The only way out is to win a quiz show

Aravind Adiga’s Booker winner White Tiger and Danny Boyle’s Golden-Globe-harvesting film Slumdog Millionaire (based on Indian Diplomat Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A) illustrate a “Shining India” that has long shown up in the statistics of those critical of the Globo-glorifiers. It bears repeating (Thus Passim) that 70-80% of India’s population cannot afford to feed themselves to international minimums, that is 2400 calories of cheap stodge per day, assuming they spend on nothing else.

Yet in the UK we continue to talk about “the poor” as if they live on council estates, and as if all they need is the chance to show how bright they are in order to climb up into our middle class paradise. Meritocracy may imply that the less intelligent ones should stay where they are, but what if they were dulled by malnutrition? The world is not made up of a series of Westminster villages, but being good nationalists, the policy makers and pundits seem reluctant to acknowledge this.

The implication of this is that national governments tend to live in a room full of mirrors, where all that they see is themselves, especially in rich OECD countries. Almost everyone uses the poor to justify their policies and positions in these compassionate days of media-conveyed suffering, yet our policy and political debates do not at all reflect their circumstances. This is a flaw of the Left as well as the Right. The legacy of Marx and the Union movement is that we see emancipation of the poor in terms of workplace rights, yet only around 8% of people in India have formal employment contracts, so this is mostly irrelevant and this is probably the case in most poor countries.

If people cannot feed themselves in the cash economy, as the numbers show, then they have to be feeding themselves in the non-cash economy. How can this be so? Where does food come from if not from shops? That’s because the poor are in the environment. Either an urban one, scavenging the remains and polishing the shoes of those visible to us, or a rural one, growing or gathering food under unpredictable conditions. But since policymaking is largely about economics, and economics largely about the cash economy, and the cash economy about people with purchasing power, and not the environment or the poor, these humans (of whom there are rather a lot) remain largely invisible. But what is the problem with them, and their environment, remaining invisible to policy makers, particularly in the rich world?

It gives us a totally misleading sense of the future. Economists, particularly historically oriented ones, write as if it is the swing of a pendulum that determines economic history.  Presumably this means that after this latest desperate burst of neo-Keynesianism we will turn back to more liberal and less risk-averse approaches once times are good again. But that invisible thing, the environment, is changing, and it will impact on all of us, but mainly on those other invisible things, the poor, so that our whole perception of risk, and thus how to organise ourselves, will have to change. We are not going back to a nice cosey stable world with seemingly unlimited natural resources, and we are not replaying the Industrial Revolution in countries like India, even if our policy makers have been Oxbridge-raised on a diet of social thinkers from the steam-engine age. We can talk about public spending as a way of stabilising things until we are blue in the face, but how do we propose to get money to those really at risk under our undoubtedly changing circumstances?

Via NGOs? Well they are not coping well with spending the fraction of the 0.7% of GDP put to aid budgets efficiently. Via business? Well their track record of behaving well in the absence of strong regulation is not so good. Via governments in poor countries? To quote Aravind Adiga’s lead character in White Tiger, “what a fucking joke.” Survival of the fittest in a world where pro-poor leaders in the poor world, particularly those that interfere with rich world access to natural resources tended to “dissappear” has left a legacy of governance that does not exactly channel funds to the needy as a first priority.

We can perhaps hope that our rich world “Social Mobility” thesis works in poor countries, and the poor can suddenly help themselves. Sadly the post-industrial boom in India seems not to be creating lots of jobs, so the whole 1950′s rich world idea of mechanising agriculture and shunting people into the cities is creating shanti towns rather than a lovely unionised industrial base. Also, it takes rather a lot of planets, at current levels of inequality, to lift the poor out this way.

So we have a big problem that our current policy debates are simply not up to addressing. We don’t know how to think about the dependency of the poor on the environment, or how to support them in the face of environmental change or indeed how, in short, to stabilise the world through the coming times of trouble (Thus Passim). There is the  Keynsian idea of a “Green New Deal”, but this is not a cyclical issue we are facing, actually the problems are likely to grow gradually but inexorably over time, so a short-term spending strategy won’t do it (though long-term rural employment guarantees may help a bit, even if dogged by corruption).  Maybe we in the rich world should look to the artists for answers, because right now, it looks like our wonks are all out of ideas.

Thus predicts that reluctantly, the shrinking viole(n)t Campbell will enter the fray and snuggle up next to Mandy in the Lords, with the sincerity of a Spice Girl pushed on stage for a reunion gig. It is also odds-on that more propaganda masquerading as comment such as the longwinded, wonky, badly-argued cant which miraculously appeared recently in my former magazine, Prospect (however did that happen?) will trumpet themselves to general apathy. 

Meanwhile, under its relatively new director, wannabe kingmaker Richard Reeves (another ex-hack) of formerly leftish think tank, Demos, has taken another turn to the muddy centre and has invited ‘University’ of Cumbria academic, god botherer and ‘Red Tory’ cheerleader Phillip (sic) Blond to orchestrate a programme of ‘debate’ into  ’Progressive Conservatism.’ (The first question I’d ask is whether the term is an oxymoron or simply moronic). Keynote speeches will be delivered on January 22 by David Cameron, crossbencher Frank Field, Oliver Letwin and the ubiquitous Will Hutton of the Work Foundation (another oxymoron?) for which Richard Reeve once ‘worked’. There is allegedly a lot of money around in the think tank world, ahead of the election, which we are told isn’t happening (it is), despite all this jockeying for the centre ground. I’ll gladly head up a study group to ask: why? Nobody outside Islington and Notting Hill cares what these drooling halfwit spinmonkeys think, or if they think at all. 

John J Kelly

no malingering in back-to-work Britain

In yet another demonstration of the sort of lateral thinking that has made Gordon Brown not only saviour of the banks but saviour of the world, Work and Pensions Minister James Purnell announced a government pledge to force long term sickness benefits claimants and some single mothers back to work. The Welfare Reform White Paper has also been welcomed by the Conservative Opposition, largely because it steals their thunder by arguing that unearned benefits undermine society and destroy the work ethic.

a spot of hard work never hurt anybody

The sand in the vaseline of this get-in-your-invalid-car-and-find-work initiative is that the UK has just registered the highest unemployment figures for 11 years. For example, Plaid Cymru (Wales) MP Hywel Davies observed that there were 320,000 unemployed people in his constituency but only 20,000 jobs advertised. Scottish MPs are also skeptical, as well they might be. Nobody (dares) to gainsay ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ in our Through the Looking Glass mother of Parliaments, but it would help if the UK had any Arbeit on offer to its able-bodied citizens, never mind the vulnerable, disadvantaged or unskilled. Genuine skivers will always find a way to avoid job opportunities and cheat benefits, but they are a tiny minority. 

But enough of this cup-half-empty rhetoric. Despite the fact that my White Paper to reskill unemployed lap dancers as school zebra crossing attendants and bankers as traffic calming bumps in the road met with studied silence from the government (Thus passim), our policy wonkers have been hard at work solving this latest conundrum. It’s so simple it hurts:

Latest UK Government health advisor

Send the sick and the lame on a ‘Crusade to Health’ to Lourdes. Allow those that are cured back into the country and put them to work immediately building a Brit Art installation out of their crutches, eye patches and walking sticks. Those that stubbornly refuse to be cured should be branded a threat to national security or similar by no-nonsense Northerner, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas who can knock together a failsafe points-based entry system at least as good as the one which kept out the million or so illegal immigrants we apparently boast. And there’s more. Since RyanAir are the main carriers to Lourdes, there is a fair chance that they won’t be they won’t be able to run fast enough to catch the plane back in any case so they’ll have to live in a French concentration camp – Calais has a good one, I hear. 

Behold the miracle: the lame leap from their Beemers and into the pub each match day

In the event that nobody will lend the UK Government enough cash to buy the RyanAir tickets, even during one of their miraculous ‘million seats for £1.00′ bonanzas, there is another solution. I have noticed that whenever my local team, Arsenal, play at home, miraculous numbers of people with disabled badges leap from their cars and rush to the ground, more agile and fleet of foot, in many cases, than the footballers themselves. If the government wants revenge and tabloid headlines, my advice is to start by investigating those displaying disabled badges in 4×4 jeeps, Beemers and pimpmobiles on Match Day restricted parking zones. There is more than a fair chance that they are also benefit cheats, especially if they can afford the gouging season ticket prices charged by our foreign-owned Mercenary Utd. soccer clubs.

Or we could move towards creating real jobs which people, disabled or otherwise, will enjoy doing. If that fails, make a Novena to St. Jude, patron of Lost Causes.

Bottoms up

Much recent research has explored the causes of youth binge drinking. Work at Sheffield University has suggested that “cheap alcohol is the single biggest driver of alcohol harms”, so shortly the government will unveil plans to ban the sale of cheap alcohol and thus end the Binge Drinking Culture. I doubt this will work.

The single biggest cause of ‘alcohol harm’, ‘binge drinking’ or whatever other label we like to place on this not-so-rare phenomenon is the fact that people – teenagers in particular – like to get sloshed of an evening.

We can fiddle the pricing system, run educative campaigns about the ill effects of alcohol use, use punitive interventions such as on the spot fines and stop supermarket discounts (as the policing and crime bill will do). We could even ban selling alcohol to under 21s, as Boris Johnson is reportedly in favour of. But I guarantee that this will not work (cf North America who shares our statistics on underage drinking for the compelling evidence as to why the latter will not).

Young people like getting drunk and will simply switch product of choice if they can no longer afford their White Lightning or 20/20: they will club together and buy a bottle of vodka. They think the law is boring and that the police are as cool as parents and as important to avoid when under the influence. Many of them take illegal substances such as Cannabis about as often as they drink a beer (Cannabis is both illegal and much more expensive than booze but it doesn’t put them off). We are barking up the wrong tree.

Pretty middle class girls supping sensibly

So what to do? First, I would suggest we stop printing weekly pictures of mini-skirted young girls on a debauched night out as if this was worth reading about or representative of most modern youth. I believe the media is normalising the idea of binge drinking and making those young people who aren’t drinking copiously feel like they are missing out or are failing to live up to social expectations. For this I reference excellent work in US universities by Cass Sunstein, which shows that when new students are told that their campus has a culture of binge drinking, they drink much more than peers who are told that alcohol is considered uncool. I have barely read a newspaper or watched TV in the last two years without encountering some reference to the extent of the British binge drinking culture: it certainly sounds like all the cool kids are doing it, even though the statistics suggest that the vast majority of young people are not (yet).

Second, the best research from the behavioural sciences suggests that young people are more likely to drink heavily when parents or other familiar adults or role models do. So let’s take some responsibility here and stop blaming young people for internalising behavioural norms set by us. It is well known that the UK has an adult binge drinking culture that is the shame of Europe and I never drank so much in my life as when I was working in Parliament in my early 20s and hanging out with purple-nosed MPs.

Third, forget academic research, policy analysts and psychologists; successful advertising agencies understand youth culture like no other organisation and have become increasingly adept at marketing a host of useless products, clothes and lifestyles to impressionable teenagers and children. The government should appoint a crack team (hopefully not literally, JK) of the most successful advertising executives currently moulding the youth market and task them with devising a strategy to sell sobriety and clean fun to the younger generation.

Fourth, rather than paying out for yet more ‘qualitative research’ with young binge drinkers to work out why they do it, I would like the ongoing government review of this issue currently being led from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to fund some research with young people who – despite the unremitting peer pressure, public expectation and easy availability of booze – do not binge drink, and find out why. I believe it would be very informative.

Wilkins Micawber, new Labour economics guru

Before spreadsheets enabled geeks to assume they could manipulate the economic weather, we knew that if we spent too much, we’d run out of money. If we ran out of things to sell or do in return for more money, we’d be in trouble. If we borrowed money at unrealistic interest rates, we’d be in even more trouble. If we borrowed money with no intention of paying it back, we’d be beggars and pariahs.

If we intend to borrow money for a ‘fiscal stimulus package’ when most of the developed economies are scrabbling to do the same, we will need to demonstrate that we’re a better bet than the other guys, offer a higher yield to the lenders or form an international syndicate – effectively what Brown is trying to do. Going it alone is risky. According to the IMF, British external debt is hovering around £UK 6 trillion. Net assets are around £350 billion. Gross domestic product (GDP) is around £357 billion and falling.

Gordon Brown is hassling the part-nationalised banks, tied to a 12% interest rate, to repay their government bailout loans, to start lending to businesses without further ado before it is clear where the backstop cash is coming from. They are ignoring him: losers don’t lend to other losers. Meanwhile, who does he strong arm to lend to UK Plc? The Americans have £13 trillion debt and troubles of their own. They might need to turn a tad protectionist. We’ve been routinely horrid to Europe over the past eight years, even though we’ve been net EU contributors. Unsurprisingly, the majority of our trade is with the Eurozone.

Back to the syndicate idea. The European Central Bank is sort of a pompous mutual savings and loan organisation. The once-stern criteria for entry into the Euro – sound fiscal policy and limits on public spending as a proportion of GDP – have probably been breached by the majority of its members of late. Regardless, as a result of Eurozone membership, Greek bonds are likely to be more attractive than those offered by the UK and even the US. (Thank you, Stilpon Nestor, late of OECD, for this insight. We had lunch today. Thank goodness we didn’t drink or this would be even more mazy).

This might be a good time to start thinking about how to get back into the Euro club. It may require a degree of grovelling and scraping. Labour still has an outstanding election pledge to give the electorate a referendum vote on the Constitution (‘Treaty’) but the Irish have given us all a breather. Europe should be a big ticket item on the forthcoming election agenda. The Tories have a recent history of Europhobia, which is ironic, since Ted Heath took us into Europe and the Iron Lady signed the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The UK took part in European Monetary Union from 1990 until recession and George Soros forced an undignified exit in 1992. Incidentally, Britain was the fifth, not the first currency to be forced out. It is a mistake to compare EMU, an exchange rate mechanism, with a merged currency such as the Euro and it was an accident waiting to happen to peg our exchange rate, at an all-time high, to a falling Deutschemark. But no such problems now. Sterling is so low we could enter with ease. They might even welcome us back, prodigal style. We are a big, if obese, economy with Europe’s best financial markets.

The alternative is to carry on pretending we have a special relationship with the US. The problem with this approach is that it implies continued reliance on a busted economy and a falling dollar. Or we can go cap in hand to the IMF. Remember 1979?

We will need to have some sort of ‘fiscal stimulus’ unless we want to do a Hoover (the president, not the failed vacuum cleaner company, although there are similarities) but to do that we need allies, since we’re basically skint. There is an obvious mutuality with our European neighbours, and the Euro makes for a better spread bet than a single national currency. Labour and Tory will need to be explicit about their respective positions. Both have been suspiciously tight-lipped. Make sure you ask them what they think about Europe when and if you are called upon to vote, which I think will be next November, by crisis more than design.

Feel free to tell me if some or all of this is wrong. I’m not proud. I’m not an economist, but I’m Irish and was educated by Jesuits. It’s what I’d do.

One concept that has been leaving me speechless recently is how many people will die due to resource shortages if we keep on with this free-market stuff. How do you put this kind of thing into a word or phrase? Well, I entered “genocide by economic means” into my trusty dictionary and the first result was: Supply Side Economics. Who would have thought it? A dictionary with a sense of humour.

I also have to admit to being a wonk (though hopefully not a wonker). But this issue is so huge, it really bears explaining, and also a word of its own. Jared Diamond pointed out that there are a few things that often characterise civilisations on the brink of Collapse. Generally there is a party going on at the top, because this is the point on the exponential curve of resource usage where consumption is maxing out. But at the same time, as basic resource shortages bite, people at the bottom are starting to feel the pain, as basic neccessities start to run short. The problem that Diamond identifies, the one that is a killer risk for civilisations, is that those at the top do not pay attention to the problems of those at the bottom, because they are having such a great time. They  are too consumed by hubris to address the emerging problems. It all sounds eerily close to home doesn’t it?

But here comes the really deadly bit. What happens to the price of a resource in shortage?  Economics 101 says it tends to go up.  What does trying to implement a global free market do? It tries to make prices the same for everyone everywhere, free from distortions. What does this do to people with little purchasing power (the poor) as basic resources run short? It kills them, efficiently.

Now this could be the most efficient killing machine ever invented by human kind, so surely it deserves a name? Genocide is not quite it, because, as people endlessly argue, it implies a deliberate intention to mass murder, and this particular form of wipe-out seems unplanned. We could go from the idea of manslaughter, which is applied to such unplanned or accidental killings by negligence, and generalise it out: mass humanslaughter perhaps? However it is, at least to begin with, a selective kind of killing, so how about mass poorslaughter?

None of these phrases really trip off the tongue, so perhaps we should use the words of Jean Zeigler, the UN special rapporteur for the Right to Food, who described biofuels, which turn land over from food to energy production, as an “Agricultural Crime Against Humanity.” Although I think there is an even snappier way of summing all of this up. Stupid.

Miliband quoted Indian Economist Amartya Sen when explaining New Labour’s ideas on equality. I was surprised, not because it was untrue: – I had done the paper chase already through Antony Giddens via Stephen Lukes – but because he was happy to admit that we had outsourced our thinking about progress to the intellectual powerhouses of the subcontinent. In this slightly scary vision of progress we are all seen as “Human Resources.” The Human Development Report, published by the UNDP, which bases its numbers on Sen’s work, largely describes us in those terms. We are told that humans should be happy to be seen as a form of national wealth, because this is better than seeing progress as only being about money. Indian politicians, with the 1.13 billion people they serve, welcome this message, since it answers the question of what to do with all the poor people. Indeed, the politicians have so much taken this to heart that the Department of Education is now a sub-section of the Ministry of Human Resources.

But a tricky detail in the concept of progress throws this rosy vision of ‘useful’ human beings into question. If you are making progress, presumably it is towards a purpose. Some, such as Francis Fukuyama, see this as a quaint notion. He argued in The End of History 2003  that we were no longer making progress because we had already arrived. Hegel had called time early. 19th Century Prussia wasn’t Shangri-la. USA Neoconcon free market capitalism was the pinnacle of history. Then came the credit crunch. Fukuyama is not so sure any more.

This brings us back to the question “what should we be so useful for?.” In his introduction to the Happy Planet Index, Andrew Simms observes that Economics tells us an awful lot about the transactions in between, but almost nothing about the ultimate ends and means of development. The questions “where does wealth come from?” and “what should we do with it?” are hardly touched upon. Since the environment is the ultimate means for development, we should be aiming to use it efficiently to sustain as many long, happy lives as is humanly possible. All blindingly obvious. So how – and why – did we all lose our sense of purpose?