Saturday 30 November 2013

Don't get bewitched by European urbanism again...

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Peter Hall is the godfather of British urban planning who, more than anyone else, set the scope and nature of our town planning system. There is no doubt that his contribution is enormous - and not entirely benign. Like many he is bewitched by European urbanism:

The brilliant new developments, visited by admiring tour groups of British planners, are now in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France and Germany: Hammarby Sjöstad, a new-town-in-town in the centre of Stockholm; the Western Harbour, a similar redevelopment of an old industrial area in Malmö, facing out to look at the new bridge from Copenhagen; new Dutch suburbs like Almere outside Amsterdam and Ypenburg next to The Hague; developments along new tram lines, as in Montpellier’s spectacular new corridor to the Mediterranean; and Freiburg in south west Germany, the university city that got everything right.


These developments are, we're told, the acme of urban development -  'environmentally sustainable', appropriate in scale and driven by the state. Indeed Peter Hall and other planners will tell us that this approach gives the private sector "the surety it craves" and sets the ground for its development and success. This is the urbanist version of that 'white heat of technology', the development approach that may result in a place as dynamic as Milton Keynes but will also produce Cumbernauld, Skelmersdale and Corby.


And when we (or rather those "admiring tour groups of British planners) visit these wonderful European places, what they see is the shiny regeneration they're not shown this:


Away from the modern developments lie older areas developed in the late 19th and early 20th century. A growing population led to urban sprawl, which took place outside of the city walls (e.g. The Gambetta). Here terraced, ‘2 up – 2 down’ housing is packed into narrow and cramped streets, lacking the open space of the Antigone. Even with the influx of high tech jobs, unemployment in Montpellier rose from 16.7% to 22.4% of the active population. A large majority of these are the North Africans who have made Montpellier their home, but cannot locate within the newer developments. Both lack adequate housing provision and high crime rates are now major problems in Montpellier. Social and ethnic polarisation is therefore highly evident.

The truth with state-led regeneration everywhere is that, even the successful stuff (or stuff the planners love) simply hasn't even scratched the surface of the problems lying below - crime, deprivation, unemployment, racism. The sectarian and communal aggro of modern Stockholm isn't resolved by the Hammarby Sjöstad however great it may be for its most better off residents. And to describe the mini-totalitarian place of Freiburg as the city that "got everything right" is a stark reminder that town planning sits at the heart of what I call the new fascism.

To remind you about the green wonderland of Freiberg:

Its housing blocks, built to a uniform height (usually four storeys), are reminiscent of the Eastern Bloc. Because the properties are all the same age, the place lacks character and charm. On the walk to my hotel, I pass an area of pitted waste ground reserved for the last phase in Rieselfeld's development, awaiting the excavators and cranes that accompany any such work in progress. It might be 'the gateway to the Black Forest' (as one resident put it), but the quarter lacks some of the facilities you might expect of a small provincial town.

And this is the town where you're charged  18,000 a year to park your car - to not get charged this impost, you have to sign the pledge not to own one (something plenty of Freiberg residents do and then go buy a car anyway). This is the town where supermarket bags are banned and the bicycle is god. This is the world those planners - Peter Hall and his ilk - want you to live in. A sanitised, controlled, regulated, judgemental world of standardised apartments, regimented green space and a stasi-like control of our choices and behaviour.

Me, I like the untidiness of the old city, the idea of organic, people-driven development rather than a world planned and directed by people like Peter Hall. People who fail to realises that their cities of gold are simply gilded marvels, circuses tacked on to failure and shown to us as Potempkin villages hiding the deprivation, decline, degeneration and communal strife that is the real truth of much urban life Europe. Just as Britain's shiny regeneration didn't create new jobs or attract new industries, these European places are just chimera, illusions of success that bewitch us and lead us into believing that grand projects, state-directed regeneration and a green agenda will turn round our struggling northern towns. It won't.

And remember, planners in the mould of Professor Hall created the places we hate, the architects they spawned designed the buildings we loathe and the philosophy they espouse crushes individual initiative, prevents opportunity and detests the dynamism of business - the hatred, the fear and loathing of "haphazard growth" is designed to crush the private at the expense of the public. Those planners are the problem not the solution. Don't let them fool you with their enchanted European wonder-towns - these are the safe, environmental, sustainable banlieues of the new fascism.


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Thursday 28 November 2013

Quote of the day...

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From Boris...

They weren’t around in the 1970s. I was, and I remember what it was like and how this country was seen. Our food was boiled and our teeth were awful and our cars wouldn’t work and our politicians were so hopeless that they couldn’t even keep the lights on because the coal miners were constantly out on strike, as were the train drivers and the grave-diggers, and the man who was really in charge seemed to be called Jack Jones.

Some of the music was good though...

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More crime, more smokers, fewer jobs - hey let's do it! The story of plain packs for cigarettes.

I heard an interview on the radio about plain packs for cigarettes. The public health doctor being interviewed (I forget his name, they all blur into one hideous nannying blob in my mind) explained that it's a wonderful idea - lot's of words like'colours', 'cool', 'shiny' and 'children' were uttered capped off with the killer line, something like:

"...these are used to make people choose a particular brand."

That was it, a statement of advertising truth - it's about brand choice not product choice. And this is the basis for introducing plain packaging. There is absolutely no evidence at all that supports the idea that the shininess or otherwise of the packaging is the crucial factor in some thirteen-year-old's decision to try a fag. Indeed, if you think about this for a minute or two (especially if you were once that thirteen-year-old), you'll know it's nonsense. Of all the myriad reasons for someone starting to smoke, "it's in a gold pack" or "the pack is all pink and girly, I have to smoke" are such vanishingly small reasons as to be irrelevant.

But that doesn't stop them:

The policy – designed to make smoking less appealing to young people — appeared to have been put on hold four months ago. But Government sources indicated that ministers had decided to implement the scheme after an outcry from doctors and the Opposition.

I'm guessing that the last two words in that quote are the crucial ones - we're having a review because the government want to close off another line of criticism from Labour. This is despite what evidence we have showing what an utterly stupid and ineffective policy 'standardised packs' is:

...the accountancy firm KPMG released a report on 4 November, which highlighted how the Australian government has lost $1 billion Australian dollars in the 12 months ended in June, as a consequence of the vast jump in black market sales of cigarettes.

There was also a rise of 154 per cent in sales of manufactured counterfeit cigarettes and fake brands (known as ‘illicit whites’). One of these is called Manchester; it has a market share of 1.4 per cent, which is staggering considering they are illegal. In terms of total shipments, illicit sales of cigarettes have increased from 1.5 per cent to 13.3 per cent. And most significantly – cigarette consumption has not changed.

So there you go - these public health idiots and a ministerial class more bothered by headlines than whether a policy works propose an idea that will increase crime, cost jobs and, at best, have no effect at all on rates of smoking. It makes me want to scream - partly because these idiots still don't understand brand marketing (or even bother to ask people who do understand brand marketing what they think) but mostly because this is policy-making based on prejudice masquerading as science.

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Wednesday 27 November 2013

Pointless tears for a lost high street

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Professor Sparks laments the emotional void left by the loss of Woolworths. He makes an important point, putting his finger on the way some retailers can create a sense of attachment that’s more sentimental than economic. But of course sentiment doesn’t pay the bills.

Do you feel an emotional void as a result of Woolworths closing? If you do then your levels of emotional sensitivity are far more developed than those of normal people. Now I understand how marketing and advertising - the presence of a brand over the years - can create attachment. Indeed, as a professional marketer I can respond with a smile of quiet satisfaction at the way in which branding sustained Woolworths as a business long beyond the point where it lost its way as a retailer. But emotion at the demise of a shop few of us visited more than a couple of times a year?

Let's weep for the high street, let's mourn the loss of those shops we cherished in our now forgotten youth. We should wipe away a tear knowing that the greengrocer who always called you "John" has gone, that there are so few bakers and that the comfortable retail brands of yesteryear are now just memories.

We should post pictures of our towns in those glory days when we had, we're told, some 'attachment' to the high street. And have long conversations while hunched over these snaps, remembering past ages and regretting the loss of these past institutions.

Show that emotion, call down a curse on the shops that have filled the void left by those old shops. The second hand shops, dens of evil gambling and places where all that's for sale is the false hope of an easy (but expensive loan) - cry out about:

...predators in Food Bank Britain, leeching on a society that struggles to make ends meet and ensuring their users pay over the odds to survive.

But let's not see that remembered past as a guide to some golden future for the high street, let's not pretend that emotion can ever substitute hard reality. Not the reality of poverty - there is less poverty today than there was when those black and white photographs were taken, when people trudged in worn out shoes, back aching to the high street to haggle and hassle for the things a family needed to survive. No it is the reality that our wealth has brought choice, mobility, opportunity and, in doing so, has left those retailers behind. All the tears of happy memory will not change this fact.

Yet people like Julian Dobson persist in painting this myth:

This is why the future of such high streets lies in a very different approach to prosperity. Instead of desperately competing for the spending from enclaves of affluence, high streets need to return economic value to local entrepreneurs and shoppers. This demands access to property at low rent and with business rates set at intelligent levels; it requires active encouragement of local enterprise by councils and chambers of commerce; and it requires community-based networks of trade and exchange that rebuild local loyalty.

Don't get me wrong, I'm with Julian on the tax thing - all taxes do is make business harder. But the pretence that somehow affluence is fading from places like Rochdale, that poverty and the food bank is somehow the norm of living in these northern towns is a distorted, even insulting, picture.

However, the shoppers in Rochdale, in Littleborough and in Middleton, they're on the tram into Manchester or fighting the traffic round the M60 to the Trafford Centre. Or indeed, and this is ever more the case, sat in their onesie on the sofa, smartphone or iPad in hand buying stuff on-line.

There is a future for the high street, not as a dystopic place filled with betting shops and fried chicken takeaways but as a place for leisure and pleasure. This isn't about some form of local protectionism, an impost on prices that further excludes the poorest, but about getting the scale right and the place right. Above all it means fewer shops.

So wipe away the tears, they serve no purpose beyond the memory that invokes them. Instead recognise the reality of 21st century retailing - on-line provides a scale of choice never before available to the consumer. It drives down prices and brings the world's goods to our sofa. Just as there were once 50 shops in Cullingworth (there are now fewer than 15 and four of these are hairdressers), there will be no future need to struggle with heavy bags to that high street of people's memories to face less choice and higher prices than we get either on-line or in the supermarket.

These tears for a lost high street are pointless.

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Tuesday 26 November 2013

A billion fewer poor people tells me the Pope is wrong about free markets

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The Pope has the biggest bully pulpit of the lot, millions of people believe his word is divinely-inspired and even less god-bothering folk in the western media give his pronouncements loads of coverage. So expect to hear a lot of this comment:

"... some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting." 

It contains those familiar nonsenses loved by left-liberal people - trickle-down, justice, power, inclusion. The Holy Father goes on to have a good pop at "consumerism" and then defends state intervention.

Now this is all well and good but the problem is that the Pope is wrong. Wrong about markets. Wrong about speculation. Wrong about state intervention. And above all wrong about what free market capitalism, that dreaded neoliberalism, means for the poor.

In simple terms that neoliberalism has, where governments have allowed it to work, delivered for the poorest in the world. Not just one or two of them but over a billion of the poor.

In 1981, 52% of the world's population lived on $1.25 a day or less. By 2008 that figure had fallen to 22%. Half of the world's poor people were no longer poor. Why? Because of capitalism, free markets, self-interest - those very things the Pope rails against in his ignorance.

We've still a long way to go - there are still over a billion people living in extreme poverty and that's a billion too many. But why scrap the system - that neoliberalism, those free markets - that has already more than halved the number of people in abject poverty? Economic growth, encouraged by a free market may not bring "justice" but it sure as hell will bring wealth, income and an end to poverty for those poorest people.

And the alternative? The alternative is this. Or, even worse, this.

The Pope is not just wrong but his wrongness may mean more people die in poverty. I'd find that hard to excuse in a man named for St Francis.

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Monday 25 November 2013

Here we go again...EU e-cig regulation

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You thought it was over. You thought the rush of common sense through the usually nonsensical MEPs meant that the job was done. Electronic cigarettes wouldn't be regulated as medicines. You'd be able to buy them form the local shop rather than require a prescription.

You were wrong. The regulatory zombie has crawled from out its tomb:

Late last week the European Commission circulated a confidential new proposal for regulating e-cigarettes.   The document was sent only to those negotiating the future of e-cigarettes behind closed doors in Brussels – representatives of the European Parliament and European Council.  This isn’t a final proposal, but it provides the negotiators with something to discuss.

And the something to discuss - as Clive Bates explains - will have this effect:

...if implemented this proposal bans every product on the market today and would severely limit options for future products - and may make it commercially unviable to develop in future.

It's almost as if EU officials actually want smokers to die.

So what do we do? It's back to the letter writing and campaigning again. Clive Bates provides a helpful guide to who you should contact - he suggests writing to your MP and MEP (providing useful links). I might add that there are European elections coming up next year so:

1. Write to your local paper saying you'll not support candidates who argue for excessive regulation
2. Contact local candidates (if you can find out who they are which might be tricky) to get their support

We only get one go at this - once the EU has regulated the direction is always one of more control, more rules. So sharpen your quills and go into battle!

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The basis for revolution (or how a commie talks some sense)

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Chris Dillow is a commie (OK, a Marxist, but since Karl Marx wrote the manifesto for communism that makes him a commie in my book) which is pretty close to unforgivable. However, he speaks sense when he says this:

And this is why I say the totalitarians have won. A totalitarian is a fanatic who believes that one ideology should dominate society. And (some) managerialists are - in this sense - totalitarians, who have extended top-down control freakery to places where it is counter-productive and destructive of traditional values. 

 Many years ago I concluded (in one of those all too infrequent flashes of wisdom) that not everyone agreed with me. And that it would be a pretty sad old world were that to be the case. Not that I'm wrong, of course, but that any idea must be challenged - how often do we see the biggest public administration disasters (look at NHS computerisation) occurring where there is no challenge, where everyone thinks it's a good thing.

This is why the closing down of debate by the use of bans is wrong. I think Marxism is wrong (axiomatically) but welcome people who want to argue from a Marxist viewpoint. The biggest problems - the recent banking crisis, the continued failure of international aid, the sclerotic European Union, England's failure to win international trophies at football - all stem from adherence to received wisdom and the absolute dismissal of radical or different approaches to these problems.

I recall campaigning during the 2001 General Election in Keighley, handing out "save the pound" leaflets outside the market, when a Labour councillor stopped for a chat - "I thought you were a sensible Tory, Simon," he pointed at the leaflet, "you don't believe this do you?"

Strip the politics away and this was simply an expression of that year's perceived wisdom - Europe and the Euro are good things and only frothing loonies believe otherwise. Yet those who took a contrary view were right were they not? Despite being contrary, despite being narrow-minded 'Little Englanders'!

The purpose of the government, to many of its denizens (and especially the non-elected ones) is to direct us all to the right decisions, right actions, to promote conformity. And, since I'm a grumpy old liberal rather than a Marxist, here's a reminder to government about its authority and impermanence:

There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.

I'm such Chris, as a good commie, would agree that this is the basis for revolution. However it is prosecuted.

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Sunday 24 November 2013

The statement Ed Miliband won't be making following Labour's Co-op and Unite problems

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"In recent weeks it has become clear that the Labour Party has placed its financial future in the hands of soft loans and contributions from trade unions.

The problem is that this disenfranchises Labour's membership by handing control of policy to funders - we attack the Tories for this but never look to our own problems.

Worse still, this situation is an offence to Labour voters. The millions of men and women from all classes, all ethic groups and every town who put their trust in the great party to provide leadership and direction for Britain.

So today I am announcing that the Labour Party won't be taking million pound donations from trade unions, will not negotiate soft loans with friendly banks to cover up financial weaknesses and will refuse to accept any donation bigger than £1,000.

There are eight million Labour voters. If each one gave us just £5, we'd have more than enough to fight a general election. And I'm sure there are many thousands of Labour people who'll give a little more - £50, maybe, for some, £500.

The message Labour will send British voters is that we will never again sell our party to the highest bidder, auction policies in exchange for finance or go cap in hand to friendly banks for soft loans.

The challenge I lay down to David Cameron is this:

Do the same. Join Labour in refusing to accept any more big donations. Make British politics better again. Remove the buying of influence that so distorts that politics. Refuse to accept any donation bigger than £1000.

If you don't the British people will know who's on their side."

With a few changes David Cameron could make this statement too - and it really would change British politics for the better if he - or Ed Miliband - did so.

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A Co-op memory.


It's 1977. Mum had sent me to buy an iron. I had complete instructions - the particular iron to be bought, how much it was on sale for and where to buy it. So I toddled off to the selected location clutching the cash needed for the purchase - the Co-op on Penge High Street.

I entered the Co-op (for current Penge residents the Co-op isn't there any more but it's next door to the Odeon Cinema that isn't there any more either) and look around for the location of the iron. After a moment's scrutiny of the signs - they weren't especially helpful, I recall - I headed to the most likely spot. You need to appreciate that, at no point in this adventure had there been any human encounter or indeed any encouragement for that encounter to happen.

I found the iron, checked its price and began the next phase of the adventure - trying to buy the blessed thing. From the spot I was stood there was no obvious "pay here" sign and, unlike the supermarket, there wasn't a bank of checkouts before the main doors.

"Aha," I thought and headed for the food section of the store clutching my iron, "they have checkouts there."

So I queued and, once at the front of that queue, presented my iron for payment.

"You can't buy that here, love."

"Oh. Where?"

An arm was waved in the vague direction of the main store (from where I had just come).

"Over there in the store."

I trudged back to the main store. In a distant corner, I spied what might be a shop assistant. I headed that way and it was such a person. They were unpacking a box and placing it's contents on the sales desk. Carefully, one item at a time.

And ignoring me stood shuffling from foot to foot a couple of yards away clutching a ten pound note and an iron. After a while, the assistant looked up and grunted.

"Wanna buy that, mate?"

"Er, yes." I held out the iron and the £10.

"Gotta go to the pay desk for that."

"Er, where..."

"By the lift."

I turned and headed towards the indicated location. And, yes, the pay desk was there. However, there was one small problem, there was no-one behind the desk to actually pay. I stood. I looked around for a bell to ring or maybe some instructions as to where to go in the event that the pay desk was unmanned. Nothing.  So I stood some more.

A older woman shambled over after what seemed an eternity.

"Can I pay for this please, " says I in an ever-so-slightly frustrated tone.

"Ysfffs" mumbles the woman and starts trying to insert a key hanging from a string on her belt into the till. After three or four goes at this, the till finally responds with those little lights and bells the new electronic wonders have to entertain us.

And I can complete my purchase. The woman seems somewhat affronted that someone actually wanted to buy something, as if this was not the reason why the Co-op had a big department store on the High Street.

"Thanks," I said once the sale was complete.

And I walked out from the shop. Not sure I ever went in again before it closed a couple of years later. Didn't seem much point since they didn't really want any customers.

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Saturday 23 November 2013

On the health benefits of alcohol...

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A very cheering quote (OK it's the Daily Mail so treat with caution):

Most of the evidence suggests that if red wine, in particular — and to a lesser degree white wine, beer, lager and spirits — were used as a preventive and therapeutic medicine, disease rates would fall substantially. Not only that, but lives would be saved — with huge benefits to the economy.

Of course we've being saying this for years...

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More misrepresentation of science in the cause of so-called "public health"

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One of the New Puritans' favourite approaches to the presentation of science is to take an extreme example - high doses of the chosen "evil substances" - and use this to run a scary story about consumption at more normal levels.

Here's an example from the Daily Mail:

Soft drinks laden with sugar could raise a woman’s risk of developing womb cancer, claim researchers.


Pretty straightforward and further evidence of how those "sugar-laden fizzy drinks" are so evil.

But hang on a minute, let's take a closer look:

Researchers discovered that postmenopausal women who reported the greatest consumption of sugary drinks had a 78 percent increased risk for estrogen-dependent type I endometrial cancer.

And that greatest consumption of fizzy drinks? It's consuming 60 plus 'units' (essentially, one can), which is about 20 litres a week. That's an awful lot of coke!

If you're drinking that much sugary drink, you've a problem. And:

The University of Minnesota researchers said that they couldn’t rule out that women who had lots of sugar-laden drinks had lots of unhealthy habits.





Looks to me like we're extrapolating from extreme levels of consumption here by women who are very likely to be seriously obese - this doesn't mean that your mum having a glass of coke while sitting in the garden is going to give her cancer of the womb.

It's just a scare story. And just to give you a little hope and cheer - if you're under 70 then, in the unlikely event that your can of 7Up gives you uterine cancer, you've a 90% chance of surviving.

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Friday 22 November 2013

"Local Protectionism" - the New Weather Institute and the promotion of poverty

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David Boyle from the New Weather Institute (a sort of nef on steroids) asks us to name the 'local economics' his organisation and others are promoting:

The prevailing economics of regeneration is based on the idea of comparative advantage.  Places need to specialise, otherwise – heaven forfend – everywhere will have to build their own radios or cars or anything else.

Or so the old-world economists mutter when you suggest that ‘comparative advantage’ might be taken too far.

Because when it is, what you get is too few winners and far too many losers, places that are simply swept aside in the narrowly efficient new world, where only one place builds radios.  Or grows carrots.

Now, as we know, comparative advantage - while not being the be all and end all of trade economics - is a pretty fundamental concept. And the idea that there will be only one place building radios because of 'comparative' advantage is, to put it mildly, nonsense. And here's a rabid right-wing economist to explain the nonsense - his name is Paul Krugman:

At the deepest level, opposition to comparative advantage -- like opposition to the theory of evolution -- reflects the aversion of many intellectuals to an essentially mathematical way of understanding the world. Both comparative advantage and natural selection are ideas grounded, at base, in mathematical models -- simple models that can be stated without actually writing down any equations, but mathematical models all the same. The hostility that both evolutionary theorists and economists encounter from humanists arises from the fact that both fields lie on the front line of the war between C.P. Snow's two cultures: territory that humanists feel is rightfully theirs, but which has been invaded by aliens armed with equations and computers.

Put simply the losers in David Boyle's 'local economics' are - as with protectionism everywhere - the consumers. This supposed 'resiliance', this much vaunted 'susatainability' and this self-important 'social responsibility' all comes at a cost. And that is higher prices, less choice and more poverty.

Getting people to scrat about in fields doing "sustainable local growing" is not an economic policy - it's a good idea, good for health, good for community but if it's your economic policy then it's a step back towards living in mud huts and relying on subsistence agriculture, the sort of policy Oxfam promotes in Africa rather than giving Africans access to trade, investment and economic growth.

What poor communities don't need is another bunch of middle-class sociology graduates arriving on their doorstep with another big hug. What they need are better schools, good homes and an idea that there's something beyond the horizon, a route out from poverty. What The New Weather Institute are offering is a future of gentile poverty with vegetable growing not a genuine economic future for poor communities.

The name for David Boyle's 'local economics' is an old one and a bad one: protectionism.


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Thursday 21 November 2013

Alcohol harm reduction in practice...

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Although I'm pretty sure Sir Ian Gilmore and Alcohol Concern wouldn't approve:

An unusual Dutch initiative aims to put an end to one of Amsterdam's worst nuisances -- those bawdy, loitering alcoholics -- by employing them in a kind of street cleaning corps. The problem, though, is that the state-financed Rainbow Foundation behind the project pays the self-professed chronic alcoholics in beer for their labor.

Perhaps, rather than nannying people whole aren't either a problem or harming their health, our public health people should look at schemes such as this - here's why:



I don’t know, but would be willing to bet, that most of these workers were consuming rather more than the equivalent of five cans of beer per day before they started in. The delivery is paced throughout the day so there’s no chance any of them get drunk. By delivering the beer as beer rather than as the cash equivalent encourages pacing things rather than having the workers spend it all on lower cost per unit binge at the end of the day.


It might not work for all these men - some may carry on old habits when not on the programme - but if a few drink less dangerously that's a real health gain. And Amsterdam gets some cleaner parks!

....

I don’t know, but would be willing to bet, that most of these workers were consuming rather more than the equivalent of five cans of beer per day before they started in. The delivery is paced throughout the day so there’s no chance any of them get drunk. By delivering the beer as beer rather than as the cash equivalent encourages pacing things rather than having the workers spend it all on lower cost per unit binge at the end of the day. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/should-you-ever-pay-alcoholics-in-beer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29#sthash.atiIcZqu.dpuf

Wednesday 20 November 2013

"Regulation kills kindness": thoughts after a public health event in Bradford

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It's a rare day when something from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation strikes me as profound and significant so this simple statement - regulation kills kindness - again made me sit up. Especially, as was the case today, it came as a refreshing moment in a depressing conference about 'public health' and health inequalities.

The context is a study on loneliness - a real killer, as bad as smoking and worse that obesity - and the finding that one barrier to people doing stuff like befriending projects, running events and, in truth, just being a good neighbour is the annoying rules, forms, bureaucracies and general jobsworthiness of public agencies.

However, the simple observation that people don't feel able to help because of "the rules" represents a more profound criticism of the modern state. The consequence of officials and their agents moving into spaces previously occupied by voluntary actors hasn't been enhanced service (as was probably expected) but the withdrawal of those volunteers into peripheral roles of little significance. Or indeed to the armchair in front of the telly.

The state doesn't 'care' (despite all the billions spent by it on caring) and this means that the state cannot be 'kind'. But, by deeming certain actions deserving of state finance, the government creates a society where 'care' - or kindness - is nationalised and where people think they need permission to do those acts of kindness.

I was also cheered by another conversation, one about the curse of "smokadiabesity" - the obsession of public health with smoking, drinking and diet rather than with more significant problems. This fits well with the loneliness study and the idea that it's unemployment, isolation and lack of material resource that creates health problems not simply the booze, burgers and fags. Far more important than telling people to stop smoking and to drink less is the idea of social engagement and physical activity being central to wellbeing and good health.

When 'public health professionals' are confronted with this idea they smile, nod and agree. But carry on with spending millions on ineffective campaigns that merely act to wind up the public. People don't see the nannies' message as relevant.

A small glint of hope in a slagheap of interventionist, judgemental new puritan waste.

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Tuesday 19 November 2013

Remember folks - moderate drinking is good for you

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Chris Snowdon blogs about the "j-curve":

...the optimal level of drinking is quite low, at around one drink per day (or 5-10 units per week), but that you would have to drink a lot more than before your mortality risk rises to that of a teetotaller. If complete abstinence is 'safe', then so is drinking 30, 40 and perhaps 50 units a week. Only beyond this point does one's risk rise above that of the teetotaller.


Go read the rest - very interesting stuff that you won't hear from the Church of Public Health.

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Local multipliers are something of a myth

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Trendy regional economic development folk like to tell you about "the multiplier effect" arguing that buying locally means that more money "stays in the local economy". We are told - mostly without any real evidence - that this multiplier effect is the magic formula for making poor communities less poor, that it explains how paying higher benefits improves local economics and is the reason why inefficient traditional high streets are better than supermarkets.

Here's an example of this mythmaking from New Start magazine:

Working with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, Preston Council is researching how much of the procurement spend of institutions – including Preston College, the University of Central Lancashire and Preston Council itself – actually stays in the local region.

‘The findings so far suggest that each institution spends less locally than you’d expect’, Whyte says. ‘There’s scope for us to improve that by looking at how to maximise local spend and supply chains and if there are any gaps in the local market, think about what we could do to fill it.’

The Evergreen model fills those gaps through a network of co-ops supplying food, energy and laundry services to local institutions. Preston Council is considering emulating this approach and has undertaken a number of initiatives to boost and expand local coops, including setting up a Co-operative Guild network.

Sound great doesn't it? But what it covers up is a fundamental factor about local preference - it distorts the market and, in doing so, it raises prices. If local suppliers in Preston know that they won't be squeezed out by a supplier from distant Burnley or, god forbid, Skipton then there will be no need for them to keep prices under control.

Thus we witness the essential fallacy of the local multiplier - the gain made in keeping money circulating locally is taken up in higher prices. It is, at the local level, essentially protectionism - great for the businesses that benefit but awful for the consumers who don't. The money may be circulating for longer but the buyers are paying more than they would be if the system were a free market. There is no gain.

And this is before we start talking about the opportunity cost of public spending:

It is quite misleading to leave public policymakers with the notion that their spending is not at the expense of the private sector because it may be autonomous or have multiplier effects

There may well be a local multiplier but these strategies to promote it are not only ineffective but probably damaging to the local economy (and certainly an impost on consumers).  Apparently though, this is "new economics" and we should be excited:

Until recently experiments in local economics were small-scale and peripheral. But the failures of orthodox approaches are leading even the most successful local economies to find new ways to boost jobs and revitalise communities. With a paucity of ideas and support from central government local areas are now abandoning laissez faire for more interventionist approaches.

Welcome to the latest in a long line of failed and failing regeneration strategies!

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Markets work - so planners have to stop them!

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Central London offices are being converted into homes:

“We have sold over 100 office buildings in Mayfair back into residential use in the past year,” said Peter Wetherell, founder of Mayfair estate agency Wetherell. “All the period office buildings that have been used as offices for 50 years are being turned back into homes.

“It’s the biggest thing going on in central London right now.”

Tim Worstall at the ASI thinks this is excellent:

It is of course the change in relative prices which is leading to the change of use. And of course without a price system we'd not be able to determine the relative demand (and the effectiveness of that demand) for the two potential uses of the properties.

What Tim doesn't spot is that the planners don't like this change happening.
 
A second London borough has launched a legal challenge against government legislation allowing developers to convert offices into flats without planning permission.
Lambeth Council has filed judicial review papers to Eric Pickles questioning his decision to deny Brixton town centre, Streatham town centre and the borough’s key industrial business areas exemption from the planning laws.

Lambeth joins Islington, Tower Hamlets, Richmond and Sutton is seeking exemptions from allowing permitted development rights for conversions from office to residential use. And the government has already removed those rights from properties across Kensington & Chelsea and the City of London.

Planners really don't like markets you know!

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More evidence that e-cigs don't need medical regulation

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From researchers who have connections to "manufacturers of smoking cessation medications".

There is very little risk of nicotine toxicity from major electronic cigarette (EC) brands in the United Kingdom. Variation in nicotine concentration in the vapour from a given brand is low. Nicotine concentration in e-liquid is not well related to nicotine in vapour. Other EC brands may be of lower quality and consumer protection regulation needs to be implemented, but in terms of accuracy of labelling of nicotine content and risks of nicotine overdose, a regulation over and above such safeguards seems unnecessary.

These are good things - people really are stopping harmful smoking with them. So let's encourage rather than carp and condemn, eh?


H/T Dick Puddlecote
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Sunday 17 November 2013

Thoughts on cycling...

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I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like.
It's got a basket, a bell that rings and
Things to make it look good.

I don't cycle. Indeed I gave my bike to my son a week or so back for him to travel to and from work. I used to cycle, back in the days when cycling five miles to school in South London was a done thing (and when schools, famously, had bike sheds behind which you could smoke).

So I was curious about the recent modest hullabaloo about cycling accidents where, if I understand correctly, they are all the fault of Boris Johnson.

The thing is that the number of cyclists involved in accidents has increased as the number of cyclists has increased. The CTC reports that the mileage cycled has increased by 20% over the past decade and that around 750,000 people regularly cycle to work.

It may be that, as numbers of cyclists increase, awareness levels increase too - both because cyclists are more expected on the roads but also that more drivers are also cyclists. And some research supports this contention:

The likelihood that a given person walking or bicycling will be struck by a motorist varies inversely with the amount of walking or bicycling. This pattern is consistent across communities of varying size, from specific intersections to cities and countries, and across time periods. (Jacobsen, 2003)

So more cycling means lower risks (although not necessarily fewer injuries in absolute terms, which is the reason for the silly spat over Boris) for cyclists but not for motorists.  The question is whether there's a point at which the critical mass of cyclists has sufficient of an effect on driver behaviour to begin to see the risks for the motorists fall as they are for the cyclist.

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Writing by me elsewhere....

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...about planning!

The post includes a quote from one of my favourite songs:




Do enjoy - the tune and the blog!


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Friday 15 November 2013

About that stagnant education performance again...

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A quotation, unashamedly snaffled from here, from Algernon Wells' 1848 essay "On the Education of the Working Classes."

How to teach, how to improve children, are questions admitting of new and advanced solutions, no less than inquiries how best to cultivate the soil, or to perfect manufactures.  And these improvements cannot fail to proceed indefinitely, so long as education is kept wide open, and free to competition, and to all those impulses which liberty constantly supplies.  But once close up this great science and movement of mind from these invigorating breezes, whether by monopoly or bounty, whether by coercion or patronage, and the sure result will be torpor and stagnancy.

We've done the latter and achieved stagnation. Maybe Bradford should try the former now?

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Parks and the city....


Picture a city (Bradford) from Architecture Player on Vimeo.


Anyone who has played Sim City will know how effective green space is in raising values and in making your city happier, healthier and attractive to the sort of folk who make cities buzz. And, when we think about it, this makes sense. I recall my wife's criticism of central Manchester (where she worked at the time) as a place without trees or greenery. I also know how the little patches of grass and tree in Bradford's Centenary Square are, at the first sign of sun, covered with people lunching.

So the idea of pocket parks - creating little oases of green space in the city - is a great one:

Mayor Boris Johnson has come up with a plan to make London both greener and friendlier by creating 100 tennis court-sized “pocket parks.” City Hall has agreed to put £2 million into the first 30 schemes across the capital, including a miniature inner-city “hop farm”, a community herb garden and an green amphitheatre.

This idea isn't just about greening the central business district - taking its hint from Will Alsop's wonderful masterplan for Bradford City Centre (see above) - but about a wider idea of an open, parked city. The idea of removing the bad stuff and, rather than building some new bad stuff, creating open spaces and places where we can try out new ways, pop-ups and follow the shifting nature of the city.

We should do more of it.

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Thursday 14 November 2013

When did telling the truth about Bradford's school performance become an insult?

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In their frantic efforts to smear free schools in Bradford, Labour woke Gerry Sutcliffe from slumber and got him to ask a question of the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, who replied:

I also stress that for many years the quality of education in Bradford has been appalling, yet it is only when new providers come in to innovate that we hear from Opposition Members. 

And the truth is that, taken in the round, Michael Gove is right. The performance of Bradford's schools, when compared to other local authorities, has been appalling. We shouldn't take any pleasure from this situation, nor should we try to play some sort of game with the information. We should do something to change the situation.

So what does Bradford's most eager politician say (when he can drag himself away from sucking up to trade unions so he can try and get to be an MP):

“I’m saddened, disappointed and thoroughly insulted. Standards are rising significantly and we take action when we are allowed to deal with schools that aren’t performing. We continue to put additional resources into school improvements and in attempts to raise standards."

Hold on there Ralph? Did you say standards are rising significantly? That is simply untrue:

Bradford’s primary schools have recorded the third worst results in England in tests sat by ten and 11-year-olds earlier this year, new figures show. A shocking one in three (32 per cent) of children are failing to achieve the standards expected of them in the Three Rs by the end of their primary education. 

Education standards have not risen at all - let alone significantly. Michael Gove is right - our performance is appalling. This isn't a criticism of teachers but a statement of the truth. And rather than saying you're "insulted" by the revelation of that truth, perhaps actually doing something might be an idea?

Instead what we get is more bureaucracy, more unwanted politicking and an unpleasant campaign against educational innovation in the city - where the Council's leadership does the bidding of the teacher unions rather than serve the interests of children and parents.

Telling the truth about our schools isn't the insult. The insult is not doing the things that might make things better, might give Bradford's children a better start and a better chance in life.

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Wednesday 13 November 2013

The myth of landbanking

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Politicians who think they know about housing are wont to shout about a thing called landbanking:

Ed Miliband will warn developers to ‘use it or lose it’ if they continue sitting on land with planning permission under his government.

In a speech to Labour’s national policy forum this Thursday the party leader will announce plans to give local authorities power to serve compulsory purchase orders on developers.

Town halls will also be able to levy fees on land that sits unused for years despite being approved for development, under the proposals.

The inference of all this is that the big housebuilding companies - Barratts, Wimpey, Redrow and so forth - are buying up land, getting permissions and then sitting on the land.

Without wanting to get all technical, this is twaddle. It's true that housebuilders have landbanks but it's also true that tying up all your capital in land is a daft idea if you make your money from building and selling houses.

Here's an indication of the truth from Barratt:


The interim management statement from Barratt Development PLC said in 2013 it secured 8,150 plots as opposed to 3,685 plots in 2012 to bulk up its landbank.

£150 million more has been spent on land in 2013, £377.7 million, compared with 2012, has £226.8m.

The statement said: ‘We continue to target an owned and conditional landbank of around 4.5 years.’

It's interesting to note here that local planning authorities are expected to maintain a five year supply of deliverable housing land. Barratts are merely matching that process in managing their land supply. What Barratt (and the other builders) aren't doing is buying up land with the intention of waiting for it to "accumulate in value".

The problem - if there is a problem - is the securing of speculative permissions. Landowners - especially corporate landowners - seek permissions for housing to secure a putative value increase (great for bulking up slightly dodgy balance sheets). Until a housebuilder sees the land as viable for development nothing will happen. All over the North's cities and towns you'll see cleared land that has a permission for housing. There is little prospect of these - mostly former industrial - sites being developed so long as the housebuilders has to secure, for Barratt at least,:

...minimum hurdle rates of a 20 per cent gross margin and a 25 per cent return on capital employed based on current market prices.

All the compulsory purchase threats, levies and other big sticks don't change this fact. You cannot use force to make a developer spend millions of his (or the bank's) money when they deem it to be unviable. This is why Miliband's soundbite was stupid - it would stop applications and further dry up the limited opportunities for housing development, especially in the North.

Update: A brief and unedifying discussion of landbanking cropped up on Question Time where Labour's Sadiq Khan rolled out the "use it or lose it" line. Sadly no-one challenges his repeated statement that developers hold land in anticipation of future rises in value - this is simply untrue. Nor is the crazy economics of compulsory purchase questioned or indeed whether, in places like Salford, there really is the need for all this housing (one man in the audience said Salford has about 9000 permissions that haven't been built - this tells me there isn't a market not that landowners are sitting on land). I suspect if you asked any of the landowners for undeveloped sites in Bradford whether they want to sell, they'll say yes. But they won't be looking to make a loss.

Finally, the idea that rescinding planning permissions is an option needs challenge. If you grant permission for housing, the site will remain a housing site regardless. All you do is require another permission before building - there will be no impact on value, just an additional cost for a future developer.
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Tuesday 12 November 2013

Do you believe in Santa Claus? More on the case for HS2

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In the remake of Miracle on 34th Street (the slightly schmaltzier version of the classic movie) a wave of people across New York - including a couple of baddies - sport "I believe" badges as part of the campaign to liberate Kris Kringle from the asylum.

This statement of faith - an assertion of a truth without evidence or hope of evidence - is the essence of the film. "If the government of the United States can place its trust in God without evidence," proclaims the judge, "then the State of New York can say it believes in Father Christmas."

So it is with HS2. As each economic, social and fiscal argument in its favour falls down we end up with pure faith:

The HS2 rail project would help "rebalance" the UK, former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has said.

The senior Tory called the high-speed line a "really imaginative project" to spread the prosperity of London and south-east England around the UK.

We are to ignore the "men with slide rules" (better described as "the evidence") and charge into the future regardless:

"All over the world governments are making decisions about a future which they cannot predict but in which they believe."

Hallelujah! Shake that tambourine! I believe!

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The ideology of social work: "we are all guilty"

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Michael Wharton, in his guise as Peter Simple, so often found his satire cropping up in real life. So it is with the mantra of Keinz Kiosk, psychologist -  "we are all guilty" he would cry as the audience stampeded for the exits. However, this collective sin sits at the heart of much soft left thinking and damages society in being so.

At a time here in Bradford when we must look to our practice and policies around child protection for all the wrong reasons, the idea that there is nothing wrong with the training, management and development of social workers must be challenged. So I am cheered when Michael Gove, as the responsible minister says:

"In too many cases, social work training involves idealistic students being told that the individuals with whom they will work have been disempowered by society. They will be encouraged to see these individuals as victims of social injustice whose fate is overwhelmingly decreed by the economic forces and inherent inequalities which scar our society."

This isn't to deny inequality or to say that the inconsistency of our education system doesn't result in inadequate parents. It is to change the focus away from the idea that social workers should not judge the actions of their clients.

As the health and achievement of many families demonstrates being poor simply isn't a precursor to dysfunction. However, we have rather got use to the idea of using poverty as an excuse or explanation for dysfunction. For all that each tragic child protection case is different, recent cases have a depressing similarity - not simply the presence of broken families, drugs and alcohol but the apparent failing of seeing a starving child and assuming poverty rather than neglect or abuse.

We are not all guilty, people are not poor because others are rich and Britain is a generous nation - collectively and individually. So when social workers see that starving child, they should perhaps ask themselves whether the fault lies with a neglectful parent rather than an unequal society.

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Monday 11 November 2013

On being a mass membership party again...

The rhetoric from Conservative Campaign HQ is ringing - get more members. The chairman, Grant Shapps MP has written to all his MP colleagues urging them to recruit more members, to get 3% of Conservative voters signed up as members.

I don't object to these injunctions although I suspect that most MPs will adopt the old Spanish colonial adage, obedezco pero no cumplo - I obey but do not comply. And why blame them. After all the number of members isn't the big deal it used to be. Election campaigns are fought out over the airwaves and election funding allows for a generous dollop of postage and paid doorstep delivery, there's no real incentive to persuade people to join the party, however much Grant Shapps may cajole.

Think about it for a second. Assuming you're not ambitious or a politics anorak, why on earth would you pay good money to join a political party? What do you get for your pleasure? Endless appeals for more money, on infrequent occasions you get to vote for the leader of the party and similarly to select a local MP or councillor. You won't be asked about policy (although you can join groups that engage in endless circular discussions about that policy) and you might get asked to buy tickets for dinners and garden parties.

If you join the RSPB they give you stuff, send you a magazine and give you free entry to their nature reserves. The same goes for other organisations - the National Trust, RHS and so forth. Joining a political party doesn't really get you anything.

If Grant Shapps wants more members at £25 he needs to offer something more and to give up on the idea that the overstretched troops on the ground have the time or inclination to respond to his urgings. Back in Campaign HQ they need to find some money to recruit members - do some old fashioned direct marketing. I don't just mean mass mailings but rather the development of an offer that might make it worthwhile for Fred Smith to hand over that £25 in exchange for a membership card.

The sad truth is that those MPs - and the young things at CCHQ - really aren't interested. Either we'll carry on with parties funded by business donations (or in Labour's case by unions) or else the politicians will, as Nick Clegg wants, dip their hands into the public purse and have state funded politics.

Friday 8 November 2013

Helping Africa (well sort of...)

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This is brilliant - and so true:



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Telling thoughts about the failure of regeneration...

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Almost all our local economic policies target business investment, and masquerade as job creation efforts. We abate taxes, apply TIF’s and woo businesses all over the state, but then the employees who receive middle class wages (say $18 an hour or more) choose the nicest place to live within a 40-mile radius. So, we bring a nice factory to Muncie, and the employees all commute from Noblesville.”

Change the places - Muncie to Middlesbrough, Noblesville toStokesley - and you get the gist. We throw incentives at an 'enterprise zone' in South East Leeds - where do the people who take the resulting high skill jobs live? It won't be Seacroft or Beeston but more likely Tadcaster, Mirfield or Denby Dale.

The model doesn't regenerate (although big business and big government rather like it) - here's some more:

In short, the blue (Democrat) and the red (Republican) model produced some success, albeit in different modes (think San Francisco vs. Houston, Chicago vs. Indianapolis), for the “haves” side of the equation but haven’t yet proven equal to the “have nots.” The Economist makes it clear the totaly different policy configurations of the UK haven’t made a dent in it either. Post-industrial blight in much of Europe tells a similar tale. 

The beneficiaries of regeneration - three decades and more of investment - haven't been the poor and deprived. Despite this we carry on with the same approaches and the same strategies.

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Bitcoin and the end of big government...

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There's a great article about Bitcoin over at ASI where Michael Taylor concludes:

The exponential rise of Bitcoin will no doubt start to generate some heat from here on in. It’s only a matter of time before we see the traditional gatekeepers start to cry foul. No doubt we’ll see a lot of anger and rage in the courtrooms. At least in the west. In Africa and Asia we’ll probably see things take off a little quicker. I predict it will only be a few years from now before we see Bitcoin (or other similar digital currencies) emerge as the exchange of choice for the majority of people otherwise denied access to the established money structures. And when that happens, prepare for the world to shake.

There's no doubt that the opportunity to eliminate transaction costs and ensure that the transaction is private is very appealing. Not simply because it makes the word a better place or that it begins to undermine that banking hegemony but also because it disrupts the basis of government finance.

Which is why the apologists for the current finance system and other fans of big government keep talking about drugs. It's all they've got!

Me I hope Taylor is right in his prediction and we can get the monkey of big government off our backs.

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Wednesday 6 November 2013

Quote of the day - Peggy Noonan on responses to spying scandals

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Peggy Noonan was, of course, speechwriter for my political hero. Here's what she wrote about the response of some pundits to phone tapping and spying scandals:

Particularly obnoxious on this question are the American policy thinkers and journalists who, when asked about the Merkel taps, put on their world-weary professional wise-guy face, looking like tragic suburbanites who once read a John le Carré novel and can’t forget the shiver of existential dread, and say that everyone does it, governments spy, get with the program, this is the way the world works.
* * *
Sorry, but tapping the private telephone line of one of your most important friends in the West is not how the world works, it’s how, once she finds out and the world finds out, it falls apart.


And frankly we're no better in the UK.

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NHS leadership: has the world lost a little decency and honour?

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In April 1982 Lord Carrington, along with the rest of his foreign office team, resigned from government. Not because they had done anything wrong but because something very wrong - the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands - had taken place while they headed the Foreign Office.

Here's what Lord Carrington wrote:

The Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands has led to strong criticism in Parliament and in the press of the Government's policy. In my view, much of the criticism is unfounded. But I have been responsible for the conduct of that policy and I think it right that I should resign.

When I listen, as I did yesterday, to the Chief Executive of an NHS hospital refusing even to consider resigning, I am reminded of Peter Carrington's response to failure on his watch.  Here's what the modern response reads like:

Asked by BBC Essex if he would resign, the hospital's chief executive Dr Gordon Coutts said: "My job is to keep improving this hospital, and I intend to continue to do so."

Am I alone in thinking the world has lost a little decency and honour?

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Tuesday 5 November 2013

A lesson for London from New York - it's about housing supply

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 Here's Scott Bayer talking about New York:

Meanwhile, the housing that zoning does allow is faced with substantial barriers. New developments must pass through the planning commission, the city council, and often-reactionary community boards, and undergo environmental and code reviews that last years. Economist Randal O’Toole says that this approval process, which goes hand in hand with substantial lobbying by developers, adds $312,000 in costs per home. Such “planning penalties”—defined as the price of navigating bureaucracy—are major expenses alongside New York City’s already-high land and construction costs.

And while we're about this, the solution doesn't lie in rent controls or other such regulations - they will just constrain supply making the matter worse - here's more on New York:

...officials have imposed various price controls on developers that practically every economist—from Milton Friedman to Paul Krugman—agrees are counterproductive. Rent control, an imperishable World War II policy, has led to widespread apartment under-maintenance by landlords who see minimal potential profit. Requirements that developers receiving height bonuses provide affordable units, so as to be “inclusionary,” force them to either raise prices on market-rate units or demand government subsidies, to cover losses. Both measures discourage supply: Rent control does by preventing tenant turnover, thus delaying the replacement of old buildings with new ones; affordability mandates do the same by lessening profits, a strong recipe for inaction.

Yet rather than face the truth - there simply aren't enough houses in London (of any sort of tenure) - people blame the problem on landlords, foreign buyers, lack of government funding and probably aliens.

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Monday 4 November 2013

May I have permission to care, my lord?

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I attended a day's presentation and workshop for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's "Neighbourhood Approaches to Loneliness". Mostly I went because one of the study areas was the village of Denholme, part of Bingley Rural ward.

The work is interesting and useful. I can commend it's basic idea - that communities can be helped (assuming this is needed at all) to respond to the problems of loneliness. And loneliness, as much as any other so-called public health challenge, is a killer:

Loneliness is a bigger problem than simply an emotional experience.  Research shows that loneliness and social isolation are harmful to our health: lacking social connections is a comparable risk factor for early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and is worse for us than well-known risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity.

Put simply, meeting our need for social interaction can help us live longer, healthier lives regardless of the other choices we make about our lifestyles.

Much of the work is about what might be done - not at the grand level of national policy but at the level of the neighbourhood. And in presenting these findings two observations stood out to me: one depressing but not surprised and the other chilling.

The first was:

Regulation kills kindness

People who want to help are put off helping because of the regulations - the safeguarding checks, the insurances, the mandatory training, the forms, the licences, the sheer bureaucracy of trying to do a good deed. This is depressing - and my depression was worsened by advocates of regulation defending the use of regulation. Pleasingly the project head amended her statement to say that regulation and bureaucracy kills kindness.

The second, the chilling one that went almost without notice, was:

We need to give people permission to care

That's right - permission to care. That professionals in the employ of the Council, the NHS or their satellite agencies needed to allow people to look out for their neighbour. In this I saw a dead culture - one murdered by the good intentions of public agencies. That we might not be allowed to pop in on Mr & Mrs Jones to make sure they're OK, maybe make them a cuppa and have a chat for half and hour. Unless we've undertaken the official "befriending" course, got the required clearances from the state and been attached to an organisation that "delivers" looking out for the neighbours.

So tell me you caring professionals, what kind of world are you creating where someone needs your permission to be a good neighbour? Chilling indeed.

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Sunday 3 November 2013

Chris Huhne and the reality of rehabilitation

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Chris Huhne, ex-con, liar, cheat and former cabinet minister seems to have landed on his feet. The Guardian, that collector of left-liberal flotsam, has given him a nice column to spout his platitudinous cant. No, I'm not going to link to it.

I have no doubt that Huhne will collect a set of cosy little sinecures, will snuggle onto the speaker circuit and will pop up plugging some sort of renewable energy scam in exchange for loads of cash. It is utterly shameless but precisely what we might expect.

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm all in favour of rehabilitation, of wrongdoers serving their time and returning as useful members of society. And there might be an outside chance of Chris Huhne doing something useful with his undoubted intelligence and (as we now know) unquestioning contacts.

Instead of sounding off in the Guardian perhaps he'd be better served rolling up his sleeves and doing something to help those who have more of a problem with rehabilitation. Most ex-cons don't have mates running national newspapers who'll bung them a favour with a weekly column. They have to go and try getting a job - any job - in a tough old labour market.

And frankly when you've a criminal record, don't read and write so well, maybe suffer from depression and drink just a little too much, getting a job isn't a matter of wringing up the editor of the Guardian. It's hard - really hard. And there's not much help. I don't mean the benefits sort of help - that's there. I mean the real help that takes you from the mess your life's in to the chance of a better place. That will persuade employers to take a chance on an ex-con. And will sit alongside that ex-con, hold his hand a little, as he gets into the job.

This is the reality of rehabilitation. It's hard as Kate Belgrave describes:

“I’ve had my ESA suspended. I was using a care-of address, but they got me down at the social as actually living there. I’ve had no money for the last eight weeks.” That basically left him with his goal. “I’m getting on an emergency script next week. They’ve got me on these meetings – anger management and self- awareness. Then, I’m going to rehab. This time, I’m taking it.”

The tent Darren didn’t mind, although he wanted to move on from it. “I stink of fire all the time (and he did smell of smoke). I’m not usually like this. I’m only dirty, because I’m sleeping on the streets and because of the [cooking] fire. The police come and do a body count [every now and then] and as long as the fires are only under control, they’re not too bothered. I do need to get off the streets – that’s a priority really.”

So Chris, rather than warming yourself with a nice sinecure - get out and help some of your fellow ex-cons. It might make the world think a little better of you.

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