Never Had It So Good? The Accidental Truths of Lord David Young

The Tories' paper-thin mask of faux social concern slipped this week when Lord David Young of Graffham, Coalition Government adviser on health and safety at work law, was quoted pontificating over a good lunch on how the "so-called" recession was nothing really. The former right-hand man of Margaret Thatcher held forth on how the half million jobs set to be lost in the public sector were "within the margin of error" and how home owners "have never had it so good." There was a howl of outrage from a wide spectrum of the public and media and, in spite of an apology from Young, Prime Minister Cameron dismissed him within hours. He described the peer's words as "offensive and inaccurate". 

Offensive they were without question, but how inaccurate or not were they?

The way we were: Young and Thatcher, 1980s

No lost jobs can be dismissed as marginal errors - these are people's livelihoods, but his Lordship happily supported the disposal of several million jobs under the Thatcher Government of 1979 to 1990, when his roles included chair of the Manpower Services Commission and Employment Secretary. So job losses of any number may indeed be of marginal importance to him as he views the world from the lofty heights of the Lords, atop his fortune made in the construction industry.

Likewise, from the perspective of the people who actually matter to the Conservative Government, there is some truth in his words about mortgages. Interest rates have indeed been at a historic low for some time now, making mortgages and loans for those who have them cheaper than they have been for several decades. In particular, if you are one of the significant numbers who invested in property and especially in "buy-to-let" schemes over the last decade, the chances are you will indeed be quids in.

Buy-to-let schemes began in earnest under the Major government, significantly fuelling the boom in property speculation. In spite of widening the gap in wealth between the haves and have nots, making buying property well beyond the reach of many younger people, this phenomenon expanded greatly under New Labour. Now, more and more people face a serious struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Unable to buy, they are facing higher and higher rents - including the innovation in some areas of making sealed bids on their rents to prospective landlords. With housing benefit and social housing tenure reforms in prospect and likely to make tenancies ever harder to maintain, the rented sector is becoming more and more profitable for predatory landlords - or residential entrepreneurs, as Tories would call them.

So if Lord Young is guilty of anything, it is certainly not of being a liar: for the people he meets and spends his time with, for the people the Tories exist to serve, they indeed have never had it so good.

But what this episode does brightly illuminate is the real strategy behind the Government's actions. Young referred to the recession as "so-called", contrasting our current economic circumstances pretty favourably to past recessions. This betrays the Big Lie at the heart of the Con Dem Coalition - that massive, urgent cuts in public spending are necessary to avoid imminent national bankruptcy.

In sharp contrast to this, Young has confirmed what many critics have  suspected for months - that the hype around the deficit is just that; and that the cuts to welfare, to health and education and a range of other services are a political choice, not an economic necessity. And it is a choice which will indeed ensure that a significant, better-off slice of the populace does have it good, quite contentedly at the cost of the rest. This is a tactic they used successfully throughout the 1980s and which our archaic voting system allows to continue even in the face of the opposition of the majority of the electorate.

The way we were: 1981 revisited?

Tellingly, Young also said the Coalition Cabinet is far narrower politically than the Thatcher Government of 1979. In spite of the Lib Dems' supposed moderating presence, the unity around this new social project is greater and more far reaching than even the Iron Lady's right wing revisionism. Then, several million jobs were sacrificed, along with the hopes and dreams of millions of people. This time, who knows where we are headed, with at least an initial million jobs set to go over the next year or so? Although the Government claims that "we are all in it together", the mere fact that 23 out of 29 Cabinet Ministers are millionaires makes it hard to see how. Nearly every major move since their taking office has been regressive - on the budget, on welfare, on cutting back on resources to tackle tax evasion, it is clear where this regime's loyalties lie.

So Lord Young is an offensive man making offensive comments about the stark realities facing millions of ordinary Britons. But perhaps his words were also the most unintentionally accurate representation yet of the arrogant disdain and detached world view of our Cabinet of Millionaires.

What was wrong about "What the Green Movement got wrong"?

Channel 4 in the UK has just shown a very lengthy, two-part mockumentary provocatively titled "What the Green Movement Got Wrong" . Unlike a previous programme of this ilk, The Great Global Warming Swindle, it did not particularly challenge climate change, but rather tried to show that green campaigns, when successful, have done more harm than good. Three examples:

- malaria in African slums could be reduced by making the chemical toxin DDT available to spray inside houses "in small quantities", but campaigns by Greens in the 1980s to have DDT stopped from being heavily used in agriculture had led to outright bans of DDT in many countries. This in turn left people living in squalid shanty towns vulnerable to mosquito bites and malarial infection - all because of the greens. At least, that was what the scientist Dr Florence Wambugu, who had previously worked for agri-chemical giant Monsanto, was given free rein to argue. (The programme skated over the fact that Greenpeace dropped its opposition to small scale use of DDT nearly a decade ago).






The real solution to malaria - DDT powder or slum clearance?

  On the other hand, just how safe is DDT, even at low levels and especially over any protracted period? Rather than DDT, wouldn't proper investment in clearing the slums and providing decent accommodation to the people living there be better?

- genetically modified food: the successful green campaign in the European Union to ban the sale of genetically modified (GM) foods was contrasted with how widely used it is in the USA - 70% of foodstuffs in many regular restaurants in the USA are GM and declared "delcious" by a contributor. Meantime, African farmers were shown harvesting low nutrition sorghum, grown as it is resistant to drought. Much better if they could grow GM crops designed to provide better nutrition in such bad climatic conditions.

Yet, given the contrast between the health of the average American and that of the average EU citizen, perhaps the jury is out on this for now. And as for the farmers, would a better solution not be found in reforming the trade system that denudes Third World countries of its food? GM could have untold consequences for other crops.

- nuclear power: Mark Lynas, who has written powerful articles on global warming, including the book "Six Degrees", visited Chernobyl, wistfully reflecting on the dreadful legacy of the 1986 disaster. It was an old reactor, he concluded. The new ones would be much safer, he was sure. The nuclear industry had cleaned up its act since 1986 - the implication being that Chernobyl and Three Miles Island could never happen again.

More than that, because the greens had spearheaded a reaction to these disasters which led to the cancellation of planned nuclear reactors, governments instead commissioned more coal powered electricity, leading to millions of tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. A former Greenpeace activist, Patrick Moore, was put up to denounce the "anti-science" of the green movement. But there again, he is now a paid lobbyist for the nuclear power and logging industries, so could he be trusted to say anything else?

Another view, summarily dismissed in the programme, would be that given the hugely uneconomic cost of nuclear reactors, governments have shied away from building the things. The argument presupposes a choice limited to coal or nuclear, ignoring the clean alternatives - such as solar, wind and waver power- which greens argue for in place of both these different but dirty and dangerous forms of energy production. It is bizarre to hold the green movement responsible for the decisions of others.

Channel 4 devoted 2 hours to this misleading polemic. Like previous efforts in this field, it was full of holes, half-truths and dissimulation. Greenpeace set out the very real corporate lobby interests of those contributing to the programme in the guise of "new environmentalists", allegedly able to see the science and weigh up realistically what is needed for the future. Others in the green movement were portrayed as wild-eyed evangelists, proselytising for a mythical past and hostile to anything modern. "The greens can dish it out, but they can’t take it," Lynas smirks, evidently revelling in his self-assigned moniker of "turncoat".

Lynas may or may not still have as alarming views of our likely future as he has expressed often enough, but if he thinks his efforts this evening in any way will assist the long battle to stop global warming, he is sadly deluded. Even if a complaint to OfCom, the broadcast regulator, of being badly misled by the producers from one of the contirbutors is upheld, at least some damage will have been done.

Channel 4 has a remit to be controversial and, of course, any and all sides of any debate have a right to be aired. But there needs to be a distinction between what is presented as documentary fact and what is simply the personal opinion of individuals - in the latter case, where is the balance? Will the green movement now be given two hours to put a counter-case? Or will this supposedly objective film be left standing for unquestioned use as propaganda by those who wish to carry on as usual?

Everyone involved in this enterprise should be searching their consciences. Self-publicity and audience ratings can come at a high cost to others - and to the planet.

Channel 4 - what is it up to?