The national curriculum in the UK is currently being reviewed by an independent commission which should be given further food for thought this year with one third of children (around 180,000) leaving primary school at the age of 11 years, without reaching the required standards in reading, writing and arithmetic. National test (SATS tests) results also showed more than 30,000 of these 11-year-olds leaving the primary school stage with a reading age of seven years or less. The largest group of underachievers were those from disadvantaged homes usually with few books and where education is not necessarily valued, the sole responsibility then falling upon the schools to teach these children what they need to know.
Traditionally such teaching used to be based on instilling a core knowledge of history, geography, art, music, English, mathematics and science. However, this system of knowledge-based education seems to have been discarded in favour of more progressive ideas which are aimed at developing thinking skills through child-centred teaching, rather than the subject?centred teaching associated in the past also with rote-learning. This current progressive emphasis on putting the learner child at the centre poses less problems for the middle class child with supportive and aspiring parents it would appear, than those from disadvantaged homes requiring new experiences beyond the limited confines of their local community.
Children as in previous generations can still be taught how to think for themselves but they will be better prepared to think and make more sense of the knowledge-based, modern society around them, if this can also be based on an acquired and broader subject knowledge. If this core knowledge base is then decided by the teacher rather than relying on the individual child to decide what is important, at least all will start junior school with the same basic grounding.
This could be one small step perhaps towards reducing the number of children entering the feral, uneducated under-class currently rioting, vandalising and looting in major UK city centres.
German Economic Success?
août 4th, 2011The German economy has seemingly made a remarkable recovery since the onset of the financial crisis with GDP growth of 3.6 % in 2010, the same level expected in 2011 and unemployment now below 3 million, giving the best results for 20 years. A major factor has been the labour market proving more flexible than expected, enabling costs and productivity to be held at more competitive levels than e.g. the weaker members of the Euro-zone such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland which are now requiring financial bailouts. In reality, the German economy is now back to where it was in 2009 and the current growth rate is not considered typical, underlying growth being around 1.2 % according to Stefan Kooths of the Kiel Institute.
However, despite this growth in business and manufacturing adding an unexpected Euro 135 billion in extra revenues, the financial crisis has still left the German federal government finances weaker than before. There are structural threats to the economy from local public authority indebtedness, a costly social security system and a health system with a Euro 11 billion deficit. Half the total income of Berlin comes from federal sources and e.g. Frankfurt as a major financial centre with a population of 600,000 raises three times as much in local taxes as Berlin, which has a population of 3.5 million and a debt mountain of over Euro 60 billion. In common with the north of the UK, the former industrial heartland of the Ruhr region is still trying to replace jobs in iron and steel with new businesses in high technology and services such as the media, as the financial health of many cities in the region has steadily declined. The city of Bremen in the north of Germany has a debt of Euro 20 billion on a budget of Euro 4.5 billion and Saxony-Anhalt has the highest debt of any German state outside Berlin, with around Euro 20 billion of debt equivalent to 40 % of income.
Therefore, as is the case with the Coalition government in the UK, the German federal government is faced with having to reduce its debts (currently 83 % of GDP) by what some might well consider, however, a less than ambitious although substantial Euro 80 billion, considering the large tax gains from growth in the previous year (and indeed what the government in the UK is still struggling to replicate from growth in the British economy). It is aiming to achieve this mainly through cuts to the social service budget and family benefits, together with redundancies amongst civil servants and tax increases. Local authorities are also being forced to find new sources of income from taxes and cutting costs by withdrawing support for e.g. libraries, sports programmes, parks, playgrounds and swimming pools.
Trust in MPs?
juillet 27th, 2011Once trust has been lost it is difficult to regain it as MPs are discovering following the scandal over their expenses. Thus, the article by Ian Cowie writing in the Daily Telegraph of Friday 8th July questions why MPs should be exempt from a new law to block tax avoidance. He writes that after Budget promises to tackle tax avoidance, Parliament is passing legislation to block several loopholes ? but an obscure clause specifically exempts MPs from these new restrictions. According to HMRC this legislation is only there to prevent tax avoidance but Section 554E(8) of the Finance Bill (No 3) in question specifically exempts members of the House of Commons and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) from the new legislation in situations where they fall within its scope.
In response to an MP who asked for clarification on behalf of a concerned constituent, the Treasury has responded that there is no question of this legislation providing MPs with a special dispensation from the new anti-avoidance rules. The issue it seems is that the scope of this new legislation is so broad that in addressing the use of third parties to disguise rewards to employees, the legislation has had to include a number of exemptions for arrangements which are considered as not concerned with attempts to avoid tax. One of these exemptions as it happens is a specific exclusion for anything done by the IPSA in relation to a member of the House of Commons. This is necessary because there is a legal requirement for the IPSA to administer payments to MPs to cover the necessary expenses they incur in their work, while also providing the necessary oversight to ensure the expenses of MPs are properly paid and that the public can be reassured that this is so.
The problem with this response by the Treasury is that it still does not seem to address the question raised by Mr Cowie and indeed distrustful members of the public, as to why MPs cannot rely on the same arrangements that every other employer and employee in the country will have to rely on to comply with the requirements of this Finance Bill. Is it just to avoid a further bureaucratic load on the IPSA for new rules on disguised remuneration which are really only intended to catch complex arrangements designed to avoid income tax through loans made to executives, typically via offshore structures?
Dilemma of Power
juillet 21st, 2011David Cameron is faced with the dilemma of power of all Prime Ministers that he needs to court the media but not too closely, the latter the criticism levelled at the Labour government under Tony Blair. He made a mistake it now seems in hiring Andy Coulson, the former editor of the now defunct News of the World newspaper as his head of communications, and in only now going on the offensive before parliament to demonstrate his anger should the on-going police investigation reveal that Mr Coulson was more involved in the on-going phone-hacking scandal than previously believed.
However, this has allowed the Labour leader Ed. Miliband to score another tactical victory in the Commons, exploiting what the opposition believes is the weakness of a lack of attention to detail of the Prime Minister, as demonstrated not only in the current media scandal but also over the health service reforms. Previous incumbents such as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair both showed the benefits of better preparation and attention to detail, the latter for example with his training as a lawyer very involved in the Northern Ireland peace process and the intricacies of NHS budgeting.
Labour could undermine the government again with calls of economic incompetence if the current Euro-zone crisis further threatens the recovery of the UK economy, since British banks are still at major financial risk through the loans they have made to French and German banks more directly exposed to the terms of the second Greek bail-out being debated in Brussels today. The Euro-zone also represents around 40% and, together with the other European Union member states, some 60% of total British exports, making it critical to the success of the export-driven recovery plan of the government. As it is, total government borrowing for the financial year as a whole (following the unexpected rise in June) is now expected to be larger than the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted, its target based on an assumption that the economy would grow by 1.7 % instead of what is believed by economists as likely to be 1.4 % or even lower.
Luckily voters have longer memories of the role and responsibility of the previous Labour government in the current troubled state of the British economy, although they will progressively lose patience with those now in power if their everyday financial concerns about e.g. jobs, taxes, budget cuts, pensions, mortgages, inflation and declining real incomes, are not being competently addressed within a growing economy before the next general election. The Prime Minister also needs now to start raising his game as they say and start paying more attention to the briefing evidence presented to him by his advisors.
Eurozone Threat to Political Order
juin 30th, 2011Further to our Euro Debate : That Britain should join the Eurozone (refer Categories/ Chairmans Blog/ Federal EU/ Euro Debate in the right-hand index column), Charles Moore writing in the Daily Telegraph Saturday 25 June, sees Britain as the political outsider, essentially proven right now that the dangers of the Euro as a one-size-fits-all currency have come to pass. He thinks this very outsider status also gives Britain little chance of influencing the current Eurozone crisis now threatening the political order in Europe. There will, therefore, be no new post-crisis agenda that Britain can change.
Since in theory existing treaties forbid bail-outs of Eurozone members, the very nature of the continuing Greek bailouts (currently the second one) is helping to bring about further European integration e.g. Euro-enthusiasts losing patience with the difficulties of extracting bail-out money from national governments, are proposing more pan-European taxes instead. The government debts of the weaker Eurozone members are being transferred from banks and other creditors to the European taxpayer. Dogmatic EU leaders are saying ? like the failed Communist ideology of the former Soviet Union ? if Europe is not working, it is because we do not have enough European integration.
However, fear and boredom are currently letting these European leaders get away with it. EU boredom works well in the UK for example with 400,000 people marching through London in protest at proposed government cuts of £6.2 billion, yet Britain has committed twice this amount to the Euro bail-outs with no one taking to the streets in protest. Fear similarly holds the angry populations of the Eurozone in check. The people of Greece do not like the austerity measures imposed on them (as they see it) by the European Central Bank (ECB), but they know that if they left the Eurozone the value of their savings would halve. Therefore, Greece will pretend to do what is demanded by the ECB, and Eurozone leaders will claim that everything is under control, until the next crisis.
The Germans are angry as well since they do not like subsidizing the profligacy of Greece, Ireland and Portugal etc. but they also do not want to lose the competitive exchange rate of the Euro, the respectability of being good Europeans or the problems of their own banks to be exposed. So Chancellor Merkel agrees to the bail-outs but only on terms so perversely punitive that they cannot work and, therefore, will guarantee e.g. a third Greek crisis.
The question is whether boredom or fear will continue to outweigh the anger of the European people. When influential people make other people poor while they remain rich, the political order can start to crumble. Charles Moore concludes that although the Euro was ill-conceived, we should not wish for its demise. There is some logic in a common currency for large parts of mostly northern Europe and only misery for many if the Eurozone falls apart. However, to be seemingly proven right as a Eurosceptic brings no power for Britain over how events in the Eurozone will evolve. Certainly, the endorsement of the Euro by the Chinese Prime Minister during his recent visit to the UK brings powerful support for the continuing viability of the Eurozone.
Euro Debate: That Britain should join the Eurozone
juin 23rd, 2011As previously advised (refer to Categories/Chairmans Blog/ Federal EU/ EU & Euro Survey in the right-hand index column) on 20th June, the British Conservatives in Paris (BCiP) held a lively and stimulating debate chaired by Paul Thomson on the motion that Britain should join the Euro.
Given the current financial crisis facing the Eurozone, the dice seemed already loaded against the opening speaker Gregor Dallas who, however, proposed the motion in feisty style. He spoke of the Euro and the UK as being an enormously emotive issue steeped in politics that lots of people preferred to avoid talking about, including some members of the Conservative party. Yet some 60% of our exports go to the European Union of which two-thirds are to Eurozone countries. The political aspects can be traced back to the aftermath of the Second World War and the ambitious ideal to maintain the peace through the stabilizing influence of trading links developed within a single European market. Today this presents Britain with a market of around half a billion people, a major part using a single currency, and to compare this with the US our largest, single trading partner, the latter represents only 16% of our exports.
He elaborated that the single European market acts to stamp out the extremes of nationalism on the far right and socialism on the far left, with terms such as economic sovereignty or national sovereignty essentially blown out of the water by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Prior to that in November 1967 we had The Pound (£) in your pocket of PM Harold Wilson when the Pound was devalued by 14.3% and which seemed to change nothing for anybody living within Britain. However, Britain lost the trust of its important trading partners not only in 1967 but also in 1949 and after flotation in 1971. Now we have floating exchange rates and so-called hot money speculating on the highest return currencies and there is still no major improvement in exports for the UK.
Of course given the current financial crisis in the Eurozone, Germany is concerned about the so-called Club Med-countries but the Euro is a German invention and it tracks the former Deutschmark. It would be a disaster if Greece was forced to quit the Eurozone but in fact no such exit plan exists. There is no way back for national currencies, all members of the Eurozone want it to work and it is significant that China has already adopted it as a reserve currency. The UK must, therefore, join the Eurozone because it brings a strong, stable currency for a 21st century economy.
Michael Webster who opposed the motion saw the current economic situation as making it impossible for the UK to join the Eurozone. The Eurozone is also too dominated by Germany with e.g. the French economy suffering as a result. The market economy of the UK is completely the opposite of the dirigisme found on the Continent of Europe. In referring to the effect of interest rates and exchanges rates, he saw the need of the German economy for low interest rates as leading to cheap money and the resulting economic ruin of Eurozone countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece. At least the UK can only blame itself for the results of its own economic policies. Now Germany wants higher interest rates with its economy booming and this leads to the euro being overvalued in the money markets. As far as exchange rates are concerned, the UK has essentially devalued the Pound (£) in order to improve export trade, whereas its imports from Portugal have been reduced by some 50% due to the strength of the Euro.
A Swedish government minister has been quoted as saying that a reason for its successful economy is that it is not a member of the Eurozone. Indeed, the financial situation in the Eurozone is so bad that Greece will never be able to pay its debts, with e.g. ?45 billion owed to German banks and ?65 billion to French banks all under threat of default. Britain has already taken steps to withdraw some ?12 billion in bonds from the Eurozone as one step in trying to avoid the Greek debacle. Sterling is, therefore, still rated AAA in the financial markets by the rating agencies while the current credit rating of France is under threat, and French manufacturers are trying to relocate their production sites to lower cost countries. There is no possibility of the UK joining the Eurozone.
Seconding the proposer of the motion, Robin Baker quoted two traditional views of the Conservative party as 1) a belief in sound money and 2) a natural distrust of governments which manipulate the affairs of the country for their own, short-term electoral advantage. Sound money acts to counter the cancerous effects of inflation on the economy, with governments as major borrowers taking benefit from the effects of inflation, by being able to pay back their debts to lenders in devalued currency. The current UK inflation rate of 4.5 % would double prices in 16 years if left unchecked, whereas within the Eurozone France has inflation of only 2.0 %, Germany 2.3 % and even Italy only 2.6 %. The Eurozone, therefore, shows the benefit of taking the power to devalue away from national governments and also being able to dampen the effects of inflation through sound money.
Being able to devalue has also not helped the UK to grow relative to the 27 states in the European Union (EU). In 2002, the UK economy represented 17.2 % of the EU but by 2009 this had fallen to 13.3 %, while the share of the 16 Eurozone countries had increased by more than 2 %. During 2010, growth in Eurozone GDP was 30 % greater than that of the UK, and currently France is growing at twice our rate and Germany three times. Devaluation also does not seem to have helped our exports. In 2010, the Eurozone had a balance of payments deficit of ?30 billion but the deficit of the UK was 30 % worse for an economy only one sixth of the total Eurozone. From 2002 ? 2009 our share of total EU exports fell from 12.8 % to 10.4 % while total Eurozone world market share increased, our intra ? EU share also having fallen from 9.6 % to 6.4 %.
Our exporters suffer the commercial disadvantage of not sharing the same currency as 40 % of their customers and are forced to price higher to offset adverse currency movements or ask the customer to take the risk. In short, without the security of sound money and no benefits to growth in our economy or trade in being able to devalue compared with our European partners, Britain should join the Eurozone.
To close the formal part of the debate and confessing to being no economist, Evelyn Joslain the seconder of the opposition to the motion, chose to speak more passionately on behalf of the people of Europe in asking why the Brits would want to drop the Pound (£) for the Euro. The Euro is dying; you need to look more at defending what is left of your sovereignty and the problem of your soaring deficit is more pressing. She asked the audience to consider the success of countries outside the Eurozone such as Switzerland and Sweden which are doing much better. Germany is also very unhappy with what has become of its Deutschmark in the guise of the Euro and is faced instead with a Greek tragedy. Behind the Eurozone lies more European integration ? before it was to avoid war but now it has gone too far. We must avoid the excuses of the former Soviet Union that it only failed because the correct ideological measures were not sufficiently applied.
The Euro is a favourite of the currency speculators to short and coupled with excessive welfare payments and bail-outs is a recipe for disaster. It is easy to get into the Eurozone but hard to get out and there could also be a two-tier system between the north and the south. The Euro was forced on the population of Europe in an undemocratic way and the people are being ignored in a march towards a centralized super state. On the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, it is appropriate that the UK should reject the disaster of the euro.
The comments from the floor which followed the formal part of the debate touched on the emotional (all we have left is the Pound and our Royal family), lack of proper financial rigour (Germany & France were the first to press for relaxation of the 3 % limit on budget deficits), lack of transparency (surely they must have known what was happening in Greece?), a disaster for Europe if the Eurozone collapses, it is more a question of political will to hold Europe together than a financial problem, the euro is now one of the most important currencies but failure of the political cycle matched by failure of the financial cycle has changed the Euro, the Eurozone has steadily abdicated its responsibilities since its launch, as Conservatives we must balance ideology against pragmatism and now is not the right time to join and if the UK had been allowed into the EU earlier, it could have had more influence but it is too late now.
A vote was taken and the motion was defeated with 5 votes for but 15 votes against.
British Expatriate Voting Rights
juin 20th, 2011Those of us British expatriates who have been non-resident in the UK for more than 15 years are thereby denied the right to vote in our country of origin, even though we might remain British citizens and the UK our country of domicile for tax purposes.
There is now more encouragement for those who still value this basic human right to vote, however, from the launch of a new website www.votes-for-expat-brits.com in support of a campaign to enable all British expatriates to be able to participate fully in the political process in their home country, by giving them unrestricted voting rights in national elections.
Click on the above link to browse through the issues of the legal position, how other countries treat the voting rights of their expatriates, the view of the European institutions concerned, British parliamentary discussions on voting rights, media buzz about denying British expats the right to vote and how two concerned British expatriates – James Preston and Harry Shindler – have legal cases on their voting rights before the courts.
All you then have to do on the website is to add your vote to an on-line poll to show your support for this campaign.
National Health Service (NHS) Reform Setback
juin 16th, 2011So the Coalition government has had to step back from its proposed reforms for the NHS, having considered it best to accept the recommendations of its independent commission. This has the benefit of keeping the Liberal Democrats happy and saves the face of Nick Clegg their leader and Deputy Prime Minister. The main concessions then appear to be to:
? Limit competition from the private sector.
? Involve hospital doctors and nurses together with the original General Practitioners (GPs) on commissioning panels for care and managing the associated budget.
? Have no fixed deadlines for implementation of changes.
The government is spinning the outcome as positive saying that health professionals are now back on board (where they should have been before launching the initially proposed reforms of course!) with the proposed changes having the support of patients and professional bodies, as well as back-bench Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs. The legislation is said to have been improved by such scrutiny with the Liberal Democrats claiming a lot of the credit, despite the Coalition only trying to build on what the previous Labour government had started to try and do i.e. to involve the private sector to meet demand over and above what the public sector could support.
One Liberal Democrat back-bencher commented that their efforts had mitigated the effects of untrammelled competition and if local communities did not want competition, they would now be able to call their local health commissioner to account. However, other feedback from the medical profession saw it as now more like a dog?s breakfast!
After all this we are now left with the situation as Nick Robinson the political correspondent of the BBC put it, if the general public did not know before how the NHS worked, they certainly do not understand now:
? how the NHS would have worked with the originally proposed reforms or
? how the NHS will now work in the future with these changes.
If the general public does not understand the problem of the NHS, it becomes an almost impossible task to convince.
The main issue seems to be a broad public unease about profit-making by the private sector in the provision of public services and this includes the Liberal Democrat partners in the governing Coalition, with Nick Clegg calling on Monitor, the health regulator, to promote collaboration among providers rather than competition. However, the UK is unusual among rich democracies in how little private involvement there is in public service provision with e.g. only 4% of acute-care beds provided by private companies. Given that the German economy is held up as a successful example and driver for the European Union of Member States, it is instructive that (according to The Economist of 21st May, 2011) the proportion of for-profit hospitals at 32% already exceeds the 31% of publicly-run ones, with the rest operated by charities and voluntary organisations.
It is ironic that the original idea of putting the care budget of the NHS in the hands of GPs (such family doctors being private operators since the foundation of the NHS in 1947), was aimed at reducing the high cost item in the NHS budget of hospital care by their also finding lower-cost solutions sometimes only involving primary care and not always hospital beds e.g. for elderly patients.