Batting for the Bankers

So with great fanfare David Cameron claims he has stood up for Britain's national interests by opposing every single one of the other European Union member states as they attempt to claw their way out of the Euro-crisis. With everyone now acknowledging the arrival of a two-speed Europe - 26 states going at one speed and Britain at the other - the chances of a General Election in the New Year have to have increased. Hoping to ride a wave of mindless xenophobia, "Bulldog" Dave will be watching the polls closely for his hoped-for bigot-bounce over the next few months so that he can call a snap election, pose as John Bull reborn and free himself of the pro-EU Lib Dems, who face oblivion at any polls. Given the long-term economic prognosis, it could be his only-ever chance of forming a majority regime.

And yet, how tragically confused the public mood will be - because the supposed national interests he claims to have stood up for are nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people. What he has vetoed is not any of the daft (though in total relatively few) regulations that emanate from Brussels on standardised food weights or what constitutes Wensleydale cheese, or not. Nor have his efforts done anything the tackle the corruption to be found in the workings of much of the Union's institutions. He has done nothing to stop the EU's ludicrous and damaging pursuit of biofuels, nor anything to challenge the wasteful transportation of goods over huge distances of the Continent. And there is nothing to stop the  dislocation of local communities caused by the single European market (unsurprisingly, that last is the bit that the rich backers of the  Eurosceptics are very, very keen to keep as it is).

Indeed, for ordinary British people, his actions may make things much worse - as Europe faces financial disaster, any economic meltdown across the Channel will inevitably shaft Britain as much as anywhere else, creating unemployment, inflation and misery for millions. By vetoing the proposed international financial regulations, Cameron has at least delayed and probably damaged longer term the struggle to restore economic stability to our key trading partners. Why risk that?

Simple - because for Dave it is worth it.

What Cameron has done is make sure that the City of London remains free of any effective scrutiny. Yep, Bulldog Dave has been out fighting on behalf of the bankers. He has used Britain's veto on this historic occasion to strike a blow against proposed internationally binding regulation of the international finance trade that flows in and out of London banks and City brokers' accounts, fleecing hardworking people of billions in thieved commission and forcing public service cuts through their myriad means of tax avoidance and tax dodging.

He has also put paid to the so-called Robin Hood tax - a tiny levy on bankers transactions that could raise tens of billions of pounds a year to cut deficits and fund public services. Instead, Dave sees it in Britain's interests to let the leeches keep the cash. The rest of Europe may go ahead, but given the importance of the City of London in international finance - a trade with little more than peripheral, trickle-down benefits for Britain - our decision to opt-out will blunt the impact of any transactions tax. This in turn will seriously undermine wider attempts to get the international community to tackle the excesses of the banking and finance cartel that has done so much to bring our world to its knees.

And of course by isolating Britain from absolutely everyone else, he leaves a European Union which will inevitably be dominated by Germany and France - British influence will diminish rapidly in spite (and even because of) all the jingoistic flag waving.

So, I hope Dave is proud of himself. The challenge will be for progressives to expose his claims of fighting for our national interests as a lie and cover for protecting his party financiers and former school chums; yet at the same time to keep advocating for a better, social Europe. The new, more integrated arrangements that every other country seems to be signing up to may not be the right answer either, but at least at its core is an attempt to create some international public control over the currently pretty much unregulated international finance markets which play games with ordinary people's jobs, communities and life chances.

Bulldog Dave? Not likely. Just Bull**** Dave, batting for the bankers.



1946 - and the Eurosceptics mascot calls for a Union of Europe: Winston Churchill's Zurich Speech.

It's a Wonderful World

Sister Earth? We may need Keppler 22b - if only we can develop warp travel (solar powered!)

Just broadcast this evening by the BBC, the final episode of the Frozen Planet looked at climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic. Cataloguing the break up of ice shelves the size of Greater London, a 3C increase in local temperatures over the last fifty years and the ever southwards migration of penguins in search of colder climes, the crime and danger of global warming is never more evident. And yet this very week, as oil rich Arctic state Canada has been rumoured to be on the verge of withdrawing its already lukewarm support for the Kyoto Protocol, the massively under-reported Durban conference on climate change has struggled to make any progress at all. Yet again, humanity seems as far as ever from taking any real action on carbon emissions - which have risen faster than ever over the last twelve months, with Britain as culpable as anyone else.

This advert for BBC Natural History programmes played at the end - a touchingly melancholic celebration of our home. In the week that NASA revealed it has discovered what may turn out to be our sister planet - 600 light years away - and a sci fi film is released about Another Earth, it is a tribute to the power of public broadcasting that a series as powerfully thought-provoking yet visually stunning as this can still be made to highlight the reality that we have only one planet, and we need to start looking after it a lot better, very, very quickly.

The Socio-Economics of Del Boy: Myth & Reality in the Court of the Cleggeron

The last three years since the banking crisis began in earnest have seen a transformation of popular views about wealth and its deeply inequal distribution in Britain and globally. For the first time in two decades, many more people have challenged the huge payments made to senior executives across a wide range of industries, including the private sector.

This has been against a background where, while bosses and owners have frequently called for pay restraint from their frequently non-unionised workforces, they have carried on paying out huge increases to themselves - even in recessionary 2010/11,  Chief Executive pay in the FTSE100 top companies rose by 43%, with other senior executives doing even better on 49%. At the same time, average pay for everyone else fell by over £2,600 p.a.  And this is part of a long established pattern - in 2010, before much of this last year's huge hike, the ratio of top to lowest paid in the top 100 FTSE companies was an utterly obscene 232:1. 

It is no surprise that, as recession bites and ordinary people find their living standards squeezed and services cut, we see both rising political protest and the crime wave of the summer riots. As Wilkinson and Pickett demonstrated so powerfully, highly unequal societies are more personally unhappy, physically and psychologically unhealthy, socially disrupted and prone to higher levels of crime than societies - even poorer ones like Cuba - where the disparity in wealth is much lower.

And so today Nick Clegg, hapless Deputy PM, has announced with great flourish his anger at the wealthiest being rewarded so highly and that he has decided that it is time to do something about it! Unfortunately, he has been typically vague as the different components of our dysfunctional Coalition Government try to respond to the wave of public discontent. Neither Government party is in any way instinctively egalitarian and both are unashamedly pro-capitalist. So we needn't hold our breaths in the hope of any concrete action.

From what we can see, the proposals are likely to amount to little more than requiring the publication of the ratio of the top paid person in a company with the pay, not of the lowest, but of either the average or, conceivably even worse, the median paid worker. This of course massively reduces the ratio, ignoring the lack of value placed on the lowest paid and often hardest working (and most stressed) workers in our society. Otherwise limited to requiring more information for shareholders (when most shares are held by other large businesses anyway) and some pious hope of capitalism caking itself in enough greasepaint to present a half-acceptable face to the public, this proposal is just a load of window-dressing from a Government too scared to challenge its own paymasters (that's if it actually wanted to!).

But why on Earth, at a time when the capitalist system is on the ropes with the Last Chance Saloon clearly in sight, are we not tackling the rapaciousness of the rich, the very people who in so many ways are ruining our world? Why, in a reality of inevitably limited resources, are we not setting maximum pay as well as minimum pay? We cannot tackle the poverty of the poorest without also tackling the wealth of the richest. Full stop.

Capitalism is vicious and deceitful, but it is also very clever - it sells the myth that it rewards effort when in fact it mainly assists those who already have wealth to engorge themselves ever more: it holds out the naive lie that anyone can share in the fest if only they work harder just that bit longer, etc. It is the socio-economics of Del Boy; this time next year, we'll all be millionaires. And the real tragedy, like the brilliant pathos of the comedy of Only Fools, is that so many still buy into the myth.

And that must be Mr Clegg's hope - that his tilting at windmills might yet fantastically transmogrify into a belief that he has miraculously slain the dragon of excess without even lifting his lance. That is the trouble with myth - it is at its most appealing when it tells its biggest lies to the most desperate of people in the most desperate of times. It bends and outlives reality, becoming exposed as fake often only when its premise has destroyed all around it and it finally stands naked and exposed as the lie it is. So the Government may cloak its inaction on inequality with fiery rhetoric about damnable greed, but in doing so it will allow the carnival of destructive excess to carry on yet longer, causing more and more irreparable damage to our social fabric and the well being of our country and planet.

Jeremy Clarkson...in a Microwave

Carbon wagon champion Jeremy Clarkson has been rightly condemned today for his comment that public sector strikers should be shot dead - and, to boot, in front of their families.

Clarkson, who fronts BBC car programme Top Gear, which is as good an example as any of the close relationship between large vehicle engines and the priapically challenged male, has always been something of a bete noire for any self-respecting environmentalist, liberal and, indeed, human being. His pathetic column in the Sunday Times reeks of the attention-seeking adolescent arrogance of the Prefect's Room in a boys-only Sixth Form .

This odious character conveniently ignores the fact that, with a salary reportedly around £1 million coming from the BBC licence fee, he is actually one of the few public sector workers whose terms and conditions are indeed truly bloated and excessive. Yet writing these very words is probably self-defeating, because this pathetic petrolhead appears to thrive on coverage of any sort.

So, never mind any further analysis or ranting about how different the response of the authorities and the Prime Minister would have been had a trade union called for bankers or Tory MPs to be executed in front of their families. No more comparing the disparity in the jailing for several years of two youths for briefly setting up a Facebook riots page when they were drunk compared to the apparently sober Clarkson's supposedly satirical call for violence.

So, instead, here is a video to make us all feel better.



Strike, By Gove!

Education Secretary Michael Gove has today launched into a scathing attack on the beleaguered public sector workers who are due to go on strike on Wednesday across the UK. The strikes are to highlight plans to cut the pensions benefits and increase pension contributions of workers in schools, local authorities, and other public sector services. While the media and the Deputy Prime Minister have played up to myths about supposed "gold-plated" pensions in the public sector, the fact remains that the average pension paid out is around a paltry £5,600 p.a. - this is actually over £200 p.a. lower than the average private sector pension. The accrual rate is slightly better than the private sector, but it has long been a feature that lower pay in the public sector is compensated for by a slightly better set of pension arrangements than most private employers offer.

There is plenty of evidence the public sector pension pot is perfectly viable in the long run and stands to decline as a proportion of public spending. The Government however is determined to cut it and while claiming to still be negotiating, has essentially adopted a "take it or leave it" approach for some weeks now.

And so on Wednesday there will be a one day strike. It is likely to cause significant disruption around the country, although the nation will not be paralysed - but aside from anything else, the inconvenience caused might highlight to people just how much of the work carried out by public sector workers is not noticed - until it isn't there, when its vital role becomes very apparent.

Mr Gove however has lambasted strike leaders: "I am deeply opposed to this action, and the damage it generates," he has said, claiming the leaders of Unite and other unions are simply spoiling for a fight and keen for confrontation.


Mr Gove hasn't always felt like this. Like many Tories, it always a different matter when its his own wallet he is worried about.


Here he is on strike, trying to shut down his employer when he was a journalist back in 1989.


Sauce for the goose...

A kick up the 80s: Striking Gove - kneeling, on the left! (1989)

Antarctica

Mother Naure weeps as the ice melts.

There is a myth among the climate change denial industry that the climate of Antarctica is actually cooling rather than warming, and that this disproves the case for global warming. One theory is that the (man made) ozone hole has temporarily cooled the stratosphere and this makes for local cooling in spite of global warming; but needless to say, even this week, outright deniers claim that the thinning and breaking of huge swathes of glaciers is meaningless.

This surprising claim is in the face of the 1.2C average increase in Antarctic temperatures between 1959 and 1996. And it also ignores the plain fact that on a more front line level, there is clear warming taking place - for example, the Antarctic tourist industry (yes, there is such a thing, now) is rubbing its hands with glee at the profitable prospect of being able to take tourists deeper into Antarctica - one tour has been extended from 11 to 14 days because there are far more opportunities to disembark and sight see compared to a few years ago.

And study after study, including this year, has shown increasing thinning and melt of ice shelves, with massive icebergs resulting. while a plague of parasitic crabs moving south with warmer water is currently causing concern for local flora and fauna. By contrast, the supposed cooling evidence comes from data collected at just one location on the Continent - the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research Station, along with rather a lot of extrapolation.

Antarctica has been described as the canary of the world - perhaps we should be listening harder to its faltering song.


The music and beauty of Antarctica - with film from the threatened south and north poles:

More Funny Weather

Today, with supremely smug irony, the British Parliament has been discussing slashing the feed-in tariff (originally designed to encourage the adoption of solar power by domestic consumers) as part of the Government's so-called "green deal". It is being cut by over a half on the spurious argument that it increases the cost of electricity to consumers and consequently pushes people into fuel poverty - I say spurious because the highest estimated increase caused by FITs is £6 per annum onto the average household bill, with some estimates as low as just 30p. This is zilch by most standards and even more so when set against the rise of several hundred pounds per annum that the Government has contentedly allowed profiteering energy companies to add to fuel costs in the last year or two.

This comes in the same week as a World Meteorological Organisation report has revealed that in 2010, in spite of all the talk and more talk by the IPCC and Governments, the rate of increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached its highest yet - an additional 2.3 parts per million, putting us firmly on course to exceed even the worst scenarios previously anticipated by climatologists. These figures endorse an earlier report by the International Energy Agency in May, which produced similarly stark findings. Even if magically all further increase was to stop, temperatures would rise by around 3C by 2050 - it may not sound much, but its impact would be on a level that would spell disaster for human societies in many parts of the world through the collapse of their agriculture and social systems. Less directly affected countries would find the cost of basic needs such as food and water rocketing well beyond the point of social crisis, and mass migrations would almost certainly trigger conflict on an unprecedented scale.

Don't believe it? It would be nice if it wasn't true and tempting to want to think that; and this week, the BBC announced that the global warming episode of its "Frozen Planet" series won't be shown in the USA so as not to disturb the willful ignorance of the US public, who are among the worst polluters on the planet. 

However, aside from the evidence of increasingly extreme weather events, like the fact that British temperatures this past week have been around double the seasonal average - a whopping 18C on Sunday compared to the 9.5C norm for mid-November - the plain science is this:

- the more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more heat from the Sun is trapped in our atmosphere. Too little and we would freeze; too much, and we'd fry. The margins either way are surprisingly (and terrifyingly) small - humanity's hold on the planet is tenuous to say the least.

- through our massively increasing use of fossil fuels, such as gas, coal and wood due to the processes of the industrial age from the 1750s onwards, humans have pumped unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide and other gasses with even greater "greenhouse" effects, like methane and nitrous oxide (currently the fastest increasing gas), into the atmosphere. Indeed, in the last fifty years, we have used more carbon fuel than in the rest of history combined.

- Consequently, since 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million to 389 parts per million. At the same time, temperatures have climbed, sometimes exaggerated or cooled by natural variations like El Nino and El Nina, and even occasionally by sunspots, but overall, the ongoing, underlying trend is up, and has nothing to do with any natural phenomena. Rather, it is created and fanned by human activity for precisely the scientific reasons set out above: burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions which trap more and more heat in our atmosphere.

The current rate of emissions is in spite of the downturn in economic activity through the global recession - and Britain is as much to blame as anywhere, with a 2.8% increase in emissions in 2010. And as the planet warms, we are already past the "feedback" thresholds for a number of phenomena which will start to cause an exponential increase in greenhouse gas levels. These include the diminishing of the albedo effect as Arctic ice melts and the "whiteout" of the northern hemisphere declines, reflecting less light and heat back into outer space. Similarly in the north, the melting of the Siberian tundra after millennia of permafrosting is releasing dangerous quantities of methane, which is around twenty times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Eventually, what has been triggered by human activity and could still be at least mitigated by human action, will take on a life and dynamic entirely of its own.

So, just as every long march begins with a single step, every piece of action taken now to reduce greenhouse gas is utterly vital, not to saving the planet - it will endure - but to saving our civilisation and even our species. To this end, the delay and trimming by the Con Dem Government is more than lamentable - it is a betrayal of our futures and a crass denial of reality.

Funny weather indeed. But no laughing matter.

The Spirit of Free Enterprise

The Guardian newspaper is reporting that the Business Secretary, the foot-in-mouth ballroom dancer Vince Cable, is likely to exempt small businesses from most employment law protection for staff. It isn't clear yet, but the exemptions seem set to reduce further the rights of millions of ordinary people, potentially allowing their employers to bully them, treat them unfairly and dismiss them with some ease. Although the Con Dem Government already accepts that Britain has one of the most "flexible" work forces in the world, apparently some folk are not tugging forelocks far or flexibly enough not to traumatise our nascent entrepreneurs. So what little practical protection exists for swathes of low paid, temporary, part-time, often female staff, will be taken away.

All to help unleash the spirit of free, but evidently not fair, enterprise.

They Came In the Night In the Land of the Free

New York police have cleared the Occupy Wall Street camp in the dead of night. Arriving at 1 am, they gave demonstrators 20 minutes to pack up and leave, arresting 70. The authorities told the demonstrators they were to remove all "private property" (like tents!) and could return presumably to stand all night in the open, in November. Allegedly, the camp in Zuccotti Park, was a health and safety hazard (sounds familiar to St Paul's protest in London?) and followed the clearing of a similar Occupy camp in Oakland in California a few hours earlier.

So much for freedom of speech and assembly in what is meant to be the land of freedom. If Egyptian police had done this in Tahrir Square, they would rightly have been condemned for squashing freedom of expression. Likewise, in many other countries, like Ukraine during the neoliberal "Orange Revolution", the USA squarely backed and even funded demonstrators as they brought down the mildly socialist government.

Different then when it is in their own backyard. Different when it is protest against the greed and excess of the 1,000 corporations and their political puppets who run our planet and rip us all off. These demonstrators have got it all wrong, it seems.

Freedom has its limits, it seems, if you are opposed to the Establishment. And so, as well as all the powers of surveillance and detention built into laws like the ludicrously named Patriot Act, they authorities will use by-laws to ensure that, in effect, prevent the protest continuing - as winter deepens, who on Earth will be able to stand in the streets of New York in the middle of the night, night after night?

Health and safety risk, the Powers-that-be claim. Yeah? Who's exactly?

Chilling, in more ways than one.

Your Employment May Be At Risk

The Guardian reports (10 November) that Home Secretary Theresa May has been told by Government lawyers that the head of the Borders Agency, Brodie Clark, is highly likely to win his claim of constructive dismissal followingher very public intemperate outbursts about his alleged handling of passport checks over the summer and apparent background briefings at her behest that he was a “rogue” civil servant. She gave him no right to defend himself although he had been suspended and she pre-empted the outcome of any investigation and hearing into his conduct. She may not have been his immediate boss, but was part of his senior management line and so this breach of both civil service procedure and good practice, coupled with her damning comments about him, put him in a strong position to claims around £135,000 of public money in compensation.

It is far from reassuring to know that someone as closely connected with the workings of government so readily dispenses with (or perhaps simply does not recognise to begin with) the most basic premises of natural justice – that someone alleged to have done something wrong should have a chance to defend themselves through some sort of fair process and be presumed innocent until found guilty (even under the lesser test of “reasonable belief on the balance of probabilities” applied to employers dealing with their staff as opposed to “proof beyond reasonable doubt” required for court cases). Yet here we have May, who does appears on most levels to be a rather "rogue" operator herself, supported by the Prime Minister in her frankly dysfunctional, blame-shifting behaviour.

But at least Brodie Clarke will be able to defend himself by taking a claim to an employment tribunal. Unlike a growing number of British workers, he had employment protection against unfair treatment by his employer, a right that used to kick in after twelve months service.

Lib Dem Employment Minister, Ed Davey, has now decided to increase this qualifying period to 24 months – so, if you or anyone else has less than two years service, your employer will shortly be able to treat you just as badly or even worse than Brodie Clark experienced at the hands of Theresa May, and you will have absolutely no redress.

Likewise, while ruling out supporting recent proposals by David Cameron’s adviser (and also funder and holder of various seven-figure public contracts), Adrian Beecroft  to allow employers to dismiss staff without any explanation by giving them a payment equivalent to state redundancy pay (capped at less than £600 for each year of service), Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has repeated his own wish to introduce a right for employers to have “protected conversations” with staff that cannot be used in any subsequent tribunal proceedings.

Such a right already exists where there is a dispute such as a performance management, disciplinary or grievance case ongoing – employers can have a “without prejudice” discussion, usually linked to agreeing some sort of compromise payment with the member of staff. However, Clegg wants this right to exist even where there is no active dispute. Basically, he wants an employer to have the right to talk to an employee off the record, regardless of the issue. So, your boss could say to you “I think you are useless, you should leave your job as fast as possible or I will make your life hell” and, if he or she has declared it a protected conversation, you could do nothing about it even after two years’ service.

Clegg’s words make clear that he is pretty well signed up to the belief that employers should have much stronger powers to discipline and sack staff than even Margaret Thatcher allowed; he forgets that 85% of workers are employees and, although there is a striking blindness among many that such arbitrary powers won’t affect them, I have come across all too many people from all walks of life who have been astonished when it has been their turn to be on the receiving end of pernicious behaviour by their employer.

Deregulation did nothing for the banking industry; why should anyone think for a moment that it will help the employment relationship which, at its deregulated core is still founded on the centuries old laws of Master and Servant?

Clegg and his allies are proposing nothing less than a bullies’ charter.

Theresa May must be licking her lips.

OCCUPY CONSTANTINOPLE – Back to the future with Byzantine Economics

“The more powerful should not injure the less powerful, but that everything should be weighed by a just measure...”                        
                                   Prologue to the Byzantine “Book of the Prefect”, 912 AD.


Last week came the news that, at the same time as they have been urging wage restraint by their workers and insisting that the “bloated” public sector needs to be slashed, Britain’s bosses have dug their snouts even deeper into the trough. In the last recessionary year, the Chief Executives of the Top 100 Listed Companies in the UK have been awarded 43% increases in their pay packages, while the next level down of Directors has gained even more – 49% increases on average.

There was much awkward wringing of hands by Government Ministers, embarrassed by the extreme extent and blatant arrogance of these people, many of them funders and supporters of the same Tory regime that has assured the suffering public that “we are all in it together” in facing the economic downturn. But none of them undertook to implement any hard and fast action that might change this utter fest of rapacious greed.

Finally breaking the Church of England’s silence over the demands of the Occupy London protesters, the Archbishop of Canterbury last weekend asked “Are economics too important to be left to economists?”, positing the need for some ethical underpinning of the economic framework – including supporting the so-called Robin Hood tax on financial transactions. And yet, is capitalism capable of delivering such a benign outcome at all? So how do we deal with these people? If not capitalism, then what?

Given that the entire raison d’etre of capitalism – the maximising of profit – inevitably drives this grasping process of exploitation of resources to exhaustion coupled with the excessive accumulation of wealth, the long-term answer can only be through adopting a new economic ideology – one embracing sustainable stewardship of resources and a genuine redistribution of both power and wealth. It is a measure of the success of the capitalist media’s propaganda that socialism remains a dirty word even among many progressives, but that makes the need for new solutions and the potential for a new society no less possible, nor any less imperative.

All economic systems have to accommodate choice and exchange in some way – the central question has to be whether this is determined by wealth measured and expressed by monetary power or by human need identified and agreed by a wider social construct. In this, market mechanisms may have a greater or smaller role to play according to the culture of the society in question – and this has as often as not in human history depended on ethics or morality as much as on cash in hand.

For example, ninth century Byzantium, the eastern successor of the Romans and the most successful state of its time, purposefully adopted an economic ideology based on self-sufficiency and just distribution. The Emperors, driven in part by Orthodox Christian theology and in part by political considerations, adopted a series of laws which held “just exchange” to be at the centre of any market transactions. In particular, policy focused on tackling the rapacious excesses of the dynamoi, the powerful nobility, over the poorer citizenry and especially the peasantry.

And so, in a society that was significantly monetised in its exchange process (as opposed to barter which remained a significant component in other contemporary economies), we find a series of edicts which, among other things, forced the free return of land bought from famine-struck peasants by their exploitative lords for less than half the assessed “just value”. We find laws rendering void any contract where the workman had agreed a rate lower than the “just wage” and in the realm of lending, the rich were forced to charge lower rates of interest than less prosperous lenders. In the capital, Constantinople, craft guilds were established to licence producers in such a way that, while competition was permitted within a particular sector, even the most successful producers in one field could not diversify into others and come to dominate the supply of goods to the consumer. The Prefect of the City regulated the production of key goods to ensure sufficiency of supply to the population, with the Government intervening where this was threatened (especially in terms of staple foods like bread and fish), and to prevent “unreasonable profit” – an established principle in Byzantine law.



The Byzantine Economy  - putting the Just into Justinian?

 Perhaps of greatest contemporary relevance, it was the Byzantines establishment of the practice that, while supply and demand might inevitably affect the costs of producing goods and that Government might be limited in its long-term ability to temper this, it was both possible and indeed a moral imperative that there should be a legal limit on profit margins. Consequently, Patriarch Nicephoros in the ninth century set this as no more than 10% of cost, a figure so low that it would have many a modern venture capitalist choking on his swill.

And yet, in the precarious Medieval world, Byzantium’s adoption of an ethical, redistributive economics worked highly effectively. With a million inhabitants by 1100, Constantinople flourished as the wealthiest city in Europe and the Near East, inevitably incurring the envy and desire of predatory neighbours.

Briefly, it is of note that the effective end of the Byzantine Empire did not come through economic ruin. Rather, the death blows fell through a combination of the violent reassertion of power by the military aristocracy, who rolled back many of the laws during the turbulent late eleventh and twelfth centuries, and then through the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, led by the avowedly mercantilist Venetian Republic. Although the Empire lingered on in various forms for a further quarter of a millennium, these two forces – the propertied and the moneyed – between them destroyed what had been one of the most successful and long lived civilisations in the Mediterranean world.

Sustainable and ethical economics, and equitable distribution of wealth, were not new even at the height of Byzantium. Aristotle had written of justice in exchange in 360 BC, Roman law incorporated the concept and the 4th century Church Fathers advocated justice as including material equity. And all accepted the role of the State as the “judge” (Aristotle’s concept) in “restoring equality between those who have much and those who have little, by giving to one what he takes from the other”.

Indeed, for most of humanity’s existence, societies have functioned on the basis of a “steady state economy”, where output expanded slowly and in tiny increments, if at all. Consequently, how resources and material wealth were shared inevitably became a central policy issue. It has only been since the early Renaissance that first long distance trade and then the technological and productive potential of the Industrial Revolution led to the fairly recent capitalist construct that wealth can be skewed horrendously disproportionately, yet everyone can be better off.

Plainly, with so many key raw materials near or past peak production while demand rises inexorably, if this nostrum ever contained any truth at all, it no longer holds. With growth rates now facing long term decline, the capitalist system is morally bankrupt and in the coming decades will be practically bust. Even beyond the current recessionary cycle, resource scarcity looms and the need for an Aristotelian Judge has never been greater – we need to re-embrace an economics where, once again, as one economic history has described tenth century Byzantium, “...individual economic action is limited by the needs of society as a whole.”(as succinct a definition of contemporary ecosocialism as I have seen).

The question for our society and our world is whether we wait for our system of economics to collapse in pain, blood and violence, or whether we take control of our contemporary dynamoi now and begin the transition to a happier, more egalitarian, and sustainable future.

Brief Encounter or The Life of Brian?

Sometimes life has strange coincidences.


Returning from London on the train the other evening, I ran by chance into Green Councillor Andrew Cooper (author of the blog Greening Kirklees), who was not long finished at a consultation session between environmental groups and Greg Barker, Tory Energy Minister and deputy to the Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne. Professionally, Andrew is an expert in the renewable energy field and he was lamenting the reversal in Government policy over renewable energy feed-in tariffs, a great incentive for consumers to install microgeneration in their homes, especially solar panels, and which pays them for electricity they generate but don’t use (it is instead fed into the national grid, hence the micro-producers’ payment from the electricity companies).

Huhne’s department, in spite of claiming to be part of the greenest government in history, has just decided to slash the subsidies supporting solar power and the tariff (from private companies) by 50% on the spurious grounds that the 30p added to the average annual household fuel bill by the tariff arrangement pushes poorer people into fuel poverty. The Government also for some reason adds the cost of the tariff to the public deficit, in spite of there being no public funding involved and hence utterly no reason for doing so.

We grumbled a bit more about Huhne’s turnaround on nuclear energy as well – from decrying it as dangerous and expensive in his days in opposition to now advocating it as an essential part of Britain’s energy supply and adopting the bizarre view of it as being a source of green energy.

Bidding Cllr Cooper farewell, moments later, on a connecting train, I was hailed by an old acquaintance, now a recently elected Lib Dem MP, who out of residual personal affection shall remain nameless.

He was looking a bit downhearted, apparently having just rebelled, clearly with some difficulty, against one of the Government’s welfare plans. I asked him how he was finding life as an MP and heard him say how awful it all was, how essential the dreadful cuts were to tame the deficit, how Plan A wasn’t working but they had no choice, etc, etc. My suggestion that some good old Liberal Keynesianism might help seemed to go down like a bucket of cold water in a rainstorm, but he tried to appeal to my environmentalism by telling me, “We have done some good green stuff. Chris Huhne has introduced some new green energy initiatives.”

Well prep’d from my discussion with Cllr Cooper, I responded, “Well, hasn’t Chris Huhne just slashed the feed-in tariff...?”

“Yes, yes, he has...but before last week, he had done some good stuff.”

“Well, I don’t like his turnaround on nuclear energy...I remember watching him talk about that in the past and he was really anti but he seems to have changed his tune...”

“Er...yes, but at least there won’t be public funding for it...I mean apart from the tariffs and nuclear...we will eventually do more solar panels...I think...”

“It would be good if money was spent on solar now...its a labour intensive field and if you invested in jobs, the multiplier effect would generate tax and get the deficit down. But I think I read they are cutting back on funding community schemes for renewables...”

“Yes...but....apart from these...I think in time we will do more green things... our Green Investment Bank, when it gets started...it will... well, it’s difficult...”

And then, as our brief encounter threatened to turn into a reverse parody of Life of Brian, it was his stop.

Visiting St Paul's

I walked the Occupy London encampment outside St Paul's Cathedral today - a wonderful mix of people, with a huge range of views; but filled with hope. The good citizenship of the protesters was evident in every way - from the orderly nature of the layout, to the solar panels powering some of their gear, the recycling bins in the centre, and the "artistic wall" surrounding the cathedral emergency exit, with its injunction not to post banners as these might create a health and safety hazard.

What was immediately evident was that there was never any need at all for the Cathedral to be closed - there is acres of space for tourists to access the building and there was no need for the wedding a couple of weeks ago to have gone in the side entrance. But that seems to be history now anyway as even the Archbishop of Canterbury has today spoken sympathetically of the demands of the camp and supported the "Robin Hood Tax".

"There are even right wingers here," one man told me as he handed out leaflets. "They support capitalism - but not the nasty sort we've got."

As he spoke, the speculators and bankers were having their lunch breaks around the square, tutting at the riotous visual display, their nearby offices and restaurants neatly cordoned off by the police - presumably to stop the violence that never comes, the riot or damage that the demonstrators do not inflict, do not threaten and do not want. Throughout, they have repeatedly offered to talk - to the St Paul's authorities, to the City of London as well as to the bankers, until now with little response.

Things have changed a little in the last day or two, but it is clear that both Church and State hope that their new tactics will reach the same end of moving the demonstration on without effecting the real, systemic changes we need to end the inequality and poverty that have moved the Occupy movement around the world. Still they are derided as either wasters or dreamers - "St Paul's Mob Wins the Day", the Sun headline proclaimed today.

"Nice" capitalism - now there's a notion if there ever was....

St Pauls' Canon Resigns In Support of Occupy Protesters

Rev Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, has resigned as police and the City of London Authority prepare to take action to forcibly remove the tented protest encamped outside the cathedral. Rev Fraser has criticised the plans and refused to collaborate with them. The authorities have insisted on proceeding and, in the absence of any support from his superiors, Rev Fraser has stuck by his principles and given up his job. It is heartening to see him take such a stand, but at a dreadful and unfair cost to himself.

As blogged earlier this week (click here), the Trustees of the Cathedral are drawn heavily from big finance and stockbroking backgrounds and could be expected to be sympathetic to the banks which are the target of the Occupy demonstrations - they ended up at St Paul's after being forced away from the City itself. Rev Fraser would appear to have been surrounded by men and women whose views were alien to his own - none of the Trustees has so far followed him in resigning, so must be deemed to support the police plans.

It is a travesty that big business would appear to be calling the shots over a church which whose founder threw moneylenders out of the temple and warned people that they could not serve both God and Money. The City has repeatedly refused offers to meet and talk from the protesters, while the Cathedral Trustees have provocatively closed the building on highly spurious health and safety grounds, clearly as a ploy to demonise the protesters - notably, on BBC Question Time tonight, two speakers, the odious Nigel Farage of UKIP and Labour's Gloria di Piero, warned that it would be a national disgrace if the protesters are still there on Remembrance Sunday next week - after all, not even the Nazi Blitz closed the Cathedral.

Evidently, we didn't fight the Second World War to preserve freedoms such as being able to protest peacefully against Government policy.

Adolf Hitler, eat your heart out.

Sacking with CONfidence - Part 4

Continuing an occasional, but all too frequent, series on the Coalition's "reform" of employment law in Britain.

Capitalism to "Inspire" - you really couldn't make it up!

Yesterday we were treated to a chilling insight on how the Conservatives view British employees and their rights. A report on employment laws and their impact on the economy, commissioned by Chancellor George Osborne and supported by David Cameron, was leaked. Written by Tory supporting venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft, who has enriched himself to the tune of £85 millions in spite of the apparent encumbrance of UK employment law, it uses the most lurid and vituperative terms about British workers and the alleged need to bring us all the heel.

The report blames Britain's economic woes on the supposed inability of employers to fire people at will if they are underperforming. Beecroft wants a "compulsory no fault dismissal" system whereby employees can be fired without redress to an employment tribunal via a simple payment equivalent to the state redundancy payment (currently a maximum of £400 for each year of service). So, if after working for an employer for 10 years, your boss decided you were not performing well enough, Beecroft's view is that there should be no need to undergo any particular process of identifying and warning about the performance issues - if your company gives you £4,000, it is straightforward curtains to your career.

The report goes on further to make a list of complaints about employment protection given to the tens of millions of us who are employees (over 85% of the workforce!) which demonstrates lamentable prejudice, ignorance and pretty sloppy research (or lack of it) by Beecroft:

Beecroft donated £530k to the Tory Party: cheaper staff
could free up so much more!

- it demands  that employers should be able to have off-the-record discussions with employees with whom they are in dispute. They already can! Current employment law already allows without prejudice discussions in disputes which cannot be entered as evidence in tribunal proceedings.

- Beecroft complains that employers can't ask employees if they intend to retire and grumbles that this slows down recruitment and labour flexibility, apparently damaging the wealth of the nation. Again, employers can already do this! You can read the guidance from ACAS about how to do this in a fair and safe way HERE.

- Beecroft complains that the new rules protecting agency workers from summary dismissal and exploitative low pay arrangements will disadvantage Britain in the global economy. Yet he ignores the fact that the rules have come about as part of a European-wide directive and have to be the same in our nearest competitors.

All in all, it is a bigoted, ill-informed rant against the relatively low levels of protection enjoyed by British workers. And while some Lib Dems try to disassociate themselves from it, Nick Clegg made strikingly similarly ill-informed comments about performance and retirement only the day before - who knows what he's been reading lately?

It is easier, cheaper and faster for employers to fire British workers than in most western economies and it is disingenuous for employers and top managers to lay the blame for our woes at the feet of ordinary workers. While most employees have seen their pay static and reducing in real and even absolute terms over the last two or three years, Boardroom pay and bonuses have continued to climb relentlessly.

The Business Secretary, Lib Dem Vince Cable, has rejected the report today, insisting workers need protection otherwise their job insecurity will affect their spending and damage the wider economy. This sounds good until you reflect that Vince and his Lib Dem Minister, Ed Davey, are at the same time busy removing employment protection from millions of workers who will now have to work for two years rather than one before they will be protected from unfair dismissal. This is being done using very similar arguments as Beecroft does about labour flexibility. It was also Cable's department that rushed out a so-called Employer's Charter, quickly re-christened as a "sacker's checklist" last year to remind employers just how easily they can already dismiss staff. It makes the bad part of you wonder if the leak of the extreme Beecroft worldview was deliberately done to make Cable's current plans appear a little milder by comparison - but surely they wouldn't do that, would they?

The absence of trade unions from most of the British workplace has never been more in evidence. Employees face a difficult time ahead as first their employment and, coming up next, sickness protection are whittled away by people who in many cases have never really held down a normal type of job.  Capitalism, yet again, is busy blaming and punishing others for its own failings - biting back, like the cornered rat that it truly is.

http://www.comicsbybrad.com/2008/12/17/youre-fired/

Democracy - Time for Starting Over?

"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly found in democracy, they will be best attained when all alike share in Government to the utmost."  - Aristotle, philosopher, Athens (384 to 322 BC).

Democracy come to Westminster in "V for Vendetta"

Tonight, in the British House of Commons, a farce unfolded, the latest of many to besmirch the self-proclaimed Mother of Parliaments (the moniker itself an utter denial of historical reality). Barely two months ago, the Coalition Government, loftily proclaiming its desire for a new, open democracy and keen to show its embracing of the twitterati, created its E-petitions website. Aside from crashing on its first day as a stampede of would-be hangmen rushed to ask Parliament to restore the gallows, the idea of the website was to introduce a direct link between People and Parliament to counter the widespread cynicism and disillusion about the political process. If your petition gets 100,000 signatures, it "could" be debated in the House of Commons.

But today, this would-be return to the Agora (where the Athenian progenitors of democracy gathered in the citizens' assembly to debate and vote on anything they liked) has fallen at the first fence. Although tonight's debate on whether to hold a referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Union was not a direct result of an epetition, it came just days after one calling for precisely the same thing passed the 100,000 signature mark.

E-petitions: how it doesn't work...

And how did our Masters respond? Why, they huffed that it was entirely the wrong time to discuss membership of the EU. Prime Minister Cameron, referring to the Eurozone crisis, today likened to proposal as akin to walking away from your neighbour's burning house rather than helping to put the fire out - although at least one neighbour would like Dave to keep his sand-buckets to himself. 

Ignoring opinion polls showing that two-thirds of voters want a referendum sometime soon, the three main party leaders imposed a three-line whip to compel MPs to vote down the motion or face serious consequences to their careers. And they duly did so, by 483 to 111 votes, albeit with a very large Tory revolt. So much for direct democracy - you can have it when we say you can. Socrates, a master of procedure himself, would have been given his cup of hemlock years earlier had he tried that out in the Agora.

And yet this doublespeak about reconnecting the rulers with the ruled is far from confined to the epetition scam. Cameron has played a clever game over the bloated cost of our MPs not by clamping down further on their expenses, which are back at pre-scandal levels, but rather by cutting their numbers from 650 to just 600 - approximately one MP for every 100,000 people. These must be in constituencies of nearly identical size, regardless, it seems, of the impact on the integrity of local communities and how their interests are to be represented.

On Saturday, I met with a Green Party colleague from our neighbouring city of Wakefield to look at how the boundary changes will affect us - my home town of Dewsbury, long represented in the Commons by its own MP, is being split up, with one part linked to Wakefield, which is split in three. Numbers count, not communities. And consequently, people will become ever further alienated from our legislators.

One underplayed feature of this supposed numerical rebalancing of representation is that the Government Cabinet is significantly strengthened in its hold over the Commons. The Government has the Payroll Vote - these are the 140 or so MPs who, as well as being MPs, also hold paid jobs in the Government as Ministers at one level or another. In votes like the one on the European referendum, they are considerably more reliable and loyal to the line decided by the Prime Minister as he has them by the money. If the Cabinet can start out with 140 votes it is nearly half way towards a majority in any vote in a Commons of 600 than one of 650. And so a measure presented as increasing democracy in Parliament is, in fact, one which centralises power even more in the hands of the Government elite and party leaderships.

Even more troubling are the Coalition's plans (steered by the oddly self-sacrificing Nick Clegg) to change electoral registration laws, relaxing the legal requirement to register and removing the obligation on local authorities to ensure that people sign up. It creates a situation where British electoral law will be similar to the pre-civil rights era in many American states, with fears that, as happened in the USA, many marginalised people, the poor, the disabled, ethnic minorities and elderly, will disappear from the voters' roll. Up to ten million voters, about 30% of the total, may drop off the register, MPs were warned - and guess which party will be least affected?

Demokratios - the rule of the people in Athens' Agora

The Coalition Agreement promises to extend transparency in political life and devolve power from central government to communities, but unsurprisingly, the political class is ensuring that any light that is shone on its murky hold over the rest of society is well filtered through the most opaque of prisms. The Liam Fox scandal showed how brazenly Ministers collude with fee-paying, contract-seeking lobbyists, yet the vigorous defence of Fox's behaviour by many Tories was matched only by the silence from Labour benches - no one rocked the leaky boat too much.

Of course, our leaders smugly think that all this will work, that people will buy it. Maybe even some politicians buy it in their own heads, reassuring themselves that they are still beloved of the nation. "Hey, what's up, I'm with you guys," a thoroughly deluded Colonel Gaddafi allegedly told his captors this week, moments before they shot him. Maybe he had listened to too many focus groups.

Our politicians may sneer at demonstrations like Occupy London Stock Exchange. They may think if they suggest the tents put off tourists or (as the dreadful Louise Mensche attempted) claim the protesters are hypocrites if they buy a Starbucks latte that somehow the status quo will prevail. Perhaps, for now, it will, but it may be a Pyrrhic success, a hollow victory which will leave the Commons as nothing but a teetering house of cards. Perhaps St Paul's and the open meetings of Occupy show we can yet return to the Agora and leave behind the jaded, gauche Victorian monstrosity that is the Palace of Westminster.

Occupy London - Update on St Paul's Cathedral and its Trustees' links with Big Money

News on Twitter and other websites tonight that St Paul's Cathedral is threatening legal action to evict the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters encamped outside the building. This comes after a weekend of claims by the Church authorities that the protesters represent a health and safety threat that has forced the building to be closed to the public - although a wedding went ahead uninterrupted. An Observer newspaper informal survey of tourists visiting the area found that nearly 75% felt the tents added to the ambiance of the Cathedral and provided some contemporary meaning to the site.

However, in spite of their claims, the Cathedral authorities have refused to provide Occupy LSX with any information or advice about how they are creating a health and safety threat, although notably they have confirmed that the protest is not affecting their financial or commercial situation.

In addition, and very troubling, is the revelation that the City of London Health and Safety Manager has told Occupy LSX that the Cathedral has had no recent contact with her - a flat contradiction of the claims by the Church that they had been advised to close on safety grounds.

The organisers had previously taken full advice from the Fire Brigade about how to set out the camp, both for their own safety and the Cathedral's, so increasingly, the Church's insistence on being closed becomes more and more mysterious and their explanation increasingly seems to be rather "economical with the verite". But there again, the Cathedral Trustees are in large part a bunch of bankers, brokers and financiers of one sort or another, so their decision to close the House of God may just possibly not be purely based on some risk assessment by a Safety officer.

The Anglican Church may be at a crossroads of its own making - if it ends up using deceitful means to undermine the protesters, it may finally divorce itself from what reduced links it still tenuously holds with the populace of England. As protesters, speakers, bloggers and others have repeatedly cited, the Christian message in large measure talks of social justice and the iniquities of societies where the rich hold sway. If at this time of crisis and this moment of mass awakening, the authorities inside St Paul's throw their lot in with the pro-bankers, pro-finance speculator Government, they will be isolated for good from their former flock, and deservedly so.

THE BANKING CONNECTION: St Paul's Cathedral Foundation - Trustees

Chairman
Sir John Stuttard  - former Lord Mayor of the City of London; Chartered Accountant; former partner of PriceWaterhouse

Trustees
The Right Reverend Graeme Knowles, Dean of St Paul's
Dame Helen Alexander DBE - deputy Chair of the Confederation of British Industry; Chair of the Port of London Authority; adviser to Bain Capital, a global asset management company.
Lord Blair of Boughton - former Chief of the Metropolitan Police
Roger Gifford - UK head of SEB, a major Swedish-based bank
John Harvey - American entrepreneur in the media field; founder of the Personalized Media Communications Group
Joyce Hytner OBE - London Theatre Director & Arts patron
Gavin Ralston -  Head of Product at Schroder's Bank
Carol Sergeant CBE - senior financier; former head of risk at Lloyd's Bank (to 2010)
John Spence OBE - senior banker; has occupied various key roles with Lloyd's Bank; senior member of the British Bankers' Association; Chair of the Audit Committee of HMRC.

Malachi 3:5
The Lord Almighty says "I will appear among you to judge, and I will testify at once against those who give false testimony, those who cheat employees out of their wages, and those who take advantage of widows, orphans, and foreigners - against all who do not respect me...."

Occupy Heaven! Protestors take on the Jesus Business Model

"Don't believe the Church and State

  And everything they tell you.

  Believe in me,

  I'm with the High Command."

St Paul's Cathedral yesterday announced that it was closing down to worshippers allegedly on health and safety grounds owing to the presence of the Occupy London demonstration's tents outside the hallowed place, about as close to a national church as we have. "It's worse than the Blitz," opined one commentator yesterday and the BBC dutifully reported this under the headline -
Occupy London: Demo forces St Paul's Cathedral to close

Good old Auntie, dutifully doing the Establishment's work for it, along with the Church of England, which as the established church, with Bishops sitting as unelected legislators in the House of Lords, is at the core of our ruling elite.

And yet how accurate is this assertion in this headline, almost implying the Cathedral rather than the City was the target of the demonstration?
Firstly, the demonstrators are at St Paul's as they were banned from protesting where they wanted to go - to the financial centre of the City of London. Secondly, the demonstrators themselves have by any account kept the area very tidy, with eyewitnesses phoning Any Answers on Radio 4 yesterday  afternoon to decry as false statements on the BBC that the area was full of trailing cables and badly positioned tents. Occupy co-ordinators had asked the Cathedral to stay open and kept the entrance clear to help.

Thirdly, and perhaps the most telling, although the dean declared the closure to worshippers as unavoidable on safety grounds, it seems he still took the risk of holding a wedding there on Saturday afternoon - and no, the bride did not wear a hard hat. In fact, she told the Observer newspaper that the demonstration had added to the drama of her Big Day and that "I love the drama!"

Sadly, it seems that when people demonstrate peacefully, carefully and creatively, perhaps because of the particularly difficult threat this poses to the Establishment and its dark propaganda about its opponents, our rulers more than ever have to come up with something to make the protesters appear like threatening animals. No shops have been looted, no police injured, no fire extinguishers thrown - so what is left to the elite to come up with? Ah yes, these anti-capitalists are stopping decent civilised people from worshipping. After all, God is a Tory and in some evangelical circles, especially in the USA, the free market is seen as coterminous with Christianity, while socialism held to be inherently and irredeemably evil. Quite seriously, check out the Jesus Business Model here.  Less full-on, but perhaps more disturbing, is this defence of capitalism from a Judeo-Christian perspective (here), suggesting that opposition to the free market is indeed some form of latter-day heresy.

So little wonder that our leaders might like to find some way to literally demonize their opponents, and what better than to portray them as having silenced the prayers of the Tory Faithful? After all, Blessed are poor, as long as they stay that way.

This of course defies the fact that many people of all faiths, including a wide spectrum of Christians, are taking active part in these global demonstrations. This includes many Evangelicals, motivated by their belief in Christian stewardship into calling for social justice in place of the rank capitalism that is damaging our world. And so the assertion by one commentator that Christian religion and capitalism are natural allies is denying the validity of the beliefs of others of his faith. Difficult, even dangerous days indeed.


What, in Heaven or on Earth, would Jesus do?