One of the defining characteristics of Great Britain has always been a natural affinity with justice and fair play.Not the sort of justice that we associate with the bewigged denizens of Planet Zog who populate the upper levels of our judiciary. That is designed primarily to shield their upper class mates from the prying eyes and cameras of the popular Press.
You won't find the sort of justice I have in mind entombed in a law book so densely worded that you have to employ a specialist in arcane language - a lawyer to you and me - to interpret it. Generally, it comes through in the actions of ordinary people who have an instinctive appreciation of what is right and wrong.
Three recent stories highlight the disconnect between the great mass of people,our political and judicial elites and the concept of Natural Justice.
The first is the so-called revelation that Labour has deliberately pursued an open-door immigration policy not - as they kept reassuring a sceptical population - for the economic benefit of the country but for the much more narrow purpose of changing the cultural complexion of Great Britain while, coincidentally broadening their client and voter base. Where have our so-called political journalsists and commentators been for the last ten years?
As I wrote as long ago as November 2007:
"There are certain areas of Great Britain that have always voted Labour and will always go on voting Labour - whether the old or the New variety - because every wave of economic success passes them by. Equally, there are bastions of Tory support which catch all the waves for the simple reason that they create them in the first place. Noo Labour knows this. No matter how pathetic they may be as administrators, the Blairs, Mandelsons and Browns of this world understand politics. Equally, they know that the more prosperous people become, the more conservative ( with a small c) they tend to become in their habits. Owning a property in common with a bank has a way of concentrating the mind and stimulating an interest in economics that may have, hitherto, lain hidden. Consequently, with the British economy enjoying the longest sustained growth in living memory, more and more people have climbed onto the property ladder and, thus, have also taken the first, tentative steps towards small c conservatism. In fact, all that has limited the numbers jumping aboard the property bandwagon has been the astronomical inflation of house prices. ( One of the Laws of Unintended Consequences that we can discuss at a later date).
So, here's a conundrum. We ( Noo Labour) naturally want the country to be prosperous because it enhances our prospects for re-election. On the other hand, the better off the country becomes, the further away from our core values the electorate moves. This is particularly true in the engine room of the economy, in the South East where home ownership is at its highest; as is, surprise surprise, the level of support for the wretched Tory party. Even more worrying is the fact that the benefits of the economic miracle are also being enjoyed in our traditional working class heartlands where the same shift towards middle class values is clearly discernible. There are only so many times we can move to the right to maintain our appeal to "Middle England" before we alienate the Unions and there are only so many new government jobs we can create. So, where else can we look for the voting fodder we need to win the next election and keep ourselves in a manner to which we have become rapidly accustomed? The answer, my friends, lies some where else in a place known as Abroad.
Let us welcome the huddled masses, yearning to be free that the US, Australia, Canada, South Africa and most of the developed world - and virtually the whole of Europe, apart from Sweden - don't wany darkening their doorsteps. Let's remove all border controls and issue entry visas as if they were library tickets. If people swarm in illegally, let's pretend that we hadn't noticed even if, by doing so, we encourage slave labour in the form of Chinese cockle pickers or Romanian child prostitutes. We'll claim to be building a truly multi-cultural society. If people complain, we'll brand them racist. If they say we are destroying British culture, we'll label them Little Englanders. And, if they persist with their protests, we'll introduce a raft of new laws that make it illegal for them to do so. We'll deny, cavill, argue and prevaricate while, all the while, encouraging the largest continuous migration in British history. Because, while the rest of the country looks on the newcomers as immigrants, foreigners and threats to their jobs we see them in a totally different light. To us, this multi-coloured rainbow of cultures and religions represents the future. Our future, handed to us on an electoral plate by hordes of grateful Poles, Somalis, Albanians and Slovaks so different in their origins but united by one pure and beautiful emotion; undying gratitude to the party that gave them the keys to the Kingdom."
This week, we also learnt that all three main parties are considering some sort of charge or levy on old people to help fund them if they have to end their days in a care home of some sort In the case of Labour, we are apparently looking at a post-mortem tax of £20,000 on individual estates. While the Tories have cavilled at this figure, they are, themselves, suggesting a voluntary contribution of around £8000 for a post-retirement insurance scheme to fund old age care. As` usual,the LibDems don't seem to have formulated a policy so far.
Whichever way you slice it, all of these elite politicians seem to feel that it is perfectly in order for someone to work and pay taxes for thirty to forty years and then, at the very moment when they should be enjoying the fruits of honesty, hard work and civic responsibility, for the government to insert a large mitt into their back pocket and extract a substantial sum of money. There are two problems with this policy of course and the biggest is that it flies in the face of any idea of natural justice. The only people to whom it can apply are, by definition, those who have managed to work regularly,save for and buy their own home over the course of their lifetime. People who have been feckless,lazy, unambitious or simply uninterested in owning a property will, obviously, be unable to participate in this scheme. But, since we all have Human Rights, it is a fair bet that they will still be eligible for the same levels of care and consideration irrespective of any lack of tangible assets. So,they will escape the legalised larceny of the Government while enjoying exactly the same benefits as those robbed at the cashpoint.
Is this fair? NO. Is it in any sense just? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Is there a politician who will articulate the basic injustice being proposed? Not one enjoying any sort of influence in the three main parties.
Which brings us to the final hackle-raising story of the week.
While our politicians are debating not whether to rob the old of part of their life savings but precisely how much to steal, they apparently have no difficulty finding the funds to house, feed and clothe someone whose apparent entitlement to help and assistance would, at first blush, appear to eb tenuous at best.
For while we cannot, as a nation, find it in our collective heart to make the last days of our old folk warm, comfortable and secure without their coughing up a substantial chunk of change, we do not have the same problems when it comes to funding a millionaire lifestyle for a single mother with six children.
Esma Marjam hails from the Midlands where her ex-husband is a solicitor or some similar bastion of middle class respectability. Despite this fact, she and her six children have all ended up living in council accommodation in London. Not in Tower Hamlets. Not in Brixton. Not even in Peckham, Kilburn, Brent, Lewisham,Ealing or Islington. No, the Marjam family, for some reason that isn't made clear, has elected to make the area administered by the City of Westminster its base. Until recently, they managed to scrape by in an ordinary 3 bedroomed council house. For some reason, which again is not made really clear, Ms Marjam decided that this was inadequate for her growing brood. When Westminster Council dragged its feet in finding the right sort of accommodation, she decided to go online and find something suitable herself.
What she came up with was a seven bed mansion not a boundary throw from Lords Cricket Ground in St. John's Wood. And what a snip,it has turned out to be. All Westminster Council - or to be more precise the unwitting Council Tax payers of that Borough - has to find to put a roof over the Marjam family's heads is £7000 per month, or £84000 per annum.
But, of course, there's more to life than mere accommodation so the family also has to take an additional £1500 of taxpayers' money every month to scrape by. Taken all in, the Great British public is paying this woman and her brood the equivalent of a pre-tax salary of about £150,000 per year. In the meantime, the same politico-judicial elite is debating whether to force people who have paid taxes and National Insurance all their lives to pay a further £8000 to £20,000 for the privilege of being allowed to grow old gracefully.
Little wonder that people are starting to look around fro alternatives to the three main parties if this is their idea of natural justice.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Burnt at the stake
Stakeholder.
Now, there's a term you don't hear too often these days.
Not so long ago, oh say 18 months or so, it was impossible to avoid stakeholders. They were everywhere. Large government departments, local councils, charitable organisations, commercial institutions and giant industrial companies alike were stuffed to the gills with them. Rarely a week went by without some politician or CEO restating his or her total commitment to their stakeholders; be they shareholders, directors or just plain employees.
Mind, that was back then, when the world was young and bountiful, Jim; bankers were regularly lauded for their entrepreneurial skills and we spent our lives grazing on the sunlit uplands of plenty with limitless credit fuelling our consumption. You would have been hard pressed in those halcyon days to find a CEO who didn't regard his company as "A people company".
All that has changed. The economic storms swirling around the global markets apparently bore within them gases so lethal to stakeholders that they wiped them from the face of the earth at a stroke.
How else can we explain their sudden disappearance?
The term stakeholder has been expunged, ripped from the lexicon in case it rears up and bites its previous champions on the bum. CEOs are no longer interested in stakeholders but shareholders and shareholder value.
The problem is, of course, that the label stakeholder implies that someone is much more than just an employee, that , individually and as part of the collective, they are an essential cog in the corporate machine. Like many silly business expressions, it was devised by HR departments to give everyone a warm sense of belonging. But, it's a tough line to hold when you have to decimate a workforce and close a factory or two, when the only stake many employees would be interested in is one driven firmly into the CEO's heart.
In a recession, any stakeholders who are not actually shareholders become an embarassment, a potential drain on resources and a drag on the share price.
That being the case, let's hope that we all learn to live with a simple truth. Companies generally, and quoted companies in particular, are not "People" companies. They are not a cross between a mutual society, a creche and a dating agency. They do not exist to provide financial support, sustenance and a really neat social life to their employees. They are money-generators, pure and simple. So, stakeholders are fine when markets are vibrant, sales are firm and the bottom line positively vibrates with health. But, they become a liability when business goes down the toilet. Then they revert to being plain employees, a Human Resource to be sure but one that, like any resource, is dispensable and replenishable.
So, no more twee expressions. Let's talk no more of Stakeholders or People Companies. When the sun comes back up again, let's close the HR department, go back to an old fashioned personnel officer, sack the consultants who specialise in devising silly expressions and give the money we save to more productive employees. Then if they really want to become stakeholders, they can buy themselves a genuine stake in the company in the form of shares.
Now, there's a term you don't hear too often these days.
Not so long ago, oh say 18 months or so, it was impossible to avoid stakeholders. They were everywhere. Large government departments, local councils, charitable organisations, commercial institutions and giant industrial companies alike were stuffed to the gills with them. Rarely a week went by without some politician or CEO restating his or her total commitment to their stakeholders; be they shareholders, directors or just plain employees.
Mind, that was back then, when the world was young and bountiful, Jim; bankers were regularly lauded for their entrepreneurial skills and we spent our lives grazing on the sunlit uplands of plenty with limitless credit fuelling our consumption. You would have been hard pressed in those halcyon days to find a CEO who didn't regard his company as "A people company".
All that has changed. The economic storms swirling around the global markets apparently bore within them gases so lethal to stakeholders that they wiped them from the face of the earth at a stroke.
How else can we explain their sudden disappearance?
The term stakeholder has been expunged, ripped from the lexicon in case it rears up and bites its previous champions on the bum. CEOs are no longer interested in stakeholders but shareholders and shareholder value.
The problem is, of course, that the label stakeholder implies that someone is much more than just an employee, that , individually and as part of the collective, they are an essential cog in the corporate machine. Like many silly business expressions, it was devised by HR departments to give everyone a warm sense of belonging. But, it's a tough line to hold when you have to decimate a workforce and close a factory or two, when the only stake many employees would be interested in is one driven firmly into the CEO's heart.
In a recession, any stakeholders who are not actually shareholders become an embarassment, a potential drain on resources and a drag on the share price.
That being the case, let's hope that we all learn to live with a simple truth. Companies generally, and quoted companies in particular, are not "People" companies. They are not a cross between a mutual society, a creche and a dating agency. They do not exist to provide financial support, sustenance and a really neat social life to their employees. They are money-generators, pure and simple. So, stakeholders are fine when markets are vibrant, sales are firm and the bottom line positively vibrates with health. But, they become a liability when business goes down the toilet. Then they revert to being plain employees, a Human Resource to be sure but one that, like any resource, is dispensable and replenishable.
So, no more twee expressions. Let's talk no more of Stakeholders or People Companies. When the sun comes back up again, let's close the HR department, go back to an old fashioned personnel officer, sack the consultants who specialise in devising silly expressions and give the money we save to more productive employees. Then if they really want to become stakeholders, they can buy themselves a genuine stake in the company in the form of shares.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
No longer the Me society; now the Wii society
At Christmas, it's a tradition in many households to consider some light exercise after dinner to encourage the turkey, the puddings and pies to subside gently into the gastric juices.
In years gone by, this would have been achieved by a stroll along some country lane or, for urbanites, to a duck pond in the local park.
This year, for many, the source of the exercise will be not a gentle perambulation in the fresh air but a mat placed in front of a television screen. It will not be there for anything as enjoyable or energetic as copulation but to enable the assembled friends and relations to pretend they are playing table tennis, skate-boarding or,even, walking and jogging.
They will in other words be WIIing, or whatever the correct verb for using a WII is. Tennis racquets, golf clubs and running shoes become redundant since the mighty WII, apparently, is also able to simulate any or all of the kit needed to play a particular game.
The most annoying ads on TV at the moment feature the pleasant but extremely limited duo, Ant and Dec, travelling the country, invading people's homes and clubs to issue challenges for various activities on the Wii machine. At least, I assume they are Ant and Dec. For all any of us know, it could be two A&D avatars or holograms doing the challenging - and the challenges themselves might be virtual rather than actual.
In that sense, Wii and all the other electronic games, are a metaphor for our increasingly ersatz society.
We don't do reality any more.
Why take real exercise that involves real effort when you can stay inside your centrally-heated cocoon and kid yourself that you have played a round of golf or a couple of sets of tennis without breaking sweat?
Why write real drama when you can put together a cast of misfits and failed celebrities and lock them inside a house or jungle and let them work out their psychoses and character faults in full public view?
This philosophy extends into the political arena, education and even into religion.
Politicians long ago gave up on Parliament as a forum for serious debate, preferring to use the TV and internet to shape events and people. Budgets and important announcementsappear courtesy of the BBC or internet rather than in the Commons.
An education system that once acted as the template for large wodges of the globe has been systematically replaced by a new model in which social engineering and indoctrination masquerade as education.
It is entirely possible now to attain a pass in GCSEmaths with a grade that once wouldn't have troubled the scorers. One GCSE Science paper I looked at very recently contained questions similar to those I faced at the end of my first year in senior school. Except that many of these modern questions came complete with multiple choice answers; just to increase the pupil's chance of getting the right answer.
It is no longer necessay to practise a musical instrument such as the guitar. Simply buy the right game, plug it into a console and you are, automatically, transformed into a rock star - even if you can't tell the difference between a chord and a string.
I don't know about you, but the thought that the young surgeon who is about to operate on me or the equally young pilot whose plane I am boarding might have virtual rather than real qualifications does not exactly fill me with confidence.
The disease has spread into our financial systems. Rather than save real money by cutting our costs, the Bank of England - doubtless at the urging of Gordon B - has chosen instead to print new money - lots of it. Now, at some point, such as when we are printing more money than we are actually generating in income, that cash becomes worthless.
We don't need to look too far back in history to discover the truth of that statement; just as far as the Weimar Republic ought to do it. As Maynard Keynes said at the time: "Governments, unable, or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance."
This administration has systematically anaesthetised the populace with a mixture of cheap supermarket beers and spirits, all-day opening and readily accessible hard and soft drugs. It has reduced their ability to question or counter its actions by cutting the legs out of the education system. Thanks to Wii it is now able to reduce them to sedentary vegetables by convincing them that virtual exercise is as good as the real thing. And, to top it all off, they are printing ersatz money so that no family in the land should go without its own Wii this Christmas.
Merry Xmas and a (real) Prosperous New Year
In years gone by, this would have been achieved by a stroll along some country lane or, for urbanites, to a duck pond in the local park.
This year, for many, the source of the exercise will be not a gentle perambulation in the fresh air but a mat placed in front of a television screen. It will not be there for anything as enjoyable or energetic as copulation but to enable the assembled friends and relations to pretend they are playing table tennis, skate-boarding or,even, walking and jogging.
They will in other words be WIIing, or whatever the correct verb for using a WII is. Tennis racquets, golf clubs and running shoes become redundant since the mighty WII, apparently, is also able to simulate any or all of the kit needed to play a particular game.
The most annoying ads on TV at the moment feature the pleasant but extremely limited duo, Ant and Dec, travelling the country, invading people's homes and clubs to issue challenges for various activities on the Wii machine. At least, I assume they are Ant and Dec. For all any of us know, it could be two A&D avatars or holograms doing the challenging - and the challenges themselves might be virtual rather than actual.
In that sense, Wii and all the other electronic games, are a metaphor for our increasingly ersatz society.
We don't do reality any more.
Why take real exercise that involves real effort when you can stay inside your centrally-heated cocoon and kid yourself that you have played a round of golf or a couple of sets of tennis without breaking sweat?
Why write real drama when you can put together a cast of misfits and failed celebrities and lock them inside a house or jungle and let them work out their psychoses and character faults in full public view?
This philosophy extends into the political arena, education and even into religion.
Politicians long ago gave up on Parliament as a forum for serious debate, preferring to use the TV and internet to shape events and people. Budgets and important announcementsappear courtesy of the BBC or internet rather than in the Commons.
An education system that once acted as the template for large wodges of the globe has been systematically replaced by a new model in which social engineering and indoctrination masquerade as education.
It is entirely possible now to attain a pass in GCSEmaths with a grade that once wouldn't have troubled the scorers. One GCSE Science paper I looked at very recently contained questions similar to those I faced at the end of my first year in senior school. Except that many of these modern questions came complete with multiple choice answers; just to increase the pupil's chance of getting the right answer.
It is no longer necessay to practise a musical instrument such as the guitar. Simply buy the right game, plug it into a console and you are, automatically, transformed into a rock star - even if you can't tell the difference between a chord and a string.
I don't know about you, but the thought that the young surgeon who is about to operate on me or the equally young pilot whose plane I am boarding might have virtual rather than real qualifications does not exactly fill me with confidence.
The disease has spread into our financial systems. Rather than save real money by cutting our costs, the Bank of England - doubtless at the urging of Gordon B - has chosen instead to print new money - lots of it. Now, at some point, such as when we are printing more money than we are actually generating in income, that cash becomes worthless.
We don't need to look too far back in history to discover the truth of that statement; just as far as the Weimar Republic ought to do it. As Maynard Keynes said at the time: "Governments, unable, or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance."
This administration has systematically anaesthetised the populace with a mixture of cheap supermarket beers and spirits, all-day opening and readily accessible hard and soft drugs. It has reduced their ability to question or counter its actions by cutting the legs out of the education system. Thanks to Wii it is now able to reduce them to sedentary vegetables by convincing them that virtual exercise is as good as the real thing. And, to top it all off, they are printing ersatz money so that no family in the land should go without its own Wii this Christmas.
Merry Xmas and a (real) Prosperous New Year
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