The Govt. and public health

The Govt. and public health

To deal with the coronavirus crisis, the Govt. wants more powers and it wants them for a long time. I wonder why because they don’t seem to be making any decisions and they pretty much have the powers they need. They have a page on Gov.UK describing what they think they need, and Big Brother Watch have published their take on it, as have Inclusion London. The proposed laws reduce the standards for staff in the NHS, make changes to i.e. reduce duties under the Mental Health Acts and Social Care laws, they make it easier to dispose of the dead, postpone the May elections, take powers to close events and venues, and give the police & immigration officers powers to detain people. It also abolished the three day waiting period for SSP. We should consider their failure to offer security to those in work who may lose their jobs, fall sick or have to stop work to look after children or elderly relatives. This will also highlight the appallingly low levels of statutory sick pay and redundancy payments, not to mention the 2 year employment longevity requirement for redundancy payments. No-one is talking about those living on savings who will be hurt by the reduction in the BoE interest rate to 0.1%, by the collapse in the stock market (the FTSE 250 is down by over 40% in the month), and even their business support programme is based on loans and not grants. (This blog is based on one written yesterday and has been published before I have read today’s announcement offering an income for those not working.) …

Solidarity with the UCU

Solidarity with the UCU

The UCU have just gone back to work after a strike campaign in which they would seem to be in dispute with their management over most things but there is a particular dispute about pensions. However the Twitter commentary offered me the thoughts of an account known as University Wankings, which I felt I had to follow and they pointed me at the @THEworldunirank from the Times Higher Education supplement. I had a look at the ranking systems 10 years ago while I was helping my kids decide which universities to go to and I had been pointed at the best known ranking system of the time by my work on NESSI.

While I consider the measured quality of the UK’s Universities to be based on the fact that they all have English as a first language, the quality of research, innovation and teaching are an important, if not critical part of building an economic future worth living in, that and worker’s control.

Solidarity with the UCU! ✊ …

Ideas, alliances and promises

Ideas, alliances and promises

I was pointed at, “If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars” by Rory McQueen who compares the state of the UK’s Left today with that in 1983, arguably the last time Labour was in this situation; he conducts a balance sheet on the balance of class forces, and then explores the issues of alliances and programme. He takes “The future of the Left”, an anthology written after the 1983 election as his historic benchmark.

I think this is incredibly well written and beyond my ability to summarise. i.e. you should read it. He provokes some thoughts in me, which is why you should read the rest of this. I talk, briefly, about the power of the Left in the country, it’s much weaker today, the need for and paradox of political alliances, and the failure of Labour’s policy & manifesto development programmes. I conclude by repeating the question, what’s the point for socialists in restricting alliances to exclusively to Labour’s right and how can Labour build a policy development process that delivers a realistic, popular and transformational programme for government. For more, see below/overleaf …  …

It’s cold outside

It’s cold outside

Carlotta Perez argues that Kondratiev Long Waves have an internal shape. One of the trends is the rollout of the driving technology from the core to the periphery and this takes place in the maturity phase as profitability of the once new technology declines. Another important event is the next eruption and where that takes place. Between the Steel & Oil phases, the world’s core moved from England, the economic and political epicentre of the British Empire to the USA and we should remember that this role was contended for by both Germany and the Soviet Union. It’s moved once, it can move again but it’s most unlikely to come back to England. I wonder what being part of the periphery will be like. I suppose it depends upon where the core is. Will it remain in the USA or move, to China or even the EU. The key will be the dynamism of the innovation economy; it looks like, due to Brexit, the UK’s Universities will decline and that much of aerospace and biosciences will leave the UK. Otherwise the UK & US industries may be defended by the ubiquity of English, but the EU has had 40 years of using it as their language of commerce and to a great extent the language of government.

I can’t see it clearly, but the corruption and financialisation of the anglosphere economies are stymieing innovation and inhibiting “creative destruction”; there is opportunity for other national economies to do better. It would also seem that Perez’s predicted regulatory correction is nostalgic this time, looking back to times when things seemed better, or defending old out dated business models. We  cannot recreate the industries of the steel revolution.

It’s unlikely to be pleasant, especially if the UK moves from being a 2nd tier economy to peripheral one. …

Card Votes on Demand

The LP platform stitched up Conference over Brexit by refusing a card vote. I think this power needs to be taken away, and so have drafted this rule amendment. It is interesting that the old rule no longer exists and has been transferred to Conference Standing Orders.

C3.III.G

Insert before These standing orders will be presented ……

The Conference Standing orders are to state that voting will be by show of hands except a card vote will be undertaken as decided by the CAC who shall in their report to conference determine which votes must be resolved by a card vote. Card votes may additionally be invoked by the Chair of Conference and shall be so invoked if called for by 30 delegates.

ooOOOoo

One thing to be noted is that Conference still has the last word on the contents of the Programme (C1.V.2). For inclusion, the Programme, it needs to be approved by Conference by a ⅔ majority. Policy cannot be included in the manifesto without this approval, so the Brexit position, free train fares and free broadband would seem to be promises we should not have made. I am equally unclear where the Faith and Culture manifestos came from. (I don’t even know if they were approved by the Clause V meeting.) Policy votes where not overwhelming should be counted by a  card vote to ensure that it is accurately recorded as meeting the necessary thresholds be it ½ or ⅔ majority. …