So, where have I been?

Where indeed? Over the last few years, I have taken the opportunity to re-evaluate where I stand, politically, and am happy to say that I firmly remain a Liberal – although probably not in the sense of the word that fits with mainstream politics. I will admit I have been wrong over certain issues but remain tenacious over others. The Political Compass Test identifies me as a left libertarian; however, one should remember this is only one method of classifying political thought.

Some of my views have changed or evolved and some of them remain the same. Like many who are have been appalled at the excesses of capitalism, over the last few decades, I made the mistake of allowing socialism and statism to get the better of me: regarding Government (or The State) as a force against the polarisation of wealth and a guardian of freedom against large corporations, when, in reality, The State, to varying extents over time, has been either been colluding with conglomerates to deprive the majority of aspects of independence and self-determination, or actually, doing it all by itself.

Hence, over more recent years I have been considering the concept of Anarchism, having been drawn to it by my friend and erstwhile Liberal Democrat colleague, Jock Coats. I should explain that anarchism is a belief in a stateless (not lawless) society and has nothing to do with throwing fire extinguishers through high street store windows. For reasons I may explain in a subsequent article, I have, however, not seen such a belief as a panacea to how people should live. Nevertheless, my contemplation of it, has proved very useful in re-igniting the libertarianism in me which was becoming all but extinguished as an angry reaction to economic and social events that took place over the last 30 years or so.

For now though, I just wanted to focus on one aspect of my opinion: part of which has remained firm and part of which has changed:

I have always been a passionate advocate of small businesses, which, by their very nature, are privately, rather than state-owned, and are a feature of a free market. Albeit rather unconsciously, I have, in the past struggled to reconcile this with an opposition to privatisation and a baulking at the idea of introducing market forces into state-supplied goods such as health and education. More recently, I think I have reached a reconciliation of such a dichotomy by drawing a very important distinction between the free market and capitalism.

Much of the prevailing political and economic opinion (on all sides) seems to assume that the free market and capitalism are synonymous. I maintain they are not. For me, the free market is (or at least should be) an opportunity for the majority of individuals to create wealth for themselves; capitalism is the means by which the majority is coerced into creating wealth, not for themselves, but for a few others. It is the latter that I find repellent – not absolutely, but to the extent that it has been “allowed” to prevail in the way it has.

The aggressive advance of unfettered capitalism has seen certain corporations grow, merge, and grow again, at alarming rates, stifling any competition. With State assistance capitalism cripples and destroys the lifeblood that is small business and, hence, erodes rather than promotes a free market, forcing the majority to pay ever increasing prices for ever deteriorating goods and services, facilitating a self-perpetuating (and very dangerous) polarisation of wealth.

Having made such a distinction and thereby, identifying a problem, one may be part way to suggesting a solution. I am not sure that I have yet, but aim to get there one day. However, I do not see the solution as the removal of The State altogether as I am convinced that capitalism is perfectly capable of thriving without any assistance from Government, notwithstanding that the latter has, indeed, been partly accountable.

This, I grant you, is a very brief overview of some very complex issues and will pose many questions and provide much food for thought. I hope, in future articles, to provide further critiques of “The State” and endeavour to explain why I favour its reform rather than its abolition.

Everybody Out?

Opinion on the looming strike is by no means straight forward..

If you or I have our money invested in a bank, building society, or elsewhere, we have the right to withdraw it and keep it under our mattress – maybe because we thought we weren’t getting a sufficient return on it, or because we didn’t think our capital was safe.

In other words, one has the freedom to withdraw money capital and keep it somewhere unutilised. Similarly, one should surely have the freedom to withdraw human capital (labour), if one feels one is not getting a sufficient return or, indeed, feels one’s capital is not safe: i.e. the freedom to strike.

Why should there be the freedom for one type of capital and not another? After all, for many, labour is the only capital they have to offer.

But strike action causes disruption, you may say. Well, yes that’s the idea. Moreover, much disruption has been caused by the financial crisis of the last five years and what do you think that was, other than a mass withdrawal of capital?

Though, I am still assessing the facts over public sector pensions before I decide whether or not I support the cause of the general stoppage planned for this coming week. Gathering all the facts is not that easy and, even then, it depends in which context one sets them before reaching a conclusion on how justified it is.

Cable being pulled up to make way for Satellite

Rupert Murdoch was a candid supporter of Margaret Thatcher’s government, and he appears to remain firmly sympathetic toward the UK Conservative party (his papers The Times and The Sun supported the Tories at the last general election). Vince Cable has just been divested of his responsibility for media competition after, apparently, making effusive anti-Murdoch overtones. Ministerial responsibility for these matters has now shifted to Jeremy Hunt who has variously made pro-Murdoch comments and mooted large cuts in the BBC.

After considering this, one can’t help speculating as to how much this latest development has transpired by design: Cable had voiced his concerns over News Corporation’s bid to increase its ownership of Sky from 39% to 100%, earlier this year, and, I for one, no matter what kind of language is being used, struggle to understand why the opinions given by the likes of Jeremy Hunt are any less subjective (or more objective) than those provided by Cable.

The decision, we are told, is a quasi-judicial one: ultimately, Vince Cable would have potentially been the Judge and Jury on whether the News Corp takeover went ahead. However, if one (the one being the Prime Minister in this case) has the power to appoint the Judge and Jury, and you’re not comfortable about what ruling that Judge and Jury might make, then one, is, of course, going to find another that will make the decision you require.

For the Tories to have The Times pull the kind of sting that the Telegraph did on Vince Cable would have been far too obvious. A clever approach would be to choose another one of your mates in the media that appears more removed from the direct interest. It’s not difficult to work out that the Business Secretary must be feeling very rattled, angry, yet at the same time, vulnerable, at the moment.

So, if you’re a Conservative who, naturally, would rather have a Conservative majority government than share power with Liberal Democrats, you send along a couple of Daily Telegraph reporters, posing as members of Cable’s own party, to exploit his emotional turbulence: eventually he will give you a comment that can be construed as inappropriate and provide the key to getting him removed as the obstacle to securing your agenda.

I'm not Green enough to be shocked..

The report by Sir Philip Green on government expenditure is set to ruffle many a feather, but I for one, am not remotely shocked by his findings. As a former Councillor on Oxford City, I know only too well of the impenetrable silos of public expenditure and how both civil servants and local government officers alike, can be very cleverly evasive at providing any information that would reveal scope for some meaningful savings.

Back in 2001, when I was a member of the LibDem/Green administration, I was sounding like a stuck record with my pressing for zero-based budgeting and my passion for trying to get inside the £140million of Oxford City Council's annual spend. I am under no doubt that savings could have been revealed that would have freed up money to better serve the public and maintain and improve front line services. Suffice to say I did not get very far: some other councillors around me felt very threatened that my understanding was so obviously better than their own and I was not supported in trying to obtain information from officers.

You just need to watch the BBC's interview with Philip Green (see link top right to BBC article and video at the foot of this article) to understand the scope of just how much money could be saved. Green gives a very clear indication that obtaining information on certain expenditure amounts was no easy task: ambiguous answers (if you're lucky to get an answer at all) and the lack of accountable processes are symptomatic of how public money can be used to preserve the mini-empires of some unelected public officials on both local and national level.

This government has got it right in tackling this problem but it does beg the question as to whether, had it been done sooner (i.e. by previous governments), the welfare cuts need to be as severe as they are.

Hopefully, the BBC will leave the video up (see below): watch it, then watch it again if you feel yourself tempted to sympathise with civil servants and local government officers when they start demonstrating and striking over the cuts. Although I believe in the right to demonstrate and the right to strike (workers are merely withdrawing capital like investors did with Northern Rock), I do not believe individuals who's jobs are provided and preserved by your and my taxes have the right to be opaque about how those taxes are spent.

LibDems and CCTV

A short while after the Election, I googled +LibDems +CCTV in order to try and find out more about what how Freedom Bill would affect CCTV. All I can seem to find in terms of the Bill is that it means "further regulation of CCTV".

However, in my search I stumbled across a good few local LibDem websites that report how keenly their local councillors and activists have campaigned in favour of CCTV up and down the country. If you look to the right of the page you will see I have listed a link to all the ones I have found plus a few other links that are both relevant and interesting.

The efforts of all the local LibDem activists that have campaigned for and supported CCTV are laudible and I absolutely agree with them. However, the "Do Gooder" element in the national party must be raising an eyebrow at this as it does not sit well with what I understand to be the party's national policy on CCTV. "Further Regulation" could mean anything from tighter licensing and curbs on authorised use to effective outright prohibition. And by the latter I don't mean legislation to outlaw the use of CCTV, but rather red tape measures (rather ironically) that will make it very expensive or administratively inconvenient to use.

My experience (yes, note I use the word "experience", not "opinion") is that CCTV works. As for civil liberties, I believe it protects them, rather than erodes them. It protects the liberties of those who go about their daily, law-abiding business; it protects property and the safety of those living or working in it. Is not safety, or at least the feeling of it, a liberty?

I do understand and have some sympathy will the libertarian concerns of intrusiveness and spying. But I would rather people were allowed to protect their homes and businesses with cameras rather than guns (the latter being the Libertarian view). After all, if we are talking about civil liberties, I consider cameras far more civil than guns.

So I will await and see what the Freedom bill brings and in the meantime, as the LibDems make their national opposition to CCTV more vocal, it will be interesting to see how many of those webpages I have linked to stay live...

We are where we are

And, whichever way you look at it, a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was going to be the most natural outcome of last Thursday’s result.

Not too many years ago, this idea would have made me very upset: I would have been very vocal about it and I probably would have resigned from the Liberal Democrats over the issue, had I still been a member.

If you’ve followed my previous commentary, you’ll see how I idealised a rainbow coalition before the phrase was being kicked around in the media in the last few days. But, the harsh facts are that the numbers in the Commons barely stacked up to it and trying to control its many constituent parts would have been like herding cats. Just as importantly, public opinion would just not have worn it – and we have to remember that where public opinion is formed from what it reads in the press, 80% of the newspaper circulation in the UK is Conservative with a very big and peremptory “C”.

But, having taken a bit of quiet time to absorb certain aspects of the new Coalition’s programme and the matters over which they have agreed, I have to confess that I am pleasantly surprised.

A very important measure is that to increase the basic personal annual income tax allowance to £10,000 (it is currently £6,475). This is a very progressive tax cut as it most benefits those on modest incomes (save for those, of course, who have incomes of less than £6,475). During 13 years in power, this should have actually been a very natural policy for Labour to implement, yet they failed to undertake such a fundamental procedure towards positive redistribution.

Whilst, I am disappointed that electoral reform will not take the form of ‘STV overnight’, I was really quite surprised to discover that there are plans to transform the House of Lords into a chamber elected by Proportional Representation. This is, at least, a step in the right direction and with more and more of Britain’s political assemblies becoming subject to a fairer voting system (and particularly the House of Lords), the day when the House of Commons finally has to yield to the same must draw nearer, albeit still slower than many of us would like.

When every other elected entity in this country is subject to a fixed term, it is absolutely correct that the House of Commons should finally be subject to the same: notwithstanding that that fixed term should be four years not five. (Either way, and the case being what it is, I have long thought it also the responsibility of electors to support the elected throughout an elected term rather than engaging in the very regular populist orgy of fame-envy that it does.)

These are just a few of the issues from which I take heart and so, despite the fact that 80% of the UK newspaper circulation does its level best to discredit the Liberal Democrats and the other 20% does its best to discredit the Conservatives, and, as I sign off watching the panellists on Question Time at each others’ throats with renewed petulance....

(draws breath)

.... I remain cautiously optimistic.

Phew! Where do I start?

The days since the polls closed and the results transpired have surely proved far more exciting than the election itself: we have not seen the like of this for many a decade at least.

And this is good; it’s all good. Usually a change in party and Prime Minister happens so very quickly that the constitutional process actually gets missed by the masses. Far from what the likes of the Dailies Mail and Express would like to have you think, the deliberations of the last half-week have given an opportunity for the electorate of the country to scrutinise the political and constitutional process, to an extent whereby those of us who are both new to it, and inured to it, have gained an appreciation of it, that benefits us more knowledge about it – and in gaining that knowledge we, the masses, the public, call us what you like, gain power.

So, far from the past few days being a “Sham” or being “Sordid”, they are merely a drawn out feast of our democracy and it is quite right that such a feast should take its very natural course.

That natural course is now reaching its conclusion and, my head tells me, that the conclusion that is being reached is the logical one: a Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition.

This revelation is as difficult for me as it will be for those reading it and who share my staunch Progressive values.