Misfits and Apprentii

I love the Apprentice, where else could you find such choice one liners as 'I'm not a one trick pony, I'm a whole field of ponies.' (Intelectual featherweight Stuart Baggs 'the brand.') and 'Everything I touch turns to sold.' (Baggs again)? Faintly ridiculous people who manage to get on in life with pure pigheaded drive and inflated ego will always make good television, purely for arse over tittery alone. Another viewing pleasure is Channel 4's excellent MisFits, the superhero ASBO drama based around 5 minor miscreants given superpowers by a passing storm. It is difficult to say which of these two shows should be considered less outlandish, but it is certainly the MisFits who have more fun.

The two sets of people couldn't be more different, thrusting business types who will do anything to 'get on' and those left behind, ASBO or no where they in the words of one J. Cocker 'Dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do.' Those who are left behind by dreams of avarice and have an imposed ceiling as to what they can achieve and the quality of life that they can lead and those who may, if they can convince enough German people that goulash crisps are 'traditionally German' earn money beyond most of our dreams. The tuition fees debate has been a loud one but the voice that hasn't been heard as often as the one chanting epithets at Nick Clegg is one taking a real stand against the marketisation of our society. University graduates are to be encouraged by their huge fees to become a thrusting army of young Apprentii, marketing their skills to the highest bidder and 'getting on', making money with no real regard for what makes a good society for all. Every graduate competing with other ones to get full value for their fees with the rewards for becoming a banker or a marketing director far outweighing those of becoming a social worker or a teaching professional. No middle ground of being a well-educated graduate with a decent job who works hard but doesn't have a need to strive to earn more and more money for and from the Lord Sugarlumps and Sir Phillip 'tax efficient' Greens of this world. Fewer services in the future have the same effect, with no local library, free childcare or cheap leisure facilities life for those in the lower middle becomes worse, meaning in order to live a life in good conditions you continually need to be more like an Apprentii, not do a job you wanted to do but get into sales, eventually you may become a director and be able to squirrel away money yourself. Those who miss the boat or who don't want to catch it had better get used to a lower standard of living because the Apprentii and their masters earned their money and don't want it taxed, that would be 'anti-aspiration'.

With the marketisation of everything we are becoming a society of Misfits and Apprentii. In its most extreme example it is the contrast between those who if they are working are on a wage that barely pays for the cost of living compared to the denizens of big business. Things will get worse for the poorest but a new ceiling on quality of life is now being imposed on those who earn more but live with the same worries of watching their standard of living disappear. Cameron says that to tax the richest more is 'anti-aspiration', however by not asking the richest in our society to pay he is shutting off the aspirations of many to get on in life without wild dreams of avarice but to live a comfortable life in a good society. Forcing students to pay £40,000 in fees throughout their life is anti the aspirations of the majority to do a decent worthwhile job and not have to worry about the continuing erosion of services on which they may rely, or a huge debt burden which they will never pay off. As provision is shrunk, services disappear and the next generation are forced to pay for the mistakes of the last one, the chances for graduates and non graduates alike to merely 'get on' by doing a job whose worth isn't completely measured by the weight of its paycheck will become fewer and fewer, many more of us will be Misfits in our own society, trapped by a ceiling of increased outgoings and fewer services. It's a shame none of us will have superpowers though, nor fields of ponies.

Fuck FIFA (Gently)

Whilst I sympathise with all the siren calls to withdraw from FIFA after the loss of the world cup it does leave one with a moral conundrum. As one of those who has called on us to withdraw from FIFA or at least stick a hand up and say 'please Sepp can we stop the pillaging of relatively poor countries?' before any sort of bidding how does one associate with those who wholeheartedly 'backed the bid' and were prepared to do anything to get it because it's football and we love football?

It's not a difficult conundrum but one every real football fan comes across every day. Say you're a Villa or a Sunderland fan, how do you reconcile your love and undying support for your team with the fact that it is effectively a corporate entity? (I'm Wednesdayite so these dillemmas are but a dream.) Answer it's a mortgage of the soul one makes every day. You do it for love. The answer lies in the fact tht these teams can, as can Wednesday get close to 20,000 watching them play in the paintstripper premier. This is the point, we almost don't support a team, we support a culture. Kinks fans still go and see Ray Davies, for Sunderland memories of Bob Stokoe are confined to Football Focus, but we are all still inescapebly in love.

This is our strength, we can call out FIFA on their corruption tomorrow because there will still be 3,000 to see Chester FC, close to 10,000 to see Bradford and 40,000 for a Sheffield derby even if it was played in the dogshit shield. My point is that our game will survive whatever and that our FA should build bridges, work hard and make friends, undermine FIFA wherever possible sort out corruption and be for the good of the fans because we will support football, have its best interests in our heart World Cup or no, we've got nothing to lose. I'm not sure Qatar or Russia can say that. I back the bid to rid the game of corruption.

Kick The Bums Out!... Err Well Try.

Tomorrow everyone's favourite punchline (Try it with 'What pisses off Heather Mills?) Nick Clegg unveils the last bit of his constiutional reform type thingy. A magnificently bizarre piece of legislation that tries to make the House of Lords bigger before it gets smaller, redraws constituency boundaries while neglecting 3.5m potential voters and prepares us for the Lib Dems ungallant loss in the forthcoming AV referendum. There is though one last cherry on this massive reform cake. The proposal to allow us to throw an MP out if he has committed serious wrongdoing and 10% of his constituents wish it so.

Here's where the NUS are added to the cake mixture, just before this metaphor fails to rise in fact. Spurred on by Nick Clegg's remarkable decision to redefine the word 'pledge' to mean 'We might do it in the only situation which is never going to happen.' and a love of sentances containing the words 'hoist' and 'petard' they are going to try and get 10% of Nick Clegg's constituents to sign a petition to recall him and hold a by-election*. It's a great idea. Those with a genuine grievance against Nicholas William Peter Clegg (i.e. those constiuents who voted for him believing him to be for the things he said he was for on May 6th) will be able to hold him democratically accountable. The rest of us can sleep a little bit sounder knowing that the word 'pledge' isn't just good for cleaning up dust off mantelpieces and/or indulge in the most poetic bit of justice possible unless Carol-Ann Duffy is planning to take a golf club to Piers Morgan's face. Or will we? In short, no.

The long version of this answer could however still be interesting. The wording of the proposal makes clear that it is for cases of 'serious wrong-doing'. Like setting fire to a fellow MPs duck house or pissing in the Chief Whip's moat then. I am of course being flippant, but the point is it's not for making politicians promises. Anyway I'm sure Nick, honest politician that he is, can point to 'looking at the books', 'the nature of a coalition' or 'Dave said he'd lock me in his new IKEA cupboard' as a perfectly legitimate reason for his change of opinion. The most important point however will lie in the detail of the proposal. Will it a) Allow constituents to collect the 10% of signatures then refer the MP to some form of tribunal (more democratic) or b) Mean that MPs have to get caught doing something naughty by a parliamentary body before the signatures mean anything in law. If a.) then then this could cause massive problems for Clegg. The Deputy-PM would have to answer questions in some sort of tribunal with the constituents being able to make a representation about why they think he should be recalled. No doubt Clegg would win but having your broken promises splashed all over the papers for days doesn't help people's trust in you. Seondly on this point Clegg is the worst at looking convincing ever. He has an obvious facial tick when struggling to justify himself and can barely conceal his anger when someone has the temerity to question his integrity or fallibility. Tony Blair he ain't.

Still in all likelihood this isn't going to happen. I doubt very much that the proposal will be worded as a) as its an obvious beartrap, not just for Nick Clegg but for his fellow politicos. Went on a rally to 'Save our Hospital'? Government shutting it? We'll see your Rt. Honourable arse at a tribunal then pal. All very embarrassing. No chances are it'll be b.) so it won't change much. You'll have to be incredibly stupid as an MP to trigger it I'm sure. However even if Clegg is never questioned it will still be incredibly politically damaging and embarrassing to him. Got your 10%? Ok, well next ask him 'what he's afraid of? Too much democracy? I thought this was the new politics of accountability? We're only trying to make you accountable Nick. Why won't you let us?' (Cue TV interview, pained expression, the phrase 'I understand frustrations but what people have to understand...' Never good. Next step, 'well your reforms mean nothing then Nick.' 'What was that about the 1832 reform act?' (Cue pained expression 'This is real meaningful reform...'). All pretty embarrassing. Lastly how will fellow Lib Dem MPs react to knowing that at least 10% of people in their leaders' constituency don't just want him out, but want him out now. I know what I'd think. I'd want to bake another cake, this one's just been burnt.

*The NUS are also trying to recall Stephen Williams and Don Foster, but they're not nearly as tragically comic.

My Week: What Recent Developments Tell Us About The Coalition

The sound and the fury this week has surrounded has surrounded student protests against tuition fees and Nick Clegg's struggle to justify the unjustifiable. Firstly I find it strange the way that the 'riots' have been covered and discussed. It seems that protestors can only either be peaceful marchers or violent anarchist thugs. No mention what-so-ever of the importance of direct action in protesting. The reason for this is we know that merely marching doesn't work. This was shown by the juxtaposition between the exchanges in the commons between Clegg and others and what was going on outside. Nick Clegg as all politicians do claimed privelige access to facts while respectfully disagreeing. However his disagreement with those outside is imposing fees of up to £45,000 on future students. By his own definition he won't think again if all people do is march and say 'I don't agree with Nick.' This isn't to condone lobbing fire extinguishers at coppers, but occupation, disruption and disobedience is vitalto showing government how angry we are and that people will not stand for Nick Clegg and David Cameron's constant disagreement with themselves

Documents obtained by the Guardian show that the Lib Dems were prepared to ditch their pledge in the only likely scenarios which would see them in government. This being the case, why sign a pledge saying that you will oppose ANY increase in fees, by ANY government. Not intelligent, unless you have a real disregard for the poor saps pushing this pledge and other swiftly ditched policies and opinions. Other developments this week make this painfully obvious.

These are the repealing of animal welfare standards and the putting of fast food companies in charge of aspects of health policy. Not huge issues compared to £80bn in cuts and massive changes to higher education, but this is the point. There can be no defence of these proposals as important for cutting the deficit, they are purely ideological policies of the most extreme type of Conservative thinking. So why are they happening? The government claims that it is moderate and the Lib Dems are its moderating influence. So why are extreme policies being introduced here? Because they can be. They show that the Conservatives are doing precisely what they want with Lib Dem collusion and I rather think we should see the coalition's larger policies in this same ideological context instead of buying the line that these are difficult decisions taken for our benefit. If a government thinks cutting chickens beaks off is 'In the national interest' then its claim to think that harsh benefit cuts and trebling tuition fees to be carries no wait what-so-ever. Time for direct action to stop a government from doing what the hell it wants against popular will.

Tax Avoidance And Evasion: The Biggest Issue Facing Us Today

There are several slogans currently being pushed by the coalition government. These range from the spurious 'There is no alternative' (there always is, it's just that you think the alternative is not as good, others may not agree.) to the faintly patronising 'We're all in this together' and its corollary 'Together in the national interest.' . The main point of these slogans and the arguments they try and put across is fairly obvious. These are that unpopular decisions asking citizens to give up state help, services and tax have to be made and are on the whole fair, responsible and the right thing to do. Juxtaposed to this is the deficit figure, the national debt and the spectres of Greek style crises as well as images of benefit scrounging layabouts who are spending our money on mansions in Kensington. There is however another figure we could juxtapose with the cuts: that of avoided and evaded tax contributions.

There is an important distinction between avoidance and evasion, one that sometimes lost amidst the rhetoric, even amongst experts on the issue such as Danny Alexander Chief Secretary to the Treasury who gave a speech promising to clam down on both at the Lib Dem conference despite his own run in on his own Capital Gains Tax arrangements. Evasion the government shouldn't need to discover any great moral purpose to crack down on, it's illegal as well as immoral. Estimates by Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK put this cost to the UK as high as £70 bn a year. Others dispute this figure but what is not under question by definition is that the UK is legally entitled to this money. Obviously it would not be possible to recoup every penny both due to the sophistication of the crime and the sheer scale of it but just as we believe that the police should investigate every murder no matter how difficult and whatever the crime rate, our government has a moral duty to go after those who perpertrate this crime. Especially given the 'There is no alternative' and 'Together in the national interest' rhetoric. Recouping 1/10th of this sum, which is legally ours as taxpayers would remove the need for the most painful cuts to the poorest. Or if the government was differently inclined, a whacking great tax cut or £7bn more of the deficit. Your political hue decides the alternative. I would also say that pursuing this money would be very much in the national interest.

It is this first point that most angers the protesters I joined in shutting a Vodafone store last week. It is a well covered story but in short George Osborne went over to India to promote Vodafone in India (a country with whom they are also in dispute over taxes) days after writing off a tax bill which HMRC was in dispute with Vodafone over for an estimated £6bn, with Vodafone agreeing to pay roughly £1bn. A senior HMRC official described this as 'a spectacular cave in.' and Vodafone was also reported to have set aside at least £2.5bn to settle the claim. The UK government was legally entitled to this money, or thought it was, so why did it not try to recoup it? Especially at a time when 'there is no alternative.' £200m extra gained would have stopped cuts to the Disability Mobility Allowance which will leave disabled people in care homes stranded. £80m extra a loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, a business aiming to lead the UK's industrial recovery. One can dispute whether the amount gained would have been the full £6bn but every pound not gained is an extra cut that has to be made according to the coalition's own highly dubious position that the alternative would be bankruptcy.

Imagine my shock then to discover that the UK government and George Osborne in particular has now signed a deal with Switzerland, the Tom Hagen to the tax evaders Vito Corleone, to enable it to maintain secrecy for UK nationals' assets that sit in Swiss banks allowing the Swiss to effectively operate as an encouraged tax haven which the government are effectively promoting. UK nationals hold $61.5bn in undeclared assets in these banks, assets which in many cases will be the proceeds of tax evasion. Due to the anonymity of the individuals who own these assets they will go untaxed. Even though in many cases they legally should be. Effectively then the government is promoting criminality. Compare this with the lack of encoragement for benefit claimants to claim what they are legally entitled to. This could be linked to the appointment as a trade minister of Stephen Green, a former boss of the Swiss division of HSBC. Nice to know some of us are in this together, even if it excludes the majority of us.

Tax avoidance is a more difficult issue. It is legal but morally dubious, especially at a time of government imposed austerity. Tax avoidance mostly stems from the fact that the rich can sidestep the tax system in a way that an ordinary person, charged PAYE can't. In the case of Phillip Hammond he had what most of us would take as salary paid as a dividend so avoiding paying a higher rate of income tax. Perfectly legal but given the governments rhetoric morally dubious. All kinds of tax avoidance schemes exist, from Tesco's dubious holding companies to Topshop head honcho Phillip Green transferring ownership of his company to his wife before it paid one of the biggest dividends in corporate history. Our revulsion at this type of behaviour should be political. How can Nick Clegg, David Cameron and George Osborne be said to be promoting fairness and a 'progressive' system when it is one that legally allows the richest opportunities that are denied to the poorest? Nick Clegg was vehement in his defence of the Comprehensive Spending Review as being 'progressive and fair' even when the IFS said the opposite, apparently as we should put it into perspective: cuts in benefits would get people in work, despite the laying off of 490,000 public sector workers, and other such unproven though theoretically possible claims. However perhaps we should put the cuts into a greater perspective. We live in a society which affords great priveliges to the richest and in times of hardship attacks the poorest. Forcing a JSA claimant to pay 10% of his rent from his £65.70 a week dole if after a year he is still out of work while a multi millionaire can legally pay under 20% tax is not a fair and progressive response to a budgetary crisis. It is a gargantuan moral failure of our politicians not to tackle this issue. If society continues like this then then the next time a budgetary crisis occurs it will again be the poor that pay.

These two issues are I think two of the biggest facing us today. How can our self styled 'fair and progressive' government claim that these cuts are fair when it isn't even prepared to enforce its own tax code and is promoting criminality on a huge scale? This issue is non-negotiable. Every tax cheat needs to be chased fully and until there is an attempt to do this any cut can be decried as 'avoidable' 'unfair' on the grounds that it puts criminals above law abiding members of society, even before we get to the fact that these criminals can well afford to pay for their crimes, and those who are paying for them can't. Secondly if we want to build a fairer society we need a debate about tax avoidance and its costs and be asking why we afford these priveliges to the super rich like royals of old, free to decide how much of their taxable income is spent on the good of their fellow citizens and how much on yachting and diamond encrusted cocktails while the rest of us, from those at the bottom to the upper-middle class are left without much of a stake in wealth creation in our society. Unless tax avoidance is made much more difficult then we will never be all in this together, no matter how much the coalition wish it to be the case. Unless tax evasion is tackled fully the government do not even have a case to say so and are lying or more naive than a believer in Simon Cowell's love of music when they use any talk of 'fairness' 'togetherness' or any justification of their actions other than their own idological antipathy to the most vulnerable.

Go Ed!

With the election of Ed, rather than David Miliband the Labour Party has obviously taken a risk. This risk has many Tories either professing themselves to be laughing over their Notting Hill gastro-pub lunches or bizarrely flinging vitriol about ‘Red Ed’ or ‘Brown Ed’ or whatever smear it is they think it is particularly opportune to use at that moment in time. This may seem strange, how can Ed Milliband be an unreconstructed Brownite and a Leftist usurper ? After all the Labour left and Gordon Brown’s version are about as close together as the ideologies of Vince Cable and George Osbor… oh hang on. Seriously though the cheers and the jeers do represent the two sides of the Ed Milliband gamble. Those cheers come about because Ed is not David, he doesn’t pose the obvious problems that David would pose the Tories. However the jeers come about because of the opportunity. In the eyes of the public, if not politicos, Ed is a blank canvas. Similar to Cameron he can be associated with past failures, in fact they are very similar in that respect, both had a hand in a failed manifesto that lost the election before the next they will fight, both could be tangentially associated with past policies (ERM, Golden Rules etc) but neither are fatally tied to them. This is why the right jeer, they want to paint him as an inevitable failure, a union man and an indecisive dullard. One should in this respect remember Labour’s taunts at Cameron: toff, lightweight, unable to take the right of his party with him, etc. That went well.

So Ed represents a risk but also a great opportunity: a chance for new policy, new thinking and in the shameless words of Cameron and Clegg a new way of doing politics. In this respect Ed Milliband should copy some (but not all) of David Cameron’s manoeuvres. By this I don’t mean triangulate in ‘the heir to Blair’ mode Cameron, tough political times call for tougher politics. One must have a look at Cameron’s end destination: 25-40% cuts, free schools, a half privatised NHS. Cameron reached this point by dodging needless battles, identifying the government’s weak spot and convincing people he is on their side while not fighting needless battles where and when the coalition is strong, even when you think you may have a case, the political weather is likely to change and this is when to strike. When Cameron and co. did strike, boy did they strike, here is where public opinion may be won for measures of the left: where Cameron and co. have failed.

Which policies would do this? Ones that capture the divisions and contradictions in the coalition (both Tory-Tory and LD-Tory) as well as setting out a quite different direction where the coalition can be characterised as wrong. In order to do this he should

1. Agree with the coalition (in general) on Civil Liberties. With the proviso that, as Labour did it will come up against the compromises of power in this area. The continuation of ASBOs and reductions in police should be seen as dividing lines.

2. Support a similar, though distinct version of IDS welfare reform. The biggest disincentive to getting off benefits is not that benefits are astronomically high but the fact that taking low paid work means that one loses all of one’s benefits rather than it being incrementally reduced as one works more. Labour should praise IDS for realising this and back him and the Lib Dem’s consciences against Osborne and Cameron’s urge to plunder this budget.

3. Back the Lib Dems in their opposition to Free Schools program making the argument that it is a centralisation of power rather than representing localism, and that it is a waste of money that could be better spent improving schools for all, without resiling completely from the original idea of academies which was to direct much needed funds and expertise into failing schools.

4. Flesh out his statement that Alistair Darling’s deficit reduction plan is a ‘starting point’ keep the bulk of the plan but introduce a policy of an ‘escape hatch’ if growth struggles and state that more would be done to raise money from tax rises rather than spending cuts. A Tobin tax should be strongly considered as well as Andy Burnham’s proposal for a LVT replacing council tax, focus on this in the second half of the parliament.

5. Shame the coalition on their green record. Not only is this an important issue and source of division amongst the coalition, it exposes the completely shameless difference between their PR and their policy. Promote green industries as the centre of the campaign to cut the country’s energy use, the people’s bills and create new skilled manufacturing jobs. The aborted ‘Green New Deal’ perhaps?

6. Don’t jump the gun on trident. State that it should be a part of the Defence Review.

7. Don’t get caught ought on immigration: one of the oldest wars of attrition in politics. Let it be seen in the context of the government’s failings rather than as a moral crusade, an immigration cap rather than points system will likely provide ample examples of unfairness while giving the coalition a chance to fail on its own terms.

8. Get tough on the NHS: supposedly protected but facing real cuts and a top down reorganisation when the NHS is a great achievement of New Labour. A bad case of coalition hyperactivity could well result in a trump card for Labour.

9. Get some goodies ready for 2015. Labour will think that George Osborne will not manage to reduce the deficit entirely by 2015. If this is the case Labour will have a ready made argument that they need to promote growth. If he does manage it, the argument will be about how much destruction has been wrought on the country by the cuts and how to improve slashed public services and improve the lives of those hurt by the cuts. Either way this can’t just be done by spending promises, but by targeted tax cuts to the poor and middle class, such as lowering VAT

10. Keep calm and bide your time!

Coulson & Tory Defences of him.

I don't have a clue about what went on in the Andy Coulson case. He may be an innocent know-nothing who miraculously rose to edit one of the nation's newspapers and subsequently be talented enough to be appointed as the main press advisor to the PM whilst not knowing the reprehensible tactics that his reporters were using in his newsroom. Inquiries into the matter so far (from the police, the PCC, and parliament) haven't proved this, nor have they proved the opposite, that Coulson was and is the unscrupulous ogre many people imagine him to be. (He has some form on this with an £800,000 bullying claim accepted against him.) Quite rightly people like Iain Dale point out that he hasn't been formally charged with any wrongdoing, a perfectly legitimate defence, one which until the NY Times article on this sorry business came out was perfectly acceptable. One might call it the 'You hate him anyway defence' which in the absence of proof or significant suggestion of wrongdoing invites the unbiased observer to view the accuser's bias towards the accused. It works well with Coulson. People on the left have every reason not to like him, he works for a Tory PM, he worked for Rupert Murdoch, specifically the NOTW and doesn't seem a pleasant chap. Added to this is the accusation of mischief making by those with nothing personal against Coulson and you have potent reasons for questioning the motives of those calling for his head.

The reason the NY Times Article challenges this point is that it isn't about Coulson. Coulson may be the focal point, and the claims against him are damning if true, but central to the point is the idea that the original investigations were either lied to or were given inadequate evidence. In the case of the CPS there is a prosecutor who claims not to have been given the correct evidence from the Met, a very serious allegation. The PCC are exposed as the supine press apologists that they are and the article accused Coulson of lying to a parliamentary inquiry that already accused him and the News International of 'obfuscation'. Add to this the fact that a huge number of people had their phones hacked, many with no connection to the work of the 'lone bad apple' who has been imprisoned, the massive payouts to those who looked like getting their day in court and accusations of excessive closeness between the news organisation and the police, as well as those who may not have been told by police that a crime was committed against them having their day in court if this is the case there is a need for an inquiry. The daft ad hominem attacks of Alan Duncan and Iain Dale merely express worry about the political cost such an inquiry would incur. Since when was it the role of a member of a government to trash the testimony of a prospective witness to a possible crime committed by a News Organisation? Really it shouldn't be a political issue. It should be a case of finding out whether initial investigations were told the truth, whether it was hidden or whether they were lied to. This is what the NY times alleges, with witnesses to back this up. The veracity of what these witnesses say should be determined by a judge, not a member of HM Government with a vested interest in them being untrue. Really an inquiry into this matter should be a no-brainer, it should be non-political. Tory attacks, their ad-hominem nature and deliberate ignoring of the real issue show that their closeness not just to Coulson but Murdoch mean that it isn't.