The ads will tell you you need to vote for your Police and Crime Commissioner on November 15th. Why? Because CRIMINALS will HOPE YOU do NOTHING!
Utter, insulting, nonsense.
It says something about the desperation of those behind the new policy, the policy of taking the power of policing budgets across multiple forces, spread over two entire counties in some cases, and putting it in the hands of a single person, that they are ALREADY resorting to the politics of fear.
The insinuation is sickening. If you're not voting, you're essentially some kind of criminal loving bastard then, aren't you!
If you haven't already, please read what I put online when there was the chance of defeating the policy from becoming law, and why this is the wrong fix for a non-existent problem.
The outcome of the elections, with likely turnout figures, is predictable to see. Towns or areas that vote more readily than others will get increased budgets spent on them (or at least the crimes that those areas suffer from will), meanwhile areas that don't bother to vote won't get as much support. This is because rather than it now being a responsibility spread across representatives for all regions, the single person will act as parties do in government.
How many pro-student, pro-youth policies do you see getting implemented versus pro-pensioner? Look at the Tory Conference... "we will cut housing benefit for the under 25s...we NEED to cut the welfare bill...Don't worry winter fuel allowance and bus passes will remain universal regardless of wealth!"
The youth don't vote, so they don't get any help. The same will happen to crime ridden areas that are apathetic about the abilities of the police. What is someone who is from the east of Devon going to give two shits about when it is a problem of those in West Cornwall?
So, don't bother. Everyone stay at home (at least there is less chance of you being burgled that way). Don't legitimise a process that is intended to make it easy to play politics with your lives. Don't accept the abandonment of true cross party, and multi-region, oversight and control of the police force...and certainly don't accept one person being in control over what does or does not deserve polices attention across entire counties.
Don't vote for your Police and Crime Commissioners on November 15th, the criminals couldn't care less either way...in fact they might just like you to vote, as it may help to continue a system that provides "weak" areas that are rich pickings for criminals.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Are you thinking of voting Tory in 2015?
Do you have any family? A son or daughter? Maybe a brother or sister even?
If so, how would you feel if they were able to be sacked from their job with no reason? How would you feel if they couldn't afford to live away from their parental home, if they're lucky to not be forced to be homeless, due to high rents, a housing bubble kept inflated by the government and an almost complete reduction in housing benefit for the under 25s?
How would you feel if, while in this period of unemployment, chasing the same job as at least 2 or 3 dozen other people are going for (if you're lucky), they get deemed to be "workshy" and are forced to do community service instead of carrying on the job search?
How about being forced to work for a company with no relevance to their career path, for a third of the income that they'd be paid if they were officially given that job, having their morale sapped from them as they are passed from company to company to do the work that they would have only a few years ago paid a fair wage to get done?
How would you feel as their hopes are raised for a possible interview to find a trainee position out of these enforced labour sessions, only to find that they are over-subscribed and the chances to getting such a job is nigh on impossible.
How would you feel if they had an accident, seriously injuring themselves, but then couldn't get any benefits because government targets force people to be told that they are able to do work, despite a now limited scope of jobs available that they are physically capable of doing?
How would you feel if they fell pregnant, had a child, but couldn't afford to have both the heating on and food on the table, without going to handouts arranged by charity, not by government, never guaranteed to be there the next time they need help?
How would you feel that if they then finally managed to find a job, they'd be promised a measly £2k to give up further rights, leading to them once again being sacked for no good reason?
If you would feel pretty good about all this, and think this is a fair and understandable way to deal with your family in this situation, maybe you should carry on with your plan for voting Conservative in 2015.
If so, how would you feel if they were able to be sacked from their job with no reason? How would you feel if they couldn't afford to live away from their parental home, if they're lucky to not be forced to be homeless, due to high rents, a housing bubble kept inflated by the government and an almost complete reduction in housing benefit for the under 25s?
How would you feel if, while in this period of unemployment, chasing the same job as at least 2 or 3 dozen other people are going for (if you're lucky), they get deemed to be "workshy" and are forced to do community service instead of carrying on the job search?
How about being forced to work for a company with no relevance to their career path, for a third of the income that they'd be paid if they were officially given that job, having their morale sapped from them as they are passed from company to company to do the work that they would have only a few years ago paid a fair wage to get done?
How would you feel as their hopes are raised for a possible interview to find a trainee position out of these enforced labour sessions, only to find that they are over-subscribed and the chances to getting such a job is nigh on impossible.
How would you feel if they had an accident, seriously injuring themselves, but then couldn't get any benefits because government targets force people to be told that they are able to do work, despite a now limited scope of jobs available that they are physically capable of doing?
How would you feel if they fell pregnant, had a child, but couldn't afford to have both the heating on and food on the table, without going to handouts arranged by charity, not by government, never guaranteed to be there the next time they need help?
How would you feel that if they then finally managed to find a job, they'd be promised a measly £2k to give up further rights, leading to them once again being sacked for no good reason?
If you would feel pretty good about all this, and think this is a fair and understandable way to deal with your family in this situation, maybe you should carry on with your plan for voting Conservative in 2015.
Friday, September 28, 2012
The curious case of Craig Evans
So, you're feeling amorous and decide to send a text to a current love interest of a sexual nature... all good? Except if you're Craig Evans who appears (as far as reports allow us to see) to have been a bit too hasty in his actions and accidentally sent his message to all of his contacts.
This may not normally be more than an utterly humiliating and embarrassing experience, with family members, friends and acquaintances alike all receiving the invitation for some...let's say... "happy times". Except as a swimming instructor he also happened to have the number of a couple of his students, aged around 13-14, who also received the message.
Cue a court case at Birmingham Crown Court, and a sequence of events that landed him with an 18 month jail sentence for, as far as we can so far tell, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.
It's bizarre.
First of all, there is the issue of bringing the case to court. The CPS has been notorious in the last 12 months for taking cases to court that simply aren't in the public interest, such as the ill-fated attempts to pin terrorism malicious communication charges on Paul Chambers.
The fall out from Chambers' case led to the Director of Public Prosecutions promising to be much fairer about how they approach charging these sorts of "crimes" in the future.
Of course the case of Craig Evans is one that started before this particular about-turn by the CPS.
The question starts though with the legal wording. Intent.
At what point did the CPS decide this was intentional? There are (to my layperson mind) two situations here that are reasonable; the third being that this was a cunningly orchastrated plan to solicit sex from two underage girls while maintaining an air of innocence through the "ooops I didn't mean to do that, why would I send it to my mum" defence.
First, it wasn't intentional and, as the defence appears to have put it, the guy simply made a mistake in sending it to everyone on his phone instead of via text to the intended recipient.
Second, it was intentional as some kind of twisted prank but the intention itself was never to get anyone to engage in sexual activity.
In either case I'm not entirely sure how the charge of "causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity" can be applied. Maybe a proper lawyer can enlighten us, or someone that has transcripts of/attended the case...
There is, therefore, a definite whiff of something weird going on. It has to be expected that the defendant's team weren't denying that an "inciting" message had been sent, but that it wasn't intentional. I would also assume that the question asked of the Jury was whether they felt it was intentional or not.
The jury found him guilty, and the judge at Birmingham Crown Court gave him 18 months.
Now, however, he is out after an appeal, halving his sentence and suspending it.
But wait... the conviction wasn't overturned. He is still technically guilty of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, he will no doubt still be on the sex offenders register and scuppering any chance to carry on with his job as a swimming instructor that works with children.
The judge is reported, on reducing the sentence, to have said...
So... it's not clear if he targeted anyone. This means that the only way the charge can stand is if he intended to target everyone, in the knowledge that two kids would be included, but not those children specifically.
Any other explanation (again, to layperson Lee here) means that there is an acceptance that intent is not possible to determine. If that's the case, isn't there a burden of proof that says "beyond all reasonable doubt" in Crown Court cases? If the Judge admits that they just aren't sure of what he intended, how can the charge itself stay standing?
EDIT: To further confuse, Elias also said that the Custody Threshold was reached, under law this relates to how...
So we also have this statement that not only the original judge, but the appeal judge too, felt this crime was so serious that simply putting a fine on him wouldn't be sufficient, only jail time would do. While accepting that this may well have been an unintentional act (or if intentional, not targeted at the girls specifically), how can you still say a custody threshold has been reached?
This case is strange, from the CPS bringing it to the appeal judge not quashing it. What are we missing? The legislation is concise and clear, there's not an awful lot that is possible to be causing such a crazy situation to be occurring. I guess we have to watch this space...
This may not normally be more than an utterly humiliating and embarrassing experience, with family members, friends and acquaintances alike all receiving the invitation for some...let's say... "happy times". Except as a swimming instructor he also happened to have the number of a couple of his students, aged around 13-14, who also received the message.
Cue a court case at Birmingham Crown Court, and a sequence of events that landed him with an 18 month jail sentence for, as far as we can so far tell, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.
It's bizarre.
First of all, there is the issue of bringing the case to court. The CPS has been notorious in the last 12 months for taking cases to court that simply aren't in the public interest, such as the ill-fated attempts to pin terrorism malicious communication charges on Paul Chambers.
The fall out from Chambers' case led to the Director of Public Prosecutions promising to be much fairer about how they approach charging these sorts of "crimes" in the future.
Of course the case of Craig Evans is one that started before this particular about-turn by the CPS.
The question starts though with the legal wording. Intent.
A person aged 18 or over (A) commits an offence if—
(a)he intentionally causes or incites another person (B) to engage in an activity,
At what point did the CPS decide this was intentional? There are (to my layperson mind) two situations here that are reasonable; the third being that this was a cunningly orchastrated plan to solicit sex from two underage girls while maintaining an air of innocence through the "ooops I didn't mean to do that, why would I send it to my mum" defence.
First, it wasn't intentional and, as the defence appears to have put it, the guy simply made a mistake in sending it to everyone on his phone instead of via text to the intended recipient.
Second, it was intentional as some kind of twisted prank but the intention itself was never to get anyone to engage in sexual activity.
In either case I'm not entirely sure how the charge of "causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity" can be applied. Maybe a proper lawyer can enlighten us, or someone that has transcripts of/attended the case...
There is, therefore, a definite whiff of something weird going on. It has to be expected that the defendant's team weren't denying that an "inciting" message had been sent, but that it wasn't intentional. I would also assume that the question asked of the Jury was whether they felt it was intentional or not.
The jury found him guilty, and the judge at Birmingham Crown Court gave him 18 months.
Now, however, he is out after an appeal, halving his sentence and suspending it.
But wait... the conviction wasn't overturned. He is still technically guilty of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, he will no doubt still be on the sex offenders register and scuppering any chance to carry on with his job as a swimming instructor that works with children.
The judge is reported, on reducing the sentence, to have said...
It is difficult to conclude that he was targeting anyone
So... it's not clear if he targeted anyone. This means that the only way the charge can stand is if he intended to target everyone, in the knowledge that two kids would be included, but not those children specifically.
Any other explanation (again, to layperson Lee here) means that there is an acceptance that intent is not possible to determine. If that's the case, isn't there a burden of proof that says "beyond all reasonable doubt" in Crown Court cases? If the Judge admits that they just aren't sure of what he intended, how can the charge itself stay standing?
EDIT: To further confuse, Elias also said that the Custody Threshold was reached, under law this relates to how...
The court must not pass a custodial sentence unless it is of the opinion that the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, was so serious that neither a fine alone nor a community sentence can be justified for the offence.Source: Criminal Justice Act 2003
So we also have this statement that not only the original judge, but the appeal judge too, felt this crime was so serious that simply putting a fine on him wouldn't be sufficient, only jail time would do. While accepting that this may well have been an unintentional act (or if intentional, not targeted at the girls specifically), how can you still say a custody threshold has been reached?
This case is strange, from the CPS bringing it to the appeal judge not quashing it. What are we missing? The legislation is concise and clear, there's not an awful lot that is possible to be causing such a crazy situation to be occurring. I guess we have to watch this space...
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Responsive Images: No solution yet
I've just finished reading what is, essentially, a very good A List Apart article on the new(ish) problems of high resolution displays entering the marketplace (such as the new iPad).
It's good because it tells people, again, what they should be practicing but oh so many aren't...optimise your assets. However it's not great because it's the same conversation we've been having for over a decade now. The problems of the turn of the century, where people would "go crazy" and design for 56k modem users leaving those of us on the 28.8k connections languishing in ever longer download times, are the problems of now...but on a more global scale.
I had high hopes...
...but ultimately this avenue was simply not progressed. And thus we have the problem about discussion of proper responsive web design in the modern time: It focuses *only* on the front end development team.
I love front end development, the creativity and freedom to express is fantastic...but I also love that when there is a problem that front end development simply can't address, I can fall back to my server side knowledge.
So when I see this...
...I just have to groan in despair. (emphasis is mine)
You see, the problem of serving the right image size for the right device is indeed a front end problem. You measure the size of the screen you've got, you take the resolution in to account, and you put the right image in to keep everything looking pretty and engaging.
Bandwidth though, bandwidth... that is a server side problem (for now), and one we have gone on for too long ignoring. The idea that you can have a purely front-end solution to the paradoxes of bandwidth management is unrealistic right now, and may always be. I guess that's why the rest of the article ignored this issue.
Take for example your "average web developer", who is on holiday in the moors. They have, at best, a 2g/edge connection to the internet over mobile networks but their company has just called them to sort out a critical problem with a website.
They pull out the (hypothetical, but soon to happen) large screen laptop they develop on knowing this kind of call was possible, with a 200DPI screen. Your purely front-end developer produced website loads some catastrophically large images that take ages, and cost loads, to load and assess.
On the flip side you have someone with an old iPhone2, sitting at home on their WiFi, with bandwidth that exceeds the kind of speeds you'd ever need to buffer your favourite episode of Breaking Bad with no buffering issues, and they are being served heavily optimised images just in case they have little network capability.
Each person receives the opposite experience that they deserve, and all because our purely front-end approach doesn't take in to account the main factor that we're trying to be responsible about.
The solution?
Browsers need to take more responsibility. Our only communication with the user's situation is through the browser. We are sitting in a room with an earpiece on that is connected to a single person. That person can talk to anyone they want, but we can only listen to, and speak to, them.
The browsers need to start taking information from the user's machine, and from their very browsing, to generate reliable and mid-term data of that person's bandwidth. Through access to the device's inner workings, and complimented by being able to keep short-term calculations of something as simple as an ongoing average download speed on all sites, would provide our websites with the information they need to do right by the user.
This could be as simple as sending this information along within the data that is sent to the server as standard (in a HTTP request). A numeric value of the current likely download speed would let server-side developers take that value and guide what is served to the user, by managing which CSS files are delivered, or more directly through a server-side image processing solution such as Adaptive Images.
But it's not impossible to assume that the browser developers themselves can't go one step further. If we are to implement the srcset or picture aspects of HTML5, then why not future proof the web and consider that a value for bandwidth may also be included?
If a media-query style selector was available for bandwidth, such as "min-bandwidth" and "max-bandwidth"...dealing with the potential problem for the value of this bandwidth changing (and thus changing content)...we could add a better granularity to our front-end image requests.
Looking at the Apple pushed srcset attribute, and using a value that represents the current average download speed in KB/s, we could see this (taken from the A List Apart article's example and modified)...
You see that I'm following the same nonsensical syntax that has been proposed by saying that "b" represents the bandwidth availability of the client, as "w" represents the pixel width.
If we were to look at the "A List Apart" example, that incorporates the picture element, it may look more like this:
This would solve a whole load of problems, aside from being even more verbose than the already verbose suggestion! For a start it would begin by looking for a small and generic image that all can use. If the screen is a high resolution display it'll go for the higher resolution image, but only if the bandwidth measurements are such that it is responsible to do so.
The end result is that the developer with the large laptop in the hills will get poor resolution imagery, but it'll be fast...while the person at home will get crystal clear high quality imagery, also delivered fast.
By being more holistic in our approach to how we make decisions, whether front-end or server-side, we can deliver better experiences. Adding the ability to control content by an average bandwidth value, at the start of a user's browsing session ideally, we can control load times. We can ensure that no image we serve is likely to take more than 3 seconds to load regardless of the quality being delivered, all because we are deciding on that quality based on their bandwidth limitations.
EDIT: There is a further look at this, and how much broader we can go beyond screen dimensions, on Matthew Palmer's site.
It's good because it tells people, again, what they should be practicing but oh so many aren't...optimise your assets. However it's not great because it's the same conversation we've been having for over a decade now. The problems of the turn of the century, where people would "go crazy" and design for 56k modem users leaving those of us on the 28.8k connections languishing in ever longer download times, are the problems of now...but on a more global scale.
I had high hopes...
A visitor to your website might be using a high-PPI tablet or phone from the comfort of her couch, or from the middle of the Arizona desert. Likewise, those brand-new Retina Macbook Pros could be connected to the internet via Google Fiber, or tethered to a 3G hotspot in an airport. We must be careful about our assumptions regarding pixels and bandwidth.
...but ultimately this avenue was simply not progressed. And thus we have the problem about discussion of proper responsive web design in the modern time: It focuses *only* on the front end development team.
I love front end development, the creativity and freedom to express is fantastic...but I also love that when there is a problem that front end development simply can't address, I can fall back to my server side knowledge.
So when I see this...
Other attempts exist, such as bandwidth detection, cookie setting, server-side detection, or a mixture of all three. As much as I’d like robots to solve my problems, these solutions have a higher barrier to entry for your average web developer. The major pain point with all of them is that they introduce server/cookie dependencies, which have been historically troublesome.
We need a purely front-end solution to high resolution images.
...I just have to groan in despair. (emphasis is mine)
You see, the problem of serving the right image size for the right device is indeed a front end problem. You measure the size of the screen you've got, you take the resolution in to account, and you put the right image in to keep everything looking pretty and engaging.
Bandwidth though, bandwidth... that is a server side problem (for now), and one we have gone on for too long ignoring. The idea that you can have a purely front-end solution to the paradoxes of bandwidth management is unrealistic right now, and may always be. I guess that's why the rest of the article ignored this issue.
Take for example your "average web developer", who is on holiday in the moors. They have, at best, a 2g/edge connection to the internet over mobile networks but their company has just called them to sort out a critical problem with a website.
They pull out the (hypothetical, but soon to happen) large screen laptop they develop on knowing this kind of call was possible, with a 200DPI screen. Your purely front-end developer produced website loads some catastrophically large images that take ages, and cost loads, to load and assess.
On the flip side you have someone with an old iPhone2, sitting at home on their WiFi, with bandwidth that exceeds the kind of speeds you'd ever need to buffer your favourite episode of Breaking Bad with no buffering issues, and they are being served heavily optimised images just in case they have little network capability.
Each person receives the opposite experience that they deserve, and all because our purely front-end approach doesn't take in to account the main factor that we're trying to be responsible about.
The solution?
Browsers need to take more responsibility. Our only communication with the user's situation is through the browser. We are sitting in a room with an earpiece on that is connected to a single person. That person can talk to anyone they want, but we can only listen to, and speak to, them.
The browsers need to start taking information from the user's machine, and from their very browsing, to generate reliable and mid-term data of that person's bandwidth. Through access to the device's inner workings, and complimented by being able to keep short-term calculations of something as simple as an ongoing average download speed on all sites, would provide our websites with the information they need to do right by the user.
This could be as simple as sending this information along within the data that is sent to the server as standard (in a HTTP request). A numeric value of the current likely download speed would let server-side developers take that value and guide what is served to the user, by managing which CSS files are delivered, or more directly through a server-side image processing solution such as Adaptive Images.
But it's not impossible to assume that the browser developers themselves can't go one step further. If we are to implement the srcset or picture aspects of HTML5, then why not future proof the web and consider that a value for bandwidth may also be included?
If a media-query style selector was available for bandwidth, such as "min-bandwidth" and "max-bandwidth"...dealing with the potential problem for the value of this bandwidth changing (and thus changing content)...we could add a better granularity to our front-end image requests.
Looking at the Apple pushed srcset attribute, and using a value that represents the current average download speed in KB/s, we could see this (taken from the A List Apart article's example and modified)...
<img alt="Cat Dancing" src="small-1.jpg"
srcset="small-2.jpg 2x 50b, // this is pretty cool
large-2.jpg 100w 100b, // meh
large-2.jpg 100w 2x 400b // meh@2x
">You see that I'm following the same nonsensical syntax that has been proposed by saying that "b" represents the bandwidth availability of the client, as "w" represents the pixel width.
If we were to look at the "A List Apart" example, that incorporates the picture element, it may look more like this:
<picture alt="Cat Dancing">
<source media="(min-width: 45em) and (min-bandwidth: 400kb)" srcset="large-1.jpg 1x, large-2.jpg 2x">
<source media="(min-width: 45em) and (min-bandwidth: 200kb)" srcset="large-1.jpg 1x">
<source media="(min-width: 18em) and (min-bandwidth: 100kb)" srcset="med-1.jpg 1x, med-2.jpg 2x">
<source media="(min-width: 18em) and (min-bandwidth: 50kb)" srcset="med-1.jpg 1x">
<source media="(min-bandwidth: 50kb)" srcset="small-1.jpg 1x, small-2.jpg 2x">
<img src="small-1.jpg">
</picture>This would solve a whole load of problems, aside from being even more verbose than the already verbose suggestion! For a start it would begin by looking for a small and generic image that all can use. If the screen is a high resolution display it'll go for the higher resolution image, but only if the bandwidth measurements are such that it is responsible to do so.
The end result is that the developer with the large laptop in the hills will get poor resolution imagery, but it'll be fast...while the person at home will get crystal clear high quality imagery, also delivered fast.
By being more holistic in our approach to how we make decisions, whether front-end or server-side, we can deliver better experiences. Adding the ability to control content by an average bandwidth value, at the start of a user's browsing session ideally, we can control load times. We can ensure that no image we serve is likely to take more than 3 seconds to load regardless of the quality being delivered, all because we are deciding on that quality based on their bandwidth limitations.
EDIT: There is a further look at this, and how much broader we can go beyond screen dimensions, on Matthew Palmer's site.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Greedy Brits
There is a strange phenomenon in this country that I can't quite understand. Whether it's misunderstanding, pig ignorance or willful misrepresentation out of greed, our country suffers from a disgusting disease of greed.
Of course, those greedy lot are more vocal than the more measured, and may well be a minority, but their presence is significant in the national discourse none the less.
Take Higher Education tuition fees; This is a "debt" (it's not a real debt) that falls heaviest on those who are strong earners, specifically those that are strong earners from day 1 of their graduate life. Yet if you listen to the NUS, and to Labour, and a swathe of misinformed protestors on the issue...you'd believe it is bleeding the poor dry.
Ignore that the terms of this "debt" are far more favourable to the poor than they were before, repayment terms giving people a much greater margin of income before they need to repay their fee loans, all we seem to be able to see if the pound signs that say £9k instead of £3k.
No, paying more is bad. Except a large number of people, with a median wage of £21k (granted, this isn't a graduate median wage, but that figure is nigh on impossible to find accurately) in this country, won't be paying anything back. The rise of the fees from £3k to £9k may as well have been pushed even higher to £100k, because the repayment terms are so favourable to those who are poor.
Furthermore, the terms mean that it doesn't matter what your debt is, you'll be paying it off for 30 years anyway (if you reach the threshold of the median wage in the country, at which point you become part of the wealthier minority). Oh, except if you're super rich of course, in which case you'll not.
So who is really arguing against these changes? If you're rich (but not wealthy in heritage), I guess I can understand it. You used to pay your tuition fee loan off really quickly, now it's going to take you longer; it's "unfair" you have to pay more now given you take more. But if you don't know...what is the problem? you're afraid that you'll have to pay more than you used to?
As I said above, maybe these people are just ignorant of the realities, or maybe they are just out and out greedy. To be paying more than you would have under Labour's old system you have to be someone that enters the top 10% of all earners in the UK, one of the richest earners on the planet.
It creates a bizarre situation where people are complaining that they have money to pay towards maintaining an institution that likely helped them achieve "greatness", because rather than taking an extra 60p of everything they earn in the future on their luxurious salary, it'll only be 51p.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
There are literally billions of people in the world that can't even comprehend taking home enough money each year after taxation and "debt" repayments, probably while owning a fairly secure asset in at least one home, to buy three small cars. And you're complaining that you might have to reinvest some of this in to an asset in our society that helped you get to where you are?
Seriously, sort out your priorities.
Then there is the supposed declaration by Nick Clegg of war on the "middle classes", as it would be described in the Daily Mail. New taxes on those earning over £50k, the top 10% of earners in the UK! Cue absolutely batshit-insane, shooting-self-in-foot, cutting-nose-off-to-spite-face, nonsense...
"What is the point in working if the harder you work the more you get penalised? You'll just end up with a nation of backward, scrounging wasters because everyone else will just leave." - m.bauder, London.
We live amongst people that seem to honestly believe that having money that *you don't need* portioned up so that some of it goes back to help people that *don't have the money they need* is penalising you for working harder.
Now, let's just take this shit about you "working harder" our of the equation. It suggests the single mother juggling three part time jobs to keep her kids heated and fed while only just aquiring the median wage isn't working hard. It assumes the cleaners that come in to work every day to the London underground and clean up our shit and take our abuse and stress on a daily basis don't work hard. More importantly it assumes that sitting at a desk, funneling other people's decisions, and having meetings over lunch is hard work too.
But what is the penalty? If I currently earn £42k, and I get a £5k pay rise, then I'm up each year by around £2500. What exactly am I having to deal with to get that £5k pay rise anyway? Maybe a new person to take responsibility for? A better job title?
Maybe I'm self-employed and I only get that extra £5k is I am doing actual extra work, perhaps more hours, truly "working hard"...am I going to look that £2500 down and say... "nah, don't need it" just because it happens to be the result of a 40%, rather than 20% tax rate?
let's not forget that I'm already taking home something in the region of £28k *already* and that is at least £5k above what you "need" to live a comfortable life style.
Don't think the idea of £2300 is worth it compared to £2500 in take home pay? Fine, don't do it. The work won't disappear, it'll just go to someone else who is either a far more rational greedy person or, (fingers crossed) someone that actually needs the money.
You stamping your feet, crossing your arms, and sticking your bottom lip out saying "fine, I won't earn that much then" isn't a threat. It's laughable that you think your earning power is even remotely that important. All the "threat" does is allow more people in to work, and it means money has the opportunity to be more evenly distributed around the population of this country.
"Im sick of polititions thinking hitting the middle class is the answer, go after the people who can afford your ludicrous tax hikes!" - ali, Dublin
It just confounds me that people that earn an insane amount of money by global standards can think they don't have anything left to give. So you might need to not buy your over-priced brand of tomato sauce, maybe you'll need to use the car a bit less (at least you might walk more, avoid the heart attack from all this stressed outrage at how everyone is trying to take the pennies from your piggy bank). At what point though will you ever realise how good you've actually got it?
Of course the basic, greedy, one-track-mindism of this kind of person, to boil everything down to money and possessions, causes much more damage. Not being able to "afford" to give a fair share of your disposable income to the state to pay for things like welfare, job creation, healthcare, education, security only means that more is needed to help people. If your money isn't helping to create jobs, then it's costing you more in welfare bills. If your money isn't helping to educate and pre-preemptively tackle issues such as violence, and illness...then people will just cost more in patching them up. If your money isn't going towards keeping the peace, then it just costs you more in cleaning up, detaining and compensating.
It begs the questions as to whether or not these greedy lot are even responsible enough with money to deserve it!
At the end of the day we live in a society now where if you earn the median wage, taking out the basic costs of living such as necessary food, rent, insurance, tax and basic amenities, they have perhaps a 25-30% disposable income that they can use (probably to spend on more than basic food first!). Someone earning £50k will have close to 50% disposable income. I wouldn't be calling for that level to be the same no matter the wage (though note it would still mean someone on £50k would have twice as much money in real terms), but do we really believe for one second that out of everyone in the entire country it is this group of people that are both unable to give more, and are already targeted "too much"?
Of course, those greedy lot are more vocal than the more measured, and may well be a minority, but their presence is significant in the national discourse none the less.
Take Higher Education tuition fees; This is a "debt" (it's not a real debt) that falls heaviest on those who are strong earners, specifically those that are strong earners from day 1 of their graduate life. Yet if you listen to the NUS, and to Labour, and a swathe of misinformed protestors on the issue...you'd believe it is bleeding the poor dry.
Ignore that the terms of this "debt" are far more favourable to the poor than they were before, repayment terms giving people a much greater margin of income before they need to repay their fee loans, all we seem to be able to see if the pound signs that say £9k instead of £3k.
No, paying more is bad. Except a large number of people, with a median wage of £21k (granted, this isn't a graduate median wage, but that figure is nigh on impossible to find accurately) in this country, won't be paying anything back. The rise of the fees from £3k to £9k may as well have been pushed even higher to £100k, because the repayment terms are so favourable to those who are poor.
Furthermore, the terms mean that it doesn't matter what your debt is, you'll be paying it off for 30 years anyway (if you reach the threshold of the median wage in the country, at which point you become part of the wealthier minority). Oh, except if you're super rich of course, in which case you'll not.
So who is really arguing against these changes? If you're rich (but not wealthy in heritage), I guess I can understand it. You used to pay your tuition fee loan off really quickly, now it's going to take you longer; it's "unfair" you have to pay more now given you take more. But if you don't know...what is the problem? you're afraid that you'll have to pay more than you used to?
As I said above, maybe these people are just ignorant of the realities, or maybe they are just out and out greedy. To be paying more than you would have under Labour's old system you have to be someone that enters the top 10% of all earners in the UK, one of the richest earners on the planet.
It creates a bizarre situation where people are complaining that they have money to pay towards maintaining an institution that likely helped them achieve "greatness", because rather than taking an extra 60p of everything they earn in the future on their luxurious salary, it'll only be 51p.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
There are literally billions of people in the world that can't even comprehend taking home enough money each year after taxation and "debt" repayments, probably while owning a fairly secure asset in at least one home, to buy three small cars. And you're complaining that you might have to reinvest some of this in to an asset in our society that helped you get to where you are?
Seriously, sort out your priorities.
Then there is the supposed declaration by Nick Clegg of war on the "middle classes", as it would be described in the Daily Mail. New taxes on those earning over £50k, the top 10% of earners in the UK! Cue absolutely batshit-insane, shooting-self-in-foot, cutting-nose-off-to-spite-face, nonsense...
"What is the point in working if the harder you work the more you get penalised? You'll just end up with a nation of backward, scrounging wasters because everyone else will just leave." - m.bauder, London.
We live amongst people that seem to honestly believe that having money that *you don't need* portioned up so that some of it goes back to help people that *don't have the money they need* is penalising you for working harder.
Now, let's just take this shit about you "working harder" our of the equation. It suggests the single mother juggling three part time jobs to keep her kids heated and fed while only just aquiring the median wage isn't working hard. It assumes the cleaners that come in to work every day to the London underground and clean up our shit and take our abuse and stress on a daily basis don't work hard. More importantly it assumes that sitting at a desk, funneling other people's decisions, and having meetings over lunch is hard work too.
But what is the penalty? If I currently earn £42k, and I get a £5k pay rise, then I'm up each year by around £2500. What exactly am I having to deal with to get that £5k pay rise anyway? Maybe a new person to take responsibility for? A better job title?
Maybe I'm self-employed and I only get that extra £5k is I am doing actual extra work, perhaps more hours, truly "working hard"...am I going to look that £2500 down and say... "nah, don't need it" just because it happens to be the result of a 40%, rather than 20% tax rate?
let's not forget that I'm already taking home something in the region of £28k *already* and that is at least £5k above what you "need" to live a comfortable life style.
Don't think the idea of £2300 is worth it compared to £2500 in take home pay? Fine, don't do it. The work won't disappear, it'll just go to someone else who is either a far more rational greedy person or, (fingers crossed) someone that actually needs the money.
You stamping your feet, crossing your arms, and sticking your bottom lip out saying "fine, I won't earn that much then" isn't a threat. It's laughable that you think your earning power is even remotely that important. All the "threat" does is allow more people in to work, and it means money has the opportunity to be more evenly distributed around the population of this country.
"Im sick of polititions thinking hitting the middle class is the answer, go after the people who can afford your ludicrous tax hikes!" - ali, Dublin
It just confounds me that people that earn an insane amount of money by global standards can think they don't have anything left to give. So you might need to not buy your over-priced brand of tomato sauce, maybe you'll need to use the car a bit less (at least you might walk more, avoid the heart attack from all this stressed outrage at how everyone is trying to take the pennies from your piggy bank). At what point though will you ever realise how good you've actually got it?
Of course the basic, greedy, one-track-mindism of this kind of person, to boil everything down to money and possessions, causes much more damage. Not being able to "afford" to give a fair share of your disposable income to the state to pay for things like welfare, job creation, healthcare, education, security only means that more is needed to help people. If your money isn't helping to create jobs, then it's costing you more in welfare bills. If your money isn't helping to educate and pre-preemptively tackle issues such as violence, and illness...then people will just cost more in patching them up. If your money isn't going towards keeping the peace, then it just costs you more in cleaning up, detaining and compensating.
It begs the questions as to whether or not these greedy lot are even responsible enough with money to deserve it!
At the end of the day we live in a society now where if you earn the median wage, taking out the basic costs of living such as necessary food, rent, insurance, tax and basic amenities, they have perhaps a 25-30% disposable income that they can use (probably to spend on more than basic food first!). Someone earning £50k will have close to 50% disposable income. I wouldn't be calling for that level to be the same no matter the wage (though note it would still mean someone on £50k would have twice as much money in real terms), but do we really believe for one second that out of everyone in the entire country it is this group of people that are both unable to give more, and are already targeted "too much"?
Sunday, September 23, 2012
When do the Lib Dems grow a pair?
The Lib Dems, this conference they're using their limited lime-light to talk about how they're for "fairer tax"; but, pantomime audience, those evil Tories just won't let that happen!
[Audience: Boooooooooooo]
It seems then that the Lib Dems are positioning themselves in to an area they know how to fight from... claiming they want things but without the power to do them. The trouble is that previously they weren't in government, and now they are.
What are we meant to take from this kind of declaration? That the Tories want to keep helping the wealthy? No shit! That's hardly a revelation now is it? No, the only thing we can take is that the Lib Dems are losing their grip on direct power, and are choosing to take a back seat.
Now, for the record, I think that the Lib Dem involvement in creating compromise in Tory legislation has been, on balance, positive. The difference between the NHS bill before and after Lib Dem involvement is significant, the progressive nature of the reforms to Higher Education fees is to be applauded, and even though the end result wasn't positive at all, the Lib Dem Lords still did a fantastic job in creating a hard time for the Tories in their welfare "reforms".
This doesn't mean the end results are perfect, but it shows that at least moderation has been a result of coalition politics.
But that, it seems, is where it ends. No commons reform, no Lords reform, no repeal of the Digital Economy Act (or the parts relating to shutting off people's internet without being found guilty of a crime), retaining the 50p tax for now, mansion tax, falling behind on Green targets...the list goes on as to the number of things that Lib Dems want and are not getting.
They can claim as much as they want that they've achieved certain things in government, but these are all things the Tories would have, in all likelihood, done anyway.
So, in light of all these failures...what's the point in sitting there and pretending you're in opposition again (aside from how comfortable it feels)?
If Lib Dems are serious about fairer tax it's time to make a stand. Are they there to make real change or to moderate the Tories? I cannot believe for a second that the country would do anything other than (generally) be happy for the Lib Dems to make such a stand right now and make it a "make or break" issue for the coalition.
I guess it's time to tell just whether the Lib Dems are actually golden, or really just yellow.
[Audience: Boooooooooooo]
It seems then that the Lib Dems are positioning themselves in to an area they know how to fight from... claiming they want things but without the power to do them. The trouble is that previously they weren't in government, and now they are.
What are we meant to take from this kind of declaration? That the Tories want to keep helping the wealthy? No shit! That's hardly a revelation now is it? No, the only thing we can take is that the Lib Dems are losing their grip on direct power, and are choosing to take a back seat.
Now, for the record, I think that the Lib Dem involvement in creating compromise in Tory legislation has been, on balance, positive. The difference between the NHS bill before and after Lib Dem involvement is significant, the progressive nature of the reforms to Higher Education fees is to be applauded, and even though the end result wasn't positive at all, the Lib Dem Lords still did a fantastic job in creating a hard time for the Tories in their welfare "reforms".
This doesn't mean the end results are perfect, but it shows that at least moderation has been a result of coalition politics.
But that, it seems, is where it ends. No commons reform, no Lords reform, no repeal of the Digital Economy Act (or the parts relating to shutting off people's internet without being found guilty of a crime), retaining the 50p tax for now, mansion tax, falling behind on Green targets...the list goes on as to the number of things that Lib Dems want and are not getting.
They can claim as much as they want that they've achieved certain things in government, but these are all things the Tories would have, in all likelihood, done anyway.
So, in light of all these failures...what's the point in sitting there and pretending you're in opposition again (aside from how comfortable it feels)?
If Lib Dems are serious about fairer tax it's time to make a stand. Are they there to make real change or to moderate the Tories? I cannot believe for a second that the country would do anything other than (generally) be happy for the Lib Dems to make such a stand right now and make it a "make or break" issue for the coalition.
I guess it's time to tell just whether the Lib Dems are actually golden, or really just yellow.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Students and the new 2012+ loans system: Who loses?
I have the same discussion every time Clegg comes out. Clegg will say something, like that he's sorry and that he did something wrong, and those who don't understand or don't want to accept reality will come out and say "You bastard! We will never be satisfied, you ruined Higher Education funding, everything is ruined, the world is ended" or something to that ill-conceived effect.
They are wrong. The changes to the HE fee's system are not only a net positive, they are overwhelmingly positive...so long as you agree that the wealthy should pay more relatively than the poor for the upkeep of essential services in the UK....and so long as you agree that accessible Higher Education is an essential services.
Let's quickly revisit the old situation and the new situation.
pre-2012:
People racked up loans of £3k per year plus a maintenance loan if they took it.
This was repaid through a fixed rate based on income above ~£16k, or via advance repayment.
Any loan remaining after 25 years is wiped out
The loan increases by inflation only.
post-2012
People can rack up loans of up to £9k per year plus a maintenance loan if they took it.
This is repaid through a fixed rate of income above ~£21k, or via advance repayment.
Any loan remaining after 30 years is wiped out
The loan increases by an interest amount, set above inflation.
So as you can see, fundamentally similar systems, with some key differences. For a start the new system introduces a situation where some may be repaying more than they actually took out as a loan. however the change to income boundaries mean that people will pay less each year than they used to to repay the loan. The amount of the loan, obviously increases.
It's not a debt:
But the key to remember here is that it's not a debt. It's an obligation to pay a percentage of your income as a graduate, up to a threshold that is marginally variable.
With a traditional loan, the loan:
Counts towards your credit rating and ability to take out other loans
Is paid back REGARDLESS of ability to pay (though lenders may come to agreements with you)
Remains until it is fully paid, after interest, even if you die
If a fixed term, repayments on it can vary based on a varying interest rate
A tax, on the other hand:
Is paid based on income or transaction
Never ends unless special conditions are reached
Leaves no legacy cost for next of kin to pay (unless in relation to taxes that occur due to actions after your death)
Has no set amount to be paid, no threshold to reach.
So as you can see, this system is a mishmash of a tax and a loan...for the benefit of the student as it happens. You see it has all the hallmarks of a tax, meaning no liability for the "debt" to pass to others, no variation in repayment amount that isn't linked to your increased income, doesn't affect your credit rating or ability to borrow, and has a threshold on ability to pay. It also has the benefit of a loan...being fixed term rather than never ending it means the amount may never be, fully repaid (For many this is actually the likely outcome). Also being a loan it has the downside of collecting interest, though this becomes largely irrelvant when compared to how a tax operates.
So then, how has Nick Clegg ruined the system for students?
Short answer: He hasn't.
Those who argue against the current system are either arguing that it's worse than the old system (because it's higher fees!) or that it's worse than a hypothetical "better" system (because we shouldn't pay for HE outside of general taxation!)
The former are ill informed, or perhaps just aware that finally the system is rigged not to help those who are better off, but to finally make them pay a fair share in to the system. The latter are people better off ignoring in a political debate like this, since ideals are just that.
What we can discuss is the current vs the former system. What better way than to work out who's better off, or not?
Part-time students:
Let's get this easy one out of the way. Part time students used to have to find the money up front to pay for their courses. Given their likely reduced income to be able to take time to study, this kind of upfront cost was entirely prohibitive to re-skilling in an academic sense.
Now they get to take out fee loans the same as everyone else. Some may end up paying more than they would have up front, however since the original situation was prohibitive to the poor, and only those who then go on to increase their income will be worse off, I think we can call this an extremely progressive move, can't we?
ELQ students:
Thanks to Rob Fay (@Arathrael) for having me consider this one. Equivalent or lower qualification (ELQ) students are students that already have a degree, whether from abroad or not, and are going for a different degree to the same or lower level.
So, for example, a masters student won't get any help (unless going for a specific course that the government is happy to help fund) doing a different subject undergraduate or masters course. Someone who has an undergraduate degree in law but decides they want to be an English scholar won't get any help either.
How the new system affects them is varied from institution to institution. Like with foreign student fees, this is an area where different institutions have a more free reign on charges. Some simply add a supplemental fee to the existing course fee, others charge as if you are a foreign student, some match the cost of the undergraduate degree as if you weren't an ELQ student, and others wildly vary depending on the course.
The change in fee structure has done little to change this situation. For a few this system will be no different as it was already expensive and remains so. for other their fees may increase by a small or large amount. Those worse hit as ELQ students are ones that would have been getting the "best" deal a year ago at their institution as the margin of change is greater for these institutions that are matching their fees to the full time cost of course of non-ELQ students.
It's a definite blow to the idea of taking a second degree if you want to change direction, but while part-time students above make up a significant number of students that will benefit, ELQ's are much smaller in number. It's an area of the policy I'd sorely like to see changed, however we may be talking about less than 1% of the student population being negatively affected.
Postgraduate student:
Postgraduates are unchanged from previous years, where tuition fee loans aren't available to them.
Undergraduate students:
The main body that are effected are the undergraduate students, students taking their first degree. While their fees go up to £9k a year, the effect for anyone that doesn't make the average graduate wage, or has poor wage progression, is that they will pay less for their education than they did with the old system.
Let's outline some assumptions I shall be making from hear on in.
1) Tuition fees are £9k.
2) Everyone is taking a maintenance loan of £5500
3) courses are three years long
4) RPI will be around 3.5% and stable (hah!)
5) The cut off income for paying contributions starts at £21k and rises with RPI
6) Interest rates will remain as currently defined (complicated, RPI only < £21k, RPI plus a variable rate based on salary between £21k and £41k, and RPI + 3% on over £41k)
7) UK salary growth only grows with inflation
What this should signify is your general university goer, taking advantage of the money up front in loan form, on a standard course. The country is stable, prices are rising, but so are salary expectations. The interest rates mean you have to be doing well on salary progression to escape the interest rate, once passing the 2012 equivalent of 6.5% or thereabouts on your unpaid loan! That is, until you've been paying it for 30 years.
So, let's make some strawmen. How about Terry, he graduates into a good graduate job earning £22k, securing a good pay rise in his third year of employment, and his sixth, but otherwise stagnant on pay rises in line with RPI. In year 11 he makes a career jump, a promotion or moving to another company to a higher position, still attaining only modest RPI level wage increases. After his 20th year he gets another big promotion which sees him coasting along on RPI level wage increases until his 30 years are done.
Terry ends up on a salary of around £56.6k in today's money, he's done pretty well for himself. Still, he hasn't paid off all his debt remaining AND he hasn't actually paid back in to the system what he took out when accounting for inflation. However he would have paid off his smaller debt in the old system in about half the time.
Situation: Strong earner
Comparison to old system: not favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
How about June. She is unemployed out of uni for 3 years before taking a low paid job around £16k at the wages of the time. Her wage progression is only bouncing along at RPI, but she sticks at the job. After a few years she's had enough and decides to start her own business. It starts slowly, but she soon makes a success of it.
She builds up her business to a stable level, taking regular above inflation pay rises for herself, after 30 years sitting on a reasonable salary around £47.5k in today's money. The loan didn't stop her from being able to get a business loan or any such necessity to make her business work, and ends up not only not paying very little of her debt before it's wiped out, but she doesn't pay what she put in AND she just about doesn't pay as much as she would under the old system.
Situation: Unemployed to entrepreneur
Comparison to old system: slightly favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
Gary. He starts strong, straight in to a highly paid job at £35k. The job has a structured salary progression for 10 years after which progression drops off to just 1% above RPI. Good pension though. He repays his loan 3 years before the 30 year mark, but ends on a salary around £55k in today's money.
The result is that he pays much, much more than he would have under the old system, pays slightly more than he took out originally after inflation, but pays it all off.
Situation: Great job for life
Comparison to old system: very unfavourable
Paid off debt: Yes
Paid off amount borrowed initially: Yes
Kelly isn't one of the lucky ones, she remains unemployed for most of her life, except for the odd part time job, spending most of her time raising her children instead.
Situation: "Full time mother"
Comparison to old system: Same/Marginally favourable for those who get a low paid job for a period of time.
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
Bobby manages to get a £26k job out of uni, however he never really applies himself as much as he should, he goes from job to job, but never manages to attain a pay rise above RPI. He ends, obviously, on £26k in today's money...but at least he's not had to pay too much. Under the old system he would have fully repaid his debt, under this one he's not even paid half of that amount.
Situation: coasting along
Comparison to old system: very favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
Then we have Felix. He starts out from the bottom but he is extremely capable of working his way up. He's got the right skills, he has the right industry, and after a steady and consistent pay progression he finishes his 30th year with a £150k salary.
The progression means that he's able to pay the debt off early, saving some money on what he would have had to have paid if he was forced to keep up payments for the full 30 years. But he does pay roughly what he borrowed, and paid significantly more, perhaps double the amount, than he would have done under the old system.
Situation: Tipped for the top
Comparison to old system: unfavourable
Paid off debt: Yes
Paid off amount borrowed initially: Yes
Finally let's look at Kacey, she has a good job but also puts her kids first...applies herself when they get towards university age themselves revs up the career. For almost 20 years she gets an ok set of pay rises, some years not getting more than RPI as her small business employers struggle with the times. But as they expand she is later able to make moves up the ladder and command greater salaries. She ends up on almost £76k after 30 years with most of the salary earned in the later years.
She ultimately pays just over half her loan. She would have, under the old system, almost paid her loan after the 25 year cut off, but the amount she has paid into the system only exceeds the old system debt by £2k, while at the same time saving her significant money each year as the payments are lower.
Situation: Late bloomer
Comparison to old system: marginally favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
There are many more "types" I'm sure, feel free to ask me to model one. These represent, I feel, the main types of salary progression; from the unemployed or low earner, to the high flier, with those who make salary gains early or late in their career in between.
It's clear to me who the winners and the losers are. The people rich enough to pay off early need to be significantly rich before they gain any "benefit" and even then are worse off than under the old system. Those who stagnate around the average salary will win, as will those who have low paid regular jobs. People who achieve later in life will also be winners, while those that start strong but fail to progress their salary will perhaps be worse off...though being someone earning an average of £47k per year over 30 years is debatably never so "worse off" to be animated about.
The reality is that unless you're doing well in life, compared to everyone else in the country, you're going to be better off if you go to university now compared to in previous years.
Shouldn't the fees be less?
NO! Labour floated a plan to move the fees to £6k instead of £9k, playing on student's fears and trying to cynically move in on a territory that they have no right to occupy given their place in the creation of very real student debt.
The effect of this plan would be that Felix is much better off, while people like June are no better off. Reducing the "burden" actually helps the rich and doesn't help those on lower incomes at all. If anything, the fees should be increased from 9k to something higher, to ensure that those graduates that progress hard and fast in their salary always pay in to the system!
Is it regressive?
Well, yes...if you take the letter of the meaning the fact that very wealthy or high earning individuals can pay off all they owe before they accrue any interest, while less well earning individuals may have their "debt" increase and the amount they pay back end up larger than they initially borrowed.
But the old system is also regressive. The same rich people can pay off their loan early, and easier. The old system is technically more regressive than what we've got now...and while I'd rather see an out and out graduate tax rather than this weird loan, I also welcome progress.
Progress...
We can't let the best be enemy of good. It happens over and over again that we have people that scupper positive steps forward because their too hard headed to take a compromise. Whether it's Lords Reform, or Common's reform, or this hear change to HE fees...there is granularity in what is good and not. The situation is that the old system clawed back money from people that barely had enough to pay their rent, and completely ignored the large proportion of part-time students in the UK.
This system redresses that, and while it leaves ELQs out in the cold (for shame) it helps many, many other people in to not being penalised for their degree not working out for them the way they thought it would, for their industry collapsing around them, or for choosing to do more altruistic but low paid work.
Why not a graduate tax?
So this is the puzzling thing. If it's like a graduate tax, and is paid like a graduate tax...why isn't it just a graduate tax. It'd be interesting to find an official line, but with the SLC set up and the loan book available at some point to be picked up by private interest, there is a money saving to be had for the government by keeping it as loans. In theory.
Also a graduate tax opens up a Pandora's box. How do you deal with the fact you have people with loans who would now have a graduate tax, and how about all those students from the 60s through to current day who never signed up to go to university with a graduate tax in mind.
Wiping people's slates clean is easy, convincing everyone who's graduated they should be paying a graduate tax on the other hand...I would like to see the politician brave enough.
General taxation
Of course my preferred route is general taxation paying for Higher Education, including second degrees (those ELQ students). Creating a world where re-skilling and re-educating is accessible and free to anyone who wants to do it is necessary for a free society and to break down the barriers to social mobility. University as an experience changes and matures people (in general) and provides them with life experiences and scenarios far richer than they could find without it.
This isn't to say HE is perfect, it needs to reform before people could begin to be confident enough in it to not be disgruntled at paying for it in their taxes, but equally I believe that where the tax is found for HE doesn't have to come from the pockets of shop workers and bin men. Businesses should play their part more than individuals, especially if they can target where their tax funding goes in a more direct manner, and an additional few percentage points of income tax should be put on the higher earner bracket. After all, high earning graduates will now be effectively paying a 49% tax rate, spreading that cost to everyone that is successful in their earnings to help create more successful workers seems to me to be a fair thing to do.
[Note: This has been put together in a rush, I hope to get the references, etc, together soon...unless you're reading this in a few months, in which case I totally forgot. Prod me.]
They are wrong. The changes to the HE fee's system are not only a net positive, they are overwhelmingly positive...so long as you agree that the wealthy should pay more relatively than the poor for the upkeep of essential services in the UK....and so long as you agree that accessible Higher Education is an essential services.
Let's quickly revisit the old situation and the new situation.
pre-2012:
People racked up loans of £3k per year plus a maintenance loan if they took it.
This was repaid through a fixed rate based on income above ~£16k, or via advance repayment.
Any loan remaining after 25 years is wiped out
The loan increases by inflation only.
post-2012
People can rack up loans of up to £9k per year plus a maintenance loan if they took it.
This is repaid through a fixed rate of income above ~£21k, or via advance repayment.
Any loan remaining after 30 years is wiped out
The loan increases by an interest amount, set above inflation.
So as you can see, fundamentally similar systems, with some key differences. For a start the new system introduces a situation where some may be repaying more than they actually took out as a loan. however the change to income boundaries mean that people will pay less each year than they used to to repay the loan. The amount of the loan, obviously increases.
It's not a debt:
But the key to remember here is that it's not a debt. It's an obligation to pay a percentage of your income as a graduate, up to a threshold that is marginally variable.
With a traditional loan, the loan:
Counts towards your credit rating and ability to take out other loans
Is paid back REGARDLESS of ability to pay (though lenders may come to agreements with you)
Remains until it is fully paid, after interest, even if you die
If a fixed term, repayments on it can vary based on a varying interest rate
A tax, on the other hand:
Is paid based on income or transaction
Never ends unless special conditions are reached
Leaves no legacy cost for next of kin to pay (unless in relation to taxes that occur due to actions after your death)
Has no set amount to be paid, no threshold to reach.
So as you can see, this system is a mishmash of a tax and a loan...for the benefit of the student as it happens. You see it has all the hallmarks of a tax, meaning no liability for the "debt" to pass to others, no variation in repayment amount that isn't linked to your increased income, doesn't affect your credit rating or ability to borrow, and has a threshold on ability to pay. It also has the benefit of a loan...being fixed term rather than never ending it means the amount may never be, fully repaid (For many this is actually the likely outcome). Also being a loan it has the downside of collecting interest, though this becomes largely irrelvant when compared to how a tax operates.
So then, how has Nick Clegg ruined the system for students?
Short answer: He hasn't.
Those who argue against the current system are either arguing that it's worse than the old system (because it's higher fees!) or that it's worse than a hypothetical "better" system (because we shouldn't pay for HE outside of general taxation!)
The former are ill informed, or perhaps just aware that finally the system is rigged not to help those who are better off, but to finally make them pay a fair share in to the system. The latter are people better off ignoring in a political debate like this, since ideals are just that.
What we can discuss is the current vs the former system. What better way than to work out who's better off, or not?
Part-time students:
Let's get this easy one out of the way. Part time students used to have to find the money up front to pay for their courses. Given their likely reduced income to be able to take time to study, this kind of upfront cost was entirely prohibitive to re-skilling in an academic sense.
Now they get to take out fee loans the same as everyone else. Some may end up paying more than they would have up front, however since the original situation was prohibitive to the poor, and only those who then go on to increase their income will be worse off, I think we can call this an extremely progressive move, can't we?
ELQ students:
Thanks to Rob Fay (@Arathrael) for having me consider this one. Equivalent or lower qualification (ELQ) students are students that already have a degree, whether from abroad or not, and are going for a different degree to the same or lower level.
So, for example, a masters student won't get any help (unless going for a specific course that the government is happy to help fund) doing a different subject undergraduate or masters course. Someone who has an undergraduate degree in law but decides they want to be an English scholar won't get any help either.
How the new system affects them is varied from institution to institution. Like with foreign student fees, this is an area where different institutions have a more free reign on charges. Some simply add a supplemental fee to the existing course fee, others charge as if you are a foreign student, some match the cost of the undergraduate degree as if you weren't an ELQ student, and others wildly vary depending on the course.
The change in fee structure has done little to change this situation. For a few this system will be no different as it was already expensive and remains so. for other their fees may increase by a small or large amount. Those worse hit as ELQ students are ones that would have been getting the "best" deal a year ago at their institution as the margin of change is greater for these institutions that are matching their fees to the full time cost of course of non-ELQ students.
It's a definite blow to the idea of taking a second degree if you want to change direction, but while part-time students above make up a significant number of students that will benefit, ELQ's are much smaller in number. It's an area of the policy I'd sorely like to see changed, however we may be talking about less than 1% of the student population being negatively affected.
Postgraduate student:
Postgraduates are unchanged from previous years, where tuition fee loans aren't available to them.
Undergraduate students:
The main body that are effected are the undergraduate students, students taking their first degree. While their fees go up to £9k a year, the effect for anyone that doesn't make the average graduate wage, or has poor wage progression, is that they will pay less for their education than they did with the old system.
Let's outline some assumptions I shall be making from hear on in.
1) Tuition fees are £9k.
2) Everyone is taking a maintenance loan of £5500
3) courses are three years long
4) RPI will be around 3.5% and stable (hah!)
5) The cut off income for paying contributions starts at £21k and rises with RPI
6) Interest rates will remain as currently defined (complicated, RPI only < £21k, RPI plus a variable rate based on salary between £21k and £41k, and RPI + 3% on over £41k)
7) UK salary growth only grows with inflation
What this should signify is your general university goer, taking advantage of the money up front in loan form, on a standard course. The country is stable, prices are rising, but so are salary expectations. The interest rates mean you have to be doing well on salary progression to escape the interest rate, once passing the 2012 equivalent of 6.5% or thereabouts on your unpaid loan! That is, until you've been paying it for 30 years.
So, let's make some strawmen. How about Terry, he graduates into a good graduate job earning £22k, securing a good pay rise in his third year of employment, and his sixth, but otherwise stagnant on pay rises in line with RPI. In year 11 he makes a career jump, a promotion or moving to another company to a higher position, still attaining only modest RPI level wage increases. After his 20th year he gets another big promotion which sees him coasting along on RPI level wage increases until his 30 years are done.
Terry ends up on a salary of around £56.6k in today's money, he's done pretty well for himself. Still, he hasn't paid off all his debt remaining AND he hasn't actually paid back in to the system what he took out when accounting for inflation. However he would have paid off his smaller debt in the old system in about half the time.
Situation: Strong earner
Comparison to old system: not favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
How about June. She is unemployed out of uni for 3 years before taking a low paid job around £16k at the wages of the time. Her wage progression is only bouncing along at RPI, but she sticks at the job. After a few years she's had enough and decides to start her own business. It starts slowly, but she soon makes a success of it.
She builds up her business to a stable level, taking regular above inflation pay rises for herself, after 30 years sitting on a reasonable salary around £47.5k in today's money. The loan didn't stop her from being able to get a business loan or any such necessity to make her business work, and ends up not only not paying very little of her debt before it's wiped out, but she doesn't pay what she put in AND she just about doesn't pay as much as she would under the old system.
Situation: Unemployed to entrepreneur
Comparison to old system: slightly favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
Gary. He starts strong, straight in to a highly paid job at £35k. The job has a structured salary progression for 10 years after which progression drops off to just 1% above RPI. Good pension though. He repays his loan 3 years before the 30 year mark, but ends on a salary around £55k in today's money.
The result is that he pays much, much more than he would have under the old system, pays slightly more than he took out originally after inflation, but pays it all off.
Situation: Great job for life
Comparison to old system: very unfavourable
Paid off debt: Yes
Paid off amount borrowed initially: Yes
Kelly isn't one of the lucky ones, she remains unemployed for most of her life, except for the odd part time job, spending most of her time raising her children instead.
Situation: "Full time mother"
Comparison to old system: Same/Marginally favourable for those who get a low paid job for a period of time.
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
Bobby manages to get a £26k job out of uni, however he never really applies himself as much as he should, he goes from job to job, but never manages to attain a pay rise above RPI. He ends, obviously, on £26k in today's money...but at least he's not had to pay too much. Under the old system he would have fully repaid his debt, under this one he's not even paid half of that amount.
Situation: coasting along
Comparison to old system: very favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
Then we have Felix. He starts out from the bottom but he is extremely capable of working his way up. He's got the right skills, he has the right industry, and after a steady and consistent pay progression he finishes his 30th year with a £150k salary.
The progression means that he's able to pay the debt off early, saving some money on what he would have had to have paid if he was forced to keep up payments for the full 30 years. But he does pay roughly what he borrowed, and paid significantly more, perhaps double the amount, than he would have done under the old system.
Situation: Tipped for the top
Comparison to old system: unfavourable
Paid off debt: Yes
Paid off amount borrowed initially: Yes
Finally let's look at Kacey, she has a good job but also puts her kids first...applies herself when they get towards university age themselves revs up the career. For almost 20 years she gets an ok set of pay rises, some years not getting more than RPI as her small business employers struggle with the times. But as they expand she is later able to make moves up the ladder and command greater salaries. She ends up on almost £76k after 30 years with most of the salary earned in the later years.
She ultimately pays just over half her loan. She would have, under the old system, almost paid her loan after the 25 year cut off, but the amount she has paid into the system only exceeds the old system debt by £2k, while at the same time saving her significant money each year as the payments are lower.
Situation: Late bloomer
Comparison to old system: marginally favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No
There are many more "types" I'm sure, feel free to ask me to model one. These represent, I feel, the main types of salary progression; from the unemployed or low earner, to the high flier, with those who make salary gains early or late in their career in between.
It's clear to me who the winners and the losers are. The people rich enough to pay off early need to be significantly rich before they gain any "benefit" and even then are worse off than under the old system. Those who stagnate around the average salary will win, as will those who have low paid regular jobs. People who achieve later in life will also be winners, while those that start strong but fail to progress their salary will perhaps be worse off...though being someone earning an average of £47k per year over 30 years is debatably never so "worse off" to be animated about.
The reality is that unless you're doing well in life, compared to everyone else in the country, you're going to be better off if you go to university now compared to in previous years.
Shouldn't the fees be less?
NO! Labour floated a plan to move the fees to £6k instead of £9k, playing on student's fears and trying to cynically move in on a territory that they have no right to occupy given their place in the creation of very real student debt.
The effect of this plan would be that Felix is much better off, while people like June are no better off. Reducing the "burden" actually helps the rich and doesn't help those on lower incomes at all. If anything, the fees should be increased from 9k to something higher, to ensure that those graduates that progress hard and fast in their salary always pay in to the system!
Is it regressive?
Well, yes...if you take the letter of the meaning the fact that very wealthy or high earning individuals can pay off all they owe before they accrue any interest, while less well earning individuals may have their "debt" increase and the amount they pay back end up larger than they initially borrowed.
But the old system is also regressive. The same rich people can pay off their loan early, and easier. The old system is technically more regressive than what we've got now...and while I'd rather see an out and out graduate tax rather than this weird loan, I also welcome progress.
Progress...
We can't let the best be enemy of good. It happens over and over again that we have people that scupper positive steps forward because their too hard headed to take a compromise. Whether it's Lords Reform, or Common's reform, or this hear change to HE fees...there is granularity in what is good and not. The situation is that the old system clawed back money from people that barely had enough to pay their rent, and completely ignored the large proportion of part-time students in the UK.
This system redresses that, and while it leaves ELQs out in the cold (for shame) it helps many, many other people in to not being penalised for their degree not working out for them the way they thought it would, for their industry collapsing around them, or for choosing to do more altruistic but low paid work.
Why not a graduate tax?
So this is the puzzling thing. If it's like a graduate tax, and is paid like a graduate tax...why isn't it just a graduate tax. It'd be interesting to find an official line, but with the SLC set up and the loan book available at some point to be picked up by private interest, there is a money saving to be had for the government by keeping it as loans. In theory.
Also a graduate tax opens up a Pandora's box. How do you deal with the fact you have people with loans who would now have a graduate tax, and how about all those students from the 60s through to current day who never signed up to go to university with a graduate tax in mind.
Wiping people's slates clean is easy, convincing everyone who's graduated they should be paying a graduate tax on the other hand...I would like to see the politician brave enough.
General taxation
Of course my preferred route is general taxation paying for Higher Education, including second degrees (those ELQ students). Creating a world where re-skilling and re-educating is accessible and free to anyone who wants to do it is necessary for a free society and to break down the barriers to social mobility. University as an experience changes and matures people (in general) and provides them with life experiences and scenarios far richer than they could find without it.
This isn't to say HE is perfect, it needs to reform before people could begin to be confident enough in it to not be disgruntled at paying for it in their taxes, but equally I believe that where the tax is found for HE doesn't have to come from the pockets of shop workers and bin men. Businesses should play their part more than individuals, especially if they can target where their tax funding goes in a more direct manner, and an additional few percentage points of income tax should be put on the higher earner bracket. After all, high earning graduates will now be effectively paying a 49% tax rate, spreading that cost to everyone that is successful in their earnings to help create more successful workers seems to me to be a fair thing to do.
[Note: This has been put together in a rush, I hope to get the references, etc, together soon...unless you're reading this in a few months, in which case I totally forgot. Prod me.]
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
On Assange
A lot is being said about Julian Assange, a lot of it would seem to be complete guff. That said, I am nervously stepping in to put my thoughts down, mainly because 140 characters isn't enough to explain my view to those who have asked.
Primarily I'd want to say I can't see what all the fuss is about. The idea of this being a conspiracy, or being engineered in any way, seems to be a wild fantasy by those who would prefer to put their stance of anti-Americanism above all else.
The facts are that two women claim that they were sexually assaulted (and I will use that term for brevity even though clearly the issue if of rape also). The fact that they went to ask about getting a HIV test rather than to report a rape doesn't mean anything other than that at the very least these women were concerned about what had happened with them.
There was no delay (relatively), with only a couple of days between the alleged incident and going to the police. There was no governmental or high-end order to make this case happen as, despite prosecution initially saying that they didn't see a case, it was a legitimate legal process of appealing that decision by a social-democrat lawyer, with a long history of fighting against violence against women, on behalf of those women.
Did the prosecutors change their mind solely based on the claims of the lawyer, or was it also slightly political? The answer: Who cares, two women believe they were sexually assaulted and deserve to see their accused properly challenged on the fact.
Assange's lawyer has appeared to have as much as admitted to the fact that Assange did it, perhaps already going in to far too much detail about events than is proper before the case is heard by a court. And no, claims that they consented before (about a different sexual act) or after (which can come through any kind of emotional and psychological need to cope with such sexual assault) mean nothing, in my opinion, as to whether the act that the lawyer admitted to constitutes rape. However that is for the Swedish courts to deliberate over.
David Allen Green, most recently, has followed up on a post by @PME200 debunking some myths surrounding the Assange case by posting his own debunking of some of the more legal aspects of the Assange case from this point onwards.
It is entirely right that Assange gets deported to Sweden to be formally charged, and no...he's not only wanted for questioning (see the links above) and so dealing with him outside of Sweden is plainly not an option any of us who care about justice should settle for.
It is entirely idiotic of Assange to claim that he wants assurances he won't be extradited to the US. It is impossible for a government to make such a claim, because there is zero knowledge about what might happen in the future. Making this song and dance is thoroughly disrespectful to those who claim to be victims of his.
Just think for a second if you have a mother, daughter, sister, whatever... who was waiting to have their rapist brought to justice, but had to hang on while he made grand claims about this being some kind of US led vendetta against him? It's disgusting and reprehensible.
If after the case the US decides it has a case to bring, one that is non-political, equivalent to a Swedish offence, and respects his rights as a prisoner...then I also don't see why he shouldn't face extradition. Thankfully for him the world *is* watching, and the idea that Sweden (and the UK, if our say still counts at that point) would send out a message that it'll deport people simply because another country has a problem with their politics (in this case, what has Assange done other than obtain and publish secrets, exactly what newspapers around the world have been doing for years) seems nonsensical to me.
This whole affair shouldn't change what Assange has done for exposing lies about what is going on on behalf of the more clandestine aspects of governments around the world. Unfortunately it will change it, since he is running to a country with a terrible record on the rights of the press and freedom of speech to gain safety; it begs the question that, like many of his rape apologising supporters, is he really for freedom of information and speech, or simply against the governments of the west?
Primarily I'd want to say I can't see what all the fuss is about. The idea of this being a conspiracy, or being engineered in any way, seems to be a wild fantasy by those who would prefer to put their stance of anti-Americanism above all else.
The facts are that two women claim that they were sexually assaulted (and I will use that term for brevity even though clearly the issue if of rape also). The fact that they went to ask about getting a HIV test rather than to report a rape doesn't mean anything other than that at the very least these women were concerned about what had happened with them.
There was no delay (relatively), with only a couple of days between the alleged incident and going to the police. There was no governmental or high-end order to make this case happen as, despite prosecution initially saying that they didn't see a case, it was a legitimate legal process of appealing that decision by a social-democrat lawyer, with a long history of fighting against violence against women, on behalf of those women.
Did the prosecutors change their mind solely based on the claims of the lawyer, or was it also slightly political? The answer: Who cares, two women believe they were sexually assaulted and deserve to see their accused properly challenged on the fact.
Assange's lawyer has appeared to have as much as admitted to the fact that Assange did it, perhaps already going in to far too much detail about events than is proper before the case is heard by a court. And no, claims that they consented before (about a different sexual act) or after (which can come through any kind of emotional and psychological need to cope with such sexual assault) mean nothing, in my opinion, as to whether the act that the lawyer admitted to constitutes rape. However that is for the Swedish courts to deliberate over.
David Allen Green, most recently, has followed up on a post by @PME200 debunking some myths surrounding the Assange case by posting his own debunking of some of the more legal aspects of the Assange case from this point onwards.
It is entirely right that Assange gets deported to Sweden to be formally charged, and no...he's not only wanted for questioning (see the links above) and so dealing with him outside of Sweden is plainly not an option any of us who care about justice should settle for.
It is entirely idiotic of Assange to claim that he wants assurances he won't be extradited to the US. It is impossible for a government to make such a claim, because there is zero knowledge about what might happen in the future. Making this song and dance is thoroughly disrespectful to those who claim to be victims of his.
Just think for a second if you have a mother, daughter, sister, whatever... who was waiting to have their rapist brought to justice, but had to hang on while he made grand claims about this being some kind of US led vendetta against him? It's disgusting and reprehensible.
If after the case the US decides it has a case to bring, one that is non-political, equivalent to a Swedish offence, and respects his rights as a prisoner...then I also don't see why he shouldn't face extradition. Thankfully for him the world *is* watching, and the idea that Sweden (and the UK, if our say still counts at that point) would send out a message that it'll deport people simply because another country has a problem with their politics (in this case, what has Assange done other than obtain and publish secrets, exactly what newspapers around the world have been doing for years) seems nonsensical to me.
This whole affair shouldn't change what Assange has done for exposing lies about what is going on on behalf of the more clandestine aspects of governments around the world. Unfortunately it will change it, since he is running to a country with a terrible record on the rights of the press and freedom of speech to gain safety; it begs the question that, like many of his rape apologising supporters, is he really for freedom of information and speech, or simply against the governments of the west?
Monday, July 23, 2012
My problem(s) with Dark Knight Rises (spoilers)
Starting, perhaps predictably, with a caveat...I really enjoyed watching the Dark Knight Rises at the cinema, it's a great movie well executed. Not perfect, but very, very good. It's not on the other hand a great Batman movie, I feel. In fact the more I reflect the more I see it as disappointing, and a missed opportunity.
First, let me say, there were good things.
Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Catwoman felt perhaps like the most true to the modern comics than any other characterisation made so far.
The twist of Talia al Ghul was (for me) completely out of the blue. Perhaps because of the detractions from the world I know of Batman in the comics, I'd allowed myself to consider that Nolan would make Bane the son of Ra's al Ghul. I should have guessed it earlier (and no doubt many a bat fan would), but it was a well crafted twist...perhaps more so because of the way the pre-screening media was involved in selling the dummy.
Showing the intelligence of Bane; the path of the previous Batman movies did a great disservice to the only character to truly break the Batman. This Bane was almost everything that he needed to be.
Also, in general, the costume design, the soundtrack, the work that was done on the environment, the locational work...basically the actual filmmaking...was all fantastic. This is the main reason that it'll always be a great movie.
It's the story and the characters other than above that make it disappointing.
The film itself seems to take inspiration from two main stories...though it doesn't take more than a few of the elements that make those stories great. The stories are Knightfall and No Man's Land, arguably the two most defining stories of the 90s for Batman.
The trouble is that Knightfall is a character study in Batman losing all hope and being unable to reach out for help when the odds start to become insurmountable. It's a story of Batman believing that he can get through everything on his own. But in order to do this Batman is beaten down, kept too active and involved in crime fighting super-villains.
This is Bane's plan, to wear Batman down so that when he comes to fight him, it will be a Batman of broken wills and concentration. The film, by contrast, does the opposite and portrays Batman coming from the other direction...with plenty of spirit and a slowly improving (though not peak) physical condition.
The interaction between Bane and Batman, therefore, seems entirely consequential. That the plan is to have Bruce Wayne watch Gotham destroyed as Ra's would have intended seems almost tacked on.
Furthermore the interesting thing about Knightfall is what happens next. Bruce decides to retire as Batman under largely happy circumstances, but only because there is another Batman to take his place, that he has an understanding of, and trusts to do the job. Interestingly Alfred also leaves Bruce during this time as he doesn't want to see him damage his body any more.
Bruce would later come back to retake the cowl, when his replacement goes somewhat crazy and starts endangering the public and taking punishment to a new level.
The film cut this opportunity off, by 'killing' Bruce Wayne off (though it doesn't really explain how Bruce Wayne is perceived in the public eye after the ending) who would be there to come back?
Then there is No Man's Land, perhaps my favourite Bat story of all time, where an earthquake has left Gotham largely destroyed, with criminality running rife as Ra's al Ghul (Bane acting as his proxy in the film) has previously released everyone from the maximum security prison after trying to release a virus around Gotham (Batman Begins, essentially Batman Year One meets Contagion as story lines...I digress). As a result the federal government deciding it has to cut Gotham off from the rest of the country.
The story showcases perfectly Batman's abilities to act as a strategist. With several allies around the city in the form of police, other vigilantes and even former foes, Batman regains control of Gotham enough over time to allow the government to stop their blockade of Gotham.
Is any of this present in the film? Of course not. Batman miraculously recovers from his 'broken', or more likely dislocated, back and makes it back to Gotham (with no money) just in time to stop the city from being destroyed.
No strategy, no organisation, no intelligence.
And maybe this is what bothers me about the film as a bat film...Batman wasn't recognisable in it as the character we know. He pleads and bargains more than he growls and commands, he starts off severely injured and out of the game for 8 years, without any good reason
Batman started to stop criminals, not just super criminals...those like the man that killed his parents. The film already says that crime isn't abolished in Gotham, so why would Batman stop just because organised crime was curtailed?
The Batman I know and love would have, by the time he was 10 years in to life after donning the cape and cowl, become a master detective and be finding his prowess in being a 'war general' of sorts. This Batman is a damp squib, almost emo in personality. While Batman in the comics may use his personal loss and possible depressive outlook to drive him to clean the city up, the film's Batman doesn't use it at all.
In fact the greatest loss in Batman's life in the comics is that of his sidekick Jason Todd, the second Robin. We know from this that Batman's reaction to the loss of someone by the Joker is rage and determination, not depression as happened in the aftermath of Rachel's death. The key is that Batman shouldn't stop doing what he intended to do when he started.
It does make him less keen to trust people with his identity, and getting close to him though, which is what makes he film's portrayal even more confusing as he seems to readily hand over the mantle to 'John Blake' without really knowing much about him and his ability to not get killed the first time he faces danger.
But then Nolan is clearly trying to wrap up his Trilogy, and he does it in style (albeit of questionable physics). But from the initial niggles in Batman Begins of allowing Ra's al Ghul to die (as much as that character can, and having guns on his vehicles ) the concerns only grow. Dent/Two Face killed readily in the Dark Knight, then Talia and Bane killed in the Dark Knight Returns. The obsession with killing off villains seems to have grown and grown.
And then there is letting everyone know or find out his identity so easily; He talks about why he wears his mask in the film, yet does everything he can to ensure people know it is Bruce Wayne underneath it.
This might all sound like I'm being overly critical, and perhaps I am. As I said at the top of this post, I enjoyed the film a lot for what it was and it genuinely entertained me. I just also see from my previous knowledge of the stories a lot of missed opportunities, fundamental mistakes with the character that I'm surprised DC signed off, and avenues cut off for potentially keeping this particular universe going.
But then given how this character of Batman was left, not my Batman but someone else's that had the privilege to bring him to the big screen, I'm not sure that I would particularly want to see any more of 'The Dark Knight' Batman anyway.
Roll on the 'reboot', as long as it's not another origin story!
First, let me say, there were good things.
Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Catwoman felt perhaps like the most true to the modern comics than any other characterisation made so far.
The twist of Talia al Ghul was (for me) completely out of the blue. Perhaps because of the detractions from the world I know of Batman in the comics, I'd allowed myself to consider that Nolan would make Bane the son of Ra's al Ghul. I should have guessed it earlier (and no doubt many a bat fan would), but it was a well crafted twist...perhaps more so because of the way the pre-screening media was involved in selling the dummy.
Showing the intelligence of Bane; the path of the previous Batman movies did a great disservice to the only character to truly break the Batman. This Bane was almost everything that he needed to be.
Also, in general, the costume design, the soundtrack, the work that was done on the environment, the locational work...basically the actual filmmaking...was all fantastic. This is the main reason that it'll always be a great movie.
It's the story and the characters other than above that make it disappointing.
The film itself seems to take inspiration from two main stories...though it doesn't take more than a few of the elements that make those stories great. The stories are Knightfall and No Man's Land, arguably the two most defining stories of the 90s for Batman.
The trouble is that Knightfall is a character study in Batman losing all hope and being unable to reach out for help when the odds start to become insurmountable. It's a story of Batman believing that he can get through everything on his own. But in order to do this Batman is beaten down, kept too active and involved in crime fighting super-villains.
This is Bane's plan, to wear Batman down so that when he comes to fight him, it will be a Batman of broken wills and concentration. The film, by contrast, does the opposite and portrays Batman coming from the other direction...with plenty of spirit and a slowly improving (though not peak) physical condition.
The interaction between Bane and Batman, therefore, seems entirely consequential. That the plan is to have Bruce Wayne watch Gotham destroyed as Ra's would have intended seems almost tacked on.
Furthermore the interesting thing about Knightfall is what happens next. Bruce decides to retire as Batman under largely happy circumstances, but only because there is another Batman to take his place, that he has an understanding of, and trusts to do the job. Interestingly Alfred also leaves Bruce during this time as he doesn't want to see him damage his body any more.
Bruce would later come back to retake the cowl, when his replacement goes somewhat crazy and starts endangering the public and taking punishment to a new level.
The film cut this opportunity off, by 'killing' Bruce Wayne off (though it doesn't really explain how Bruce Wayne is perceived in the public eye after the ending) who would be there to come back?
Then there is No Man's Land, perhaps my favourite Bat story of all time, where an earthquake has left Gotham largely destroyed, with criminality running rife as Ra's al Ghul (Bane acting as his proxy in the film) has previously released everyone from the maximum security prison after trying to release a virus around Gotham (Batman Begins, essentially Batman Year One meets Contagion as story lines...I digress). As a result the federal government deciding it has to cut Gotham off from the rest of the country.
The story showcases perfectly Batman's abilities to act as a strategist. With several allies around the city in the form of police, other vigilantes and even former foes, Batman regains control of Gotham enough over time to allow the government to stop their blockade of Gotham.
Is any of this present in the film? Of course not. Batman miraculously recovers from his 'broken', or more likely dislocated, back and makes it back to Gotham (with no money) just in time to stop the city from being destroyed.
No strategy, no organisation, no intelligence.
And maybe this is what bothers me about the film as a bat film...Batman wasn't recognisable in it as the character we know. He pleads and bargains more than he growls and commands, he starts off severely injured and out of the game for 8 years, without any good reason
Batman started to stop criminals, not just super criminals...those like the man that killed his parents. The film already says that crime isn't abolished in Gotham, so why would Batman stop just because organised crime was curtailed?
The Batman I know and love would have, by the time he was 10 years in to life after donning the cape and cowl, become a master detective and be finding his prowess in being a 'war general' of sorts. This Batman is a damp squib, almost emo in personality. While Batman in the comics may use his personal loss and possible depressive outlook to drive him to clean the city up, the film's Batman doesn't use it at all.
In fact the greatest loss in Batman's life in the comics is that of his sidekick Jason Todd, the second Robin. We know from this that Batman's reaction to the loss of someone by the Joker is rage and determination, not depression as happened in the aftermath of Rachel's death. The key is that Batman shouldn't stop doing what he intended to do when he started.
It does make him less keen to trust people with his identity, and getting close to him though, which is what makes he film's portrayal even more confusing as he seems to readily hand over the mantle to 'John Blake' without really knowing much about him and his ability to not get killed the first time he faces danger.
But then Nolan is clearly trying to wrap up his Trilogy, and he does it in style (albeit of questionable physics). But from the initial niggles in Batman Begins of allowing Ra's al Ghul to die (as much as that character can, and having guns on his vehicles ) the concerns only grow. Dent/Two Face killed readily in the Dark Knight, then Talia and Bane killed in the Dark Knight Returns. The obsession with killing off villains seems to have grown and grown.
And then there is letting everyone know or find out his identity so easily; He talks about why he wears his mask in the film, yet does everything he can to ensure people know it is Bruce Wayne underneath it.
This might all sound like I'm being overly critical, and perhaps I am. As I said at the top of this post, I enjoyed the film a lot for what it was and it genuinely entertained me. I just also see from my previous knowledge of the stories a lot of missed opportunities, fundamental mistakes with the character that I'm surprised DC signed off, and avenues cut off for potentially keeping this particular universe going.
But then given how this character of Batman was left, not my Batman but someone else's that had the privilege to bring him to the big screen, I'm not sure that I would particularly want to see any more of 'The Dark Knight' Batman anyway.
Roll on the 'reboot', as long as it's not another origin story!
Friday, July 13, 2012
What's the fuss with the NHS cap on private income?
After a significant misinterpretation by the New Statesman, a lot of people got very concerned on Twitter about the potential for the rules on how much income NHS hospitals could make from private sources.
I feel this is a subject that is incredibly fraught with symbolism over substance, and wanted to just delve in to the realities of the cap, the law, current reality, and how it all ties together.
What is the cap?
There are rules over how NHS Foundation Trusts (FTs) operate. these FTs were created by Labour to enable a form of lessened state control, local staff and public were intended to drive the direction of their local NHS services. In return they get to keep any profits they make, can work with and are in essence in competition with other FTs.
It was privatisation of sorts, just without the (direct) commercial influence of a company running the board, and it started the whole ball rolling to where we are now.
To balance the extra freedoms they have to operate, a means of capping how much money these FTs can make from private patients was introduced. It's disparate and not necessarily "fair", in that it is whatever their income was in 2003. This means that some hospitals have much higher caps than others, but all under the currently proposed less than half of all income level (erroneously referred to as a 49% cap, but which I'll use as it's understood when talked about).
In fact the reality is that less than 1% of all money coming in to FTs this country is from private healthcare sources.
Side Note: NHS Trusts
The whole situation with the NHS is complex, FTs aren't the only providers of care, NHS Trusts that provide services in the more "traditional" structure are being essentially abolished with the new NHS reforms, the intent is to give patients more say and the only way the government (both the current and the last) sees that as being practical is by trusts becoming FTs.
Of course this is why you'll hear people claiming that the 49% cap is new, and that there was no cap for NHS Trusts before. Technically it's true, but it's a bit of a side point as they are being told to become the equivalent of foundation trusts, which means they would have been capped, albeit at an income level of lower than 49%...hence why this is still ultimately a rise on the potential income hospitals can make.
Reaching the cap?
It's no surprise, when looking at the FTs figures, that analysts and those in the sector aren't actually too bothered about this cap; in the short to medium term at least there is little chance of foundation trusts reaching the 49% cap anyway.
With only a handful of hospitals having significant income from private sources, it is inconceivable that all NHS hospitals will suddenly be putting NHS patients second to a vastly increased private constituent, in only as the rate of rise would be completely out of step with the amount of private money circulating (the amount FTs took from private patients DROPPED compared to 2010/11, presumably due to recessional forces).
The reality is that the law as set out isn't about capping anything, given there is no need for most FTs to have such a high cap anyway, it's about symbolically enshrining in law that hospitals are primarily there to provide services for NHS patients, not for private ones.
This doesn't mean less beds for those using the NHS
One way that opponents of the raising of the cap put their case is that they make grand claims about resources being requisitioned for private patients, meaning they won't be there for normal NHS patients. Some go as far as to claim (as Polly Toynbee tried) that it means that half the beds could be reserved for private patients.
The reality is that if we look at those FTs generating a lot of income from private sources, it's through infrastructural investment and partnerships that involve new technologies and better facilities being developed for the express purpose of bringing private patients in from outside the area, not only from within the UK but from around the world. Some people just want to have the opportunity to pay for what they see as the best specialist services in the country, even if they wouldn't usually be able to on the NHS (or at all, because they are international patients).
The result of this is money coming in from wealthy sources to provide profits for an FT that can be reinvested in NHS services, while at the same time having newer, better facilities on site that NHS patients can also be using to the improvement of their health. Indeed by allowing partnerships with private hospitals (and to , and therefore being able to provide a "better" experience for private patients (through finding them a space, and thus a shorter waiting time, with the partnered institution), the side effect is more capacity to deal with non-private patients at NHS facilities.
Of course this causes it's own issues, with it being clear that cashflow will largely pool in London and the South East, with little prospect for the North; indeed this is why the overall private patient income gained by FTs is so low despite those like Royal Marsden already commanding significant percentages of income from private sources.
The misplaced outrage over no cap
So if the 49% cap is symbolic, almost entirely unable to be reached, what is the problem with a removal of the cap? Opponents to the idea (and I must stress, I'm not in favour of a removal of the symbolism of the current law) claim that it would lead the the wholesale privatisation of the NHS, that normal patients would be put second.
I say this is rubbish.
For NHS FTs to generate 100% income from private sources it would have to also become a requirement in this country for everyone to take private insurance, and for hospitals to HAVE to generate it's income from private insurance. It would also require the current reform laws to change to allow hospitals to be selective over how they treat people, and what their duty is.
On the second point there, let me just reiterate what it says in the reform act...
The same is said of the Secretary of State for health, of the Clinical Commissioning Groups and the board that monitors those CCGs. It is a core principle in the law that the NHS is not to introduce policies or to integrate in such ways that those without private health insurance see a widening gap between the quality and effectiveness they receive versus a private patient.
Even if this was not the case, until the law is changed to require people to take private insurance, ala the US of A, and that the state will NOT provide funding for patient care it is fundementally impossible for a 100% private income situation to be reached, and can we honestly see this happening given how vociferously opposed to these rather tame (in comparison) reforms has been?
While people look at the removal of the cap as something that means privatisation, I just can't see it adding up to that. Those who complain about the idea of a FT making 50% of it's income from private sources completely ignore that this could be achieved without reducing the level of income from non-private care. In essence hospitals could DOUBLE their income from current levels, provide no worse care for NHS patients, and hit that 50% income level from their private patients.
Is this really a problem, assuming that all the various levels in the new structure of the NHS do their job and ensure that hospitals adhere to the principles of increasing quality and effectiveness of care for NHS patients, and a commitment to reduce inequality between patients on the issue of ability to pay? I'd say that in practice, it is not.
I feel this is a subject that is incredibly fraught with symbolism over substance, and wanted to just delve in to the realities of the cap, the law, current reality, and how it all ties together.
What is the cap?
There are rules over how NHS Foundation Trusts (FTs) operate. these FTs were created by Labour to enable a form of lessened state control, local staff and public were intended to drive the direction of their local NHS services. In return they get to keep any profits they make, can work with and are in essence in competition with other FTs.
It was privatisation of sorts, just without the (direct) commercial influence of a company running the board, and it started the whole ball rolling to where we are now.
To balance the extra freedoms they have to operate, a means of capping how much money these FTs can make from private patients was introduced. It's disparate and not necessarily "fair", in that it is whatever their income was in 2003. This means that some hospitals have much higher caps than others, but all under the currently proposed less than half of all income level (erroneously referred to as a 49% cap, but which I'll use as it's understood when talked about).
In fact the reality is that less than 1% of all money coming in to FTs this country is from private healthcare sources.
Side Note: NHS Trusts
The whole situation with the NHS is complex, FTs aren't the only providers of care, NHS Trusts that provide services in the more "traditional" structure are being essentially abolished with the new NHS reforms, the intent is to give patients more say and the only way the government (both the current and the last) sees that as being practical is by trusts becoming FTs.
Of course this is why you'll hear people claiming that the 49% cap is new, and that there was no cap for NHS Trusts before. Technically it's true, but it's a bit of a side point as they are being told to become the equivalent of foundation trusts, which means they would have been capped, albeit at an income level of lower than 49%...hence why this is still ultimately a rise on the potential income hospitals can make.
Reaching the cap?
It's no surprise, when looking at the FTs figures, that analysts and those in the sector aren't actually too bothered about this cap; in the short to medium term at least there is little chance of foundation trusts reaching the 49% cap anyway.
With only a handful of hospitals having significant income from private sources, it is inconceivable that all NHS hospitals will suddenly be putting NHS patients second to a vastly increased private constituent, in only as the rate of rise would be completely out of step with the amount of private money circulating (the amount FTs took from private patients DROPPED compared to 2010/11, presumably due to recessional forces).
The reality is that the law as set out isn't about capping anything, given there is no need for most FTs to have such a high cap anyway, it's about symbolically enshrining in law that hospitals are primarily there to provide services for NHS patients, not for private ones.
This doesn't mean less beds for those using the NHS
One way that opponents of the raising of the cap put their case is that they make grand claims about resources being requisitioned for private patients, meaning they won't be there for normal NHS patients. Some go as far as to claim (as Polly Toynbee tried) that it means that half the beds could be reserved for private patients.
The reality is that if we look at those FTs generating a lot of income from private sources, it's through infrastructural investment and partnerships that involve new technologies and better facilities being developed for the express purpose of bringing private patients in from outside the area, not only from within the UK but from around the world. Some people just want to have the opportunity to pay for what they see as the best specialist services in the country, even if they wouldn't usually be able to on the NHS (or at all, because they are international patients).
The result of this is money coming in from wealthy sources to provide profits for an FT that can be reinvested in NHS services, while at the same time having newer, better facilities on site that NHS patients can also be using to the improvement of their health. Indeed by allowing partnerships with private hospitals (and to , and therefore being able to provide a "better" experience for private patients (through finding them a space, and thus a shorter waiting time, with the partnered institution), the side effect is more capacity to deal with non-private patients at NHS facilities.
Of course this causes it's own issues, with it being clear that cashflow will largely pool in London and the South East, with little prospect for the North; indeed this is why the overall private patient income gained by FTs is so low despite those like Royal Marsden already commanding significant percentages of income from private sources.
The misplaced outrage over no cap
So if the 49% cap is symbolic, almost entirely unable to be reached, what is the problem with a removal of the cap? Opponents to the idea (and I must stress, I'm not in favour of a removal of the symbolism of the current law) claim that it would lead the the wholesale privatisation of the NHS, that normal patients would be put second.
I say this is rubbish.
For NHS FTs to generate 100% income from private sources it would have to also become a requirement in this country for everyone to take private insurance, and for hospitals to HAVE to generate it's income from private insurance. It would also require the current reform laws to change to allow hospitals to be selective over how they treat people, and what their duty is.
On the second point there, let me just reiterate what it says in the reform act...
(4) Monitor must exercise its functions with a view to enabling health care services
provided for the purposes of the NHS to be provided in an integrated way
where it considers that this would—
(a) improve the quality of those services (including the outcomes that are
achieved from their provision) or the efficiency of their provision,
(b) reduce inequalities between persons with respect to their ability to
access those services, or
(c) reduce inequalities between persons with respect to the outcomes
achieved for them by the provision of those services.
The same is said of the Secretary of State for health, of the Clinical Commissioning Groups and the board that monitors those CCGs. It is a core principle in the law that the NHS is not to introduce policies or to integrate in such ways that those without private health insurance see a widening gap between the quality and effectiveness they receive versus a private patient.
Even if this was not the case, until the law is changed to require people to take private insurance, ala the US of A, and that the state will NOT provide funding for patient care it is fundementally impossible for a 100% private income situation to be reached, and can we honestly see this happening given how vociferously opposed to these rather tame (in comparison) reforms has been?
While people look at the removal of the cap as something that means privatisation, I just can't see it adding up to that. Those who complain about the idea of a FT making 50% of it's income from private sources completely ignore that this could be achieved without reducing the level of income from non-private care. In essence hospitals could DOUBLE their income from current levels, provide no worse care for NHS patients, and hit that 50% income level from their private patients.
Is this really a problem, assuming that all the various levels in the new structure of the NHS do their job and ensure that hospitals adhere to the principles of increasing quality and effectiveness of care for NHS patients, and a commitment to reduce inequality between patients on the issue of ability to pay? I'd say that in practice, it is not.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
'Lib Dems did nothing about the NHS', and other nonsense.
Just for reference, I feel I may be sending a few people to this over the next few weeks...
Getting tired of idiots claiming things about Lib Dems/NHS/tuition fees that simply aren't true.
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
1) Lib Dems DID get on their high horse about the NHS, it resulted in a significant delay AND reworking
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
You may not like the end result, but do not pretend the Lib Dems "did nothing" on the NHS.
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
2) We will some time enter a time when people realise why the Lib Dems did not halt fee reform, because IT HELPS THE POOR.
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
Labour can bluster on all they want, especially on how they'd have raised it by less (and thus let the rich off early, ironically)
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
The reality is that the Lib Dems may not have stood against tuition fee rises, but that was actually a progressive thing to do.
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
3) If Lib Dems are the only ones getting "on their high horse" about Lords Reform, that is less negative on them than Tories and Labour
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
All 3 parties have been committed for the best part of a decade to reform. Tories + Labour not standing behind it are disingenuous to voters
— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Thinking about Lords Reform...
Lords reform is a tricky subject, one that isn't really about the Lords in isolation but the function of the wider political system of creating, scrutinising and implementing legislation. The current plans being put forward by the coalition are for a partly elected chamber to replace the currently appointed lords.
How it currently works:
Right now people sit in the Lords because the leaders of various parties ask them to be there. They have no obligation to attend (some Lords barely ever attend debates, vote or provide evidence on legislation, yet still claim tens of thousands of pounds in tax free tax payers' money), and due to more and more appointments they are become a partisan bunch of individuals that consist of more and more ex-MPs, MPs that the country has had enough of while they were in the commons yet now carry on taking a public wage for political work.
The problem:
The problem is that we currently have two halves of a bad system. On the one side we have people that are completely unaccountable, "unswayed*" by public opinion. This shouldn't be a problem because the Lords should be independent and expert in dissecting legislation. This is where the other half of the system comes in, with more and more Lords being aligned to a party of some kind, indeed being put in to their position by the leader of their party. Independence is a distant memory (if it was ever there before) and worse still expertise in relevant fields is being washed away in favour of a few reliable and loyal voters.
The options:
There are several options that are referred to with Lords reform, and it makes sense that while it would seem a simple and unifying issue when all three parties want reform of the Lords, the variation in what is possible offers the opportunity of disagreement and the usual political theatre.
The choices that I've seen put around, though not all are even remotely being considered, are:
Further complicating the above list is that when elections are talked about, some favour STV style proportional elections, some party list, some a fully proportional national party list vote, and so on.
My view:
As I said above, Lords reform isn't and shouldn't be about the Lords alone. While they make terrible decisions from position of vested interest in their medical insurance companies or telecommunication empires, and follow a party whip on key government votes, in other cases they come in to their own as defenders of subjects such as human rights and privacy.
My personal stance is to fully elect the Lords, every 5 years.
Of course there is a concern that with a partly or fully elected chamber of Lords that we will have a drain on expertise of those available to scrutinise. Certainly with only a 5 year term this is even more likely (read on...). There is also a claim that it is the wrong thing to do while we are trying to cut the cost of politics in the UK. Also with the elections comes natural partisanship and towing of the party line.
Party lines and the Lords:
I don't, perhaps surprisingly, see this as a problem. I dislike the party system but understand that it will always come to naturally exist. My main problem with the party system is that currently one party tends to hold disproportionate power and is able to force through threats of blockades in an MPs career or even deselection at local level to ensure people vote to maintain the power of that party.
With a second chamber elected proportionally, whether through STV or open-list (the system being proposed), the power of the party is diminished. I feel this is one reason why so many Tory MPs are rebelling against the idea of this reform, they know that one things is true:
Lib Dems will finally get the power that they proportionally deserve in the scrutiny of legislation, and they (with their ambition) will never have sole discretion to power through changes such as abolishing or reverting various aspects of healthcare, education or welfare.
While the commons, elected through FPTP, will continue to be disparate to the wishes of the country, the second chamber would be one of temperance. I believe this operates as the perfect "yin" and "yang" of politics. One chamber inflates public opinion to get an idea of what they desire to be direction of policy for the UK. The second chamber, in turn, ensures that the policy brought forward is in line with the real wishes of the public.
This would mean that while the Tories could get a majority (or any party) and decide to abolish the NHS, they would not get it through the second chamber due to the unlikelihood of the some 70% of the other "Lords" being unlikely to vote for such measures. This is a good thing, and anyone presenting this as "gridlock" is glossing over the fact that only bad legislation that the public has not actually voted for will be blocked.
The cost:
I dislike arguments about cost when it comes to politics. When you walk in to a garage and they quote you £50 to do your car repairs, while the rest quote £300, you deserve everything you get if you choose that cheaper garage, and all the problems that follow.
The answer to making politics more reasonable in the eyes of the public is not to reduce the cost, all this will do is reduce the numbers of politicians, reduce how long they have to balance meeting their electorate with reading up on the laws they're passing, and in turn make people more angry when bad legislation is passed.
Politicians need to be seen as more valuable. Their salaries may be high but people wouldn't complain about this if they actually understood the country better, instead of being so constantly and hopelessly out of touch.
A such this idea of trying to do things cheaper isn't one I entertain. If (and it's still only an if) the new proposals lead to more expense then so be it. If they perform their function better than the current Lords then we have got a good deal.
Besides, any such expense will still be a complete drop in the ocean compared to the public purse.
5 Year Terms:
I don't agree with the idea of a 15 year non-returnable "term" of standing for election in the second chamber. It is inflexible to changes of current opinion, and if you are using a proportional system of election then your intent must be to reflect the will of the nation. Restricting elections to only turn out one third of all politicians in the second chamber every 5 years, leaving everyone in post for 15 years each, means that proportionality will only exist in bubbles.
While I'm not against the idea of staggering the elections, much in the way council elections are done (which can actually help to maintain proportionality and avoid chaotic swings of power) every politican should be out of their post after 5 years. That is unless they are re-elected.
Yes, there is no reason to say after 15 years that someone is "done" and no longer able to be a politician. If they are good at their job, and the public/party agree with that, then they should be able to keep standing. MPs can, so there is no reason why someone in the second chamber couldn't.
There is a danger, I feel, if the system was introduced that parties would simply use the second chamber as a "training ground" for the commons, putting younger candidates through 15 years of legislative scrutiny before letting them finally stand in a seat if they've proved loyal enough to get a seat in the commons, and perhaps a governmental position. Such things would belittle the political system, not enhance them.
Expertise:
The trouble is that expertise isn't guaranteed with elections, especially not with 5 year terms (unless someone happens to stay elected for decades!). We can rely on the open-list system, and hope that parties will put forward experts in their field rather than pliable individuals with a loyal heart, but that would be foolish.
It is entirely natural that with these changes we will lose experts. It is probably for this reason that the consensus is to keep some Lords appointed, such as Bishops, so as to keep a buffer of "expertise" around, especially on the issue of religion.
However I believe that looking at this issue of a "brain drain" on the second chamber is missing the point.
Three "chambers"
Let's say that somehow political deals are made great enough for this legislation to pass, if any referendum is forced then the public vote yes because the main faces of each party all go out together and campaign shoulder to shoulder for greater democracy (Yeah, I know...)
What we're left with is two chambers, one that is responsible for the proposal of laws, ensuring it's "primacy" or power over any others, and that is used to create the executive, and the other that is purely legislative and only exists to scrutinise legislation, passing it through the filter of a proportionally elected set of politicians.
What we are missing is independent scrutiny that has power.
Right now we have independent experts turn up to provide evidence on legislation. Where law is involving human rights especially we will see organisations such as Liberty pitch up and suggest their amendments to legislation, while the Police may give counter-claims and a different perspective that supports the law as written.
None of it is binding though, these are people that are incredibly informed and knowledgable about their field and yet their word is only advice. How it is taken depends entirely on the integrity of the politicians listening to them.
A third "chamber" which operates on a much more fluid basis, with permanent individuals with solid constitutional and legal knowledge to deal with legislative concerns both domestic and European, and temporary experts drawn in to provide their experience and knowledge to the process of amending law, would serve to take from the responsibility of the commons and a second chamber (currently the Lords) the requirement of ensuring that the law is workable, in line with all other laws, and doesn't result in any unintended side effects.
A good case in point would be the ridiculous "Auto-block porn" law that has resurfaced. While the two chambers can argue as much as they like about the merits of requiring ISPs to block porn as default, an expert chamber would be able to write off pretty much all of the law in the bill due to it being simply impossible to put in to action or enforce. Even the current Lords, with all of their alleged expertise, are likely to fail to understand such nuances, and given the highly religious motivation behind the law there will be pressure to ignore actual knowledgable people that can currently only give their advice.
Of course this chamber will, unfortunately, never exist. It will always be criticised by both elected chambers as a "wrecking chamber" that doesn't act to the wishes of the public. Even though it is doing the most important work of all, in grounding the law's provided in reality, and protecting everyone's legal rights against existing laws and standards, it's hard to wrench the power away from politicians that want to write laws that can be ambiguous enough to be exploited later on.
Edit: To clarify, I would see this "chamber" or body as something that is formed for every bill BEFORE it is put to scrutiny. The biggest problem with legislation is that it's hugely flawed and there is only enough time to fix it slightly. This level of input at a "draft" stage would ensure that the truly insane side of some legislation would be filtered out before MPs had to waste their valuable time arguing against it too (if they catch it at all).
Conclusion:
Even though it may be imperfect, I still stand behind a fully elected second chamber. I don't believe that we will lose a great deal of expertise as long as the parties have a level of integrity over who they pick to run, but I also don't believe that the Lords is a universal board of knowledge that stops bad legislation all the time anyway.
In the balance of all things, my priority will always be for legislation that is forced to follow public wishes. Aside from a few examples this reform will by itself stop extreme legislation through the dilution of power in a second chamber.
But ultimately such a change will not change the world. It won't stop workfare, it won't create more jobs, it won't stop people with no technical knowledge of the internet continuing to erode freedoms. It may over time help though, and I firmly believe if we had a Lords that was formed as it is intended in the programme set out by government, the changes to the NHS, to the welfare system and to those on benefits would have been no-where near as severe as they have been.
Tories may shout this as an example of why it is such a bad idea, but I believe they are in the minority, and that the majority of us wish we had that protection of "gridlock" in the last couple of years.
----
*I say this in reference the the public being able to apply direct pressure. There is no question that the Lords, like anyone, understand the mood of the nation. However they aren't necessarily pressed to vote that way as there is no way to punish them for going the wrong way.
How it currently works:
Right now people sit in the Lords because the leaders of various parties ask them to be there. They have no obligation to attend (some Lords barely ever attend debates, vote or provide evidence on legislation, yet still claim tens of thousands of pounds in tax free tax payers' money), and due to more and more appointments they are become a partisan bunch of individuals that consist of more and more ex-MPs, MPs that the country has had enough of while they were in the commons yet now carry on taking a public wage for political work.
The problem:
The problem is that we currently have two halves of a bad system. On the one side we have people that are completely unaccountable, "unswayed*" by public opinion. This shouldn't be a problem because the Lords should be independent and expert in dissecting legislation. This is where the other half of the system comes in, with more and more Lords being aligned to a party of some kind, indeed being put in to their position by the leader of their party. Independence is a distant memory (if it was ever there before) and worse still expertise in relevant fields is being washed away in favour of a few reliable and loyal voters.
The options:
There are several options that are referred to with Lords reform, and it makes sense that while it would seem a simple and unifying issue when all three parties want reform of the Lords, the variation in what is possible offers the opportunity of disagreement and the usual political theatre.
The choices that I've seen put around, though not all are even remotely being considered, are:
- A partly elected house of Lords with some remaining appointed (the current preferred option)
- A fully elected house of Lords
- A fully appointed house of Lords (as per the current system)
- A fully appointed house of Lords, starting afresh with people that are experts first and foremost in several fields and in legislative scrutiny
- Abolish the lords completely and just function on the house of commons
- A "citizens jury" appointed for each piece of legislation (lol)
Further complicating the above list is that when elections are talked about, some favour STV style proportional elections, some party list, some a fully proportional national party list vote, and so on.
My view:
As I said above, Lords reform isn't and shouldn't be about the Lords alone. While they make terrible decisions from position of vested interest in their medical insurance companies or telecommunication empires, and follow a party whip on key government votes, in other cases they come in to their own as defenders of subjects such as human rights and privacy.
My personal stance is to fully elect the Lords, every 5 years.
Of course there is a concern that with a partly or fully elected chamber of Lords that we will have a drain on expertise of those available to scrutinise. Certainly with only a 5 year term this is even more likely (read on...). There is also a claim that it is the wrong thing to do while we are trying to cut the cost of politics in the UK. Also with the elections comes natural partisanship and towing of the party line.
Party lines and the Lords:
I don't, perhaps surprisingly, see this as a problem. I dislike the party system but understand that it will always come to naturally exist. My main problem with the party system is that currently one party tends to hold disproportionate power and is able to force through threats of blockades in an MPs career or even deselection at local level to ensure people vote to maintain the power of that party.
With a second chamber elected proportionally, whether through STV or open-list (the system being proposed), the power of the party is diminished. I feel this is one reason why so many Tory MPs are rebelling against the idea of this reform, they know that one things is true:
Lib Dems will finally get the power that they proportionally deserve in the scrutiny of legislation, and they (with their ambition) will never have sole discretion to power through changes such as abolishing or reverting various aspects of healthcare, education or welfare.
While the commons, elected through FPTP, will continue to be disparate to the wishes of the country, the second chamber would be one of temperance. I believe this operates as the perfect "yin" and "yang" of politics. One chamber inflates public opinion to get an idea of what they desire to be direction of policy for the UK. The second chamber, in turn, ensures that the policy brought forward is in line with the real wishes of the public.
This would mean that while the Tories could get a majority (or any party) and decide to abolish the NHS, they would not get it through the second chamber due to the unlikelihood of the some 70% of the other "Lords" being unlikely to vote for such measures. This is a good thing, and anyone presenting this as "gridlock" is glossing over the fact that only bad legislation that the public has not actually voted for will be blocked.
The cost:
I dislike arguments about cost when it comes to politics. When you walk in to a garage and they quote you £50 to do your car repairs, while the rest quote £300, you deserve everything you get if you choose that cheaper garage, and all the problems that follow.
The answer to making politics more reasonable in the eyes of the public is not to reduce the cost, all this will do is reduce the numbers of politicians, reduce how long they have to balance meeting their electorate with reading up on the laws they're passing, and in turn make people more angry when bad legislation is passed.
Politicians need to be seen as more valuable. Their salaries may be high but people wouldn't complain about this if they actually understood the country better, instead of being so constantly and hopelessly out of touch.
A such this idea of trying to do things cheaper isn't one I entertain. If (and it's still only an if) the new proposals lead to more expense then so be it. If they perform their function better than the current Lords then we have got a good deal.
Besides, any such expense will still be a complete drop in the ocean compared to the public purse.
5 Year Terms:
I don't agree with the idea of a 15 year non-returnable "term" of standing for election in the second chamber. It is inflexible to changes of current opinion, and if you are using a proportional system of election then your intent must be to reflect the will of the nation. Restricting elections to only turn out one third of all politicians in the second chamber every 5 years, leaving everyone in post for 15 years each, means that proportionality will only exist in bubbles.
While I'm not against the idea of staggering the elections, much in the way council elections are done (which can actually help to maintain proportionality and avoid chaotic swings of power) every politican should be out of their post after 5 years. That is unless they are re-elected.
Yes, there is no reason to say after 15 years that someone is "done" and no longer able to be a politician. If they are good at their job, and the public/party agree with that, then they should be able to keep standing. MPs can, so there is no reason why someone in the second chamber couldn't.
There is a danger, I feel, if the system was introduced that parties would simply use the second chamber as a "training ground" for the commons, putting younger candidates through 15 years of legislative scrutiny before letting them finally stand in a seat if they've proved loyal enough to get a seat in the commons, and perhaps a governmental position. Such things would belittle the political system, not enhance them.
Expertise:
The trouble is that expertise isn't guaranteed with elections, especially not with 5 year terms (unless someone happens to stay elected for decades!). We can rely on the open-list system, and hope that parties will put forward experts in their field rather than pliable individuals with a loyal heart, but that would be foolish.
It is entirely natural that with these changes we will lose experts. It is probably for this reason that the consensus is to keep some Lords appointed, such as Bishops, so as to keep a buffer of "expertise" around, especially on the issue of religion.
However I believe that looking at this issue of a "brain drain" on the second chamber is missing the point.
Three "chambers"
Let's say that somehow political deals are made great enough for this legislation to pass, if any referendum is forced then the public vote yes because the main faces of each party all go out together and campaign shoulder to shoulder for greater democracy (Yeah, I know...)
What we're left with is two chambers, one that is responsible for the proposal of laws, ensuring it's "primacy" or power over any others, and that is used to create the executive, and the other that is purely legislative and only exists to scrutinise legislation, passing it through the filter of a proportionally elected set of politicians.
What we are missing is independent scrutiny that has power.
Right now we have independent experts turn up to provide evidence on legislation. Where law is involving human rights especially we will see organisations such as Liberty pitch up and suggest their amendments to legislation, while the Police may give counter-claims and a different perspective that supports the law as written.
None of it is binding though, these are people that are incredibly informed and knowledgable about their field and yet their word is only advice. How it is taken depends entirely on the integrity of the politicians listening to them.
A third "chamber" which operates on a much more fluid basis, with permanent individuals with solid constitutional and legal knowledge to deal with legislative concerns both domestic and European, and temporary experts drawn in to provide their experience and knowledge to the process of amending law, would serve to take from the responsibility of the commons and a second chamber (currently the Lords) the requirement of ensuring that the law is workable, in line with all other laws, and doesn't result in any unintended side effects.
A good case in point would be the ridiculous "Auto-block porn" law that has resurfaced. While the two chambers can argue as much as they like about the merits of requiring ISPs to block porn as default, an expert chamber would be able to write off pretty much all of the law in the bill due to it being simply impossible to put in to action or enforce. Even the current Lords, with all of their alleged expertise, are likely to fail to understand such nuances, and given the highly religious motivation behind the law there will be pressure to ignore actual knowledgable people that can currently only give their advice.
Of course this chamber will, unfortunately, never exist. It will always be criticised by both elected chambers as a "wrecking chamber" that doesn't act to the wishes of the public. Even though it is doing the most important work of all, in grounding the law's provided in reality, and protecting everyone's legal rights against existing laws and standards, it's hard to wrench the power away from politicians that want to write laws that can be ambiguous enough to be exploited later on.
Edit: To clarify, I would see this "chamber" or body as something that is formed for every bill BEFORE it is put to scrutiny. The biggest problem with legislation is that it's hugely flawed and there is only enough time to fix it slightly. This level of input at a "draft" stage would ensure that the truly insane side of some legislation would be filtered out before MPs had to waste their valuable time arguing against it too (if they catch it at all).
Conclusion:
Even though it may be imperfect, I still stand behind a fully elected second chamber. I don't believe that we will lose a great deal of expertise as long as the parties have a level of integrity over who they pick to run, but I also don't believe that the Lords is a universal board of knowledge that stops bad legislation all the time anyway.
In the balance of all things, my priority will always be for legislation that is forced to follow public wishes. Aside from a few examples this reform will by itself stop extreme legislation through the dilution of power in a second chamber.
But ultimately such a change will not change the world. It won't stop workfare, it won't create more jobs, it won't stop people with no technical knowledge of the internet continuing to erode freedoms. It may over time help though, and I firmly believe if we had a Lords that was formed as it is intended in the programme set out by government, the changes to the NHS, to the welfare system and to those on benefits would have been no-where near as severe as they have been.
Tories may shout this as an example of why it is such a bad idea, but I believe they are in the minority, and that the majority of us wish we had that protection of "gridlock" in the last couple of years.
----
*I say this in reference the the public being able to apply direct pressure. There is no question that the Lords, like anyone, understand the mood of the nation. However they aren't necessarily pressed to vote that way as there is no way to punish them for going the wrong way.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
"There are plenty of jobs for those who want it."
"There are plenty of jobs for those who want it. Just go out there find it and work hard"
The wise words of a Mr Thomas Hablin from Romford (25 years old, as if that matters). If wise, of course, means "lazy, unfounded and utterly ridiculous".
Thomas speaks in the way that the Conservatives of this country would like us to all think, that those not in work are only there by choice, that it is a workshy nature of the public that causes our current economic woes.
I call bullshit.
For a start, let's see how many people are unemployed in Romford.
According to the data compiled by the Guardian's data blog, in May of this year around 2100 people were unemployed, with men outnumbering women unemployed around 2:1.
This isn't a problem though as, according to Mr Hablin, who works for the council (and therefore should know better), there are PLENTY of jobs....
Heh.
Total Jobs lists, within a 5 mile radius of the center of Romford, a grand total of 368 jobs (at the time of writing, 26th June 2012). Some of these will be duplicates, but at best we can say that there are more than 5 people for every job going in the area.
EXCEPT...the area also covers Dagenham and Rainham (3,500 unemployed), Erith and Thamesmead (3,500 unemployed), Hornchurch and Upminster (2,200 unemployed), Illford (6,200 unemployed), Barking (4,700 unemployed) as well as part of Brentwood (1,200 unemployed) and Bexleyheath (1,800 unemployed).
So, in fact there are around 25,200 people going for those 368 jobs, over 68 people for every job going. Before anyone gets all "pointy fact nazi" on me, I do know that those 25 thousand people could well also look for jobs in their own area which doesn't overlap with my search. However if I do extend my search further to 20 miles from Romford, I still only manage to find some 10,000 jobs while simultaneously pushing the job search area over the center of London in to West London, and south past Croydon...so let's not split hairs over just how few jobs there are directly accessible to individuals near to where they live, let alone further afield.
Anyway, I'm glad we now know the new definition of "Plenty" in Tory britain.
Now that we know there are 'plenty' of jobs, and people just need to find it (well duh, job sites and the jobcenters, of course) and then work hard! Simple, right guys? I mean, isn't everyone 'F Gas 2079 certified' these days? Who doesn't have 'A working knowledge of JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, SQL and ASP'?
Let's stop pretending we've got an attitude problem in this country instead of a jobs problem. There are fundamentally not enough jobs for people to apply for, and even if they can find the vacancies, the chance of them being correctly qualified, with the right experience, is slim.
The reality is that our jobs market is serving a few elite people, and that the jobs are probably around only because of a skills shortage in this country (that the Government is trying it's hardest to retain through discouraging immigration) for the specific jobs in hand. Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of people in every area of the country are fighting it out over jobs that they can be fired from without fair reason, on a wage that makes it hard to afford your rent, facing the prospect of having the housing benefit that might give them room to breathe stripped away from them.
But it's ok because as jobs dwindle, they will, like a phoenix, rise again in the form of unpaid "work placements" that those unemployed souls can be forced on to. Let's look on the bright side, everyone will find there way in to work soon enough, they just probably won't be paid for it.
The wise words of a Mr Thomas Hablin from Romford (25 years old, as if that matters). If wise, of course, means "lazy, unfounded and utterly ridiculous".
Thomas speaks in the way that the Conservatives of this country would like us to all think, that those not in work are only there by choice, that it is a workshy nature of the public that causes our current economic woes.
I call bullshit.
For a start, let's see how many people are unemployed in Romford.
According to the data compiled by the Guardian's data blog, in May of this year around 2100 people were unemployed, with men outnumbering women unemployed around 2:1.
This isn't a problem though as, according to Mr Hablin, who works for the council (and therefore should know better), there are PLENTY of jobs....
Heh.
Total Jobs lists, within a 5 mile radius of the center of Romford, a grand total of 368 jobs (at the time of writing, 26th June 2012). Some of these will be duplicates, but at best we can say that there are more than 5 people for every job going in the area.
EXCEPT...the area also covers Dagenham and Rainham (3,500 unemployed), Erith and Thamesmead (3,500 unemployed), Hornchurch and Upminster (2,200 unemployed), Illford (6,200 unemployed), Barking (4,700 unemployed) as well as part of Brentwood (1,200 unemployed) and Bexleyheath (1,800 unemployed).
So, in fact there are around 25,200 people going for those 368 jobs, over 68 people for every job going. Before anyone gets all "pointy fact nazi" on me, I do know that those 25 thousand people could well also look for jobs in their own area which doesn't overlap with my search. However if I do extend my search further to 20 miles from Romford, I still only manage to find some 10,000 jobs while simultaneously pushing the job search area over the center of London in to West London, and south past Croydon...so let's not split hairs over just how few jobs there are directly accessible to individuals near to where they live, let alone further afield.
Anyway, I'm glad we now know the new definition of "Plenty" in Tory britain.
Now that we know there are 'plenty' of jobs, and people just need to find it (well duh, job sites and the jobcenters, of course) and then work hard! Simple, right guys? I mean, isn't everyone 'F Gas 2079 certified' these days? Who doesn't have 'A working knowledge of JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, SQL and ASP'?
Let's stop pretending we've got an attitude problem in this country instead of a jobs problem. There are fundamentally not enough jobs for people to apply for, and even if they can find the vacancies, the chance of them being correctly qualified, with the right experience, is slim.
The reality is that our jobs market is serving a few elite people, and that the jobs are probably around only because of a skills shortage in this country (that the Government is trying it's hardest to retain through discouraging immigration) for the specific jobs in hand. Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of people in every area of the country are fighting it out over jobs that they can be fired from without fair reason, on a wage that makes it hard to afford your rent, facing the prospect of having the housing benefit that might give them room to breathe stripped away from them.
But it's ok because as jobs dwindle, they will, like a phoenix, rise again in the form of unpaid "work placements" that those unemployed souls can be forced on to. Let's look on the bright side, everyone will find there way in to work soon enough, they just probably won't be paid for it.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Benefits
We seem caught in an ideological war of hatred that is not all that different from that of the waves of racism that were pervasive in British society decades ago. While the "haven't-quite-got's" may have lashed out at those who were a different skin colour to themselves in the past, now it has somehow become simply "Benefit scroungers".
Scroungers. It's not even cheats any more, the narrative has moved on from the idea that the bad people in society are the ones conning us in to a meagre allowance from the state, now it's just about those that no doubt need the benefits as it stands, but are "undeserving".
On the whole the right wing press, rallying around David Cameron most recently with his talk of a blanket ban on under 25s getting housing benefit, will talk about "these people" like a drain on society, hurting us all through the tax we have to pay, the children they bring up to be wasters too. En masse these people group together as an indistinguishable mass of lazy, probably fat, certainly over-burdened with children, 50" HD screen buying wasters.
Yet, much like the "I'm not racist, I know [X] and he's a sound guy...it's just the rest of 'em" excuse making for prejudice, we all know people that are having real and true struggles with benefits and finding work.
We know that guy or woman who wants to work, who wants to move out of their parents house, who is applying for everything going. We know that they are being screwed about by the system, being made to jump through hoops, living in fear that if it goes on too long they'll be made to jump through even bigger hoops, making the choice between losing their benefits and still having time to look for work, or being forced to work for free stacking shelves for a major corporation.
We all know someone like this, yet for some they are the exception...everyone else of course is just resigning themselves to picking up the benefit check. Somehow these people don't have to jump through the same hoops, they don't have to show willingness to work, and they have jobs that they could take but are just too workshy to do so.
Unlike our dear friend who we know who has it completely the other way around.
But if we all know people like this...doesn't it show that actually there are thousands upon thousands of people on benefits only just staying afloat while they do everything they can to re-enter a level of normality in society? Isn't this exactly why the welfare system exists, to keep these people afloat?
The Conservatives don't see these benefits, they see only numbers on a machine, further debt that is all too easy to take away, justified by public support that is too blinkered to realise it is once again going through a population wide cultural campaign of discrimination. The stick is the approach, but like the horse getting whipped with it you have to question what the point is.
Forcing people in to voluntary work isn't finding them work, the vast majority don't have jobs waiting for them at the end of their "placement", some even being forced out of voluntary jobs that they're actually being productive in, vindictively, to instead service large corporations on threat of losing benefits.
Forcing people to simply not have housing benefits won't make living costs cheaper, whereas maybe tackling the rental market that has spiraled so out of control that in some areas of the UK it's as impossible to rent as it is to afford a mortgage would, as would dealing with wage disparity that sees executive pay rocket during a recession, while the real wages of low paid workers tumble ever downward, putting pressure on the welfare system as people NEED to find some way to plug the gap in their income vs outgoings equation.
While there may be a minority of people that choose, subconsciously or otherwise, to remain in the shadow of benefits, I believe the majority do not, as it is those who are trying to claw their way out of the shadow that we all see in the faces of our friends and our family, and rarely the other kind. The problem is not that they are on benefits, but that the trench they're in is too deep to get back out of without a ladder.
Cameron and his Conservatives want to put a hole in the trench, so that people fall straight through and in to hell, and hope that this is incentive enough for them to climb a bit harder, if that were even possible. What we should be doing is putting down ladders. Without more jobs being created, without better wages, without lower rents...people will always find themselves sliding back down in to this sorrowful pit where their life is not in their own hands.
We seem to be at a crossroads, one that unfortunately looks like it's becoming a one way street every day we carry on. It's time to work out if we're ethically and morally happy with abandoning people completely to homelessness, absolute poverty, starvation, in an effort to punish the few who may abuse a system or choose to remain in it at least...or we can recognise that with any socially liberal system you have a certain level of "gaming" of the system that is cost-prohibitive to enforce against, but this is a price you pay to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to keep up with the rest of us.
Scroungers. It's not even cheats any more, the narrative has moved on from the idea that the bad people in society are the ones conning us in to a meagre allowance from the state, now it's just about those that no doubt need the benefits as it stands, but are "undeserving".
On the whole the right wing press, rallying around David Cameron most recently with his talk of a blanket ban on under 25s getting housing benefit, will talk about "these people" like a drain on society, hurting us all through the tax we have to pay, the children they bring up to be wasters too. En masse these people group together as an indistinguishable mass of lazy, probably fat, certainly over-burdened with children, 50" HD screen buying wasters.
Yet, much like the "I'm not racist, I know [X] and he's a sound guy...it's just the rest of 'em" excuse making for prejudice, we all know people that are having real and true struggles with benefits and finding work.
We know that guy or woman who wants to work, who wants to move out of their parents house, who is applying for everything going. We know that they are being screwed about by the system, being made to jump through hoops, living in fear that if it goes on too long they'll be made to jump through even bigger hoops, making the choice between losing their benefits and still having time to look for work, or being forced to work for free stacking shelves for a major corporation.
We all know someone like this, yet for some they are the exception...everyone else of course is just resigning themselves to picking up the benefit check. Somehow these people don't have to jump through the same hoops, they don't have to show willingness to work, and they have jobs that they could take but are just too workshy to do so.
Unlike our dear friend who we know who has it completely the other way around.
But if we all know people like this...doesn't it show that actually there are thousands upon thousands of people on benefits only just staying afloat while they do everything they can to re-enter a level of normality in society? Isn't this exactly why the welfare system exists, to keep these people afloat?
The Conservatives don't see these benefits, they see only numbers on a machine, further debt that is all too easy to take away, justified by public support that is too blinkered to realise it is once again going through a population wide cultural campaign of discrimination. The stick is the approach, but like the horse getting whipped with it you have to question what the point is.
Forcing people in to voluntary work isn't finding them work, the vast majority don't have jobs waiting for them at the end of their "placement", some even being forced out of voluntary jobs that they're actually being productive in, vindictively, to instead service large corporations on threat of losing benefits.
Forcing people to simply not have housing benefits won't make living costs cheaper, whereas maybe tackling the rental market that has spiraled so out of control that in some areas of the UK it's as impossible to rent as it is to afford a mortgage would, as would dealing with wage disparity that sees executive pay rocket during a recession, while the real wages of low paid workers tumble ever downward, putting pressure on the welfare system as people NEED to find some way to plug the gap in their income vs outgoings equation.
While there may be a minority of people that choose, subconsciously or otherwise, to remain in the shadow of benefits, I believe the majority do not, as it is those who are trying to claw their way out of the shadow that we all see in the faces of our friends and our family, and rarely the other kind. The problem is not that they are on benefits, but that the trench they're in is too deep to get back out of without a ladder.
Cameron and his Conservatives want to put a hole in the trench, so that people fall straight through and in to hell, and hope that this is incentive enough for them to climb a bit harder, if that were even possible. What we should be doing is putting down ladders. Without more jobs being created, without better wages, without lower rents...people will always find themselves sliding back down in to this sorrowful pit where their life is not in their own hands.
We seem to be at a crossroads, one that unfortunately looks like it's becoming a one way street every day we carry on. It's time to work out if we're ethically and morally happy with abandoning people completely to homelessness, absolute poverty, starvation, in an effort to punish the few who may abuse a system or choose to remain in it at least...or we can recognise that with any socially liberal system you have a certain level of "gaming" of the system that is cost-prohibitive to enforce against, but this is a price you pay to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to keep up with the rest of us.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Render twitter embedded tweet (web intents style) dynamically
Just a quick one, a note about the Twitter oEmbed API. If you use Javascript to load in this content and insert it in to the page,instead of doing as they ask and caching it, though you could still insert a newly found web intents widget and cache it at the same time, the tweet will be the basic HTML that is returned via the API call to Twitter's oEmbed service.
In your callback, where you're adding the HTML to the page that has been returned by the oEmbed API, make sure you put the following in to "kick start" your code's styling, ensuring the embedded tweet is styled up as a web intents widget and not just a blockquote:
Simple!
In your callback, where you're adding the HTML to the page that has been returned by the oEmbed API, make sure you put the following in to "kick start" your code's styling, ensuring the embedded tweet is styled up as a web intents widget and not just a blockquote:
twttr.widgets.load();Simple!
Friday, June 15, 2012
Argyll and Bute censoring a 9 year old, why?
Argyll and Bute council have today released a statement as to why they have taken the measure to force a school, a school that had no problem with the following occurrences, to stop a 9 year old from photographing her school meals and posting them on her blog.
Let me critique a few of their reasonings for carrying out what, ultimately, amounts to censorship of the press*:
Unwarranted attacks? For a start it is not for Argyll and Bute to decide what is unwarranted or not. If this girl was attacking the council (which she was not) then she obviously feels it's warranted. Assuming that no actual lies or misrepresentations were made, hard to do with a real picture taken of real food, then it's not for the council to make any claims as to the legitimacy of any "attacks".
Not that they were attacks anyway, let's take a sample of the latest posts...
I'm not going to pretend that this is necessarily scientifically reflective of the entire blog...except that someone already has done the work to see just how much the Never Seconds blog attacks the food on offer...
A 75% score rate, how very scathing, Argyll and Bute council!
Onwards...
So why is this the problem of VEG, her dad, and their blog? If they fear for their jobs it is because the school or council are doing nothing to manage their expectations and to give them the right assurances. If the staff can get afraid that they'll lose their jobs off the back of a 75% enjoyment rate by a single child, doesn't that say a lot more about the probably terrifying circumstances these staff work under with clearly victorian working practices being employed by their employers?
Politically they recognised that it is impossible to tarnish the image of a 9 year old girl writing thoughtful posts on her lunches, yes...
Now, does the blog purport to be a complete review of the food standards and choices at school? No, check the first post and you'll see it's clearly a fun take on reviewing what she's eating.
If Argyll and Bute had a problem with this website being taken "out of context" to any degree by the press, then they had other options here. Would VEG or her father have had any problem with including a link on the side of her blog to a full menu provided by the school/council to show the full range of options? How about empowering OTHER students to take up this kind of journalism to get a wider range of views?
No, Argyll and Bute went for the nuclear option, hence why the Streisand Effect is in full force.
Which is his absolute damn right. I'm sorry Argyll and Bute, but does OTHER PEOPLE making comments you don't like based on information they gain from a 3rd party mean the third party needs shutting down?
The council here essentially admit that VEG and her dad have done *nothing* wrong, but they don't like the media response...and since the dad was unwilling to stop supplying information publicly (instead of trying to sell a story about crappy school meals in private, for example), they are now punished?
This is actually outrageous.
The media report on all kinds of things about political life, most of it negative. There is a DIRECT comparison here between what the Never Seconds blog is doing, and freedom of information requests. I'm sure Argyll and Bute would love to not give information about it's inner workings via FOI, to help stop those evil media people from doing there job of scrutinising and reporting on our power-wielding leaders, but they can't, because of the law.
So on that note, why exactly is it legal to stop someone from photographing what they're eating and talking about it?
"The council has had no complaints for the last two years about the quality of school meals other than one from the Payne family received on 6 June and there have been no changes to the service on offer since the introduction of the blog."
So despite all of this terrible media coverage purely intended to unfairly tarnish the council's good name...no-one has actually made an official complaint.
All in all I think this is a very important case, the council have played their big gun cards with this statement, insinuating all kinds of evils that have come as a result of this...but they've simply skimmed over the fact that all this Never Seconds blog has done is carry out journalism. If any of these claims were made about a press agency, a paper, or official processes like the FOI process, there would be huge questions about what is going on at Argyll and Bute if they think that they can trample over basic human rights in order to keep 'bad news' from surfacing.
Watch this space...
*OK, so a girl in school isn't the press...but if she was writing this column for her local newspaper, would the council get away with such censorship?
Let me critique a few of their reasonings for carrying out what, ultimately, amounts to censorship of the press*:
Argyll and Bute Council wholly refutes the unwarranted attacks on its schools catering service which culminated in national press
Unwarranted attacks? For a start it is not for Argyll and Bute to decide what is unwarranted or not. If this girl was attacking the council (which she was not) then she obviously feels it's warranted. Assuming that no actual lies or misrepresentations were made, hard to do with a real picture taken of real food, then it's not for the council to make any claims as to the legitimacy of any "attacks".
Not that they were attacks anyway, let's take a sample of the latest posts...
Lunch was really nice today and it helped cheer me up. Macaroni Cheese at school is so creamy and it's nice to have it with the crunchy radishes and peppers. You don't have to have mash with the macaroni but they offered me some and I took it as I always have mash if it's offered. We don't get jelly often, maybe about twice in every 4 weeks, and I like to put it on my spoon and suck it through my teeth. It's so slippy it doesn't really make a noise so I don't upset my friends!
There is always spag bol the day after mince pasta which I think are the same meal really. The fajita was lovely because there was no fat on the chicken and it was covered in salsa. I cut it up rather than pick it up in case I dropped bits which isn't popular. It is quite hard to eat peas and sweetcorn without dropping them but I was very careful. The dessert is called Australian Crunch but I don't know why. The only reason I can think of is it has coconut in it unless its a traditional Australian recipe. I didn't finish my dessert so no fruit.
I asked if I could have a dessert and soup and they said yes, maybe because there was a lot of soup left. The soup was carrot and I ate half of it but then stopped because it was too hot! I finished my soup after I ate my pasta and before my yoghurt. I didn't quite finish my pasta because it had a lot of onions in it.
I'm not going to pretend that this is necessarily scientifically reflective of the entire blog...except that someone already has done the work to see just how much the Never Seconds blog attacks the food on offer...
Just done an average of the scores on #neverseconds blog. Why do @argyllandbute say staff feared for jobs on average of 7.59/10?
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) June 15, 2012
A 75% score rate, how very scathing, Argyll and Bute council!
Onwards...
headlines which have led catering staff to fear for their jobs.
So why is this the problem of VEG, her dad, and their blog? If they fear for their jobs it is because the school or council are doing nothing to manage their expectations and to give them the right assurances. If the staff can get afraid that they'll lose their jobs off the back of a 75% enjoyment rate by a single child, doesn't that say a lot more about the probably terrifying circumstances these staff work under with clearly victorian working practices being employed by their employers?
The Council has directly avoided any criticism of anyone involved in the ‘never seconds’ blog for obvious reasons
Politically they recognised that it is impossible to tarnish the image of a 9 year old girl writing thoughtful posts on her lunches, yes...
In particular, the photographic images uploaded appear to only represent a fraction of the choices available to pupils, so a decision has been made by the council to stop photos being taken in the school canteen.
Now, does the blog purport to be a complete review of the food standards and choices at school? No, check the first post and you'll see it's clearly a fun take on reviewing what she's eating.
If Argyll and Bute had a problem with this website being taken "out of context" to any degree by the press, then they had other options here. Would VEG or her father have had any problem with including a link on the side of her blog to a full menu provided by the school/council to show the full range of options? How about empowering OTHER students to take up this kind of journalism to get a wider range of views?
No, Argyll and Bute went for the nuclear option, hence why the Streisand Effect is in full force.
There have been discussions between senior council staff and Martha’s father however, despite an acknowledgement that the media coverage has produced these unwarranted attacks, he intimated that he would continue with the blog.
Which is his absolute damn right. I'm sorry Argyll and Bute, but does OTHER PEOPLE making comments you don't like based on information they gain from a 3rd party mean the third party needs shutting down?
The council here essentially admit that VEG and her dad have done *nothing* wrong, but they don't like the media response...and since the dad was unwilling to stop supplying information publicly (instead of trying to sell a story about crappy school meals in private, for example), they are now punished?
This is actually outrageous.
The media report on all kinds of things about political life, most of it negative. There is a DIRECT comparison here between what the Never Seconds blog is doing, and freedom of information requests. I'm sure Argyll and Bute would love to not give information about it's inner workings via FOI, to help stop those evil media people from doing there job of scrutinising and reporting on our power-wielding leaders, but they can't, because of the law.
So on that note, why exactly is it legal to stop someone from photographing what they're eating and talking about it?
"The council has had no complaints for the last two years about the quality of school meals other than one from the Payne family received on 6 June and there have been no changes to the service on offer since the introduction of the blog."
So despite all of this terrible media coverage purely intended to unfairly tarnish the council's good name...no-one has actually made an official complaint.
All in all I think this is a very important case, the council have played their big gun cards with this statement, insinuating all kinds of evils that have come as a result of this...but they've simply skimmed over the fact that all this Never Seconds blog has done is carry out journalism. If any of these claims were made about a press agency, a paper, or official processes like the FOI process, there would be huge questions about what is going on at Argyll and Bute if they think that they can trample over basic human rights in order to keep 'bad news' from surfacing.
Watch this space...
*OK, so a girl in school isn't the press...but if she was writing this column for her local newspaper, would the council get away with such censorship?
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