Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Pakistan

The scale of this disaster is said by the U.N. now to exceed the tsunami, thought not, mercifully, if measured in loss of life. The world is slowly stirring to the need for aid on a gigantic scale. Those images of shivering and frightened children haunt us. And it goes on. The rains do not stop. There will be an end to this suffering, but as yet it is not in sight.

The suffering reminds us of true human needs and the values which should underpin them. There are reports that the Taliban and charities linked to Islamic militants, have been active in getting aid through. They may be better equipped with their own simple transport system, relying on foot, pack animals and small motorbikes to cope  with the ravished communications. Whatever the fervour of the armed conflict and however cruel the justice and social values of this alien (to the West) culture, it is good to see that humanitarian aid is unfettered by the issue of from which side it comes.

House Prices

These are falling again. This is good news. They need to fall a good deal more. I realise the pain and distress this causes to those who are over borrowed, earn their living in the housing market, or are in the replacement kitchen industry. But we cannot get away from the fact that another housing surge with increased personal debt will lead to another crash. Neither can we get away from the fact that housing costs are too high to allow earnings to operate at levels which will make industry competitive and public services affordable.

For too long we have spun ourselves into a trance of believing that an economy based on debt and shopping was prosperity. We invented new meaning for old words. Debt became credit, spending became investment, borrowing more became equity release. This is why the total of private and public debt in the U.K. is the second highest in the whole world and, as a percentage of GDP, five times greater than that of the U.S., which is the biggest borrower of all.

The scale of all of this and the inherent problems it causes is way beyond anything which nervous politicians, muddled economists or hated bankers have admitted to. Like the cost of the second world war it may take sixty years to finally pay for. To survive at all financially, we will have to take much pain and slowly rebuild our economy on sound asset valuation, sound money, net saving and above all real wealth creation not derived from asset inflation.

We need to learn that cautious bank lending and falling house prices are good signs. We will have to learn on our own because nobody is going to have the political guts to teach us.

Job Losses

Figures from the U.S. on the job front were disappointing recently and now we have a warning that U.K. unemployment situation, which had been better than most predictions at the start of the recession, is about to ‘stall’. This surely means deteriorate.

Unfortunately this is the inevitable outcome of government funding unnecessary jobs in the public sector by spending money it did not have. The borrowing becomes unsustainable, in our case by a mile. Like a distant thunder cloud hovering in the sky, the inevitable cuts are about to move across to darken the prospects of many loyal and innocent workers. There is no way round this. There will be a good deal of pain. There may even be negative growth or a double dip recession.

There are now more and more monetarist voices flowing across the airwaves. They are  holding their Keynesian colleagues to account. The spending and borrowing works only for a moment to create a false dawn. It does not correct the faults which caused the crisis. These have now to be addressed. The monetarist message is that the process would have advanced further and the pain would be over sooner if the job had not been put off. They have history on their side.

If the recession had been solely caused by events outside this country and beyond our control as Labour, quite wrongly,  inferred, government spending to tide us over until our trading partners recovered enough to buy our goods and services again would most likely have worked. But this was not the case. The crisis was born in London and New York, through systemic failures in the whole Anglo-Saxon economic model. The requirement is to rebuild a better model. We cannot spend our way out. We have to build our way up. From rock bottom.

Child Protection

Once again it is in the news that massive court delays, which will get worse, are placing abused children at risk and vulnerable families at risk from a wrong decision. When interviewed, representatives from the legal profession, social workers and Cafcas blame each other for then chaos. Now they have a common enemy, government cuts.

I have been advocating change since the beginning of 2009. I even received a very nice letter from Gordon Brown inviting me to submit evidence to one of Labour’s many Task Forces. Whatever little has happened does not include any of my proposals. It is clear that soon I will have to have another go.

Every report of failure and delay confirms my conviction that the working relationship between social workers, adversarial courts, lawyers and Cafcas is systemically dysfunctional and cannot ever work. I propose an end to the responsibility of social workers as the engine of inquiry into cases where potential risk is flagged up, an end to the adversarial family courts, an end to battling lawyers and closing down of Cafcas.

All this to be replaced with a Child Welfare Commission, with a Commissioner in every district with the power of a judge presiding over an inquisitorial court employing its own investigating officers, fully trained to deal with the diversity of challenge in identifying children at risk and families in need of support. Robust with the dodgy but family friendly with the frail and the frightened this logical new system would be up to date and fitted to a civilised country in the twenty first century. It would also save a good deal of money.

The present shambles is an expensive failure and an affront to the values we declare to hold dear.

School Milk

David Cameron has moved fast to shut down this absurd proposal from one of his junior ministers. This was an insensitive gaffe from a faction of the government that sees cuts as a virility symbol. Of course we have to have cuts, but  taking the milk from little children is politically barmy. If it is that bad, the vast majority would say bring the troops home and save the money (and brave lives),  if we cannot afford to nourish our toddlers. 

Any minister who cannot see that, should not only get out of the government, but get out of politics as well. As for this ridiculous phrase ‘there is no evidence to show….’ It is meaningless. You can use it the other way round. ‘There is no evidence to show that milk does not do little children good’.  Dear me.

Disaster and Conflict

For a while the media has been full of worldwide bad news. Not only have we had the continuing reports of security failures and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the terrible suffering of those caught in the floods in Pakistan and  China, to which we can add the huge disruption and toxic smog from the fires in Russia. We must not forget either the Gulf oil leak.

The scale of the resources needed to bring relief to the suffering caused by accident or freak weather events is sometimes almost beyond imagination. The sight of frightened children soaked and shivering in homeless abandon, beyond the reach of large scale aid, invites a feeling of inadequacy among the world wide audience of these daily pictures of distress. The view of Moscow shrouded in a poisonous cloud recalls a sci-fi horror movie.

This extraordinary contrast between the ability to cope with natural disasters in a timely fashion, while at the same time employing extraordinary resources to maintain military adventures, which become disasters of our own making, is sobering. It is also important to notice that the most efficient country in helping its own population in crisis is China.

There are lessons here for us all. As time goes on, weather patterns change, populations increase and vulnerability of finely balanced ecologies produce epoch making events, we will have to learn that the greatest priority of national organisation of states all across the world will be, not to ratchet up spending on warfare, but to spend instead on humanitarian aid mobilisation on a global scale, in order for all countries to be ready to pitch in to help each other. None can tell who may be next in the line of need.

Praise for Cardinal O’Brien

It is not often that the blog steps forward to defend and applaud a church leader, let alone a Cardinal, but the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is greatly to be admired for his comments criticising the American attitude to the Lockerbie bomber. In an outspoken attack on America’s’ thirst for retribution and vengeance he has called upon them to turn their gaze inwards in one of the sharpest put downs of the United States that I can recall.

These are precisely the sentiments expressed previously by my posts on this blog and in my book 2010 A Blueprint for Change. It is very unfortunate for America that there has been the hysteria about BP (as opposed to the disaster) and the agressive attacks upon the Scottish justice system.  Add to this a cavalier disdain for the independence of Scotland’s Ministers as well as the naive lack of understanding of the limits of U.S Sovereignty and you have an image of a rather nasty bully, who is getting on everybody’s nerves. Especially the nerves of her friends.

America has very few true friends left in the world. She cannot afford to lose any more.

Fidel Castro

There is something remarkable about the veteran revolutionary re-appearing in public, as if back from the dead. For staying power in the face of American opprobrium, boycotts and blockades, he takes the prize.

It is reported that today he is to make a speech to the Cuban parliament, in which he will allege that the U.S. is planning nuclear attacks on Iran and North Korea. The Americans, whose attitude towards Cuba ceased to be rational many years ago will ignore him. Castro loves to goad them and make them angry. There will be many in the smaller powers opposed to Anglo Saxon/Nato hegemony of what is right and wrong in the world, who will listen. Perhaps we should all pay attention for this good reason.

Castro always exaggerates, but he should not be dismissed. He is well briefed and has access to good intelligence. He will not actually be saying what he says, if the advance trail is right. What he will be saying is that there is a gung ho element in the Pentagon, the Republican Party and the discredited neo cons, who dream of such things and always have. They have been restrained by wise Presidents in the past, although the Bushes proved gullible, especially the younger, but stuck to conventional.

From the dawn of the United States the military have had influence at the heart of the state and key military figures have often been appointed to government office and even elected President more than once. With the Democrats and President Obama, the world is in save hands. He will restrain the wild cards in the pack. Castro is issuing a wake up call to the danger ahead. President Palin.

Pakistan and the U.K.

David Cameron and President Zardari have, by their own accounts, had a good meeting a reached an accord upon their long term strategic aims and immediate ways to strengthen ties and address difficulties. Cameron is showing himself to be a tough but effective operator on the international stage and the shift of British foreign policy from a form of shuffling and emollient diplomacy in the shadow of the U.S. to an edgy prosecution of British interests is already becoming clear. This is very good.

So is the decision to increase co-operation with the Pakistan military and intelligence services. We cannot be sure how much power the President will actually have when he gets home from his tour. In his absence and the seeming incapacity of his government to mobilise, separate from the army, larges scale and effective response to the calamitous floods, gravity in that unstable country is already shifting towards the Generals. Links with them as a separate power in the state similar to pre WWI Germany, may be useful all round.

This is in sharp contrast to the power balance in India, which is much nearer our own model. It is interesting that our relationship with India is largely founded on economic and commercial opportunities for each side, whereas with Pakistan it is more strategic. We share culture and citizens with both, but it is with Pakistan that the key to the end game in Afghanistan will be found.

Barclays

A big improvement here in profits, but if you strip out investment banking and all those dodgy derivatives, the High Street part reflects the slow conditions in the core economy. However, though I hesitate to disagree with George and whilst I know it is akin to blasphemy to question the wisdom of Vince, I now believe they are both wrong, when they whinge on about insufficient bank lending.

The old collapsed economy was built on excessive credit offered in rivers to anyone who asked and many who did not even have to. The result was a very big crash. The banks were at the root of the excess of credit, but to build a sound economy, they will be at the root again. However this time their job is to say no, unless the loan proposition meets the age old criteria for sound lending, which was the bedrock of economic management until all these wisdoms were forgotten and everybody, including the banks, nearly borrowed themselves into financial oblivion.

Economic recovery, built not on sand but on a firmer foundation, requires a good deal less borrowing all round. The banks, the retail side certainly, appear to have got the message. We must now let them get on.