The accountability of markets and governments - lessons from a Keighley cafe

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In positioning themselves in opposition to states, tech giants have taken on certain state-like characteristics. “If you look at Google and Microsoft, they don’t just have the power of states, they even organise themselves like states,” says Brown. “Microsoft has a foreign service that negotiates with foreign governments.” Facebook has its own internal counter-terrorism unit.

It seems that some people are getting hot and bothered about the way in which big tech firms are behaving. This is prompted, in part, by popular decisions such as Apple's refusal to crack an iPhone at the behest of the FBI. Now while some people - mostly from the populist left (the sorts who applaud at the wholesale theft of private property) - are agitated about big business taking on the sort of hegemonic role normally reserved for governments, I'm rather more interested in the extent to which this approach challenges our model of representative democracy by presenting accountability via customers and markets rather than via elections.

Democratic systems evolved because people demanded a say over the decisions affecting them - "no taxation without representation" absolutely captures the principle of democracy. But in accepting this model for government, we also accept its limits - limits beautifully captured by this little piece about a cafe in Keighley:

A STRUGGLING Keighley cafe owner has been threatened with prison if she does not hand over cash for the town’s new Business Improvement District.

BID bosses have demanded Janet Croden, who runs wartime-themed Forteas in North Street, pay £97 to a special fund for town centre promotion and improvements.

The BID, which is run by local businesses, also has the power to make Mrs Croden bankrupt or seize her property if she fails to pay up.

Mrs Croden said that last autumn when Keighley businesses were asked to vote for or against setting up the BID, she could not see how Forteas would benefit.

I'm not here arguing for or against the imposition of this additional tax on Ms Croden's cafe merely pointing out that it shows us the limitations of democracy as a system. Having voted for the additional tax, Keighley's businesses (or rather the local council on their behalf) are able to insist that all businesses pay up regardless of whether they supported the proposal.

I'm guessing that our tech progressives who believe Apple et al are too over-powerful are quite happy with Keighley's little business democracy. But what they're not asking is whether a system founded on decisions freely made in an open market makes authority (and for the sake of argument we'll say Facebook, Google and Apple are, in this context, authority) more or less accountable than is the case with a system based on representative democracy. This isn't a question about ownership but rather a question about market power and whether that is exercised by us as consumers or by the big businesses as big businesses. And, as the tech progressives make clear, the loser in all this is the state:

However, tech giants have something new: millions of loyal customers, many of whom choose to side with companies over their government. This is especially true in the dispute about privacy and encryption. In this light, Apple is protecting its citizens.

It's also true that these progressives are now likely to work with the state in attacking these large consumer-based powers - for example by scuppering free (or pretty near free) internet access for millions of poor people in India. The apparatus of government is used to prevent one of these new powers from acting positively essentially for reasons of protectionism (which is all so-called 'net neutrality' is really):

While it acknowledged some “positive effects” of differential pricing, TRAI said that “differential tariffs arguably disadvantage small content providers who may not be able to participate in such schemes.

“This may thus, create entry barriers and non-level playing field for these players, stifling innovation. In addition, TSPs may start promoting their own web sites/apps/services platforms by giving lower rates for accessing them.”

The beneficiaries here aren't India's consumers but a small group of Indians with the capability of offering ISP services. And, while the core context is the myth of net neutrality, the wider issue takes us back to government and it's capture by producer interests. What saddens me most in all of this is that those producer interests have persuaded a group of activists - I've dubbed them tech progressives - that a more expensive, industry-dominated web is better than a cheaper, consumer-focused web.

Returning to the theme we started with - is Apple more or less accountable than the US government - we can see an emerging discussion that places the exercise of consumer preference and power in direct competition to government and to a group in society who have historically seen themselves as champions of 'people power', the progressive left. It's pretty safe to say that neither the FBI nor Apple are especially accountable but Apple has one advantage - you and I don't have to be one of its customers. If you live and work in the USA, you've no choice as to whether you're the 'customer' of the US government and its agencies.

It's the difference between the Keighley cafe owner freely agreeing to pay into a marketing agreement to promote the town and her being coerced into paying because she was outvoted in a referendum.

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Leaving Bradford? Your views please

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OK, I most of you aren't from (or especially interested in) Bradford but for those who are there's a blog post at the Bingley Rural Conservatives website about whether Shipley, Bingley and Keighley should leave Bradford:

There are undoubtedly differing views about this idea – some feel that replacing rule from Bradford with rule from Keighley isn’t necessarily an improvement while others feel that the dominance of the old City over the wider District leads to misplaced priorities. Phil Davies is very concerned about planning decisions but there must be equal concern about the manner in which Bradford Labour has implemented its cuts to services.

Just recently, during the budget discussions, Labour proposed closing five children’s centres – every one in the Shipley and Keighley constituencies and every one in a ward with Conservative councillors. The same goes for spending on highways, on youth services and on regeneration – the focus is on the City and especially the City centre.

Happy to accept views from anywhere - politeness is, as always, urged on you!

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Fair trade and the keeping of peasants in their place

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The other day the fine town of Keighley was celebrating achieving "fair trade" status. In truth not everyone in Keighley was celebrating this new shiny mark of goodness. Indeed most of the population of Keighley neither know nor care about it's "fair trade" status. However, for those Keighley folk (what do you call someone from Keighley - Keighleyite, Byworthian) who care here's what it means:

A Fairtrade Town is a town, city, village, island, borough, county, zone, district or region that has made a commitment to supporting Fairtrade and using products with the FAIRTRADE Mark. 

The good people who run the "fair trade" campaign provide a handy action plan for getting to be a "fair trade town" which elaborates further:

Fairtrade is about bringing the farmer and the shopper closer together. It’s about putting people at the heart of trade. Becoming a Fairtrade Town sends a powerful message about how your community wants trade to work and will directly benefit some of the world’s poorest farmers and workers through increasing awareness and sales of Fairtrade in your area.

Brilliant stuff - by searching out that little logo, by persuading the greasy spoon cafe to serve the approved sort of coffee we are making the world a little better and those poor farmers a little less poor. Crack open the bubbly, hoist some bunting and let's have a party. Let's celebrate our municipal goodness!

But hang on. What exactly are we doing here? Is this the best way to make the lives of poor people elsewhere in the world a little better? Or is it just a marketing scam dreamt up to assuage our guilty Western consciences?

It's a bit of both really - the fans of fair trade argue that is it a better model (with its co-ops and supposed transparency) when compared to traditional free trade models (with their nasty bad businesses and entrepreneurs) but there's no evidence that this is the case (pdf):

The benefits claimed by Fair Trade can also be obtained from the normal business relationships that exist between primary product producers and buyers. Attempts by proponents of Fair Trade to denigrate free trade and normal market practices are not helpful and distort realities.

More worryingly, especially in Latin America, "fair trade" does little or nothing to support the very poorest (because those very poorest are landless and dependent on plantation agriculture). Indeed, it could be argued that "fair trade", by preferring the products from (relatively better off) smallholders, acts to increase the risks of destitution for those landless workers.


However, the scale of "fair trade" is such that such impact is marginal - there isn't enough of it to have sufficient of a negative effect on the established trading models. So my biggest concern is that, far from helping smallholder farmers, "fair trade" acts to trap them in essentially uneconomic conditions - they remain poor compared to us guilt-ridden Westerners but are stuck in a condition that merely sustains that relative poverty.


To support me here's a reference from the Guardian:

...economist Paul Collier argues that Fairtrade effectively ensures that people "get charity as long as they stay producing the crops that have locked them into poverty". Fairtrade reduces the incentive to diversify crop production and encourages the utilisation of resources on marginal land that could be better employed for other produce. The organisation also appears wedded to an image of a notional anti-modernist rural idyll. Farm units must remain small and family run, while modern farming techniques (mechanisation, economies of scale, pesticides, genetic modification etc) are sidelined or even actively discouraged.

The success of the "fair trade" model hinges on the success of the Fairtrade Foundation's marketing campaigns - so long as the marketing message ("Fairtrade is Ethical and if you adopt it you are good people") succeeds the model succeeds. But back on the farm we have locked peasants into the peasant agriculture we ought to be helping them escape.

This is all part of a core development message (although to call it's outcome 'development' is to turn the meaning of the word on its head) proposed by organisations such as Oxfam - that we should subsidise subsistence farming as a protection against supply problems (drought, flood etc.) in order to allow for development.

I don't know about you but this does rather smack of keeping peasants in their place, scratting away trying to feed their families and dying at 45. Indeed the entire bien pensant development world is riddled with people promoting some sort of Maoist peasant idyll rather than looking at what happened elsewhere. In the elsewhere with the cars, TVs, computers and so forth that those peasants would like too. In that elsewhere we didn't (at least until recently) subsidise the subsistence farm but rather we encouraged mergers, enclosures and the development of commercial agriculture.

And "fair trade" is part of this corrupted idea of development, of an idea that guilty rich folk should simply hand over extra cash so that people farming ever more marginal land don't starve to death. An idea of development that proposes the use of Western wealth to keep peasants as peasants and then guilt-trips us into coughing up charity to do just that.

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Pathetic...

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Not content with spending a fortune on a 'civic centre' no-one wanted or needed, Keighley Town Council doesn't want its proceedings to be transparent either:

Town mayor Councillor Sally Walker repeatedly asked members of the public in the gallery to stop filming the monthly town council meeting.

The group of about a dozen people included Graham Forsyth and Elizabeth Mitchell, who had told of their plan to film the meeting beforehand.

They argued that the Government's own rules applied to all public council meetings, and that these rules now allow them to film. 

Now I appreciate that Bradford Council needs to change its standing orders too but this is just pathetic. This is a public body meeting in public, there should be no grounds at all for refusing the public rights to film just so long as it doesn't interfere with proceedings.  Plenty of councils including Leeds and Kirklees (but sadly not Bradford) now live stream their proceedings.

As I said Keighley Town Council's response is pathetic.

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A hearty meal

We took a trip to Shan's who call themselves the premier multicultural halal supermarket. They're in Keighley - another premier multicultural halal place - and are well worth a visit. The shop is tidy, stacks of spices, rices and flours line the shelves and it's great to wander through the fruit and veg section going "what on earth is that?" or "I wonder how you cook that?". I love the yard long beans and the strange knobbly roots but have yet to pluck up the excuse to buy some and see how they taste. Maybe next time.

At the back of the shop is a long butcher's counter - chicken, lamb, mutton. Both off and on the bone, butchered Asian style. And plenty of offal from tripe (best avoided I think) through to sweetbreads. Amongst this was a pile of lamb's hearts something I hadn't eaten since my childhood. We bought them and took them home for a hearty meal!

I stuffed the hearts with shallots, chestnut mushrooms and puy lentils and since I had way more stuffing than needed I poured the rest over the top of the hearts before covering and baking slowly for (if I recall right) about two and a half hours at 150 degrees. For the last half hour I took the foil off and added some red peppers - more for colour than for additional flavour.

Very nice it was too (as you can see)!

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Pie and peas for lunch in Keighley Market (and other tales of normal life)

So yes, Kathryn and I had pie and peas for lunch at Charlies caff in Keighley Market. And very nice it was too - embellished with some mint sauce and accompanied by a mug of tea.

Sitting in the market you can watch the world - or rather that bit of the world that finds itself in Keighley on a slightly damp April Saturday - pass by. You pick up little snippets of conversation - mostly mundane, everyday things. Quite often these snippets are meaningless - a conversation about something opening where one doesn't know what that something might be, chatter about friends and family interjected by a knowing little chuckle or a private joke. Today's favourite was a gem - two young women walk past, one speaking into a mobile phone and the little snatch of conversation I hear is:

"Leopard-skin print knicker shorts"

Just that, nothing else - one daren't even turn and stare, mouth hanging open! The very concept of such a garment - what exactly are "knicker shorts" and why would one want them in leopard-skin? But this moment of gobsmackedness passes and we move on through the town going about our private business - shopping, sitting, looking at stuff, listening to the sounds of the town.

All these conversations - little shavings of which we overhear - are serious, are important. Clever folk who want to discuss the great doings of the day - kings and ministers and policies and such - don't always appreciate that it is these little everyday interactions and chatterings that are the atoms of enterprise, the molecules of exchange. The trader understands - or should do - the importance of these banal conversations about kids or dogs or broken fences.

And the governor should understand too - appreciate that, for all the guffle about policy-making, for all the cant about "involving", "engaging" and "consulting", it is these mundane, everyday nothings that are the basis of society, of community. I fear that sadly, those governors do not understand but know better. The market - literally "the market" given where we had our pie and peas - is untidy, disorganised, inconsistent. So we must create - through the medium of public policy - a better system.

The problem is that there isn't one.

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Saturday's post: good Bradford stuff!

The morning's snail post was - with the exception of First Magazine and a pile more guff about swine flu - a joy and delight.

1. An invitation from Yorkshire Water to an "Exclusive Tour of Esholt Waste Water Treatment Works and Environmental Visitor Centre". I've always like factory tours and this tour showcases the £75 million invested by Yorkshire Water at the site. I also lived in Esholt when I first moved to Bradford - the place is more famous for being the location for Emmerdale Farm (useless quiz question used to be: "what is the real name of The Woolpack?" Answer - Commercial Inn. However, it's now really called The Woolpack).

2. An invitation to the preview for Sheila Gaffney's "Others" exhibition at Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley - the result of a residency at the museum exploring how memories might be made tangible. The exhibition in free and runs from 19th Sepember 2009 to 10th January 2010 - so you've no excuse for not going!

3. Notice of a private viewing for "Chiz Turnross - 1000 Bird Paintings" at the Bradford One Gallery in Centenary Square, Bradford. This exhibition is free and runs from 12th September to 22nd November. (This Gallery wouldn't be there without my banging on about it for what seems like years - it is one of the very few new council-run public art galleries in the last 50 years).

4. An invitation to "David Moore, The Last Things" at Impressions Gallery (featuring awesome photography) in Centenary Square, Bradford. Impressions relocated to Bradford from York and were important to getting the funding to open Bradford One as they took half the space in the "Banana Building! and shared the costs. This exhibition features pictures of the MoD's secret crisis management centre and should be really interesting. It runs from 19th September 2009.

And people say nothing good happens in Bradford?

How many supermarkets can one small town take?

The fine town of Keighley is enjoying - if that's the right word - a new ASDA superstore. This vast new addition to the town's shopping offer is situated just off the town centre (so people no longer have to fight the traffic) and was crammed today with customers - well the car park was very full!

So what's the problem? Well Keighley already has...Morrisons, Sainsbury, Iceland, Aldi, Netto and Co-op. And they all seemed busy today as well! And if this is so where is the new ASDA getting all that business from?

I can tell you - it comes from neighbouring towns without a supermarket or with a smaller store - Bingley, Steeton, Crosshills, Glusburn - and from shoppers taking advantage of the cheap clothes, household goods and other non-food products that adorn ASDA's shelves.

Keighley gets 400 low grade jobs (a lot of them part time) at the expense of businesses and jobs elsewhere in the town and in surrounding communities - perhaps as many as 200 jobs will go. Will we see Keighley Market decline again? And smaller retailers in the town close for lack of footfall?

Another victory for our stupid planning system. Another place compromised by the strong arm tactics of the big supermarkets. And remember - if the choice had been left to local decision-makers there would not be this new blight on Keighley!