Having, at last, read the report by Professor Guy Standing on ‘Basic Income as Common Dividends’ for John McDonnell, I have to say it is a very impressive document and no wonder John McDonnell has said Labour would institute trials. It is a really comprehensive review of everything about a basic income (and even why… Read more
Category:
Politics
And the New Leader of the Tory Party is: Boris Johnson
Introduction Even the most ardent Brexiters concede that things are not going very well. This however is a chronicle of a failure foretold. Once Brexit crystallized into solid form it was clear that any Brexit would leave the UK in a worse place than before. My own thinking pre-referendum was most informed by J C… Read more
NHS may be for sale as much as everything else
Stephen Fry recounts the reasons for fearing the complete privatisation of the NHS sale and thinks it will be even worse if Johnson becomes PM I fear he’s probably right…… Read more
Coffee house rent extraction shock…
You might have thought that the staff serving it were the most expensive overhead but no, the graphic proves that rent extraction is really what commerce is all about: and this is for a coffee company which seems to pay tax…… Read more
Media myopia isn’t the only crime – but it is one of the worst
While all eyes are turned upon the possibility of preventing a proroguing of Parliament (the spoof twitter account ‘Not Boris Johnson’ is currently thanking the 274 MPs who voted in favour of him closing down Parliament and running a dictatorship instead, whilst ‘Our future our choice’ has, wonderfully, dubbed Johnson as Trump with a Thesaurus),… Read more
Non inflationary Basic Income
By putting a price on everything in terms of monetary value, we devalue the things that cannot effectively be priced. This is a rough quote from Professor Guy Standing, he of Universal Income fame, from a recent ‘Renegade Inc’ interview. So happiness is both priceless and worthless. Anyway Professor Guy Standing has produced a report… Read more
Why any job guarantee is a bit suspect
There is an excellent article on Vox reviewing David Greaber’s ideas on ‘Bullshit Jobs. “The point of an economy should be to maximize leisure in order to pursue passions, not “make work.” This is also, I’d suggest, effectively Mariana Mazzucato, who infoms that the state usually creates the origination, as it were, of most original… Read more
If the NHS is not a charity why are private providers?
It seems to have received little publicity but I have to say I’m pleased that the government is going to be taken to court over rates bills. Apparently: Hospitals in England and Wales will pay a combined £408.6 million in business rates this year – a rise of 42.8% since 2017 when the Government carried… Read more
Anti-semitism is not Labour
There is a very instructive article on Labour’s supposed anti-semitism, which has long been a trumped up charge in my view. It is written by Jonathan Rosenhead, Emeritus Professor of Operational Research at the London School of Economics, and also Chair of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine. So I suppose suspicions might… Read more
Keeping Corbyn Out
This is from the latest blog post from Jonathan Cook. I consider it all worth reading, but in case you decide against, the final paragraph is worth some attention: As long as we colluded in the manufactured consensus of western societies, the system operated without challenge or meaningful dissent. A deeply ideological system destroying the… Read more