David Cameron I

Off to work 

Dear David

Years ago, at a Party Conference, you rescued the Conservative party from its nervous breakdown.  That speech made you leader of the party. 

Last year at the Party Conference you were leader of a coalition government, the first in seventy years.  The country had voted for coalition.  We accepted you. 

Your speech next week will be the most important of your life, and perhaps of our lives.  People do not want to hear the leader of a political party.  They do not want to listen to a political leader of coalition government.

Shadow  Fear  Not me

There is a great stage play doing the rounds.  Take a break; go and see it:

Three Days in May.

In 2011, seventy one years later, our country faces a great and similar existential threat.  It is not now, as it was not then, merely an issue of money, machinery or resources.  It is, and was, fear, despondency, lack of self-belief, that were the dangers.

Next week we want hear a leader.  Just remember the title of the great office you hold:

The Queen’s Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

You, me, Him, Her, everyone, knows the difference between an effective leader and an ineffective one.  All have had our own personal experience - good schools, bad schools, good jobs, bad jobs.  What separates the good from the bad is not money, or buildings, or other stuff; it is leadership.

In that first day at a new school or at new job, we all instinctively know the answers to the key questions:

Do I trust the boss – headmaster, director, doctor, prime minister, president - ?

And

Are the rules few, fair and firm?

And most important:

Does the boss trust me?

David, you understand leadership.  You have seen the result of intrusive, meddling, niggling, angry, frightened leadership in our country.   You have the intellect, the charisma and the emotional courage to lead, to do the right thing and to do it right.  You have great gifts and you are lucky, because this country is lucky.  (You will remember Napoleon’s reason for selecting a general.)

Britain has been lucky for hundreds of years.  Today, yet again, we have new ideas, new knowledge, new technologies, new industries in waiting, new gas, new oil, new talented industrious people, some come here from all over the world, and also the many, clever, caring, people who have lived on this island for generations.  Great Britain is lucky.  We are ready to make and to take the opportunities of a new world order.  This new world order will soon produce unprecedented real wealth and wellbeing for everyone on the planet.

Twentieth century bumper sticker politics, simplistic, insulting even - Left against Right, Labour against Tory, Republican against Democrat, is dead. That parrot is deceased, finito, no more. The world’s tectonic plates have shifted.  We now face the economic, political and social tsunamis that arise from that shift.

However, we can survive and will prosper.  We always have.

The forum next week may be just a party political conference.  However your actions, not your words, will be the tipping point.

I shall write again with proposals for:

Action this day – to lead by direct and immediate example –

Economic action – to cut the Gordian knot and get Britain working and trusting itself –

Paws4Now

Jock

Dovedale  cooling  calming

Greece – Dole and delusion do not work

Hi

Dole, handouts, “go away and don’t bother me” money, a.k.a. transfer payments from one part of a currency union to another, rarely work.

In a crisis, a war, a flood, a fire, a tsunami, they can work.  Like Elastoplast and tourniquets, they are useful, essential.  Where the problem is cultural or structural, doles destroy.

Wolgang Nowak of Deutsche Bank, a politician and an economist, says:

“Of course Germans are aware that fiscal transfers can work: we became a successful nation after the Second World War because such transfers took place. . . . . cannot extend or tolerate the current lack of discipline, in for example Bremen or Westphalia, to Greece or Portugal or Italy.”

The German wirtschaftswunde of the 1950’s and 1960’s was the product of necessity, of a unifying plan and of self-discipline.  A self-discipline that Mahatma Gandhi called swa raj and Presidents Adams and Jefferson called virtue.  Germans and Germany still share language, culture, self-discipline and organisation, but no longer can they make transfer payments effective, even within Germany.  What chance has Brussels and a euro currency area?

There is a secret.  Politicians, helped by some economists, try to hide it.  After about three years of transfer payments, the rich, paying areas, grow richer.  The poor, receiving areas, become poorer and more dependent.

Used inappropriately or for too long Elastoplast or tourniquets can damage and kill.

Paws4Now

Jock

Hit the Buffers

Hi

Money, wealth, tax, what a web we weave in order to deceive.

As usual, before my morning walk, I listened to BBC Radio 4, news, discussion and finally “Thought for the Day.” 

Obama is calling in aid the Sage of Omaha.  Warren Buffett thinks it is wrong that he, one of the richest people in the world, should pay a smaller proportion of his income in tax than his secretary pays.

Morally, I am sure that both Mr Buffett and his secretary meticulously pay every cent of the taxes they are required to pay.  Him and Her and Me and You probably try to do the same.

Politically,  whether Warren should pay an increased proportion, or his secretary a decreased proportion, is a question for informed** debate and democratic political decision.  (** “Informed” that is a subject for another day.)

At an economic level, the money, that Buffett does not give to Obama as taxes or as a gift, is not like the grain stored in the biblical rich man’s barn, discussed in Thought for the Day.

That grain in that barn is wealth that is idle, useless, doing nothing.  It is not feeding the rich man, his family or his cattle, let alone the poor man at his gate.  Mr Buffett’s spare cash is not idle; he invests in railways and other things that create jobs and wealth in the community.

Cash, money, apart from a few coins down the back of the sofa, or wedges of notes under the mattress, cannot by definition be idle, useless or be doing nothing.

Him has some money from time to time.  Assuming there are enough biscuits for me and Him and Her and Co., where should that money go?  Him could:

1. Invest it directly. 
2. Leave it with HSBC to invest.
3. Give it to politicians in Whitehall or Washington.

My Scottie ancestry and many years experience have made me a very wary Skeptic in the Pub.   http://skeptic.org.uk

Where would you put your money? 

Paws4Now

Nobel Laureates Spanners Omelettes

Joseph Stiglitz, with other Nobel prize winning economists, has been debating the economic crisis with a group of younger economists.  Their discussions took place over a number of days on an island in Lake Constanz in Bavaria.

Joseph, in an interview on BBC World Service, was very open.  They had together reached no conclusions, no plans, no proposals, only profound pessimism. 

Economists talking with economists, what do you expect?

Would you ask a mechanic to fix a collapsed omelette with a spanner?

We must try a new recipe.  Mix Stiglitz with Amartya Sen, Baron Cohen and Robert Puttnam.

Our chef, David Cameron, needs to find those old ingredients;

Trust   Hope   Youth

Paws4Now

Jock