In praise of ... Charles Ferguson | Editorial
22.05.2012, 21:51:43
His evisceration of the Obama government's alliance with the banks opens a new front in the war on Wall Street He's clever, he's funny, he doesn't pull his punches, and he makes cliffhangers out of details like the $4bn in bonuses paid by Merrill Lynch after the failing bank was sold at the height of the 2008 crisis. But best of all he is furious, and reminds us why we should be too. The Inside Job director and former academic, who made a fortune from computer software, began his speech at last year's Oscars by saying it was wrong that no bankers had gone to jail for the frauds that led to the crash. They still haven't. So Charles Ferguson has written a book which both fills in the background to his film and tells us what happened next. His argument, that corporate America bought politics, is not new. But his evisceration of the Obama government's alliance with the banks opens a new front in the war on Wall Street. And his account of big finance's sway over academia is horrifying. If only righteous fury were always this enjoyable. United States Banks and building societies Banking Barack Obama guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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Anti social behaviour: crackdown - and backdown | Editorial
22.05.2012, 21:23:55
During the later Blair years, the prime minister's own aides would sometimes raise an eyebrow and mutter the word 'respect' During the later Blair years, the prime minister's own aides would sometimes raise an eyebrow and mutter the word "respect". Their boss's swansong agenda pledged to put the respectable majority in charge. His henchmen revealed weary irony because, after a decade of hyperactive legislating, it was implausible to hope that central diktats could really do away with all the dumped fridges and drunkenness. The coalition initially made a point of saying that draconian activism would not deliver. But as it slides in the polls, the old itch to do something about everything is flaring up anew. The home secretary's heavily trailed white paper on antisocial behaviour yesterday took us back to the time of Tony. There was spin about new fines which turned out to be on the statute book already, talk of "streamlining" and "joining up", plus a more substantive offering of a crackdown through the law. Like her New Labour predecessors, Theresa May is right to say that bullying and unruliness that are tricky to tackle through the criminal law are nonetheless a major cause of misery on many streets. This is not always obvious from the vantage point of the leafier communities where judges and mandarins reside. The difficulty is not recognising a genuine problem, but posturing solutions that do more harm than good. New Labour's asbos were punitive all right, often a trapdoor to prison, but that did not make them effective. They fell out of fashion as the proportion of the orders being breached rose from about half to 70%-plus. Thus - as yesterday's document stated - their use has more than halved since 2005. Rather than recognise this failure, Mrs May seeks to reinvent it in purer form. Specifically, her "crime prevention injunction" would move much of the arsenal of punishment out of the criminal and into civil courts, where penalties can be meted out on the basis of probabilities rather than proof. Asbos were always a legal hybrid, and New Labour had originally tried a similar trick. But it fell foul of the law lords, who ruled that the liberty-sapping potential of an asbo demanded the full protections of criminal justice. The new wheeze involves working round this judgment by legislating so that the whole process - not just the issuing of injunctions, but also determination of whether they have been breached - becomes a purely civil matter. Every sort of punishment including imprisonment could then be allowed without any conviction having to be secured. It is frightening stuff, but it won't be happening soon. It was not in this month's crime and courts bill , and will now be examined as draft legislation before enactment is even considered. Lib Dems and Ken Clarke's justice department both fret about bulging prisons, and may have forced the delay. That is grounds for relief at least, if not for respect. Asbos Communities UK criminal justice guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Letters: Special needs children have a right to inclusion
22.05.2012, 20:00:06
The "next steps" document on special needs education, following the Queen's speech, drives a coach and horses through the aspiration to inclusion ( Special needs kids deserve better than a rush to reform , 21 May). Parents have the right to choose a mainstream school unless it is "unsuitable to the child's ability or SEN" - that is, they have a right just until some school or local authority tells them they don't. The right to mainstream is also said not to apply where it would be "incompatible" with the education of the other children. The survival of this nasty and discriminatory proviso utterly contradicts the document's new and welcome aim - mentioned 71 times in as many pages - of tackling the dismal record on employment as disabled children grow up. Children who are "incompatible" with their peers will become adults who are "incompatible" with employment of any kind. The government also finds itself contravening article 24 of the new United Nations charter on the rights of disabled persons. Richard Rieser and Chris Goodey London Special educational needs Schools Disability United Nations Liberal-Conservative coalition guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Letters: Workers' rights don't strangle growth
22.05.2012, 20:00:06
Current demands for slashing red tape to increase startups and ease employment are familiar remedies for recessions ( No fault dismissal proposals set to be shelved , 22 May). But we know they are wrong. Birch's 1970s study showing relative increases in small firm employment was soon discredited when it became clear he was using data from firms seeking investment. Subsequent work has shown that small firms, in the UK at least, employ fewer (we have micro companies) and worse (the happy family firm is an ideal, not an empirical reality). What these demands do show is a lack of direction and political leadership. Small firms with more regulated workforces (those at the prosperous core of the eurozone) benefit from workers who invest in their skills and stay around when the economy picks up. If we ever do get out of this recession, the number one problem for small firms will not be regulation but a lack of skills in the labour force. We'll need them to keep at the better-paying end of the value chain. German (and Swedish and Dutch) industrial relations are not different because they have different cultures but because they collectively made different decisions. As they emerged from the crises that defined their 20th century, they chose consensus and collaboration, proportional representation and social equality. To achieve this they regulated their small firm sector and showed it was worth doing so. By not regulating small firms for basic employment standards, we are regulating for poor quality, low skills and a lack of competitiveness that will keep the rest of the economy dependent on the City. Is that familiar enough? Dr Charles Dannreuther University of Leeds o Vince Cable is right to brush aside the ill-argued proposals of the Beecroft report along with those from Liam Fox MP, who has claimed, counterfactually, ( Financial Times , 15 May) that Germany has "a more deregulated jobs market" than the UK. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has a dataset on "How Labour markets perform" (2011). From this, we compared the UK's "performance" with three similar economies - Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Among our findings: the UK has a much lower level of employment protection, and is next to bottom of the OECD "league table" (ie the least protected); unemployment was higher than the others; UK taxes on labour are much less; UK employees worked far longer average hours; UK unemployment benefits, compared to previous earnings, are much lower than the others, and only half of the OECD average. From the OECD data, we conclude that there is no evidence to support the thesis that excessive employment protection is damaging the UK's below-par economic performance. The problem with our economy is the lack of aggregate demand, not workers' rights. Ann Pettifor and Jeremy Smith Policy Research in Macroeconomics o The Beecroft report ducks the main issue: workers' pay. If employers knew they could choose not to pay their employees when things got sticky, the jobs market would open up. Sometimes an entrepreneur will have to say "sorry chaps, bit tight this month" and not have to deal with a load of old fuss. Owners cannot always pay themselves what they like, so it puts them all in the same boat, really. If we can just change this something-for-nothing culture, we'd have this recession licked in minutes. Howard Pilott Lewes, East Sussex o That anyone today should even conceive of the idea that an employer could dismiss a worker "at will" should be enough to provoke a revolution. The pioneer Scottish trade union leader Robert Smillie expressed it perfectly: "The bosses have invested their money in industry. The workers have invested their lives in it." Frank Jackson Political education officer, Harlow Labour party o Can we expect the coalition to propose a "fire-at-will" policy for underperforming members of parliament whose lack of productivity fails to justify further expenditure from the public purse; perhaps piloting the idea in the Lords as a first step towards reform? Shouldn't want to scare the wits out of them, though. Stephen Harries Crowhurst, East Sussex Employment law guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Letters: Richard Hoggart and Roy Shaw - moral giants
22.05.2012, 20:00:05
Prior to becoming secretary general of the Arts Council, Sir Roy Shaw led the Adult Education Department at the University of Keele ( Simon Hoggart's week, 19 May ). In 1969, Prof Shaw (as he was then) promulgated to a class of student health visitors (of which I was one) lessons from The Uses of Literacy - Richard Hoggart's great exposition of the betrayal of the intentions of the 1870 Education Act, and subsequent devaluation of the intellectual capacity of working-class readers of the popular press. Shaw's teaching on Hoggart's analysis of the ease with which the media may influence people's attitudes left an indelible impression on someone who had left school after O-levels and simply pursued what was then nurse "training". It was probably this, with other experiences on that remarkable course, that convinced me of the need to educate nurses in higher education settings. I have often wondered during the recent phone-hacking debacle why Hoggart's seminal work has not been revisited. Jane Robinson Emeritus professor of nursing, University of Nottingham o At the Arts Council in the 1970s I worked with both Roy Shaw and Richard Hoggart. Though authoritarian and often prickly, both men articulated and fought for crucially important cultural values in the face of creeping neoliberalism. Hoggart's Pilkington report, published 50 years ago, remains a vital testament to the importance of the public service ethic in broadcasting. From the perspective of 2012, both Hoggart and Shaw can be seen as proverbial moral giants when compared with current ministerial pygmies like J Hunt and E Vaizey. Robert Hutchison Winchester, Hampshire Higher education Arts Council England Arts policy Nursing Nursing Keele University guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Letters: Throne out
22.05.2012, 20:00:04
I am obliged to be in receipt of a facsimile of the 1611 Authorised Version of the Bible. I note from the gold letters on the spine that it is presented to us by the secretary of state for education ( Tory donors fund Gove's mission to send Bible to schools , 16 May). In his charming accompanying letter Mr Gove writes that he believes it is important that all pupils "should appreciate this icon". Speaking as an RE teacher, I have to say that this particular religious artefact is not an icon but a Bible. Icons usually require even more gold leaf. Perhaps an icon of the donor is to follow: should I clear a space on the school hall wall? Carolyn Roberts Head, Durham Johnston school o Graham Smith, of the pressure group Republic, describes the meeting at Windsor Castle of the world's "crowned heads" as a catastrophic error of judgment by the Queen because of the involvement of some of the most repressive regimes in the world ( Report , 19 May). But what of the inclusion of the "kings" of two republics - Greece and Romania - and of the crown prince of the non-existent country of Yugoslavia. Is the Queen hoping these countries will restore their monarchs? Peter Slade Guildford o I'm surprised that a newspaper which has led the way in the verbatim reporting of obscenities should now balk at the word "tit" ( Tabloid tidbits , 12 May). The ever increasing influx of Americanisms threatens our language and exerts a subtle cultural censorship on us. I'm old enough to remember the magazine Titbits without a snigger (not a snicker). Ian Goodall Anarita, Cyprus o "Is football as we knew it dead?" asks John Sinnott ( Letters , May 21). Like many people he judges the health of the sport by the professional game. Should he wish to come to one of our training sessions and witness our under-sevens in action he might change his view. Peter Thornton Vice-chair, Rossendale United Juniors FC o Re Monica Hemming's letter on lettuce and sugar sandwiches (21 May), we had them too - with the addition of a sprinkle of malt vinegar. I still eat them, but now the vinegar is balsamic. Heather Walker Papplewick, Nottinghamshire guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Letters: The painful truth about cheap alcohol
22.05.2012, 20:00:03
I was surprised to see the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) quoted in a comment piece, ( Minimum alcohol pricing? Blame those vomiting girls , 16 May), as noting "no discernible relationship between (alcohol) affordability and harm". This statement, taken in isolation from the report Trends in the affordability of alcohol in Europe, merely highlights that affordability is not the sole operating factor in cross-country comparisons of alcohol harm which in no way contradicts the finding that affordability is a strong factor within countries. It is no coincidence that, as drink has become cheaper in the UK (alcohol was 44% more affordable in 2010 than it was in 1980), hospital admissions, liver mortality rates and alcohol-related crimes have rocketed. This all comes at a cost - to individuals, families and communities, that, as a nation, we can't afford to ignore. There is a wealth of evidence to support alcohol price increases as an effective policy to reduce health and social problems: outcomes include reductions in liver deaths, suicides, hospital admissions, car accidents, youth fatalities, homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, car theft, domestic violence and child abuse. The relationship between alcohol affordability and harmful consumption is indisputable. The coalition should be applauded for recognising this and taking action to tackle the problem of cheap drink through minimum unit pricing. Katherine Brown Director of policy, Institute of Alcohol Studies o This talk of minimum unit price for alcohol will only put more money into the pockets of manufacturers. Might I suggest a sliding scale, seeing as pubs are losing out to supermarkets and are closing at an alarming rate. 1 Reduce the tax on draught beer (limited to 4.5%), any higher strength, tax to remain the same. 2 Poured drinks: tax to be the same. 3 Sealed drinks, ie those sold in supermarkets or shops: increase the tax according to alcohol content. 4 Alcoholic drinks not to be sold as a loss leader. 5 Tins and plastic bottles (with soft drinks and high sugar): an added tax to pay for clearing litter. Roy Gill Ulverston, Cumbria Alcohol Health Health policy Young people Crime Liberal-Conservative coalition Conservatives Liberal Democrats guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Letters: HSE in ill health
22.05.2012, 20:00:03
The retirement last week of the chief medical adviser for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) leaves its Employment Medical Advisory Service (EMAS) close to collapse. Twenty years ago EMAS was an internationally respected source of occupational health expertise employing 60 occupational health doctors and 62 nurses. It is now down to 2.2 doctors, only one of whom is full-time. Successive years of cuts and "reviews" (three in the past five years) have effectively destroyed by stealth an organisation committed to the wellbeing of the nation's workforce. Well over a million people are currently suffering from ill health caused by or made worse by their work - all relying on medical help from an ever-stretched NHS, the vast majority suffering from preventable illness. If the government truly believes prevention is better than cure it must reverse the cuts to HSE and rebuild a service that can help protect the UK workforce. Simon Hester Branch chair, Prospect HSE branch Health policy Health Public services policy guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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