Bankers can keep their bonuses and we’ll have a bonfire of financial regulations! Was Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves only six years old when the great financial crash of 2008/9 happened? Labour’s sucking up to the City is now becoming obscene, there’s even been suggestions of tax cuts for the wealthy, but I know you can’t trust everything you read on click bait. The problem here is that the hints aren’t out of kilter with the direction of travel.

Who’s behind Labour’s revolutionary new approach as outlined in its document Financing Growth: Labour’s Plan for Financial Services just published?  We have Sir Douglas Flint, who in June 2006, in recognition to his services to the finance industry, was appointed a CBE. Flint became group chairman of HSBC at the end of 2010 In 2014, he criticised banking regulations as "disproportionate", "unwarranted  risk aversion [which] threatens to restrict access to the formal financial system to many who could benefit from it"’ (Wikipedia entry); we’ve got David Schwimmer, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group with twenty years’ experience working at Goldman Sachs; there’s Dame Elizabeth Corley, chair of Schroders (with a sideline writing crime fiction); there’s Nigel Higgins, Group chair of Barclays who spent 36 years at Rothschilds; then there’s Sir John Kingman, a highly integrated member of the financial establishment with much experience handling the mess said establishment makes and is a member of the Trilateral Commission; then there’s Anne Glover, a venture capitalist, a non-exec director of the Bank of England and another CBE; of course Sir Ron Kalifa is here too, another knight of finance he too is a non-exec director of the Bank of England and was commissioned by the Tories to conduct a review of fintech, for which Rishi Sunak was duly grateful; Charles Randell was a former chair of the Financial Conduct Authority and is yet another CBE; and look! There’s Baroness Shriti Vadera, a Gordon Brown favourite, formerly a minister and now chair of Prudential, and a real mover and shaker (sometimes criticised for her tough style). Bringing up the rear, so to speak is a mere OBE, Susan Allen, CEO of the Yorkshire Building Society, formerly of Barclays and Santander.

So! When Starmer and Reeves say Labour represents change they really mean it! I would have had more optimism on that front if we had seen one or two trade union voices here, or the likes of Lord Prem Sikka, and don’t we have any local Thomas Pikettys or Joseph Stiglitzs? Dream on. Labour’s aiming for such a humungous change, it has to be handled very smoothly if it’s to work, in fact it’ll be so seamless I doubt many people will even notice the ‘change’ and in four or five years’ voters may choose something else entirely, maybe as indicated in the article I highlighted yesterday.

The document does express support for getting more women onto company boards and support for the mutual sector, both things which Labour in the past hasn’t actually done a great deal about aside from talk. Much of the rest is couched in terms of supporting continuing reviews, brushing up existing initiatives and tweaking things here and there. Most definitely not a major reform of the way the economy works. Its great vision is kind of summed up in the final paragraph: ‘Labour will look to deliver a modern ‘Tell Sid’ campaign for retail ownership to highlight the value of British people supporting British businesses.’ Well, we know what happened there. 

Recent comments by Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves have made it clear that the party’s previous commitment to spending £28 billion per annum on green investment is now fully ditched. This is because the ‘economic circumstances have changed’ apparently. This makes a change from saying we can’t say what we’ll do until we see the books. Rachel’s team clearly have their own crystal ball. I doubt that the economy has changed all that much since the ‘pledge’ was made. But perhaps it was only ever intended to be a headline grabbing thing at the time. I wonder. What would Winston Churchill have done in 1940, when it became clear the British economy was facing it’s toughest ever test? Well into the Phoney War, did he say ‘the economic circumstances have changed’ - so we’ll drop down a gear or two on our commitments? I imagine the appeasers around him—still hoping for an accommodation with Hitler—were whispering ‘we can’t afford this war!’
 
It’s all about the short-termism of politics of course—adequate climate change action can always be postponed. There are many ways Labour could find the dosh to fulfil this pledge, it just chooses not to. What’s going on in the real world is made startlingly clear in an article posted on Inside Climate News, which I thoroughly recommend:
 
With the World Stumbling Past 1.5 Degrees of Warming, Scientists Warn Climate Shocks Could Trigger Unrest and Authoritarian Backlash - Inside Climate News
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Here we are nearly at the end of the first month of the new year. I didn’t make it an alcohol free month, nor indeed a ‘veganuary’ - can’t do without cheese and eggs I’m afraid. Or wine. So nothing happening there. One needs one’s comforts in these rather bleak times, times when of course millions are denied their comforts. Maybe that should read billions. The sheer scale of global problems is now overwhelming, and I don’t see any particular politician with the wherewithal to get a grip—it’s more a case of watching a group of loudmouthed privileged passengers fighting over those famed Titanic deckchairs (but to his credit, Trump wouldn’t have bothered with a deckchair, he would have commandeered the first lifeboat). The fights our world leaders are engaged in are pre-modern (I’m using that phrase as a sort of crutch) namely to gain territory, to keep territory, and to subjugate the other. How is it possible that we have got this far down the road of climate catastrophe when these idiots (not just Putin) are still so obsessed with sacrificing hundreds or thousands of lives just to raise a flag in some obscure village or town? And yes, I apply the same criticism to Hamas and their partners in senseless killing, Israel, since these days one doesn’t want to be accused of being ’one-sided.’
 
Well, we know that when humans are faced with a bit of a crisis they can go into distraction mode. If the house is in flames, at least make time to have a hoover-up and do the dishes. Indeed, go looking for dirty dishes to prolong the distraction. But as I’ve written before, great minds (Russell, Einstein et al) have considered this problem and nobody has taken them up on their ideas, such as world government or a single global military force. Other ‘great’ minds briefly believed that world peace would be secured through the globalisation of trade, like no two countries with MacDonald’s would ever go to war with each other. What do we hear from the globalisers now? Just a bit of fretting and tut-tutting between canapés at Davos. And we’re just seconds away from midnight on the Doomsday Clock.
 
January 29th 2024, note for the diary: it was wet and gloomy all day.

I caught a bit of BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme this morning, which featured a piece on child abuse in the Church of England. One current reverend, who had been abused by the late disgraced Bishop Peter Ball thought the C of E’s response to the whole issue was shameful and shallow, a matter of continual reviews, inquiries and delay. His criticism of the church was utterly visceral. But isn’t this the norm for an organisation whose response to anything to do with sex is hand wringing and wriggling, if not squirming in embarrassment that such to-do-ments could possibly creep into their hallowed portals? It seems that much of the Sunday programme’s time is spent hearing religious squirming, where those blessed with access to revelatory truths discover a certain discord with reality. And we’re supposed to take them seriously?  As a fan of Saint Richard of Dawkins I can only marvel and despair at the credulousness of so many religious followers. Perhaps it’s time for a latter day Martin Luther to come along from within the cult and not merely nail 95 theses to the door but to knock it down entirely and suggest that from now on everyone should learn how to think for themselves. Obviously I come from a Judeo-Christian heritage whether I like it or not, but I apply the same critical approach to the alleged ‘holy’ fathers (all men) of the Muslim world, who love nothing more than slaughtering each other just because of a family split many centuries ago. Why exactly should that schism be our business now?

We seem to be in preparation for something. Only days after Starmer was photographed on manoeuvres wearing his camouflage outfit and looking very much like a bunny rabbit on its first outing, several UK army generals have suggested that such is the dire state of the army we may need to sort out a ‘citizens’ army’ to fend off the impending invasion of Britain by Putin. We all need to go and get our camouflage gear in readiness. Well, not quite all. The Daily Mirror has helpfully listed 60 health conditions which would prevent one from being recruited, including having active piles. Diabetics are deemed useless too along with anyone with a heart condition (can you imagine BANG!!? Surpriiise!) Given the nation’s state of health it’s hard to imagine anyone being available for service. 8 million of us are on NHS waiting lists for heaven’s sake. So the government’s spokesperson has flatly denied that conscription is on the cards. What we’re seeing is just some posturing by generals who aren’t courageous enough to speak out directly about how the Tories have done so much to decimate the UK's defence forces, never mind Vlad the Bad. Anyway, it’s good to know that at least one member of the opposition is kitted out and ready for the fight, on the beaches, in the streets and on the landing fields. Give the lad a pitchfork!

More thoughts on Royal Mail, prompted by my time as a postie in the 1970s. I worked in Malton doing urban walks and rural rounds. Apart from having to get up very early in the morning it was the cushiest job one could wish for. On rural delivery runs one would be offered full cooked breakfasts in farmers’ houses or alternatively one could create a little bed out of mail sacks in the back of the van and have a little restorative kip for an hour or two, after reading some farmer’s Yorkshire Post (taking care to reinsert it in its wrapper). It was an all weather job of course and on some occasions after a couple of hours on my urban round the beard would be completely frozen. On urban rounds the target was to have completed the delivery by 9.30 and get back to the office for a relaxing break before the second delivery. It was quite possible in those days for someone with a local first class letter to drop it into the Malton Post Office box by 11am and see it delivered the same day. On his morning break one of my colleagues would go into his locker for his treat of chocolate cake and mustard. It’s something one can’t forget. This was a time when change was ever pressing on old certainties. It wasn’t that long before I joined that posties were still classed as civil servants and we had to sign the Official Secrets Act. Technically I wasn’t able to tell anyone where the nearest telephone box was. That of course is a joke, but you could learn a great deal about people just by delivering their mail. Where had it come from? What was it? Official or personal? Regular or infrequent? And wearing that uniform you gained almost invisible man status—country houses would leave their back doors (tradesmens’ entrances) open to let you collect their private afternoon mail left on their kitchen tables. As a humble servant on my pushbike I was once asked by a huntswoman which way the hunt had gone. ‘Ooh arr, I think they went that way’ I said and off she galloped in the wrong direction. After a couple of years I realised I wasn’t fully engaging with how things worked, and it dawned on me that you could take 13 days sick leave a year without question. This was welcome particularly on those very nasty wet and cold mornings when you just didn’t want to get up, but it was also good for colleagues who would be called in for some welcome overtime. I got involved in the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) and in my final year I spent two weeks (in 1976, a wonderful dry summer) at Ruskin College on union training courses. I must have been very political—the only question I could think of asking Tom Jackson, our moustachioed general secretary was what was it like being on the Morecambe and Wise show?  Having said that, judging by the response it was the question that everyone wanted to ask. I took my duties as branch secretary seriously. When management announced that they wanted to ‘restructure’ our rounds (i.e. make them more demanding) I consulted with the members. They were all up in arms, and I spent hours pouring over their suggestions and concocting counter proposals. I met with Cyril, our Postmaster in what must have been an unprecedented encounter on such a difficult subject. It didn’t work well. He took the afternoon off sick and when my comrades heard what happened they all backed off. I realised that swear words uttered at 6am on the sorting tables don’t necessarily translate into solid industrial action. It hadn’t been long since the last national postal strike, and most of the lads (they were all men) had gone back to work after a couple of weeks, leaving only two who stayed out. There were still people who wouldn't talk to each other.
 
Yes, this is a picture of an organisation that was in need of change. That change was already happening—it was when postcodes were being introduced, foreshadowing mechanisation (and a lot more). I wonder now who profits from postcodes. Who could have imagined in the 1970s that postcodes would be so essential to GPS? No longer do you need a local postie to know that a farm with such an unusual name as Manor Farm is not the same Manor Farm up another nearby lane?  Technology has replaced local knowledge. In a curious way I wonder if the introduction of postcodes actually signalled the death knell for the Royal Mail? As the OFCOM proposals suggest, the business seems to have lost its purpose, for the less it does the better its profitability might become, they suggest. Who I wonder checks whether OFCOM itself could turn a profit? (Point being it doesn’t need to.)

+The race to be Numpty of the Year 2024 is definitely on. We’re only in January, but my second nominee appeared in a Daily Mail story about Labour’s proposed brutal attack on private schools. Here’s a quote from the story:

‘For my wife and me, Labour's plans to hike private school fees by 20 per cent could well be the difference between our son continuing in the school he knows and loves or moving to a state school. We are not a wealthy family. I work as an analyst in the  NHS and my wife drafts contracts as a lawyer at an IT company. Together, we earn in the lower £100,000s. We knew school fees would be expensive, but adding 20 per cent  VAT could be too much for us to manage.’

This man doesn’t actually know what wealth is. He’s in the global top 1% and clearly wants little Johnny to join him. But yes, people do struggle on the ‘lower £100,000s’ these days. What I wonder does ‘lower £100,000s mean? £200,000? £300,000? Our chap works for the NHS as an ‘analyst.’ not a doctor or nurse but a backroom pro whose contribution is to analyse. What exactly is anybody's guess. And who pays his wage? Maybe he’s forgotten. In normal times the Daily Mail would be describing NHS ‘analysts’ as surplus-to-requirements faceless pen pushers but in this election year they have clearly found a use for public sector workers (of the right type).

Perhaps our hero analyses NHS waiting lists. Perhaps he might also have concerns about his BUPA subscription (or, I wonder does the NHS pay for private healthcare insurance?) Anyway, he’s made it on to the Numpty award list for being a self-centred prick.
​
+OFCOM’s suggestion that the way forward for Royal Mail’s unsteady looking business is to reduce the number of deliveries we get, maybe down to three a week. A bit like it is now. They obviously haven’t taken into account the feelings of people who won’t get their birthday cards on time. But this is a tale of depressing familiarity. If fewer people are participating in a certain economic activity, the response is generally to reduce the availability of that activity—like reducing the number of bus services because there aren’t enough passengers to make a profit. And for the poor sods that still have to use the service, ramp up the price to see them off too. Amazingly for this government, in the case of buses, they have introduced and are subsidising fares to a capped level of £2 (going up to £2.50 later I believe) so it will be interesting to see what impact this has had on usage. And if as I believe it’s got more people on to buses then we should also look for research on the social, (i.e. harder to identify in economic terms) benefits of greater travel freedom. Perhaps the same approach could somehow be applied to Royal Mail. Perhaps it should be nationalised as a first step. Just like Starmer promised.

Labour has published what amounts to a pre-manifesto, a 24 page document called Let’s Get Britain’s Future Back. Hours, blood sweat and tears will have been shed coming up with this title. I am willing to bet that there was some debate about whether the word ‘Great’ should have appeared somewhere. Let’s Get Great Britain’s Future Back or perhaps Let’s Get Britain’s Great Future Back. Clearly that discussion didn’t go anywhere. We don’t want MAGA overtones. As a pre-manifesto the document deserves some scrutiny, I am guessing that we are now too close to the general election for Starmer to launch a document with his signature on it which will be shoved onto the shelf like his many previous slippery and cynical non commitments. We are also entering a period when as has been widely reported, Labour shadow ministers and their teams will be given the customary access to civil servants to discuss their plans. This means that we should hear less of the old excuse ‘we need to see the books’ which people like Rachel Reeves (and her many predecessors of all persuasions) hide behind when they refuse to talk about what is financially possible).
 
The Great Leader proclaims in LGBFB that ‘his’ Labour Party has changed under his leadership so it is fair to ask what has changed. One of the very first policies that caught my eye was a cast iron, no holds barred commitment to keeping our nuclear ‘deterrent.’ I highlight this first because that commitment is immediately followed by a promise to hold a strategic defence review. Talk about putting the atomic cart before the horse, but this is the ghost of New Old Labour, with its craven obeisance to some conservative notion of patriotism and national dignity. Some may have noticed this week the story that the Royal Navy has withdrawn three ships for want of crews. Well, our enemies will have picked up on that. Anyway, the glass is half full. Here’s a picture of Our Beloved Leader in his borrowed kit. Or is it borrowed? Is it proper NATO or TK Maxx? Proper service personnel by the way wear hats when they’re in uniform, I really object to this pathetic dog whistle signalling which can’t quite cut it (yes, I was told off once for not wearing a hat. It hurts). I think the prominence given to the nuclear deterrent is simply to show how Labour has ‘changed’ since Corbyn’s day—even though JC didn’t junk the policy. Theresa May said she would have no compunction pressing the button. JC was iffy. Starmer would hit it with a sledgehammer (if given permission by the White House). Man of Action! And what a break with the past = real change!
 
But that’s just one policy which just happens to be a bugbear of the left, and should not be allowed to prejudice our take on the whole LGBFB document. Here’s some of the things I like:
 
Abolishing non-dom status for the super rich, potentially generating £3 billion. According to LGBFB this £3 billion will pay for a great many of the promises made in the document.
 
Cutting tax breaks for private schools—which it is said will pay for investment in schools.
 
Creating  a national energy company to corral investment in new green energy - fine so far as it goes, but co-incidentally the £28 billion figure (absent in the document) for green investment is just the sum the nuclear industry thinks it needs to develop its new modular nuclear reactors.
 
The document recommits to the NHS principle of ’free at the point of need’ but that’s not to say that structures within the NHS won’t continue to be privatised. No mention of this or how it will be controlled.
 
At the core of everything of course is the economy, and here we have a solution fit for the age, ’securonomics’ which sounds like it’s straight out of a policy wonk’s doodle pad. How will everyone benefit from securonomics? The proposals in LGBFB are fine in themselves—more powers to the Office for Budget Responsibility, an Office for Value for Money, a clampdown on cronyism in public contracts, cutting consultants but most importantly setting a  ’fiscal lock’ to temper any outlandish tax and spend proposals—which sounds like maintaining austerity– or having ’tough fiscal rules’ as the document puts it.
 
Given the crises we face, LGBFB doesn’t present a vision for lasting change, but merely tempers some of the worst aspects of Toryism. In so much as it does that, if implemented it could provide some temporary relief for ordinary people. But its core message is don’t rock the boat. Don’t mention the equality gap, don’t mention the urgency of climate change or the radical response that demands, don’t mention the botched deregulation of the City. Steady as she goes! To have credibility as a government in waiting it is important not to challenge very much. Perhaps I’m wrong. When Rachel Reeves was in Davos last week, I am sure she was mercilessly challenging the business execs all the time.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

+Attacks on merchant shipping seem to be with us all the time. It’s not a particularly modern development of course, remembering the likes of Sir Francis Drake and the glory days of state tolerated or for that matter state sponsored piracy. But these days it’s just bad ‘uns, like Putin and now the Houthis of Yemen who get up to these criminal acts. They should, it goes without saying be stopped, and anti-drone or missile weaponry should be deployed. But since it costs a lot more to shoot a drone down than it does to launch it, the tactic now is to strike at the launch sites. One wonders what the Saudis have been doing in Yemen all these years with their Western supplied armoury. Kier Starmer has naturally gone along with the new line of attack after being briefed by the PM—and this appears to be in defiance of one of his leadership pledges to consult Parliament prior to any military action. Now it seems that pledge only applied if there were going to be ‘boots on the ground.’ Another sleight of the hand from the U-turn King. But perhaps he is not yet aware that these days military action relies a lot less on ‘boots on the ground?’ Perhaps in future more use will be made of the phrase ‘special military operation.’ We’ll see how long this particular piece of string gets.
 
+I am ambivalent about the new law now coming into effect which grants UK voting rights to all expats no matter how long they have resided abroad and regardless of whether they never intend to return. Having dual citizenship myself I am conflicted since I could if I wished freely enjoy the rights afforded to a citizen of another country—in this case Canada. Perhaps the only reason I don’t is because it's thousands of miles away. It was assumed many years ago when the Tories introduced voting rights for expats that it was purely for partisan advantage, in that Tory supporting criminals living on the Costa del Crime would all take up the opportunity to vote for their fellow n’er do wells in Westminster. But post-Brexit I think the ground has shifted. Brexit has screwed up the easy going life of many expats. I wonder if more of them had voted remain we could have avoided the whole bloody disaster.
 
+I am breaking a vow, which was never to refer to the awful rightwing gobshite Lee Anderson, the MP for Ashfield in this blog. A Labour Party member up until 2018 he was appointed a Vice Chairman of the Tory Party but has now resigned that position in order to ‘toughen up’ the government’s immigration (Rwanda) Bill. Anderson is one of an increasing number of very unpleasant populists and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t jump ship again, this time to the Reform Party. Electoral Calculus predicts he’ll lose his seat to Labour. It also suggests Reform is one per cent ahead of the Tories in his seat. Reform makes a natural home for gobshites, so it’s a fair bet he’ll be off.

People do say the stupidest things (except me of course). Some survey or other reported in the Daily Express (the Mother of people who say the stupidest things) showed that London is the slowest city to get around –about 37 minutes to go 6 miles—which in my experience is true. But the Tory Mayoral candidate had this to say:
 
‘Ms Hall, the Tory London mayoral candidate, said: "This is the consequence of Sadiq Khan's war on motorists, which has gridlocked our roads and made London the worst city in the world to drive in.’

Clearly Ms Hall hasn’t been to Dhaka, but one wonders how fewer cars on the roads leads to ’gridlock.’ She also says it’s the worst city in the world ’to drive in.’ This suggests that she doesn’t use buses which along with the Tube is how most people in London get about.  So today I am nominating Ms Hall as the first fully fledged Numpty of the Year. I wonder how many more there will be?