The Reith Lectures

   I have just been reading http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18456131. This is the first Reith lecture by Niall Ferguson. It is amazing how much rubbish one man can write in one short essay. For a man who is meant to be an academic it is amazing hwo he can write a whole sequence of assertions with no justifications.

  Like many people with a strong political view he has no concern for facts or logical argument. His writing appears to be entirely polemic with no concern for rational argument. I read that he was/is a Thatcherite and I assume his advice to young people in America to join the Tea Party is tongue in cheek but he might know that saying such things will help him sell books, In that way he reminds me of John Charmley, write controversial stuff with a right wing bias and you will sell. The Daily Mail of history?

  Anyway back to the first Reith lecture, he has some interesting figures for what has happened to debt as a percentage of GDP over the last 12 years and it has increased dramatically. He also asserts that this cannot be blamed on wars, perhaps he doesn't live in the same world as me but both Britain and the USA have been involved in wars over this period and I don't know what it has cost but I am sure his researchers do know and perhaps it will appear in a later lecture.

  However one of his more right wing themes is that this debt is bad for our children or grandchildren. Well I have both, he is probably too young to have grandchildren. What is clear to me is that if we followed his recipes, I assume close the the Tea Party, my grandchildren will have no society to grow up in. To me the most important aspect of any society is that it treats people with dignity, that is what we have been striving towards for a long time.

  Perhaps it is hard to be a right wing historian, perhaps you yearn for an older world and imagine that you would be a top dog and so think it would be great. But most people lead hard working lives with little money, food or shelter. Mr Ferguson might wish to return to such a world but I do not. It appears that his next lecture might give his explanations as to what went wrong but looking at the BBC website it look like he will blame regulation! It is interesting that when a thief breaks into our house we blame the thief not the fact that there is a law against it!

 

Cameron and Hunt

Is this the key question that won't be asked? If Hunt believed that allowing the Murdoch bid was in the best interests of the country how could he find against? What ever the independent advice surely he would have ruled that the bid should go ahead in the countries interest.

We will never know since the row about phone hacking forced the Murdochs to withdraw the bid. In view of this Cameron knew that Hunt would do the right thing by the Murdochs and that is why he gave the job to Hunt. When the flack came of course Cameron would blame Hunt, but only after the deed was done!

Thatcher's Legacy Part 2

I was just reading about all the people being forced into the rented market. No security of tenure, rapacious landlords and bad accommodation. This is all the consequence of one simple ideological belief, unfortunately bought into by most sides of the centre of politics. That is the concept of the property owning democracy. Like most dangerous ideas, it sounds plausible and good. It might even be possible if the state gave everyone a house to own once they reached 18 years of age.

In the real world a significant number of people will never earn enough to afford to but a house. Mrs Thatcher came up with an equivalent wheeze, give away houses at half price. Notice that it was the ratepayers house she gave away not her own. My view of the legal profession and the House of Lords has never recovered. How come they sanctioned the government giving away something they didn't own? One day some historian might come up with a plausible explanation.

Many years later we see the consequences, not enough reasonably rented properties. The family house that were bought at huge discounts have now been sold off and are rented out, often at exorbitant rents and in some areas to students. So that well built family homes  are now in multiple occupation and families are being made homeless. We are getting back to the days of families having to be put up in bed & breakfast because councils do not have enough housing for the need.

The property owning democracy was always a chimera and by buying into it we gave condemned more and more people to live in substandard housing!

Thatcher's Legacy Part 1

  I was sitting on a  narrow boat trying to use my mobile phone and failing. So I checked to see which networks were available where we were. Out of the networks only two were there, This seemed a bit irritating and I started to wonder why.

  Then I remembered it all went back to Mrs T and her ideologically driven government. When the mobile phone networks were being set up Mrs T believed in competition so it would obviously be good if the networks competed by having their own masts and so compete over the coverage they offered.

  The consequences of such a decision was obviously beyond her and her cabinet, Lots more masts than are needed. If the central authorities has built enough masts to cover the country then space on them could be leased to the mobile phone companies. This would have reduced the number of masts needed, so avoiding a lot of duplication of masts.

  Just by where I live there has been an application for a new mast, 11.8m high. It is an example of how competition is very often inefficient.