How cynical are you?

While the politicians have been busy trying to sort out a government what have you thought their priorities have been?  I caught a little of the TV coverage and it mostly seemed to be about party advantage for either the short or long term.  Is it possible that our politicians are thinking about what is good for our country as well?

Gordon Brown
Assuming that he believes what he was saying, then he believes that a Tory government who cut spending immediately will put the country at risk of a double dip recession - trying to stop them doing so, even at the cost of damaging the Labour Party's future prospects would be the right thing to do.  If he really believes this then standing down to facilitate a deal with the Lib Dems would also be the right thing to do (although he might find this harder if he believes that he has the skills that others don't to solve the issues).
I actually think that party advantage would suggest that he should have already resigned.  Let the Tories run the country for 6 months as a minority government and then find there needs to be another election - they then have the problem of being the incumbent in a difficult economic situation.  But he would believe that that would be bad for Britain.

David Cameron
If we want a government with any prospect of longevity then I think it has to be a Tory/Lib Dem coalition - anything else could fall apart at any moment.  The question is whether that is what we want.  I don't however think that there is any doubt that that is what the Tories want - there has been much talk about the fact that they don't like the idea of PR because it will give weak government - so again this fits into a "good for the country" decision (you might not like the solution, but I don't think you can argue that they don't sincerely believe this).

Nick Clegg
Here is where the rubber hits the road - and in some ways I feel sorry for Nick Clegg.  What is best for the country?  Is it a period of stable government with time to sort out the economy?  Can he and David Cameron agree sufficiently on the necessary economic policies?  If they can't then is it better to support the economic policies that he wants and try to do a deal with Labour?  And all that is before the cynicism about what might best get PR (which he would believe to be in the country's best interest) and whether the Lib Dem party would allow him to enter into a coalition with either of them, or how the country would see the Lib Dems "propping up" a failed Labour government.

Who would be a politician?

PR - Why don't politicians like it?

At last weeks hustings one of the arguments given for not having PR was that PR might allow minority parties like the BNP into parliament.  The other was that with PR we would not have strong government.  What arrogance of the politicians.  They obviously think that they know best.

Of course, we need strong government - it was strong government that gave us the poll tax, the Iraq war, and all number of other unpopular policies.  And as for the BNP - whilst I hold no truck with them or their policies - if we claim to live in a democracy and people vote for them then they deserve representation.  What both of these arguments show is a contempt for the idea of democracy - the people don't know what they are doing and we politicians should sort it out for them.

There is also a confusion between strength and speed.  So much of management these days is about speed - how quickly can a decision be made - and so little about making the right decision.  I recall at work recognising that making a quick decision and making it work was more highly valued than making the right decision.  Why do we think that speed is so important?  Particularly when it comes to law making?  Surely a law which has been discussed and agreed by parties representing more than 50% of the electorate has a greater chance of gaining the support of the people and of being obeyed and lasting than one which is imposed against the will of a significant proportion of the people.

I am writing this before the result of the election is known, so it may be that things are about to change - but it will lead to a very different kind of politics which may well need a very different kind of politician; one who knows how to negotiate and work out what is best for the long term needs of the country rather than one who knows how to force through what they want NOW.

Where are all the Characters?

What has happened to the characters in politics - and for that matter in other spheres of life?  When I were a lad (strains of the New World Symphony please) there were characters in politics - people who disagreed with the party leader, but were still elected election after election.  Similarly in business, when I started there there were eccentrics and if you wanted cast iron eccentrics what better place to look than the church!

Nowadays eccentricity seems to have gone out of fashion.  Politicians have no hinterland, as Denis Healey called it, and appear to be scared to offend the hierarchy for fear of rejection.  In business putting the hours in and avoiding making a mistake appears to count for more than having good ideas and in the church there are still some eccentrics around - but we seem to be trying to catch up.  Common Tenure appears to be making the church more like business and will I suspect lead to less eccentricity.

Before I get carried away, all was not well in the old day.  The selection criteria in all of my examples appeared to be who you knew rather than anything objective and prejudice and "unfair" behaviour abounded. But we do seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater in our search for the "safe" option.  I wonder whether today Churchill, John Harvey Jones or David Jenkins would have been put into post.

Robin Hood Tax - A Good thing?

It is also clear that such taxes could raise significant additional revenues of the order of $200bn - $400bn with minimal impact on the real economy or retail consumers.  The tax will have a highly progressive final incidence that falls mainly on the top income earners and wealth holders in society.  Report on Robin Hood Web site

When I first heard about the Robin Hood tax I was suspicious.  It sounds such a good idea and recently the Archbishop of Canterbury has written in support of it.  However, my concern was that if you raise that amount of money it has to come from somewhere - and the people it comes from aren't going to like it!  I decided to do a little research and found that the report from which the first quote came also contained:

The world’s top 1000 commercial banks have reported profits of between $700 billion and close to $1 trillion in recent years with the exception of last year when the financial crisis cut deep into these profits

So what is being proposed is to reduce banking profits by half - and we think that the banks aren't going to do anything about it?  And I'm not the only one to have thought of this: Ed West in the Telegraph and Church Mouse have raised similar concerns.

My other concern is that the motivation for this seems wrong to me.  Bankers are making so much money that most of us just gasp and someone suggests lets take some of it off them...  Well why not take some off Premiership footballers, or film stars, or business leaders?  There is a second issue behind this which to my mind may well have more merit, but seems to be getting less attention, and that is the impact that it might have in reducing the number of high turnover trades taking place in the financial markets.

Yesterday at Diocesan Synod we had a presentation on Giving for Life - the CofEs new stewardship approach.  This is rooted in a generous response to God's generosity to us, rather than, as have previous approaches, the fact that we are skint!  What is the motivation behind the Robin Hood Tax?

If it would be a good idea to reduce the short term trading in city institutions then let us debate that rather than implementing it on the back of an emotive marketing campaign about what we could do with the money raised, without looking too closely at the other impacts that it will have.  I have searched the web and failed to find anything looking at this - it is probably there - but doesn't seem to be very prominent in the current campaign.

Shorter Working Week

This article suggests that the working week should be shortened to 21 hours.  I have blogged before (here and here) about work and working hours as a vicar, and wonder about the practicality of this.  It is all very well suggesting that people cut their hours and earn less, but there are some people who cannot live on less - are we going to double the minimum wage?  Might not be a bad idea - but then of course there will be battles to maintain differentials.

And when it comes to a lot of professional work, do we really believe that people work long hours for the extra money?  I believe that most of our professionals and senior managers work the hours they do because of their will to win - their ability to do whatever it takes to get the outcome they desire.  I have blogged before about control, and of course it might be good if that could be taken away, but while people believe that they control their own destiny then it will be hard to get them to act in a way that contradicts this.

And vicars?  I know people think that we only work on Sundays, but depending on your answer to what is work for a vicar then 21 hours might not give any time to do anything other than pray and lead services - or might that be a good thing? J


Christian Aid update:

‘We had 13 children, but four of them died.’  What Leandro wants more than anything is to keep his children healthy. 80% of his family’s diet is potato. Chronic malnutrition and infant mortality are huge problems in Bolivia. Christian Aid is helping to fund seeds, tools and training so families there can build greenhouses and grow vegetables to eat and sell. Could you hold a Super Soup Lunch on 26 March? Visit www.christianaid.org.uk/super-souplunch.

Mmm - I am on a residential on 26th and will be travelling at lunchtime, so no I can't.  But is this a convenient excuse?

Children's Society Research and Tory Marriage Policy

The difference between a young person's family getting along - and not - explained 20% of the variation in overall happiness with life, whereas differences in family structure only explained 2%

There have been a number of comments about the proposed Conservative tax breaks for married couples, and I had held back from commenting as I thought that others had done a better job than me at demolishing them:

I find it staggering that David Cameron thinks that he can keep couples together by a tax break and that this is a universally good thing, what about toxic and violent relationships?  Lesley's Blog

The standard argument for a marriage tax break goes like this. Children of married parents have better and more stable lives, therefore marriage is good, therefore the tax system should support marriage. While the correlation is true, there is no evidence that proves the causality runs in this direction. Only the most bone-headed reject the possibility that stable, well-meaning couples are likely both to marry and to raise children well.  Chris Giles, FT

However, I recently discovered this report from the Children's Society, which proves what most sensible people (no prejudice there then!) think - that what children need is good parenting, which can come from married or unmarried couples.
6MACS98SBPWA
Taken with the comments on the requirements for teachers (which I blogged/ranted earlier) I have to question what planet Cameron is on - I can only assume that these issues play well with focus groups, because there is no logic involved in them.

What gets measured gets done...

I have read about Cameron's new policy on teachers, and it reminded me of the old management saying "what gets measured gets done" - and the dangers in making sure that you measure the right things.  In this case the proposal is to measure the class of degree that someone gets.  The article above well makes the point that what is required is good teachers, not necessarily academic ones.  For example why do you require a 2.1 to teach maths to 11 year olds?  Surely if we want better teachers it would be better to introduce a practical teaching qualification and require good marks in that.  After all, I didn't spot him requiring all Premiership footballers to have degrees in Sports Science, or all politicians to have them in politics.

The other thing that surprised me about the proposal is that it came from the Tories - there appears to be a shortage of people (even qualified teachers) prepared to teach (articles here).  Surely the party of "the market" should be using financial incentives to increase the quality of teachers, not socialist intervention measures!