The housing crisis that isn't...

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Today there will be much hand-wringing from 'experts' on housing about 'Help to Buy', mostly from people resident in or near London, living in houses worth (theoretically) a great deal more than they paid for them and earning good money. Squeals of concern will be directed at using government loans to help people get onto the 'housing ladder'. There will be so many bubbles it will be like the Boleyn Ground after a win!

It is interesting to note that these squeals weren't directed - for the same reasons - at Ed Miliband's egregious proposal to seize land from people who have chosen not to build houses on it (presumably because that would be uneconomic). And then use government borrowing to subsidise RSLs and councils building "affordable housing".

However that's not the point I'm making here - the point is that we're told by London-dwelling 'experts' that there is a housing crisis (sadly some daft Bradford-based councillors seem to believe the same thing) and, to coin a phrase, 'something must be done'. So - understandably - politicians respond, the propose to do something.

The problem is, however, that there isn't really a housing crisis at all. There's an employment crisis. Here's exhibit one:

Those are three of 59 properties listed at £50,000 or less in Bradford by the local paper. And we could repeat the same story for a host of other cities and towns across the North of England. Yet, in London - even in multiplied deprived East London - you won't find a two bedroomed property for under £200,000 (and that will be somewhere where you daren't go out at night and need three locks on the door). For interest £200,000 will get you a four bedroom detatched house in Bradford.

If housing is so important, so central to everything, why are people leaving Bradford, Liverpool and Hull to take their chances in London (not to mention those trooping there from Romania and points east)? The answer is simple - there aren't any jobs. Or more specifically there are fewer jobs than there are people to take those jobs. As a result more and more people flock to London (and to a lesser extent regional cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham) because they believe there's a better chance of a job.

We - by which I mean all us folk who sound off about these things, pundits, sort-of-economists, folk who sell mortgages - have chosen to describe this as a housing crisis. And indeed it manifests itself as such - you only have to read Ben Reeves-Lewis on the Landlord Law blog to get this picture. But it is a problem of employment - the dysfunction created by the success of London rather than by the failure of the North.

The challenge facing London - and ipso facto, the UK government given how important London is to the economy - is to provide housing that falls within reasonable aspiration of affordability. And there are three ways to do this - ship people who aren't contributing economically (the young, the old, the unemployed) to places like Bradford, scrap the planning and building controls that hold back development or subsidise housing.

So it really shouldn't surprise people that the government - and all three main political parties - support subsidy since the other options aren't politically acceptable. So let's get used to the bubble - it really is the only choice facing the government (assuming that 'something must be done').

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Quote of the day...

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If people in Asia work harder than us, study harder than us, achieve better educational standards than us, are less burdened by chronic public debt than us and have more successful global companies than us – why does Ed Miliband assume they will be at ‘the bottom’, to be vilified and patronised to win empty applause at a Labour conference?

Apart from the on message last sentence, this is a great article from Jeremy Browne.

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Fracking and the legacy of the mines...

Harry Stone was a miner born
He worked to win his wages
Riding down the cages
And raging at the seams
He worked his stall from dusk till dawn
Sweet sweat and raw endeavour
Black diamonds bound together
By a strong and simple means

For two-hundred years and more England built its wealth and success, in large part, on the exploitation of its minerals  - as someone said we're an island of coal in a sea of oil. And, for all the machismo of coal-mining, it was a dangerous life and the winning of coal left great scars on the landscape, polluted the environment and created unstable landforms. The blasting of the coalface and the shifting to the tunnel-ridden rocks led to subsidence and even earth tremors.

Yet the coal ripped from the ground was the fuel for our industrial revolution. That coal provided the heat and light, the power to drag us from bare subsistence agriculture to today's warn, healthy and pleasant condition. Those men who rode the cages down into the dark - the ones who died in accidents, the one's who coughed up their lungs - they played a great part us us being wealthy.

Today the land around the mines - 'scarred like the face of the moon' as the Cornish tin and clay mined landscape was once described - slowly recovers. Where once there were ugly, deep-grey heaps of waste and spoil, we now see young woodland, ponds, trails and fields. In places the structures of the minehead are preserved - a reminder of why the town is there and what men did in times past.

Today a new fuel is there for us to win, a fuel that can power our lights, our homes, our industry for a hundred years and more. It's a fuel that doesn't require men to crawl into dark holes, to destroy their health with dust and fumes. It's a fuel we can win from the surface without despoiling the landscape, without any significant - let alone long-lasting - damage to the environment. It's a fuel that can replace the last few coal-powered generators and ensure that we can all keep our homes warm at a reasonable price.

And the fuel is shale gas. Compared to the damage - to society health and environment - that coal-mining causes, the winning of shale gas is benign. Yet people living in places that have gained from the wealth of mining without the costs of winning that wealth would stop us all - including the children of those miners - from enjoying this benefit:

The prospect of fracking is what has unsettled Fernhurst. Towers burning off excess gas and oil wouldn’t fit in with Tennyson’s vision of ‘Green Sussex fading into blue’. Beyond that, there is a terror of toxic and radioactive leaks and long-term pollution of aquifers. Marcus Adams, leader of the Frack Free Fernhurst campaign group, told me, ‘I find it extraordinary that the government allows companies to use this fracking technology when we don’t properly understand it.’ Adams is no environmentalist, merely an ordinary if concerned bloke who has lived in the area for many years. He is convinced that permission to explore will lead to permission to frack, so he and some likeminded neighbours want to thwart Celtique’s initial proposal.

Compared to the cost of mining - a cost that people like Marcus Adams didn't pay although they live with the benefits of that mining - the impact of fracking is vanishingly small. And, short term. Part of me shrugs at the opposition - I'm sure the opposition would be there wherever the extraction took place - but another part is angry.

Angry that the twisting and misrepresenting of the facts by environmental campaigners, the frenetic lobbying of the 'renewable' energy companies and the scaremongering of media results in a risk that the benefit of a 100 years of cheaper energy will be denied us. That we should slide into a world of brown-outs, industrial decline and ever higher energy prices just to protect - for a few years - a few acres of Sussex.

If this attitude had prevailed in times past we wouldn't have dug those mines at Wentworth, at Heanor and in Ashington. Instead we'd have left it there and carried on burning wood and scraping a living - in a good year - from a third of an acre of poor field.  But we did dig those mineshafts and win that coal, it did help make us rich.

And the least thanks we can offer the miners who won that coal is to go and win the shale gas, to provide the fuel to power future generations and future industry.

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Benevolent lying...

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A wonderful observation by Dan Murphy about the IMF and World Bank:

Over the years current and former employees of both groups have explained that bias is down to the belief inside the financial institutions that their rosy projections can take on a life of their own by inspiring that elusive beast "investor confidence" and unleashing a deluge of cash upon their clients. They see it as a form of benevolent lying.

I find this a fascinating take on the problem of these international - and essentially unaccountable - organisations. I recall being taught - back in the early 1980s - that the two babes in the Bretton Woods were essentially superior bodies since they didn't suffer from the self-interest or realpolitik of bilateral interventions. Now it seems that the truth is sneaking out - their guesses are just as self-serving as the guesses of political leaderships in client countries. And the prescriptions - based on these optimistic guesses - have dreadful consequences:

"However, not tackling the public debt problem decisively at the outset or early in the program created uncertainty about the euro area’s capacity to resolve the crisis and likely aggravated the contraction in output. An upfront debt restructuring would have been better for Greece although this was not acceptable to the euro partners."

However Murphy suggests we shouldn't be surprised:

In the middle of that decade (1990s), the so-called Asian financial crisis hit much of the region, with capital flight threatening private banks, government coffers, and project finance alike. Thailand and Indonesia accepted IMF loans in exchange for "structural adjustment programs" (government spending cuts, foreign investor friendly legal changes, promises to have fully convertible currencies), while Malaysia, against dire warnings from the IMF, imposed currency controls and sought to stimulate the economy out of the downturn with an expansive government budget. The results? Malaysia weathered the crisis better than its neighbors, with fewer job losses and much less political turmoil.

Perhaps the time has come for politics to reassert its ascendancy over the cosy internationalist boondoggle. It seems that, whatever the choices made, it is better for them to be made by politicians we can kick out rather than on some distant scapegoat of an international institution. Especially one with as lousy a record as the IMF!

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So Mr Murphy thinks the UK is a "finance dependent economy"?

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I ask this because Richard Murphy and the folks at "Tax Justice Network" think that the UK is a finance dependent economy. And of course that doing that moving-money-around business that we've been doing since the 18th century is damaging our economy.

Just for clarity - according to UKTI:

The financial services industry accounted for 10% of UK GDP and 11% of UK tax receipts. 

That's it? We're a 'finance dependent economy' at 10% of GDP?

This, it seems to me, is a load of nonsense (something Mr Murphy seems to specialise in) - especially since manufacturing - you know we don't make things anymore, don't you - accounts for a mere 12% of GDP.

This "Finance Curse" is just ideology looking for a theory and then making up some statistics to fit the resulting bias.

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There is no moral basis for taxation...

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This isn't an argument against tax but a simple statement of fact. We pay taxes because we have to and, possibly, because we get some sort of benefit from the payment of those taxes. And in paying those taxes it is entirely proper for us to arrange our affairs so as to pay only the tax that is due and nothing more. I would add that it is for the tax authorities - and no-one else least of all parliament - to assess what we pay and determine whether we have complied with the rules parliament has prescribed.

If parliament believes that I do not pay enough taxes (and assuming that I am not guilty of evading taxes which is a crime) then parliament has it within its power to change the rules that determine how much tax I pay. None of this is about any sort of moral duty or responsibility. Taxation is merely expedient - the means whereby government secures the revenues that government needs to carry out its purpose.

It rather worries me that - for reasons of political opportunity rather than good government - politicians (aided by their friends and relations in the broadcast media) have decided to whip up some sort of mob, to conduct a sort of moral crusade targeted primarily at large corporations.

Why does it worry me? Quite simply because corporations - businesses of one sort or another - are what will lift us out from the ire of recession. It won't be government however much they wish to scatter the magic fairy dust from the basement of the Bank of England across the land. It won't be shiny new value-destroying railways, ridiculous floating airports or delving ever more tunnels under London (there is something wonderfully Swiftian about today's infrastructure schemes) that will provide that elusive growth.

Yet every politician is now dragged into condemnation of tax 'avoidance' - from committees of MPs asking impertinent questions of people who actually contribute to the economy (unlike those MPs) to cabinet ministers writing pleading letters to jurisdictions with tax regimes that have met with disapproval. All to pretend that somehow this attack will help make the economy better and, worse still, accompanied by words like 'evil', 'corrupt' and 'immoral'.

There is no moral basis for taxation - government imposes a levy on our incomes, wealth and expenditure because it can do just that. But this is not a moral act and seeking to reduce how much tax we pay is therefore not immoral. What we see in a ghastly ignorant mob egged on by politicians and other hacks who point at businesses and successful men crying: "look there, wealth and money! We should have more of that for us to spend. These people are moral pygmies for not paying more tax than they owe!"

And the business people are dragged before the media - the court of mob rule - and accused of what? Essentially of complying with the rules set down by parliament, the European Union and contained in solemn treaties between sovereign nations.

Put yourself in the place of those businesses - international in scope and purview. Do you decide to develop your UK business? Or do you go somewhere else? Perhaps China, Brazil or Indonesia - places where the government welcomes your acumen, investment, jobs and wealth.

There is so moral basis for taxation - saying so is stupid and damages our economy.

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Hubris and sympathetic magic - the essence of macroeconomics

The model is broken. So therefore we have to understand how the (broken) model really works and then everything will be fine. In essence this is the nature of the current debate about the economy – no-one really understands how the thing works and so, as we usually do when faced with something large and inexplicable, we behave like the blind men and the elephant.

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

So it is with macroeconomics. Different sets of economists stand over their models of the economy – each one more Heath Robinson than the next – and argue that the results tickering out from the machine tell us the right things to do. Raise interest rates here, increase money supply there says one set of machine-minders.

Nooo! We hear another crew scream – more taxes, public investment and perhaps a little dose of inflation. That will do the job. All the while, over the wall the third crew say their combination of levers and pulleys provides the only proven and correct system of economic management. And so on along the line from Central Bank to International Body, from think tank to accountancy firm and from college to university – each set of overlookers, underlookers and sagger-maker’s bottom knockers proclaims that their results are proof of how we can make the economy work better.

Every now and then – more by luck than through skill and knowledge – one or other set of economists gets something right. For a moment it appears that a particular combination of lever-pulling and knot-tying is the way to run the economy. The leaders of the team receive great prizes, backs are slapped and the Kings and Princes grant the machine-minders money. And all the other teams, for a short while, shuffle into line by using the specified combination of levers and knots.

All this is just a combination of hubris and sympathetic magic. We witness the combining of the false belief that the economy can be “managed” with the misplaced view that because when we pulled lever seven last Wednesday and the ‘right’ result ensued, this will happen every time we pull lever seven. The truth, of course, is that the pulling of lever seven and that ‘right’ result coincided because of mere happenstance.

There is an old shopkeeper saying – ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’. It is the very antithesis of all this self-confident macroeconomic legerdemain. Rather than trying to design a great unifying theory of the economy (one of those Heath Robinson machines), we might be better looking at the simple process by which value is created. This has nothing to do with money, with central banks or with government but everything to do with providing other people with benefits.

No, not the benefits that are cash entitlements paid by government but the benefits that us advertising folk talk about. You know, the ‘sizzle not the sausage’. We don’t buy things just because they are things, we want them because of what they do for us – feed us, clothe us, shelter us, entertain us, please us.  There are no macroeconomic policy levers here just people adding value by offering others benefits and in doing so giving themselves the means to secure the value – the benefits – they want.

All those economic model minders, all those predictors of the economy, all those lever pullers seem oblivious to this simple idea of value. They have become obsessed with money and the meaning of money, convinced that if only the correct dragon’s teeth are sown takes the economy will thrive and value will spring fully armed from out the ground. It seems to me that these people are the inheritors of those priests and wizards who call on the gods and magic to ensure that the sun rose in the morning and the crops grew in the spring.

The economists and policymongers inhabit grand temples, are granted the ear of kings and princes and are looked on in awe by lesser folk. But their ideas contain only a little more truth or hope of future goodness than did those of the old priest who said the corn must be planted on a full moon or that the rains will come if the right dance was danced.

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A useful reminder of why we're so much better off than we used to be...

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It's those evil markets again:





With thanks to The Whited Sepulchre for the link.
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Austerity and government spending

Austerity is back in the news. Not that it ever went away, I guess. But it's back, the IMF has told us that we're too austere (thereby contradicting what it said the previous time and the time before that) and the masses hordes of pseudo-economics experts has leapt on the collected words of a few luminaries to say that the government needs to do something different.

They are, however, studiously vague about what that "something different" might look like. One day it sounds like printing loads of lovely pounds and scattering them like confetti across the nation. Later the same folk suggest - in the manner of business snuggling up to government - that we should "invest in infrastructure" with that freshly created and unearned cash.

Mostly though the cries of pain around "austerity" are about government spending rather than economic growth. Sometimes this is wrapped up in barely understood, quasi-Keynesian comments about aggregate demand thereby providing cover for a message that tries to tell us that the answer lies in borrowing more money to spend on (variously) higher benefits, new trains, tunnels under London, "boosting the housing market" and any number of special appeals from health and welfare lobbyists.

The central argument is that the problem is that we (consumers) aren't spending enough. Which is a bit rich when the government insists on taking round-a-bout half of all we earn so it can squander it inefficiently on heaven knows what. Plus of course the rest of the government's strategy - cheered on by the austerity worriers - is to inflate our way out of debt. For sure, we pretend that the high inflation of the past four years has been brought about by special factors but the truth is that the Bank of England, charged with controlling inflation, has been allowed to ignore its responsibilities by allowing that inflation to run well above the target level month in and month out.

Since the government hasn't really cut spending then we have to ask where the austerity comes from? It's a real fact that there are people out there who are more-or-less destitute - the latest reports from those food banks (for all their selective nature) tell us this is so. But are those people destitute because of government spending cuts - spending cuts that, in aggregate, haven't happened? Or are they destitute for some other reason - policy, regulatory or just plain bad luck?

It seems to me that, by focusing on the misguided view that the cure to economic problems lies with government (and central bank) action, we condemn many people to a much deeper 'austerity' that would have been the case had we focused instead on the things that do make people better off, that do end recession and that do prevent "austerity".

Growth comes from adding value - taking or doing things that make lives better, that allow us more time or that give us access to things we didn't have before. It doesn't come from taking money off Fred and giving it to Susan. It doesn't come from regulation, from controls or from the deranged view that a few suited masters in the Treasury can "run the economy". Every day I see exciting, creative people doing things to make the world better and brighter - sometimes just because they care but mostly because they can turn that value into money and that money into nice cars, foreign holidays, fancy clothes and a big house.

That's what will end austerity not government spending.

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In which an ex-central banker inadvertently explains what's wrong...

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John Gieve, opining in the Financial Times, manages to capture what's wrong in his headline:

Who is in charge of the British economy?

This is a revealing question since it assumes that Mr Gieve and his ilk were - indeed are - somehow "in charge" of the economy. Think for a second what we mean by "the economy" and the sheer hubris of this man's belief becomes apparent. The British economy consists of the choices made by nearly seventy million people and millions of business. It's the sales made by the corner shop, the decision we make about this year's holidays or whether to go to B&Q or IKEA.

Yet this ex-central banker, undaunted by the scorching of his feathers as he flies ever closer to the sun, says stuff like this:
 

...the UK is now pursuing three macroeconomic objectives – steady growth, low inflation, and a stable supply of credit – with three sets of policy instruments. In the long term, the goals are compatible. But in the medium term there may be trade-offs. A new framework should explain how and by whom those trade-offs will be made and how the three sets of policy tools will be combined to best effect.

Impressive stuff I'm sure you'll agree. But it's wrong and not just because it's barely comprehensible. It's wrong because only a deranged idiot would think he (or a claque of him and his pals) can run the economy. It is this outlook that is causing all the damage - this stupid belief that there are a set of levers in the Bank of England that if pulled in the correct order will usher in an era of growth, prosperity and prizes for all.

All the rest of us going about our lives buying, selling, sleeping, eating and dreaming, we didn't cause the problem. It was caused by people like John Gieve who, despite all the evidence, still believe they know better. They don't know better and no one is in charge of the economy (unless you're in North Korea).

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Immigration is (mostly) a good thing...

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And perhaps politicians need to stop telling us how bad it is - not just the tinpot poujadist Farage but all the others too. Miliband, Clegg and Cameron all lined up to tell us how jolly awful immigration is, how something must be done, how (in Miliband's case) how sorry they were that they'd not said nasty things about immigrants before. All accompanied by a stream of lunatic policies and controls - designed less to do anything about those dreadful immigrants than to get the juices flowing in a certain sort of upper lower middle working class person that the focus groups have spotted.

Let's be clear folks, what Britain has gained from immigrants so vastly outweighs what it has lost that to start on some ghastly line of "they don't speak English" or "they take our jobs" is to entirely miss the point. A point that goes like this:

Immigration is good for us. With every major party now promising to ‘get tough’ on immigration, it’s easy to forget that immigrants bring new skills to the country, allow for more specialization, tend to be more entrepreneurial than average, pay more in to the welfare state than they take out, and make things cheaper by doing the jobs that Britons won't.

So a little bit of me despairs when the last generation of immigrants turns on the latest arrivals - here's Rashid Awan from Bradford Pakistan Society:
 

“If anyone is coming to this country, he or she should have a job to go to or study,” he said. “Students coming here should have their financial backing in place. In my view it does make sense.

“Maybe some people will be affected by this, but I think this policy has to be observed. To bring back the economic situation of this country to normality, these small steps are necessary.

“I am not here to say people who are here genuinely should be penalised, but I think these people coming here genuinely are taken care of. We are in a very acute economic situation and we need to make sure no abuse is created as far as benefits are concerned.” 

But I'm not surprised.

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The Smith Institute (unwittingly) spots the North's problem...

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Amidst a turgid, dreary and special interest laden report, The Smith Institute, the world's last remaining centre of Brownite thinking, unwittingly nailed the reasons for the North's economic problems:

In the three Northern regions, in the boom years of 2000-08, the majority of the new jobs came directly or indirectly from public funds.

The Labour government, under Brown's chancellorship, borrowed money and spent it on creating public sector jobs. There were no "boom years" outside the public sector in places like Bradford. For a few moments it felt that way but it was a chimera.

Public sector jobs were better paid, had better pensions and (seemingly) offered better prospects. Voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises were sucked into the government's maw where juicy morsels of grant and contract were served up. The private sector - unless it was simply delivering public contracts - stood no chance.

The North's economy is in such crisis because of that false dawn, because the Labour government conned us into believing that the solution lay in an ever larger and ever more inefficient (and ineffective) public sector. They were wrong and we're paying the price.

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The Storm

The storm swept in from the North, cloud boiling in the sky, the dark band of lashing rain visible as it soaked the hills below. The wind, at first just a cold squall,  built up  - all howling and moaning - until its strength broke branches, raised the grit from the track and blew slates from the sheep pen.

The two men stood on the crest - one short, one tall. Boots firmly placed in the mud of a soil bank.

"We can control this storm," said the taller man, "it need not damage us, we have the tools."

The shorter man pulled his coat a little more tightly around him, raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"We can," repeated the taller man, "we can divert the winds, capture the rain and guide the storm to benefit our lives. Great scholars have shown that this is so - we cannot waver from this path."

The shorter man smiled to himself and turned to face the storm.

"These powers to direct the wind, to catch the rain and to calm the storm," he mused, "did they not make the storm worse when last we tried to use them?"

The tall man snapped back; "that was 80 years ago! We have learned from the mistakes made then - we can turn this storm away."

The small man raised his hands, "if you are so sure then let it be - but might it be better to let the storm pass and repair the damage it does than risk it doing more damage because we intervened?"

The storm swept in the the North. The spells of control were cast.

And the wind ripped slates from the farm roofs, livestock were killed by falling walls and the floods swept through the town. People's lives were ruined and they turned to the two men accusing them of failing.

"It would have been worse if we'd done nothing," came the response from the tall man.

The small man stamped his feet to keep his feet warm, rubbed his hands together. And spoke:

"Did you really think men could stop the storm? We rage at the storm, throwing spells and curses its way because then we're seen to do something. Nothing changes. The storm still comes, the damage is still done. But we clever fools persuade ourselves - and you - that our actions will help."

"We are wrong. We cannot control the storm."

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Inflation and the ordinary man...and woman, for that matter

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The Canadian superstar who is arriving to take over as boss of the Bank of England is dropping some hints about inflation:

...although price stability was central, there were “tolerances” concerning the speed with which inflation would be brought down if the economy was struggling. 

I'm guessing this is posh banker code for carrying on doing what the Bank and the government have been doing - ignoring inflation targeting. There's a really good reason for this, of course, as inflation is a sweet, back-door way of reducing debt. Let's call above trend inflation what it is (especially when it is deliberate as is the case here at the moment), a tax.

Perhaps instead of trying to blind us with banker bollocks, the government should say it's going to do something about the cost of living? Rather than listening to grandees in fancy Swiss ski resorts, maybe the government should come down the pub with me and talk to the people - people with jobs and mortgages - who are being screwed by these policies. People who say things like this:

 "It's all gone wrong - tits up, hasn't it" Says Lewis. In response to my request for clarity he continues, "the economy, the government. Everything has gone up, bread's like 50% more expensive and look at diesel. People can't afford stuff - come March there'll be a real mess. We've got to get prices down."

And I'm sure that I could introduce our lords and masters to a few others with the same problem. Yet the government, stuck in a nonsense of its own making, isn't listening. Or is listening to international banks with huge, dodgy debts.

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Punishing shopping centres won't save the high street

Skipton Market - my kind of shopping but not to everyone's taste

I like Julian Dobson’s stuff; he talks sense about the challenges facing town centres (although his prescriptions and solutions seek to put a finger in the dyke of consumer behaviour rather than try to direct its flow). But sometimes his heart is too firmly on his sleeve and he loses the grip on common sense.

So it is with his reaction to the claim from the British Council of Shopping Centre that their collections of emporia are at “the heart of the community”. Rather than considering that this signals worry rather than arrogance, Julian launches into his “I hate shopping centres” mode and proposes a nonsensical set of ideas for those shopping centres to “prove” their central location in “the community”.

Let’s look at them:

“...every shopping centre operator should sign a public Community Reinvestment Pledge...”

Why just the shopping centre Julian? Why not the artisan baker, the trendy clothes boutique and the ‘independent’ coffee shop? How are they any different and shouldn’t they be making this same pledge? Truth is, of course, it’s just another cost to the business – means higher rents and these mean higher prices. But I guess Julian doesn’t about that as he’s not on a budget.

“...ask their tenants to pay staff a living wage: one that gives people enough to live on, not a minimum wage.”

Sounds great doesn’t it! And the same applies – those retailers not in the shopping centre should also pledge to pay a living wage surely? Again though – although doubtless Julian will be swiftly on with talking nonsense about the regional multiplier – the main effect is to increase costs (wages are one of the two big retail costs and the other, rent has been put up by the “Community Reinvestment Pledge”). And higher costs mean higher prices. Great idea!

“...they should dedicate a portion of every centre to community or civic space.”

Another impost that means higher rents – it all sounds great but why should a commercial venture do this? Out in Julian’s beloved high street, they aren’t clambering all over each other to give away space to ‘community or civic’ uses. They’re quite rightly looking for paying tenants and, if the Council wants a library or the community group a meeting space they can pay the rent just like everyone else does.

Right now it’s a pretty tough time for high street retailers – the country’s economic problems and the rapid growth in e-commerce and m-commerce make it ever more difficult for traditional retail models to succeed. Dreaming up passive aggressive pseudo taxes for shopping centres – punishing them for being “bad” – is a recipe for more closures, more job losses, more business failure and more empty parades with the occasional crisp packet or flyer doing a passable impression of tumbleweed.

What annoys me most about this anti-retail (or rather anti-certain kinds of retail that we disapprove of for no obvious reason other than that they are national businesses) approach is that it will do nothing to change the decline of high streets or the loss of independent shops. There is a rather patronising, middle-class, guardian-reading pomposity about the “save the high street” rhetoric. It reminds me of folk who criticise McDonalds while tucking into their £20 of hand-formed, lamb burger in some trendy gastropub. It’s not the bad diet but a sniffy, “that’s a bit common” attitude – and hating shopping malls is much the same.

I don’t like those malls but that’s my preference so I seek out other places. Yet millions of people do like shopping malls, visit them often and get real pleasure from shopping in those dreadful national chains. I know this because that’s precisely what millions of people do every weekend. Who am I – or Julian – to criticise that choice, to say that our preference for trendy shops in windy alleys is better that shiny shops in glittering malls?
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So which is right?

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Two (adjecent in my reader, as it happens) reports on charities.

Firstly:

Analysis of quarterly Charity Commission statistics by accountant Chris Harris, drawn from charity accounts, says total income during the year rose by £3.2bn to £58.9bn

And secondly:

One in six charities believe they could face closure in the coming year amid public spending cuts and falling donations, according to a new poll.

Either one of these is wrong or else fewer charities are getting hold of the income. No idea which it is - but I have my suspicions.

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On not needing extra troops north of the Trent - some strategy thoughts for my Party

Alex Massie writing in the Spectator touches on the vexed issue of the ‘North-South’ divide - at least in political terms. Referencing a piece by Michael Dugher in the Guardian, Alex says:

The north-south divide threatens Tory hopes of ever winning a workable parliamentary majority. Doubtless the Conservatives can make some gains in the south-east and the midlands but they must, surely, be closer to their ceiling in those regions. Which means they need to be more competitive north of the Trent.

As a Conservative in the North I find this subject fascinating. Indeed, the choice of the term “North of the Trent” is itself a historical curiosity. As players of the boardgame, Kingmaker, will know the northern bishops – York, Durham, Carlisle – lose their troops when venturing south of the Trent. Or perhaps, like modern day Conservatives, they need those troops to guard them from those who see them as creatures of a London-based, south-east focused culture.

The contention from Alex Massie – reflecting Labour commentors – is that the problem lies in political positioning. He appears to swallow the line that the issue is that northerners think Tories “nasty”:

But even when this is not the case there’s no doubt at all that being considered the Nasty Party and being seen to be just-fine-with-that-thanks is a more than rum approach to government. Politics is a communications business and it’s bizarre so many MPs and ministers seem to forget that.

It seems to me that – while I have a great deal of agreement with Alex on the “nasty party” problem – the core of the failure lies with policy not with communication. All the political parties have policies determined primarily by the culture of London but, for the Conservatives, this is compounded by the dominance of the South-East among the parliamentary party and (just as importantly) the voluntary party.

We see this policy problem with transport investment, with housing and with such issues as regional pay. There is no north of England filter through which to run these policies, no right-of-centre think tank in Leeds or Preston with the ear of ministers and policy planners. This problem is made worse by tokenism such as holding cabinet meetings in Manchester or appointing a “minister for the north”.

If the Conservative Party is serious – and I hope we are – about winning seats in Yorkshire, Lancashire and the North East, then it needs to find a real voice in the North.  Perhaps something as radical as recruiting the team to write the 2015 manifesto from the north and basing them in the north - not in Chester or Harrogate but in Barnsley, Burnley or Washington. And then making use of the great resource we already have up here – experienced local councillors who have spent decades fighting in Labour’s rotten boroughs.

It won’t happen but, if we are to take the north we have to listen to these voices. We have to appreciate just how the party is misunderstood by so many. And perhaps think a little about those folk living in three-bed semis near Oldham and on the hills overlooking Keighley. People who think they pay too much tax, who see too much waste and who worry about the cost of living. This was the simple message of the Thatcher years – work hard, keep what you earn, care for your family and look out for your neighbours.  And in return the government will take less from you, will help keep you safe, will protect our shores and will reward thrift and effort.

Even Tory voters in my neck of the woods think the party’s leadership too distant, too grand, and too posh. That they are, in truth, no more distant, no more grand and no more posh than that leaderships of Labour and Liberal Democrats does not matter; it is the Conservatives who are seen that way not the others. If we are to change then we must campaign in the language of the saloon bar not the language of the country supper. And this doesn’t mean being snapped holding a pint in some Berkshire gastro-pub but talking seriously about tackling inflation, cutting out waste and reducing taxes.

Above all, it means campaigning in the north – not by sending out patronising mailings from London or recruiting a few kids to work in “target seats” but by basing a real and substantial part of the Party’s activities in the north. By showing that we really do think the North matters.

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Going anti-clockwise round Coventry - a paen to England's roads

Today, for reasons that are unimportant to you, dear reader, we drove from the fine old town of Bath back to a very nearly drowned Cullingworth. The journey took in a new experience since, rather than the usual sclerotic motorways we opted for a pleasant drive – I would say meander but the one thing the Fosse Way doesn’t do is wander about – passed Malmesbury, Cirencester, Stow-in-the-Wold and Stratford. I say passed since – with the exception of Moreton-in-Marsh – all the places en route are safely by-passed by a well maintained and appropriately sized highway.

At the end of this little trip the navigation (Kathryn) announced that we were now going “anti-clockwise round Coventry”. This tickled me a little but got me to thinking about how we moan and whinge about transport, traffic and roads. Yet, over the years the assorted county councils (in the main) have, along with the Highways agency, smoothed the passage of traffic while allowing the various little market towns, spas and villages to breathe again.

So since we didn’t go through any town centres – a favourite topic on mine – I will comment on roads. Starting with the little windy country lanes that don’t seem to go anywhere but which are lovingly patched up and repaired by a combination of council workers, assorted contractors and the local farmer. The recent bad weather has bashed away at these roads washing away lumps of them, filling dips and hollows with water and strewing the surface with the debris from fields and lanes – a veritable flotsam and jetsam of farm life. And they – those farmers, the men from the water board and the council – were already out mending and making do. Allowing us to pass (actual thigh deep floods aside) from one place to another with the minimum of hindrance.

And then to the better roads – thousands of miles of them that we take for granted. Filled –sometimes to overflowing – with traffic, all going busily about its daily business. These are the arteries of England’s economy. Forget about those trains and planes, ignore the fancy urban tramways and underground systems – it is these A-roads and B-roads along with the wealth of England flows each day. Ten thousand and more vans, pick-ups, low-loaders, trucks, container wagons, car transporters and delivery lorries. Each one with its precious cargo – goods and expertise flowing from one small place to another. Each little trip making it possible for us to have bread on the table, heat in the house and a happy smile on the faces of healthy children.

So to those who look disdainfully at the car, who curse the van and the truck. For all you who hold forth about how all the freight can go on railways or even into barges. All of you are wrong. The future success of our economy depends rather more on those roads, on allowing the easy movement of plumbers and locksmiths, supermarket delivery drivers and truckers, computer salesmen and cheesemakers – all the producers that make us rich. And that means roads.

So if there is to be infrastructure investment let’s spend it on by-passes, new road links, road widening and road improvements. Let’s give councils the money to do the backlog of repairs. Let’s spend the money we get from road users – all £30 billion and more of it – on making life a little easier for those road users. And let’s tell all the tree-huggers and planet-savers that, right now, getting the economy moving is more important than their eco-scaremongerings.

Getting the economy moving means getting people moving. And that needs roads. Including the one going anti-clockwise round Coventry.

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