Democracy is too valuable to be by-passed

The critique of democracy is well-worn so need not be restated, except to say that alternatives are worse. There are times when only the firm hand of a dictator seems attractive; and others when popular uprising seems called for, but these are conclusions usually seen from a particular viewpoint. We all want the world or the country to be run as we think it should be.
However, bad though a government may be, in a democracy there will be process and mechanism whereby it may eventually be changed. It is when these are removed and democracy no longer applies, except in name, that true disenfranchisement occurs and the people are left powerless. Zimbabwe, North Korea and Turkey come to mind.
So we here in UK need to stay alert and use our representatives to protect our system. Why now? Because we are seeing signs of intolerance, in the attacks on those with different views; we are engaged in a denial of representative government, in this unnecessary and damaging referendum; and we are seeing abuse of power on the part of the current ruling party, as it dismantles and potentially prevents the rebuilding of the State.
These actions eat away at the fabric of representative democracy, weakening it further from its already flawed manifestation and risking a drift towards inequities which, whether deliberate or accidental, may lead to a future infinitely worse for the people of this country than even our current parlous state.

Do not blame Corbyn for Cameron's Folly

I am furious with Cameron. Why would I not be? He leads a party and a government both of which are at odds with my beliefs and values. My antipathy is permanent. No, my fury today goes beyond the norm. His arbitrary decision to put  the country through the forthcoming referendum will define his legacy. Not only has this led to a nasty, gratuitous distraction for Parliament and people but it could yet lead to lasting real damage to the country he is supposed to lead. Where is the leadership in gambling all our futures with such uncertainty over the outcome? This has been done for purely partisan motives. It will be small compensation that he will be the greatest loser.

There was never any need for this. Had he been a true leader he would not have derogated to an uninterested and under-informed public the responsibility for determining policy on immigration (which is what drove the referendum decision). Parliament is the place for such matters. This is what we pay MPs and PMs to do. Were he truly the Remain advocate he claims to be, he could not have taken the risk he has with all our futures. Whatever the outcome of June 23 (please let it be IN), this reckless gamble must go down in history as Cameron's Folly. Now that Out looks possible, the voices of the Remain Right are starting to point the finger of blame at Labour's performance in the campaign to distract public opinion from the truth. Let us be crystal clear: any failure was in calling the referendum in the first place and only one man carries the responsibility for that.

Transport is no luxury, especially in the countryside

In modern societies transport is a necessity. We no longer live and work only in neighbourhoods. Access to jobs, healthcare, education, welfare, shops or even just family demands travel. One might even say that transport is an entitlement; but one which for many has become increasingly scarce. So more public transport seems like a good idea. A vote winner. But in reality, whatever form of transport one requires,even if it runs to capacity or pays its way, can it justify its investment?
Those who live in cities or suburbs may think so. Infrastructure and services serve them and may even be taken for granted. Further investment may be seen as desirable to improve on frequency or comfort. But what of those 10 million or so separated from such services because they live some distance from routes and hubs? They (we) pay as high a Council Tax for a fraction of the benefits. No bus; no trains; no access to the essentials of independent living. We are either deprived of something to which we are entitled or have we elected to do without? Perhaps the attractions of rural or coastal life merit such a choice for some but what of others deprived by circumstances of essentials? What of those of limited means? What of those smitten by ill health? What of those incomers seeking more affordable housing? These still need access to all aspects of modern society. Yet for these the very services on which they should be able to rely may be separated from them by distances unbridged by any form of public transport. The first few miles of any journey towards the means to lead independent lives is untouched by investments, services or policy. Cars, private or taxi, are the only means of starting essential travel. The modern world is car-centred, allowing those with the means to move around at will, often in sole occupancy of a vehicle with capacity for several. Most households own one or more cars but how efficiently are most used?
Were transport truly a universal entitlement, networks of small capacity vehicles would circulate among rural communities, picking up and dropping off, enabling all people affordably to access shops, services or other transport services. We must assume, though, from the fact that this is neither the case nor a plan for any political party, that public transport must currently be viewed at best as only an occasional opportunity rather than an entitlement.
It must be time to re-examine just what the role should be for public transport and to whom it may be deemed relevant not only in cities but in rural locations. How can new technologies be brought to bear, for example to facilitate car sharing, locating assets to match needs or summoning vehicles, even driverless ones, to bring all who need to travel to do so. If there were the will, there could be a way.

Time for a brave, new world?

Work or employment have for centuries been the foundation-stones of society, providing the means for living and the opportunity for advancement. A perfect storm of factors may be about to change this permanently, in Western society at least as the work available to be done may no longer be valued sufficiently to sustain the majority of workers and the dependents.

These factors include neo-liberalism’s stranglehold on power; new technologies and the digitisation of jobs; and mass migration.

Neo-liberalism describes a political mindset particular to the powerful and wealthy who control the levers of power. These, the so-called 1%, have effectively used the media they control to persuade sufficient voters to support their “small State” doctrine, in which the markets which their organisations dominate are given free rein to decide the value and price of everything, with minimal control or regulation from government. Markets like low costs and high profits. Where labour is a significant cost element in the price of goods or services, its costs is reduced wherever possible. Jobs which demand high skills pay most but wherever possible these are kept to a minimum. So whilst in this country political leaders have decreed that more and more young people should go to university, fewer and fewer of the skilled graduates will be needed in work-places. How can this be achieved? Through the application of market forces – competition – and of the digitisation of functions previously thought to depend on human expertise. New technologies have enabled paradigm shifts already in how society goes about its business. Jobs which used to pay good, living wages have disappeared as new ways of doing things have been made possible, often without significant skills or large numbers of workers. Dock work was destroyed by containerisation of shipping decades ago. Coal-mining went in the face of alternative fuels. Secretaries are nowadays mere vanity items for the few instead of essential lubricants of business, as anyone can make arrangements, keep records and manage communications using a tiny hand-held device. Shops have disappeared as consumers buy online, leaving retail staff without jobs or with squeezed wages. Financial and medical advice has migrated from thousands of local experts to websites staffed by tiny numbers. Travel agents cling on to service technophobes whilst the majority can arrange travel, find the best accommodation and arrange currency for themselves, online. True, employment numbers have been upheld as new employments like call-centres and coffee-shops have grown; but these are low-paid, insecure and not career roles.

This trend shows no sign of slowing. What other, even more skilled historic functions may decline or disappear into the Internet? Teaching looks vulnerable to the ideologues of neo-liberalism as they week to remove standards and accreditation and encourage “any willing provider” to try their hand, turning the profession into a low-wage employment at best; or into an online endeavour for self-educating students. And what of drivers? Today there are millions of drivers of cars and trucks, buses and trains. How many of these will be left after the advent of the driverless vehicle? Uber has already demonstrated how the use of new technology can devalue the skills of the black-cab driver. It is not beyond imagination that Uber cars will become driverless, is it? And how many even higher-skilled jobs may be more accurately carried out, without human error, by robots? City trades can be automated and increasingly it is realised that humans are quite poor at betting, so maybe even the bonus-enriched may be replaced. Even film-acting may give way to CGI.

And why does mass migration matter, if the Right can slam the country’s doors shut? First, this is no passing event which will end when/if Syria is emptied. Climate change will perpetuate the drift northward of millions from Africa, the Middle East and subcontinent. Wire fences will not stop this. The influx of more and more workers, many highly skilled, desperate to earn a living and willing to work for lower wages, undoubtedly creates ever greater competition for those jobs which remain.  So there will be more people, fewer jobs and lower wages, for the foreseeable future.

Governments of the Right point to record high employment numbers and to how wrong the Luddites of history were in such warnings in the past, as evidence that these warnings are baseless. This time, though, they cannot point to high wages nor future opportunities beyond for a small minority of highly skilled researchers and developers of the next generations of non-employing enterprises. So how will they continue to persuade young people to indebt themselves to go to universities when at the end of their education there will be a graduate premium for only a few engaged in the most valued and creative fields of science, the Arts and, cherish the thought, good governance; but a lifelong struggle for subsistence for most? The inequalities already bemoaned in US and UK economies can surely only grow in these circumstances unless a new model for life and remuneration is found. Experiments with a Living Income – paid regardless of work status are worthy of attention. Just as Gordon Brown instigated Working Tax Credits to supplement low paid work, perhaps the State should simplify matters and just settle for everyone having leisure for life. No means testing; no transport to work requirement; no benefits system. Utopian – or inevitable?

Tom Serpell

Is less more for education?

"Less is more" is a quite useful rule in some fields, avoiding over-complication and delay. The current government, though, seems to believe that such an approach should apply to public services, with less money supposed to achieve wellbeing for a growing population. How may this apply to education under the upcoming Morgan [or is it Osborne] Education Bill?

Is less qualification of teachers likely to lead to more learning by pupils? Is less Local Authority oversight of admissions and provision likely to lead to more parent satisfaction with the places their children access, especially in rural areas with fewer options, far apart and poorly connected?  How will reducing public assets of land and buildings increase State provision? Will lower pay, poorer terms of employment and working conditions for teachers raise recruitment, retention and standards? How will fragmentation of commonalities such as curriculum or teacher training give more families comfort? Will less parent and community governance end up with more village Primary closures at the behest of Trust finance directors? Could it even be that removal of education from the budgets of Local Authorities  actually reduce their very viability?

The one certainty where less will mean more is that the loss of local accountability for education will mean more central bureaucracy, more Civil Servants at the failing DfE and more opportunities for private sector contractors to profit from Academy Trusts. Lack of evidence of competence or capacity to educate in either DfE nor Academy Trusts set up by Big Capital suggests a wholesale, arbitrary abandonment of a generation of children and a denial of the State's duty to educate all. Less indeed. Let us have no more of it.

Tom Serpell

Terrorism works. Lets avoid it.

Let us be in no doubt. For those prepared to practise it, terrorism or politically inspired violence works. Terrorists generate not only death and destruction but uncertainty and fear too. Their efforts affect not only innocent victims immediately in the firing line but even governments, often far away.

Governments have a duty to defend their citizens but in deciding how to do this they are susceptible to doing exactly what terrorists want; as are the civilian populations who perforce become refugees. Kid yourself not: huge increases in defence budgets, surveillance, ethnic cleansing and xenophobia are exactly what perpetrators of terrorism want. These are manifestations of fear.

ISIS may or may not be in retreat, suffering casualties, leaderless or just past its sell-by date but, relatively small in numbers that it is in comparison to its chosen enemies, it punches well above its weight when it comes to impact on governments. When the latter adopt state assassination or remote attacks affecting the innocent, ISIS wins. When every email you or I send is inspected, ISIS wins. How they must smile as those they attack join the game of violence, gainsaying the stated primacy of diplomacy. By killing a few, they invite the reciprocal killing and displacement of many more, perpetuating the cycle. The losers are not just the people fleeing for security only to find that countries they thought would shelter them slam their borders in their faces; but the governments which too readily kneejerk into doing what they criticise their attackers for.

If anyone doubts that this works or that history proves it, look no further than Israel or Ireland for precedent: diplomacy and eventual stability achieved via a violent journey. To say that violence works is not to advocate it. To acknowledge how it works could result that, instead of playing the games of the extremists, governments can redouble their diplomatic, social and intellectual efforts to deal with the issues potentially leading to the violence before they do so. A tenth of the sums spent on defence dedicated to diplomacy would seem a start.

How do you feel about this EU campaign?

Dare one say it? The campaign which started this morning but which is in reality already 2 months old, is both boring and badly managed. Yes, the subject f EU membership is important. Yes, voting about Europe is, for us who live in safe Tory seats, the one occasion when our votes count. But the powers that be could hardly have done worse in terms of enthusing the electorate.

If I were a Brexit-er [which I am most decidedly NOT] I could at least be enthusiastic because this is such a simple, clear message. But the awfulness and chaos of the rival gangs could reduce this clarity to confusion and lose them their chance of prevailing.

Then there are the Remainers. Oh dear! Their case could be so strong but their message and presentation are so poor. As usual with anything run by the Tories, the focus is on money and foreigners, when the visceral, emotional attraction must surely lie in decades past and future of peace and cooperation. Instead, we have Johnny Foreigner against Colonel Blimp; gunboats against the defenceless; and, sadly, old-and-voting versus young-and-disenfranchised. As if it were not already bad enough that Europe as an issue historically attracts low priority in voter concerns and low turnout. Four months of bad-mouthing bigotry is no turn-on, will do nothing to give democracy a good name and may lead to a damaging conclusion when there was no need for the referendum in the first place. What a mess.

Tom Serpell