Freaky in the FT

[rockfreak]

And again! Another of my letters goes into the FT - this weekend's edition. And guess what? It's about, wait for it, public schools! Rishi (several miles up my own backside) Sunak and his noble £100,000 gift for bursaries to Winchester College. But there's a paywall on the FT and I'm afraid you'll have to buy a copy at the grand sum of £4.50 (and cheap at the price, guv!) or sneak a look at your local newsagents. Letter is titled: "Here's a statistic that would shame any Victorian head".

[sejintenej]

As for one's interactions with those who supported Brexit and those who voted to remain, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the former group as they have gone so very quiet (including on this forum)! Within my (extended) family, as far as I know it was only a small number of the elderly who voted to leave and we have agreed not to talk about it as support for remain was otherwise pretty much universal.

Andrew. The vote on Brexit happened a considerable time ago as did the decision to exit Calais during the middle ages or even the decision by the French king to accept that the Danes had successfully invaded Normandy.

We are fixed with those facts of life, we have to simply live with them. Freedom from EU control allowed the possibility of building our economy to Far East levels but ..... I have just read a Canadian novel which sums up our government to a tee. They will not do anything to annoy their constituents so they will waste their time on petty matters rather than opt for the (temporarily unpleasant) conditions which would allow Britain to prosper. That way they personally will (hope to) stay on the gravy train. Had I the power I would decree that nobody could stay in a government post more than two terms and then could not serve in the Civil Service.

As a local example of the simple stupidity it has been decided to make my local roads 20mph limited. OK so there is a concept in officer training that you do not give an order that you know will not be obeyed; our roads have had cars normally driving to 40 plus mph and Mr Plod does f*** all. (He convicts 5% of burglaries!). You can put up signs but they are routinely ignored so, given Army training they should not exist. Conversely the police have recommended that low speed limits should be removed but the erks involved simply ignore the experts.

That example is translated into higher levels of so-called government who cannot be bothered to answer constituents but still demand our obedience to their hairbrained schemes. From work carried out in the seventies Britain could be self sufficient for green electricity but the government stopped it. Those involved then went abroad and he Portuguese now have the use of the methods by the benefit of the UK research.

[Avon]

As for one's interactions with those who supported Brexit and those who voted to remain, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the former group as they have gone so very quiet (including on this forum)! Within my (extended) family, as far as I know it was only a small number of the elderly who voted to leave and we have agreed not to talk about it as support for remain was otherwise pretty much universal.

Andrew. The vote on Brexit happened a considerable time ago as did the decision to exit Calais during the middle ages or even the decision by the French king to accept that the Danes had successfully invaded Normandy.

We are fixed with those facts of life, we have to simply live with them.

No. Brexit can and will be reversed - it is just a matter of time. I hope it’s sufficiently swift to irk the aged, bigoted, hidebound, lumpen idiots who voted for it.

[loringa]

Off topic I know but ...

As for one's interactions with those who supported Brexit and those who voted to remain, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the former group as they have gone so very quiet (including on this forum)! Within my (extended) family, as far as I know it was only a small number of the elderly who voted to leave and we have agreed not to talk about it as support for remain was otherwise pretty much universal.

Andrew. The vote on Brexit happened a considerable time ago as did the decision to exit Calais during the middle ages or even the decision by the French king to accept that the Danes had successfully invaded Normandy.

Avon got there first but there is a huge difference between England's defeat by Henry II at Calais, another triumph of Queen Mary's glorious reign, and the entirely self-inflicted injury that is Brexit. The pedant in me wants to point out that 1558 is hardly medieval either, which is relevant as we are less than a century away from the Treaty of Westphalia on which our modern world, and the concept of nation states that underpins 'alliances' such as the EU, is built.

Reversing Brexit would be difficult; we wouldn't get the highly favourable terms we enjoyed previously for a start, but it is feasible if we are prepared to accept becoming part of Schengen, and adopting the Euro. The former would, of course, risk giving away the significant degree of control at our borders we previously enjoyed as a member state, but the Euro may start to look more attractive as the consequences of Brexit make themselves ever increasingly felt. These are also two things that Scotland would need to consider if it votes for independence: a hard border and a different currency from the rump UK.

Bottom line is this, whilst I am pretty certain the majority for Brexit has long evaporated there are clearly significant numbers of Brits, mainly English, who either believe the lies they were told by a certain Mr Johnson, or for some inexplicable (to me) reason actually believe we can be stronger outside one of the world's leading trading blocs. What is absolutely certain, however, is that our status on the world stage has been significantly diminished and once a reputation has been trashed, it is very hard to regain it.

[sejintenej]

Andrew. The vote on Brexit happened a considerable time ago as did the decision to exit Calais during the middle ages or even the decision by the French king to accept that the Danes had successfully invaded Normandy.

Avon got there first but there is a huge difference between England's defeat by Henry II at Calais, another triumph of Queen Mary's glorious reign, and the entirely self-inflicted injury that is Brexit.

My point was that Brexit is/was not the first gam-echanging change seriously affecting Britain. It might have taken a little while but Britain turned itself round before and it could do so again - IF the politicians, unions and money-men will allow it. Of course it will not a shipping of slaves nor (probably) the invasion / control over a large part of the world but with our technical ability it could be in engineering etc just as south east asia has done.

Reversing Brexit would be difficult;

I agree. Do we really want to be ruled by the likes of Britain haters like Macron and the rest of the Brussels cabal? We are already seeing splits where Brussels is trying to enforce illegal laws on members - laws which are forbidden by the constitutions of certain members. Indeed I understand that two EU member's top politicians would be arrested if they venture abroad!

[rockfreak]

Today I get lead letter in the Guardian. About the modern phenomenon of the Tory party roundly insulting the electorate (Lee Anderson and the 30p meal). Generally it used not to happen in the post WW2 years because you don't really want to be slagging off the people you hope will vote for you, but after Thatcher created the worst unemployment since the war in her first administration Norman Tebbit was promptly up on his hind legs telling us to get on our bikes, and it's been a habit of the Tories ever since, much less so with Labour.

[rockfreak]

He's done it yet again! Another letter in the FT (Weekend edition 22/23 October). I'm ploughing what is by now a familiar furrow because this is my third letter in the FT on this particular subject. Is an independent central bank any more effective in softening the economic cycle than one controlled by politicians? I say no. When Banker Brown (the Labour variety) gave independence to the BofE the governor, the late Eddie George, thought about resigning because he saw how he might be hung out to dry for policy mistakes (or external events) that were political rather than the Bank's fault. Too often the central bank is left resembling a flapping stable door while the economy has bolted.

Would it not be better to have the chancellor, governor of the BofE and eight wise persons sitting round a table and trying to balance monetary and fiscal policy? The kind of arrangement that we had when Ken Clarke was chancellor? The present arrangement merely ghetto-ises the functions of Bank and politicians. I make the point in my letter that things are harder for the BofE in this Thatcherite/Lawsonite era because so many people and companies are living on tick, so a rise in the Bank rate risks tanking the whole economy. Whatever you might say about the much-maligned 1970s there was less debt then (private or corporate) so the Bank could, and did, raise the base rate more aggressively. This is the era that our Banker Brown (the CH variety) would largely have been working in, and I note his comments in the past about "the Yanks" coming in to the City, and the shadow banking sector (what are these: hedge funds? repo funds? - all the things that the rest of us struggle to understand). As far as central bank independence goes I can at least claim one eminent economist in my corner. The late John Kenneth Galbraith who was Roosevelt's lieutenant in the New Deal and wrote the seminal book on the Wall Street crash of 1929. He claimed that nothing the Federal Reserve had done in its lifetime since 1913 had made the slightest difference to the US economic cycle.

[sejintenej]

Freaky wrote:

Would it not be better to have the chancellor, governor of the BofE and eight wise persons sitting round a table and trying to balance monetary and fiscal policy? The kind of arrangement that we had when Ken Clarke was chancellor? The present arrangement merely ghetto-ises the functions of Bank and politicians.

You are writing about a committee involving elected persons who could have / not have specialists skills and have to satisfy their constituents at the next election. Remember the definition of a committee; it takes the minutes and wastes the hours. That is against what I understand to be the constitution of the BoE. Conversly, the top level of the BofE is comprised of experienced specialists renowned worldwide in their trade. Note that in the recent lunacy the BofE stood back and took steps to reduce the impact of what the shamateurs did.

The reference to ten wise men sitting around a table irks me. If the late Lilibet* who was trained as a girl to stand and stand a few hours more always conducted business with the Privy Council whilst standing would not that rule cut the time wasting of committees countrywide?

[rockfreak]

The Freakster rides again, after a long lay-off.
My letter in today's Weekend FT is titled: "Home truths about the capital's unaffordability".
About how the Thatcher/Lawson housing ideology has merely made housing (rented or bought) more expensive and left less money in people's pockets to spend and keep a system of capitalism going. How bizarre that those two arch proponents of capitalism should have designed a system which helps inhibit it.

[rockfreak]

After a long layoff the Freakster returns with the glad tidings that he's got a second lead letter in the FT. In today's weekend edition (16/17 August) I set aside economics and home in on religion. Titled "Sophistry, special pleading and an ignorance of the constitution" it is a riposte to a recent interview with the Rev Franklin Graham (son of Billy) who was making the remarkable assertion that religious free speech was somehow under threat in America. This seemed a bit of a stretch to me. People I know who come from the heartland say it's quite difficult to turn on a radio and not find some hot gospeller shouting at you. It seems to me to be the opposite. Is it in fact possible to accede to high political office in America by being a declared atheist?
I pointed out that the American constitution was inspired by the European Enlightenment - itself a reaction to the dreadful wars of religion on our continent four centuries ago. By their writings, Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin appear to be agnostics a century before Darwin and would almost certainly be atheists today. Then I include a rant from a rather unlikely figure, the very conservative late Republican senator Barry Goldwater who railed at the evangelicals for trying to hold him to ransom for their votes. "Who do these people think they are? he demanded.
I pointed out that the very lack of a state church (as the founding fathers wanted) has unfortunately resulted in an open field into which had poured a thousand Elmer Gantrys selling religion like soap flakes. The FT though subbed out my bit about our official state CofE being a happy accident that has helped keep religious fanaticism at the margins. In the God Delusion it's the only religious institution that Richard Dawkins has a kind word to say about, having like our generation, been exposed to several years of singing the stirring hymns and listening to the noble language of the old KJB, itself a work of literature.

[rockfreak]

OK, not the FT this time but today's Grauniad (Saturday 7). Responding to a feature as to what constitutes British values, I resisted the temptation to nominate our most famous export, the football hooligan, and homed in instead on our part (and particularly Edinburgh's) in the 18th century European Enlightenment where advances in philosophy, economics, science and town planning helped us shake off the grip of religious dogma and superstition and lay the ground for humanistic and common-sense laws. These ideas are so embedded in our national life that I ended by asking whether we weren't in danger of forgetting them, and enquired whether the Enlightenment was actually taught in schools today.

[rockfreak]

So no-one answers as to whether the European Enlightenment is taught in today's schools. Voltaire, Diderot, Fontenelle, Montesquieu? I don't remember much about these guys at school but then I left after the fifth form. And yet their ideas: natural law, natural justice, tolerance, independent judiciary, and, paradoxically, freedom to worship, are deep in our common law today. Freedom to worship is allowed as long as it doesn't involve arranged marriages or female genital mutilation. When religious or tribal dogma with cruel or unusual practices bumps up against our common law it's usually the common law which prevails. This we owe to the Enlightenment. The Church of England has been sensible enough over recent years to trim to the prevailing wind and dress itself in Enlightenment clothes.

But are there no schoolteachers out there in History and Humanities who teach the Enlightenment? London and Edinburgh were centres of progress, science and new thinking in the 17th and 18th centuries, along with Paris, and the French philosophers who visited our shores always admitted our contribution.

[rockfreak]

Another outing for the Freakster, in the FT Weekend magazine section. "Were the 80s as much fun as Jilly Cooper says?" by FT columnist Robert Shrimsley, who claimed that people had lots of money to spend. Well one for Banker Brown here who was there at the coalface (or bankface) at the time.
All very well if you were maybe an FT reader, said I. Of course Shrimsley and Jilly Cooper were probably referring to the second half of that decade after Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe had taken an axe to the northern industries, but suppose you were one of those who got clobbered at the end of the decade when things started to recover on the back of deregulation of the City, but the money to spend involved silly amounts of credit suddenly being advanced to people who in many cases should never have had it? People seem to have forgotten the scandals of BCCI, Barings and the pension missellings, and then the whole thing blowing up in 1990 and going into reverse and negative equity entering the language for the first time. I remember it well having lost my own job at this point. Greed was definitely not good.

[sejintenej]

"Were the 80s as much fun as Jilly Cooper says?" by FT columnist Robert Shrimsley, who claimed that people had lots of money to spend. Well one for Banker Brown here who was there at the coalface (or bankface) at the time.

Miaow. hardly the bankface; I was very often at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic earning space on the front page and the back page of the Financial Times.

All very well if you were maybe an FT reader, said I. Of course Shrimsley and Jilly Cooper were probably referring to the second half of that decade after Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe had taken an axe to the northern industries, but suppose you were one of those who got clobbered at the end of the decade when things started to recover on the back of deregulation of the City, but the money to spend involved silly amounts of credit suddenly being advanced to people who in many cases should never have had it? People seem to have forgotten the scandals of BCCI, Barings and the pension missellings, and then the whole thing blowing up in 1990 and going into reverse and negative equity entering the language for the first time. I remember it well having lost my own job at this point. Greed was definitely not good.

Multiple points. BCCI (and the Iceland crisis) were clearly going to happen long in advance; I had banned the mention of BCCI about 8 years before it blew up and the Iceland situation was outside our business.
Yes; credit was far too easy and the selling was too effective. Normally if something is offered like that (and e see it happening today) then a sensible person would be at least concerned (the Iceland situation was the same!). I blame the schools who concentrated on salts of calcium, square roots of numbers with no square roots, the speeeling of 30 letter words and nothing about the use of common sense.

I suspect we are going to see a change in the private pensions business; Labour have told us that if we die before emptying our pension pots then they will take 50% of what is left and then the will tax the will beneficiaries on the amount they inherit Since inheritors will be already at 40% tax bracket then effectively Labour are nicking 90% of any pension pots not used. You and I, David, will remember when income tax was up to 90% and how that was found to hold investment, business in general and the economy back damaging the country.
What is going to happen? peeps will draw last possible cent asap and either squirrel it away in bank notes under the floor boards, hide it abroad or spend it and find themselves broke as they age.

[rockfreak]

And again! Today, 12 July.

My letter is titled "Wealth has migrated away from ordinary people". As you can imagine the FT rather goes in to bat for those put-upon, internationally mobile, "high net worth" individuals who are supposedly doing so much for our economy and national life. I contest the idea by quoting the eminent late economist JK Galbraith who wrote the seminal book on the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and always said that it was the regular spendings of the working masses which motored the economy rather than the erratic luxury spending of the high-rollers. I point out the failure of Thatcherite "supply-side" economics over 45 years where it is assumed that if you give the rich everything they want they will do the business and the wealth will trickle down. It's notable for having done the opposite with the sixth-richest country in the world not so much a nation of shopkeepers as pizza deliverers.