Day 3757: Doctor Who: What's Wrong With Kinda?

Friday:


"Kinda" is an acknowledged classic of Doctor Who, a story from Mr Dr Peter's first year, when everything was NEW and EXPERIMENTAL (or "wildly inconsistent" if you prefer).

Notoriously, it was voted worst in Doctor Who Magazine's annual poll, but was rehabilitated by a reappraisal from Mr Paul Cornell: yes, he's the chap who wrote "Human Nature" so clearly he knows STUFF.

There are several really awesome performances and some really astounding (and in a GOOD way) visuals.

So why do I still end up thinking it's a wee bit rubbish?

And no, it's NOT the big pink mind-snake!


Thing is, there're at least FIVE kinds of "Kinda".

There's the "Kinda" that Kate Bush (Christopher Bailey) wrote as a Buddhist allegory; there's the "Kinda" that Peter Grimwade's Syndrome directed, full of Christian Eden imagery and Top-of-the-Pops visuals; there's the "Kinda" that Eric "von" Saward wanted, guns, guns and, well, guns; there's the "Kinda" that Mr John Nathan-Turner had in mind, something with Richard Todd and Mary Morris and Nerys Hughes in it. Probably in a jungle.

There's the INEFFABLE one in fans' minds… or the terrible one in fans' memories…

And then there's the one we actually GOT!

For starters, the "Kinda" that reached the screen is really TWO stories: there's "what's going on in the dome (Mr Hindle's gone potty)"; and there's "what's going on in the forest (a Hindu demon has escaped from Tegan's dreams and is going to destroy the Kinda's Buddhist paradise. Probably)".

These two stories only intersect each other tangentially and the final episode is reduced almost to the Doctor running backwards and forwards between the two plots trying to DO something only to see them both resolve pretty much all by themselves.

It doesn't ENTIRELY help that there are certain bits of one plot that LOOK like they are in the other. The Kinda Wise-Woman Panna (Ms Mary Morris – awesome performance #1) and her Box of Jhana very much LOOK like they are part of the Kinda plotline but are ACTUALLY part of the "dome" plot.

The colonists in the dome have been pushed to a state of hysteria by the disappearance of three of their team.

The disappearances have also led to the colonists sealing themselves off in the dome – heightening the paranoia – and taking two of the local Kinda tribe as "hostages". All according to the manual, which inexperienced, out-of-his-depth security officer Hindle (Mr Simon Rouse – awesome performance #2) is following to the letter.

The expedition leader, Sanders (Mr Richard Todd – awesome performance #3), is taking his frustrations out on Hindle and the combination of these stresses has pushed an already weak man to the edge.

Hindle then makes telepathic contact with the Kinda "hostages" and it pushes him right over. (You can see this happen; all that guff later about mirrors and capturing souls is his patronising colonialist rationalisation).

And this is all Panna's fault.

She OUGHT to be a figure of wisdom, but actually it's her bloody-minded insistence on giving the "Kinda healing device" to the colonists – even though she KNOWS that it'll drive any man who opens it mad!– that causes the disappearances and sets the whole inevitable cycle going.

And then she does it AGAIN to Sanders, and it really doesn't help matters any.

Ultimately the situation is resolved because Todd (Nerys Hughes – also pretty good) tricks Hindle into opening the Box of Jhana and because he's already nuts it turns him sane.

The Mara has NOTHING to do with this plot!

Notice especially that no one tries using the box of Janna to cure Aris of the Mara!


Meanwhile, in a very much other part of the forest…

Dr Woo arrives with three chums: Nyssa, Tegan and boy-brainiac Adric (Mr Matthew Waterhouse – awesome performance #4… no, just kidding).

Tegan falls asleep under the Kinda tribe's magic wind-chimes and through her dreams an evil spirit called the Mara takes possession of her. Through Tegan, it is able to take over of one of the Kinda, Aris; and, because it is able to speak through Aris and because there is a Kinda prophecy that they must obey a man who can speak, through Aris it takes control the rest of the tribe, threatening them with destruction through the reintroduction of "progress".

This is very much the WEAKER story of the pair. (Pear? No, it's apples… hang on, we'll come back to that!)

It is quite DIFFICULT to CARE about the fate of the Kinda.

We're repeatedly TOLD that they are far more sophisticated than they appear. Which isn't hard as they appear to have stepped out of a Timotei commercial – and that's what the WRITER has to say! The so-called clues to this include the necklaces that they wear, which are said to resemble the DNA double-helix but actually don't, the glass glockenspiel at the place of dreaming and ultimately the "sophisticated healing device" that is the Box of Jhana.

But the Kinda themselves never DO anything to justify this claim. The telepathy does not help. The Mara (as Tegan) is all too right when it declares "telepathy is such a BORING way to communicate".

I UNDERSTAND – because the script keeps TELLING me – that they are supposed to "do nothing" because they are kind of beyond all that, but to paraphrase "Warriors' Gate", it needs to be the RIGHT KIND of "nothing".

These guys, hanging out with blissed out expressions and carrying their fruit platters, could just as easily be a tribe of primitives living in the ruins of a far more ancient and sophisticated society, a thought that is reinforced by the way they try to recreate the Colonists' high-tech "total survival suit" (or TSS – the galaxy's clunkiest spacesuit) using just leaves and branches: mimicking rather than understanding.

What it NEEDS is for one of the Kinda to disable the REAL TSS, maybe casually flipping open a panel and changing a circuit or maybe just by touching it, to indicate that the technology – ALL technology – is BENEATH them.

Instead, this is almost PATRONISING to the "charming native folks".

The script invests much more character into the colonists in the dome, and as a result we CARE about what happens to them. Even Hindle. In contrast, the Kinda are a bland bunch in whom we are never invested. At best they are an over-stylised collection of archetypes; at worst, a bunch of ciphers.

And if we don't care about them, we don't care about this part of the story. And remember, this is supposed to be the IMPORTANT part of the story, the bit with the dirty great SYMBOLISM in it.

At the end of part three Panna shows Todd and Dr Woo a VISION, so heavily STEEPED in SYMBOLS, not to mention so heavily treated with visual effects, that it might as well have "THIS IS A VISION" appear as a caption card. It's undeniably POWERFUL, but that power depends really on what happens to the Kinda tribe MATTERING to us.

And what is it with that prophecy anyway? It appears to do nothing but HARM, since the Kinda end up following Aris into larks and scrapes because of it. By falling for it, the tribe demonstrates blind faith rather than spiritual enlightenment. And if they are supposed to be so sophisticated how come they haven't made their prophecy a bit more specific?

Why DON'T the menfolk have voice? It's cultural rather than biological (Aris, at least, clearly HAS vocal chords for the Mara to use). I know that I shouldn't be bringing my own cultural baggage to the anthropological table, but "it just is" isn't a completely satisfactory answer at the end of a story that RELIES on a man suddenly having a voice.

And for that matter, why are only WOMEN allowed to be WISE? Panna repeatedly calling the Doctor an idiot is, yes, a running joke. But it's also prejudiced and rude and once again WRONG!

Female wisdom (Panna) and compassion (Karuna) are shown to be no match for the Mara.

At one point, Karuna's knowledge even appears to go backwards: SHE'S the one who tells Dr Woo that the way for the Mara to enter the waking world is by the dreaming of an unshared mind. But then she appears shocked to learn that Tegan might have been sleeping near the chimes, asserting "but it is forbidden!" like she doesn't know that the CONSEQUENCES of doing "the forbidden" are already upon them.

And, incidentally, if it is forbidden for an unshared mind to dream, why do the Kinda tribesfolk just blithely decorate Tegan's slumbering form with flowers. Rather than, say, waking her up before something terrible can happen. Or at least going to Panna to tell.

Panna, though, as we've seen, gets everything WRONG and Karuna falls under the Mara's sway. (Perhaps it's trying to say that only when you COMBINE wisdom with compassion do you succeed, but it don't come across that way.)

In a story that OUGHT to be big on female EMPOWERMENT – what with the women Kinda being the wise ones who get "voice" – it actually undermines this by having them fall victim to such an overwhelmingly MALE power. It's a BIG PINK SNAKE for goodness sake; I mean what WERE they thinking?


The shame of it is that Mara itself is TERRIFYINGLY AWESOME.

Played like a lizard by Mr Jeff Stewart (awesome performance #5) in the already-incredibly-creepy nearly-black-and-white world inside Tegan's head. The bleached-out film and the red dye on the teeth make him – it? – look like something DEAD, a corpse that the Mara has just slung on like an ill-fitting suit. Dukkha-Mara toys with Tegan as he toys with our expectations of the "rules" in this "dreamworld", casually tossing them aside to twist the knife, somehow both revelling in this and remaining dead-eyed and unaffected by it at the same time: an emotionless savagery.

And when it takes possession of Tegan (Ms Janet Fielding – awesome performance #6, and possibly winner of the Most Awesome, You Ownz Da Deva Loka award) if anything it gets even BETTER.

It's not an ORIGINAL observation that there's a big slice of SEXUAL AWAKENING in the Mara-possessed Tegan. (What's that you say? A big pink snake and apples in the paradise garden leading to knowledge of good and evil? Could there be a SUBTEXT going on here?).

The unfettering of her sexual identity (while "under the influence") also mirrors the hints that Tegan is repressing something rather UNPLEASANT: in this story, a childhood memory of ice cream and she "didn't like the taste"; in "Snakedance" she talks about her garden "where people always come back"; and there's further insight into her state of mind in "Enlightenment". When we first meet her she's living with her (maiden?) Aunt Vanessa and given the propensity for Dr Woo's companions to be orphaned, can we guess that an early bereavement is the answer to what's her childhood trauma? Or is there something WORSE going on?

The Mara doesn't just exaggerate Tegan's unspoken DESIRES; it might actually USE her fears to torment her with her "own" behaviour.

But then the idea of a (sexually) LIBERATED woman as POWERFUL or even FRIGHTENING is VERY Nineteen Eighties! It's hardly a coincidence that the then Prime Monster was depicted as the woman out of SPECIES (see especially the Comic Strip's "Ken" – and that really DOES have a song by Kate Bush in it!).

It's a shame that Tegan-Mara gets so little of the screen time (and then SHAMEFULLY she's not even IN episode three!) and has to wait until the sequel to really let rip!


In some ways you could say that the PROBLEM with "Kinda" IS "Snakedance".

In "Snakedance", the Mara is a world-conquering all-consuming snake god. We know that in the deep past it overthrew the Manussan Empire and ruled its own Sumaran Empire for half a MILLENNIUM. In the "present", we see that it has formed a plan to take advantage of the Manussans' ceremony in the cave and quickly takes control of the people it needs to effect its resurrection: first the showman, then Lon (directly), then Ambril. With the Great Mind's Eye and all the people at the ceremony it can recreate itself and take over the world. That Mara is both ambitious and effective and, looking like it could succeed, credible.

Contrast that with the Mara's aims and ambitions in "Kinda". If it WANTS to conquer worlds… wouldn't it be better off possessing one of the COLONISTS, rather than a barely-dressed hippy? If its aim is no more than to cause misery for the Kinda, then it would STILL be better off possessing one of the colonists – imagine it taking over Sanders and instigating a full military assault on the jungle. Or even Todd and turning her scientific detachment into cold clinical killing.

When incarnated as Dukkha inside Tegan's head, the Mara's malevolence is sophisticated and philosophical. When it takes possession of Aris, its evil amounts to… being mean to the tribe's jester. And playing dress-up with twigs.

Just what the HELL does the Mara think it's DOING?


In story terms – and frankly according to the PHILOSOPHY here – the threat of the Mara OUGHT to be the MAIN threat, appalling and apocalyptic as Panna's episode-ending vision implies; the threat from Hindle should be PETTY in comparison.

But from the way it's shown on screen, it's the other way around.

The biggest threat to the Kinda is that they and their forest will be incinerated by the insane Hindle. Compared to that, the Mara is, what, getting them to perform some kind of cargo-cult approximation of an attack on the dome at the end of which they all run away.

That thing with the giant pink snake may be jaw-dropping (for one reason or another)… it's certainly "the memorable bit"… but rescuing Aris from the mind-snake is, in STORY terms, treated as just an adjunct after the main drama is over.

And that's just wrong.

In a lot of ways, what the story needs is TIME.

Everything seems to happen in a big rush. It almost FEELS like it all plays out in real time, or at most takes place over the course of one afternoon. The Doctor actually tells Tegan she's been asleep for two days, at one point, but there's no sense of that much time passing: it never seems to get dark, and there hardly seem to be enough events to take up the stated time.

(You CAN just about make it add up, if you assume Sanders goes out in the TSS on day one and Hindle locks up Dr Woo and Dr Todd overnight – which certainly ISN'T the implication of, for example, Todd's "shouldn't we try to escape?" line – and then episodes two and three take all day with the prophecy vision taking all the second night so that they wake Tegan up on their third day on Deva Loka in episode four. But it's a stretch and there's not a sense of morning and afternoon passing.)

But that isn't my point.

When the Doctor arrives it's ALREADY the beginning of the crisis: people have disappeared, the hostages have been taken, Hindle is ready to go fruit-loop etc. And the Mara hasn't even been released yet!

This is fundamentally the wrong order: the release of the Mara NEEDS to come before events start to spiral out of control – the POINT of the Kinda is that they have "stepped off the wheel of time" so events shouldn't BE occurring, let alone spiralling out of control, until the Mara turns up to restart the wheel.

The story OUGHT to work like this:

1. Tegan falls asleep under the chimes and falls under the power of the Mara, releasing it;
2. the Mara possesses Aris and the Kinda begin to change, perhaps starting to use or develop their technology;
3. reacting to this change, Panna suspects the colonists and uses the box of Jhana to try and bring things back into balance;
4. far from healing things, this makes things worse as one by one the colonists exposed to the box go crazy and/or native and disappear;
5. Hindle, possibly already sensitive to the Kinda telepathy, becomes paranoid and instigates the security protocols, and he and Sanders kidnap two of the tribe;
6. the Kinda become hostile, possibly beginning to turn their technology to weapons…

In THIS context, the two different stories become INTERCONNECTED because the Mara is the root cause, driving them both.It means that Panna's prophetic vision of an apocalypse seems like a credible extrapolation rather than an hysterical over-reaction. And it means that stopping Hindle isn't enough, because the Mara will carry on turning the wheel unless it can be stopped, confronted, rejected.


But maybe that's just me, wanting the PARABLE to make SENSE as a piece of action sci-fi rather than just a statement of state of mind.Maybe the problem is that I was just TOO YOUNG to see "Kinda" the first time and that sense of "WTF" has stuck. Daddy Richard thinks he has the same problem (ooh look: the fourth wall!). But then I was even younger when I saw the allegedly-even-more-baffling "Warriors' Gate" and I've never had a problem with that!

In the end, it's possible that "Kinda"'s great success is that it is SO baffling that people just keep coming back to it for more. Even if it's like that scene in "Star Trek" where Guinan serves Data a drink so he can experience it emotionally: "that is REVOLTING! Give me another!" Its contradictions give it DEPTH; the lack of a single unifying vision for the story makes it MULTI-FACETED (Noo, crystals is the OTHER one!); and its very inconsistencies make it interesting.

In other words, what is WRONG with "Kinda" may be exactly what it does RIGHT.

PS:

"Kinda" is available on DVD along with "Snakedance" in the BBC boxset "Mara Tales".

Daddy Alex previews the set (and the rest of the year's releases) here; and also talks more stuff about "Kinda" here.
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Day 3754: We Salute the Conquerors of Space

Tuesday:


Peoples of Russialand and all across planet Earth celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the first ever space trip by one of you monkey people, when Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was strapped into a tin ball, plonked on top of an enormous firework and blasted into orbit.

In Moscow, capital of Russialand, this amazing achievement is rightly celebrated by this statue in tribute.

To Infinity?

It is called the "Monument to the Conquerors of Space". Which clearly puts the DALEKS in their place!

But wait, Daddy says we are receiving an incoming communication about this… run VT!



(ashamed now!)
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Day 3748: Worse Off Wednesday?

Wednesday (surprisingly enough)


The new Tax Year has begun (eleven days after the quarter day, thank you the Gregorian Compact and the Eleven Day Empire) and no sooner has everyone's personal tax allowance gone UP than Portugal – our OLDEST ALLY; who we SHOULD bail out – kindly provides us with another example of WHY we are going to spend the rest of the year doing all of these spending cuts.

It's pretty cut and dried, isn't it? If your austerity package FAILS to convince, the market LOOSES CONFIDENCE in your economy and your interest rates go THROUGH THE ROOF.

That's the way Master Gideon sees it too – but don't worry, that doesn't make it wrong. Mr Bully Balls says the opposite, so we know THAT'S wrong.

In fact, Mr Balls says that Great Britain's situation is completely different. And of course, he is RIGHT. Portugal owes about a hundred and ninety billion pounds. Great Britain owes the BEST PART OF A TRILLION!

Labour claim that it is the austerity programmes that are causing the debt crisis. WRONG! That is COMPLETELY BACKWARDS. Portugal didn't get its credit rating downgraded because it was doing TOO MUCH austerity – they were downgraded because they were NOT DOING ENOUGH!

Labour like to say that we are in a BETTER position than other Western Governments. WRONG! Thanks to the last couple of years of unfettered borrowing, our debt is fast approaching 80% of GDP, the average among the G7 countries, but with Britain having the LARGEST deficit in the G20 (never mind the G7) then we are ACCELERATING PAST the average and, unless we do something, will soon be topping the table of dishonour.

Hard Labour's position, reiterated by Ms Caroline "Heart of" Flint on Questionable Time, remains one of: "Lalalalala can't hear you!"



Funnily enough, those FRIGHTFULLY UNCONVINCING "Liberals" at the Labour Conspiracy website have published a VIDEO from the Labour Party's backers in the UNIONS saying very much the same thing.


So, how much of a CLUE do the Unions have about the causes of the deficit?

Spot the Difference?

A clue: "spending" and "tax" are labelled the WRONG WAY AROUND!

(Unless they really MEAN that spending collapsed in the recession and the government's coffers are overflowing with soar-away tax revenues???)


But even if you CORRECT the labelling so that the RED line is SPENDING, it's STILL wrong when the voiceover claims that the fall in tax revenue caused the deficit. WRONG! There was a deficit from 2002 onwards – look! Look! The red "labelled tax but should be spending" line is ABOVE the blue "labelled spending but should be tax" line; the collapse in tax revenue just made it much, much worse.

They blur the line between "debt" and "deficit" to claim that we don't have a debt crisis; and then they appeal to the historical fallacy:

Debt Mountain?

Actually, there's a basic statistical trick going on here anyway, which is that by shading the AREA under the graph (and filling it with all those repetitions of the word "debt") it gives the impression that the AREA under the graph represents debt, when it doesn't: it's the HEIGHT of the graph, that is important.

Oh, and that graph appears to show the 2010 debt level at just out of the lower shaded area or only slightly over 50% when it should be half way between the two shaded areas since in 2010 the National Debt was 76.1% of GDP.

This creates an OPTICAL ILLUSION.

How much larger does that debt LOOK? Because actually, the National Debt at the end of the most destructive war IN HISTORY was THREE maybe THREE-AND-A-HALF times larger.

But seriously, their case is that it's FINE to have the WORST debt in fifty years because in the aftermath of World War Part One and World War Part Two we had truly stratospheric debts? Debts that literally cost us an Empire? Debts that led to PEACE-TIME RATIONING? Never mind founding the NHS, we were reliant on American CHARITY to SURVIVE after World War Two.

This is what I mean by the historical fallacy: "it used to be worse so this is fine". Ask yourself: if you'd not worry about Swine Flu just because we used to have BUBONIC PLAGUE?


The next TRICK to make our debt look SMALL and HARMLESS is to compare it with other countries in the world

Where in the World?

(Remember, Mr Bully Balls says you can't compare the British Economy with Portugal or Greece… oh, wait… there's Greece…)


Firstly, they're again slightly undercalling the level of debt, let's generously say they are somewhat OUT OF DATE to say Great Britain's dept is 60% of GDP – Google suggests we went through 60% of GDP in mid 2009 and by the end of the year we were near to 70%.



And by the end of LAST year (2010), I repeat myself, the National Debt was 76.1% of GDP.

Debt of 68% of GDP last year, debt of 76% of GDP this year AND ADDING to the debt with a DEFICIT of 10% of GDP a year would mean debt of 86% of GDP next year and debt of 96% of GDP the year after… unless we cut the DEFICIT.

Let me put that another way: in three years we JUMP PAST GREECE on that league table; in FIVE we overtake ITALY… unless we cut the DEFICIT.



(And no, Japan's example does NOT count – 90% of Japan's debts are to its own national savings bank; 40% of the UK's debts are to foreign investors. Work out the difference.)

Is this a PRUDENT economic policy? Is this a sound basis for investment in the British growth and British jobs that we DO need to pull us into recovery?

Finally, they say that the solution to all this, their "alternative" is GROWTH. Just that "growth". NO word on how the growth is going to happen. The government just keeps on borrowing and spending and by magic, growth happens and makes all the debty badness go away.

Of COURSE we want growth, but it just doesn't work like that. If it did, why did we even have a recession at all?


Perhaps the Unions are so used to "loaning" money to Hard Labour and never getting it back that they think that the rest of the World will do that too. WRONG! Wake up call for the Dinosaurs Unleashed! Eventually, people STOP lending you money. Then you need to go begging.

Which brings me back to Portugal.

Helping to bail out our European partner is the RIGHT THING to DO. "We're all in this together" means EVERYONE, not just we lucky beggars this side of the white cliffs of Dover.

But if that doesn't convince you, there's always the selfish approach: it is in our interest to offer help when we can, because we do not know when we will need it ourselves. We have had to go to the IMF before (thanks to Labour). If Mr Bully Balls is RIGHT about what the Coalition are doing to the economy (he's NOT) then he should be expecting that we will have to go there again. That would be AWKWARD for a man who's been saying we shouldn't help out our friends.

But more importantly, we NEED the Eurozone to stabilize. Most of our TRADE is with Europe – if they go into a permanent tailspin what is THAT going to do for GROWTH in Great Britain? Come on, Mr Bully Balls, if it's ALL ABOUT the GROWTH STRATEGY when where's your joined up thinking? Or is this the so-called "Blue Labour strategy" of "flag and family" (code: appeal to British Nasty Party)?


Look, I'll say this again too: long term, everyone KNOWS that the health of the British economy depends on GROWTH. Hard Labour keep banging on about Growth like they think we don't KNOW that, but OBVIOUSLY the Coalition understand that. What we DON'T understand is how borrowing yet more money to pour down the endless drain of management consultants and public sector quangocrats even REMOTELY helps achieve that!


A real strategy for growth means freeing up people to spend. That is why a VAT hike was entirely WRONG; but it's also why the tax cut for basic rate taxpayers is exactly right, putting money back in people's pockets.

A real strategy for growth means freeing up people to invest. Not Hard Labour's so-called government "investment" in buying jobs. That's REAL people making REAL investments that create and grow businesses and create and grow more real jobs. That's why cutting corporation tax and red tape is RIGHT. We DO need to raise some tax to reduce the deficit, but the right place to tax is UNPRODUCTIVE WEALTH and HARMFUL POLLUTION, rather than INCOME. (Maybe we can twist Gideon's arm a bit more on that Mansion Tax…)

This is going to be hard. There's no two ways about that, and Hard Labour making promises that it doesn't have to hurt is just LIES. I'm sorry, but it's LIES. And the Unions' "no cuts economy" is a FANTASY.

Controlling public spending down will make the economy stronger and more sustainable in the long run. Labour call that "ideological"; I say ACTUALLY that's reversing YEARS of LABOUR'S ideological INCREASES in state spending and power and control.

And we CAN get through this.

Are we worse off for Wednesday? I don't think so.

Short term: higher rate taxpayers will pay more; people on benefits will get less. (So that's BOTH my daddies covered!) But basic rate taxpayers will be a little better off. And we don't begrudge them that. And if it means an economy built on better foundations than ever more Labour borrowing, if it means the British economy HAS a future, then we are better off indeed.
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Day 3743: More GOR'BLIMEY than GOEBBELS: But Baroness Warsi is still wrong on AV

Friday:


There's been un peut d'un spat between Mr Huhney-Monster and Baroness Insider Warsi over her scaremongering that AV will aid the British Nasty Party.

As you might EXPECT, Baroness Warsi has it all BACKWARDS. Let me explain.

Let's take a COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS example of share of the vote: e.g. the latest YouGov Poll:

Sickly Green 2% Scots/Plaid 4% Hard Labour 42% Liberal Democrat 10% Conservatory 35% UKPNuts 5% British Nasty Party 2%

Suppose you're a Conservatory: whose second preferences will you go after? The 7% of UKIP/BNP voters to your right? Or the 51% of voters to your Left?

That's not JUST the Liberal Democrats. Should the Union's dictate an even-more loony left manifesto, then the more Blairite backers of Mr Potato Ed's Party MIGHT be persuaded to give their number one to Mr Balloon to support that neo-liberal market they've so enjoyed, so long as you're not posing as the new Oswald Mosley.

On the other fluffy foot, if you DO start trying to appeal to the far right, you are going to ALIENATE far more voters than you stand to win – you will be fluffing off the very fluffy woolly liberal centrists whose votes you will NEED to cross the winning line. Not to mention the more CENTRIST of your own voters.

Conservatories who adopt a hard right agenda MIGHT convince some of those Cameroon Coalitionists to switch first preferences to the Liberal Democrats to keep the centre-right economically sound but socially just government that they like.


Or suppose you're from Hard Labour: you might THINK you're sitting pretty on 42% under First Pass the Port, but Liberal and Conservative votes combined CAN BEAT YOU. So do you appeal to your deep left core? Or do you reach out to the centre ground?

It might give you a warm fluffy feeling to, for example, address several hundred thousand marchers and liken yourself to Nelson Mandela, but that's NOT going to reach out to "White Van Man" or "Worcester Woman" who can't stand Mr Bob Crow turning off the tube at the drop of a hat and are quite frankly fed up with paying for Mr Mark Serwatka's gold plated salary and diamond encrusted pension.

(I'm really sorry to all the overworked and underpaid public servants out there, but the simple fact is we cannot afford to have twice as many people on the government's payroll as there are working in manufacturing to PAY the government's payroll.)

And frankly, governments can afford to IGNORE mass protests like that one precisely because they don't need to reach out to people. Lord Blairimort could ignore literally MILLIONS more marchers because he could get a working majority on 35% of the vote.


It ought to be a NO BRAINER: AV will encourage politicians towards the CENTRE and encourage them to listen to and engage with as many people as possible because they need to have 50% of the votes if they are going to WIN.



First Pass the Port, in contrast, actively encourages you to the extremes because you can consolidate a winning bloc that DOESN'T appeal to 50% of votes but is just LARGER than anyone else's.

If you don't believe me, just look at what happened in the politics of Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. As soon as artificial restrictions on Parties were removed, the moderate/centrist Parties collapsed and voters polarised to the more extreme Republican/Nationalist positions. Why? Because First Pass the Port REWARDS divide and conquer and PENALISES conciliation.

(As I've said before, "First Past the Post" more ACCURATELY describes AV – you only get a winner once someone gets to the 50% winning line and you stop counting when the first person to get there gets there. That is, the winner is the first person to get past the winning post. As it were. You'd be better off calling the current system something like "who gets nearest to the post" or to be completely accurate "who furthest from the starting line when the counting stops".)

The ONLY way for the BNP to win a seat under AV is if they can appeal to 50% of the electorate there. And if they can do that, they'd win under First Pass the Port ANYWAY.



There's a kind of secondary non-argument about results being decided on the preferences of extremists, or even extremists get a "second vote" when other people only get one.

Well in the first place, they ARE still Human Beans, all men created EQUAL, all girls together and all that, and they get to have their say the same as the rest of us. You can't deny people their democratic rights. You can't turn them into second class citizens just because of the colour of their… ROSETTES (after all, that's quite close to our PRINCIPAL complaint AGAINST the British Nasties!).

But let me just slap that "second vote" idiocy down.

If you're going to say THEY get a "second vote" then EVERYONE gets a "second" vote.

You voted first preference for the Conservatories? That vote was counted in the first round and in that round the British Nasties came LAST and were eliminated. Then you get your SECOND vote for the Conservatories again counted in the second round and any BNP voters who put a second preference gets their second vote, just the same as yours.

I say "any" because people pushed to vote for the British Nasty Party are probably least likely to express a second preference. Imagine your BNP voter thinking: "Well, I've voted for the racists, but I'll choose a multicultural party for my second preference." It doesn't make any sense does it?

Sure, the BNP have a few so-called strongholds, but almost everywhere else they get a derisory handful of votes. If those votes are the ones that tip a winning candidate over the 50% threshold, then that candidate was SO CLOSE to 50% already that they were pretty much bound to win anyway!


Look, I fully understand that Mr Huhney-Monster probably got a bit cross with the ZOMBIE ARGUMENTS that Baroness Warsi was using (you know Zombie arguments: you knock them down but they just keep on moving). But I'd rather he hadn't used the "G" word. Not only does it bring Godwin's Law into play, but it's the kind of hysterical language that, well, Ms Warsi was using. And she started it, isn't any excuse.

Besides, I do think we should try ever so hard NOT to use "hate" language against people we disagree with. We Liberal Democrats have been on the receiving end of QUITE A LOT of that sort of thing recently and it's not nice. So let's not dish it out either.



Finally, remember, REGARDLESS of the voting system we are moving into an era of multi-Party politics where the Red-Blue duopoly has been worn away by many more choices (UKPNuts and Sickly Greens as well as Liberal Democrats).

This means coalitions are MORE LIKELY (with or without AV). In which case, GOOD GOVERNMENT will NEED Parties that can work together – and because AV encourages the Parties to have manifestos that reach out for broad-based support that becomes easier.

After the last General Election, Hard Labour barely even TRIED to form a Coalition with the Liberal Democrats. First Pass the Port had convinced them that BUGGINS TURN meant the Conservatories would have a go this time, and that they would bounce back next.

We have an electoral system that makes politicians think first: "what is good for my Party"; AV would mean that they have to think about MORE than just their sectional vested interests, they would have to think "what is good for the majority".

Vote AV for the good of the country and leave the extremists OUT!

PS

No2AV also seem to be using "None of the Parties want AV" as a reason to vote No; I'm surprised Yes2AV aren't using this as one of the strongest arguments for a "Yes":

"If NONE of the Political Parties want AV it MUST be doing SOMETHING right! Take our politics back from the politicians: vote Yes2AV!"

Day 3739: Money

Monday:


I suppose we all like to THINK that we could take a one pound coin to the Bank of England and swap it for one pound coin's worth of gold. But if you take your pound coin to the Bank of England, all they will give you in exchange is… ANOTHER pound coin.

Of course, a moment's thought will explain why. If Great Britain, a trillion pounds in debt, were, like a dragon at Gringotts, sitting on a great big hoard of gold, wouldn't we, um, sell it to pay off the debt?

Oh wait, Mr Frown already did that.



There is a theory that money exists just because the Government SAYS that it does.

This is what is known as "Modern Monetary Theory" or "MMT", and I have recently been reading a small tome (pdf) by one of its proponents, a Mr Warren Mosler.

It's a bit like discovering a SITH HOLOCRON.

You can see how the ideas of the "other side" are put together – there is a LOT in there that clearly informs the what I call "thinking" of Mr Bully Balls, for example – but you can't quite help but feel oddly REPULSED because there's clearly SOMETHING not quite right, even if you can't put your fluffy foot on what it is!

(And I thought that MMT was a kind of TANK for BATTLE DROIDS in STAR WARS, but it turns out that's an "MTT" or "Multi-Troop Transport". Though as it happens, the Wackypedia disambiguation for "MMT" offers up both "Modern Monetary Theory" AND "Magical Mystery Tour". You can make your own jokes up, really.)

Now you SHOULD bear in mind that Mr Mosler is a RESPECTED and WORLD-RENOWN economist with YEARS of study and thought behind his works. Also he's a candidate for the US Senate. And I am a stuffed elephant. Admittedly an AWARD-WINNING stuffed elephant, but even so.

And what he has to say READS very PLAUSIBLY.

But my rule of thumb is if it sounds too good to be true it almost certainly IS too good to be true. And this doesn't half sound like the MAGIC MONEY TREE.

Money does NOT grow on trees. Unless you are the survivors of the Golgafrinchian "B Ark" that crash-landed on prehistoric Earth in Mr Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy". They adopted the LEAF as their currency and all became instant millionaires. Although there was a small problem with inflation. As we will see, this is a not untypical outcome of creating money from nothing.

Anyway, I'm going to try to explain some of the things in his theory and why I think they must be wrong. But you may prefer to read him in his own words and decide for yourself.


In this theory, since money exists because the government says it does, then taxation is just the government saying that some of the money – your money – does NOT exist any more. Similarly, government spending is just the government creating new money, as and when it needs it. And there is NO CONNECTION between the two.

Thus the government can never go bankrupt. Do you see the attraction for Hard Labour?

When the government taxes you, claims Mr Mosler, all it does is change the numbers on your bank account. When the government spends, all it does is change the numbers on the bank account of whoever it is paying.

Mr Mosler likens this to the scoreboard in a football game. (I suspect he means an AMERICAN football game, but it still counts.) When one team scores, the ground staff change the numbers on the scoreboard. They don't need to have a supply of "goals" beforehand; they just "create" the score at the point when it is needed.

This leads to the BACKWARDS-SEEMING notion that the government does NOT raise taxes in order to have money which it can spend, but instead SPENDS so that people will have money which it then collects again in taxes.

Oh dear; Daddy says his head has just turned inside out!

let me try and give you Mr Mosler's explanation:

The government demands tax from people (under threat of punishment) and only accepts payment in its own special tokens (what we call "the currency" which is "pounds and pence" to you and me or "dollars" to Mr Mosler).

This means that people have to OBTAIN currency, which they can only get from the people who create the currency, i.e. the government themselves.

Which, in turn, means that people EITHER have to work for the government directly OR produce something which they can trade with government employees in order to get the required tokens to settle their tax bill.

So, the government "creates" all the money and "puts it into the economy" (spot the Bully Balls phrase). Private business just "re-circulates" the money inside the economy like a big tumble-drier full of notes. And then the government destroys some of the money by taxation.

The illogical logical consequence of this is that if you want to GROW the economy… the government should almost always run a deficit.

(Further counter-factual arguments that follow include: "running a trade deficit is good because imports are a real benefit and exports are a real cost(!)"; and "leaving our debts for our kids is fine – they'll still enjoy all the benefits of the goods they produce because they can't send those goods back via time travel to settle our debts now(!)" – to which I have to reply: "no, but they CAN send them to CHINA to settle the debt. You IDIOT.")

Now, this is all rather like that optical illusion of those monks walking up the endless stairway. It LOOKS like it makes sense, but surely there's something WRONG somewhere.

And I think that, actually, it has the same PROBLEM as the monks' stairwell: it's a system with NO INPUT. Or, as Daddy Alex puts it: a perpetual stagnation machine!

Suppose EVERYONE goes to work for the government. The government can create the money to pay everyone and everyone can pay their taxes, and what happens? Everyone starves to death.


Look, let's just step back a second and ask the IMPORTANT question: what IS this thing called "the economy" anyway?

Well, it seems to me that "the economy" is basically a machine for turning WORK into GOODIES.

Most people have some basic needs: food, shelter, James Bond DVDs and so on.

At the most basic level: you COULD go out and fix all of these things for yourself: you could catch your own food; you could build your own shelter; you could make your own cine-camera and film yourself performing your own James Bond script… or is that just me?

This is called a SUBSISTENCE economy, or TOO MUCH EFFORT.

A step up from that is that YOU could go and gather food while YOUR FRIEND could stay behind and build shelter. This is a (slightly) more efficient use of both your time. AND it is the most basic form of ECONOMY: you put in your labour getting food and get out BOTH food AND shelter; your mate puts in labour building shelter and gets out BOTH shelter AND food.

You've both turned your work into more goodies.

It should be pretty obvious how you extend this to a BARTER economy: you and your friend might have EXTRA food left over – suppose you're especially good at gathering apples, you might have more apples than you need or want. So you can take off with some of your EXTRA apples and see if you can't find someone with something they might be willing to SWAP. Perhaps you find someone who's really good at growing potatoes.

So now, you've put in your work gathering apples and you've got apples AND shelter AND potatoes.

BARTER allows for more complicated economies to develop. If you aren't spending all your time gathering your own food and finding your own shelter then you can SPECIALISE: for example you can become an expert in making TOOLS. The tools themselves might not feed or shelter you, but they enable someone else to be BETTER at getting food or making shelter. So you make them a tool, and they use it to increase the stuff they get from their labour, and in return give some of the excess back to you.

[Even today, this is why trade is GOOD – and why exports are NOT a cost; you've converted your labour into goodies which you swap for other goodies and everyone benefits.]

So you can see how this is a BETTER sort of economy, but it's still a bit CUMBERSOME. Carrying, say, a flock of sheep around with you to exchange for stuff is a bit of a chore, not to mention fiddling with the small change.

Eventually, it occurred to people that carrying around small chunks of VALUABLE stuff – mainly lumps of gold – was more convenient.

Now, a chap called King Croesus of Lydia came up with the idea of making regular sized lumps of gold so that you could easily count out different amounts depending on how much things were worth. And he decided to have his face stamped onto each one – well, he was king, after all. This was the invention of COINS, and also why we still talk about being "as rich as Croesus" – because for a while at least he did literally own all of the money in the world.

Of course it helped that his kingdom of Lydia – in modern day Turkey – was sat on a great big deposit of gold to make coins out of. Well, electrum, actually, which is a naturally occurring alloy or what we call gold mixed with silver, though HE called it gold, and so invented debasing the currency at the same time that he invented a currency to debase!

Unfortunately for King Croesus, Lydia was also slap-bang in between Greece and Persia and – with all that gold – a very tasty target for invasion; Croesus made the SLIGHT strategic error of pre-emptively attacking the vast Persian Empire who promptly obliterated him. Still, they quite liked this "coins" notion.

So, once the idea had caught on, money in those Ye Olden Dayes was worth its weight in gold mainly because, Croesus electrum aside, it WAS gold. Or silver. Or copper. Or sometimes shiny shells. Or even leather belts. I'm drifting…

This was called COMMODITY money, because the money itself was an exchangeable commodity or what experts call "useful stuff". The economy was now basically "BARTER PLUS": that is, LIKE barter but with a sort of agreed exchange rate based on the value of the stuff you made your coins from.

This was quite a lot of FUSS, though. The coins were HEAVY and cumbersome and even if people DIDN'T try to cheat you by mixing their gold with silver (or some copper or tin or lead or whatever), it wasn't always easy to be sure you were getting the weight of gold you thought you were. Different kings issued coins in different weights so they ought to be worth less or more than each other, but some traders were a bit crafty about that too.

So, to get around all this, someone came up with the idea of PAPER money. And as most people probably know, it was the CHINESE who thought of it first.

There is a famous episode of Doctor Who where Mighty Kublai Khan gives Dr Woo some of his new paper money. And this was worth real stuff: these notes were basically written I.O.U's, which could be exchanged for the stated amount of gold, silver or silk and wily old Kublai was as good as his (printed) word when it came to his money.

Unfortunately, his descendents were less trustworthy: running short of resources, they just PRINTED extra currency and carried on spending, resulting in nasty case of HYPERINFLATION – a situation that brought down their dynasty and that the subsequent Ming Dynasty only got out of by abolishing the currency all together!

Nevertheless, Kublai Khan's cash was an early example of what we call FIAT MONEY. Now, that's NOT currency that you can exchange for a small Italian car. It is money where the VALUE does not depend on what it is MADE of, but on the PROMISE that it is worth what it says it is worth. Fiat comes from the Latin for "let it be" as in "let it be worth THIS".

Ultimately – or at least as ultimately as the 21st Century – this evolves into our system where we don't even need the paper, and the promises are recorded as electronic scores inside banking machines.

Now, I think I can see how this FIAT system LOOKS like it's the government just wishing money into existence with a "let it be"; even more, I can see how the electronic recording of money makes it LOOK even more like Mr Mosler's football scoreboard.

But I think that those resemblances are SUPERFICIAL.

You can't ACTUALLY exchange your goals on the scoreboard for anything else.

Or, on a deeper level, the rewards of the players ARE determined (in the long run) by those numbers of goals scored, so in a way they DO exchange goals for exchangeable currency… BUT, that currency is paid for from the receipts that the club got at the gates (and from television rights) so in a way the ground staff DO have a supply of "goals" before they put the scores up on the board. Money goes in – the money is "turned into goals" for which the players labour – and then the scores are turned back into money which goes out again. There's just not a simple linear relationship between these flows.


Money is essentially a DEBT: it represents the VALUE that we are OWED for the labour and resources that we have put in (or maybe that someone else, our Daddies perhaps, put in and then gifted to us); and/or it represents the VALUE of goodies we expect to get OUT in return. And that is why we are able to swap money for goodies. Or for that matter vice versa if, for example, you produce James Bond DVDs and want my pocket money.


Suppose *I* choose to create a currency. It WOULDN'T have any VALUE because no one else would BELIEVE in it.

I could call it the CURRANT. It'll be a decimal currency: ten currants equals one BUN. Actually, currants are delicious and nutritious and that's in danger of being a COMMODITY CURRENCY that MIGHT have actual value. I'm drifting again…

Mr Mosler suggests another example of a family where the parents issue the children with coupons for doing chores under the rule that the children have to pay a "tax" of ten coupons or face punishment. But again, that's another system without input. Not to mention sadistic! The parents obviously have to go out to work to support themselves and their kids, even if they just go hunter-gathering. So that's NOT like a government "creating" currency. The kids get food protection, shelter "for free" from their parents. Probably not James Bond DVDs from THESE parents, though, the swine! Again, that's not ANYTHING like the way that real governments or real economies work.

"But," says Dr Freud, "literally infantilizing everyone EXCEPT ze government – zat IZ, how you say, revealing."

No government just sits down and CREATES an entire currency from scratch just by issuing it. Even when introducing a NEW currency – like when the Euro arrived in 1 January 1999 (yes, the single currency is two years older than ME!); or when pounds and pence replaced pounds shillings and pence on 15 February 1971 (yes, our "grand historic traditional pound" is two weeks YOUNGER than Daddy Richard!) – the new currency is swapped for old currency. So in theory (if not always in practice) the VALUE – or if you prefer the DEBT for LABOUR put in – gets carried forwards intact.

So if governments DON'T create all the money, where DOES the money come from?

Well, there's a bit of a CHICKEN and EGG thing going on: because there IS money in circulation, we BELIEVE people (governments or banks) when they gives us more money.

Look, there is more money IN CIRCULATION than is just the spending of the government.

If I was a farmer with a corn field, I could EAT some of my corn, TRADE some of my corn and KEEP some to PLANT next year. I don't need ANY input of "money" government.

Suppose that the person that I want to trade my corn with DOES want to pay me with money. Must they have got that money from the government? No, they could BORROW it from a bank. The BANK (not the government) creates the money. It also creates a DEBT that will have to be paid off with some WORK sooner or later. I ACCEPT the money because I BELIEVE the bank's promise to back up the money with assets, that is that the bank will get hold of the promised labour or goodies for me either directly from my trader or indirectly from someone else who has created a similar debt.

So we've added some VALUE to the economy (my corn) and added MONEY to the economy (as a debt my trader – or someone – will have to repay, backed up by the bank's promise to make them) and the government had nothing to do with it.

In fact there is a case for saying that the value of money is not created by the government but by the fact that the banks will accept it in settlement of debts. Or ultimately that any of US will accept it in settlement of debts.

And thus, the level of money in circulation has built up over time.

The labour put in by our parents and grand-parents and great-grand-parents and so on has built up some assets that endure. Even if the VALUE of those assets is concentrated into the hands of a very small number of people (starting with the government, formerly the King), the DEBT for that Labour (i.e. the MONEY) has been spread about rather thinly.


Since the first introduction of Fiat Money, what has tended to happen is that currencies have swung between being hard guarantees of convertibility into assets to open ended government promises depending mainly on how much money the government needs in circulation compared to how much people TRUST the government.

For example, after World War Part Two, and particularly remembering the inter-war inflation in Germany, trust in governments was very LOW so governments had to stick to the Gold Standard, essentially promising that they would always swap actual gold for currency if asked.

At the start of the Nineteen Seventies, President Tricky Dickey Nixon BROKE the Gold Standard and said US Dollars would no longer be a straight swap for gold.

He did this because too many people (mainly the Swiss) kept asking him for the metal stuff and it's just a bit AWKWARD for governments to have to hold a great deal of gold in reserve, on the off chance someone happens to ask for it. Just ask Mr Frown. Ahem. It doesn't earn you any interest, just sitting there glittering, and its value can fall relative to other investments (although recently it has performed better as people see it as a long term safe store of value because it's basically indestructible, unlike – as 2008 reminded us – the stock market).

More importantly, gold is in short supply which tends to limit the amount of money backed by gold that any (or even all) government can issue.

And governments have MORE assets than just their gold. Foreign currency reserves; debts; chunks of land. And one way of looking at assets is that they are basically something that you can convert into money later, whether that is gold or land that you can sell or a debt that you will get repaid. So from that point of view, FUTURE TAX REVENUES are "something that you can convert into money later" so sometimes governments look at their future tax revenues as ASSETS too. They issue money as a DEBT, a promise of goodies or labour, and they get the goodies or the labour to clear that debt IN THE FUTURE.

When it came to breaking the Gold Standard, it was a bit dodgy for a while, but basically people ACCEPTED that America had a basically strong economy and would be good for paying the debts. And the perceived value of the Dollar stayed good.

So governments CAN "create" money, but only in the same way that banks can "create" money i.e. because HISTORY means that they have assets and because we BELIEVE them when they promise they will swap the money for a share of those assets.

The government's ability to create money relies on our COLLUSION; money is created by our BELIEF that the debt will be settled, not by the government's say-so.

And we have already seen what happens when people DON'T believe their government when it creates money by its say-so: you get hyperinflation. It brought down the Yuan Dynasty in ancient China. It brought down the Weimar Republic in pre-war Germany. And today you can see the enormous strains being placed on the Euro because the governments of Greece, Ireland and now Portugal have lost credibility.




Money has been described (by Iain M Banks fictional ultra-smug post-scarcity society "The Culture" and/or their dragged-up Doctor Who cousins "The People") as an only-slightly-better-than-the-most-inefficient method of rationing in a society with limited resources. And the hardly-any-less-smug* Federation of Star Trek also claim to have abolished money. To which I say, yes, but you're FICTIONAL.

We have to live in a world where resources ARE limited. And that applies to governments too. So even if a government COULD create infinite MONEY, there is a strictly FINITE amount of resources it could obtain with that cash. So there is a FINITE VALUE to that money.

And, as Mr Dougie Adams would tell you, any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no difference: which is why printing money makes it worthless.

PS

*Daddy Alex couldn't disagree more! He says the Federation are far MORE smug – and with much less to be smug about! Also, they may CLAIM to have abolished money, but that doesn't stop them trading "gold pressed latinum" with the Ferengi when it suits them.

Daddy suggests that when Space Commander Sisko goes to the bar and says "give me a drink", Mr Quark says, "that will be one slip of latinum," rather than "your word and a shower of your imaginary Federation pixie dust? That'll do nicely…"

Obviously, that's NONSENSE. Space Commander Sisko would BULLY Mr Quark into giving him a drink or else the LIGHT and AIR gets TURNED OFF.

Though that DOES raise an interesting point: Mr Quark IS charging his customers for drinks, and for time in his only-to-be-used-for-wholesome-and-morally-uplifting-entertainment holosuites. So is he getting his power for replication and holograms for free from the station? If he is, do the Federation MIND him profiteering off their back? Even when THEY are the ones being charged for DRINKS? And if not, what do the "we don't use money" Federation DO with the rent they charge him?

Mind you, the Federation clearly have both technology ("replicators") that can make literally anything from thin air, or rather energy AND apparently inexhaustible supplies of cheap energy** to power them with. Under their "Prime Directive" they refuse to share this technology with their neighbours. So they have a society with limitless resources surrounded by (relatively) poor neighbours and no immigration problem… which makes you wonder what just what KIND of a society it might be.

PPS

**Daddy reckons that the Federation has some sort of perpetual motion machines, and wonders if it might not be the replicators themselves – and you know he might be sort of right: if the replicators can replicate ANTI-MATTER (and why wouldn't they be able to?) then your onto a winner.

You would need to put E=mc2 of energy IN, but you could annihilate the anti-matter with an identical mass of matter to get 2xE=2 mc2 or twice as much energy OUT.

Even allowing for a bit lost to inefficiency, that would be almost limitless free energy so long as you can keep your reactors topped up with matter in the form of any handy planets, stars, or annoying neighbouring civilisations who bug you about sharing the technology…
.

Day 3734: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Wednesday:


Master Gideon's second budget was really quite unexciting. What changes there were were moderate and predictable.

A bit off fuel; a bit more tax on the oil giants. A bit off company tax; a bit more bank levy. Another step towards the £10,000 personal allowance.

Then Mr Potato Ed stood up and read out the speech he'd written a month ago.

"Same Old Tories ," he said, "you're just robbing Peter to pay Paul."

He doesn't seem to understand: ALL government spending "robs" (taxes) somebody to "pay" (spend on) somebody else.

Perhaps Mr Bully Balls has been "explaining" it.


If you WANT to take less tax from one person, or more realistically one GROUP of people, then you have just TWO choices: either you SPEND LESS or you have to take the tax from SOMEONE ELSE.

(Yes, you can BORROW it, but that's only taking it from a "someone else" who just happens to be in the FUTURE, i.e. when they are the someone who will have to pay back your borrowing.)

Last year, in the emergency budget and then in detail in the spending review, we decided how much we would cut spending this year, and so how much we would raise in taxes (and how much borrowing we would need too).

We haven't changed those numbers.

And that's GOOD because last year's budget was quite painful enough already! Cutting spending even more would be AWFUL. But equally, cutting spending less would only PROLONG the AGONY – if you're GOING to take a trip through HELL, swerving from side to side is only going to make it take LONGER!

So Master Gideon's budget was what we call "fiscally neutral" which just means it raises the same AMOUNT of tax but in different WAYS. Or in Mr Ed's language: "choosing to rob different people".

For example, with the cost of fuel rocketing, the Government could hardly fail to curb the fuel tax escalator, and that's what Gideon did. But forgive me if my heart fails to bleed for the oil companies whose super-massive profits will be taxed a bit more to raise the same amount of money from them instead.

What we're doing is moving the tax burden from families who are finding it hard to make ends meet because of the price of petrol going through the roof onto the oil companies who are seeing their profit margins soar because of, er, the price of petrol going through the roof.

When Hard Labour do this, it is called "redistribution"; when the Coalition do it, apparently, it is called "robbery".

Someone clearly slipped Mr Ed a bit of paper at the end of his peroration, pointing out that his reply to the budget speech had not actually mentioned any of the points IN the budget speech, so he tacked on a bit about the 1p cut in fuel to say "ah ha, but you put up the VAT which added 3p to the cost of petrol! Ha!" So, what, Mr Ed would have preferred us to KEEP the fuel escalator price increase and put petrol up MORE? What's that you say? Hard Labour would have reversed the VAT increase? If you were PAYING ATTENTION you would have heard Master Gideon say he'd LOOKED at that and it would have been ILLEGAL.

And of course it would have been three times as EXPENSIVE. That is, we should have had to raise three times as much tax from somebody else to make up the difference. Or cut spending by ANOTHER six billion pounds on top of all the cuts that have been forced upon us already.

(And that's why Gideon didn't reduce the duty by THREE pence and cancel out the VAT increase – it would have had to come from somewhere!)

NEITHER of these options are in the Hard Labour way of budgeting: they would DUCK the difficult choice and just BORROW the difference.

Which of course is robbing Peter's CHILDREN to pay Paul.

And remember, the WHOLE POINT of this Age of Austerity is so that we STOP DOING THAT!

That's why we've raised more in taxes – VAT, National Insurance, bank levy and others – and why from next month we really start with these awful spending cuts. It's not for a laugh or for ideology or through sheer bloody-minded ignorance of the state of the economy; it's so that we will start to close the gap between what the government gets in and what it pays out.

This, fundamentally, is the difference between the Coalition's position and the one that Hard Labour are espousing (as much as they'll admit to ANY position): WE say that we have to get the country's finances under control in order to achieve economic growth; Mr Balls says that you've got to achieve some growth before you can hope to get the country's finances under control.

This is why he reacts with such GLEE to every new BAD statistic that comes out. He likes to say that the economy was in recovery until the Coalition yanked out the IV drip of continued borrowing.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that the figures are NOT bad; in fact I think they are appalling – inflation is up (again!) to 4.4%; unemployment is up (again!) to a seventeen year high, and, worse, an ALL TIME high for youth unemployment; and in some ways worst of all, Government borrowing, the POINT of the whole thing, after a good month in January is up (again!) in February.

But I do not think that these are our fault. Economies just don't turn around that quickly. We were left with an economy badly damaged from the banking crash that, far from recovering, was in fact screaming out of control just as Labour were ejected from the driving seat. Keynes may be RIGHT that you can kick-start an economy out of recession by investing in public works, but Labour have spent YEARS borrowing money to fund the ILLUSION of economic activity – public sector jobs and construction projects – so much that it's now a busted flush. Like the Wizard of Oz you HAVE to keep beavering away behind the curtain JUST to keep up the illusion, because when you stop, well, THIS happens!

So I think that these figures are a RESULT of a decade of Labour's mismanagement, covered up by borrowing and now revealed as we stop shovelling money into the black hole they've left.

Of course, Mr Balls, contrariwise, says that the figures are caused by US, by the Coalition's plans to bring borrowing under control i.e. caused by the cuts that, er, haven't happened yet, just as December's poor sales were caused by the VAT rise in, er, January.

Of course, Mr Ball's ALSO says that there was NO structural deficit during Hard Labour's time in office. Well, since they clearly DID run a deficit every year, he must be saying that his government presided over an EIGHT YEAR LONG RECESSION. And THEN hit the banking crash!

So if SOMEONE from the Hard Labour front bench tells you that if they had still been in power there would NOT have been a contraction in the fourth quarter last year… you can be sure that it's BALLS.

PS:

You may well think that I've concentrated too much on Mr Potato Ed's REPLY to the budget, but really, Master Gideon just wasn't that INTERESTING.

With not a lot of money left, there were lots of LITTLE schemes – enterprise zones, apprenticeships, support for first time buyers, some stuff with railways – but nothing startlingly major. After all, there are only so many ways he can say: "No changes; economy still rubbish; nothing to see here."

PPS:

Lib Dem manifesto, front cover, pledge to increase the basic allowance to £10,000 by the end of this Parliament; today's Budget, another big step to delivering.

Tory manifesto, big speech by Master Gideon, pledge to cut Inheritance Tax; today's Budget, umm, tax cut limited to charitable giving.

I think that's what we call a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT-Led Coalition.
.

Day 3719: Stars

Tuesday:


My mum died and the universe ended.


We are made of stardust.

In the Doctor Who episode "The Big Bang" there is a Richard Dawkins who believes in stars even when there are none in the sky.

But our Professor Richard Dawkins, in his book "The Ancestor's Tale", says:

"It's hardly surprising that we see stars when we look up into the sky at night, because stars are a necessary prerequisite for organisms that see."

He means that the elements necessary for life – carbon, nitrogen, oxygen – are only created through nuclear fusion, and thus only in stars.

So the evidence of our own existence requires that there must be stars, even if we do not see them.

So the Richard Dawkins in the story is not a blind believer but a rationalist who has inferred the stars' existence from the very fact that we are here at all.


Listening to the 500th "In Our Time", Melvyn Bragg and his guests, philosophers all, discussed free will and spent the better part of forty minutes trying to find different excuses for why determinism doesn't rob us of choice.

Determinism is the belief that given any one arrangement of physical space, the laws of physics determine that there is only one possible thing that can happen next. If that's true, then even the atoms that make up our brains, the patterns of electrons that describe our thoughts among the neurons and axons, are just one "arrangement" and physics determines what will happen next: what we think, what we do is determined by simple physical laws and any experience of choice is an illusion generated by the chemistry, our "will" no more than along for the ride.

Obviously, this presents a huge problem for morality: if we truly have no choices then how can it be fair to judge anyone by their actions? Yes, yes we would have no more choice about whether to punish or not and the punishment itself would be inevitable – but suppose you believe in a god outside of the laws of space and time: how could it be moral for such a god to set up a deterministic universe and then judge people to heaven or hell based on actions they cannot control?

But that can't be right, can it?

I believe in free will. And I believe that even if I'm wrong, I have no choice but to believe in free will. But I see the universe as intersecting matrices: space and time; matter and energy; observation and awareness. In Quantum Mechanics, in the Copenhagen interpretation, all possible outcomes of quantum event occur simultaneously in multiple "superposition states", all stacked up – super-positioned – on top of each other and our observation collapses this into a single state that we see, without necessarily disturbing the others.

If our awareness, our continuous observation of our own existence, our long reiteration of "I think therefore I think I am", if that means anything then it means we can and do choose the quantum superposition states that we observe.

We can, with our actions and choices, change the universe, even it is only the universe that we ourselves are aware of, passing like ghosts along one path through the myriad observable superposition states.




In another Doctor Who episode, "Utopia" by Russell Davies, the TARDIS carries the Doctor, and Martha – and Captain Jack clinging to the outside – to a hundred trillion years into the future, to the End of the Universe.

That's almost right. We live in the Stelliferous Era: the Age of Stars. And in a hundred trillion years the Stelliferous Era will come to an end as the last stars go out.

In his "Wonders of the Universe", Professor Brian Cox took us there too. He presented us with the Heat Death of the Universe as an inevitable consequence of Entropy, the scientific measure of disorder, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "In a closed system, entropy increases". Or as it has been satirised: "Things Can Only Get Worse".

That's bleak, very bleak, and not a little controversial – it is by no means a certain thing that the Universe will end that way.

In a nice simple universe, the Big Bang scatters matter in all directions and gravity tries to pull it all back together. If there is enough mass in the universe, then eventually gravity stops all the bits from flying apart and pulls them back into a Big Crunch, a reverse Big Bang that ends the Universe as it began in a fiery cremation of all matter, energy and time; if there isn't enough mass then things just expand into the cold and black forever.

Astonishingly, the amount of matter in the universe – the stuff we can see and the so-called dark matter that we have to guess must be there from the way the rest of space moves – is right on the borderline between being just enough to stop the acceleration and not quite enough to stop it going forever.

But whatever happens, that expansion should gradually slow down and slow down under the pull of gravity.

Except that's not what we observe. The expansion of the universe actually appears to be accelerating.

So we DON'T live in a simple universe; and until we have any idea what the "Dark Energy" powering the acceleration is, all bets are off.

The law of entropy, that Second Law of Thermodynamics, means – says Professor Cox – that nothing is forever.

But that's not right, is it.

Not even nothing is forever.

Quantum Mechanics tells us that particles can just happen, appearing out of nowhere in matter/anti-matter pairs. In our busy universe of stars and matter they almost always collide and vanish again. Almost always. But who knows what the rules are for a cold, empty universe, trillions upon trillions of years after the last stars. Our universe began in a single point of time and energy bursting into existence: everything from nothing. Perhaps that is how the next universe will begin.

Not even nothing is forever; there is always, always something new.

I believe in hope and I believe in choice and I believe in life.


Mum is with the stars now.
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Day 3715: The Murdoch Shilling

Friday:


So, Mr Rupert Stavro Murdoch gets to gobble up BSkyB thanks to the decision of one his biggest lackeys fans: the Hulture Secretary, Mr Jeremy Spoonerism*.

Be fair! In return, Mr Jeremy got a promise from Mr Murdoch that he will not interfere with the Sky News… Just like EMPEROR PALPETINE promised he'd never interfere with what DARTH VADER was up to.

But only an ABSOLUTE IDIOT would believe that Sky News will be REALLY fair and balanced and… and…

…and Daddy's done WHAT? Again? Oh bottom!

So, that Barnsley by-election then…

Run Sky VT…





*And congratulations to the Tell-lies-o-graph and (for shame) Mr Dr Vince for, between them, getting the decision taken OUT of Mr Dr Vince's hands and handed over to Mr Murdoch, er, Jeremy.

PS:

Daddy didn't actually get a PENNY much less a whole SHILLING for doing this!
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Day 3706: Chap With Wings

Wednesday:


Somewhere, somewhen, there is a TARDIS by a graveside, and the inscription on the headstone just reads:

"He saved the world."


I met Nicholas Courtney in late 2005 in the BBC shop off Regent Street. I was buying a Dalek.

I addressed him as "Brigadier" and said the new series wouldn't be complete until he was in it, a sentiment he approved. And now he won't be. And that is sad.

To fans of Doctor Who, Nicholas Courtney was the Brigadier: Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart KBE, originally a Colonel, latterly a General, but always, forever, just "the Brigadier".

As everyone always says, he first appeared as Bret Vyon, the slightly sinister Space Special Security Service agent in the first Doctor epic "The Daleks' Master Plan". But it was as the head of UNIT (British division) that he became central to the second incarnation of Doctor Who, when it regenerated into a colour action-adventure series with Jon Pertwee in 1970.

The Brigadier, much more than the Master, is the Doctor's equal and opposite. A military man, an establishment figure, a human with no Gallifreyan superpowers or Time Lord cosmic knowledge, but with simple courage and belief in doing the right thing Lethbridge-Stewart stood up to be counted as Earth's first and often only line of defence.

He definitively Saves the World™ in "Battlefield", but doesn't claim to be the World's finest. "I just do the best I can," he says. And then shoots the monster dead.

Like the Doctor himself, the Brigadier's character changes from era to era.

The Brigadier that we remember, the crack shot, lead-from-the-front, stiff-upper-lip, not phased by anything sort of a guy, who founds UNIT and recruits Liz Shaw – who commits genocide against the Silurians, don't forget, but who also stops the xenophobic General Carrington – is actually the second take on the character, after the Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart who breaks down upon getting his troops massacred by Yeti. This, second, Lethbridge-Stewart, who greets the second Doctor as an old friend in "The Invasion" and in turn is greeted by the third in "Spearhead from Space", is smart and wily – watch how in "Terror of the Autons" he foists Jo Grant on the Doctor knowing that the Time Lord won't have the heart to tell her she's sacked, and knowing that Jo Jo is exactly the assistant his scientific advisor needs – and exactly the one who will keep him here working for UNIT.

He evolves again into the more comic, bumbling, "Scooby Doo" version of the character that we see in the later Pertwee stories, infamously "The Three Doctors", though it's less of a stretch than you might think from "Five Rounds Rapid" to "I'm almost sure that's Cromer". And he still retains a kind of dignity that rises above any mockery the script – or the Doctor – might throw at him. By "Terror of the Zygons", the fourth Doctor story that is really the end of the UNIT era (no, "The Android Invasion" and "The Seeds of Doom" don't really count as UNIT stories) he's able to wear his clan tartan and look like he means it.

In the Eighties, in notorious continuity-cruncher "Mawdryn Undead", we meet a later Brigadier, a retired Brigadier, who is somehow more fragile and more real. He becomes an icon of nostalgia, but also an exploration of how things are so much less simple than they used to be. Ironically, given that he was a late replacement for the character of Ian Chesterton, the Brigadier is perfect for this role because the Brigadier was never quite as simple as good guys/bad guys – again, see "…and the Silurians" but also the even-less-subtle (than "Mawdryn Undead") contrasts of "Inferno".

The audio adventures "The Spectre of Lanyon Moor", with the Sixth Doctor, and "Minuet in Hell" with the Eighth, develop the retired Brigadier further, making him a UN ambassador and occasional off-the-payroll assistant to UNIT – a role recognised in the new series with a nod in "The Sontaran Stratagem". (There are also a couple of extremely wonderful "Unbound" adventures – "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Masters of War" – with the incomparable David Warner as an alternative third Doctor – well worth a listen.)

The books go further still, particularly Paul Cornell's "Happy Endings" and "Shadows of Avalon", while many of the New Adventures make reference to the Brigadier leaving a legacy of "Zen Warriors", using Buddhist techniques along with the things he learned from the Doctor to train a better defence for Earth in a gentle blending of the TV Brig with the second biggest contributor to the Brigadier's character: the late soldier-turned-Buddhist, producer Barry Letts (though Barry was, in reality, a Navy man).

It's a testament to Nick Courtney as an actor that he played all of these Brigadiers with humour and dignity and made them all recognisably facets of the same man: hero, killer, friend, saviour. Splendid chaps, all of them.


In a way, it is astonishing that Russell, with his reverence for all things Pertwee-era, never managed to find a place for the Brigadier in the revived series. Yet, in a way, he did – not so much with that throwaway reference in "The Sontaran Stratagem" or an oh-so-welcome guest appearance in the Sarah Jane Adventure "Enemy of the Bane", but I now realise in the character of Wilfred Mott, the old soldier. The scene in "The End of Time" where Wilf offers the Doctor his old service revolver and urges him to kill the Master first: it's pure Brigadier.

Dr David would have loved it – he'd appeared with the Brig in a couple of those Big Finish adventures, although playing Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood rather than the Doctor. Yet somehow it seems that Lethbridge-Stewart would have fitted better with Tennant's successor. The childlike crazy erratic Eleventh Doctor would have been perfect with the stalwart, dependable Brig of later years. And there's always the risk that the Brigadier would have taken one look at the "Time Lord Triumphant" and said "Doctor, you've gone bonkers" before shooting him dead.



The television series "The Web of Fear" somehow neglects to include the iconic first meeting of the Doctor and the Brigadier. Terrance Dicks, of course Terrance Dicks, corrects this oversight in his Target novelisation of the story, and Alex gave it to me to read this morning. If… no, when we see "The Web of Fear" re-animated – and dammit I will win the lottery and pay for it myself if I have to – shouldn't it be outrageously bowdlerised by having that scene "reinstated".

Or perhaps not. There's something poetic in the idea that we will never see the Brigadier's first meeting with the Doctor and we'll never see the Brigadier's last meeting with the Doctor.

Nicholas Courtney, rest in peace. The Brigadier is forever now.
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Day 3705: Aaron Porter – Be Careful What You Wish For…

Tuesday:


Mr Aaron Porter is, depending on interpretation, "resigning", "standing down" or "choosing not to stand for re-election" as President of the National Union of Students.

Mr Porter is famous for shouting BETRAYAL at the Liberal Democrats because, when we were not given enough votes to put an end to TUITION FEES, we COMPROMISED to make the system more PROGRESSIVE and get the best deal for students.

IRONICALLY, Mr Porter appears to have been ousted following the revelation that he thought the Coalition's system was, er, PROGRESSIVE and that the NUS should try to get the best deal for students.

Still, I will not shed any TEARS for him; HE chose to try to ride the TIGER-monster… and now it has EATEN him.

Or as Mr Jesus might have put it: He who lives by the rhetoric of "betrayal" will die by the rhetoric of "betrayal".

Unsurprisingly, he's been given a column in the Grauniad to air his self-justification. No doubt he can look forward to many more when he receives the usual reward for being a grovelling quisling an NUS President: a safe Hard Labour seat.

Equally unsurprisingly, it makes NO SENSE at all.

I précis:

"I've done tremendously well bringing people together and leading the fight against the nasty horrid Coalition and so now I'm standing down in the interest of unity."

Er, riiiiight.


He talks about "the politics of personal attacks" which is IRONIC for a man who himself attacks Captain Clegg and Mr Dr Vince for "disgraceful behaviour", (way to play the men not the ball there, Aaron) and rather OVERLOOKS that the "attacks" that have brought him down are coming from, er, the very STUDENTS he claims that he represents.

And after all, why would the students attack him when he's been showing ONE FACE to them – one of solidarity with the campaign against tuition fees – while showing a SECOND FACE to the Universities and the Government – making the frankly OUTRAGEOUS suggestion that student fees could be kept down by cutting grants to the less well off, as well as the recent revelation that it turns out the NUS think the Coalition proposals are progressive after all!

He goes on to say: "Young people have proved that they can hold entrenched interests and uncaring governments to account"

Well, HALF right: "Young people have proved that they can hold entrenched interests."

It is CLEAR that the entrenched vested interest here is… the NUS itself!

The NUS has been acting (and always HAD acted) in the interest of careerist Hard Labour proto-drones who want face-time on the tellybox and column inches in the Grauniad when it SHOULD have been acting in the interest of the STUDENTS.

For CYNICAL and SELFISH reasons, the NUS leadership have fanned the flames of student anger over the Coalition's plans for tuition fees having kept pretty quiet when Hard Labour INTRODUCED tuition fees and pretty quiet when Hard Labour TRIPLED tuition fees and while still keeping pretty quiet about the fact that THEIR OWN PROPOSALS for a graduate tax are, fundamentally, PRETTY SIMILAR to the scheme we've ended up with.

If a graduate tax is acceptable, then the loan scheme with its higher starting point for repayments and cut-off point is ALSO acceptable; and if the loan scheme is NOT acceptable, then NEITHER is a graduate tax.

There is something frankly DISHONEST about making young people upset, afraid and angry over this when you are promising them EXACTLY the same deal under a different name.

Now I think that there is a WORD for making promises to people and then going behind their backs to break those promises… but it eludes me for the moment.


Does this mean that we will get a better representative for the students elected?

Well, as things are we shall probably get an angry young socialist called Mr Mark Bergfeld whose manifesto is:

"The fight goes on – No fees, no cuts, save EMA"

So, no change in the rhetoric, then.

(And after all, after the poison of Porter, who's likely to even THINK of standing on a platform of "let's try and make the best deal that we can get"?)

Is it better to face someone like Mr Porter who rails against you but will compromise in secret, or Mr Bergfeld who rails against you and WON'T compromise ever? And, more importantly, who is better for the STUDENTS?

Maybe, if he gets elected, Mr Bergfeld will – like the Liberal Democrats – make the UNPLEASANT discovery that you CAN'T keep all your promises all the time when you are in a position of political weakness. Or maybe he will just go on hating us.

In the end, that was Mr Porter's REAL fault. He was TOO LIKE the Liberal Democrats: spoke out against the tuition fees and then found that he couldn't actually get rid of them so tried to make things less bad.

Though at least we've shut up about abolishing tuition fees (for the duration of the Coalition) since we found we can't (for the duration of the Coalition). Mr Porter tried to have his cake AND fling it in our faces.

Declaration of Interest

Yes, yes, okay, I DID have a LITTLE bit of a controversial opinion about Mr Aaron Porter's policies… and then he resigned.

And there was that time I had a LITTLE bit of a tussle with Mr Aaron Murin-Heath… and then HE resigned.

Look, I don't JUST have it in for people called "Aaron"… it's just, if you're working your way through the ALPHABET, you have to start SOMEWHERE!
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Day 3702: An Interest in Inflation

Saturday:



This week, we learned that the headline rate of inflation is 4% (with the rate including mortgage costs an even higher 5.1%) and we were warned that higher interest rates are on the way, pinching our purses even tighter.

For lots of people, particularly those on public sector pay freezes, this is VERY BAD NEWS. Inflation turns a pay FREEZE into a pay CUT: you get the same money, but it doesn't go as far. In fact, inflation does this even if you do have a pay rise.

So why risk the EXTRA pain of higher mortgage repayments now?

Well, for starters, interest rates are like exoplanets – you really want to find them in the GOLDILOCKS ZONE.

(No, that's NOT like Dr Woo's "Medusa Cascade"; it means not too hot and not too cold but just right.)

It's fairly obvious what the problems are if your interest rates are too HOT or rather too high: anyone with any borrowing – which is most businesses, on top of everyone one who bought a house using a mortgage – they get squished flat under the cost of repayments.

If all your money is going in interest repayments then you have no extra cash to put into savings or to employ new workers.

So, HIGH interest rates are HARMFUL to prospects for GROWTH.


BUT, there are problems if your interest rates are too LOW as well.

Although it is much cheaper for businesses to borrow, it's much harder to find anyone to borrow FROM, because almost no one wants to lend money when the rate they'll get back is so low.

Think about this as a SAVER: people who have money in the bank are seeing it LOSE value at the moment because the interest rate is LESS than the inflation rate.

If I had £100 today, I could buy £100 worth of sticky buns with it. But put it in the bank and in a year I might have £100 and 50p, but to buy the same number of sticky buns would cost me £104!

Or to put it another way: I could buy sticky buns today for £96.63; in a year's time those buns will cost £96.63 PLUS £96.63 x 4% inflation, which is £96.63 PLUS £3.87 or £100.50, which is what I get from putting my imaginary £100 in a bank.

So what we call the "REAL" value of putting £100 in the bank is that it LOSES £3.37 (or 3.37%) in value!

(Of course real savers can get better interest than the ½% base rate, but it makes the point.)

So for starters, very low interest rates discourage saving, which is a bad thing anyway. But more than that, they mean banks have no reason lend money out, even if there were any savers putting it in, which perpetuates the CREDIT CRUNCH.

So, LOW interest rates are actually HARMFUL to prospects for GROWTH too.

SAVERS want to make a PROFIT on their savings, so they need higher interest rates to encourage them to put their money into banks.

BANKS – and this is going to be unpopular – need to make a profit too. So THEY need higher interest rates both to tempt in savers AND to make money when they loan it out to businesses.

BUSINESSES need more lending, so that they can buy new machines or factories to grow their businesses and take on more workers who in turn will then have money to save.


Okay, but I'm sure you can spot the problem at once. You don't need to be a genius to work out that you DO need to be a genius to know WHERE the Goldilocks Zone IS.

A rise in interest rates will inevitably (and in fact AUTOMATICALLY) cause a rise in that measure of inflation that includes the cost of mortgages. (It's called the "RPI" if you want the technical language.)

Put up interest rates and you MIGHT stimulate growth – but you WILL stimulate inflation, which cuts into people's budgets and makes it harder for them to save or invest… which might REDUCE growth.

Worse still, an increase in the interest cost that businesses have to pay might stop them from expanding or, worst of all, mean they can't cover their other costs and put them out of business altogether!

(And you very well KNOW that just as SOON as interest rates start to go up Hard Labour will be putting on their sad puppy faces and saying how AWFUL it is that Coalition policies are making things WORSE for "hard pressed" families with mortgages and business with borrowings.

Which is a bit like someone who's just driven a TRUCK through the front of your HOUSE saying how AWFUL it is that the builders are going to have to knock down your garden wall to get it back out again.)

Sticky, isn't it. And not in a bun way.


So, you might very well ask, if low interest rates are so BAD, how come the Bank of England let them get this low in the first place?

Well, the Bank lowered interest rates during the recession in order to protect EXISTING BORROWERS. By reducing the amount that people and businesses had to spend on interest, the Bank gave them more to spend on other things, reducing the effect of higher prices and protecting jobs.

As I explained above, low interest rates DON'T help savers and they DON'T help NEW borrowers (because there's nothing for them to borrow). So it's hard to invest in new projects. But in a recession, the economy is shrinking and defending what you have is prioritised over starting new stuff.

You DO have to start investing in new stuff EVENTUALLY. (Real investment, I mean: people starting or growing businesses; not Hard Labour's idea of more public spending.) But WHEN you start investing is a whole 'nother sticky bun!

Anyway, when dead low interest rates didn't look like working, the Bank went one step further and started printing money, so-called Quantum of Easing, which meant that there was more actual money washing about in the economy.

The low interest rates contained the problem of the huge debts that Hard Labour had run up; printing money allowed them to go on spending like there was no tomorrow. And as it happened, for Mr Frown's government there WAS no tomorrow.

One way of looking at this is to say that the extra money soaked up the effects of inflation, allowing the economy to keep going through the downturn.

But the flip side is to suggest that the extra money actually CAUSED the inflation because it meant that prices COULD rise, stuff could cost MORE, even though there was LESS economic activity because of the recession.

Monetarists will tell you that if there is more money about and the same amount of stuff to buy, then the price of the stuff will go up to match the available money. If you believe that – and I'm not entirely sure that I do – then RAISING interest rates will REDUCE the amount of money in the economy and so reduce inflation.

What I do believe is that by printing money we have undermined the value of the POUND. Printing new pound notes does NOT magically create new VALUE out of nowhere. It takes the EXISTING value and just spreads it out a bit more thinly.

So, low interest rates means there is little return for FOREIGN investors to put their money into Great Britain, and printing money means that they think (correctly) that our pounds are now worth LESS than they used to be. So our pounds can buy less of their goods.

In other words, the pound goes DOWN and imports become MORE EXPENSIVE, which is INFLATION.

Raising the interest rates – and, possibly even more importantly, starting to reverse the Quantitative Easing – will strengthen the pound and ease the inflationary pressures of higher import costs.

I only say EASE, not ELIMINATE, because there are GENUINE reasons beyond the weakness of the currency that mean imports are getting more expensive. And will KEEP ON getting more expensive.

In fact, looking back I see that I already wrote a diary about this… back in 2007!

Yes, it is a bit SCARY to think that the economic crisis has been going on for MORE THAN THREE YEARS!

And those forces have not gone away. The pressures on food and energy resources will continue to grow as China and India and Brazil and all the others continue to expand their economies and populations.

In spite of this, it has been clear for quite a while – from signs like the weak pound and the rising inflation rate – that interest rates are definitely too LOW at the moment. A carefully planned and MODERATE increase (or rather a gentle series of cautious increases) might provide some comfort to savers and maybe, just maybe, do better than Project Merlin in convincing the banks to start lending again.
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Day 3700: William Hague Announces: "I should Never have been Tory Leader"

Thursday:


GOOD NEWS: the AXIS of DINOSAURS in the House of Lords have been defeated and REAL people will now decide how THEIR representatives are elected.

Responding to the news, Mr William Vague, Folliclely Challenged Foreign Secretary of "Save the Pound" fame*, has rushed out a statement to supporters of the No2AV campaign saying:

"AV doesn't work. Rather than the candidate with the most votes winning, the person who finishes third could be declared the winner."

Um, you do realise YOU weren't the candidate with most votes when you won the Conservatory Leadership Contest in 1997, don't you Mr Vague?



Other Conservatories who should never have been leader include:

Mr Major Minor – shouldn't even have stood since Mr Heselswine was beaten by Queen Maggie on first preferences in 1990;

Mr Ian Drunken-Swerve – beaten by Mr Michael Portaloo on first preferences. And second preferences. And by Fatty Clarke on third preferences.

Oh, and the current bloke.

Mr Vague, have you really thought this No2AV thing through?




*Mr Vague's famously disastrous "Save the Pound"/"Save My Job" election campaign in 2001 means that he is EMINENTLY SUITED to the job of letting Captain Clegg talk to all of those nice people in Europe for him.

My legal people remind me that as part of the Coalition agreement I have agreed NOT to refer to Mr Vague as a twit, nincompoop, buffoon or ninny. Thankfully, a lot of half-witted Europhobic gibberish got dropped by the Conservatories in return.
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