Gordon Brown’s ten gravest financial errors
The Times have compiled an excellent list of Gordon Brown’s ten worst financial gaffes.
Inevitably, some of the items on the list are much worse than others, but most of them have been pretty disastrous.
Do read the whole list!
It’s amazing that some people still regard Brown as having been an excellent chancellor, even if they agree he’s a very bad prime minister.
Krumme agurker
Uffe Ellemann har skrevet et glimrende forsvar for EU-forbuddet mod krumme agurker.
Han pointerer, at de alle lande allerede havde deres egne regler om agurkekrumninger, og at alt, EU gjorde, var at harmonisere reglerne, så kasser med agurker kunne sælges overalt i det indre marked.
Det er desværre alt for sjældent, at nutidens politikere forsvarer EU – der er alt for mange stemmer i ulødig og populistisk kritik.
Balls accused of lying
Do read this blog posting on The Spector’s Coffee House blog.
In an earlier blog posting, they had accused Ed Balls of lying, and for once the government didn’t send out its spin doctors:
Ed Balls has just called me up about my post from this morning, hopping mad. He instructed me to “take that post down now”. I thought he was joking: has there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media? But he was deadly serious. [...]
Is the Scandinavian model restricted to Scandinavia?
Charlemagne is quoting Johan Norberg for wondering whether the Swedish model is restricted to Sweden: “If countries don’t already have a tradition of an efficient, non-corrupt bureaucracy with an impressive work ethic a larger government only means more abuse of power and more waste of money. I often try to convince Americans, no, more government in the US would not get you a big version of Sweden, it would get you a big version of the US Postal Service.“
It’s an interesting point, and I think it’s at least partly true.
I do think Sweden in this context can be replaced by a much larger area, at the very least Scandinavia and parts of Germany, but living in Scotland, I can see that many things are just not working because of different attitudes.
For instance, buses are regularly late, but people just shrug their shoulders and use their car the next time. In Denmark, people would be very upset and it would eventually become a priority for the government to sort out.
How to fix the pensions
More and more people are complaining about the fact that the public sector are still enjoying generous final-salary pensions while the private sector has mostly moved to much more modest defined-contribution schemes.
The solution recommended by most commentators is to reduce public-sector pensions.
This, however, is not likely to be enough for a comfortable retirement for most people. Pensioners in the UK are already much worse off than those in other developed countries.
The way I see it, defined-contribution schemes (which basically means you give people some money to invest in shares, without any guarantee how the investment will turn out) are far too risky for normal people.
Final-salary pensions, while great for the workers, are far too risky for companies, and they put established companies at a disadvantage compared with newer companies and companies in other countries without similar pension systems.
So a third way is needed. I would suggest something along the following lines:
- Set up some big pension organisations/companies (let’s call them POCs) to take contributions from workers and companies, invest this money and pay out generous pensions to retired workers.
- Make it obligatory for all companies, for self-employed people and the public sector to pay in a specific percentage of salaries to one of the POCs.
- Make sure sure the POCs insure each other and give them some sort of state backing to ensure people can be confident their pension will not suddenly disappear.
In this way, public and private sector workers would have equivalent pensions, and old companies wouldn’t struggle to compete with newer ones.
Also, when people change jobs, their pensions could still remain with the same POC, instead of having small pensions in many different places.
The reason I’m suggesting setting up multiple POCs rather than a single one is to avoid having an organisation that is too big to fail and too big for the state to save.
Can anybody spot any flaws in my suggestion?
Is Brown stuck in 1992?
Daniel Finkelstein has again written a really interesting article.
This time he’s come up with this brilliant theory:
I want to advance my 1992 theory of Gordon Brown and the Brownites.Here it is. The central ideas that make up Gordon Brown’s policy, political strategy and day-to-day tactics were all developed between 1992 and 1994. He hasn’t had an important idea since. Nor has he discarded an important idea since then, remaining doggedly faithful to every last one. And these notions, the bedrock of everything he does, were developed as a response to the two big political events of 1992 – the victory of Bill Clinton and, more centrally, the defeat of Neil Kinnock by John Major. There you have it – my 1992 theory.
It might be a little unfair to Brown, but I think this theory has a lot going for it. Labour were just so traumatised in the 1990s that it will have been really difficult to move away from mentally.
The best MP is somebody who never set out to become one
I’ve always believed that in a democracy, people should as a rule choose people like themselves to represent them.
As a consequence, I don’t think being a politician should be a job for life.
People should set out to be something else, then get involved, become politicians for perhaps ten years, and then return to normal life.
Because of this, I urge you to read this article by Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph.
He claims that some of the reforms being proposed at the moment will make it even less attractive for outsiders to become MPs:
Mr Brown has fatally undermined that notion in recent weeks with two changes – one voted through last month, the other threatened – that will transform the House of Commons from a collection of individuals representing the varied interests of the nation, to a cosy home for professional politicians subsidised exclusively and generously by the taxpayer.
I don’t know whether it’s true that these reforms will have this consequence, and I definitely don’t think the status quo is ideal, either.
When I moved to Scotland, I was shocked by the way the media talked about the political class as if it was a separate part of society, rather than a part of us all, so change is sorely needed, but possibly in the opposite direction of what is being pushed through at the moment.
Borgerlig-liberal Centrumalliance
To radikale og en konservativ bryder ud og starter et nyt parti.
Den konservative skrider.
En tredie radikal bryder ud og starter også sit eget parti.
En af de to første radikale skrider også og bliver konservativ.
To eks-radikale partiejere slår pjalterne sammen.
Hvad bliver det næste? Fusionerer Liberal Alliance snart med Det radikale Venstre igen? Eller bliver de begge snart konservative?
Jeg ville have mere respekt for dem, hvis jeg kunne finde ud af, hvad deres parti egentlig står for.
Som jeg ser det, vil Anders Samuelsen bare have frie tøjler til at føre sin egen skattepolitik, og Simon Emil vil køre sit eget værdipolitiske løb.
Da de to områder ikke overlapper synderligt, kan det holdes inden for ét parti, men hvor er ideologien blevet af?
Which voting system should you use for choosing a voting system?
If you’re a voting system nerd, there’s a highly amusing article by Martin Rosenbaum on BBC’s site.
He’s asking which voting system should be used for choosing a new voting system, and shows that under certain circumstances, each voting system will declare itself the winner.
Electoral systems and systems of measurements: A very British mess
It’s impossible to tell which electoral system that is used in the UK, because almost every single election uses its own system: First-past-the-post for Westminster, AMS for the Scottish Parliament, STV for Scottish council elections, and d’Hondt for the elections for the European Parliament.
I think the intention originally was to test out different systems and then to introduce the best one everywhere, but at the moment there seems to be no urgency to do so.
Similarly, the metric system was introduced in schools and in many other contexts decades ago, but the imperial system is still found in lots of places, for instance for buying beer and milk, and for measuring heights and weights.
So the situation is that kids actually only learn to use the metric system, but they still use stones, inches, pints and so on all the time without actually knowing how to use them.
It’s ridiculous, but again the UK seem to pause halfway through the introduction of a new system, instead of biting the bullet and going all the way (or reverting to the original situation).
Why is that? What is this national obsession with never finishing anything?
I guess it’s good the UK never decided to switch to driving on the right, or we would have been stuck with a situation where motorways and roundabouts and half the cars were for driving on the right, and the rest were still for driving on the left!
(PS: Do click on the photo to read its description. It’s the pub that saved the pound, kind of.)