Retired Professor of Political Economy
(Lancaster University, UK - retired 2021)
(also #ProfDJ across the Lune Valley)
Contributor: North West Bylines #NoBridge
Holly Pester's short novel The Lodgers (2024), is a timely mediation on the unanchoredness of the peripatetic life of the renter/lodger. At times elliptical, with two narratives whose relations remains unsettled, this is a book which offers a real feeling for a key element of modern life; moving from one lodging/rental to another. While at time wry, it remains elegiac in its approach to tenant's despair & longing.
I've just boosted this, but wanted to really stress how this simple message seems to me to sum up the manner in which the media colludes with our political elites to stifle & stamp down on dissent:
'Judging a demonstration by its most violent participants but NOT judging a policy force by its most violent cops is the language of the oppressor'!
We see this again & again, and I've seldom see the criticism so concisely or saliently put.
When 0.6% growth of GDP (for the first Q of 2024) is reported as stronger than expected... you know that we have seriously downgraded our expectations about the UK's economic plight.
0.6% might end up looking like 2% + growth over the year, but don't get all happy, most of this 'growth' took place in services, which continue to have (as is well known) problems enhancing productivity... and productivity is the likely key to a revival of workers' real wages!
Indeed, I'd expect that, especially with the mess the ONS has got itself into recently... the data collection issues in the Labour Force Survey are hardly likely to be isolated.... but to hear the Tories, its like we're emerging onto the sunny uplands - on this Rachel Reeves is right; they are gaslighting us
Having worked (many years ago) for an employer who saw 100% commitment to the 'project' as indicating a readiness to work on any day at any time as required by the 'project'... & having had so many students aspiring to find 'meaningful' work - a perfectly reasonable aspiration, let me note - I fully endorse this warning about how meaningful work can extract an unhealthy personal cost.
I've experienced it myself, and have seen ex-students get trapped similarly.
David Rowland (Centre for Health & the Public Interest):
'One of the things that people who promote a two-tier system never point out is how premiums can quickly rocket as soon as someone gets a chronic condition or develops cancer... In the event that someone’s condition becomes uninsurable or they can’t pay, what then? A depleted NHS might not be there as a safety net to look after them'!
Looking across the Atlantic this warning looks like a massive understatement!
Nadhim Zahawi's lawyer has been referred to Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over the use of legal means (the SLAPP) to try to silence Dan Neidle who was looking into Zahawi's tax affairs - Neildle you recall resisted the pressure & was vindicated when Zahawi was sacked.
While the SRA has investigated a number of SLAPPs, this is the first case which has then resulted in referral to the SDT.
Here's a piece from BMJ, looking at social determinants of heath suggesting the crisis in health is not one of perception, but a wider problem with how our health is impacted by the social structures we encounter.
The authors conclude: 'A common response is that we cannot afford such action [on inequality & health] —we argue, we cannot afford inaction'!
Health inequality compounds social inequality which makes health worse
There's lots of interest in the latest release of well-being & other quality of life data from the ONS, but I was struck by the continuing decline in self-reported good health.
The underlying Q. is: is this an issue of ripples from the NHS crisis making people more anxious about their health (the 'worried well') or is it caused by the crisis in capacity & treatment of actual illness in the NHS (which I pick up in post 2)?
Using the threat of criminal damage, Lord Walney's review of protesting seems about to recommend energy & defence sites should have protest exclusion zones around them - of course these being two key areas of politics that attract significant dissent.
Each (further) restriction on protest is another erosion of democracy; what criminal damage that is caused by protestors is a small price to pay for a right to protest.
Democracy is in danger whatever pious reassurances we hear! #politics
h/t FT
Pressure is building on the DWP to (at least) pause it persecution of carers receiving carers' allowance (who have tipped over the weekly income limit)... of course, we all know what is needed: a TV drama.
The DWP will not reform voluntarily & its unlikely any Govt. will now act unless there is a clear public outcry (which is building), so we need Jimmy McGovern, or another screenwriter to pen a drama that spells out the injustice in human/personal narrative terms!
Ha ha... once again like Lucy & Charlie Brown, the BoE holds interest rates steady, but offers the prospect of a cut in the future... just whisk that ball away Mr. Bailey (each time).
I'm sure they'll eventually cut the rate but the sado-monetarists need more 'evidence' before they do;
but not evidence that inflation is easing, whatever they say; rather they want evidence that workers have been properly tamed/beaten down, that they/we have been disciplined!
If you're looking for a new (but short) series to watch, I can thoroughly recommend Netflix's A Man in Full (based on a Tom Wolf book);
Jeff Daniels (who I was pretty impressed by here) plays a Trump like character in business meltdown, while a subplot deals with racism & incarceration in Atlanta.
Better still at only six episodes it avoids the mid-series sogginess that blights some streaming offerings.
@sjwrenlewis explores relations between the Public debt/GDP ratio & 'tax smoothing' to manage higher levels of debt when particular expenditure seems both necessary & prudent, but when taxes should be more stable.
If you have a Direct Debit to pay for their energy bills, 'tax smoothing' is like the DD while public debt changes are like your shifting energy use.
I don't like the household metaphor but here it does makes sense even if SWL doesn't use it.
The National Institute for Economic & Social Research has joined a growing clamour for the UK fiscal rules to be reformed as they are no longe fit for purpose;
the fiscal straightjacket that policy makers have imposed and/or accepted is aimed at an audience in financial services, whose interests are in no way in line with what the country now needs.
Its not just the availability of staff, or of beds/equipment that lies behind the NHS crisis, its a shortage of drugs too....
The Tories wrecking strategy has been multi-dimensional & has come together compounding each element to put us in the position where the political clients of private healthcare can ensure they can profit from the chaos (see earlier post on agency nurses)
The NHS is in real & present danger... and (now) not just from the right!
Thanks, I'll give it a whirl later; I stopped reading the Economist some time ago... the journalism seemed to me to have deteriorated somewhat, but maybe it was my tolerance for their position was eroded?
'AI can do wonderful things. But civil rights can’t exist in a world of hidden calculations. Just as with a lawyer or doctor, we must have AI that acts in our self-interest. AI needs a constitution — or more accurately, we need a constitution that defines access to artificial intelligence acting solely on our behalf as a civil right'!
We need an constitution for AI not an AI manifesto!
The triangular relationship between workers, employers & the Labour Party is getting more fraught as power looms in the mid-distance...
Business want to influence Labour not to 'over' regulate their business, unions want to ensure their members (and other workers) have rights restored & extended.... and the Labour Party, what does it want?
Well, in the age of declining mass-membership, it needs wealthy donors; the unions can wield their contributions but may be outgunned by business interests?
Another aspect to the staffing crisis in the NHS; the excessive billing for nurses (check out the surplus kept by the agency) providing flexible, emergency shift cover.
The mismanagement of the health service is draining cash out of the system & putting it in private firms' pockets....
And no, its not a bug in the system, its a feature; its classic Tory wrecking.
And any claims by the Tories they're going to end such 'profiteering' should be ignored!
I think Robert Shrimsley (FT) is right, for the Right of the Tory party, rather than now seek a leadership election, they have a job for Rishi Sunak - be the fall guy, so after the election, they can say (even though this makes no sense to anyone but themselves), that it was Rishi being too timid in his moves rightwards that lost them the election....
Indeed, after the election fantasy/deluded politics will be the game of choice for the Tories... which might turn very dangerous
