Oh damn, still in this dream.

Which I blogged about here there is this:

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/12/universal-credit-delays-a-factor-in-prostitution-government-accepts

Wherein we find that:

Donna Ward, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) senior civil servant responsible for children, families and disadvantage, told the committee chair, Frank Field, that it had fact-checked Alston’s report, which had in passing referred to a rise in survival sex.

“He made a lot of good points. It was factually correct,” she said. “I think where the secretary of state took issue with it, and where I as a civil servant can’t be involved, was the political interpretation of a lot of what’s happened.

“But in terms of the facts, in terms of austerity, cuts to local government, in terms of the reliance that we have on the labour market and the risks we face if there is a recession – all of those things were really good points that we have taken on board, and we should take on board.”

Our last two governments have been pretty disgusting institutional pimps. And now they are admitting it, but no-one appears to care very much.

Where is the sense of institutional shame? When the BBC had to confront the legacy of Saville, it showed institutional remorse, and put safeguards in place. Fat chance that any government will do any of that. Instead a minor functionary will fall on his or her sword. Eventually.

The Department of Work and Pensions needs a complete overhaul. As do the policies which encourage the outsourcing of the responsibility for determining whether folk are eligible or not for welfare; as this means there is no political accountability for this and it can all be blamed on the the private operators providing the service to the DWP.

When it all goes wrong, the government have managed to privatise the blame. That really is the current Tory party's main accomplishment.

 www.rootsmusic.ca/2019/03/14/a-brief-history-of-why-artists-are-no-longer-making-a-living-making-music/

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-defense-of-reinhart-and-rogoffs-flawed-debt-study-2013-4

From the Business Insider, a short piece by joe-weisenthal.
Where he quotes Paul Krugman

"As Paul Krugman states in one of his (several) posts on the Reinhart/Rogoff issue: "the larger story is the evident urge of Very Serious People to find excuses for inflicting pain."

This impulse, to show your seriousness by promoting pain, is the real overriding drive behind austerity, not an academic study.

For example after Obama publicly embraced a "chained CPI" (a form of Social Security cut). Economist Dean Baker told Business Insider: "You piss on the people who care about Social Security, then you're serious."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-defense-of-reinhart-and-rogoffs-flawed-debt-study-2013-4#ixzz2QuhME9cL

We have the ex-Keynesian but now neo-Monetarist IMF World Economic Outlook report Chapters 1 and 2 here:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/c1.pdf

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/c2.pdf

And even it is advising George Osborne to relax his austerity programme.

I wonder, could some of the IMF bods actually be beginning to remember what the IMF was formed to do? That would be a turn-up, now wouldn't it?

Nevertheless, I can't see it happening: our present government has too much riding on it never being wrong. The loss of face would be so tremendous as to call into question its competence.

Not that any of us could ever be accused of calling George incompetent. Much. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/04/austerity-policy-eurozone-crisis

I quote:

It is increasingly accepted that these policies are not working in the current environment. But less widespread is the recognition that there is also plenty of historical evidence showing that they have never worked. The same happened during the 1982 developing world debt crisis, the1994 Mexican crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis, the Brazilian and the Russian crises in 1998, and the Argentinian crisis of 2002. All the crisis-stricken countries were forced (usually by the IMF) to cut spending and run budget surpluses, only to see their economies sink deeper into recession. Going back a bit further, the Great Depression also showed that cutting budget deficits too far and too quickly in the middle of a recession only makes things worse.

Isn't it amazing how we frame political debates?

In the UK we have just had a reading of a new "Welfare Reform Bill" including a section on a "Benefit Cap" which will limit benefits for the unemployed of most kinds: this has been done on the grounds of expense. Quite rightly people see they are paying out from their taxes what they consider to be "excessive" benefits. One set of figures I saw mentioned the savings from the Benefit Cap alone would amount to £270M a year, which is almost £5 a year for each person in the country, or almost £10 a year for every tax-payer. However, the House of Lords amended the teeth from the bill (much against the will of the people, damn elitist House of Lords scum) by scuppering any inclusion of Child Benefit in the equation.

Now, a few folk with kids would become homeless over this "Benefit Cap" and maybe as many as 60,000 will be affected by it. But the tax-payers, most of whom appear to approve of this return to the values of Dickensian society, aren't too bothered about it, because they'll each be saving almost £10 a year. This could buy three pints of beer or half a bottle of cheap whisky, and that's not to be sniffed at.

And at the other end of the spectrum apparently tax evasion costs the UK some £69.9 Billion a year. This doesn't apparently take into account legitimate though unethical tax-avoidance. If this could be fixed it would put over £1,100 in each person's pocket, or well over £2,200 in each tax-payer's pocket. Or pay for well over half of the UK's total healthcare budget.

But really, who wants an extra couple of thou, or a decent health service, when we could be evicting families for the price of a few pints of beer a year. I mean to say, it all adds up, doesn't it?

Noblesse Oblige. The poor are always with us. Unless we can find a way of shipping them abroad, or encouraging them to live a life of homelessness where they will only be a minor drain on society until they die at approximately aged 47.

I know folk like Cameron have to pander to the ignorance and prejudices of the voting public. And it sure helps if the voting public are kept ignorant and prejudiced. I mean to say, even the Labour party agrees with the coalition that the "Benefit Cap" is a good thing, because it too has to appeal to the voting public.

I do think that we should educate our folk to be able to think critically, and if necessary, that education should be beaten into folk when they are children. But this is because, as an elitist, a snob, and someone who likes to occupy the moral and intellectual high ground, I have little time for the ignorance and prejudices of the general public, especially when they are informed quite as badly as they appear to be.

X-posted to talk_politics

Caught Jacob Rees-Mogg on Newsnight last night, with of all people Will Self.

Rees-Mogg made a number of uncontested claims during the interview, at which Self was the other guest. At one point Rees-Mogg suggested that the UK's 'Structural Deficit', at some seven-point-mumble percent, which he claimed to be "almost eight" is amongst the highest in the world. Neither the interviewer, nor Self questioned Rees-Mogg on which countries had a greater structural debt. Sloppy interviewing, or giving Rees-Mogg an easy time? Who knows?

As it happens, the countries with higher 'Structural Deficits' than the UK are (figures for 2004 alas):

USA -25.56%
Japan -24.86%
China -9.75%
Germany -8.33%
France -7.46%

And the UK -7.43%

So all the countries with larger structural debts have larger economies. And as the 5th or sixth largest economy in the world we have the sixth largest 'Structural Debt'.

I mean, I don't think that Will Self should necessarily have all this stuff at his fingertips....but the journalist interviewing Self and Rees-Mogg should have at least a grasp of the questions at hand. Shoddy, Newsnight, shoddy.

Given Boris Johnson's recent statements

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11642662

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/davehillblog/2010/oct/13/boris-johnson-government-housing-benefit

Has the time come for Boris to leave the Tory party and either stand as an independent or actually join the Labour party?

More data comparing Ireland, Spain, the UK etc...

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/24/recession-ireland-spain-recovery 

Well, there you go.

There is one anomaly, as mentioned in the comments section: and that is Poland, which didn't have a housing bubble.

And just for the record, people should know that I understand that cuts have to be made: but it is the timing and nature of the managed (or otherwise) implementation of such cuts I think the coalition is in danger of getting catastrophically wrong. And though in many ways unfit to govern, Gordon Brown at least seemed to have the right policy about this particular crisis.

Yesterday that class-traitor Mervyn King addressed the TUC:

www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/sep/15/spending-cuts-mervyn-king-tuc 

But as he admits, though the current mess is the fault of the Banks, the Legislators, and those whose duty was the oversight of policy, it is the state sector that will have to pay for all this by being cut to the bone.

So there are at least two of us that think it wasn't the public sector's fault: but why do I still feel that opinion is, for the educated upper-middle class, a minority one?

Sometimes I feel some folk today have a stupid sense of entitlement similar to the Aristos of yore, but without the sense of duty that meant those Aristos weren't totally without some redeeming qualities. The bourgeois middle classes never really got noblesse oblige.