Retired Professor of Political Economy
(Lancaster University, UK - retired 2021)
(also #ProfDJ across the Lune Valley)
Contributor: North West Bylines #NoBridge
So now cash-strapped NHS trusts are being required to balance their books, and as such are being forced to choose between repairing buildings or retaining staff.
This engineered crisis of the NHS looks to be accelerating as the Tories use their last months in Govt. to squeeze the health service some more & ensure the maximum mess for Labour to deal with on gaining power (a mess so big the Tories will soon start blaming Labour for not clearing it up).
Between 2015-21, Alberta (Canada), to 'encourage' Shell's investment in the province, allowed the Oil company to register (and sell!) double the amount of carbon credits related to avoided emissions at it's facility in the province;
Dignified as a 'subsidy', but effectively allowing 'phantom' carbon credits to be used to off-set real emissions through the market for carbon credits.
Thus more emissions legitimated & a juicy profit for Shell. Another scam!
As Kenan Malik concludes, the Imprisonment for Public Protection 'regime provides a morbid illustration of how the moralising of social problems can lead politicians to leverage cruelty as a social good'!
Malik argues (correctly to my mind) that the IPP punishment logic was (and is) indicative of how our political class see moral failings not social situations as the driver of behaviour... a morality that they see themselves as guardians of!
As tennis (WTA) agrees to be hosted in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi's deride 'outdated' depictions of their treatment of women, a feminist activist is jailed for eleven (!!) years effectively for wearing dungarees.
Some tennis players are outraged, others are taking the money; if you're taken in by the idea that this will encourage Saudis to reduce its repression of women, it may be time to stop & reflect on reality!
While trust in Government is failing (see earlier post) this has not merely been caused by recent actions of the Tories.... Inquiries into the Horizon IT persecutions & the infected blood scandal have again & again revealed duplicity & malpractice by Govt. & associated institutions.
Certainly the Tories have compounded the issue, but our political class' contempt for normal people & their difficulties has also driven the longer-term decline in trust!
Scott Galloway (NY Stern School) sums up the misconception(s) the rich have about their success (which they try to make us believe too):
'What I’ve found is that the majority of people’s success is not their fault. And I think something that plagues people, especially tech bros, is they conflate luck with talent'!
Its also the networks they're embeded in, he notes, that lead them to quickly be presented with (new) opportunities.
Hey, Soul fans; if you're in Kirkby Lonsdale this afternoon, why not join ProfDJ for four hours of soul - yes, its Soul Sunday at the Royal Barn (New Rd.) again.
They'll be timeless classics, northern soul, some Motown, a bit of southern soul, but everyone's a treat (and all played on vinyl).
You can expect to hear: Aretha, Marvin, O'Jays & Love Unlimited and so much more
See you there! Kicks off around 2.00 & runs through to 6.00(ish).
If voters don't trust Government & a resulting cynicism about politics spreads further, then democracy is under threat from populists & other agitators who claim to offer another way to organise society.
This may not be accidental but an agenda driven by the right to push us into the eager hands of anti-democratic forces;
However, this corrosion of trust has been compounded by a media that has forced/allowed centre & left into similar sorts of duplicity.
When I was assembling my last book (Corporations: A research agenda), I became quite interested in Mondragon in Spain as an alternative way of organising businesses (and featured them in the book).
Somehow I missed this recent profile on the Spanish Cooperative conglomerate. It make for an interesting read when we are told there is no other way of running firms in capitalism.... because clearly there is!
Yes, to some extent that was the Yugoslave experience in 60s/70s.... started off looking quite radical in economic organisational terms, but then stripped back into more 'conservative' practices
Its been clear for ages that many public service cuts are false economies.... as a friend of mine pointed out some time ago, if you cut early intervention & prevention services (which can be relatively cheap & effective), you then enlarge the demand for more expensive (and often mandatory) crisis services....
A new IFS study that looked at closing police stations, suggests, likewise that every £1 saved by closing a location increased social costs by £3!
So despite effectively distancing himself from the Tory party & campaigning on his merits as West Midland Mayor, Andy Street has lost be a narrow margin (and after a recount in Coventry).... now we being confronted by Tories saying well, of course, Labour should have expected to win & being this close shows how strong the Tory vote still is....
No doubt the reading of the runes will continue tomorrow, as it has today... but in the end we actually just need an election, sooner rather than later!
As with so many things in Britain, the green transition in housing is hampered by infrastructure under-investment - we (the country) have been living in a short-term present driven by the electoral cycle & a lack of vision in our political class.... and its now come round to bite us in the bum.
Only when we start to think strategically (not tactically) about our political economic problems will we be able to engineer better solutions!
Sadiq Khan, makes it three for Labour City Mayors as he bats aside the Tory challenge, delisted some 'excited- Conservatives claiming they might win....
So two out of three high profile Labour city mayors have been reelected - Andy Burnham & Tracy Brabin - now we await the result in London (although the ever-reliable John Curtice has predicted a Khan win buy around 10%)....
here's the ever interesting David Allen Green on why regulating the press/media may be easy to demand but is (now) much more difficult to achieve.
For this of us who see the control of the media & what its owners do with that control as a key problem for the UK's democracy, this is what one can call a 'sobering read'!
If you take the BoE at its word (to be frank I wouldn't) then increases in wages are a significant aspect of the UK's recent inflation problem... countering that many (including me) have noted that workers real wages have yet to regain the level from over a decade ago.
However, that's not all workers: new solicitors have seen their entry-level wages rise by around 50% in the last five years.... now reaching around £150k for 'magic circle' elite law firms...
