Blond on Practical Economic Policy

Shattered Society | ResPublica

While agreeing with much of the critique of neo-liberalism found among distributist writers, I have been less clear about the specific public and economic policies that such writers would wish to see, particularly in a British context. In the United States, for instance, one wing of the movement against perceived statism seems to have evolved into a Libertarian form through the Tea Party movement, which, I must confess, is not one that I am indistinctly drawn to.

I'm not sure whether Philip Blond would describe himself as a distributist, but some of the ideas in this essay are consistent with the economic theory espoused by Belloc and Chesterton.

In any event, Blond does set out several practical policy directions that he believes would provide workable solutions to the failures of both statism and developed capitalism. If I've understood the article correctly, these include:

1. Turning public services into employee-owned co-operatives without the current layers of management characteristic of existing public services.

2. Empowering "citizen's groups" to take over the budget of central government, in areas such as welfare/social service payments and to use it for their own economic empowering rather than subsidizing their existence - giving capital rather than income.

3. A "doctrine of radical democratic subsidiarity" would see political decision making radically devolved. Blond is short of specifics on this one, unfortunately!

Much to ponder.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Red Toryism

Subtitled Liberalism and the Loss of Liberty, Michael Merrick's essay on Red Toryism is the best short piece I have read so far on Philip Blond's political philosophy.

Interesting quotes abound in this well written piece, as well as direct and indirect links to issues of localism and distributism, which I have commented on elsewhere in this blog.

I am particularly interested in Merrick's central thesis, that although Blond has been welcomed into British Tory circles, the true nature of his critique of liberalism has probably not been understood by the right.

In my own very limited experience, I have found than whenever I tentatively put forward ideas around localism, I am often perceived to be expressing views to the right of centre.

I don't think I am. My starting point is a critique of developed capitalism and its destructive effect on individuals, families and communities, especially the poorest, and its related contribution to the destruction of the physical environment. These have tended to be seen in recent years as issues of concern to those on the left.

Anyway, who cares about these labels?

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Police, Camera, Action!

Like Paul Scoles, the star of this fine video gives hope and inspiration to ginger, middle-aged men everywhere.

POLICE CONTROL from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

BBC News - Profile: Thailand's reds and yellows

BBC News - Profile: Thailand's reds and yellows

Thailand's increasingly tense political stand-off between the red-shirted United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and their yellow-clad Peoples' Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has overtones of some the European political upheavals of a former era.

The two constituencies - the reds primarily a coalition of students, farmers and urban radicals, and the yellows a collective of monarchists and the urban middle classes - resonates with numerous phases of European political history in the C17 and C18.

I'm reminded even of the origins of the English Civil War with its two increasingly polarised camps. In a sense, even the American War of Independence had elements of these traditional class-based and rural-urban divisions, with the added complexity of a long-standing traditional monarchy thrown into the mix.

The BBC's photo essay on the current stand-off is illuminating.

Matthew Hosier: PREDICTION TIME

Matthew Hosier: PREDICTION TIME

Church leader and political pundit Matthew Hosier predicts, counter intiutively, an election victory for the Labour Party on May 6th, due to the Conservatives being unable to achieve a large enough breakthrough.

What do you think?

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Football Then and Now

Watching the BBC's DVD of the 1966 World Cup final last night (it's only a few weeks till this year's tournament after all), I noticed a few differences in the beautiful game back then compared to now:

1. generally played at a slower pace
2. tackles appeared less severe, though,
3. taking out the goalie seemed more acceptable
   
4. no advertising hoardings
5. no black players on the pitch
6. less sophisticated commentary/analysis
7. film of the Duke of Edinburgh having a ciggie
8. free kicks taken more quickly

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Seven Great Questions for Parliamentary Candidates

Thanks to No2id for these questions for candidates on their positions on the database state.



1) The National Identity Scheme is not just about ID cards. It is built on a National Identity Register, a set of linked databases behind the cards holding an archive of personal information. The Identity Cards Act 2006 provides for lifelong control of personal identity by the state and data-sharing without the knowledge or consent of the individual. The Act permits any official document to be designated, compelling registration for anyone who needs that document. Though the UK is under no obligation to add fingerprints to the passport, the Home Office intends to make fingerprinting and joining the National Identity Register compulsory for anyone who applies for a passport from 2012.

If elected, would you vote to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006? Would you also oppose moves to make a database of passport holders and their fingerprints a feature of the British passport?

2) Medical confidentiality is fundamental to public health. If people feel that what they say to their doctor will not remain private, they may fail to disclose vital information or avoid treatment, assisting the spread of disease. By seizing all medical records and making them centrally accessible to hundreds of thousands of people - in the NHS and outside - the electronic Care Records System destroys the assurance of confidentiality. The Department for Health is seeking now to upload from
GP’s surgeries sensitive data, including chronic conditions and prescriptions. It is using a fraudulent definition of ‘consent’ in order to do it, with heavy promotion using public money, of claims about benefits that are not supported by evidence. Patients are made to jump through unnecessary hoops in order to exercise their right to opt out.

If elected, would you work to ensure that control of medical records remains with patients and their own doctors, and that they are shared only with properly informed consent?

3) The National DNA Database contains the profiles of almost one million people who have not been convicted of any crime. A few notorious cases are quoted to justify this, but detailed examination usually shows they could have been solved using proper police procedure and a database only of convicted criminals. Treating the innocent as criminal suspects corrodes relations between the police and the public, and undermines confidence in the quite proper use of DNA detection.

How should the DNA database be operated? If elected, would you vote to remove immediately and automatically all profiles of unconvicted people from the DNA database?

4) ContactPoint, an index of every child (and family) in England and Wales is now operating, despite technical and security faults. It identifies the most vulnerable by flagging those using sensitive services and is accessible to hundreds of thousands of people. It is too big ever to be secure. The existence of a "shielding" scheme, denied to most families, suggests that in fact ContactPoint itself is a potential danger to children. Putting record-keeping on a database can’t correct the failures of child protection to act, which is the cause of the most notorious tragedies.

Are the hundreds of millions spent on ContactPoint and related databases not better spent in other ways?

5) The creation of the Independent Safeguarding Authority means a massive expansion of police checking. The Authority can ban you from your career for accusations, or even for its own idea of 'risk factors' in your legal behaviour. Lifelong retention of arrest records by the police means ‘enhanced’ Criminal Records checks may treat you as a convicted criminal simply for being arrested – affecting your potential employment and volunteering, with no right of appeal. Mass checking feeds suspicion and undermines trust, but there is no evidence that it prevents any sort of crime.

If elected, what would you do to reform vetting and barring schemes?

6) Despite denying plans for a central database of communications data, the Home Office set up a new directorate just this January to push forward the £2 billion Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP). The intent is store details of everyone you call, text or e-mail and which websites you visit – providing a record of clues to your religious and political beliefs, your sexual interests and personal relationships, your financial and medical worries – ‘just in case’ they become of interest to the authorities. Phone tapping and opening mail is so sensitive that it is a power exercised only on the approval of the Home Secretary, and cannot even be mentioned in court. But collecting communications data, and building techniques for them to be arbitrarily investigated, makes much more available to be known about every one of us without any form of warrant or independent oversight.

If elected, would you vote to ensure that access to any form of personal communications is only permitted to formal investigations under warrant?

7) Tens of millions of law-abiding citizens are being routinely monitored as they travel, on the roads by Automatic Number Plate Recognition – without any legal basis – and in the air or by sea when detailed passenger records are passed to the Home Office’s e-Borders data centre even as you leave the country. Vast quantities of information, including your financial details from ticketing, and
pictures of who you are travelling with, are being kept. For five years in the case of road data, and ten years at least for e-Borders. It is passed around government agencies, and even sent abroad. Such records are used to match records with ‘intelligence’ (which usually means guesses) from other sources – exposing unsuspecting citizens to suspicion, arbitrary penalties, and worse.

What limits would you place on the database surveillance of those travelling abroad and within the UK?

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Why Not Rent Your Car Out?

I like the look of this enterprising business, currently based in Australia but waiting for the right person to launch something similar in the UK.

Drive my Car allows car owners to rent their vehicles out to members of the public privately by the hour, day, week or longer.

The site handles insurance and creates a rental agreement each time a renter wants to hire a specific vehicle.

Rental prices are set by the car owner and are typically up to 60% cheaper than the market leaders. In this instance, of course, the beneficiaries are individual car owners.

A smart business, combining a national web-based platform with an individual micro-business model. Nice.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Being Franck

If Chelsea FC wanted to do something really cool, they could do a lot worse than drop any interest they may have in signing French footballer Franck Ribery.

The Bayern Munich striker stands accused of having sex with an under-age prostitute, an offence that carries a maximum of three years in prison.

With an estimated 1.3 million children trafficked annually, many of them into the sex industry, a decision by Chelsea to take a stand against this form of child abuse would send a positive signal that show that they value something more than money or winning matches.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

God, The Ash and the Business Backlash

It's noticeable that elements within the business community are starting to increase their efforts to have Europe's flying ban lifted as soon as possible. This is understandable, of course, since the airline industry is losing millions of pounds through its forced inactivity this week.

BBC business editor Robert "Good-in-a-Crisis" Peston is quoted today as saying that the disruption to airlines risks becoming a "major business and economic disaster" which may place several European airlines in financial difficulty.

The International Air Transport Association, meanwhile, has warned that airlines will lose at least £130m each day that they cannot fly.

It is no surprise, therefore, to find KLM and Lufthansa trying out "test flights" this weekend in order to see if it is safe for planes to fly. No doubt, they hope to convince the various authorities of their case.

For the thinking Christian, the disruption caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano raises a number of important issues, questions and opportunities:

1. Since they serve a God about whom the Psalms declare, "stormy winds do his bidding", they must conclude that God has either decreed or permitted the prevailing jet stream to blow the volcanic ash over Europe, as opposed to into the Atlantic or the Arctic.
2. In ascribing this act to God, they may discern within it both his mercy and his judgement. Examples of the former quality are numerous. Firstly, they can be grateful that, so far, no human life has been lost through this powerful display of nature and that destruction to the towns and villages in the immediate area of the Icelandic volcano and glacier has been minimal; secondly, they can be thankful for the technology that enables human beings to predict and anticipate the impact of the ash upon aircraft. Much better to suffer the current disruption than to have woken two days ago to stories of numerous planes falling out of the sky without warning.
   
3. On the issue of God's judgement, Christians should recognise the biblical reality of judgement in this age, as well as in the age to come. This huge topic cannot be explored adequately in this post - and no doubt the usual suspects will soon be making sweeping and ridiculous statements about the issue before too long. To say nothing about the reality of judgement in this age, however, only hands the subject over to the extremists. It is a topic that must be addressed. The portrayal in the Bible of God's judgement on the city of Babylon - the graphic symbol of a society in every age obsessed with greed, sex and godlessness - does include judgement upon her commercial activity:

"The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no-one buys their cargoes any more—

cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls ... of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep .... and bodies and souls of men.

......

The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn and cry out:

'Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls!

In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!' "

(Revelation 18)

It would be ridiculous, of course, to claim that the current airline disruption is an exact fulfillment of this ancient biblical prophecy! Indeed, the final reality will, if the passage is read in full, be much worse.

However, it is possible to identify within the judgement passages of both the old and new testaments, themes which can inform our understanding of the nature, extent and purpose of divine judgement in every age.

If it true that global warming is happening, and that it is largely caused by human activity, and if it is true that the world's poorest are those most affected by climate change, then surely it is not too far-fetched to see behind the current forced grounding of European flights the activity of a sovereign God, who "secures justice for the poor".

Specifically, can we discern a voice from heaven saying, "Enough of your greed; enough of your luxury" and within that, a call to Europe (and elsewhere) to build more sustainable economies - ones that do not contribute to environmental and economic degradation among the poorest in the world?

It is to be hoped that, over the silence of the runways in this early summer, human beings are able to hear and respond to this still, small voice.

Image credit Sverrir Thor.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Some Thoughts on the Volcano-Airline Story

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Harry's Place » RIP Anna Walentynowicz

Harry's Place » RIP Anna Walentynowicz:

"Among those killed in Saturday’s terrible plane crash was 80-year-old Anna Walentynowicz, the former crane operator and trade union activist whose firing in 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk helped spark the Solidarity movement which eventually toppled Poland’s Communist government."

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Quote of the Week

"Professor Paul van Riper has recently retired from Texas A & M University for the third time, at the age of 94.

He has never used a computer or mobile phone."

From a friend of the Professor

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Some Good News from Pakistan

"April 2010 shall go down in Pakistan’s history as an epoch-making month," according to Prof. I Ahmad of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

The reason for this optimistic observation is the passing of the 18th amendment to the constitution of Pakistan, which seeks to strengthen parliamentary democracy, give more power to the provinces in the country's federal system of government, and support the independence of the judiciary.

Most striking to many western eyes of the proposals bundled together in this reform package is the reduction in the powers of the President:

"The removal of Article 58-2/b ends the arbitrary power of the President to dismiss an elected government. With this, Mr Zardari becomes the first president in the country’s history to surrender his powers vested in the Constitution."

Other measures include:

• the re-naming of the North-West Frontier province to the less colonial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
• the creation of a Judicial Commission for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court
• the removal of the name of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq from the Constitution - a symbolic act aimed at making a statement against military intervention in the democratic process
• the extending of compulsory education to all 16-year olds
  

The news, meanwhile, is less encouraging from Thailand where a virtual media blackout is now in force.








If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Opponent of "Mosques" on Army Firing Range Was Rushdie Book Burner

When a member of the media wants to report a story, they will often get in touch with their list of known contacts and ask them for a quote.

Not surprising, then, that the BBC and other media providers should turn to Ishtiaq Ahmed, of the Bradford Council of Mosques, for a comment on the presence of mosque-like wooden buildings on the army's firing range in North Yorkshire.

Not only has Mr Ahmed served as Press Officer for the Bradford Council of Mosques for several years, but members of the press may also remember him as the local leader of the group which publicly burned copies of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses in January 1989. (Source).

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

How to Create More Terrorists

The following video, which I cannot yet embed, shows an American helicopter gun-ship killing a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad in 2007.

Those killed included two staff members of the Reuters news agency. Two children were also seriously wounded in the attack.

Reuters has been trying without success to obtain the video under America's Freedom of Information Act. On April 5th, the classified video was released by WikiLeaks.

Watch it here and watch American forces recruit more members for al-Qaeda.

Warning, the video is very graphic and disturbing.

Between 2003 and 2009, 139 journalists were killed in Iraq. Professor Scott Lucas at Enduring America has some immediate reaction to the video here.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Just Discovered Freedly

With subscriptions to several hundred RSS feeds which I access through Google Reader, Freedly, which turns these feeds into a magazine-style page, looks excellent.

I'll let you know how I get on with it and, meanwhile, let the video do the talking.






If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.