cartels and monopolies were broken up before they could dominate sectors. Of course, that has been 'reformed' so that it no longer presents a threat to dividend incomes.

Aldi, Lidl.

Note what has happened to Tescos profits

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... ce-plunges" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Five profit warnings last year, you must have noticed.

Doesn't look like a monopoly sector to me.

[AnatolyKasparov]

It is a very good profile. It is unbiased, I think, and allows people who don't think he is very good as leader (eg me) to nod along, as well as those who take a different view. It has genuine access and insight I think.

My prejudice comes in part from my attitude towards Stewart Wood. Wood is Miliband's intellectual soulmate, and shares his analysis of what should be done. I strongly disagree with Wood, who I think just re-heats ideas from the 80s. I think he is a disaster. Wood is the (Labour) father of pre-distribution. I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name. I think we should help the poorest by giving them more money (the approach of the last Labour government).

I want a return to the last Labour government. I am not going to get it. I'll have to settle for the Tories being out (which is much better than nothing).

[Edited to remove a 'not']

Your analysis is completely and utterly flawed.

New Labour, like Thatcherism, was a product of its time. There was strong growth, in part due to a massive banking fraud. This growth allowed Labour to let the market rip and use the tax raised to fix market inequalities. In effect the state was subsidising society to the benefit of business.

Miliband analysis is quite correct, the economy has changed. This route to a prosperous society is closed, to quote Byrne - there is no money (or more accurately rather less money than there was).

However society is still broken, and left to free market capitalism we are heading to ingrained poverty, rigged elections (Cameron has started down that road) and eventually something that looks a lot like a police state to increasingly the majority on the margins.

This has to be fixed, since the state can no longer fund a just society business must be forced to. This is the brutal logic of pre-distribution.

Now given your world no longer exists I suggest you might want to do some deep thinking.

Well, that seems to me to be long on critical analysis and rhetoric, very short on practical solutions (the same as Wood's oeuvre). The opposite was true of the Labour government from 1997-2010.

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work.

It can work, in certain situations.

I agree we can't just return to the 1970s/80s, but TE's analysis is fundamentally correct. 2008 and its fallout has wiped out the platform from with New Labour governed (and often very successfully, I'm certainly not going to disagree with you there) We need something new and Ed realises that. The blueprint is sketchy at the moment, but (as is often forgotten now) very much the same was true when the Tories won in 1979.

[mikems]

Aldi and Lidl are new entrants to the cartel. You or I couldn't start up an international supermarket chain. They are large players expanding to get their share of the cartel action in the UK.

Tesco and others are suffering because they are being undercut, not be free market competition, but by other giants moving onto their territory, as they have done themselves. I'm sure in a few years Aldi and Lidl will grow to replace some of the existing cartel members, but that doesn't stop it being a sewn up market for the big players.

[danesclose]

It turned out that in the UK we have a fiercely competitive food retail sector driving prices down (ask a dairy farmer). Aldi and Lidl undercut the big five who had been coasting for too long. The market worked.

Sorry Hugo, but the market hasn't worked for everyone - certainly not the dairy farmers, who are being driven out of business. Nor for the poor saps forced to work in supermarkets for their "benefits" or a minimum wage job topped up with tax credits etc.

[mikems]

You take evidence of monopoly extortion - the oppression of farmers - as proof of free markets? These farmers have no choice. There is no market for them. It is the supermarkets or bankruptcy. Why see only one side of the equation? Why no concern for these suppliers, but plenty of defence for the monopolies that exploit them?

[PorFavor]

Clegg provokes anger by refusing to take questions from journalists at manifesto launch

It’s official. We’ve declared the Lib Dem manifesto launch the worst so far. This is from my colleague, Patrick Wintour. (Guardian Election Blog)

I had it on in the background. (That's it. I have nothing more to say about it.)

Next up, in a minute - Ukip.

[ephemerid]

Re. Tory manifesto......

I've just read the whole thing. Most of it is rubbish.

Long on rhetoric, full of outright lies about Labour's record, and plenty of empty pledges (due to half the stuff being already implemented).

Worst of all - abolition of the Human Rights Act.

[SpinningHugo]

Aldi and Lidl are new entrants to the cartel. You or I couldn't start up an international supermarket chain. They are large players expanding to get their share of the cartel action in the UK.

Tesco and others are suffering because they are being undercut, not be free market competition, but by other giants moving onto their territory, as they have done themselves. I'm sure in a few years Aldi and Lidl will grow to replace some of the existing cartel members, but that doesn't stop it being a sewn up market for the big players.

That is how competition works in markets like this. Expecting start ups to compete with Tescos is unrealistic. Expecting other major international players to do so is. And has happened. It is just observably not a cartel, and Tescos earnings per share is not great. You are at least ten years behind the curve.

A classic example of a firm with a competitive edge, that loses it overtime as other market players copy their model or undercut them.

Sometimes markets work. Recognising that doesn't make you a free market libertarian.

The only options are not

(a) free market libertarian

or

(b) a denial that markets ever work, so that any market distortion just has to be accepted.


I don't accept either view.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Okay SpinningHugo, I appreciate some of your argument but you appear to be forgetting a major factor, i.e. ease of entry to a market. Where it's difficult or requires huge start-up costs then you're likely to see cartels. Even in more easily entered markets larger corporations are prone to undercut until they can squeeze out the small players.

Classic example of that was the transatlantic airline companies; not a formal cartel but, when Freddie Laker tried to challenge them, they all cut their prices until they had forced him out. You can only break that sort of informal cooperation if you have serious resources and/or serious resolve, as Branson later proved.

[gilsey]

The supermarkets were declared not to be a cartel by the captured regulator.

How can any sane person see three or four large companies dominating high percentages of total trade and not see monopoly? That's the blooming definition, fgs!

Also, we used to have a powerful Monopolies and Mergers commission which made sure cartels and monopolies were broken up before they could dominate sectors. Of course, that has been 'reformed' so that it no longer presents a threat to dividend incomes.

Aldi, Lidl.

Note what has happened to Tescos profits

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... ce-plunges" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Five profit warnings last year, you must have noticed.

Doesn't look like a monopoly sector to me.

Tesco blew up their own business model with home delivery.

[SpinningHugo]

Okay SpinningHugo, I appreciate some of your argument but you appear to be forgetting a major factor, i.e. ease of entry to a market. Where it's difficult or requires huge start-up costs then you're likely to see cartels. Even in more easily entered markets larger corporations are prone to undercut until they can squeeze out the small players.

Classic example of that was the transatlantic airline companies; not a formal cartel but, when Freddie Laker tried to challenge them, they all cut their prices until they had forced him out. You can only break that sort of informal cooperation if you have serious resources and/or serious resolve, as Branson later proved.

Absolutely, and what they did was criminal even at that time. BA was subject to huge fines.

But international air travel is another market that clearly works. Good luck making much money running an airline.

[RogerOThornhill]

Anyone not convinced that the LibDems are lining up to back Labour?

Focus policing on crime prevention, saving money by scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners

After some of these I really can't see how they can go into coalition with the Tories again.