The Obscurer

Friday 10th March 2006

To Market To Market

In a typically thought-provoking post a few days ago, Chris Dillow at Stumbling And Mumbling discussed why the “left” regards the market as a “right wing” device. His conclusion was that the left falsely equates markets with business, and that the depression in the 1930’s and the Keynesian methods subsequently employed resulted in socialists abandoning market-based theories such as guild socialism in favour of models based upon state intervention.

I am certainly not going to take issue with that analysis, but from a personal point of view I can’t help thinking that this is another issue over which Margaret Thatcher casts her malign shadow. During the ‘Eighties, the phrase “the free-market” in effect became co-opted into – for want of a better term – the Tory brand. Albeit perhaps it was a term that no-one else wanted at the time, but if you opposed Thatcher then it could seem that you had to oppose markets; in becoming synonymous with the free market, I think Thacherism may have given markets a bad name. I certainly suspect that this had a large effect on me personally; although I have never considered myself a socialist, and I have always valued the effectiveness of markets in the economy (well not always, not when I was at nursery), I still used to roll my eyes, either metaphorically or literally, when a Tory, or my Dad, “went off on one” about the unalloyed virtues inherent in the free market.

Antipathy towards Thatherism itself is one reason, but I also think part of the fault lies in the behaviour of certain unthinking Thatcherite drones. Chris says that “much of what (the left) object to about markets shouldn’t be (and isn’t) markets as such but the same things rightists object to – market imperfections”. Fine, but viewing from the sidelines in the ‘Eighties it didn’t look that way to me, and still doesn’t at times. Many “rightists” seem oblivious to and blissfully ignorant of any possible drawback to markets. Particularly when I learned a bit more about economics at school and then at university I found it all to easy to dismiss the pro-market, scratched-record ramblings of some Tory spokesmen; perhaps unfairly. I was and remain far from being an expert in economics, that much should be clear, but many Tories seemed to have gleaned their entire knowledge of the subject from the first page of Lipsey’s “Introduction to Positive Economics” where it discussed the benefits of perfect competition; if only they had turned to page 2 they would have learned that perfect competition is a rare beast indeed, that we are more likely to get imperfect competition, monopolistic competition and oligopolies, and that there are such things as externalities and market failures. Many Tories may indeed be conscious of some market imperfections, but it was hard to tell that under Thatcher when all the simplistic rhetoric was about market forces being able to solve everything.

If, during the ‘Eighties, the Tories had presented me with a realistic view of markets, rather than an idealised one, then perhaps I would have viewed the free market more positively. As it was I think my appreciation of markets was more grudging, like admiring Eric Cantona when he worked wonders in a United shirt. I think it is hard to truly admire something that you see as being a weapon in your opponent’s armoury.

No doubt many people became opposed to the free market because of the Great Depression, but for others I think the matter was up for grabs until Thatcher forced the issue; perhaps in opposing the Tories an appreciation of the free market was thrown out along with the baby and the bathwater, and I may be as culpable as many others in this. As ever, an open mind on matters is to be welcomed.

Chris ends his post by saying it is time for the left to “update their Bayesian priors” and although I am reluctant to claim membership of “the left” I suspect others are less reticent in deciding where I stand. No doubt this is very good advice and I will look into doing some updating right now; just as soon as I find out what “Bayesian priors” actually are.

2 Comments

Monday 6th March 2006

Anyone For Monkey Tennis?

BBC Three presents… Dog Borstal

Now I really have seen everything.

Sunday 5th March 2006

Emperor's New Clothes

In a different time and place, when Sir Menzies Campbell was young and so was I, I was involved in student politics for a while. I was a member of what we now call the Liberal Democrats, although I think the party went through several name changes during my involvement with them.

At that time every student organisation was guaranteed a visit each year from one of the smattering of MP’s the party then had. One year our visit was from Charles Kennedy and a very pleasant chap he was too; my abiding memory was discussing Pink Floyd and The Green Party over a pint in Bradford University’s Biko Bar; an association I doubt he would thank me for.

During that time there was a kind of running joke amongst us Lib Dem student activist; whatever else you wanted, you didn’t want your precious MP’s visit to be from Menzies Campbell. In a political party often lacking charisma Campbell took the biscuit.

And so to today, and the one MP you wanted to avoid at all costs has become the leader of the party, but my opinion of Ming hasn’t changed over the intervening years. Where some see an elder statesman, a safe pair of hands, gravitas, I can only see an ineffective and ineffectual bumbler, a lacklustre mediocrity. He may be an expert on foreign affairs, but if so it is a talent he keeps well hidden.

Ming’s age has nothing to do with this; as I have explained my opinion of him was formed many years ago and nothing he has done since has changed it. If anything I think his age has benefited his reputation; it can only be because of his advanced years that he is seen by some as a respected sage, a wise old head. It certainly cannot be down to his mundane performances in parliament and across the media.

Some may say that he is a welcome antidote to the slick emptiness of Blair and Cameron, but if so he is about as refreshing as a dose of cod liver oil. Hopefully British politics can manage to get well again on its own; I think my interest in the subject is going into retirement.

Thursday 2nd March 2006

I've Become My Fears

I don’t really know what’s going on. I have traditionally eschewed reality TV programmes, pretty much. I tend to see bits of I’m A Celebrity… when it’s on as Ant and Dec are usually good value, I found myself watching some of the first series of Big Brother while it was still a novelty, and I even saw the fag-end of the second series of Fame Academy when my wife got into it; but that is about the end of it. Celebrity Love Island, The Farm, Simply Come Dancing and the rest of them pass me by; or rather I cross over to avoid them.

So what is going on now? First I got hooked on the last series of Celebrity Big Brother, largely I suppose because the evil triumvirate of Galloway, Burns and Rodman held such an awful fascination, and now I am watching, enjoying and even looking forward to the next episode of The Apprentice.

It is a sensation akin to rubbernecking really, I suppose, and I can’t help it. The thing is, I could always see why some people watch the celebrity reality shows; they feature people who you (may) have heard of and who you feel you know. It can be interesting to see another side to some famous faces, and indeed many celebs go on purely to show the public how they “really are”. In the event Celebrity Big Brother surprised me in that I didn’t expect to see another side to George Galloway, I was pretty sure he was happy with his public persona and that we would be subjected to it ad nauseum. I knew that when the series finished I would still think of him as an idiot; I just didn’t expect him to be revealed as also being such a nasty bully.

But why watch The Apprentice? Who cares what a group of unknown egotists get up to as they try and suck up to their would-be boss? Not me, I thought. The only effect the first series had on me was to unleash the mildly irritating Saira Khan into my consciousness, and I thought this new series would hold the same level of interest. However, for lack of anything else on telly I watched the first episode of the second series last week, and I haven’t looked back. I fear I’m hooked.

Yesterday’s episode for example showed the two teams, one of boys and one of girls, designing and selling their own calendars in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. In fairness I reckon that is a tricky challenge, a tough one to get right. The most obvious idea for the calendar, for it to be full of pictures of kids, is too obvious; but the lads went with it anyway, dressing babies up as teachers and policemen and printing a cheap, tatty and unimaginative calendar that looked like it had been run off on a pc with a cheap printer using the nastiest font available. The girls’ calendar was made up of pictures of cats, beautifully photographed and produced, but tragically balls all to do with Great Ormond Street, and with the dates on the calendar so small you needed a magnifying glass to read them. Then both sides pitched to three sets of buyers; the resulting presentations were at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but both utterly awful. Nargis for the girls showed that as a salesperson she makes a great pharmacist; she looked like she had never done any public speaking before, so surely this wasn’t the time and place to start. Her opposite number Mani stated before hand that he was an expert at this sort of thing, and he was, in his own mind. A more cheesy and insincere presentation it is hard to believe, until you realise that Mani is a management consultant, and then it all makes sense. To top it all, neither Nargis nor Mani thought it important to know how much their calendars cost when they went into their respective sales meetings.

It really is fascinating to see how inept (and indeed how downright odd) many of the candidates appear, how they just don’t seem up to it. I am sure doing The Apprentice must be pretty stressful, but it was still bizarre to see a good number of the contestants blubbing away when someone disagreed with them and they couldn’t get their own way. You could understand it if these people are wee youngsters plucked off the streets, all green and wet behind the ears, but they are mainly successful business people in their mid-thirties , old enough, and intelligent enough, to know better. Or so you would think.

They are not all as bad as each other, however; some seem to have a fair idea what they are doing, and in particular the girls appear generally more clued up than the boys. A good example of this was in the first episode where both teams had to pick a name for themselves. The girls apparently decided in a matter of minutes; one suggested “Velocity”, the others said “fine”. That was all that was required. The lads clashed horns for hours on end, agonising over this crucial business decision, before finally deciding on “Invicta”, in the face of solid opposition from Syed who couldn’t see why his suggestion – “The A team” – was shit.

It was high comedy indeed, and as if to prove it Harry Hill tackled the subject on last week’s TV Burp; but to no avail. Try as he might, no matter what he added to the raw material on show, nothing he said could make the situation seem any funnier than it already was. It is early days yet, but so far The Apprentice looks impossible to improve upon.

2 Comments

Wednesday 15th February 2006

No Cigar

Everyone knew that the proposed law banning smoking in public places was absurd; for smoking to be outlawed only in pubs that served food meant it was likely that some pubs would ditch food and become purely drinking and smoking dens. That hardly seemed a recipe for a healthy environment and so something had to be done; but surely not the complete banning of smoking in every public place in the country?

I don’t smoke, and so I am sure that I will regard pubs as being even nicer places for me to visit once smoking is banned, but this law seems all wrong. If you were to compare the way we live now to the way things were twenty years ago – with regards the general smokiness of pubs, the number of no-smoking areas and smoke-free workplaces, and in the number of smokers in general – then you can’t fail to notice that we have already made great strides in the direction the health campaigners would like us to go, all without any legislation. So why the need to ban smoking now?

I can understand the argument for banning smoking at work; I once worked in an office where most people smoked and it was pretty unpleasant. The proposal that I could just leave and get another job if I didn’t like it didn’t seem that fair to me (especially as this was in the middle of a recession and it had been tough enough just getting that job in the first place), and so I can sympathise with pub workers who don’t want to indulge in passive smoking but feel that they have little choice. Surely, though, there are all sorts of alternatives to an outright ban. You could ban smoking in the bar area itself, for example, or offer the carrot of tax relief or even the stick of health and safety regulations to encourage premises to improve their ventilation and air conditioning systems, or to create separate areas so that smokers and non-smokers are provided with a choice of where to sit. Of course, bar workers would still face smoke when they move out of the bar area, to collect glasses and so on, but then many workers face similar problems when they venture out of their offices or places of work. Plumbers, for example, may have their own smoke-free office, shop or showroom but could still have to work in a house owned by smokers, and they have to accept others’ freedoms in their work environment; or does this new law mean a private house becomes a workplace when workmen are there? Are people now going to be prevented from smoking in their own homes when they have an electrician in doing a re-wire?

It is easy, and all too tempting, to blame this law on a Labour government that is continually assailing our civil liberties in the face of public anger, but it is more depressing than that. The 200-vote majority in the commons on a free vote shows that this is not just a New Labour thing; politicians of all parties supported this bill. Also, as with ID cards and terrorism legislation the government can genuinely claim that they are in agreement with the general public on this one, as opinion polls regularly attest to. If anything, though, the figures on smoking are more disturbing.

Because I can see why people could support ID cards, 90 days detention, laws against glorifying terrorism, even capital punishment if they believe that such things will make them safer and aid national security; I don’t agree with them, but I can see there is an argument there. How though can you explain the Newsnight survey that suggested that if anything this government isn’t authoritarian enough; 64% of those polled agreed with the smoking ban, but many wanted the law to go further. 68% said that pregnant women should be banned from smoking at any time, 69% said that those with children should be banned from smoking in their own homes, and 48% wanted a total ban on smoking, full stop. I doubt many people think it is a good idea to smoke if you are pregnant, or to smoke around children, but for a majority to think that it is alright for the state to legislate in such areas seems quite worrying. For those who want a freer and more liberal society, it is starting to look like we may have no alternative but to impose it!

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