| |
Diary Note
/0063
Thursday 4 July 2002
Did you miss the previous DiaryNote?
Check
it out
Just
mention Proudhon...
 Just mention Proudhon, and you
bring out the real socialists, the principled thinkers of the old
school. And my quoting Proudhon last weekend ("Property is
theft..") prompted an immediate response from my tenacious
correspondent Michael McCarthy.
My own focus was on the very broad concept of private property itself, from freeholds to
copyrights, patents and the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act. MMcM, by contrast, drew attention
specifically to the brooding power of the UK agricultural landowners - and to their conspiratorial role in
maintaining high property values. He
referred me to a remarkable new book by Kevin Cahill Who Owns Britain,
currently being developed as a website at
www.who-owns-britain.com. And the
secrecy of the UK system of unregistered land is certainly one factor in that awesome
conspiracy - a conspiracy which contributes so massively to today's housing shortages.
But this argument
packs a killer punch. For the conspiracy is deepened
decisively by factors
eminently under our immediate control. Indeed, among the leading co-conspirators are Labour Councillors, throughout the UK. They conspire to
promote the idea that the UK is short of Lebensraum, that
residential planning consents must be very carefully rationed, Green
Belt must be protected, and amenity conserved.
As a former housebuilder by trade, I know about high land values,
and the failures of land-use planning and land taxation. I wrote about the problem in early 1997, before Labour returned to power.
If you have a moment, read a short article of mine that was published at the
time in Prospect
After three attempts to break the Great Land Conspiracy
(1947, 1965, and 1976) it seems that Labour may now have given up.
We should return to the attack, for a fourth attempt, by introducing a new Property Tax upon the
ownership of land, not its occupation - look back at my own scheme, published
last January
UK Property Tax
. I hope the redoubtable MMcM will agree...
I am convinced that radicalism would now be electorally attractive, in
tackling the Super Rich. Where do you stand?
Drop me a line >
<
Top
This telling phrase appeared in an explanatory "advertisement" published this
week by
Schizophrenia Association.
I have no doubt that the allusion is correct. Our society is, for
whatever reason, becoming increasingly punitive in style. We are,
as a society, resorting more and more to prohibition and criminalisation as a
means of social control. But why? Why is it happening now?
I have two explanations.
-
My first
is that the anxiety levels of mankind are rising, instilling fears in
current generations: I argued this in my 1992 essay
-
Multiple Differential
Uncertainty, and that stands open for the judgment of others.
-
My second
is that our systems of government
have become far too centralised, and that repression and prohibition are the
only instruments available to over-centralised governments. The
redistribution of power is now a political priority of the highest order.
Micro-management is not an option, for Big Governments - witness the absurdity
of Labour's designation of ten Ministers to receive weekly reports of the
incidence of street crime, in ten specific areas - how ridiculous!
The incident demonstrates the woeful poverty of over-centralised government.
Street crime should be monitored by the local communities directly affected by
it.
Do you agree that our society is
increasingly repressive? If so, what is the explanation?
Let me know what you think
Drop me a line >
<
Top
|
|
I
reckon this is symbolic, after all. It represents
the ephemeral nature of p olitical action, activists constantly ducking
and diving, scheming and weaving, devising new "little systems" - those
few of you with "Chapel" backgrounds may remember my favourite lines
from a hymn - "Our little systems have their day, they have their
day, and cease to be..." - I am an inveterate inventor of little
systems - Ozymandias, an' all that. I reckon this beautiful butterfly,
snatched free from some Internet clip-art file, symbolises all
that.
Spinning Accelerates
July started with more spin, unashamed news massage by the
Government - listening to
Today on Monday morning
1 July, I was incensed to hear Cabinet Office Minister
Barbara Roche
extolling the creative humanity of the Government's future publication
of policies for the Rehabilitation of Offenders. She signed
off by saying "I am sure everybody will be pleased with it, when it
appears..." That is sheer impertinence, coming from a public
servant. She should either have something substantive to say, or
stay off the air...
What examples of
spin have you spotted this week? From either the Government
or the corporate sector?
Drop me a line >
<
Top
The Leak of the Year
Spinning embraces leaking. And last weekend, the
mighty Treasury masterminded The Leak of the Year. They are revising
the dreaded “Barnett Formula” (for the regional redistribution of tax
income). And the preliminary results were leaked – see
Regions
face funding shake-up from last Monday’s Guardian.
These
figures are dynamite. In terms of annual public-spending per capita,
some of the key winners and the losers are identified. And these figures are said to take account of
statistical disparities: they therefore reflect unjustifiable
differences in public spending, which ought to be rectified.
On that footing, there are certain obvious
winners. Whitehall has been short-changing the Welsh by £213 per head
(say, £600m a year, potentially increasing the Assembly annual Budget by
7%). And North-East residents are losing out too – they would
benefit by a whopping £600 each. By the same token, the
Northern Irish would lose £364 each, the Scots would lose
£600 each, and Londoners (the most favoured of all UK residents)
would lose £1,125 each – every year. These figures were slipped
out in a low-key leak to David Walker in last Monday’s Guardian – just
to get them unobtrusively into the public bloodstream and let them sink
in, over the Summer. Did you spot them? Or did this
bombshell hit you right here, on this website? And when will they
really be published?
Be straight with me now – which was it?
Drop me a line >
<
Top
Market Denial
My regular readers will be familiar with my theory
of market denial. My idea is that nation-states should
discipline rogue corporations by denying them access to their national
markets. I would wish to constrain the use of such techniques, by
international treaty – because I remain an Adam Smith free trader at
heart, and I recognise that trade constraints are a bad idea.
Nevertheless, this technique represents one of the few sanctions capable
of disciplining rogue corporations (either individually or by class) –
hit ‘em where it hurts! I advocate the use of
market denial as a sanction for unacceptable commercial behaviour, whether corporate
or otherwise.
The technique can be used selectively at all levels
of government. The Port of Baltimore, for instance, already prevents
single-hulled oil-tankers from entering its harbour. The Port Authority
insists on the high safety-standard of double-hulled vessels, as an
assurance against oil spillage. And this week, the UK Financial
Services Authority has given me another good example.
The UK authorities
long been concerned about the London
operations of subsidiaries of foreign banks that are registered in
poorly regulated jurisdictions. Where banks are permitted to operate on
a cowboy basis in their home-state, they will no longer be allowed to
trade in London. This year, some twelve banks have already been forced
to withdraw from the London market. That’s
market denial. I reckon the signs are good.
Market denial
is a mode of enforcement whose time has come. While one should at all
times be zealous to avoid abuse, the EU would be in a particularly
strong position to deploy this technique, to clean up the corporate
sector. Can you think of other examples?
Drop me a line >
Top
The unpalatable truth is sinking in.
Labour has fouled up, on local government. Labour's ideas are quickly running into the
sand, and could still cause the Party grave political discomfort.
Elected mayors are a busted flush, misconceived in principle and
ill-thought out in practice. And with a massive increase in the number and level of salaries now paid to
mediocre Councillors, the clouds of public wrath are gathering.
The Local Government Act 2000, heralded as a great
"modernising" force in local government, is dead in the water. The
think-tank Demos, the spiritual home of the formidable Downing Street guru Geoff Mulgan, has published a new critique, cleverly entitled Local
Authority? It blows the lid off the local government
reform process – check it out at
Demos.
I make no apology
for repeating my advice. I say that the introduction of regional
government (I would prefer to call it provincial government) should be accompanied by the creation of 40 or so "small regions"
within the provincial framework, most of them centred on cities, but others with
small-town groupings. Both province and region would be governed
by salaried representatives, at the rate of one each per Constituency.
That should be coupled with a deliberate extension of community (town
and parish) councils at neighbourhood level. Such a reform
would engage the whole population in the process of reform, and unleash
new enthusiasms throughout our public life. I commend it to
Labour, as third term business...
What do you think?
Drop me a line >
Top
No Contract,
No way
I rebel
at my Government's use of the spurious contract as a governmental
technique. Convicted drug users are said to consent to medication, by way of contract. Parents and pupils are said to
commit themselves, by way of school contract. Errant patients, it
is proposed, should be penalised for breaking a contract to see the
doctor, at a particular time and place. And now, prisoners on
release will get better treatment, higher benefits, if they enter into
a rehabilitation contract with the parole authorities.
Where the State is a monopoly supplier, or is empowered to
coerce the individual, it is mischievous to embellish the relationship
as a consensual one, and to misdescribe it as a "contract".
This is an abuse of language, an abuse of power. The binding nature of a
contract, as a matter of law, flows from the free and unfettered
consensus of the parties thereto. That is fundamental to the
concept of a binding contract.
And there are very few situations where the citizen can be
considered the equal of the State, genuinely free to contract - or not
to contract. Is the drug user, offered the chance to avoid
imprisonment, genuinely free to refuse medication? Is
the prisoner, offered early and better-paid release, genuinely free
to choose to remain in prison? Is the parent with a child
legally required to attend its local school genuinely free
to disregard the Headteacher, with pen in hand, poised to sign the
"contract"?
Of course not.
The sooner that this deceitful technique is dispensed with, the better.
Have you been forced to enter into any contract with the State?
Drop me a line >
Top
Back to today's
Home Page
Did
you miss the previous Weblog?
Check
it out
|
Taming the
Corporations >>
My Welsh socialism
>> 