Tag Archives: economy

Have you paid for the Royal Wedding?

Posted on by

It’s the Royal Wedding soon – 29 April 2011. Have you bought your tea towel? Have you paid £3 for a bottle of Kiss me Kate from your local Weatherspoons pub?

If you haven’t yet then you need to be quick, the economy needs you! If conservative estimates are correct, £1bn could be injected into the economy as a consequence of this wedding, but it needs you, the consumer, to get out over the bank holiday weekend and spend like your children’s centre or maternity unit depended on it.

Of course that doesn’t matter much because the wedding will cost £5bn to the economy anyway, making the whole occasion a loss to the tune of £4bn – hey but it’s worth it, right? It’ll be the most expensive day that the nation has taken off for a long time but who hasn’t taken a sneaky day off before at the expense of a day’s wages (and a taxation loss of a few hundred frontline police staff)?

I suppose it would be a bit rich to ask either of the families to pay up. The Middleton’s, despite much fuss being made of Kate’s maternal family lineage, which includes coal miners from Byker (as in Byker Grove, I cannae believe that man), are worth £30m. True, that wouldn’t be able to re-pay the loss to the UK economy for an extra bank holiday, but it could’ve at least contributed to the cheesey pineapple sticks and cocktail sausages.

And the other family, the Royal Family, the most Royal of all UK families. They have a bit of cash lying around to see that Kate and Bill’s special day is, er, special, don’t they? Prince Charles, through entrepreneurial ventures, is worth something close to £36m himself. And if that’s the case, why does it matter that in 2009 the Royal Family cost the taxpayer 7p more than in 2010. It’s not a saving, it’s an insult.

The Civil List, which effectively is the Government subsidy for the family (around £38m a year), pays for Royal staff and transport. The Crown Estate says that 70% of that sum goes on staffing costs. But how much do they cost, if you consider that it cost the taxpayer £14,756 for the Prince of Wales to take the Royal Train from London to Cumbria to launch a Red Squirrel Survival Trust. Or consider that it cost £85,700 in charter flights to get him and the Duchess of Cornwall to Italy and Germany in 2009.

Those are some significant staff costs.

But – a big but – they are worth every penny for the money they bring to the economy. The Crown Estate estimates £304m. It doesn’t say exactly how, and I’d love to see some breakdown figures. I’ll give it a guess though: tourism and trade. Though France doesn’t have a Monarchy, and they’re doing okay aren’t they?

Not just okay. France is the second largest economy in Europe, fifth largest in the world and has been growing consistently since 2009. Wow. France attracted 78.95 million foreign tourists in 2010, making it the most popular tourist destination in the world. Their tower – the Eiffel tower – is the most visited paid monument in the world.

So France can do international trade well, and receive tourists without making losses literally all over the place. I’m not liking the sound of this, but perhaps there is no point having a Monarchy. But how do we tell them that?

Frank Huzur on Imran Khan, Jemima, the Taleban and writing.

Posted on by

I was delighted to interview writer Frank Huzur recently. Frank specializes in Indo-Pak political affairs and is incredibly knowledgeable on India, the Afghanistan war and the Taleban. He has a book coming out soon, Imran versus Imran: The UNTOLD STORY, the biography of Imran Khan.

Frank had this to say about the book and then the interview follows:

It has not been a smooth journey across the border. For an Indian national, irrespective of profession-media is more notorious in India-Pakistan for stoking the fire of jingoism and sowing the seed of hatred—it is always a thorny affair to travel to each country. I somehow have been fortunate to visit Pakistan seven times in three years. Writing the biography of Imran Khan was, indeed, a powerful motivation. Nevertheless, travelling through different areas, Lahore, Mianwali (ancestral place of Imran Khan and his political constituency) and Islamabad–was always a tough ask, considering the combustible political situation on streets. Terror attacks, hundreds of them–quite big in size and casualty, have hit high profile targets, some of them during my visit.

Irrespective of everything, I maintained my focus on the goal, and returned each time armed with a vast range of anecdotes and impressions of Imran Khan and Pakistan politics. People of Pakistan have been very beholden to my literary endeavour and have never discouraged me from probing further into their lives and times.

Imran and his family and friends were very warm and friendly during numerous round of interviews for the biography. His brother-in-law and sisters in Lahore were candid in sharing their side of the story.

Jemima Khan in London was equally considerate and beholden to my requests. She was very forthright in sharing her impressions of Imran. I am indebted to her for taking the interview at her Studio One apartment, Fulham Broadway in April, 2008.

1) How did you get into writing?

FH: I discovered as early as in 8th grade at school that writing was my natural instinct. The urge to write began with composition of poems in English. Reading of Wordsworth’s poems, I wandered lonely as a Cloud, The Solitary Reaper, Strange Fits of Passion have I known romanticised my imagination. By the time I was a school graduate at the age of 15, I tasted blood with the publication of some of my poems on the New Delhi-based English dailies, including The Asian Age. I was in love with the romantic age in English literature, and doted on the Lyrical Ballads, a joint publication of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Before taking a maiden shot at playwriting, I had composed over 100 poems under the title of Remembering Her. When I joined Hindu college, Delhi University in 1995, poetic sentiments found expression in prose and play. In summer of 1998, I published my maiden play, Hitler in Love with Madonna. The title of the play was dubbed weird by friends, and critics were attracted like moth to the lamp during rehearsal itself. However, it brought me a fair share of public acclaim in the national press, for its political undercurrents.

Poetry and play further fired my imagination to comment on the burning issues of society and politics. In the spring of 1997, I had the temerity to launch a monthly newsmagazine, Utopia, with heavy dose of political reportage from around the world. The inaugural issue of Utopia in March 1997 coincided with the political debut of Imran Khan across the border in Pakistan. Since then, political churning in the subcontinent and elsewhere continues to fire my imagination to dabble in chiefly three genre of literature, poetry, drama (fiction) and non-fiction. I am still a few years away from writing a novel.

2) You have written a lot about Imran Khan and have a book coming out soon about him. What can you tell us about him and why is he so fascinating to you?

FH: The fascination with Imran, to speak the truth, bordered on paranoia during school days. I was growing up in Patna, capital of a benighted state like Bihar in India, where cricket was staple diet. Throughout ‘80s Imran was a household name for apparent reasons. However, I found myself increasingly obsessed with the other side of his charismatic persona, such as his philanthropic passion, which was on display during the 1987 World cup semi-final in Lahore. Imran lost the battle against Aussies, announced his retirement and despite winning the car in the ‘Man of the Series’ award, he gifted it to Abdul Qadeer. He had already started a fierce campaign to build the cancer hospital in memoriam of his mother, Shaukat Khanum. I was a 10 years old cricket wannabe at the time. Still, I could experience the magic moments of Imran’s other side, a cricketer who was a crusader for a public cause and an opinionated sportsman who could talk for hours on issues of public interest. Gathering such impression of Imran in the face of prevailing media stereotype at the time like he was a playboy, junkie and Lothario was quite a unique experience. Doting on a superstar from across the border, supposedly an enemy country for an average Indian youth, was another surprise.

Nevertheless, Imran Khan was a ticket to hate-free zone vis-a-vis Indo-Pak barbed wire rivalry goes. He has never been an anti-India rhetorician.

The childhood obsession with Imran became a passionate act of observing his political innings in the prime of my youth as a writer and journalist. Visiting Pakistan for over half-a-dozen occasion in the past three years of troubled past opened my eyes to a vast sheaf of reality bites. Not only about the man who has been deep into maelstrom of his political struggle and movement for justice, but also about the bedevilled country, mired into morass of bad political morals.

My biography of Imran Khan, Imran Versus Imran: The Untold Story (expected last week of July, 2010, Falcon & Falcon Books Ltd. London) is an unambiguous enquiry into his political innings. This is not about a cricketing legend. Imran versus Imran brings out the so far unknown sides of a legendary crusader who has sacrificed on several fronts, including his marriage to Jemima, children living in London while he braves the heat and dust on Pakistani streets, luxury of cloistered life in the West and a lucrative career in cricket administration or commentary box. Like a Sufi who lives by his passion and instinct for a cause, Imran has been an Avant-garde voice against the status-quo in Pakistan.

3) What do you think is next for Imran?

FH: Imran will not fade out in the present avatar. Those who know the former captain of Pakistan cricket team will testify to his childlike lust for grabbing his toy. Capturing power is not his agenda. Power doesn’t please him, which is why he has been quick in rejecting several offer of alliances with nearly all the political formations. He could have won a good number of seats in February 2008 Parliamentary elections. Yet he listened to the voice of his conscience and boycotted the polls as a tribute to lawyers’ struggle for restoration of Independent judiciary.

Like Jemima told me, even if Imran doesn’t succeed in electoral terms, he will remain a yardstick by which honesty of a politician in mud pond of Pakistan politics will be measured. However, Imran will not give up. The youth of the country are solidly behind him, and he is promising them a ‘bloodless revolution.’ Imran will go down even in his political innings a successful crusader. Even though he is still not a maverick and a great organiser of political programmes, he does stand his chance. He is gearing up to go for jugular sometime in near future.

Having said that, Imran Khan is a unique politician who is rabidly against the American policies and on-going drone attacks in the tribal areas, not to mention a series of suicide bombings targeting civilian population in Lahore and elsewhere. Imran will not soften his anti-America stand in order to capture power. He wants to create history like Ayatollahs in Pakistan, and he doesn’t give damn to those who accuse him of being a ‘devil advocate’ of Taleban.

4) What do you think of the current political and economical situation of the world today?

FH: The world politics is on the brink of tectonic shift in its scope and character. Forces of privatization and globalisation are under intense scrutiny in nearly all the countries, be it the USA, Europe, Latin America or Indian Sub-continent. The economic crisis, in the past couple of years, has robbed the crystal ball gazing off its sheen.

Europe is experiencing a paradigm shift vis-a-vis confrontation with corporate state. The upsurge in stocks of Liberal Democrat in the British Parliamentary elections is a testimony to the ‘wind of change blowing in the air.’ In Germany, there is a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left) led by Oskar Lafontaine. In Nederland, the Socialist party is looking set to replace the Labour Party as the principal opposition party. Greece’s economic woes have triggered a massive surge in mass support for the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. Spain and Norway, Socialists are already entrenched in power corridor. Least said the better about the Latin American countries like Bolivia, Venezuela, Brasil and others where socialist sentiments have acquired a zing even among youth.

In Indian subcontinent, love affairs with corporations continues and it will have its moment of reckoning in near future. Though the ruling party, Indian National Congress is a centrist party, its policies of late have been hammered on public streets for extreme pro-corporation bias. The principal opposition party led by Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) is not perceived much different from the ruling coalition of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). However, a vast crowd of poor Indians, especially in northern provinces of Hindi heartland where majority of Indians live on their small agricultural holdings, are veering towards the third alternative, socialist party of India. Samajwadi Party, (Socialist Party of India) is the third largest political bloc on the floor of Indian Parliament. Over the past couple of years, the party is registering massive inroads into hearts and minds of common Indians under the vibrant leadership of its young leader, Akhilesh Yadav, who is a suave, English-educated master in Environment from University of Sydney. Akhilesh is the principal rival to Rahul Gandhi’s juggernaut in the most populous province of Uttar Pradesh, and probably a counterfoil to Rahul Gandhi’s premier ambition to rule the highly-cherished state.

The politics across the border in Pakistan is a worrying sign for us all in the sub-continent. However, the transfer of power from President Zardari to Prime Minister Gilani and recent surge in judicial activism augurs well for fledgling civil institutions in the beleaguered nation, which has been an important ally of the USA-led coalition against war on terror. Imran Khan’s role can’t be discounted, as he has fired the imagination of Pakistani people over pros and cons of democracy and dictatorship.

In all, President Obama is yet to demonstrate his famous ‘audacity of hope’ calibre, and as of now, he is looking like an Ostrich over Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrytal’s unceremonious exit is a serious setback to the American strategy in Kabul.

5) Do you think the war in Afghanistan is winnable?

FH: There are no winners in war, whether in Afghanistan or Vietnam. For centuries, the Great Game theory has been pounded of its barest bone and flesh in the opium fields of Kandhar. The Soviets were sucked into interminable conflict and by the time realisation dawned upon them, they had become paupers in every conceivable way. The USA and Britain didn’t learn a lesson from the condemned past before committing chaotic blunder after blunder.

The Taleban should have been taken out of their hideouts. Nine years later, the army of rugged Pathans are now lurking at gates of Kabul. Nine years of bloated and arrogant war machinery has created only mausoleum of thousands of innocent Afghan men, women and children, over 1,000 American soldiers and over 100 British soldiers, not to mention tragic loss of NATO soldiers and a great number of promising journalists, including Daniel Pearl. Had the war on terror in Afghanistan been on the course of achieving even ten percent of its laid-out objectives, Taleban would not have mushroomed in the tribal areas of Pakistan and bombing its innocent civilians and military General Headquarters.

Adding further insult to injuries, the cost of Afghan war has overtaken that of Iraq for the first time this summer. President Obama is committing $65 billion more, with total cost of fighting the Taleban and Al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan all set to zoom past $100 billion in 2010 alone.

The Afghan war is a catastrophic blunder on all fronts. Just as the Soviet’s humiliating withdrawal destabilised the neighbouring regions, the prevailing situation on the border of Pakistan bodes ill for even eastern neighbourhood of India.

6) What is your writing schedule?

FH: Writing is a spontaneous process for me. I never plan my writing schedule. However, I am a night animal, and prefer to borrow more from arterial stretches of imagination late into the night. The midnight hours are more simulating as the din of daytime robs me off creative cultivation of thoughts.

7) Do you think it is possible to defeat the Taliban?

FH: Taleban is a stateless phenomenon. Which is why it is difficult to root these faceless warriors out for once and all. Taleban is an idea, and a vampire-like creation out of the monstrous cocktail of Jihadi ideology and distorted interpretation of Islam. If the Western powers commit to fight the idea of Taleban, only then its elimination is possible. Liberal and democratic forces should be encouraged to penetrate into the deep pockets of extremist heartland where young, impressionable minds are being indoctrinated to slaughter innocents of the civilised society.

8 ) India is known as a place where people go to find themselves. What makes India so magical?

FH: India is not just a place populated with people of diverse faiths and caste-ridden Hindu population. India’s secret weapon is her tenacity, ability to smile in face of fierce tragedy. There are islands of poverty in every single metropolis, not to mention hundreds of small towns and millions of villages, yet beauty of India cuts through rivers of sorrow as millions of Indians rise and fall in their perennial search for salvation. Every Hindu caste Indian has his own deities, his own temple where he believes his deity will rain milk and honey if he surpass other fellows in his offerings. Spiritual fascism of high priests apart, there are many portals of liberating one’s soul. The vastness of the country offers its own aesthetic beauty where a person from northern temple town of Benares will find himself alien in the southern temple city of Tirupati in lingua and look, yet a northerner and southerner will be united in their common pursuits of salvation at the feet of stone-deity.

India is home to more Muslims than Pakistan, and its secular, democratic polity has endured powerful assaults over the fabric of its communal accord. However, the land of mystic seers and shrines is in the grip of difficult challenges, of late as terrorism of all shades rears its ugly head.

9) What is next for you?

FH: I am about to write a couple of more biographies, preferably a biography of India’s socialist titan, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has ruled India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh three times and has also been ex-defense minister. I am also working on the biography of Britain’s top Muslim, Dr Khurshid Ahmed, who is winner of CBE from the Queen, for his pivotal role in improving the image of West in Muslim countries. In addition, I am also working on my debut novel, albeit a tad slow.

Thank you Frank.

For more on Frank, follow the link

Michael Green interview. On Philanthrocapitalism, Thatcher and why globalisation is a good thing.

Posted on by

I was honored to interview Michael Green recently. Here is the interview. Buy his books, Philanthrocapitalism
and Road To Ruin

Tell me about philanthrocapitalism.

What I can tell you about the genesis of the book, Matthew and I are old friends from school and then we both studied economics at university, and then went off in very different directions. He went off to the Economist writing about business, I ended up in Government working on international aid, we stayed friends and we talked about things in the world. About 5 or 6 years ago we came together again because Matthew was going out and talking to all of these Silicon Valley top entrepreneurs who were all getting into philanthropy.

I think because they saw themselves as natural problem solvers so they very quickly got into philanthropy. So Matthew was going along to talk about business and they would start having a conversation with him about philanthropy. So he was coming to me because I was working in aid. Saying: ‘what do you think about what these people are doing?’ Do you think it’s any good?’ My initial response was what they were doing was interesting, but they are business and aid is all about government.

My mind started to be changed when you saw people like Bill Gates [ doing his foundation]. So Matthew and I decided that we were starting to see a new trend from different perspectives. His from the business side and mine from the government aid side. So we decided to get together and chart what was going on. So the real time was about 2006 with Warren Buffet, giving his money to Bill Gates for his foundation. So here were the two richest men in the world who up until then had not really been big philanthropists. 
What we decided to do was go through all these different philanthropists, started from a position of some scepticism. The good ones in business actually had a lot of value to add, but what I saw was that the government can do some things well but the government is never going to be very good at taking risks.

Government is never going to be innovative. Whether that be politicians or civil servants or anyone. We don’t have government to do those risky things. So actually these people playing the role of being the rich capitalist in our system may be good ideas, to then be implemented later by government. So that was how we came up with the book.

So philanthrocapitalism is really about two things: One, the way the super rich donors are applying the skills of business to giving, using the tools in which they made money to giving their money away. The second idea is, if you look back in history, whenever you have a golden age of capitalism you will always have a golden age of philanthropy. So rather than philanthropy and capitalism being opposites. Philanthropy is the thing that complements the capitalism. Because capitalism creates disruption and turbulence in the world. Because it brings change. So essentially entrepreneurs are implementing that change through our history. 
They have been most sensitive to those changes and they have also been aware of their own responsibility to mitigate the impact of those changes. And deal with the social and environmental consequences of that change. So philanthropy is the thing that complements capitalism. To keep it sustainable in the long term. So philanthrocapitalism is about that. The word itself was Matthew’s bright virgin idea. The point: people who do best out of our economic system have an obligation in their own self interest to give back to all the rest of society.

Can ordinary people do anything to help?

The book first came out on the autumn of 2008. The paperback came out autumn 2009. In the original book we talked a bit about some of these online giving sites like kiva.org and global giving, but actually when we wrote the paperback we wrote a whole new chapter because we were being a witness to change. We called it mass philanthrocapitalism.

These sites on the internet are giving individual givers so much power these days. The way the internet has transformed business, it is now transforming giving. Online giving tools allow people to be selective in their giving. I give money to a charity, I have no idea how my money is used. They send me back a load of photos, saying haven’t we done well. These new online giving tools tell me exactly where my money is going. It helps me feel really connected. The way these transform business and giving. It allows ‘ordinary people’ to really do amazing things.

Tell me about your background

I grew up in the most boring part of south – west London. Glaswegian by birth. Left when I was 2 and a half. Was a Geordie for two and half years. Moved to the most boring part of south west London and grew up there until I went to university. In 1992 there was a chance to go and teach economics in Poland, which actually was funded by George Soros so I leapt at the chance. I spent four years in Warsaw. Fascinating time until 1996 when that country was changing and how they managed that transformation. When I arrived there of course Poland was really in the doldrums and just after the first year it really started picking up and recovering. So I learnt a huge amount then about the role of business and all these things about development and how that change really pushed Poland ahead. Came back to Britain, didn’t have a job, and I got taken in by government, working as an economist, doing aid. Thought I would do it for a year. Then found out I really enjoyed it. So stayed for 12 years and left 18 months ago.

Will poverty ever be eradicated?

Pockets of poverty. Say people living on less than 60% of median wage. I don’t think you will ever eradicate that. There will always be really big inequality. I think in terms of absolute poverty. People living on a dollar a day, people not being able to go to school, very high levels of disease that can be eradicated. I think we do have the resources to do it.

We do have the tools but what we are missing is the political will. With the right political will there are so many problems in the world that can be solved. And when I talk about Political will I am talking about the government of developing countries. That is the real missing piece of the jigsaw. And that has really got to be changed.

Has the recession hurt?

It has definitely hurt overall giving. The figures for UK giving have fallen by about a billion, I think, because of the recession. In terms of big philanthropy we haven’t. I think the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for example is giving more. If you look at the latest Forbes list, wealth is recovering, so definitely, the richest are still spending money and the will of the rich to give is still there. It may even be stronger after the recession. A lot of people said this was a passing thing. A lot of our critics said this was a passing fad, that philanthrocapitalism was part of the bubble. But we have seen over the past few years is that giving is resilient. There has been some setback but I think it is going to come back even stronger over the next few years.

What can be done to promote long term social change?

Some of the things that will have an effect on social change are technology. If you look at global changes, the big challenge over the next fifty years is going to be the change of agriculture particularly. I think we have a huge challenge over the next fifty years. So you have got to see social changes in the context of ecological changes. So that is a negative change.

You also have huge opportunities, like the internet. Lots of the problems in the developing world can be solved by mobile phones. I think this could be the most transformative technology. One is it’s a way of getting information to those people. It is now a way you can transfer money to those people. It is a way for them to communicate to the rest of the world. Even more importantly what the mobile phone is doing in developing countries is allowing people to have their voice heard. So one of the impacts of the mobile phone on the developing countries that you see is that it is much harder for dictators to rig elections. Because if you have people with mobile phones outside polling stations you could say. ‘I have not been allowed to vote. They are stuffing the ballot box.’ They can phone in and share that to the rest of the world.

It is a huge tool for democratization. It allows people voices to be heard. In so many ways traditional government programmes are still those sort of 20th century, we decide what the targets are and then we tell people what they are getting. What the internet and the mobile phone allow us to do is create this dialogue of communication with people, but actually it means we can customize information, focus on what people really need, that is huge potential transformation. It brings the poor into the discussion about the kind of transformation they need rather than giving them what they think they need.

How do we balance the line between helping and a dependency culture?

I think the real challenge here is how do we actually help the poor to help themselves, whether in this country, or in another country. To take control and escape from poverty. Instead of being trapped in this dependency culture. There are a couple of things, in the developing world; you have got to give them property rights. There is a brilliant economist, Hernando De Soto, who shows that is the lack of property rights in the developing world that holds them down. You need to have a state that enforces those rights. You also have to provide those people with assets. Not just inanimate assets, but also skills and education 
The way to help the poor is that you give them assets that they can use. We all aspire to a better life but how do you give people the tools to do that? People know that it has to be education. That is 
how you create a level playing field. If you give people education I think they will find their way out. That is the secret.

What do you think of the growing divide between the rich and the poor?

If you look at the average incomes in the past 20 years. At the start of the 20th century there was a peak in super wealth. And then there is a huge reduction in inequality, what they call in America, the great compression, in the middle of the 20th century. Then in the last 30 years, basically since the Reagan era there was this massive spike in inequality. The rich have had the greatest share out of economic growth. The super rich have not even peaked yet. There has been a massive spread in inequality. I am less worried about inequality per se. I don’t think all inequality is bad. It does not bother me about the super rich. The real question is ‘are people trapped in dependency?’ Are people trapped in poverty. That is different. That to me is the real question rather than just the inequality.

Where do you think aid is needed?

There are a couple of things. Say a country like Pakistan. Here is a country whose poverty has gotten no better in 30 years. Over that same period, here is country who has managed to develop nuclear weapons. So, actually there are the resources in that society to meet the needs of the population. So the people who run the country choose not to allocate the resources. 
This is true of so many developing countries. The country in Africa with the most amount of poor people is Nigeria, which also has spectacular wealthy rich people. Are the population receiving a decent amount of the wealth of the country? 
Political leaders do not see that as something they have to do. I think one of the good things the philanthropist have done is challenge some of those systems. There is a guy called Mo Ibrahim who set up the CelTel company, who brought the mobile phones to Africa. He sold to MTC Kuwait, but what he has done is use lots of his money to run a foundation which is giving an annual prize to the best political leader in Africa. 
Basically, he has these people at Harvard that rank all the political leaders in Africa. Then he gives a prize to the person who has done the best job. What he says is that he is trying to start a debate about it. About political leadership. So the ordinary person will say, hold on, why has my guy not won? Actually there are real objective reasons, because my guy is not really doing anything. We have to see that change in the developing world. Where the leaders actually start serving ordinary people.

Do you think there will be a future revolution?

Slightly worried that there is the potential for a tremendous backlash against capitalism. Not in terms of an economic system, but in massive regulation. That would strain the whole financial sector. I don’t think people realise just how angry the public are about the financial crisis. It is not something that is going to go away.

We have this new book that has just come out in the States called ‘The Road form ruin’ which takes a look at the financial crisis. We have taken a look at the crises in the past and which shows how long the public stays angry. What we look at is banker bashing with regulations. This is where the captains of industry have to say, ‘we do have a responsibility to society.’ They have to start talking to society about how what they do is socially useful. If they don’t, the backlash could still come.

What influence do you think the coalition government is going to have? Will it make it better or worse?

I think this government … The natural assumption is that the Conservative manifesto talks tough about the banks butmost people are going to assume that behind the scenes they won’t do anything about it. On the other hand the lib-dems have this very easy populism. This was essentially the populism of a party that would never come into power. I think we could actually have a dream team here – you have a recognition that change has to happen because there is public anger, but also recognition that our future prosperity is at stake if we over-regulate. 
We have to build a better financial sector. What they are saying in the coalition document on financial reform is nothing particularly exciting. But I am encouraged about the idea of having a commission that will look at future financial regulation, to think seriously about how you rebuild the financial sector. The coalition could go either way; into heady populism, the other way into doing nothing. But there is also a chance that there will be some real change.

I do not know what ‘Big society’ actually means. All I have seen come out of the coalition so far has not told us much more what it is about. What my big concern about this is that I don’t know how much the big society actually owes to Phillip Blond and the ‘Red Tory.’ I think reading ‘Red Tory’ what really strikes me is that he has this huge resentment off capitalism and the financial market. My fear would be that, therefore, the big society vision sees itself as something that is about specific sectors, like the social enterprise sector on its own. Rather than being connected. 
Which I think would be enormously disenchanting.

I think it has to be reworked to check out the link between the city, and the big society. We have to bring the skills from the city to support the big society vision. I think there is something potentially really transformative. If you ring-fence the big society and keep it away from capitalism, I think it is just going to be a small experiment that is not going to go very far…the government has to think how it will work interacting with the big society. Should you be actually ring fencing parts of government departmental budgets?

I wonder what Phillip thinks about capitalism… I have been reading ‘Red Tory’ and one of the examples he gives for his vision is micro-finance… By the way of investing in micro-finance as a commercial product. Which I think is a great story as micro-finance started out as charity but has becomes a full, proper business. You actually have micro-finance banks raising money on the global capital market, which of course, is all this capital sloshing around which can then be financing the poor. It’s easy to bash capitalism but actually it has enormous potential to do good.

When you talk to leading CEO’s they really do get it. They are serious about giving back to society. A lot of people like to dismiss this as ‘capitalism is just evil.’ I don’t think that is true. If you meet these people they are passionate and committed. They see that you cannot separate the fortune of their company from the fortunes of the rest of society. The two are linked. Companies have to do well by doing good. That is what good capitalism is about. That is what people who hate capitalism do not want to see.

Why do you think people are so wary of capitalism?

We take what capitalism gives us for granted. What changed my mind about capitalism was living in Poland. One of the blinding conversions I had in Poland, was actually that I learned to love McDonalds. When I arrived in Warsaw there was no McDonalds, but there was a local version called Hamburger Max. Their largest burger was a ‘Big Max’. Just a rip off of McDonalds. The food was terrible, it was expensive and the toilets were disgusting. McDonalds came in, I am not saying it is the greatest food, but it was clean and it was inexpensive. You knew what you were getting. It changed the way people invested in Poland. They were providing a very valuable service. I am not saying feed your children McDonalds three times a day. I am not advocating that. But these businesses that are often seen as the bad face of capitalism. They add value and change the economy.

What do you think about Globalisation?

I am very pro. In a country like Poland, it was globalization that helped them make their economic reforms such as success. The thing about globalisation and trade is that it is win-win. The one thing that most economists agree on is free trade. Economists are usually miserable people. They say you can only have one thing if you don’t have something else. Trade is the one thing in economics that is definitely win-win. The power of that to transform is so powerful. A lot of the anti- globalisation lobby is, I think sometimes it’s a rage against change and sometimes its anti corporate mentality and they do not see the opportunity. 
I sometimes want to cry when I see what Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, says about trade. He is hugely influential. He has these articles written, presumably by Christian Aid that is all sort of anti trade. It is really bad.

Do you think people ever change their mind?

You have to remember that people are tribal, However, we have access to so much information now that people will have the knowledge to change their mind. I would really worry if I was running a large charity these days. I would worry about the hold on my membership. People have so much access to information.

Do you think George Osborne will be a good chancellor?

I think the six billion cut was a mistake. Interest rates are still basically at zero. What that means it that the economy is on life support. We are hopeful that it is actually starting to recover. The first quarter growth figures are at 0.3%. 
There are signs of recovery, but we won’t know that. By the end of this financial year, debt to national income will be 70%; the USA will be 80%.Greece is way over 100% Therefore UK debt it manageable. I don’t think we have to make cuts to re-assure the market. There is no way to know for certain, but I would err on the side of caution. I can see why Osborne did it. It is probably necessary, because if you are campaigning on the back of it, when you come into power you have to say; ‘Look, we found six billion pounds’. It was political necessary but economically unnecessary. Low marks so far but for understandable reasons.

Will the economy get worse?

If you are on a tracker mortgage, during the course of the recession you will have been better off. When we start to see more of those job cuts coming through, particularly in the public sector, unemployment it not going to come down very quickly. What has happened in this recession is that firms have not been so quick to get rid of staff so quickly, but that also means they are unlikely to start hiring quickly. 
Unemployment will not come down for a few years. What we will get is a loss of social welfare for ordinary people. I think we are not out of the woods yet. Do I think there is another meltdown coming? There is always a risk but I can’t see something particularly looming. Even without another meltdown it is going to feel really bad.

I came across a quote recently by Margaret Thatcher. It said: ‘The problem with socialism is that other people’s money runs out.’ My friend, Nick’s, comment on this was: ‘ The problem of capitalism is that the money to bail the banker’s runs out.’ Who is right?

It is all about other people’s money. I think we have forgotten about this. That the money the bankers are playing with is actually our money. Our money invested in pension funds, invested in savings. That money is actually being kept by mutual funds, and pension funds and they are the people who were most asleep at the wheel. 
Who are the most short-term investors in the markets? The pension and mutual funds. Were they challenging the boards of the banks, the finance houses, when our money was being spent on exorbitant bonuses? They weren’t. That is one of the things that we do in the new book, ‘The Road From Ruin’. Democracy works because we have a competent citizenry of educated people who are willing to challenge, and want their voice to be heard. 
The democracy of the market needs the same things. We have become better informed consumers, using fair trade, ethical products. Etc, but we are still very dumb investors. Do we ever ask how our pension funds are used? How our savings are invested? No. We don’t do that about government money. Or any other money. 
We have to take responsibility on how our money is being spent. Is it any wonder? We have to take responsibility on how capitalism runs.

You mentioned Thatcher. The thing about the Thatcher period was how economically incompetent it was. It is very strange, overly dogmatic. It was just bad economic management. So many ideas were pushing in the right direction, but where badly implemented. It is a very odd paradox about the Thatcher period in that it was almost, not an economic project. The way they just mismanaged and engineered a recession in the early 80’s was pure incompetence. In the way it was implemented, and then the 1987 bust and the recession that came that was caused by Nigel Lawson.

Thatcherism was such a political project. There was something vicious about it. As it was one half of a nation declaring war on another part of the nation. I personally cannot forgive. There was so much unnecessary damage done to our country. In the name of war on our own society. That did so much damage to so many communities. That it was not governing in the best interests of the country. I think Cameron failing to win a majority is still in that legacy. The fact that they did not win any more seats in Scotland. That is the legacy of the pain that they inflicted.

[CB: I still hate Margaret Thatcher. I don’t think Scotland will ever forgive her. ]

The Cameron generation is actually a reversion to the norm of conservatism. Thatcherism was a deviation. They still have problems convincing large chunks of the country that that change has really happened. And that has been the big problem they have had. That whole nasty party thing is the legacy of that era.

Do you think the coalition will last?

Yes. I think the coalition will last five years. It has to, but they will be so welded together they will have to be one party.

What’s next? 
The Road to Ruin is coming out in the autumn. We are also working on a new book. I will see what comes along. I love being a writer.

Michael Green is an independent writer and consultant, based in London.
Michael has worked in aid and development for nearly twenty years. He was a senior official in the British Government where he worked on international finance, managed UK aid to Russia and Ukraine, served three Secretaries of State as head of the communications department at the Department for International Development, and oversaw £100 million annual funding to nonprofits. It was through his role in government that he saw the rising influence of the philanthrocapitalists in the fight against poverty.
An economist by training, as a graduate of the University of Oxford, Michael taught economics at Warsaw University in the early 1990s under a Soros-funded programme. During his time in Poland, Michael was also a freelance journalist working for, among others, Polish Radio and the Economist.

Other quotes by Michael.
The joy of capitalism if the joy of destruction.
VAT was such an elegant tax. Economists love it, because it is so easy to collect. It is almost self policing. Clean and simple tax.

The Great Political Debate: Part 3: Conservative – Why You Would be Mad to Vote For Labour and Why I’m a Conservative

Posted on by

By James Yardley

A response to Alain Lewis

Thanks for the article as a Conservative supporter voting for the first time it’s really interesting to know how supporters of other parties think. I guess I feel a bit like you did in 1987 and 1992 at the moment. I wonder how people can still vote for Labour after the last 13 years. However reading your article helped me understand a bit better.

You are right there are some good things Labour has done, giving the bank of England independence, introducing the minimum wage and investing more heavily in health and education but this was all introduced when Labour first came to power. Everything since has been a complete disaster and I can’t believe anyone would vote for them with the record they have.

The Wars – Lies for going to war in Iraq (Al Qaeda justification, WMD), trying to fight two wars on a peace time budget, a lack of proper equipment and vehicles leading to greater casualties than there should have been. No planning for after the war.

NHS computers systems – A waste of £12 billion which makes peoples job harder

Schools – Only teach the test, standards are no better exams have got easier, teachers have no power, schools are run as democracies.

ID cards and a massive national database – A waste of billions with absolutely no purpose other than to centralise power and exert greater control over the individual, quite frankly dangerous and bad for our democracy

Needing a licence to protest and building millions of CCTV cameras, Arresting people for shouting out the names of the dead outside number 10 – Fascist, dangerous and undemocratic

Brown and Mandelson unelected – It’s a disgrace that Gordon Brown thinks he has the right to govern having not been elected by either the British people or his own party. Even worse is that Mandelson, twice embroiled in major corruption scandals, also unelected is somehow the second most powerful man in the country. Are we living in a democracy? Are people really just going to accept this?

Spin The whole 13years have been characterised by image, deception and spin. Every attempt has been made to hide the real truth.

Numerous broken manifesto promises – Completely unforgivable broken promises about tuition fees and a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. There are tens of others as well some though not all of which can be attributed to the financial crisis.

Economy – The Golden rules proved to be more spin and were broken at the first test, borrowing and spending far more than was affordable. In 1997 the deficit was 6 billion, today it is 160 and the national debt has doubled.

Policing – The police waste hours filling out endless paper work. As a result you never see them on the street.

Reforming benefits – Millions of people on incapacity benefits who shouldn’t be

What is worst and most shocking of all is that Labour has completely abandoned the very people it is supposed to represent. The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has grown considerably. There is less social mobility than ever before. Labour has done nothing to break the cycle. Those who most need help getting into work have not been helped effectively. The 10p tax initiative summed up the whole situation. This is why I respect Richard Wright who wrote the first article because although I disagree with his politics he won’t settle for the Labour party as it is today.

Alain argues that David Cameron is trying to force private schools into the state sector. But that’s not David Cameron that’s a Labour policy. The government academy scheme (which Cameron does support and wants to expand). That says it all. The Labour party is not representative of its supporters but because they won’t vote for anyone else and Labour knows they can get away with it.

How can anyone vote for this party when they so clearly have no morality or integrity whatsoever? It is blatantly obvious that the Labour party cares only about itself. It will always put themselves first before the interests of the country. This is where our politics has gone so wrong. It’s time to start putting the people first again.

I’m a Conservative because I believe in giving power to the individual. Letting people live their own lives but still supporting them when they need help. We need to devolve power to a local level, allowing local communities to make their own decisions instead of some bureaucrat in Whitehall. That’s why I’m supporting David Cameron’s big society.

The Labour party has always sought to expand the power of the state. Every decision is controlled from the centre. They’ve tried to bring in ID cards and national databases. Everyone is treated as a statistic. This is not only inefficient and wasteful but it is also dangerous. An overly powerful state is bad for our democracy. The state has a role but it should be there to support you not to tell you how to live your life.

Budgets have seen huge increases, that’s a good thing, but only a small proportion has made it onto the frontline. In the last 13 years the government has created huge numbers of managers and administrators. It has become overly obsessed with its endless targets. This obsession is profoundly damaging. For example school exam results may be improving but does anyone really believe students are more intelligent or skilled. The real test is in the number of people being employed and youth unemployment is at around an astonishing 20%. That’s the only real statistic which matters in my eyes.

Conservatism is also about enterprise. Encouraging everyone to achieve their goals. Taxing people less. Helping small businesses by making it easier to employ people and cutting the ridiculous amounts of red tape that exist at the moment.

It’s time to get rid of this tired, inefficient and dishonest government. It’s time for people to take power back in to their own hands. That’s why I will be voting Conservative.

James Yardley