I just watched Ed Balls on Channel 4 News calling for VAT cuts. Labour’s argument is that they agree that they need to bring the deficit down but not so fast. Recently I heard Labour talking about the National Health service. Once again they agree that change is needed but not the change that the government are pursuing.
It’s easy being in opposition. All you have to do is disagree with the government. I don’t think many of us have enough understanding to know whether the governments fast track to deficit reduction is better than Labour’s ideas for going more slowly.
We do know that the opposition are bound to disagree with the government. The truth is that Labour have no alternative and so they are forced to criticise the speed of the process rather than the process itself. This is not surprising since the Labour leadership are a bunch of nobodies.
Both Millibands and Balls have never had proper jobs. They all worked as media monkeys for New Labour before being shoe horned into safe seats. They perform so lamely in opposition because they have no policy ideas of their own. They only know is how to present ideas, know how to play the media. Remember that idiotic attack on Ken Clark a few weeks ago? Any sensible person who listened to Clark’s arguments could not have believed that he meant to make light of rape yet Ed Milliband picked it up and was banging on about it during PMQs the very same day. This was nothing but spin.
I have heard several times in the news that Ed Balls is a “considerable intellect” and that he is generally well clued up on the economy. Last week The Telegraph released transcripts of some of Mr. Balls documents from when he was working for Gordon Brown. I read the document entitled Project Volvo where Mr. Balls lays out his ideas for getting Gordon Brown elected.
Not much evidence of a great intellect there.
In fact, project Volvo was no more than an off the shelf marketing campaign which could have been put together by any marketing graduate. The same approach could have been used to sell magazines or margarine.
I realise that this marketing stuff works and therefore political parties are forced to hire marketing staff. I guess this took off in the UK when Margaret Thatcher hired Saatchi and Saatchi but Thatcher was never so stupid as to confuse marketing staff with politicians. Labour’s mistake was to allow the marketing men to run the party.
You have to be suspicious when you hear that Labour want to cut taxes. So when I heard, this evening, that Ed Balls wanted to cut VAT I did not think that this was part of a well thought out economic strategy. I thought that he was TALKING BOLLOCKS! Balls knows that reputable bodies such as the IMF and the EU do not agree with him and he knows that the government will ignore his calls. But that is not the point.
Mr. Balls does not expect the government to follow his advise. His call for a VAT cut is merely headline grabbing fluff to cast the Tories in a bad light. More spin. More marketing.
Under Tony Blair the marketing men worked too closely with the leadership. In today’s Labour party the marketing men ARE the leadership. I am even starting to hear of yet another rebranding attempt, this time to be entitled “Blue Labour”.
In marketing terms Labour is now a tainted brand and repairing a brand is a very big job requiring going back to honesty and principles. The product itself must have intrinsic value.
While Labour remain a party led by nobodies like Ed Balls even Saatchi and Saatchi couldn’t repair it.
The news has been reporting that the British government is to reveal plans to provide “super-fast broadband”. Oh, good grief! We’ve had this back in March when Gordon Brown had the same idea.
I despair over our leadership as they seem rudderless when confronted with a changing world. I remember when PCs were becoming popular some idiot politicians thought that we should have typing taught as part of the national curriculum. This, at a time when kids were getting home games computers before they became teenagers and picking up typing naturally.
Now our government look around and see everyone talking about e-this and i-that and hits on some daft idea which they consider will prove their leadership regarding technological change. But copying Singapore is not providing leadership.
My broadband is quoted as about 6 meg download. I don’t get that of course due to contention ratios and other technical factors. The point is that my speed is usable. I work from home now and then without issues. If my work required faster speeds I could get it. I’d just have to pay more. I know that maximum broadband speeds are unevenly spread across the UK but I do not believe that this is a limiting factor to technological economic growth
As I said, I work from home now and then. Most of the time I join the nightmare commute north every morning to sit opposite another poor sod. We grunt “good morning” and then spend the day talking to people on the other side of the world. As soon as is permissible we join the commute back home and then slump in front of the telly.
This wokring from home is termed telecommuting. The reason I do use it most of the time is not technological, it is because of outdated management styles. British management like to see their workers sitting in the office; this makes them think that they are getting their monies worth even if the employees spend most of their time on Facebook. It can be no coincidence that for many years prior to Facebook the Japanese word for this time wasting has been “face time”. It is pointless and it costs industry millions.
The reason that facetime is so popular is that it is easier on the manager. He can hide in his office, then once his boss puts him on the spot, he can strut around giving instructions and demanding information. Having his staff scurry around makes him feel important and may impress his boss but this is poor management and detrimental to economic performance. Facetime should be eradicated irrespective of telecommuting policies but and telecommuting can help this process along.
Eradicating facetime means implementing effective achievement based management. The manager needs to plan his team’s activities, create schedules, allocate time and resources and them review progress. Employees should then be judged by the efficient and timely completion of tasks which they are set.
Many companies already have successful telecommuting policies but not enough. Achievement based management is more of a challenge as it involves the manager having to put in some effort. It is here where the British government could usefully intervene by providing training for managers and by implementing tax breaks for employers and employees.
The government encouraging telecommuting would also encourage achievement based management. Telecommuting would also ease transport problems, make industry more efficient and reduce CO2 emissions. It’s is a no lose proposition and would show real leadership.
Government should set policy and not get involved in implementation. This is where New Labour went wrong. The government should not use tax payers money to provide high speed broadband access to every shed on every mountain top in the country. Market forces can be left to supply broadband to where it is required.
Let’s not forget the last government technological big idea. Digital Audio Broadcast. OK, many of us have DAB radios but how many of us have them in our cars? And how long before the whole DAB experiment is shelved in favour of wireless internet access?
This morning I listened to John Humphries interview the Shadow Education Secretary, Ed Balls, on BBC Radio 4′s Today program. Yes, I know, I should move on from ranting about the inadequacies of New Labour and start ranting about the Tories and Lib Dems but hang on.
Following the publication of Mandelson’s diaries and a book by Andrew Rawnsley both documenting the infighting within the New Labour cabinet between Blair and Brown, Humprys was trying to pin down Balls on his association with the infighting through his association with Brown. Mandy had called the infighting an insurgency and Humphries said that Andrew Rawnsley’s book claims Mr. Brown was vacillating before a planned “coup” in 2006 and Ed Balls told Mr Brown: “It’s too late. It’s all in place. It’s going to happen.”. Adn article in The Evening Standard claimed Balls also said: “Blair is never going to go. He has to be pushed. You mustn’t be weak. You’ve been weak for too long.”
So Mr. Balls waffled and said the book was full of inaccuracies but, tellingly, did not deny the specific incident.
Humphries drew attention to Labour’s part in the financial crisis and a McKinsey document stating the UK’s horrendous debt. Mr. Balls waffled, saying “interests rates were low” and “inflation was low” and went on to say that the crisis was global, implying that nobody is to blame at all.
This tosh is like a second rate rehash of Gordon Brown’s interview technique and shows that Balls, like Brown, does not understand the linkage between cheap money (low interest rates), the asset price bubble and the financial crisis. I am reading the diaries of Tony Benn – “More Time For Politics” at the moment and he wrote something which goes to the heart of New Labour spin. He said: “….I no longer feel that I am required to believe what I am told by (new Labour) ministers”.
It occurred to me that the feud between Brown and Blair may have contributed, in a very substantial way, to the prevalence of manipulators, bullshitters and bullies surrounding the New Labour government. Both Blair and Brown would have needed hatchet men and this need would have driven out any wise, thoughtful or competent advise. Leading on from this one can speculate on the whole nature of the New Labour years without the likes of Campbell, Mandelson and Balls. If wiser heads had prevailed might Blair have remained relatively sane and not led the UK into Iraq? Might Brown have had more time for the economy and avoided the worst of the financial crisis? We shall never know.
Several people have commented to me that the Tories would have screwed things up just as bad as Labour. Maybe. But of course they didn’t did they. It was Labour and you have to punish governments who screw up by chucking them out otherwise you are just rewarding incompetence.
No doubt the Tory/LibDem coalition will draw my attention in time, though right now I just find the absence of Mandy bullshit a refreshing change and with the remnants of New Labour still voluminously TALKING BOLLOCKS it is easy to get distracted.
The Labour party wont move on until it faces up to its mistakes and rejects the unsavoury characters from the New Labour years. If it doesn’t then, once the Tories have fallen out of favour, we will be faced with another Labour government wastin ti’s time on spin rather than achieving objectives. In the words of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition the Labour party need to “Confess the heinous sin of heresy”and “reject the works of the ungodly”. ie admit that they screwed up and chuck out the likes of Balls.
I am getting really irritated by Labour in opposition. Their outrageous self riotous indignation is disgusting. From Roy Hattersley arrogant assumption that the Lib Dems should ally with Labour to Harriet Harman winging that Lib Dem voters did not vote for the current policies.
Hey Harriet! I am a Liberal Democrat voter, don’t tell me what I think!
This week Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East became almost hysterical in the House of Commons and shouted that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, was a “miserable pipsqueak”. This abuse from a member of a party which led the UK into war under the leadership of such miserable frauds as Mandelson, Campbell and Blair!
Labour backbenchers have still not faced up to fact that their acquiescence to being led by charlatans and incompetence for the past 13 years has cost them power and cost the country dear. Labour should wake up and smell the coffee. They knowingly allowed a bunch of frauds to lead them in order to win the election. This is an open secret. Even Tony Benn has admitted it publicly. They sacrificed their principles for power, they screwed the economy, they lost the election.
When Mr. Watson uses the term pipsqueak, I suggest that he is projecting. Today he swaggers around insulting people like a drunken bouncer but why did he not have enough courage to speak out when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were shafting Labour and the country? Could it be that Mr. Watson is a miserable pipsqueak?
I saw a cartoon in The Independent yesterday which implied that The Tory/Lib Dem coalition are using scare tactics to introduce spending cuts. I’ve also heard the Labour cabinet condemning all the cuts but giving no guide as to how the deficit (and the debt) which New Labour ran up should be brought under control. For those not steeped in financial jargon the debt is how much we owe and the deficit is the shortfall in our annual spending. So by running a deficit we increase the national debt. The talk by the new coalition government so far has concentrated on getting the deficit under control but bare in mind that Gordon Brown ran a deficit even during the boom years as the UK was spending more than the government gained in taxes!
Depressingly but, perhaps predictably, all we hear from everyone who has been asked to make cuts is justification for why their particular budget should not be cut. There was an education official on the radio recently “explaining” that the national debt is not like a credit card and that we can simply roll over the debt. Easy! We’re in debt, no problem, borrow more. It is this daft logic that has lead to the UK national debt of nearly 70% of GDP in 2009.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the United Kingdom became wealthy through empire and the industrial revolution and used that wealth to provide comfy lives for the British elite. Note that the majority of the British people had lives worse than many of those in India or elsewhere in the Empire mainly because of the cold British climate and the appalling working conditions during the industrial revolution. The British elite, however, did very well.
During the two world wars the European powers smashed each other to bits and America and the USSR stepped in as world leaders. The U.S. had ensured that the UK paid for aid during the war but the Marshall Plan got the UK and Western Europe back on their feat. The UK then hung on to it’s place in the world for a while. Our industry and trained workforce gave us “comparative advantage” compared to “developing countries” and so the UK and other European countries remained fairly wealthy and fairly secure. Sure Japan, Taiwan and others developed their own industry but most of the world remained pre-industrial.
Post World War 2 a Labour government came to power and, dazzled by the apparent success of Socialism in the USSR, started looking after the working class. For the first time ordinary people gained access to clean water, health care and pensions.
We developed a world view roughly as follows: The West leads the world, developing technology and operating industry, the far east copies the West and and performs some production and the “third world” supplies the raw materials but remains poor and dependent on aid.
But the UK was complacent., we became convinced that all our wealth was a natural state of affairs and that it could all be paid for by creative accounting. While we were naval gazing the Soviet Union collapsed, open markets became the vogue, China joined the World Trade Organisation and the rest of the world adopted capitalism and found that they were pretty good at it. Not only were they good at it they were unencumbered by a mature democracy or legislation to protect workers.
Global leadership, industry and power is now shifting from the democratic Western nations to nations who are either dictatorships or corrupt token democracies. As a quick preamble to my next bit of ranting I should explain, for the uninitiated, that the a common measure of a countries wealth is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced by a country. Because countries vary in populations another common measure is to divide GDP by the population and derive a figure known as GDP per capita. This gives a measure of how much each person, on average, produces.
Time for some figures.
UK GDP is sixth in the world, just above Brazil at 8 and India at 11 and below China at 3.
National debt is at 68% of GDP, higher than Ghana at 67.5% or Uganda at 19.3%
The UK’s budget deficit (how much more we spend than we earn) is at 14.2% of GDP, above Sierra Leone at 12.35% and Vietnam at 9.3%
And yet
The UK’s defence budget is 2.5% of GDP, that’s more than above China at 2% and Germany at 1.3%.
The UK’s Education spending is the same as South Africa and Mexico at 5.3% of GDP. That’s above Bhutan at 5.2% but below Fiji at 5.6% and Bolivia at 6.3% and Yemen at 9.5%!
It’s also worth considering that other countries do not have debt, they have surplus! They have saved money and built up substantial wealth in Sovereign Wealth Funds. For example:
United Arab Emirates 627 $Billion
Norway 443 $Billion
China 288.8 $Billion
The UK still has some cards up it sleeve. In 2008 we were the sixth biggest manufacturer after Italy but Russia was at 7 and Brazil at 8.
In recent history the UK has relied on North Sea oil to top up our income. I cannot find any figures on what percentage of our GDP is made up from Oil and Gas but I recall reading that the tax take on Oil and Gas was the largest contributor to the British exchequer followed by Finance. I believe that was before the financial crisis.
All this is not to say that the United Kingdom is doomed, just that the world is changing and we can’t rely on the UK remaining wealthy by default. British policies today dictate the future of this country and if we continue to run up a debt our nation will decline. It not rocket science. There are younger and fitter countries in the world.
Just today I heard a British politician talking about maintaining British leadership. Our political elite have not yet caught up with the 21st century. Why should Brazil, Taiwan or China be interested in being lead by a mid size debtor nation on the other side of the world?
No nation or empire lasts for ever. Nations and Empires rise and fall. The British Empire has fallen and one day the UK will fall and I suggest that, if we are not careful, people will look back and see that the obvious start was the 21st century due to complacency, vested interests and the inability of a people to make tough decisions..
We are no longer one of the few great industrialised powers in a world populated by uneducated and illiterate farmers. The UK is now just one of many educated and industrialised countries. It is true that we have a more mature system of law and democracy but undemocratic and corrupt governments around the world see this as an encumbrance and not as something to emulate.
We are in massive debt, the oil money is running out. New Labour’s policies of spend and hope have failed. I support the current government’s prescription of large scale cuts but this should be supplemented by informed strategic planning.
We should also reconsider our commitment to allowing foreign entities to buy British assets and industry. Sovereign Wealth Funds referred to above often buy industry and assets from the developed world and this is acceptable if everyone plays by the same rules. However some of the largest of these funds are owned by nations who play by very few rules. Specifically we should be wary of allowing SWFs of single party dictatorships or corrupt regimes owning large stakes in the UK.
Globalisation is all very well while the foreign money is pouring in and funding industry and jobs but once these foreign owners have their feet under the table they often find that it is more efficient to centralise production and transfer the industry abroad. This would be fair enough were it possible for British companies to buy up industry in China, Germany or Japan in the same way but other countries are not as open as the UK.
Last Sunday night there was a TV program enthusing about one industry in the UK which remains cutting edge and world leading. This was British Aerospace and it’s production of Rolls Royce Trent aircraft engines in Derby.
The company was very impressive. What is less impressive are rumours that in order to gain access to the larger and more lucrative U.S. military business British Aerospace is trying to morph into a United States company. Once this is achieved how long will it be able to justify dispersing it’s business over two continents?
Since this blog started in January 2008 it has been mainly polemic. Polemic, I believe, justly targeting hypocrisy. Two commons targets have been Israel for continuing a racist policy of settlement building while branding all criticism of this policy as racist (anti-semitic) and New Labour for spending most of their energy on marketing a supposedly prudent economic policy while wasting huge amounts of money, dragging the UK into massive debt and achieving very little.
Tony Blair is now gone, Gordon Brown is out of government and, while the spectre of Peter Mandelson lingers like a fart in the House of Lords the nightmare of New Labour is finally over.
So what now? Who will I complain about now? Nothing new is happening in Palestine / Israel and I don’t see a resolution to that problem in the near future. So who can compete with the ghastly liars and frauds that comprised the upper echelons of New Labour? Who can match Blair when it comes to grinning like a crazed muppet while lying through his teeth?
It’s true that New Labour Next Generation are even as I write manoeuvring for position. The Millbands appear in public shaking hands and chirpily angling for advantage. Perhaps the Labour Party will resist being pushed into an early leadership election with just Pinky and Perky but I am not counting on it.
Probably Labour are out of power for a few years yet so the question is: Are the golden days of railing against hypocrisy and incompetence over? Will the Tory/Lib Dem coalition deliver fair and efficient government? Should I be searching for a new domain name. Talking Sense perhaps?
Supporters of Labour in the United Kingdom appear incensed that they are no longer the party of government and are condemning the Liberal Democrats for forming a coalition with the Conservatives. Words such as despicable, treachery and deceit have been used.
Labour suffered a massive drop in support and polled far fewer votes than the Conservatives. The Labour party, Gordon Brown and the rag tag bunch of nobodies that formed the last cabinet are widely disliked throughout the country yet they now behave as if they have been cheated of power.
“I fear the lady doth protest too much”! Their allegations of betrayal and despicable conduct should be directed at their own leadership. Gordon Brown’s decision to bring the twice disgraced Peter Mandelson back into government placed the Brown premiership firmly in the “spin over substance” camp of Tony Blair.
Let’s just list the reasons why they are out of power:
No party gained an overall majority.
All parties are free to negotiate alliances as they see fit. The Liberals Democrats are an independent party and are not obliged to side with Labour.
A Labour / Liberal Democrat coalition would not have achieved a majority and would therefore have no more right to govern than the Conservatives alone.
Ok, we’re off. Voting for the UK General Election has started and pretty soon the TV will start pumping out predictions and theories. Jonesxxx carried out his civic responsibility and visited the local community centre to make his mark.
Yesterday I saw a clip of the vile Brown entity on some chat show with his wife and they asked him what he would do if he couldn’t be PM and he prattled on about working for a charity. This put me in mind of Tony Bloody Blair. I recall that during his time in office Mr. Blair told us fervently that he was passionate about education, passionate about child care, passionate about young people, passionate about hospitals, passionate about politics and passionate about Britain. So what did Mr. Blair do as soon as he left number 10?
Well, he resigned as a Labour Member of Parliament for Sedgefield and got a job with an American bank. Funny, as I don’t recall him mentioning his passion for banking or America or leaving the people of Sedgefield once that they had served their purpose.
Of course he also got a job as a Middle East Peace Envoy but this seemed mostly to involve living in America working for large banks.
So, what will Mr. Brown do if he can’t be PM? What will he do if the Labour Party dump him as leader? Will he carry on nobly as Labour member for Dunfermline East? WIll he go and work for a charity as he suggested? Don’t count on either. My bet is that he will spend the remains of his life in a darkened room writing endless justifications of his period in government and how it could have been so different if he had been Prime Minister in 1997 before Blair screwed everything up.
Photography
fast broadband wont stop facetime
Tags: achievement based management, “face time”, British government, British management, broadband, changing world, CO2 emissions, commute, dab, Digital Audio Broadcast, e-this, economic growth, Facebook, facetime, Gordon Brown, home working, i-that, idiot politician, leadership, management styles, managers, plan, rudderless, super-fast broadband, technological change, telecommuting, the office, their monies worth, transport problems
Facetime not facebook
The news has been reporting that the British government is to reveal plans to provide “super-fast broadband”. Oh, good grief! We’ve had this back in March when Gordon Brown had the same idea.
I despair over our leadership as they seem rudderless when confronted with a changing world. I remember when PCs were becoming popular some idiot politicians thought that we should have typing taught as part of the national curriculum. This, at a time when kids were getting home games computers before they became teenagers and picking up typing naturally.
Now our government look around and see everyone talking about e-this and i-that and hits on some daft idea which they consider will prove their leadership regarding technological change. But copying Singapore is not providing leadership.
My broadband is quoted as about 6 meg download. I don’t get that of course due to contention ratios and other technical factors. The point is that my speed is usable. I work from home now and then without issues. If my work required faster speeds I could get it. I’d just have to pay more. I know that maximum broadband speeds are unevenly spread across the UK but I do not believe that this is a limiting factor to technological economic growth
As I said, I work from home now and then. Most of the time I join the nightmare commute north every morning to sit opposite another poor sod. We grunt “good morning” and then spend the day talking to people on the other side of the world. As soon as is permissible we join the commute back home and then slump in front of the telly.
This wokring from home is termed telecommuting. The reason I do use it most of the time is not technological, it is because of outdated management styles. British management like to see their workers sitting in the office; this makes them think that they are getting their monies worth even if the employees spend most of their time on Facebook. It can be no coincidence that for many years prior to Facebook the Japanese word for this time wasting has been “face time”. It is pointless and it costs industry millions.
The reason that facetime is so popular is that it is easier on the manager. He can hide in his office, then once his boss puts him on the spot, he can strut around giving instructions and demanding information. Having his staff scurry around makes him feel important and may impress his boss but this is poor management and detrimental to economic performance. Facetime should be eradicated irrespective of telecommuting policies but and telecommuting can help this process along.
Eradicating facetime means implementing effective achievement based management. The manager needs to plan his team’s activities, create schedules, allocate time and resources and them review progress. Employees should then be judged by the efficient and timely completion of tasks which they are set.
Many companies already have successful telecommuting policies but not enough. Achievement based management is more of a challenge as it involves the manager having to put in some effort. It is here where the British government could usefully intervene by providing training for managers and by implementing tax breaks for employers and employees.
The government encouraging telecommuting would also encourage achievement based management. Telecommuting would also ease transport problems, make industry more efficient and reduce CO2 emissions. It’s is a no lose proposition and would show real leadership.
Government should set policy and not get involved in implementation. This is where New Labour went wrong. The government should not use tax payers money to provide high speed broadband access to every shed on every mountain top in the country. Market forces can be left to supply broadband to where it is required.
Let’s not forget the last government technological big idea. Digital Audio Broadcast. OK, many of us have DAB radios but how many of us have them in our cars? And how long before the whole DAB experiment is shelved in favour of wireless internet access?