Though Cowards Flinch

The violence on the streets of London, Birmingham and elsewhere appears to the over-active imagination as a Rorschach test; as the machinations of whatever prejudice we have at the time, be that the failures of capitalism or the implosion of the European project of multiculturalism.

On one extreme, this destruction is the last ditch attempt by a forgotten section of society, whose only bargaining chip is achieved through removing the last layer of skin that holds their communities to the mainstream, while for another extreme these actions represent the suture promoted by cultural Marxism in single-parent families and what Richard Littlejohn has called “I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now consumerist society“.

Though the statistics look grim, are they directly responsible for recent events? In Tottenham, as Mary Riddell noted in her widely read Telegraph article, there are 54 applicants for every job, while 10,000 are benefit claimants. Britain is less equal in wages, wealth and life chances than any time since the 1920s – that the majority of people were expected to just sit on their hands is unreasonable, but this bout of street violence hardly appeared like a political protest of the sort these figures might evoke.

However appearance is precisely the problem. When the students took to the streets last year for the cut to EMA and the rise in tuition fees, placards and banners, planning and spokespeople were the images that distinguished “mindless violence” from political action. Even when fire extinguishers were being lobbed from great heights, and windows smashed, nobody doubted the political message, even if the ethics of proper protest were being debated, both in the press and by activists themselves.

Not every set of actions, no matter how unpalatable, or unclear their causes, will have such easily identifiable symbols and signs to recognise. Likewise, not every action that has in some way been perpetuated by the political landscape will be accompanied by a series of Situationist inspired political banners.

As Tony Parsons said last night: “You can never tell who is fighting for justice and who is just fighting for a wide-screen, hi-def plasma telly”.

Undoubtedly looting, the destruction of communities, and the ruining of people’s small businesses and livelihoods is wrong, and should be punished rather strongly, but it is as naive to suggest there is no politicisation here, as to suggest that these events are the thoughtless culmination of greed and moral decay.

As sure as I am that crowds scattered across the streets of London, and further afield, are mixed in their motives, I am sure that a lot of the reaction towards these events are imparted without experience of protest (unlike with the students) lacking in any notion of bourgeois parody.

***

Businesses go under every day, possessions are lost on a regular basis – this, as some will agree, is business as usual. And it is wrong, but it is under-reported. What happened over previous nights are destructive – no doubt about it – and it is right for us to be outraged, but it will also help to restore some perspective. If we directed as much energy towards condemning these seemingly random attacks as we did business as usual, then we’d see less communities go under at the hands of social and geographical exclusion.

As Richard Murphy said, on the riots and the erratic behaviour of the stock market, “I [do not] condone violence … [b]ut then I don’t condone the behaviour of markets”. This is interesting, because thugs on the street smashing windows is just one type of violence – another type is the ill-considered changes to the way in which business rates are distributed to areas, which will see already poor communities get poorer.

One, more physical example of violence, can often obfuscate the extent to which the latter example can be considered violent, unjust and the culmination of greed. While rioters were condemned last night for their greed, it must not be forgotten what greed is, and other examples of it (for naysayers answer this – why should we not raise the issue of banker greed, fraud and tax evasion here, just why not?) for perspective. One example, displayed last night, is rare, while the other example is business as usual.

According to the media I’ve heard tonight, the rioting taking place can only have one of three causes. The media does not like the complexity of real life.  The three possible causes are:

1. Those involved are mindless thugs;
2. Those involved are expressing their anger because they are disenfranchised;
3. Those involved are operating under the direct orders of subversive far left organisations.

Let us discount 3), because a) it is silly b) it is from the pen of Melanie Phillips.  In this case a=b.

Let us also, with a little more consideration, discount 1 and 2 as explanations for the rioting.  This is because, while people may have come together to riot and loot, they are likely to be doing so for different reasons. 

Some may be angry that they have no job.  Some may be keen to have a free mobile handset. Still more may be there because they fear their friends would call them a “pussy” if they did not attend.  Others may be there because they want to be able to talk about it with their mates in the days and weeks to come. 

For most indeed the reasons will not be fixed, and may change during the evening. I am sure some will have gone down for a look, and found the temptation of a broken-into off-licence a little too great.

We can, ultimately, establish no single motivation, and it is useless to try.  It just makes you sound like Theresa May.

What we can say, though, is something about comparative incentives. 

Most people from richer areas, who have jobs or who have a good chance of getting a good job, will not riot in the next day or few because their retaining their job or job chance through not getting a criminal record is greater than any of the other incentives I have listed above.

It’s as simple as that. 

People from poorer, more deprived areas and backgrounds are rioting for different, shifting motivations, but they are doing so because they do not have enough invested in what the state can offer them to outweigh the benefits of that rioting.

That is, the state has temporarily failed, because a significant group of people in London have decided it is just not worth living within its jurisdiction.

What we do about it is a different matter, though for myself I think upping the incentive for more people to accept the state’s jurisdiction is a pretty good idea.  Nevertheless, the logic of the state’s failure should be inescapable, especially for right-wingers who believe that rational choice theory (RCT) is the best guide for the operation of society.

However, I suspect many of those that believe RCT is a good guiding philosophy for themselves and “the markets” will prefer not to extend thee same conception of basic human characteristics to young Londoners making their own calculations tonight.  They’ll prefer to keep on calling them “mindless”.

“…and Boris set fire to the toilets.”

No, not the words of a looter, but of David Cameron on his friend, the London Mayor, Boris Johnson – who has today been accused of showing a “real lack of leadership” for not returning from his holiday.

Though judging by his record, perhaps Boris should ignore criticism and stay abroad – he might be nostalgic for setting fire to toilets in Edmonton.

(via Justin Baidoo and Socialist Unity)

Of course, anything the blacks do will be minor compared to what’ll happen if Muslim areas get started.

Those are the words of Nick “the BNP are moderate and I’m not a racist” Griffin.

(via Twitter)

I’m heading off on Tuesday for a few days. Here, in time-hounoured fashion, are the books and articles I’m packing alongside my spare pair of pants.

• Harold Laski (1967, 5th Edition) A Grammar of Politics (London: Unwin)
• International Monetary Fund (2010) Global Financial Stability Report: Sovereigns, Funding and Systemic Liquidity (esp. Ch 3 on Credit Rating)
• FA Hayek (1990, 3rd edition) Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined (Lonon: IEA)
• David Coates and John Hillard (Eds) (1986) The Economic Decline Of Modern Britain: The Debate Between Left and Right (Brighton: Wheatsheaf)
• Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn (1988) Liverpool: A City that Dare to Fight (London: Fortress)
• Jim Bulpitt (1967) Party Politics in English Local Government (London: Longmans)
• Jamie Peck and Kevin Ward (Eds) (2001) City of Revolution: Restructuring Manchester (Manchester: Manchester University Press)
• Alain-Fournier (1913) Le Grand Meaulnes

Ah, bollox. No room for pants.

The Euro Debt crisis grows more acute. The attempt to form a currency union without a European state and a single tax system linked to the currency would always be problematic. What has made it impossible is that now, the model on which Western Capitalism has been based post the crisis of the 1980s has run into the sands.

Capitalism has always had a fundamental problem in that those who produce society’s wealth are paid too little to consume the wealth that they produce. Property income, which always represents a large fraction of all income, is very concentrated. Huge wealth flows into the hands of a small number of companies and individuals. Unless this wealth is somehow spent, the economy goes into recession.

There are several possible solutions to this. In rapidly developing economies like China today of Japan 50 years ago, profit income is overwhelmingly directed into capital investment – recently as much as 50% of Chinese national income has been reinvested. But this process of reinvestment innevitably leads over time to a lower rate of return on capital, at which point further investment becomes unprofitable. By the 1990s Japan had reached the end point of this process with profits driven to the floor and the economy entering a long period of stagnation.

There are other possible solutions – Britain in the late 19th century had very low levels of investment out of profit, but very high levels of luxury consumption by the upper classes : the building of large stately homes, the employment of armies of butlers and maids etc. That model did not survive two world wars.

The period 1945 to 1980 in Europe was a different model, combining historically high levels industrial investment with relatively redistributive tax and spending regimes to maintain demand. By the end of this period the rate of profit had fallen to crisis levels. At this point a continuation of the trend towards greater social equality would have required private capitalism had to be replaced by state capitalism ( the Tony Benn strategy ) or the post war goals of social justice and full employment would have to be repudiated ( the Thatcher strategy).

We all know which model won out, first here, and then in other countries. Under the neo-liberal model, social inequality increased, taxes on the wealthy were cut and productive capital investment shrunk to barely replacement levels. There was a big increase in conspicuous consumption by the very rich, and social pressures on the population in general to also engage in conspicuous consumption. Economic activity could only be sustained by the extension of credit on a huge scale. States, unable or unwilling to tax the wealthy, became dependent on borrowing from them to cover public expenditure. Employees were encouraged to finance ‘aspirational’ consumption likewise. But this could only work for a couple of decades until the level of debt, public and private became unsustainable.

Now the conflict of interest between the bond holding classes and the rest of society has become intolerable. Monetary union was constructed according to rules that made the bond holding interest sacrosanct. Nation states lost the power to inflate away the national debt by the issue of fiat money. This would not have matered if the issue of the new currency had been under the control of a democratic federal state with its own tax raising and monetary powers. Without such a state we have had a series of crises as the financially weaker countries are forced into successive and counter productive austerity programmes.

Think about it, if the level of debt is to be reduced, then at the end of the process the debtor states and individuals must end up with less liabilities and the creditor class must end up with less assets. The liabilities of the debtor states and the assets of the bond holders are opposites sides of the same coin. Reducing social services does nothing to reduce the assets of the bond holders, since those hit by public expenditure cuts own little or no bonds. The only ways that the debt burden could be reduced would be:
a) deliberately inflating the Euro to reduce the real value of bonds,
b) instituting a uniform European system of property and income taxes that bore most heavily on the bond holding classes and firms,
c) or more radically, declaring a general debt amnesty – something sharper than Angela’s ‘haircut’.

For some reason, those who call for the death penalty aren’t always the most trusted individuals. State sanctioned killing should never be an option, for some death is the easy way out, and what’s more humans are fallible – we often get things wrong, and with such measures there can be no reversal.

The front page of the Sun today revealed a picture of one Chris Hurst, a London organiser of the British National Party, raising his arm in a Nazi salute at a gig in Hungary.

London BNP member Chris Hurst

The Sun investigative reporter drew a link between Saga, the singer who was performing while Hurst waved his salute, and Anders Breivik who was said to be inspired by the music before he went on his killing rampage.

After years of the BNP trying to shed their fascist image, occasions such as this demonstrate what kind of party they really are, when Regional Secretaries are out doing this sort of thing.

Today, the BNP are on the defensive. The London Patriot blog, run by Bob Bailey among others, claimed the whole thing was a farce by those unpatriotic, left wing, Muesli munching bearded lesbians down at the Sun. One blogger, in a fit of absolute genius, pointed out:

The article goes onto to supposedly show Chris making what the ‘undercover journalist’ calls a Hitler salute. What a load of crap. I defy anybody who has not attended a concert to tell me that they have not put their hand in the air. If you watch the video on the page you will clearly see people raising their arms in many different ways at the SAGA concert.

They continue:

we on London Patriot know Chris for the fine upstanding man that he is and we stand shoulder to shoulder with him as SCUM like ‘Flynn’ try to tarnish his good reputation and the British National Party’s with outrageous lies.

It will interesting to see what Griffin does now. After last week’s leadership results, 9 points in it, he’s going to have to try and be decisive in order to win back dissenters – many of whom supported Andrew Brons, who many in the BNP see as the harder, more Right wing candidate. Griffin has a choice: he can look weak by doing nothing, or look weak by sacking him and giving in to the mainstream media, who so many in his party are distrustful of.

Hurst addressing the Hungarian fascist party Jobbik

While people in the party bend over backwards to defend Hurst, it’s worth looking at other notable things he’s done in his past:

• While studying at the University of Kent in Canterbury, he went to the Aardvark pub in Rotherhithe, South East London, to recruit white South Africans to the BNP with Neil McAllister, a South African BNP activist. On another occasion with McAllister in November 2008, he attended the National Front remembrance day service march, where he was seen waving the flag of the illegal Ian Smith white regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
• In July this year, possibly on the same trip as the one he was photographed on, he delivered an address to Jobbik activists in Hungary for the BNP. In a translated version of a Hungarian article referring to the meet, it refers to the BNP as a “Christian party” wanting to restore the “actual culture” in Britain.

The BNP, at the top level, are a Nazi party – young Chris Hurst has proven this here.

What’s the common quip about Edmund Burke? The guy was fearful of change; this informed his dislike of the French Revolution. But what’s the truth? He looked at the undercooked revolution and decided that the system of governance which has lasted decades over, in spite of its faults, is better than taking a risk on a totally unknown type of Republican, anti-Monarchism.

The same principle should be taken very seriously with regards to print media right now, though the industry is seriously suffering. Few titles you find in the shops made returns at the best of times; The Times was the first of the UK nationals to put up a pay wall online, the Guardian is considering its own – news from various, free sources has put the willies in the traditional print press, and efforts to retain any price tag is possibly a losing battle.

With the increasing sway of the blogosphere and citizen journalism, as well as content that is freely available online, can these papers really justify their unique claim of quality journalism – and expect us to pay for it?

Certainly what hasn’t helped the case for print is Murdoch and the Milly Dowler case, the Mirror being caught up in scandals, and – on the other hand – the furore surrounding Johann Hari.

So what comes after print? Are there standards in blogging? Can it be regulated in the same way as the press, or – to apply higher standards – TV and radio? There is a lot of hatred towards the tabloid press right now, and the protection which Hari and his own standards have received by paper owners who were only too aware of how many readers he was drawing in, have made us all question the sinking ship.

However according to some, instead of being the death of print, all this could simply empower Paul Dacre – a scary thought indeed. Could blogs and the twittersphere really knock The Daily Mail off? One would only hope, but that’s no solution, only a replacement of a problem.

Perhaps what is missing is accountability, in which case the problem becomes one of how to keep a free press, while making sure it doesn’t wield excessive power. Few people, to be sure, would argue against the PCC emulating OFCOM more – the latter widely considered having more weight, and, as Mehdi Hasan implied recently at his book launch at the LSE, may be one reason why news broadcasting is more respected by the public than other forms of journalism.

Perhaps the case for questioning how much one company can own is the better argument to have. Edward Pearce in the LRB recently said: “A law forbidding anyone, directly or through nominees, to hold more than a fixed, low percentage of any or all media would build a barrier against invincibility.” 40 years ago Ralph Miliband talked about the link in the concentration of power and conservatism. Perhaps not an inherent link, but that is the case in this country.

Now that Labour, under Miliband’s son, has made the forthright decision to take on the Murdoch press, come what may, why should Ed stop there? The dispersing of power among the UK media would be a radical move for Labour, but one that, if successful, would do permanent damage to the Conservatives, whose tune the press sing to by and large.

All in all, press standards are under the spotlight today – which is a great thing, but the solution is reform, not scrappage. Its weaknesses are bad, but what waits in the wings may be worse, or at worst lacking in standards. If reform dealt with the concentration of power, it could benefit the Labour party, and be good for the way in which we receive news too.

There are a number of things very wrong with the government’s proposals for Councils to retain the cash they collect from any local growth in business rate collection, a matter which Carl introduced to these pages a little while ago.  

Eoin Clarke has a good piece, for example, at on the way this ‘incentive’ to help business grow will actually end up militating against discretionary rate reliefs, in a way which is damaging in the longer term, especially in poorer areas.

But I think the biggest and most immediately quantifiable threat comes tucked away as ‘an option’ at the second bullet point of para 3.19 in the report:

The second option would be to retain the year one cash amounts and not uprate by RPI. Authorities paying a tariff and those receiving a top up would both see their collected rates uprated by RPI, as a result of the annual increase in the business rates multiplier. However, authorities in receipt of a top up would face a very strong incentive to grow their taxbase to offset real-terms reductions in their top up amount. This approach therefore creates a strong incentive for growth, but offers less protection to authorities with low taxbases and high needs (my emphasis).

I have done the maths. 

I have used two data sets (download excel file here).  These are  the formula grant for 2012-13 provisionally awarded to councils as the ‘baseline’ for what funding councils need; 2) the net yield from business rates for all Councils in the most recent available year (2010 data from The Green Benches), then uplifted by RPI of 4%.

From this, I have calculated the percentage of overall baseline funding which would come from business rates (more than 100% in areas where business rate collection outstrips funding need), and the percentage that would need to come from ‘top up’ (in those area where business rate collection is lower than funding need).

If this top up is NOT uplifted by RPI over, say, a three year period, we get the following kind of result:

• Birmingham loses £29.5m in core annual funding (4.1% of current formula grant)
• Liverpool loses £16.2m (5.1% of current formula grant)
• Bradford loses £14.9m (5.7% of current formula grant)
• Wolverhampton loses £10.1m (7.4% of current formula grant)
• Hackney loses £16.1m (7.7% of current formula grant)
• Knowsley loses £8.8m (8.0% of current formula grant)

And so on, and so on. Heh, the trend is not rocket science. The poorer areas with lower business rates, so those most dependent on ‘top up’, get steadily more screwed. 

In an area like Knowsley, where only 35% of core funding need is currently made up from its business rate collection, the council would need to income its business rate income by at least 23% just to stay level. 

The point is that, here, tucked away in the fine detail, is a mechanism to hit poorer areas even harder than they are being hit already, in direct contravention of the Pickles’ reassurances, set out in the ministerial foreword to these proposals:

We are determined that the repatriation of rates should happen in a fair and effective way. Those places with greatest dependency should, and will, continue to receive support, while being allowed to keep the products of enterprise.

Pickles is a liar, and this is how.