What should the next government do?

In the Ukraine there is a large section of the population that is known as ‘the disappointed’ – people who have no confidence in either their country’s government or the opposition. I hope that the proportion of ‘disappointed’ citizens will not continue to rise in this country as well, but I have my doubts.
It is not so-called apathy that keeps people away from the ballot box – this term is insulting to people most of whom continue to care – rather it is deep disappointment with the closely similar, austere and uninspiring fare that is on offer.
Unless the opposition brings forward a plan that has real vision, is fundamentally different from the others and which will improve the character of our society and the quality of life and work for those who have been hardest hit, I fear that the number of ‘disappointed’ will continue to increase.
Recent newspaper correspondence and a few thoughts of my own voiced in earlier articles on this blog prompted me to draw together a (partial) list of policies and objectives that would refresh the political process and inject some positivity. Here they are, along with ideas for taxation and savings to pay for them:
Policies
Recognise that the public sector can deliver public services in ways that prioritise benefit to the public rather than private sector profits. Start by renationalising the railways. Guarantee no further privatisations, jettison PFI and put an end to existing contracts wherever possible.
Make payment of the living wage mandatory, outlaw zero-hours contracts and unpaid work.
Phase in a reversal of the benefit cuts.
Stop the interminable messing around with the NHS and stop the government’s disguised health service cuts.
Impose effective regulation on those utilities not renationalised, introducing effective penalties, capping prices and restricting or windfall-taxing profits.
Get to grips with fuel poverty and undertake a big drive on insulation to reduce energy usage.
Get a grip on the banks, support an international financial transactions tax and facilitate local authorities in re-establishing municipal banks.
While interest rates are being held at historic lows introduce a scheme to pay decent interest on the first £10k of savings. Stop forcing government backed savings and investment schemes to parrot the private sector.
Crack down on payday lenders and other usurers.
Roll back increases in tuition fees.
Invest in a consistent and effective low carbon energy strategy including a tidal barrage.
Encourage domestic agriculture and the local sourcing of foods.
Prioritise manufacturing and ensure government purchases of British rather than foreign produced goods.
Support fair trade and gather support to roll back globalisation.
Stop ruining Local Government, reverse most of the cuts, devolve something other than cuts and costs and help with the millstone of unfunded equal pay legislation.
Increase the public funding of political parties to remove malign influence, policy bias and other favouritism associated with big financial donors.
Outlaw lobbying.
Implement Leveson.
Taxation
Apart from a new financial transactions tax noted above, increased revenue to support the listed policies could be gained from:
The increased tax revenue from the higher level of economic activity that would result from implementation of these proposals.
Ensuring that rich individuals and companies actually pay taxes. This will in part require international collaboration on abolition of tax havens and the introduction of a globalised tax regime.
Make National Insurance contributions flat rate. Something like 7% on incomes without upper limit would bring in as much as the present system which favours the rich. A higher rate would bring in considerably more.
Restore the 50% top rate of tax.
Make more frequent use of windfall taxes on excessive profits.
Allow local authorities to introduce two extra bands of council tax.
Savings
Major saving would follow from reduction in the number of Trident submarines.
Cancel HS2, spend half (i.e. £21.3bn (official), £36.5bn (Treasury internal) or £40bn (external experts) depending on which guesstimate you take) of the saving on improvements to existing lines and local rail schemes and use the remainder to support capital elements of the above proposals.
Take an axe to the use of private sector consultants by national government.

Let’s get rid of one-dimensional Globalisation

We hear far, far too much about the supposed necessity of ‘embracing globalisation’ but for some the embrace is much closer than others and clings with a deathly chill. I refer to those workers whose jobs have been stolen and shipped abroad by the owners and managers of multinational (i.e. mostly US dominated or with fealty to no nation) corporations and, alas, many companies still headquartered in this country if no longer in British ownership.
The receiving enterprises in the Eastern world, especially the far east including China and Bangladesh have working and environmental conditions ranging from outright exploitative through dire to lethal - as those multinational companies who profit the most from this trade have known for years. Each new ‘discovery’ of appalling working conditions, death trap buildings, cancer clusters, suicides and child labour of course comes as another ‘surprise’ to the profiteers.
There is no need for any of this. Trade, like politics, is what we make it. It is what governments allow it to be. These same governments do not allow their citizens to run amok in terms of crime (other than financial) nor should they in terms of the consequences of so-called ‘free trade’. Trade which is free in the sense that multinational profiteers are free to spend their gotten gains as they wish and the displaced workers or those younger people who will now not get a proper job are free to take a zero hours contract. In these ways, we’re all in it together.
The globalised companies take full advantage of slack or absent regulation and their ability to play one country off against another through lack of international co-ordination and covertly compliant governments. One company starts off-shoring jobs and the others, equally devoid of conscience but not of greed, follow suit with their erstwhile employees herded to the edge of the cliff like lemmings.
Ideally globalisation should be unwound – as I have argued in other posts on this blog. Globalisation didn’t arise overnight nor can it be got rid of quickly, but for western governments to plead powerlessness in the longer term is both defeatist and false. They may be thinking more of their campaign contributions.
But if we are stuck with globalisation, let us at least make it two-dimensional. This second dimension is an effective international tax regime to net the multinational tax dodgers, force them to pay a reasonable rate of tax and get rid of the parasite tax havens that facilitate them. In addition, a worldwide financial transactions tax would raise substantial revenue from a sector that can well afford to pay. Needless to say, the British Government is opposed to it but other countries may yet make a start.
And in future, when politicians and business big shots urge the embracing of globalisation let them embrace the two dimensional version in which they show some decency, social responsibility and some awareness of a common good beyond themselves.

Zero tolerance for Zero hours!

I was disgusted, though not entirely surprised, to learn that the extent of the use of zero hours contracts in business was far more widespread than officially acknowledged. And it turns out that organisations that should know better, such as some charities, are also exploiting people in this appalling way.
Someone on one of these zero hours ‘contracts’ has no guarantee of the number of hours of work that will be available to them in an upcoming week. There is also often no sick pay or holiday entitlement and they may be denied permission to get extra work elsewhere. They may also be expected, at short notice, to work far from home.
Doesn’t this all tell a dreadful story about the scandalous state of commercial morality today – zero hours at the bottom and big bonuses at the top. It also says much about the credibility of official employment figures as many of those unfortunates on zero hours contracts are taken to be fully employed. It is also one more reason to account for the huge profits made by usurers such as Wonga.
One national newspaper carried the headline ‘Why stop at Zero hours? Why not revive child labour?’ But this is, of course, exactly what is happening except that child labour is outsourced, along with the original jobs, to the Far East.
The apologists for these outrages need not trumpet that it is part of commercial reality and inevitable globalisation. Both are what we make them. And we should start re-making them immediately. There should be zero tolerance for zero hours.