• Growth

Listening to the woman talking, one would think that a continual increase in GDP was the only thing that mattered. For a politician, it perhaps is: for this is one of the few things that can be measured reasonably empirically over the parliamentary half-life of about four years (the first six months of a new government are spent working out what’s going on and the last six fighting a pre-election rearguard action).

Investopedia describes economic growth as “a rise in the production of goods and services for a certain period as compared with a previous one. It is generally measured in terms of GDP and is an indicator of the economic health of a country.” The last point is significant, particularly the words “an indicator”. GDP is not, in other words, the only measure, although it happens to be the easiest one to count.

Also significant is the word “economic”: for there are other valuable indicators. Indeed, as Investopedia’s definition goes on, “how widely the fruits of the growth are shared is an important factor in its sustenance, not to mention societal health and progress.” But such factors are very hard to quantify.

The use of “production” and the emphasis on GDP as our national indicator also encourages the creation of new things at the expense of repurposing old ones, whether or not the new are really needed. Maintenance has ever been the Cinderella of economic activity, novelty being much preferred. Although there are times when new technology is better, the laws of nature and physics are immutable. It is to them, and not the vanity of our shiny new creations, that our economic activity must pay more homage.

I would also feel much happier about economic growth if it were going to be producing four things:

• A more equitable society based on class, race, location or pretty much anything else;
• A serious re-investment in our creaking public services;
• A commitment to serious improvement in our performance on environmental matters;
• A reconsideration of the long-held mantra that companies, and in particular privatised monopolies, should be answerable primarily to the interests of their shareholders rather than to wider societal interests.

If all this seems like a hopelessly naive list, I’d suggest that every Labour election manifesto since God-knows-when would have regarded these considerations as axiomatic (the third, admittedly, being a more recent concern). In fact, I’m pretty sure this last manifesto did too. I can’t see any signs of any of these concerns being reflected in current Labour policy.

Early days, but so far this seems like one of the biggest electoral betrayals I can recall. Then you look at the alternatives, including the two parties which by most estimates are in the silver and bronze positions in the opinion polls, and you find your head crashing down onto the desk. Is it any wonder we’re losing faith in the established process?

• Bats

One of the touchstones for folly on a wide range of issues is HS2. An aspect Rachel Reeves singled out this week was £100m which is being spent on a bat protection structure in Buckinghamshire. We need, she exhorted her subjects today, “to stop worrying about the bats and the newts [and] to build a new infrastructure like nuclear power plants, train lines and wind farms more quickly.”

HS2 is a strangely pointless project. The actual idea made sense but the obsession with its speed, in such a small country, was not only baffling but also ramped up all the costs. I’ve heard stories from reliable sources about financial malpractices that shot my eyebrows right up. Everything about the project has become inflated, the cost of this feature doubtless amongst them.

Also, if this bat tunnel is to be built, this is surely only because legislation demands that the species be protected. Cheaper ways of accomplishing this might have included building the line to less rapid travel speeds and having a less dysfunctional process for running it. The £100m price tag is a salutary reminder of these points, also that we do not have a divine right to destroy the environment in pursuit of a railway line that was constructed, it would seem, largely by the vanity and self-interest of politicians and management consultants.

It’s not often that I quote the Bible, but I’ll do so here from Genesis 1 26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Well, I ask you. “Dominion over?” How does that work? Catching and eating the ones we’re able to? OK, Lions and sharks do that as well, but they don’t go around claiming dominion over creatures they’ve never seen and couldn’t dominate even if they had. The Bible, particularly the King James, has some of the most gorgeous prose in the English language but ideas like this – which have, because of the book’s commercial success, become wedded to our thought processes – are dangerous drivel.

There are ways to create growth which satisfies these other considerations but this government doesn’t appear  interested in exploring them. We can, if we follow the Gospel according to St Rachel, “stop worrying about the bats and the newts”. However, if we do that, we’ll stop worrying about all the other fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Then the delicate ecosystem in which we live will collapse and implacable nature will have its revenge upon us: and there will be great wailing and lamentations the like of which we’ve never seen.  

• Stateside

So far Trump seems to be doing pretty much what he promised, sacking staff, freezing funding (sort of), purging generals and rewriting maps. Of more importance to the rest of us will be his economic policies and how he decides to conduct himself with other world leaders.

One of these, and perhaps the most mercurial, is North Korea’s Kim. Last time out, he and DT had a famous love-in in the DMZ that didn’t produce many of the benefits Trump had hoped for. None the less, I suppose you have to try. This time, Kim has a new bestie in Moscow who needs him to help provide troops for what Trump rightly called the “ridiculous” war in Ukraine. The idea of Putin needing to recruit foreign forces at all is certainly ridiculous, and also a bit desperate. Desperate people do desperate things.

This BBC In-depth article looks at the history of the strange relationship between these two strange men and at the meetings between them that ended in nothing very much. “Donald Trump’s unorthodox diplomacy reduced tensions for a while, but it did not stop the expansion of Pyongyang’s weapons programme,” the article concludes. “His twenty steps into North Korean territory may also have legitimised a regime with one of the worst human rights records on the planet. But after three meetings there appeared to be a connection between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un that offered some hope that one day there would be peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

Kim-Trump II, the sequel,  is, perhaps, about to be put on general release…

• Captain Tom’s legacy

Covid produced several heroes, most of whose previous public profile was quite low. I’m talking about local councils, volunteer groups, charitable organisations, NHS staff and those responsible for creating and rolling out the vaccines. Less high in the roll-call of honour will come many of the national politicians, the PPE bandits and Dido Harding.

And then there was Captain Tom. In April 2020, aged 99, Captain Tom Moore decided to walk 100 lengths of his garden with the aim of raising £1,000 for NHS Charities Together. The result was slightly in excess of this, his walks producing over £38m. A week before his hundredth birthday, his duet with Michael Ball of You’ll Never Walk Alone gave him another record as being the oldest person to have a number-one single.

Everything about his life and his achievement perfectly jived with the mood and the need of the times. 2020 was a febrile period, with everyone’s nerves on edge. There was an almost millenarial atmosphere: the world as we knew it was about to collapse and saviours or symbols of hope would be found in unexpected places.

Something similar happened in1997 after the death of Diana, when the whole country went into a kind of collective spasm for about ten days. I can still remember my two young sons and their childminder, all of them in floods of tears, returning one afternoon from Buckingham Palace after having put out some flowers for, as four-year-old Michael weepingly explained, “the beautiful princess to show how much we loved her.” Captain Tom tapped into a similar main nerve in our national psyche.

Tom died in February 2021 and thus, mercifully, never saw the denouement of his work.

The swamp into which this has sunk is in stark contrast to the simple goal that he so casually set and so massively exceeded. Thus it often is. This BBC article looks at the accusations of mismanagement on the part of his family members, a tale of at best incompetence and at worst greed that is almost too depressing to read.

Two things strike me about the this. The first, that did forcibly at the time and which also does every Remembrance Day, is how there seems to be something deeply wrong with the idea that the NHS, or the care of people who have been injured in wars which the state has rightly or wrongly decided to wage, should have to rely on charitable donations.

The second is the question of temptation. At every time – but perhaps particularly at these kind of times – at every level and in every place, great causes are set up which cater for an un-met need. Whether its landmines, NHS funding or refugee support, well-meaning people put energy into something which takes off but which produces no direct benefit to them. Perhaps their own business suffers as a result, or was was failing anyway.

Such new ventures tend to have rather imperfect financial systems, particularly if they grow more quickly than the founders expected. What, the logic might run, is more reasonable than to “borrow” some money from all these funds suddenly sloshing through your hands to pay a VAT bill on your own company? You justify it by saying that you’re owed this from the work you’ve put in to the detriment of your own affairs.

First time, you pay it back. If you do, the moral trap is well and truly set: for further embezzlements then become justified. The day often comes when the repayments cannot be made, at which point falsification creeps in. Then you’re really in deep. Which of us could say that we would never be tempted in such circumstances, and from such seemingly reasonable beginnings?

None of this makes the aims of the charitable organisation you set up or took over contemptible. Nor should they be condemned by potential supporters if it’s clear that reforms have been put in place. Rather it shows a rather basic human susceptibility to temptation. Good book-keeping practices are not always followed. As someone who is more or less numerically illiterate, my instinct has always been to hand these matters over to someone else who knows what they’re doing.

Much grief can be avoided, in this and in other matter, by trusting experts. They may screw up but, if they do, it is (morally at least) their problem not yours: and it’s the moral aspect of any situation that enables us to look in the bathroom mirror each morning without flinching.

• And finally…

• I mentioned last week about Prince Harry’s high-profile court case with the Murdoch empire. Thanks to Simon Pike for drawing my attention to this legal blog which suggests that the reason for the pre-court settlement might have been a bit more complex than many (including me) suggested.

• Trump seems to be perfectly serious about trying to get hold of Greenland. Personal glory, strategic security and rare earth deposits all seem relevant to his thinking.

• Kier Starmer has had his opponents recently. However,  this editorial in The Week praises the role he played, when DPP, in helping to elevate the investigations into the grooming gangs. The article also praises the work done by The Times’ correspondent Andrew Norfolk and the then Editor James Harding on this. Mind you, this was back in 2011: does the mainstream media have the staff, the skills or the money to spend on similarly long investigations now, where there might be no return in the form of clickbait responses?

• Questions remain about about what Kemi Badenoch is up to. Her party is still languishing in the polls and she seems rather keener to dish out general blame about the state of the country (which has been ruled by her party outright or in partnership since 2010) than come up with any clear solutions. Meanwhile, Reform is breathing down her neck.

• As a football fan, I must say that the revised format of the Champions League, with one 36-team table and not everyone playing everyone, has worked quite well. None of the giants were eliminated in the final round, though some will have some tricky play-off ties. It is better now the best teams in the continent are playing each other, though some claim that this leads to inequalities. That’s always been the case. Only six countries – Spain, England, Italy, Germany, Netherlands and Portugal, in that order – have produced more than one winner of the competition in any of its formats dating back to 1956.

It’s also true that the first four countries have produced every winner and all but one finalist for the last 21 years. None the less, there’s a case that excellence rather than nationalism needs to be rewarded, even if the finances are increasingly tilted in favour of the big battalions; and often (it’s alleged) dishonestly. Will this winning pattern be upset this year? With fourteen of the twenty-four teams who might win this competition being from these four countries, I wouldn’t bet on it…

Across the area

• Old Town Newbury

The latest proposals for the redevelopment of the Kennet Centre in Newbury have recently been published. These represent almost as different a vision of the place from the previous Eagle Quarter scheme as it’s possible to imagine.

You can read more on this in this separate article  which includes the background to the development, how matters got to this point, what might happen next and sources of further information on the project.

• A (possible) email from Angela

I wrote last week about the government’s plans to reform the system of local administration, the main aim being to deal with the current two-tier system that exists in some areas; create larger unitary councils; and have mayoral authorities to make more strategic decisions (the idea with the latter probably being that one Mayor could more easily be brought into line with national thinking than could, say, a planning committee of a district council).

I also suggested, which I stand by, that councils up and down the country were anxiously looking round for potential partners, weighing the advantages of flirting with x against those of making a proposition to y. “It was,” I suggested, “a bit like a debutantes’ or freshers’ ball, with everyone equally fearful of moving in too soon and of being left on the shelf: and with the added complication that none of the participants has any money.”

It’s been suggested to me that this last statement isn’t true. Some district councils – which, in a two-tier system, aren’t responsible for social care or children’s services which are likely to bankrupt the rest – are sitting on disproportionate hight cash reserves. This would be another reason why the system is in need of reform.

I don’t have Angela Rayner’s personal email address: but, if I did, I might suggest that she send this to all councils this afternoon:

“Hi, district, country, borough, unitary, sui generis or whatever you are.

“The government has screwed up for the last twenty years or so (mainly due to the Conservatives, of course). We now recognise that some of you are spending upwards of 80% of your budget on a few statutory services for which you’re essentially agents of Whitehall. Some of you are also spending millions of pounds servicing debt repayments for services we make you provide.

This kind of makes a nonsense of the idea that you’re independent – though the illusion that you are is something we want to maintain lest people realise that it’s all our fault. Also, we don’t want to get involved with local delivery – as Covid showed, you’re much better than us at this .

“In addition, we don’t want to get mixed up with things like libraries, culture, heritage, cycle lanes, potholes and other matters your residents bleat about berng important, even though you have no money to spend on them apart from when we decide to throw a bit your way, usually to make us look good.

“We also recognise the current system of local government is a complete mess (mainly due to previous Conservative governments, of course) which is why we’ve proposed reforms. We also get it that you’re all hunting round for new partners in this dance. When one’s looking for a mate (or mates: we’re broad-minded and don’t rule out ménages à trois, or even à quatre if it gets you close to 500,000 people), two things test high: money and experience. With that in mind, this is what I’m going to do.

“First, we’re going to hoover up all your reserves. Some of you, particularly districts, will have a lot more than others. Then we’re going to let you pick your own partners. The districts won’t know anything about running social care or children’s services but probably have money stashed away. The counties and unities do know about this, but (for exactly this reason) don’t have any money. Marriages made in heaven, right? So, you pick partner/s based on this co-incidence of abilities and interests and trust us (you’ll have to, I’m afraid) to provide you with a suitable dowry.

“All this financial confusion will also enable us to finesse three other changes without anyone really noticing.

“The first is to somehow lose the billions in SEND costs that have for years been hovering halfway between your balance sheets and ours. Don’t ask how – better that you don’t know. We accept that this is a nightmare for all of us but this can be rolled into the final settlement and the whole thing wiped away like it never happened.

“The second is to deal with the clearly dysfunctional way business rates are redistributed, which doesn’t benefit anyone to the extent that was intended. Clearly you lot in rich areas can’t keep them all, but we concede the the whole system is pretty messed up. Oh yes: we’ll also have a look at reforming and updating the housing valuations for council tax – promise.

“The third is is to stop or at least reduce these insane financial beauty contests which tie your officers up in applying for funds for ring-fenced projects they don’t need just to stop some other authority getting them. These waste a lot of time for us as well. We’ll move (perhaps slowly) towards giving you, or perhaps the mayors, enough money to do what we feel might be needed; and trust you, under these new arrangements, to spend it as you decide. After all, if these new arrangements aren’t going to work, what’s the point of them?

“Admitting such a collective failure on the part of Whitehall over the last twenty years will be a bitter bill for some cilvil servants and politicians to swallow, so your complete discretion is required. The acts of financial imagination that will be required to resolve these, particularly the first, will be much more likely to succeed if you were to stay schtum on what was going on.

“In return, I can promise you, within reason, a new partner (or partners) of your choice, a dowry (set by independent-ish experts in SW1) and a new start. Let’s face it, the current situation of hidden costs, Section 114 bankruptcies and mutual blame isn’t doing any of us any good. We want to get re-elected. You want to say in power. We’re both in a mess. This is what we’ve decided will work. Or might work. Got to be worth a shot.

“And one more thing, regarding the mayoral authorities. The official line is that they’ll be receiving powers passed down from us rather than taking over powers councils already have. If I hear one yip from you saying that this isn’t the case, I’ll cut you off without a penny.

“Yours, etc.”

That should do it…

• Recycling improvements

Kerbside collections are expanding in West Berkshire with certain pots, tubs, and tray now able to be recycled. “In response to our public consultation on our Draft Waste Management Strategy,” a WBC statement explains, “we are working in partnership with Veolia, our waste management partner, to introduce this service well ahead of the Government’s deadline of 31 March 2026.

“The new kerbside collection will make it much easier for residents to send their plastic waste to recycling and recovery. Alongside plastic bottles, cans and aerosols, residents can now add certain clean plastic pots, tubs, and trays to their recycling bags for collection. This includes items such as clear yoghurt pots, spread tubs, most ready meal trays, and clear fruit punnets. Residents with communal bins, will also be able to dispose of these items in the red-topped wheelie bin.”

Please click here for more, including a more detailed list of what can and cannot be collected under these new arrangements.

• Old bills

Still on the same theme, Slough Council has admitted that in a desperate bid to plug its spectacularly large financial pot hole it’s resorted to chasing up unpaid council tax bills from up to 27 years ago. Two things immediately strike me.

The first is that if it has allowed some debts to build up for that long it’s perhaps no surprise it’s in the pickle it’s in. Of course, the problems are worse than unpaid council-tax bills: even if all this money was collected (unlikely) it wouldn’t probably tough the sides of the debt.

The second is that most people don’t have records going back that far so I can’t see how any claims could reasonably be challenged. Where does the burden of proof lie? If West Berkshire Council were to send us a letter saying that we hadn’t paid our council tax in 1997-98, I couldn’t think of any way we could refute this.

Silly me: I’m giving them ideas. Might this desperate expedient be resorted to by WBC? These days, one can’t rule anything out. All will be revealed when the budget is confirmed by the Full Council at the end of February.