Honest accounting

Quoth Alistair Darling:

The Financial Services Authority has announced a further increase from tomorrow to the compensation limit for retail bank deposits to £50,000 per depositor, which means £100,000 for joint accounts. That measure will ensure that 98 per cent. of accounts are fully covered.

Now, quoth Iain Duncan Smith:

At the Dispatch Box, the Chancellor mentioned, quite rightly, that our protection covers about 98 per cent. of all depositors, but he will also recognise that we have significantly more money on deposit than Germany does. The reality is that that 2 per cent. represents a very significant amount of money. What concerns me right now is that, given the febrile nature of the markets—watching little things and then panicking—if they see any flight of capital, even that 2 per cent., towards Germany, it could cause another stampede and another crisis. I recognise the Chancellor's problem about indicating what he may or may not do, but does he not recognise that that 2 per cent. alone is perhaps enough to tip over the markets if they saw a flight of that money to, say, Germany or even Ireland?

So, what they are saying is that the vast majority of accounts in the UK hold less than £50,000 (£100,000 for joint accounts) in retail banks.

What they are saying is that there is an incredible disparity of wealth - but that the very wealthy have the capacity to cause crises by the overwhelming might of their money.

Let's be clear, what this means. Economic crises are not natural phenomena, they are the results of the owners of society exerting their influence. they are profoundly political - the wealthy making us dance to their tune. The wealthy on strike. Capitalism causes a crisis by its very existence, starvation, starvation related diseases, gross poverty, curtailed life-spans, wars - they are all ignored as background noise. When the capitalists feel the pain, then we are all made to jump.

This isn't a case of being for or against bail-outs - after all, who can blame the man with a gun to his head - but a matter of being for or against capitalism. Our only demand must be: "End class society!" else this will all happen again. It is not a glitch, it is politics, the political decision of the real voters to vote with their feat.

As requested

Another little list:

Neville Chamberlain: Wealth at death
£84,013 6s.: probate, 15 April 1941

Baldwin, Stanley: Wealth at death
£280,971 3s. 1d.: probate, 18 March 1947

Winston Churchill: Wealth at death
£304,044: probate, 9 Feb 1965,

Harold Macmillan Wealth at death
£51,114: probate, 1 June 1987


Yeah, I believe MacMillan only had £51K - the British aristocracy and their trusts, eh? I wonder how only 1 in 20 people pay inheritance tax? hmmm.

Anyway, look at it how you will, the figures aren't too far different, though Saint Attlee still shines through.

Brother, can you spare a billion?

Just a quick list:

MacDonald Wealth at death
£21,501 18s. 5d.: confirmation, 12 March 1938

Attlee Wealth at death
£7295: probate, 4 Jan 1968

Wilson Wealth at death
£490,992: probate, 17 Oct 1995

Callaghan died to recently for me to find him, but the list, I think, makes the point. MacDonald was directly corrupted (being loaned a Roller, being taken to country houses, etc.) and yet he died with a relatively modest estate for a former Prime Minister. Attlee must have worn hair shirts all his life, or something.

Tony Blair has made £5 million (alleged) from his memoirs, and its gettign Millions of Dollars per year for consultancies with multinational firms such as Zurich and JP Morgan.

The genius of this is that in capitalist terms it is't corruption, not quid pro quo payments for services rendered. It is indirect corruption, the implicit statement that any Prime Minister will find a place in the trough, if they keep their nose suitably clean first.

The vast inequality in wealth and access to wealth implicitly corrupts the entire political system. There is no way of fixing this, only social equality can deliver genuine democracy.

How many brains?

I was befuddled, last night, listening to Start teh week with Andrew Marr, to hear David "Two Brains" Willets talking about game theory. more specifically, how game theory can describe how co-operative results occur within social systems. Further, he advocated state power as a means of constructing such circumstances, to attaion better social co-operative outcomes. They used to call that social engineering.

Admittedly, this isn't as incoherent for a Tory as it first sounds. After all, Adam Smith's economics was based around an assumption that free markets would produce co-operative and stale social outcomes. It was also profoundly egalitarian, believing free markets would produce socal equality. The invisible hand is a leveller.

More than that, they are now up against the weight of science, evolutionary science in particular which shows that each against each and devil take the hindmost isn't necessary nor essentially desirable. He cited Vampire Bats who will share out a good nights hunt to non-related colony members.

Of coruse, Willetts thinks this should come back to structures like the familly. Although discussing Pakistan, he noted that a high proportion of marriages are between first cousins, indicating the degree of clanishness that still exists there, and suggesting that this is a barrier to liberal democracy - maybe his brains haven't come to agreement on that one yet.

Comrade Blair speaks

Having cunningly arranged my annual leave so I can unilaterally declare a four day week, I caught Tony Blair's interview on the Today programme last Friday.

Blair is a stunning interview performer, easy enough to sound nice, pushy enough to control the discussion, fast enough to avoid a punch being landed.

Usually, that is. Humphries landed a punch. It doesn't really appear in the review I linked to above, but Humphries asked Blair about the lack of social mobility, and quoted Alan Milburn (the ultra Blairista) and Alan Johnson (current cabinet minister) both saying that mobility has declined since their days on the council estates.

Blair was flummuxed, he clearly had no get out, cornered by his own acolytes. He waffled, Humpries pressed. The pressing was a mistake - it gave Blair time and an opening to say "I don't believe in punishing the wealth creators" casting this as about some sort of politics of envy.

It is, though, what he said before that that struck me like an intercontinental ballistic missile. He said that the difference between now and when the two Alan's were bairns is that there was an organised labour movement to help move people like them up.

[Beat]

[Pause]

The Labour Prime Minister says there was an organised workers' movement. Think about it. The head of the Labour Party says there is declining social mobility and a hard to reach group of the socially excluded solely because there isn't an organised political force doing something about it - the implication being such an organised political force could do something about it.

A slip on an interview, unreported, unmentioned in the sound and light over cash for honours and "When will he go?" - that will be Blair's political epitaph: "There was an organised workers' movement..."