Religion: opiate of the extremist

The death of Mohamad Chatah, a moderate politician who had spoken out at
Hezbollah trying to import The Syrian civil war into Lebanon, reminds me that more people have been killed by Muslims in the Middle East than by so-called western aggressors.  Just a quick poll of stories in the news today include rebels/terrorists (depending on your point of view) being ambushed in Syria, 3 killed in Egyptian clashes, people murdered at a funeral in the Yemen (all from the BBC), over 8000 Iraqis killed so far this year mainly by suicide bombers, including people in a church because they were Christian.  These are just today; we are fed a constant diet of death and mayhem from throughout the Arab work, and a lot besides in other countries that is instigated by Islamic orientated terrorists.

Before I go further, this is not a polemic against Muslims, but systems of religious belief clearly lead people to a place where they may be open to illogical and absolutist ideas and are closed to rational intellectual debate.  After all, if you sincerely believe in fairy stories that were told 1500 - 2000 years ago when when the world was a whole lot more mysogynistic than it is today,  science as we know it barely existed and 99% of the world population were illiterate and uneducated, then you are clearly more likely to be beguiled by a persuasive Priest that only women can be ordained, or that there are virgins waiting for you in heaven if only you commit suicide and take a few others with you.  In fact I   Would seriously question your own intellect.  But that is my opinion and it is neither here nor there.  At least it is only an opinion and I am not out to tell other people what they should do.

So while not wishing to pin guilt on any and everyone who follows their understanding of the tenets of the Muslim faith, could we please hear a lot more from the vast majority of Muslims who are reasonable, civilised and educated, not to say god-fearing, people about how Anjem Chawdrey is WRONG to support the deliberate murder if innocents because he disagrees with their government's policy; that Abu Qatada was WRONG to praise the 9/11 terrorists and that there are no Virgins in heaven waiting to throw themselves on the first delusional twenty something that blows himself to pieces in a Baghdad market place or a London bus.

The Quilliam Foundation  says challenging extremism is the responsibility of every member of society. The message needs to be heard not only in the media but in Every place of prayer and worship whenever anyone tries to use religion to preach violence.  And in quite a few political arenas too, but then Politics is sometimes a kind of religion too.

Why do we need coalition government?

I joined the SDP to “break the mould” of British politics. A succession of Labour and Conservative governments coming from deep partisan positions was doing nothing for the economic success of the United Kingdom nor to build the kind of society I wanted to live in.  Coalition politics has had various degrees of success across Europe, but at least it has the potential to ensure that the loonies on the left and right are less likely to wield power.  It might also mean less and more circumspect (not necessarily weaker) government and that was fine by me. 

So now we are moving towards the end of the first real coalition government that today’s voters have ever experienced and gloves are coming off towards the 2015  (Guardian Sunday 15th December  http://t.co/TMJszk0YhZ ).  Anticipating some fun on doorsteps in the run up to the local council elections in 2014 and national elections in 2015 I thought I should hone up my arguments in favour of a coalition, and a vote for the Lib Dems.  

1.  Confirmed Tory voters will want to return a conservative government.  Confirmed Labour voters will want a Labour government.  An absolute majority in parliament is possible with somewhere between 35 and 45% of the votes polled, so neither will represent a majority of people in the UK. 

2. All parties are themselves coalitions themselves covering a broad range of political perspectives so the actual number of people supporting all policies put forward by a Labour or Conservative government will be even less than the number who voted for them.  Could be as little as 20%.  Is this any way to run a democracy? 

3.  The attitude of the other parties to a hung parliament resulting in another coalition will depend on how they come out of it.  There will be a lot of hypocrites who accuse the Lib Dems (assuming they once again go into a coalition with left of right) of “letting the other side in”.   Well, a coalition of Lib Dems with either Labour or conservative may alienate the extreme wing of the coalition partner, but is more likely to stay closer to the centre ground and therefore to better represent the country as a whole.  

4.  There will be Lib Dems who think that their leaders buddied up with the wrong party.  But forming an effective coalition is not easy, and is not about sticking with your chums.  So if one side (Labour at the last election) simply refuses to negotiate then no-one should be blamed for turning the other way; and it was principled in any event for Nick Clegg to turn first to the party that received the largest number of votes.
Without a coalition it is likely that the Tory party would have formed a minority government, lame duck or not, and returned to the electorate to gain a majority after a couple of years.  Fine for the Tories but where would that have left the rest of us?  Lib Dems now need to clearly make the case for coalition and that will be built not only on the number of Lib Dem policies that were implemented – as the junior partner we could not hope to achieve most of what was in the election manifesto – but on the Tory policies that we blocked. 

Here is the list, reproduced below, of 16 Tory policies thwarted by the Lib Dems (from the Guardian 18th September, reporting on Nick Clegg’s autumn conference speech) 

• Inheritance tax cuts for millionaires
• Bringing back O-levels
• A two-tier education system
• Profit-making in state schools
• New childcare ratios
• Firing workers at will, without any reasons given
• Regional pay penalising public sector workers in the north
• Scrapping housing benefit for young people
• Ditching the Human Rights Act
• Weakening the protections in the Equalities Act
• Closing down the debate on Trident
• Parliamentary boundary changes
• Scrapping Natural England
• Holding back green energy
• Stopping geography teachers telling children about how we can tackle climate change
• The snoopers' charter (draft communications data bill)

The story has moved on, for example on green energy some expenditure has been postponed, but even there the Tory party would have gone much further if not constrained by the coalition.

Is this list complete?  Are there any more to add?  What do you think?

Governments must act on pensions and pensions providers

In a recent entry into the pensions debate by the Prince of Wales (actually a while ago, but the topic is still hot), he suggested that the pensions industry needs to mend its ways.  Pension saving is a long term process and needs to be addressed a such, so rewards to managers should be linked to long term performance, not to short-term trading. But incentives to individual investment managers is only half the story.  There are two other areas that need reforming:

1.  Financial management fees need to be reduced and linked to performance. 
Current fee levels make a significant hole in the value of investments and in for some they are so high that they inhibit people from even bothering to save.  Cash returns at the moment are so small that the real return to savers is negative, the extent of this being largely a function of the margins that providers make for themselves (Banks claiming they have to squeeze their savers, but not their bonuses, in order to rebuild their reserves).  And in the case of unit trust and other simple equity investments, many do no more than track the market and of those that do not many underperform.  They then all deduct their costs of course whether they performed well or not.  It is as though the benefits of ISA tax breaks go to the providers rather than to savers. 

Some argue that we should rely on the market to introduce efficiency.  But financial services do not operate in an open and competitive market.  They are opaque and invariably provided through multiple layers (marketing companies, consolidators or platforms, investment companies, back office service providers, etc..etc…).  All take their  fees.   It is very difficult, impossible for retail customers, to really know what it is costing them.  This opacity suits the City who continue to reap enormous profits
The Retail Distribution Review claimed to address this.  From a Deloitte’s website:

“The Retail Distribution Review (RDR) aims to drive structural change throughout the retail investments industry, in order to give consumers confidence that the advice they are given, and products they are sold, are best suited to their needs”

“The changes required as a result of the RDR are likely to have wide reaching impacts across organisations. Strategic responses will vary significantly in the degree of change involved, but all require significant changes to business and technology operations”.

For pension funds, at least there are now proposals to limit returns, but 0.75% is still to high (the Dutch have limited returns to 0.6% for years).  It is surprising, and heartening, to find one provider (L&G) actually arguing it should be reduced to 0.5%.  This But this only applies to pension funds and not to self-investment where fees somehow seem to be stuck, at up to 3%, at the levels they were before the RDR.  

Notwithstanding the RDR I challenge most private savers using professional advisors to work out how much their savings is actually costing then.  And unlike pension funds who can set up competitive tendering to drive prices down, it is impossible for private individuals to significantly influence costs.  The amount that the professionals cream off significantly impacts on savings.  Furthermore up-front percentage fees have survived the RDR, which means that any change in provider in the short term can work out very expensive indeed.  Surely there is a case for limiting the overall cost to retail investors as well.

   

2.  People need to be encouraged to put the long-term ahead of the short term
For most people spending now is preferable to saving for the future.  For the majority of people struggling to pay bills today, this is a necessity but unfortunately a great many people simply value spending today more than saving for the future.  Perhaps for the young who have jobs, the prospect of buying a home of their own, or enjoying a long happy retirement seems so remote that savings seem pointless.  Yet if they don’t start when they are young it certainly will be. 

So we need compulsory savings or pension scheme.  It does not matter much in the longer term whether this is from employees or from employers as they both costs to an enterprise, or for the self-employed.  Furthermore, sacrificing consumption today in order to pay for future potential liabilities (pension) is altruism, of sorts, with considerable long-term benefit for the Government finances, so pension funds should be given back the tax-free status that they were robbed of by Gordon Brown.  Reasonable limits on the level of tax free tax free saving would surely ensure that this was not just a tax-avoidance loophole for the very rich..
Of course real changes would require the Government to have a really long term horizon.

But that would require a miracle, wouldn't it?

Have a nice day!

Prince of the people: attack the argument, not the man

I am not always a fan of what Prince Charles says when he intervenes in the public policy arena, but people who say he should keep his mouth shut are wrong.  As a minimum, as a private individual he is welcome to his views and as entitled to express them as anyone.  If we think they are ridiculously biased because he is from the privileged elite then we can ignore him. But generally his interventions seem to chime with the thoughts of ordinary people, and if privilege gives him a platform to speak from then he should, in my opinion, use it.

Politicians do not limit their views to promises made in their manifestos; captains of industry, newspaper editors, senior policemen, trade union leaders and others never feel constrained in using their position to express views, exert influence and impact, not always benignly, on our daily lives.  So if any if you don't like what Charles says, attack the argument, not the man.

Parking pays dividends for the Council

Parking arrangements in our towns and cities are not designed to be fund raising activities but to minimise adverse impact of parking on traffic movement and to prioritise parking for residents and local businesses. Why then do local authorities make significant financial surpluses from parking fines? In 2012/13 Islington raised over £25 mln in parking fines from 199,000 tickets. Of this £10mln related to 144,000 Parking Charge Notices (fines) and expended £18 mln on management, enforcement and collection to give a surplus of over £6.6 mln and over the last five years Islington totalled £29.6mln or has averaged £5mln p.a. surplus.

Politicians will obfuscate and imply that that any surplus is only used to maintain the parking regime itself. But this is not true. According to the Islington Council website its parking objectives are:

· ensure our roads are safe

· enable traffic to flow freely

· give residents and local businesses priority over commuters

· provide parking for disabled people and health care workers

· ensure that the parking rules are enforced fairly.

However it goes on to say that

“In addition to keeping Islington moving, any surplus generated from managing parking is used to pay for street related repairs and improvements”.

Clearly a small surplus, or deficit, year on year is inevitable and the legislation does allow a surplus to be put towards road maintenance and safety. A small surplus will also avoid any further burden the Council’s already overstretched finances. But £6mln is not trivial; it is a significant contribution to the Council’s total revenues. Only incompetence could not have anticipate it and as I have no wish to accuse the Council’s finance department of incompetence we must assume that the surplus was by design.

The 2012/13 Parking Services report states that the surplus was spent as follows:

Road safety £250,000
Transport planning £726,000
Highway improvements – Capital Expenditure £2,724,000
Traffic and Engineering - Capital Charges £2,958,000

Of course this is hokum, as these are statutory responsibilities which would have been carried out whether there was a surplus on the parking account or not. And where those fines are paid by Islington residents or business than they constitute an additional tax on living in the borough.

So how much of this additional tax do you think is paid by local residents and businesses going about their normal day-to-day activities? It is not so simple as to say that car owners are likely to be financially better off, since a great many people on very ordinary incomes need cars and vans to get to work or to carry on their trades. That, is a good question and subject of a question to the Council. It will be interesting to see the outcome.