Roosevelt and Contesting the Plutocrats

This one is going to start by sounding rather obscure but in fact goes to the way in which we properly respond to the financiers who have plunged us into the economic chaos that we are now facing simply for their own greed. Last week I was reading an article by Jonathan Raban in 'The Guardian' (24th January edition) analysing the inaugural speech by Barack Obama and comparing it with such speeches in the past. As he showed the US Presidential inaugural speeches have rather become fossilised in form and actually despite being so restrained, Obama and his primary speechwriter Jon Favreau used the speech to attack the regime of George W. Bush and try to outline a more accepting liberal USA for the future. This element of Raban's article was interesting and I have no complaint about it. Where I had more issue was with his comments on the first inaugural speech of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

Roosevelt was elected president four times, dying in 1945 shortly into his fourth term; these days US presidents are only permitted to serve two four-year terms, unless they come to office through the removal of the sitting president; Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson became president in 1963, was elected in his own right in 1964 and could have been re-elected in 1968 if he had chosen. The importance of Roosevelt's 1933 speech is that the world was in a similar position to today. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 had helped precipitate the widespread economic collapse (though it had begun as early as 1927) especially in 1931 (when the Austrian Creditanstalt Bank collapsed and the British Labour Government also collapsed after only 2 years in office) and by 1933 was leading to the highest levels of unemployment that the world had seen. US unemployment reached 13 million people, 24.9% of the workforce in 1933; in Germany, 1933 being the year the Nazis came to power it was over 6 million unemployed, 34% of the workforce.

Thus, Roosevelt came to power as a liberal president following the conservative Herbert Hoover, at a time when the economic crisis was well underway. Thus, 1933 was not directly equivalent to 2009; we are probably in something more like 1930 now. However, both Roosevelt and Obama had to make a clear lead in terms of what they were going to do to tackle the economic problems. Obama had a lot less room for manoeuvre in what he could include in his speech though was challenging a wider range of issues that Roosevelt (for example, recent US foreign and human rights policy, as well as the economic crisis). Raban is right that Roosevelt's speech was more ground-breaking and memorable, but interestingly he also feels that it was anti-Semitic. I think Raban's analysis is lazy (something which seems rather too prevalent in 'The Guardian' newspaper recently, note my critique of John Cartwright's piece on the 20th July plot last month) and to some degree by labelling Roosevelt as having anti-Semitic tendencies (even if these inadvertent) in his speech, he undermines what attacks we might make on the plutocrats of today using Roosevelt's language.

The element of the 1933 speech which attracts Raban's criticism is the following passage. I quote more of it than Raban did/was able to:

"... Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. ..."

Now Raban feels that reference to moneychangers in the temple, taking from the incident in the Bible (Gospel of St. Matthew 21:12; Gospel of St. Mark 11:15) in which Jesus goes into the 'Temple of God' and threw out 'all that bought and sold in the temple', particularly the moneychangers and those selling doves/pigeons. The assumption of course is that the traders in the temple were Jews but neither writer suggests that this is the case. It is quite possible that a mix of people were trading in the temple, ironically in a way medieval churches in the western world were often used centuries later. Added to this, of course, at the time Jesus was breaking up this trade he was not a Christian, but a Jew. No-one was a Christian as we would define it, while Jesus was alive because what we define as Christianity was only established as a result of Jesus's death.

The central element of Christianity is Jesus's death and resurrection, so without that having happened, you could not have Christians. Thus, Jesus's actions were not someone of a different faith acting against Jews, they were the actions of a Jew acting against other people, some or many of whom were also Jews. You have to also contextualise this action in terms of 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s' (words from Gospel of St. Mark) which is not long after the temple incident being covered in Gospel of St. Matthew 22:21; St. Mark 12:13-17 and St. Luke 20-26. Though there is clearly discussion about what Jesus is advocating, it does seem to suggest that the holy and the profane renderings should be kept in different contexts. Jesus has not objection to their being money changers, he just does not want them (or dove/pigeon sellers) in a place which is supposed to be about the spiritual not the mundane. Like Jesus, Roosevelt argues he is seeking to 'restore the temple to its ancient truths', how can this be anti-Semitic, as it is advocating the status quo ante rather than destruction of that setting.

Raban also feels that the reference to the Book of Proverbs in Roosevelt's statement '[t]hey have no vision' (in the Hebrew text it is 29:18) is an additional element of anti-Semitism. I accept that the Book of Proverbs unlike many elements of the Old Testament does not have a perspective on things which is Jewish-centred unlike many of the other books, but the acceptance of it in the Old Testament does not suggest that there is Jewish hostility to this book nor that it is anti-Semitic in nature; it is simply that it draws on a wider range of perspectives and traditions from the Middle East of the era and as scholars note demonstrates the interaction between the Jews and other peoples notably the Greeks and the inter-change of ideas rather than any attempt to suppress them. The Book of Proverbs is not out of step with other late and Wisdom books of the Old Testament.

Thus, I find it difficult to accept Raban's assertion that Roosevelt's speech was even nodding towards anti-Semitism, because the source material was not anti-Semitic. I know presidents are sometimes misguided by their speechwriters, but even Raban has to admit, that Roosevelt's speechwriter was Raymond Moley not a noted anti-Semite and the closest Raban can find is Father Coughlin, a supporter of Roosevelt in 1932 who soon stopped supporting him when the New Deal was introduced. There is no evidence that Coughlin had any input into any of Roosevelt's speeches. Raban seems surprised that Roosevelt was seemingly spouting anti-Semitic statements and says that '[i]t's a puzzle' especially given the fact that he had Jewish friends and appointed Jews to his Cabinet and the Surpreme Court, noting names such as Felix Frankfurter, Henry Morgenthau, Abe Fortas and Louis Brandels. 

The only other explanation he can find for Roosevelt's seeming abberation in this speech is that 'genteel antisemitism was so routine that it passed unnoticed'. This could only be stated by someone with no idea of the world of 1933. Roosevelt was a far from stupid, short-sighted or naive man, he was clearly aware of the global tensions. The Nazis attitudes to anti-Semitism were well known; refugees from anti-Semitism in Germany as from Russia thirty years earlier, were already coming to the USA. In a speech as important as his first inaugural, Roosevelt did nothing without great care. Speeches in the 1930s when rallies and oration were still a core part of the political process were more examined than even today in our sound bite world. Raban confuses himself by seeing anti-Semitism in Biblical texts when it is not there. He undermines his own argument so much that it seems pointless even making it. Both he and his editor needed to think through what was being suggested before sending it to print. Such feeble analysis wastes time in what was otherwise a useful article.

Roosevelt and Moley were clever in using these references and this is an important element to note. Roosevelt used the rhetoric that would be familiar to millions of Americans. Importantly he charged the bankers not with incompetence but with immorality and that is a vital aspect that we must revive now. Roosevelt is right that the bankers had 'no vision' because they looked no wider than their personal bank balances and consequently 'the people perish'. The importance of this for what Roosevelt set out to do in the next few years was that he was arguing that these steps were not necessary simply from an economic or political ground but from a moral ground. In this way he is trying to be as bipartisan as possible as whilst Republicans might baulk at what they saw as Socialist or proto-Keynesian economics, it was harder to turn their backs on something which was a moral campaign in the interests of those who were not the 'self-seekers' but cared for 'civilization'. Roosevelt notes even among the capitalists it is the 'unscrupulous' and those with 'stubbornness' and 'incompetence' who he is taking to task, rather than seeking to overthrow capitalism as a whole. Raban has conjured up a fantasy of Roosevelt spouting 'a lightly coded message about a conspiracy of Jewish bankers' when it is nothing of the kind. It is an attack on all 'unscrupulous' bankers whichever faith they followed.

I acknowledge that some of those seeking the end or modification of capitalism in the late 19th century and early 20th century could fall into the danger of anti-Semitism, the so-called 'Socialism of Fools'. However, partly this was because genuine right-wing anti-Semites, who generally supported the reign of the rich, used 'plutocrat' as short-hand for Jew. However, the term is far broader than that and in fact in any country of the western world, the percentage of plutocrats who were also Jewish was always a small minority; Christian plutocrats always heavily out-numbered them. Thus, when we attack plutocrats today, no-one should accuse us of being anti-Islamic because the largest shareholder of Woolworths in the UK was Iranian or anti-Hindu because the owners of Corus and Jaguar Cars are Indian. 

Plutocrats come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and religions. They are wrong and as in 1929 they, financiers rather than manufacturers in particular, have plunged the world into economic chaos because they worship no god except greed. Roosevelt was right to draw attention to the fact that when greed is unfettered and crushes so many ordinary people for the sake of piling wealth on wealth for a limited number of already wealthy people, then it is evil. It needs to be challenged in the way Jesus challenged it and to have a better society we need in Jesus's view spiritual values; in Roosevelt's view 'social values more noble than mere monetary profit'. More of us need to come forward and say the world has suffered because immoral greed was not checked. This is not anti-Jewish/Christian/Hindu/Islamic it is anti-evil.

The Myth Of An Alternative To The Bank Bail Out

Last month I was particularly angered by a comment from Defence Secretary Dr. Liam Fox when he said that the main reason for the cuts in defence expenditure was no fault of the coalition government rather it was the consequence of the sustained damage Dr. Gordon Brown had inflicted on the economy as prime minister 2007-10.  Among leading Conservative politicians, Fox has been one of the most vocal in attributing the blame for the UK's economic problems on the previous Labour governments, more so even than Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osbourne.  Cameron and Osborne use the large deficit created by bailing out the banks at the onset of the recession as the excuse for their harsh public spending cuts, which would have been imposed even if the UK was in a boom because the current batch of Conservatives believe that the state is too large and needs to be culled as abruptly as possible.  Fox, however, takes it a step further and peddles the idea that for some reason Brown and his government deliberately 'wrecked' the economy for some unknown motive.  Fox, in many ways, is a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s seeing some Communist conspiracy at the heart of British government trying to do the worst for the decent British public.  The reality was that whilst governments do and pursue a particular agenda, and Brown less vigorously than the prime ministers that bracketed him, a lot of their activity is responsive rather than proactive, particularly in the age of the globalised economy when the demand from copper in China leads to thieves in the UK disabling electricity sub-stations and sections of railway in order to get the scrap copper.

All governments say that they could have done things better than their rivals.  There is an implication in everything that Cameron, Osborne, Fox, et al say, that if, for example, rather than Tony Blair handing the premiership to Gordon Brown in June 2007, there had been an election and David Cameron had come to power, then the banking crisis and the recession which came the following year, would have been handled so differently, so much 'better', if Fox is to be believed, that, in fact, we would not now be facing such a large deficit and the consequent 'need' to slash so much of public service.  So let us look at what the Conservatives might have done differently.

The first thing to establish is what would have happened if the government had done nothing.  Even before the global recession had started, in the UK, the Northern Rock bank ran into problems.  It lent 18.9% of all of the mortgages in the UK and handled deposits of £24 billion compared to loans and assets of £113 billion.  In the summer of 2007 it found it difficult to borrow money to cover its lending.  As the US sub-prime market began to stagger, lenders became reluctant to lend on any mortgages even though British lending was generally on a far more restricted basis.  I was not surprised that Northern Rock was struggling having had much anecdotal evidence of its poor customer care combined with its aggressive marketing of products including very high percentage mortgages; this has raised its market share from 14.6% in 2006.  Rapidly fading faith led to a 'run' on the bank with £1 billion in deposits being withdrawn on 14th September 2007. This was the first run on a British bank for more than a century.  To stop the bank from collapsing, the British 'lender of last resort', the Bank of England lent the company £27 billion and in 2008 bought up £3 billion of effectively worthless shares in the company.  In February 2008 the bank was de facto nationalised. 

At least ten other offers to buy the bank were rejected because these potential owners were unable to repay the public money loaned to the company.  Interestingly, the US company Lehman Brothers which was soon to collapse in a spectacular way was one of the bidders.  Others were equity funds such as Terra Firma Capital Partners, J.C. Flowers and Ceberus, investment companies like Olivant and other banks like Bradford & Bingley and Lloyds-TSB.  If Terra Firma's bid is anything to go buy, some of the equity fund purchases would have been de facto asset stripping processes.  Interestingly, before Northern Rock was effectively taken over by the state 40% of its best business accounts was transferred to a company called Granite based in the Channel Islands which have different tax laws.  Though Granite does not receive new business, this effectively meant the cream of the bank's business (and profit potential) remained free of state control.

Now, if the state had not stepped in, then we would have seen the run on the bank continue, reducing the amount of deposits even further than before in relation to its loan commitments. There was one incident in which one bank manager was barricaded in their office because two customers were unable to withdraw their £1 million after the online banking facility of Northern Rock collapsed.  It is likely that violent scenes would have continued as the bank would have found it impossible to cover all the withdrawals with the relative low level of reserves it kept. At this stage the bank would be compelled to foreclose on its mortgages, i.e. insisting lenders immediately repay their loans or lose their homes to the bank.  This would not have helped the bank much as they would have had to dispose of the property quickly to recoup funds and in many towns the housing market would have been utterly disrupted as numerous properties were auctioned off.  As it was some borrowers, including charities, accused Northern Rock of pursuing aggressive repossession especially in 2007-8.

Some borrowers could have transferred their mortgages to other banks but this would have brought pressure on to them as they would increasingly have faced the challenges Northern Rock had already faced to raise loans to cover the mortgages they lent.  Thus, even before the main recession started, not bailing out Northern Rock could have become a crash in the UK economy. The issue for many was that the total support to Northern Rock came to £100 billion which was added to the National Debt meaning it was equivalent to 37.5% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) close to what is seen as the highest permitted level of debt by a state. 

I suppose that the difference that the Conservatives would have done, is being so averse to nationalisation, they would have allowed Northern Rock to have been sold to another bank, with no guarantee that the public funds put into the bank would ever be returned.  Under the de facto nationalisation, by August 2008, the bank had already paid back £9.5 billion of what it had been given, so reducing its part of the National Debt.  It seems unlikely, given that so much Conservative support comes from property owners that they would have allowed Northern Rock to collapse, it held too large a market share.  Thus, there would have been addition to the National Debt just in the way the Conservatives complain about.  In addition, there approach would have meant that the government would not have had a chance of ever seeing the money it had provided returned at some date in the future. 

The key difference would have had to have occurred back in the 1990s when regulation of banks and The City financial bodies was far too lax.  The Blair government like the Major and Thatcher ones that had preceded it, seemed beholden to the financial institutions and was happy for them to act recklessly and earn big profits.  The 'invisible' trade of financial products has been Britain's strongest industry since the 1980s and no prime minister seemed to have the will or the wish to temper the behaviour of not only merchant banks but also high street banks too.  The conversion of mutual building societies into banks after 1986 and their focus on shareholders rather than customers did not help the situation in the mortgage sector, because they were prone to take more risks.  A lot of this could be foreseen, the Bank of England had apparently been working through scenarios of such difficulties as early as 2004 and like many others saw Northern Rock and Halifax/Bank of Scotland (popularly referred to these days as HBOS) as likely candidates.

The ongoing sub-prime mortgage crisis in the USA and the subsequent tightening of loans to banks meant that many UK banks beyond Northern Rock began to experience crises.  The Bank of England offered £4.4 billion in relief in September 2007 and it was drained by banks within hours. In October 2008, the Bank of England offered £37 billion to Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds TSB and HBOS who were struggling to cover their loans and certainly to grant new ones.  Would the Conservatives have refused to offer such funds to the banks and so, having avoided the collapse with Northern Rock, have seen even greater problems as these banks collapsed?  RBS had assets of £2.5 trillion in December 2008 and Lloyds Banking Group £1.195 trillion, thus the scale of their demise would have made that of Northern Rock seem minor.

RBS had had difficulty in raising funds from April 2008 and in the end first 60%, in March 2009 70% and in November 2009, 84% of the bank was taken over by the state.  RBS has been shedding assets since early in 2008 but did not close its tax avoidance department until March 2009 and in December 2009 stood by plans to pay £1.5 billion in bonuses to staff in its investment arm.  Lloyds-TSB already an amalgam of an old bank and a building society turned bank, took over HBOS in September 2008.  Like these other banks, through 2008 HBOS itself an amalgam of a bank and building society turned bank, saw rapid falls in its shares.  The government approved of the combination of Lloyds-TSB with HBOS even though it was effectively counter to competition as the 'super-bank' has 38 million customers, compared to a UK population of 61.8 million people.  This buy-out effectively relieved the government of having to take over HBOS itself.  However, the continued difficulty in banks raising funds meant that in 2009 the government bought 43% of the Lloyds Banking Group.  EU rules means that by 2013, it will have divested itself of the TSB brand and hundreds of branches of the retail group.  Now, it seems unlikely that the Conservatives would have overseen the nationalisation of any bank.  They certainly would have backed the buy-out of Lloyds-TSB of HBOS, but then in 2009 what would they have done with this super-bank running into difficulty given that so many people and businesses were dependent on its stability?  The likely solution from their view would have been to sell it to a consortium of equity funds.  Given equity funds' desire for fast profit, it is very likely that we would have seen even faster shedding of staff than the 15,000 made redundant by the company in 2010, a fifth of the total workforce.  By November 2009, RBS has similarly shed over 19,000 jobs.  Again, if the state had not stepped in and the only remaining source of support had been equity funds or perhaps foreign banks, then this figure is likely to have been higher. 

The Bradford & Bingley bank's mortgage book in was bought by the government in December 2008 whilst the savings and bank network was bought by Abbey National, itself owned by Spanish bank, Santander. Without UK state intervention, the only way to have avoid collapse of banks, many far bigger than Northern Rock would have been to hawk them to equity funds or to institutions from other countries.  Spain with its insistence on higher reserves being held by its banks almost inadvertently put its banks in a stronger position to weather the financial crises of 2007-9.

Aside from the state taking over banks, the British government, following the US model, but leading the way in Europe also provided funds that could be used by other banks, 'quantitative easing' to stand in for the lack of available funds on the commercial market. In October 2008 the government made available £500 billion but only RBS and Lloyds-TSB took any of these funds.  Barclays (with £2.3 trillion assets at the end of 2008) refused assistance and turned instead to the Qatari government for funds.  So, even though it would not accepted one government's funds it was happy to take them from another government.  This may have been a model that a Cameron government coming into power in 2007 would have promoted more widely for UK banks in the place of the British government nationalising or providing funds.  HSBC (with £1.736 trillion assets), the other key bank in the UK, was able to weather the financial crisis in the UK through share issues and that unlike the other banks discussed it was a multi-national bank on an already large scale.  A second package of another £50 billion in January 2009 and an increase of state ownership of Lloyds-TSB shares to 65% was announced due to the bank suffering from having taken on HBOS's losses. 

Now, the Conservatives may argue that there was no need to come forward with these funds, especially by 2009 when things seemed to be settling.  To them, no doubt, it all appears far too Keynesian in approach, stimulating the economy through state intervention.  However, much of what happens in the financial world depends on confidence.  A key problem for British banks was not that they had so many bad loans (though some did have a sizeable number) more that international lenders lost confidence in lending to any business engaged in lending mortgages no matter the quality of them.  Thus, the extra funds put forward in the latter stages were important in rebuilding this confidence, not only of lenders, but vitally of savers.  Banks have moved far from when they were dependent on depositors to provide the funds for their businesses, but what is saved cannot be ignored.  In fact, banks that weathered the situation were those who tended to have more deposits and reserves.

In total, the government paid out £131 billion in funds to keep banks from collapsing; including £107 million in fees for financial advice from companies from December 2007 to December 2009.  Other potential expenses such as borrowing support, money put into increase liquidity and protection for savings, brought the total costs to £850 billion, though of course with the easing of the situation not all these funds were called upon.  In addition, through nationalising banks, the government to some extent ensured they would get some of their money back; having them sold to private companies especially foreign ones would have meant that the government's investment to bring stabiliy, and, vitally, to try to increase the amount of lending needed by businesses and house buyers, would have never come back and in fact would have left the UK economy.

To blame the Labour government for the size of the National Debt resulting from the support it gave banks 2007-9 is false.  No government would have been able to allow Northern Rock let alone RBS or HBOS to collapse.  Even the folding of Bradford & Bingley would have had severe consequences beyond just those who saved with or borrowed from that bank.  The Conservatives, many of whom come from banking backgrounds, would not have let their friends go to the wall.  Thus, billions of pounds was needed and this would have gone on the National Debt.  I accept that rather than nationalising, the Conservatives most likely would have encouraged buy-outs by private equity companies and foreign companies.  Whilst this would have saved funds in the short-term, it would have meant that any money paid to banks most likely would never have come back, and, particularly with the private equity companies, the stability would be short lived as the banks would be broken up for what assets they could release.  The UK since the 1950s if not longer has had a real focus on privately-owned housing as a core element of its economic life, much more than any other country.  Instability in the housing market impinges widely in the UK economy and society.  Thus, the closure of banks, the foreclosure of loans, even just a greater restriction on lending than we see now, would all have dented this important sector of the economy, having a knock-on effect on purchasing and in turn jobs and economic activity.  Perhaps the Conservatives could have save a few billions by now bailing out the banks to the extent they were, but the cost would have been more instability and in turn falling tax returns, so reducing any saving they may have made.

The increase in the National Debt was a responsive policy not a proactive one as Fox and other Conservatives pretend.  If they had been in power they would have been compelled to do very much the same.  The alternatives would have only saved some small sums and at a cost to longer-term stability that many would have baulked at.  If seeking blame, one focus has to be on the freedom which financial institutions have had since the years of the Thatcher governments, though, of course, this has been a global trend, especially in the USA from where so often the UK takes its lead.  The Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, in line with other Conservative governments throughout the 20th century but boosted by New Right attitudes that appeared in the 1970s, believed in deregulation and the state standing back in many sectors of the economy, not least in the banking world.  Allowing building societies to become banks was one element in this trend building towards the UK aspect of the crisis of 2007-9.  However, on coming to power in 1997 under Tony Blair, Labour was beholden to the Thatcherite attitude.  Blair was a Thatcherite, making the Bank of England independent was an element of this.  Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer was prudent, but in many ways was simply lucky.  No-one during the Blair years tried to rein in the behaviour of the banks and it was only sheer good fortune that meant the crisis did not hit in 1999 or 2003 or some other time in that period. 

Of course, the current government is a clear advocate of deregulation, unsurprisingly as it has been an unchallenged political trend of the last 30 years.  However, it means that the banks remain as free as ever to behave irresponsibily.  It is right that protestors from UK Uncut go into banks and turn them into libraries or woodland.  We could not let the banks collapse, it would have led to a social and economic crisis in the UK unlike anything we had seen.  The taxpayer provided the funds to bail them out after their mistakes, driven by pure greed for massive profits.  We have paid twice because now to fund that the government says it has to be taken out of public services with huge cuts, not by getting the banks to pay back what they received and in this I mean not only funds but also the steps to boost confidence and stop runs.  They do not even have the grace to curtail their vast earnings, they just behave as they did before, uncowed by what happened.  There is nothing to stop a similar crisis manifesting itself this year, next year, sometime soon and then where will be the funds to save the banks this time? It is not a scare story to recognise that in the life of this parliament we could see the end of a banking system that we have become familiar with in the last 40 years and a return to something very dated and very out of step with the rest of the world. 

It seems that, next time, UK banks will, in large part, stop being owned by British companies but by European and probably Chinese institutions.  A number will be asset stripped by equity funds, the only ones who have the money to afford to intervene.  Say goodbye to your savings, say goodbye to getting a mortgage unless you are already wealthy, say goodbye to free banking, say goodbye to even having a bank account if you do not have a well-paid job (especially once the Post Office accounts are privatised).  The current government panders to its banking friends and uses the myth that somehow Brown deliberately wrecked the economy as the excuse for their reverse social engineering and smashing up of the state.  It is a myth.  In the same position they would have done minimally different and like Blair and Brown, have done nothing to stop the chance that it will happen again, this time with no safety net.

When is a State-Run Bank Not State-Run?

I have commented before at how stunning the greed of some many of the leading staff of businesses in Britain are, especially those in a monopoly or cartel position such as utility companies and banks.  The risk of the collapse of banks in 2008 led the British government to take over chunks of a number in the largest round of nationalisation seen since the 1970s.  Not wishing to be tarred with the New Right allegations against public sector business, the government has generally adopted an 'arm's length' model to running them.  The largest bank it now effectively owns is RBS (formerly Royal Bank of Scotland) in which it has a 70% share, so not under total control but quite clearly a dominant majority. In addition, last month it was revealed that towards the end of 2008 the Bank of England made secret loans of £61.6 billion to RBS and HBOS (formerly Halifax Building Society and Bank of Scotland; subsequently merged with Lloyds-TSB).  In total the UK banks benefited to a greater or lesser extent from a £500 billion rescue package.  This was classic Keynesian economics with government deficit financing economic stimulus measures.  It is clear that government action prevented RBS and HBOS collapsing leading to thousands of job losses and severe financial problems in the UK.

Are the current directors of RBS grateful for the fact that the government saved the bank for which they work?  No.  Do they feel even the slightest obligation to temper the greed which got British banks into the dire situation they encountered in 2008? No.  Despite the difficult two years they have been through the directors of RBS have decided to pay themselves £1.5 billion (€1.65 billion/milliard; US$2.49 billion) in bonuses (so on top of their current high pay).  Despite the ongoing difficulties with the recession these bonuses actually exceed those paid last year.  Where is the vast improvement to warrant such payments?  When the government suggested that they do not do this all the directors threatened to resign from their posts.  Lord Mynors the government minister responsible for the banking sector has called their bluff pointing out how many unemployed bankers there are ready to step into the directors' shoes.

It is probably not surprising that others such as Barclays bank and the National Association of Insurers are backing RBS directors in paying large bonuses.  However, as Lord Mynors has pointed out, it is not simply RBS which has benefited from government intervention. Not only did the government take over Northern Rock and the mortgage arm of Bradford and Bingley, it now holds a 40% share in HBOS-Lloyds TSB.  In addition, all banks benefited from 'easing' of the credit availability by the government pumping money into the system.  The government has only been able to fund such intervention which prevented large chunks of the banking sector collapsing, through borrowing.  This borrowing is criticised by the very type of people who benefited from the intervention and risks the UK's credit rating.  If RBS is in a position to pay £1.5 billion in bonuses then it is in a position to pay back many millions of pounds to reduce government debt.

The RBS argument, repeated by their allies in the sector, is that they have to pay such high bonuses in order to attract and retain capable staff.  You can argue that even the bonuses they have paid have failed to do that as clearly as 2008 showed they only had incompetent staff able to wreck the bank they worked for.  Apparently there are at least 5000 bankers in the UK currently earning over £1 million, so what incentive is there to work well if you offer them an additional £100,000 or even £250,000?  As yet, I have to see evidence that we have any skilled or clever bankers in the UK, certainly ones worth the levels that have been allowed to become 'normal'.  These directors can threaten to resign because they can live without pay for many years.  It is particularly bitter when people whine about postal workers who are striking to try to keep their jobs and say that the unemployed are only out of work because they demand too high pay.  There is no 'whip' to bring in line the bankers in the way that they and their kind have been so eager to use on people earning less per year than the cost of one of the bankers' cars; remember 80% of the UK population earns less than £25,000 per year.

I support Lord Mynors.  The directors of RBS can resign if they like.  It will actually do the banking sector a deal of good.  I think then that the government should either dismember RBS or totally nationalise it.  However, importantly, they must run it properly as a state-run bank.  At the moment all the state is doing is pumping cash in and yielding complete control to people who simply want to make themselves even wealthier by funnelling that cash into their own pockets.  That is the morality, the business model of a mafia-run casino, perhaps even an extortion racket, given the level of house reposessions, and bankers who behave this way should not be lauded they should be condemned as we would gangsters.  The government should not be embarrassed at true nationalisation and they should do it on the French model rather than the half-hearted models the UK has had in the past that too often have simply given power to the privileged rather than making the industry benefit the nation as a whole.  They should stop nationalising things on the verge of collapse and take over some businesses in a healthy state again so the UK economy and society can benefit. 

Though the bulk of the population seems to make its assumptions from a Thatcherite economic perspective, with unemployment still high and pay frozen and hours cut back, there is both shock at the arrogance of the RBS bankers (as there was at the MPs fiddling their expenses) and sustained support for action to prevent such flagrant greed continuing unchecked.  In such an atmosphere, the government has the backing to take the necessary action.  It needs to be done before David Cameron and his upper class cronies have any chance to begin again to praise this kind of behaviour in order to benefits their friends in the financial sector.  Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling, Lords Mandelson and Mynors, do not let the RBS directors resign, sack them and block the obscene greed which has done so much damage to the UK!

P.P. 7/12/2009: I was very pleased to hear that Alastair Darling intends to tax the bankers receiving bonuses.  They have been given repeated (too many) chances to moderate their behaviour and yet have not only not done that but have whined on about the government daring even to criticise them.  There was a stage during the MPs' expenses scandal when some MPs realised how genuinely upset the public were about it; the change in expression and response from Margaret Beckett when answering a question about the scandal on 'Question Time' was a physical expression of that shift.  Of course, some MPs still have not really caught on and a couple have been deselected.  However, it was clear that many at the start thought they were doing nothing wrong and even more arrogantly that the public would not take them to task.  Now it is happening, if slowly and incrementally with bankers.  Most of us have no control over what bankers do, it seems even large shareholders (including in some cases the government) have no influence either.  Any, pretty mild criticism of their behaviour has a strong response attacking the critics and telling them to mind their own business.  In many cases now, of course what the banks do is our own business.  I really hope the bankers get hammered for their greed which is sickening when so many people are facing unemployment.  If it compels them to resign, all the better for the UK.  I fear, however, as with the windfall tax on the greedy utility companies promised a couple of years back the bankers will find some way to wriggle out of all of this and thumb their noses at all of us.  Personally I have come now, in the face of sickening greed to favour ending any private banking in the UK and having either mutuals (I bank with the Nationwide, a very successful mutual) or state-owned banks.  Let us get control of the economy back into the hands of the people who it actually effects.  The millionaires are really exempt from economic troughs (though they benefit from the peaks) whereas it is us who lose our job and our house.

Are Britons Only Socialist in Times of Crisis?

Many people argue that the British population is inherently conservative and for most of the time, Conservative, i.e. supporting the policies of the Conservative Party.  I suppose that most people who are generally comfortably off, no matter where they live have a tendency not to want that disrupted and to keep out others from enjoying what they and their families have.  It is a trend even in states such as China, which is Communist and founded on revolution and in which a lot of things still need to change, let alone countries, that whilst suffering from a recession currently, are far better off than those countries where the bulk of the world's population lives.  Recently I have noted people who whilst they want to reduce pressure or upset for themselves actually want other people to suffer more 'for their own good'.  Of course, the standard thing about pressurising unemployed people to take low-paid work and uproot and move right across the country or face punishment have been wheeled out again as the level of unemployment has risen.  However, I have encountered people saying Sweden is now lagging because its policies of equality means there is no 'edge' to drive people to work harder.  These people love having the whip cracked as long as it is on other people not themselves.

You might ask, well, 'what has this to do with Socialism?'  You may ask 'what is Socialism, anyway?'  It is a term that even the Labour Party dropped more than a decade ago.  The wealthy actor, Alan Cummings, when interviewed recently listed it as the extinct thing he would like see revived.  A lot of people equate it with Communism and they think that died the day the Berlin Wall was knocked down in 1989.  Of course, saying all Socialists are Communists is like saying all Conservatives are Fascists: inaccurate and ignorant of how the political spectrum works.  Of course, that was how many people have liked it.  In particular, Margaret Thatcher (British prime minister 1979-90), who, on more than one occasion said she wanted the elimination of a spectrum of political parties and preferred to have simply two very close to each other as is the case in the USA, often equated not only Socialism but the Labour Party (which often had more Liberal than Socialist policies) with the Communist.  In that way she could portray them as a the 'fifth column' or 'the enemy within', in league with the USSR to undermine democracy in the UK during the Cold War.  Of course, Socialists are passionate defenders of democracy as are most Conservatives.

What is Socialism? Well, the key word is 'social', it is a political philosophy which sees the benefit of the whole of society as the key driving force.  Of course, Margaret Thatcher argued that there was 'no such thing as society' and emphasised that it was individuals' desires and units no greater than families who should drive what happened politically and economically.  Socialism argues that people are different, they have different needs and abilities but they should be looked after when they cannot look after themselves (such as when ill, pregnant, unemployed or elderly) but also that they have responsibilities to the rest of the community and that whilst they are free to make their own way in the world and make profits (this is crucially where Socialism differs from Communism) they should not do so by exploiting people whether in their own country or in other countries.  This means employers should pay decent wages, have reasonable working hours and conditions and listen to the people that they are employing.  A key objective of Socialism is that everyone has equal opportunity, whether it is in terms of access to health care or education or to get on in their lives.  Vitally Socialism is against people being barred from certain jobs or other opportunities simply because of what social class they come, what gender, age or ethnicity they are.  In the 1960s this approach, seen with the creation of numerous new universities to allow people greater opportunity to go into higher education, was condemned as 'meritocracy', i.e. that people with ability could succeed.  Of course, this has been turned around from a negative term to a positive one.  As I have noted regularly on this blog since the 1980s we have moved too far away from a meritocracy to too many people simply getting good positions because of what family they were born into or which elite school they attended.  Opportunity is now less than it was thirty years ago.

A lot of Socialist principles overlap with Liberal ones and probably the most Socialist governments in British history, those under Clement Attlee 1945-51 actually pursued a Liberal policy.  Rather than having a controlled economy in line with what Socialism advocates, after 1948 they used Liberal Keynesian approaches, manipulating rather than directing the economy, notably through shifting interest rates.  In terms of health and social welfare, though they created the National Health Service, they permitted private, fee-taking doctors to continue practising and rather than funding a lot of health and social welfare from direct taxation as you would expect a Socialist government to do, they widened welfare insurance, which had been introduced in the 1910s and created National Insurance in line with what the Liberal, William Beveridge had advised during the war.  The idea is that you pay into national insurance as you would any insurance so that you build up a fund that you can draw upon when you need it, for example, when ill or elderly or out of work.  Of course, as with all insurance, some people never make a claim whereas others claim often, but that reflects the diverse needs of our society and that is not something we should try to restrain.

The most Socialist element was nationalisation of key sectors of British industry.  The focus was on the 'commanding heights', i.e. those sectors of the economy that fed through into many others.  Thus, coal mining and the railways were nationalised.  The fact that these industries had been run poorly or inefficiently before was a good reason for the state to take over.  Gas extraction and provision; electricity generation; water supply; coach transport; airlines; freighting and later steel manufacture were all nationalised; though some steps, such as with airlines had been taken before the war.  Other countries, notably France did the same kind of thing.  The British, however, even with nationalisation, tempered Socialism with Liberalism and had a very 'arms length' control by the state of these industries and did not direct them in the ways they should stimulate the economy the way that even right-wing governments in France did especially with the largest state-owned company in France, Electricite de France (now EDF Energy).  Often, as with the example of gas and water supply what we saw in the UK was really just grand 'muncipalisation'.  Many suppliers had been established by city councils in the 19th century and the regionalised approach to gas and water supply (and some water regions, such as City of York, were very small) was continuing this 19th century approach rather than moving to a really Socialist method. 

In later years nationalisation in the UK was not used as a way to try to stimulate the economy but rather to bail out failing companies such as Rolls Royce in 1971 (nationalised by Edward Heath's Conservative Government), British Leyland car manufacturers in 1976 and British Aerospace made up of a number of aeronautical manufacturing companies and British Shipbuilders, the same for that industry, in 1977.  It is unsurprising that nationalised industries that had failed continued to suffer but it meant that nationalisation was now seen as a failed economic policy and this was at the time when New Right ideas were rising both in the USA and the UK emphasising the reduction of all state control or even regulations and clearly nationalised industries were an anathema to such thinking (notably the economic viewpoint held by Margaret Thatcher).  Ironically Thatcher's government nationalised collapsed chemical company, Johnson Matthey in 1984. 

Despite the emphasis on nationalised industries the state sector was never larger than 20% of the economy compared to 90%+ in Communist countries.  In the 1980s and 1990s the nationalised industries were sold off by the government which brought revenue to the state.  The idea was ownership would be held by numerous small shareholders but generally they were bought out by large companies and increasingly ones from abroad.  Whilst there have been regulators of these former nationalised industries control over prices and profits and trying to keep up quality has not really worked; many have a near monopoly and as has been seen in the past couple of years attempts by government to stop them charging high prices and providing poor service have failed.

Conservative propaganda about Socialism has always been pretty successful.  In 1992, Labour did not win the election after a successful campaign arguing that its policies would lead to higher taxation, a view that even Labour supporters seem to come to believe.  In the 1950s the Conservatives argued that Labour's nationalisation was akin to a command economy and though Winston Churchill shot himself in the foot in 1945 likening the Labour approach to the Gestapo by the 1950s the Conservatives were successful in portraying themselves as the party of freedom against Labour's restraint and austerity.  In the late 1940s, of course, the public had been used to both restraint and authority so that argument had little impact.  In addition, Labour does seem to offer solutions to ingrained problems and in 1945 the public had been really voting on the problems of 1931 rather than the post-war era.

The reason why Tony Blair was so focused on manipulating the media was because he knew from history how long it had been manipulated against anything Labour had done.  However, he went so far in making the Labour Party seem acceptable to the media that he sheared it of the bulk of its Socialist principles.  Clause 4, the part of the Labour Party constitution which advocated nationalisation, was scrapped in 1994.  On coming to power in 1997, Labour in fact went further than the Conservative governments by denationalising the Bank of England and so giving up even Keynesian control over interest rates.  I believe that Tony Blair was neither a Socialist or really a Conservative, he was a Blairite and created a personal party out of the shell of the Labour Party; using Christian Democrat principles as the covered, but really based on his own ambitions and simply what he felt was 'right'.  This is why people feel Socialism is dead in Britain, but in effect we probably have not even seen a mildly Socialist government in Britain at least since 1976 if not since 1970 and that is the way company bosses like it.

The key problem for Labour, aside from the fact that the financial sector always tries to make a run on the pound and destabilise the economy, in fear of what constraints they will be put under, is that trade unions see an opportunity to get the deals that they have battled to achieve under a Conservative government.  Now, as in 1978/9, they are busily undermining the Labour government with demands and strikes that make it appear to voters, ironically most of whom will be workers, that the government has no control.  Of course, part of the problem is that no British government has been able to tackle the greed and huge profits of those who run business, so it is unsurprising that workers want more.  If the utility companies had been compelled to pay a windfall tax and bankers to limit their vast bonuses, ironically I think we would be seeing less industrial action.

Anyway, having cantered through Socialism, you might be thinking why is that relevant now?  Well, it is my suggestion that the British population while Conservative most of the time, turns to Socialism when things are going wrong.  In 1945 Socialism was seen as the way to avoid a return to the Depression of the 1930s and the economic slump that had followed the First World War.  In 1964 Socialism was seen as the way to stop Britain's industrial stagnation, unwillingness to modernise and thus its slipping competitiveness from worsening.  In 1974 Socialism was seen as a way to heal the sharp rifts in society and especially in industrial relations.  Of course, there has always been ambivalence as the elections of 1951, 1964 and 1974 showed and the wealthy always pull out the stops to prevent the advent of a truly Socialist government.  This is one reason why Gordon Brown who, unlike Blair, is a Labour leader, has come under sustained media attack throughout his term in office.  However, it is clear that the British public is drifting back in a Socialist direction once more.

Of course, it is not pure, unadulterated Socialism, there are other trends such as blaming problems of immigrants, which are an anathema to Socialism but almost seem to have become a norm in much discussion.  However, adherence to the National Health Service and a national innoculation programme to combat swine flu is one characteristic of a more Socialist outlook. People do not seem to realise that in the USA they would have to have health insurance for things they currently get for free and once they were elderly they would find it difficult to get cover.  Most likely they would be paying for innoculations.   I know prescription charges have risen but no-one pays for innoculation and the elderly and people like me with a lifelong condition, diabetes, who need constant medicines, do no pay.

There are, in fact, demands that the NHS expands it role and does more to provide treatment for the elderly, and for example, one-to-one care for premature babies.  Such things are costly and perhaps people are unwilling to tolerate the tax to pay for these.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, whilst re-inforcing pride in the military among the British population, are seen increasingly as hopeless and people are calling for an exit.  The Conservatives argue that Labour has not provided the military with the equipment it needs, something I agree has been a problem, but how does anyone expect David Cameron with all his emphasis on cutting public spending to be able to afford to send even one more helicopter to Helmand province? 

The key area where we are seeing a return of Socialism is, ironically, in terms of the previously most controversial aspect of the ethos, nationalisation.  We now have a larger nationalised sector in the UK than at any time since about 1986.  The British government took over the Docklands Light Railway in 1997 and effectively the railway track of Britain is run by Network Rail a company without shareholders but underwritten by the government.  In 2008 Northern Rock building society and the mortgage lending part of Bradford & Bingley building society were nationalised. The government took over 60% of the Royal Bank of Scotland and 40% of the HBOS-Lloyds-TSB banking conglomerate giving it a large slice of the British banking sector, especially in mortgage-lending which has always been a key element in shaping the British economy.

It is unlikely that even Clement Attlee would have been able to control such a large aspect of the financial sector.  The closest we came was when Roy Hattersley, deputy leader of the Labour Party said around the time of the 1992 election that the investment group 3i would be nationalised under a Labout Government to form the basis of state investment in private industry.  The uproar was such that the idea seems to have been entirely forgotten almost immediately.  Interestingly, this year, finally, the government is compelling credit card companies to raise the minimum repayment level on the amount people owe.  This should have come in at least 10 or 15 years ago and could have restrained some of the overheated consumption and massive debt that amounted during the late 1990s and early 2000s that has distorted the economy in an unhealthy way.

All of these steps have been taken with no dismay from the general public.  When there is a crisis they expect the government to step in and sort it all out for them.  The rest of the time they whine about over-regulation, the 'nanny state', that taxes are intolerable and so on, not realising that lack of regulation has led to much of the crisis we are now in and that expensive bail-outs can only be funded by taxes.  Again nationalisation, which seems such a dirty word in most years, is seen as the solution.  Again, however, as in the 1970s, it is being used to catch falling businesses.  This is the wrong way to approach the economy.  Northern Rock should have been nationalised before it started its mad approach to mortgage lending.  I would have taken it over in 2005 at the latest and then, rather than it being a drag on the British economy it could have been used to stabilise house prices and provide stimulus to new business. 

With the first £1002 train ticket for the journey from Newquay in Cornwall to Kyle of Lochalsh in western Scotland, a distance of 2,720 Km (a round the world air ticket can be bought for £800 and you can travel from London to Zurich on the luxury Orient Express for £1000 or from Moscow to Beijing on the Trans-Siberian Railway - 5,806 Km for only £995) and most inter-city rail fare prices having trebled in the past 15 years, a period in which inflation has been below 3%, it seems apparent that if we want a mobile population using the greenest form of transport around, i.e. electric trains, then we need the whole rail system back in state control.  You find that the only people who praise the privatisation of the railways are people who never travel on trains.

So, are we seeing a Socialist conscience developing among the British population, wanting a tax on bankers' bonuses, limits on the pay of the wealthy, better value public transport and a health service expanding its scope combined with a tolerance, possibly even an enthusiasm for privatising what are now the controlling sectors of the British economy?  People would argue, as historian Corelli Barnett did in the 1980s that the British have become too used to the 'teat' of state intervention and would be traumatised to have it taken away from them and left to fend for themselves.  However, of course, with Thatcherite policies a great deal has been taken away and yet there are still billions of pounds of benefits that people who are entitled to them do not claim.  Britons are an independent people that still like to make their own way as best they can, despite all the propaganda about benefit swindlers and dole scroungers.  Ironically no-one goes after the tax defrauders who owe millions in total to the British economy but they have taken out to tax havens.  We need to go after these people and make them contribute the way I and the large bulk of ordinary British people do.  We have no choice about paying or not paying tax, so why should the wealthy get to make that choice?  Hopefully people are beginning to realise that only a tiny fraction of the population are ever going to win the lottery or set up a business we can sell for millions or become a pop star or some other kind of celebrity, so instead of thinking it is alright for the rich to get away without pulling their weight because one day we might be one of them, more of us need to make sure there are opportunities for a decent life for all.

The veteran Socialist politician Tony Benn often recounts when he was on a train that broke down and how it suddenly seemed as if people were becoming Socialist, sharing out the food and other supplies they had, working together to make the best of a bad situation.  When the train was running smoothly of course they did none of this.  People often refer back to the 'wartime spirit' when people supposedly collaborated in the way that Benn saw them do on that train.  Historian Nick Tiratsoo has shown that a lot of that was exaggerated and we know that 'outsiders', often Jews, were kept out of air raid shelters and whilst the bulk of the population was struggling to feed their families on rations, those who could afford to, could eat unrationed food in restaurants.  However, though it might have been exaggerated it does seem that, possibly counter to what you might expect, in crises Britons become less rather than more selfish.  It is a shame that they cannot maintain that attitude in the better times.  I know David Cameron thinks he will walk into being the latest Conservative prime minister but the recession has reawakened the dormant Socialist tendencies in the British population and if Labour appeals to those rather than trying to be a pale version of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party, it may win at the next election.

In Big Brother Britain Don't Dare Move

I have long said 'Big Brother may be watching, but he's got poor eyesight'. Having worked for the civil service in three different branches I have been aware how dependent it is on human input. So many times do people misread things or transpose digits or drop files down the back of the shelving, that you can often find errors creaping in. My father ended up with three separate tax files because on different occasions when he had contacted the tax office they had got one or more of the digits of his national insurance number wrong or in the wrong order. The problem of such technical error, especially in an increasingly authoritarian regime, was shown sharply in the movie 'Brazil' (1985) in which an insect falls on a typing machine in a sinister 1984-style state and changes the first letter on the name of people to be arrested and a loyal servant of the state is arrested instead. In my own life changing branches at a bank once my middle initial was altered and the last three letters of my surname were left off creating a whole new name associated with my bank account. As we rush headlong towards identity cards in the UK I anticipate many more errors of this kind creaping in and you will find yourself picked up and held for 42 days without charge as your mistyped identity card number happens to be the same as a suspected terrorist. As people such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six innocent people wrongly convicted of terrorist activity in the mid-1970s demonstrated it is almost impossible to prove you are not a terrorist.

This post has rather branched off from my intended focuse which was a little more mundane, though for me far more immediate. Despite the fact that I moved house three months ago there still seems to be an incessant amount of people I have to inform about the fact. Partly I imagine that this stems from all the pbobia around identity fraud. This has reached such an extent with online shopping that given I forget all the identity names and passwords (and you are increasingly compelled to have very complex ones missing cases and numerals into the words) that I have abandoned buying online and gone back to doing it over the telephone, which seems to be a retrograde step and certainly more costly for me. Anyway, it took three attempts to get my bank to recognise that I had moved house though ironically they were the ones providing the mortgage for the house I am now living in. I had to change my credit card details separately as though the credit card comes from the bank it is actually supplied by a different company, something I was oblivious to as it has never come up before despite holding the credit card since 1987. Then of course there were the utilities. The fact that gas and electricity comes from a single company reduced one occasion of informing of change of address (and the company then charged me for fuel use at my old address and then refunded most of it generating even more paper) has to be balanced by the fact that in my town we have a separate water company and a sewage company both of which had to be informed. There was council tax and television licence too.

The main problem has come with things connected to the car. When you move you have to have a new insurance certificate which costs more money and they reassess if your new postcode is more hazardous than the previous one. Then I had to change my driving licence and I assumed that as this is handled by the DVLA that they would also change the vehicle registration details and car tax, but of course no, I found today that has to be done separately. Not only does this entail more phonecalls (no companies ever seem to respond to emails) but yet more paperwork as they never simply send you a licence but accompany it with a whole host of pamphlets. I do wonder if there is anything else I have forgotten to change. The electoral register is after us too, but we are loath to change that as we know our former landlord's representative is hunting us down and being public it is one source he will use to try to find us. Oh yes, and I forgot re-registering with a doctor and them wanting you to take out time to have a bloodtests and they are only open for that during office hours Monday to Thursday when I am working 30 miles away.

Of course once the identity cards come in we will have to change them each time we move too, and probably have to go for an interview. As with everything which is being added in British society, the poorer you are and thus the more mobile you are (as you have to seek out employment and housing) the more you are weighed down by such regulations and the cost of delay in changing things. The number of overlapped utility bills I have to pay is ridiculous. No-one seems to conside the burden of getting two bills on gas, electricity, water (they had cancelled the standing order when we moved for some reason then sent out a late payment letter), sewage, telephone (I had forgotten that one though this time it was resolved 5 weeks quicker than the last time I moved) occurring because they now insist you pay in advance for all utilities but they only stop charging you a month after you have left. Heaven help you if you lose one letter or scrap of paper, the authorities are unforgiving. Whilst I have no desire to have all information centralised I just wish bodies reacted as quickly as they expect us to do and not charge us double every time we move house.

The least companies can do is not tell you to inform them of change of address and yet throw away your details each time you move. They should not charge you in advance for utilities anyway and even if they do realise you do not have the capacity for two bills in one month. They should also pay attention when you actually send in change of address details, banks especially as an error in your address now mucks up so much verification of online purchasing. Finally when a company or organisation provides you with more than one service you should not have to change your address separately for each one. For a country which wants greater population, well in fact labour, mobility, its companies and government departments make it a nightmare even to move a mile.