May 16, 2005
Once upon a time etc.
Once upon a time, I lived in a land where all the trains, buses, and trams ran on time, where the shops never closed, where the telephone always worked, where my broadband internet connection never went down, where the gas and electricity companies never overcharged, where all the primary school children could read and write, where I could go and see a specialist hospital doctor without an appointment, and indeed many other good things.
However, I am here now and this week I lost my internet connection four times. Three times due to my ISP allegedly using ‘rogue’, i.e. dead, IPs (although the real rogue is probably the fake Surrey-served Dumfries ISP), and once, but for much longer, through the BT line going down.
If I want to communicate with my ISP I have to call a special line either costing 50p, or 1 pound, a minute. To report a BT fault I also have to pay. The logic appears to be that because complaints are annoying to the company, the customer should have to pay extra for them. I suppose almost all large British companies have arrangements to frustrate complaints.
I try to avoid all large English-based companies whenever possible. (I have changed my gas and electricity from Scottish Gas (another front, this time for British Gas) to Scottish Hydro in Perth who answer the phone promptly and try to solve problems. Scottish companies are invariably better.)
Unfortunately BT are unavoidable. They still have an effective monopoly as they are still allowed to own the wires and exchanges. My first BT call (by mobile) was apparently to Leicester. They told me there was a fault on the telephone pole outside our house, which would be affecting our neighbours. This turned out to be untrue. They refused to give me any contact details for my local BT engineering office,and I still don’t know whether it is in Stirling or Edinburgh. In the end I had to wait more than 51 hours for an engineer to come and fix the fault.
Meanwhile, our major politicians talk up Britain and its economic achievements. Michael Howard said during the election that we live in the fourth richest country in the world, although calculated in the normal way by GDP per capita the United Kingdom is nowhere near the top ten.
Tony Blair (or Gordon Brown? or both?) was also taking about Britain being the fourth largest economy. This claim is only true if you suspend common sense, ignore the over-valuation of sterling in terms of the dollar, and overlook the fact that economic activity in the largest countries (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil etc.) is barely measured. It’s also worth noting that France and Italy each have economies of almost exactly the same size as the UK and the smallest currency realignment can affect the order in which we are listed.
Why do politicians indulge in this ‘feel-good’ flattery tactic? Labour obviously want to persuade people that they are doing a good job. Any government that has been in power for eight years would do the same, but why should the Conservatives and the other parties join in? Arguably the Conservatives lost the election for lack of an economic policy. Did the Liberal Democrats ever have one?
Britain suffers from abysmally bad services, poor environment, poor education, poor food. There is some growth in the economy which is good, but productivity and general standards are still much lower than in many economies that currently have none.
Economic growth does not necessarily bring a good standard of life. People in Britain have low expectations. They expect hospitals to be dirty and disorganized, motorways blocked, trains and buses late, phones broken, city centres vandalized, streets dirty, children rebellious. They don’t expect to know what is happening. They don’t expect to be consulted. They don’t expect to participate.
The problem is essentially low productivity (related to poor education) and this brings me back to where I started - the bad service which is symptomatic of the problems of the economy.
Basta! Enough for now!
Posted by Simon Holledge at 11:32 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 27, 2005
Lies, damned lies and statistics
The SNP are asking for an independent statistics office for Scotland, reacting to an article in the Economist raising concerns about the freedom from political pressure of the Office for National Statistics.
Discussions about energy and the environment, the NHS, independence and many other important issues must be based on reliable figures, so I am very much in favour of this. In fact, we have got to a point where almost every government-published figure relating to public services comes under suspicion because of the pressure on managers to meet centrally-determined targets. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the NHS.
“Every measure produced by the Government, from economic growth to unemployment to accident and emergency waiting times, is being manipulated and massaged to produce rosier pictures than real people experience in their day-to-day lives.” Jim Mather MSP
www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3789219
www.snp.org/snpnews/2005/snppressrelease.2005-03-25.0981592087
news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=324&id=322872005
Posted by Simon Holledge at 06:03 PM | TrackBack
March 26, 2005
The cost of PPP projects
‘Live now, pay later’ is generally regarded as a bad idea, unless we are talking about Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects - something I (personally) associated with enormous, badly-organized, inconveniently-located hospitals with expensive car parks.
Tom McCabe, the finance minister, answering questions by the SNP MSP Stewart Stevenson, says that PPP projects will amount to a total of GBP 8 billion by 2019, by which time the burden on the taxpayers will be about £555 million a year.
The SNP think the total will be more like £13.8 billion with an eventual annual burden of about double the figure given by McCabe. Their preference would be for a Scottish Trust for Public Investment, based on lower interest rates.
Would anyone like to explain the benefits of PPP/PFI financing over traditional means of raising money for new public works? I still don’t get it!
news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=320522005
Posted by Simon Holledge at 11:53 AM | TrackBack
February 07, 2005
'The Index of Success'
Over on the Independence blog, Stuart Dickson is writing about Scotland’s poor economic performance and the so-called ‘Federation of Small Businesses-Sunday Herald Index of Success’.
It’s true that the economic data is bad enough, but when we factor in Scotland’s abysmal health record and lack of progress on the environment, the results look pretty bleak.
Gordon Brown has got away with some extraordinary hyping up of the British economy. This may be good for Labour, but it has done nothing to help people here realize the truth about their economic performance.
The reality is low standards and low productivity.
For someone coming to Edinburgh (as I did) from one of the world’s leading economic centres, low productivity is something that stares you in the face: the local government officers who respond by formal letter months after email enquiry, the paper-clutching 1980s-style solicitors, the doctors who are too busy to see you and then chat to you about the weather when you get an appointment, the shops where someone insists on doing your photocopying for you, the people who say they’ll ring you back but don’t, the call centres that are always busy, etc. etc.
I don’t see any solution to this because the problem starts at the top - with the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Parliament and the local governments. In fact it’s the bureaucrats that are the worst! Who is going to tell them that they must respond to email within 24 hours? Who is going to tell the doctors that they must see more patients? Who is going to tell the lawyers to raise their productivity and lower their fees?
And, come to think about it, who is going to tell the headquarters of the SNP to run a thorough-going dynamic, aggressive, modern party organization?
scottish-independence.blogspot.com/2005/02/scotland-is-last-among-advanced-oecd.html
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:30 AM | TrackBack
January 29, 2005
Oil
Stuart Dickson had an excellent piece on Scotland’s oil and gas on ‘Independence’ yesterday.
I have been bemused by the Labour argument that Scotland’s finances would be destabilized if we received the money, because the receipts go up and down each year. This was the argument used by Hallwood and Macdonald at the Fraser of Allander Institute (16 September). Anyway this concern should be eliminated by the SNP proposal for a Norwegian-style oil fund.
I wonder how the Norwegians would react to the idea of their oil receipts going to Copenhagen, in return for Danish pocketmoney!
scottish-independence.blogspot.com/2005/01/scottish-oil-and-gas-to-last-until_28.html
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:30 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
November 13, 2004
'Labour's Big Lie'
The SNP have produced an analysis of unemployment in Scotland showing that “the Executive’s unemployment statistics are a massive under-statement of joblessness”.
www.snp.org/index_hires.php?pageName=news/newsdetail.php?newsID=2594
/news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=324&id=1304872004
Posted by Simon Holledge at 01:19 AM | TrackBack
October 31, 2004
London bid for the Olympics
Pete Wishart MP is cautiously questioning the benefit to Scotland of the London Olympics bid.
Holding the Olympics is basically a development project. New facilities are built and new infrastructure is created that are intended to be useful after the games are over.
Do we want this kind of project in the most developed, congested, over-stretched, over-populated corner of our over-centralized state?
I would be happy to see it in the north of England - that might indirectly benefit Scotland, if only by promoting a more balanced British economy - but not in London!
www.snp.org/index_hires.php?pageName=news/newsdetail.php?newsID=2559
Posted by Simon Holledge at 03:04 PM | TrackBack
October 06, 2004
Britain is seventh not fourth largest economy
In 2003, the World Bank listed the United Kingdom as the world’s fourth economy by US dollar GDP, ahead of France, Italy, China, India etc.
This has been much trumpeted by British politicians, despite the implausibility of our little island (ranking 21st in the world by population) having a larger economy than China or india.
Using the more accurate and realistic PPP (purchasing power parity) GDP method, Britain is in fact number seven, behind the USA, China, Japan, India, Germany and France, and just ahead of Italy, Russia and Brazil. The top five are all far larger than Britain.
This is something that we need to pick up on. Spurious pride in Britain’s ‘fourth largest economy’ is not something the SNP should be encouraging.
The World Bank publish both kinds of calculation:
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:19 AM
September 27, 2004
The problem of the post offices
Mike Weir MP has been talking about increasing closures of post offices and the gap this leaves in local life, especially for the elderly. At the same time the BBC have a report on post offices in Norfolk working with the police to provide essential services.
Given the necessary flexibility, there should also be scope for post office functions to be doubled up with other local services - GP surgeries, local government offices, the fire service, lifeboat stations or whatever - and provide access to the internet!
www.snp.org/html/news/printerfriendly.php?newsID=2456
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/3691624.stm
Posted by Simon Holledge at 11:14 PM
September 16, 2004
'Fiscal Federalism in Scotland'
Paul Hallwood and Ronald MacDonald’s paper on ‘The Economic Case for Fiscal Federalism in Scotland’, with an introduction by Wendy Alexander, is available as a pdf from the Fraser of Allander Institute of the University of Strathclyde (74 pp).
www.fraser.strath.ac.uk/Allander/AllanderPapers.htm
Jim Mather of the SNP commented: “While today’s outcome was not a complete success for the argument for fiscal autonomy, it is definitely a step in the right direction and I hope we can push it further in the future.”
www.snp.org/html/news/printerfriendly.php?newsID=2426
Posted by Simon Holledge at 09:32 AM
September 12, 2004
Salmond on the economy
Alex Salmond’s speech to Scotsoft is reported on the SNP website and the BBC.
He notes that “long-term growth in Scotland has been only 1.7% compared to the UK’s 2.3%” also “according to a recent report by the International Institute for Management Development, Scotland is ranked thirty sixth in the world competitiveness rankings. The UK is ranked twenty second.”
Salmond urges encouragement of hi-tech and new startup businesses in Scotland, which is fine as far as it goes.
Low productivity is also a major issue here, as in England, and I hope to return to this subject soon.
www.snp.org/html/news/printerfriendly.php?newsID=2415
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3646450.stm
Posted by Simon Holledge at 02:56 PM