What Are Public Services For? Reflections on Res_Publica's Report on Community Ownership of Public Assets

Philip Blond, director of think tank Res_Publica, advocates allowing local communities in Britain to take over failing state-owned assets in order to run them as community enterprises.

At the heart of the concept is what Res_Publica describe as a

"shift in emphasis from public spending to public investment."

The fact that the launch of today's report, To Buy, to Bid, to Build: Community Rights for an Asset Owning Democracy was attended by Greg Clark MP, Minister of State for Local Government and Communities, lends credence to the critics of Res_Publica that the think tank is too close to the Conservative Party.

Certainly, an article in today's Morning Star criticises the report and sees it as paving the way for the "Ultimate Sell Off" of public assets, including hospitals, schools and libraries.

At the heart of the Star's critique is an interesting quote from Andrew Fisher:

"Leisure centres and libraries meet social needs. They should not be run for profit no matter who owns them."

Some questions occur to me for both Res_Publica and Morning Star (should they not have better things to do than read this blog):

1) How does Fisher define a "social need"? Is food a social need? If so, does the Marxist world view that underpins Morning Star logically lead to statist-capitalism, where the state (albeit in the name of the working classes) owns all property and directs its use?

2) If "social needs" are defined more narrowly, the question of profit still requires examination. If we accept that there is room for a "not-for profit" sector within the economy, who or what should occupy that space? Soup kitchens? Homeless shelters? Swimming pools? Libraries?

It is interesting to note that many groups that have traditionally occupied the non-profit sector in the UK (charities, primarily) have been at the forefront of running profitable enterprises in recent decades, rather than relying exclusively on traditional fund-raising methods. The host of charity shops occupying commercial space on every high street in Britain have, in turn, contributed to an upsurge in social enterprises which have sought to combine and integrate business with socially beneficial or charitable ends. Examples in my own city of Bristol include Aspire; nationally, the Divine Chocolate Company.

3) Is Fisher of the opinion that profit per se is inherently undesirable? This perspective is, in my view, limiting and self-defeating. The desire to benefit from one's labour is a natural and ethical human instinct, in my opinion. Having said that, it is an instinct that is capable of unethical outworking. Witness BP's careless destruction of the physical environment, XE's profiteering from the illegal war in Iraq, or the creation of products which serve no social use.

4) Are Res_Publica concerned about their perceived closeness to the Conservative Party? Do they see their social policy ideas as capable of adoption across the political spectrum? Is Philip Blond's Red Toryism really red? Or mostly Tory?

5) Have Morning Star and Res_Publica thought of getting together for a pint and a natter? The Star, after all, is owned by a worker's cooperative (The People's Printing Press Society), the kind of employment vehicle that has received much praise from Res_Publica in recent years.

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Related articles

• Minister backs plan for massive state sell off of assets (telegraph.co.uk)
• Calls for 'public sector sell-off' (mirror.co.uk)

Poor Services for Poor People

Reproduced under a Creative Comons licence by permission of Stuart Weir and Open Democracy. Original article.

Nick Clegg forfeited my trust when he took his party into a coalition on an agreement to accept a deficit reduction programme that was both harsh and fast, and to shred most of his party’s election policies, including the pledge on university tuition fees. He has now won my contempt. His absurd attack on the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ analysis of Osborne’s savage package as “distorted”, “a complete nonsense” and “shrill” is wrong and distorted.

Clegg says that the Treasury presentation of the cuts package gives a “richer picture” of the interaction between taxes and benefit cuts, and public service cuts and gains than the IFS’s finding that the tax and benefits package is regressive. Yet the IFS's carefully non-partisan finding is in fact kind (as Nick Pearce shows). Once the cuts in services and job losses work their way through there will indeed be a “richer picture” – of uncountable misery and distress for thousands of households, and not necessarily only the poorest.

I was already musing on the inadequacy of the coalition’s political calculus of “fairness” when the IFS report and Clegg’s response surfaced. Money and class matter. In arguing that the IFS are talking nonsense by focussing only on tax and benefits in their modelling, Clegg seems to be saying that the IFS are wrong to base their figures on how much money people actually have rather than adding in some hugely over-optimistic assumption that the “pupil premium” is going to succeed where the child trust fund failed in reducing grotesque income inequality.

The middle class has ample financial fat to cushion Osborne’s blows, the poor do not. The middle class has greater protection against losing their jobs and better terms thereafter if they do. The middle class will not be driven out of their basically secure homes in affluent areas of the country, and even into homelessness, by draconian housing benefit changes, many of the poorest will.

Study after study shows that the middle class get the most from services delivered “free” at the point of use like education and health. (Why else did the New Labour project focus on these services and neglect social housing where need enters the equation?) The middle class live in areas where the schools are better and where there are actually NHS dentists. They can go private for diagnosis if necessary, thereby “leap-frogging” NHS waiting lists and so on. The key source of the inequality in use of services is class or more specifically cash. So any serious attempt to factor in everything else would make it very clear that the poor still stand to lose most.

When I wrote on OurKingdom about the contrast between the media coverage of housing benefit caps and the child benefit cut for richer households, Stuart Wilks-Heeg wrote to say that the complaint from the middle classes about the change was important. This was the political dynamic which has kept the Scandinavian welfare state intact - almost all their benefits are universal. Everyone pays, everyone benefits - even if unequally in the UK. I hope that the Labour opposition will take this on board as they prepare their longer-term response to Osborne and will argue across the board for a universal welfare state and the security that it should bring.

Once you start to restrict entitlement to any benefit two things happen. First, government will over time lower the income threshold for people eligible to get that benefit. For those on £44,000 today, read those on £35,000 by the end of the Parliament, down to £20 by the end of the next if the Tories stay in power. The process has already begun with child benefit, now “frozen” by the coalition in spite of the Conservatives promise to retain it.

Second, as entitlement becomes more and more restricted, the benefit becomes more and more stigmatised - especially if it involves children. One Conservative minister has already said that the poor are under a duty to have fewer children. Nobody currently says that anyone has children just to get child benefit - though they already say that about access to social housing and may say it about income support. But as the change goes through, they will and their claims will become even more powerful in light of the other benefit cuts. In the USA, the political controversy over what used to be TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) grew and grew as entitlement was restricted. It ended up with Clinton imposing a two-year maximum on it, even though it was only ever 1% of American public expenditure.

Social housing has already been utterly undermined by council house sales that in effect removed better-off families and reduced the remaining, usually poorer, housing stock to catering largely for people in the more desperate need. The neglect of new building closed off the chances of many working class families of obtaining homes in their local areas. The new changes the government has announced will not only drive poor families out of affluent areas, they will also over time drive more better-off families out of social housing as rents rise. Thus what Aneurin Bevin envisaged as a universal service is now more and more a residual provision that has already become unhealthily stigmatised.

And what of the coalition’s aim to create a “big society”? I take this to mean in part that they wish to create a more cohesive society. The Danish political scientist, Gosta Esping-Andersen, has demonstrated in his book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism , that universal benefits in the Nordic welfare states were crucial in explaining cross-class solidarity in support of the welfare state. Aggressive means-testing of benefits in the USA, especially those paid to families, has had the opposite effect – each successive reform which reduces eligibility to focus resources on the “poorest” only serves to accentuate general resentment of “welfare”. Tellingly, the one aspect of the US welfare system from which high-income earners also benefit – pensions – has been virtually impossible for US politicians to take the axe to.

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Turning Public Servants into Service Partners | ResPublica

Turning Public Servants into Service Partners | ResPublica

Devaid Erdall puts forward the case - and the steps needed - for turning public service providers in the UK into worker-cooperatives or employee-owned businesses.

I agree with the tone and general direction of this proposal and believe this represents a genuine alternative to slashing public services or maintaining them at a time of unsustainable levels of public debt.

A Christian Perspective on Prisons: Interview with Stan Moody

The following article is reproduced from Truthout under an Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 Creative Commons Licence.

Stan Moody has served in the Maine State House of Representatives both as a Republican and a Democrat, pastors a small country church in Central Maine and served as a chaplain at the maximum security Maine State Prison, where he ministered to inmates in the Supermax unit. He has authored several books on the state of the evangelical church in America, including "No Turning Back: Journal of an All-American Sinner," "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship: A New Look at the Second Coming of Christ" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry."

Moody has written several recent articles focusing on prison issues, including "A Suspicious (and Lonely) Death in Maine State Prison's Lockdown Unit," "At Angola Prison, Does Jesus Christ Save?," and "Maine's New Capital Punishment Law: Solitary Confinement."

Angola 3 News: The Bible uses the word "prison" 116 times, and Psalm 69:33 reads, "... the LORD heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners." Throughout the Bible, prison and executions are identified as tools of oppression against the underclass and dissidents, including the early Apostles and Jesus himself. The Bible presents the liberation of prisoners as a social good, as illustrated by the following noteworthy passages:

• "Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners." (Psalm 146:7)
• "I the LORD have called thee in righteousness ... to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." (Isaiah 42:6-7)
• "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me ... to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." (Isaiah 61:1).

US popular culture often proudly makes reference to the Judeo-Christian traditions so prominent in US history, yet "Get tough on crime," is still the winning political slogan of the day. How did society come to view incarceration as a social good, as something necessary to keep society safe?

Stan Moody: First, we have ghettoized ourselves into white, suburban group-think that builds on self-righteousness. We are probably the most self-righteous nation on earth, which precludes us from contemplating, "There but for the grace of God, go I." Tragically, the greatest social good in America has become the acquisition of wealth through "legitimate" means, such as self promotion and corporate empire building, where greed becomes an acceptable virtue. Those who take shortcuts to the American Dream are pariahs to be banished from the kingdom of us pedestrian wannabes who, in frustration, quietly cheat on our taxes and on our spouses.

Jesus makes it clear that His followers are to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, leave vengeance and retribution up to God and visit Him in prison. "Inasmuch as you have or have not done it to the least of these my brothers, you have or have not done it to me."

A cursory examination of our nation's history will satisfy that the founders had no Christian theocracy in mind and, in fact, crafted a document that expressly ensured otherwise. Yet, people who advocate for the theocratic view are not listening. The best evidence that we are not a Christian nation is not in the actions of government but in the actions of our erstwhile evangelical state church that has embraced the Republican Party as God's instrument for redemption. The vehicle for that redemption is a moral code rather than divine grace. Getting tough on crime is just another version of an anti-Christian moral code.

A3N: Why do you suppose prisons and prisoners' living conditions are so far removed from the popular US consciousness today? How do US popular culture and the corporate media present the issue of human rights in prison?

SM: Very simply, as the nation with by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, neither the public nor the mainstream news media wants to know anything about prisons. Prisons are the depositories of our social programming and education failures. "Get them out of our sight." The ultimate driver is cost. Only as the public becomes aware of the enormous cost of the revolving door of incarceration will they begin to pay attention to what is going on inside and how we might change the dynamic. Corrections has taken full advantage of this denial by essentially saying, "You cannot possibly understand what we are up against." They have built incarceration into a growth industry that is sapping our national strength and shredding our decency.

There is a shroud of secrecy that envelops prisons. That shroud of secrecy is protected through a system of nepotism, patronage, and public ignorance and apathy. The public thinks of prisons as country clubs, while they are, in fact, crushingly boring places within high-tech boxes designed more for mass movement than rehabilitation. The human element has tragically been removed from most US prisons by a public frustrated in pursuit of its own dreams, thereby advocating for crushing the spirits of those getting what they enviously consider to be a "free ride."

Both the mainstream press and the public it entertains are too pedestrian for relevancy in this volatile world in which we live.

A3N: How can people of faith shed light on human rights abuses in prisons?

SM: The best answer is to challenge the comfort zones of your denomination, the media, your friends and neighbors and your political leaders. Write, speak and live out your faith on the front lines of activism for human dignity, especially when it disturbs your comfort zone. Only through patient suffering can you convince others of the legitimacy of your beliefs.

Belief in the power of God to move mountains by touching one life will drive people of faith toward little victories, knowing they are cumulative. While Christian volunteers in prisons are legion, they scatter to the four winds when the subject of human rights is raised. As a Chaplain at Maine State Prison, I sometimes was criticized by management for not sticking to "Chaplain things," meaning administrative and counseling duties. There was hardly a single volunteer who joined with me once I stood up for Sheldon Weinstein, who died of a ruptured spleen in segregation on April 24, 2009, a couple of hours after I requested a roll of toilet paper for him. He had been using his pillow case; he had no pillow anyway.

I speak as a Christian, believing that the willingness to sacrifice one's own comforts in defense of the human rights of those in exile among us is the best barometer of the legitimacy of faith. "Touching a life" rarely brings press coverage, but it may well reap huge rewards in the grand scheme to which people of faith must demonstrate devotion.

We must take great care, however, not to be caught up in embellished stories. If we recognize our own need for redemption, we will see the whole person rather than his or her crime.

A3N: The Bible also makes several references to the persecution of the early Christians through physical torture and forced labor (II Corinthians 11:23), and solitary confinement (Acts 28:16). Quakers and other faith-based prison reformers developed Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, self-avowedly "one of the most expensive and most copied buildings in the young United States ... as part of a controversial movement to change the behavior of inmates through 'confinement in solitude with labor'." This model was soon replicated nationwide.

Today, do you think that the practices of forced prison labor (recognized as legal slavery by the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution) and solitary confinement have any beneficial effects on the spiritual growth of people in prison? How has your outlook on this question been influenced by what you witnessed first-hand, working as a chaplain at Maine's maximum security state prison?

SM: Dehumanization is the most debilitating punishment that can be imposed on another human being. Prisoners are no exception. I can imagine a situation where prisoners are used for the crudest labor but are valued as human beings - treated fairly and consistently. On the other hand, I can imagine another situation where you have numbers of entrepreneurs in a prison who are making very good money but are working under conditions of arbitrary patronage and favoritism. Slavery does not always have to do with how much money you make. It may be possible to learn something of the value of human life even in the harshest of conditions.

I found at Maine State Prison that the biggest impediment to spiritual growth was idleness and lack of respect in work, in life and in interrelationships. Earn the right to clean the toilets, if you will, or to pick cotton, or to work in the kitchen, but know that you are respected for earning that right and will be respected for the kind of job you do and not because you are somebody's "kid." Know that you are valued as a human being and that the administration is always looking for a spark of hope to kindle.

I am reading "In The Place of Justice" by Wilbert Rideau. It is interesting that the cotton picking "slavery" at Angola seems to get far less space than the sexual slavery that stays beneath the radar of the administration and destroys human dignity.

A3N: The Maine State Legislature recently passed a bill that focused on the use of solitary confinement in Maine's prisons. Initially, the bill sought to limit the use of solitary confinement, but The Free Press has reported that it was "seriously amended" to only call for more scrutiny of how solitary confinement is used. What do you think will be the impact of the bill?

SM: As a former Maine State Legislator, I was very involved with this bill and was the only former prison staff member to give testimony. The Committee ignored our plea for transparency and accountability and, instead, continued its blind, loyal support of the Department of Corrections, the very institution it has been entrusted to oversee.

It is incorrect to view this bill as having been "seriously amended." The bill was killed with kindness by turning it into a resolve for the Department to study itself. A resolve is what a legislative committee does to kill a bill when it fears public uprising if it votes "ought not to pass." Legislative resolves are akin to patents with claims so narrow that you would not infringe on them if you copied the design but changed the color. They are not worth the paper they are written on.

Sadly for this case, the resolve showed a failure of courage on the part of committee members on both sides of the aisle. The House and Senate chairs failed their constituents and the State of Maine.

The good news is that with the upcoming legislative session to begin in January, 2011, and with the election of a new Governor, there will be a bevy of new prison bills to debate. I have personally spoken to 6 gubernatorial candidates about the conditions at the Department of Corrections and the Maine prison system and expect that the next Governor will be far better informed than previously. Further good news is that the prison administration immediately began to implement some of the advances contained in the bill. This, after having expended their energies defending their previous policies, indicates that they are aware of the battle ahead.

Prisoners who "were not supposed to be there" were put back into population. Solitary confinement residents can now earn privileges such as up to 4 hours daily outside their cells, normal prison garb instead of orange jump suits, TV's and radios, and contact visits. Sadly, there has not yet been a disposition with regard to those mentally ill prisoners held in solitary.

A3N: From the perspective of someone who has worked inside a prison as well as in the Maine State House of Representatives, why do you think that a stronger version of the bill was unable to be passed? Why did government officials and prison authorities oppose it?

SM: Corrections administrators in Maine have successfully sold the public on the falsehood that nobody understands what they are up against. From the Commissioner on down, with occasional exceptions, you have people who have come up through the guard system rather than professionals trained to be innovative in solving the larger problem of the waste of human life. The Governor and legislative committee members, convinced that they did not understand people convicted of crimes, consistently bowed to the wisdom of the "old boy network."

I recently intervened in a law suit by a former guard against the State of Maine for the purpose of unsealing a deposition that offers a damning picture of the inside politics of Maine State Prison. I was successful in doing so and have studied it in its entirety. The closest I can come to describing it is that it ought to be subject to a RICO (federal racketeering) investigation. Over the next week or so, I expect to issue a public report. It is a fear-based culture that adheres to secrecy at the expense of both staff and prisoners. While there is very little skill in managing people, what distinguishes prison management the most and is most endearing to politicians is the ability to circle the wagons to put out fires.

The legislative committee of oversight has become an echo chamber for the Department of Corrections. It exhibits the height of denial and laziness to fail to listen to professionals who have put their personal reputations on the line in the pursuit of truth. Why would they listen to such people when it is their pattern of behavior to sacrifice their own integrity in the pursuit of political gain?

We are not done ... This bill was the best thing to come along for prison reform in the history of the State for it showed the Department as the tired old system it is - a 19th Century culture housed in a 21st Century box. We will prevail, God willing, and we will see a day when our Corrections house is cleaned from top to bottom.

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

SM: The Eastern State Penitentiary was torn down, I believe, in 1973 ... Most of the prisons in the US today, however, retain the Eastern State, 19th Century Quaker culture that punishment builds character. It has survived through a system of patronage and nepotism - getting rid of good staff people in favor of the corrupt. The high tech boxes that we today call prisons are designed to manage mass movement rather than to build community and self respect, with punishment being arbitrary, inconsistent and capricious in most cases, extended out of sheer boredom.

Prison staff believes and promotes the belief that they have dangerous jobs ... I ran some statistics on jobs in the US ... Prison guards hardly surface ... At the top are commercial fishing and logging industries, both prominent in Maine but rarely heard to complain about danger ... It might interest the readers to know that a prison guard has a lower death rate than do licensed drivers - lower than 21 per 100,000 population.

Studies prove that re-entry programs begun in the inside and carried over to the outside will cut recidivism rates by as much as 75%. Why, then, are we not implementing those programs? I believe it is because Corrections is protecting itself as a growth industry. It is only when the public begins to realize it is being fleeced, will it demand change. Meanwhile, we the people continue to elect arrogant obstructionists to public office in protection of the status quo.

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Amid Much Gentle Nodding of Heads, Middle England Gets Back to Work and Prepares for the World Cup

Reports of the potential collapse of western civilisation following the election of a hung Parliament have been greatly exaggerated.

There seems to be a noticeable tone of tacit acceptance in the air surrounding the current political settlement - albeit tempered with huge increases in reported applications for membership of the Labour Party following Gordon Brown's dignified resignation speech.

The constructive tone that the leaders of both the winning parties have sought to convey has no doubt helped to create this mood of acceptance. Though the events of the last few days have been unprecedented, they have not been tumultuous.

Indeed. it appears that some from across the political spectrum have things to cheer about in the government's policy package. Immigration caps, scrapping ID cards and ring fenced NHS spending combine with the most radical constitutional and electoral reforms for a century.

All very orderly. All very British.

Roll on South Africa......

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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.

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Responding to Michael Schluter on the Relational Economy

I'm always interested in listening to thoughtful Christians who are prepared to reflect deeply about social policy issues from a Biblical perspective, and Michael Schluter of the Jubilee Centre and the Relationships Foundation must be regarded as one of the foremost such thinkers in the UK at the present time.

His recent essay on the Relational Economy drew me in with its working title of Beyond Capitalism, excited me with his critique of the current economic model and his emphasis on putting human relationships at the heart of social and economic policy, and then raised some concerns in me about the practical outworking of some aspects of his social welfare proposals.

Schluter's emphasis on putting relationships at the heart of social policy is, I think, an excellent perspective and one that is capable of receiving widespread support both within and outside Christian circles.

More specifically, Schluter is a small-government localist - certainly as far as economics and social security provision is concerned - and explicitly states in the essay that he sees the natural allies of such a worldview being, "those of other religious faiths with relational priorities, those in regional and local government ..., those in the environment lobby ...., and those among the wider public who understand the importance of family and other relational ties. These disparate groups could together form a Relational Movement to persuade political parties to adopt part or all of the Relational agenda."

His critique of the problem of debt - personal and national - is fascinating, and his assertion of the role of the extended family is, in many ways, truly radical. Elements of Schluter-ism also resonate with Distributism, which asserts the importance of small, family-owned businesses against the interests of multi-national firms, and about which I have previously written here.

Some quotes from Schluter to whet your appetite for the full article:

"The prize of localism in welfare is not primarily saving scarce resources; it is better relational support and care for vulnerable people. It is also the reactivation of families and communities, and their engagement in economic, judicial and political decisions, which reinforce relational bonds and incentivise political engagement."

"If Capitalism is not radically reformed, what is the alternative? Family and community solidarity will become increasingly dysfunctional, leading to high levels of unemployment, unsustainable demands on schools, hospitals and social services, and an increasingly angry, disillusioned and frustrated electorate. The door will be open for authoritarian politicians of the Left or Right, with an agenda of savage repression to maintain social order."

There's also an interesting interview with Schluter in Christian Today here.

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Can Gordon Build a Society of All the Talents?

"Social Mobility for All" was a central theme in the Prime Minister's keynote speech at the Fabian Society New Year Conference on Saturday, held at Imperial College London.

"I believe in an aspirational Britain. Opportunity and reward cannot be hoarded at the top, and it is not enough just to protect people at the bottom. I want to see the talents and potential of all the British people fulfilled: social mobility for the majority.....

"So let me be explicit today; social mobility will be our theme for the coming election and the coming parliamentary term. Social mobility will be our focus not instead of social justice, but because social mobility is modern social justice."

The Prime Minister's vision of what he called an "aspirational society" rests, if I have understood the speech correctly, on three principle actions:

1) a government-backed job creation strategy

2) continued investment in education and training

3) maintaining well-funded public services


The full text of the speech can be found here.


Although I share many of the PM's aspirations for a society where there is genuine social mobility, I am doubtful that merely "inputting" in the ways outlined above will achieve this outcome. This is because such actions leave many of the essential structures that hinder social mobility in place.

Specifically

1. the dominance of global firms - run by elite professionals who wield significant economic and (indirectly) political power - whose size enables them to dominate markets rather than compete within them (except with other global firms).

2. the employer-employee relationship as the primary model of paid work - with the attendant insecurity this brings as workers' wages are seen as an expense to be cut in times of downturn.



As a self-employed small business owner, I have been increasingly looking in the last year or so into the distributist theory of economics. My own preliminary thoughts on distributism are here.

Simply put, distributism envisages a society in which the vast majority of members own private , productive property. Ideally, in the distributist world, as many as possible would pursue individual owner-operated trades which intimately link production with ownership.

In his speech, Mr Brown asserts the need for markets to exist within a moral framework. Jay Griffths argues that part of what defines the morality of an organisation is its size.

"We speak of economies of scale, and I would suggest that there are also moralities of scale."

In my opinion, inputting at the bottom will not create genuine social mobility unless these is forced restraint and limitation at the top. The rules that govern the economy we have - which allow businesses the possibility of unrestrained growth and periodic collapse - are man made. Other economic rules, which not only broaden opportunity but also restrain greed, are necessary if the Prime Minister's aspirational society is to become a reality.

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More on Police and Photographers

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The Green Party on Citizens Income

There are lots of things I like about the Green Party.

Their current proposal to replace the current social security system with a non-means-tested universal Citizen's Income (CI) is, however, not one of them.

Time permitting, I'll try and blog in greater detail about what I see as the problems with the proposal.

Doing so does not mean, incidentally, that I am a fan of the current social security system, which I think has many significant deficiencies.

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A Sick Proposal on the Health Service

The Social Market Foundation, a British political think tank, is proposing that a £20 charge should be payable for members of the public to see an NHS doctor. The proposal, it is claimed, is a response to the "financial crisis" facing the NHS in the coming years.

The proposal, which is of course not government policy at present, illustrates the huge gap that exists in Britain between those who make such proposals and those who would suffer their consequences should they be implemented.

Report author David Furness (pictured) is clearly immune from the pressure that such an outrageous move would have on low and middle income families. The report's recommendation that the charge should not be levied on "anyone receiving tax credits" is a typical piece of nonsense driven by people whose life experience of poverty appears to be acquired from studying statistics and calculating averages rather than from struggling to make a living in the world of low-paid work.

The report's statement that "A charge of £20 for GP appointments should be introduced to encourage healthier, wealthier people to avoid using the NHS except when absolutely necessary, with anyone receiving tax credits totally exempt" represents an incredibly naive perspective - dividing British society up as it does into the wealthy and those on tax credits.

As noted on Left Luggage in May, many poor parents register as self-employed rather than accepting what is described as "poverty pay" in clerical or manual jobs and, in doing so, make themselves illegible for tax credits or other forms of social security. Such low income families would, of course, still be required to pay the proposed £20 charge to see a GP.

Under the report's proposal, furthermore, middle-income families with children would find themselves hundreds of pounds out of pocket every year just for making an appointment with their GP, despite assurances that such charges would be capped at "around £100 per year" per patient. This is before the cost of any prescriptions and other charges and before the hidden cost of illness such as work time lost, travel costs to hospital or the "choice" of going private for major surgery.

When faced with the option of making such payments or risking their children's health, parents will do whatever they feel they need to in order to get the service they are being taxed to provide and will, if they cannot afford the £20 levy, will turn up at A & E centres in large numbers demanding to be seen by a doctor. Hardly an efficient use of public money.

Perhaps we should not be too surprised by the report's lack of rootedness in the real world. The Social Market Foundation is chaired by Lord (David) Lipsey whose statement in the House of Lords in 2001 on the crisis of capitalism seems rather apt under the circumstances:

"However, that does not mean that there will not be a crisis of capitalism. A different kind of crisis can come over an economic system: it is not so much an economic crisis as a moral crisis. It can occur when a system becomes so far divorced from the moral sense of the people who make it work as to become inoperable."
Hansard Feb 2001

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Socialism in America?

The current economic downturn is causing a measure of debate within industrialised countries on the fundamental nature of the economic system we all live in.

Against this backdrop, a recent poll by Ramussen Reports claims that 33% of Americans under the age of 30 are in favour of socialism as an economic system. The poll, interestingly, did not define socialism (or capitalism.)

At the same time, in a move reminiscent of the McCarthy era, Congressman Spencer Bachusa claims to posess a secret list of 17 House members who are socialists. The fact that a politicain could imagine that such a claim would cause shock indicates how entrenched anti-socialist views are in some sections of the American body politic. It may also indicate confusion over definitions of terms: is the Congressman attacking the European model of social democracy or is he confusing this with reviolutionary Marxism?

Meanwhile, in another take on the issue of socialism in America, there is an interesting review here by Seth Sandronsky on Michael Yates book "Why Unions Matter."

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Portugal: a Model for National Drug Policy?

Facts can be inconvenient things.

Take the recent report on the effects of drug decriminalisation in Portugal by Glenn Greenwald of the Cato Institute, for instance.

The reality is, as explained in the report, that the policy line taken by Portugal in 2001 - to totally decriminalise all drugs - has neither resulted in Lisbon becoming a centre for drug tourism nor in rises in drug use.

The report, in fact, shows that in many significant ways, drug use has decreased, especially in the socially significant 13-18 year-old age groups.

Before getting too excited (or angry) about this, it is worth clarifying what actually took place in Portuguese law in 2001:

• The possession and personal use of drugs remained illegal but was decriminalised. This means that the action was treated as an administrative issue and had no criminal implications or penalties attached to it
  
• The emphasis of social policy shifted from a punitive approach to one of public health , with much greater emphasis placed on users seeking access to treatment programmes, without the fear of arrest or the stigma of receiving a criminal record
  
• this approach is different from that of "de-penalisation" in which the act of using or possessing drugs remains criminal but is rarely punished in practice (an approach taken in part by several EU states especially around cannabis use)
• drug trafficking (defined in Portugeuse law as "possession of more than the average dose for ten days of use") remains a criminal offence in Portugal, punishable by custodial sentences.

The report emphasises that the change in the law in 2001 was aimed strongly at reducing drug use nationally. The evidence after eight years is that the policy is having an effect. The report makes compelling reading and suggests a possible way forward in the issue of public policy on drug misuse.

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