Oxford Kevin

Thoughts about Oxford, Cycling, Politics, Economics and Climate Change

The Tory justification for Workfare

Jan 22

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Economics, Politics | No Comments

There appears to be two different argument that the tories use to justify workfare, switching from one argument when it is shown to be discredited to the other and back again.

The first argument is that the the unemployed should give something back to society as payment for the benefits that they receive. The second argument is that by doing workfare they maintain skills that are useful for a future employer.

For the first argument, if an unemployed person is doing something that is worthwhile, and worth doing, or a role that is normally a job that someone is paid to do then surely they should be paid to do that job. If poundland needs the job done then they should pay someone to do it, or if they can’t afford to then what is the tax payer doing subsidizing a failed business.

For the second argument, if it was actually the case that the placements were in positions that were appropriate to help enhance the skills of the person in question there might be an argument for it. Still wrong but it certainly would make a lot more sense than the large number of placements doing dead end jobs in retail multinationals like Tescos, Asda, Sainsburys etc.. To pull an unemployed Geology graduate out of a volunteer role in a museum which helps maintain her skills and force her into a job stacking shelves at Asda is madness.

What is the point in going to University and racking up all that debt if the result is a minimum wage job where there is little scope for career progression. Most of the workfare roles can be done by someone who left school at 16 without any qualifications. There is no point in making the UK a high skills society if there are no high skilled jobs for graduates to progress into. I thought the tory solution was to create a dynamic high skill economy, but instead we’ve got a low skill economy with high skilled graduates. We then force the graduates to do unpaid work in roles that should be paid position performed by the unskilled. We don’t have a shortage of unskilled unemployed people.

The whole system is perverse. Students are encouraged to study technical subjects like engineering, mathematics, and science because these are believed to be the skills the country needs to have a productive economy. But apart from the some of the mathematics graduates who end up working in the City, studying any of these subjects is pointless when the only jobs the economy is generating is casual, part time minimum wage jobs in retail. Because of the lack of ambition of successive governments the government is now actively destroying the ambition of the youth of today.

The reason the tories keep repeating these arguments is because they need to hide the fact that it is their policies that are destroying large number of jobs and the unemployed are the easiest scapegoat.

Oxford Labour cuts council carbon emissions by cutting facilities

Jul 13

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Climate Change, Oxford, Politics | 1 Comment

At the meeting of the Old Temple Cowley residents association on Tuesday 12 July 2011 Saj Malik, Labour Councillor for  Cowley Marsh refused to understand that there is a difference between energy efficiency and energy use.

Temple Cowley Pool and leisure centre has multiple pools, a gym, a sauna, a steam room and an exercise studio whilst the proposed Blackbird Leys centre contains only pools, pools that are not significantly different in capacity to the ones at Temple Cowley.

Comparing the energy consumption of both centres without taking into account the differences in facilities provided is necessary for him to help justify his support for closure of the pool.

The proposed new facility in Blackbird Leys will produce less carbon, but not because the facility is more energy efficient but because Oxford residents will lose a gym, a sauna, a steam room and an exercise studio.

Lack of accountability for Oxford City Council decision making

Jun 3

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Oxford, Politics | No Comments

The Oxford Times published my letter but decided to leave out the links to the City Council website and their editing was quite severe, so I have published the original here.

Sir, I am concerned about the lack of transparency in decision making at Oxford City Council. The Council meetings are published here: Oxford City Council committees but if you click on the pdf link you can see we have a large number of Single Member Decision Meetings (A link to a pdf file).

We are informed of the dates on which these Single Member Decision Meetings happen, however, we are not informed what these meetings are about or who the Single Member is that attends the meeting. Furthermore, why do we have meetings with only a single member?

How can this be right and where is the oversight? If a member of the public asks a question, how is it responded to? Could a member of the public observing the meeting actually learn anything about the questions and issues raised, decisions made etc?

I am not saying that the Councillors on the Single Member Committees are corrupt, but it seems to me that making decisions in this way makes it easy for corruption to happen.

Our democratic decision making processes need to be open and transparent at all times and at the moment Oxford City Council clearly fails in this regard.

Another Climate skeptic silver bullet

May 24

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Climate Change | No Comments

bites the dust!!!

I received a comment on my blog today from someone who I used to have many arguments on Left Foot Forward in relation to climate change. He is a climate skeptic. I responded by e-mail but he didn’t supply a valid e-mail address so it bounced. I’ve decided to post my response here.

The article he linked to is here and somehow he thinks that this new data is meant to make me doubt all the evidence that climate change is happening and that it was somewhat warmer during the medieval period. Actually whether it was warmer then than now is not even the point, physics doesn’t distinguish between natural or human drivers of climate.

Here is my response:

I’m not quite sure what you are trying to say by referencing this piece of work. First up there have been so many supposed silver bullets that bounce around the internet, so many pieces of work that are represented as bringing down the edifice of climate science but in the end they are proven to be wrong, or that it has been a matter of interpretation of the work, often in a way that the authors completely disagree with. The piece you have linked to seems to be focussed on the climatology of changes in monsoon weather patterns rather than temperature itself. I’ve never disputed the existence of the MWP, I just think that the evidence suggests that sometime during the last 30 years we have surpassed the temperature from the peak of the MWP. Even if we did use changes in monsoon weather patterns as a proxy for temperature change I don’t think this piece of work could be used to suggest that temperatures then were higher than they are now. Specifically that the modern temperature rise has been so rapid that changes in climate like monsoon patterns will be playing catch up. We’ve heard a lot about floods and tornados in the US recently but what has been less in the news is one of the worst droughts on record in the South and South West USA with Texas being the most affected. This is a change in climate that has been expected as part of AGW and from my quick read of the work you referred to it would be consistent. Other very recent events include the record drought in the Amazon in 2005, thought to be a 1 in 100 year events only to be followed by a more extensive and extreme drought in 2010, once again an expected result of AGW and consistent with the discussion in the paper your refer to. These are one off events, they don’t prove anything but they do add to the evidence that is piling up that AGW is real, happening now and happening fast.

Drought in Texas and more on Texas

Drought in the Amazon and more on Amazon drought with a brill rapture comment at end.

Modern day temperatures climbing rapidly

NASA Giss Temperature series

 

A weekend of Politics and Relaxation

Mar 6

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Climate Change, Oxford, Politics | No Comments

My weekend was good for my soul, and I don’t even believe. On Friday it started with a public meeting discussing issues around the 1 million climate jobs campaign. On Saturday I was missing out on the 6 billions ways event in London which if the tweets coming out of it were any representation then it sounds like it was bloody brilliant. Thanks to those who did tweet about the different sessions at 6 billion ways. Myself, I helped my partner setup the Seedy Saturday seed swapping event at Barracks Lane Community Garden. Seed swapping is a wonderfully subversive activity. I then went down to East Oxford Farmers Market and I ran into an old friend who has been out of Oxford’s activism and campaigning loop for months because her back has been so bad. She is up and about, still in pain but clearly on the improve. Her play on war and pacifism is nearly finished and we talked about imperialism, war, power, propaganda, the WWI Christmas truce, the German resistance movement, Rosa Luxembourg and more, it was stimulating and fantastic. I then spent an hour on Cowley Rd handing out leaflets for the March 26 protest in London. Then I went home with the shopping and did the usual around the house things, read more German, my German language skills are coming along slowly considering the effort I’m putting into it. When I couldn’t concentrate on German any more I followed some of the tweets from 6 billions ways in London, which made me wish I’d gone.

Sunday was a total day of relaxation, a late start, breakfast was good, a short bike ride to return the soup pot from the Seedy Saturday event, and then a walk to the Isis Farmhouse on the Thames for beer and cake and the accidental running into friends, followed by a walk to a Fairtrade tea party where more cakes were eaten and the intentional catching up with friends, and then the long walk home. Weather was perfect.

An open letter to Mr Keith Mitchell, Tory leader of Oxfordshire County Council

Feb 14

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Oxford, Politics | 1 Comment

Dear Mr Mitchell,

I am concerned about your fundamentalist adherence to austerity economics and what that means for this country. You are concerned about Government budget deficits and you are concerned that we will follow down the path of countries like Ireland and Spain, both of which ran budget surpluses prior to the great recession. For these countries having a budget surplus was clearly no help and yet Germany which has demonstrably weathered the economic storm better than any other European country has had higher government debt than the UK compared to GDP during all the years of the Labour Government, so clearly high levels of government debt and deficits isn’t everything.

The Labour Government certainly isn’t innocent in any of this. They ignored the high and increasing levels of tax avoidance by large corporations and the wealthy of this country. Labour only attempted band aid solutions to mitigate the worst affects of a country with high levels of inequality. These types of band-aid solutions are costly, and Labour avoided dealing with the real issues created by a dysfunctional economy dependent on an oversized financial sector. Instead Labour should have been developing an industrial policy to provide productive and worthwhile jobs for the people of this country, investing in green jobs for improving energy efficiency and supporting the development of a sustainable energy industry so that Britain could have been a leader in the field instead of having to buy in the technology from others.

Government deficit spending during recessions to pump prime an economy has a good economic pedigree. It was John Maynard Keynes’ economic insights that were used to get most major economies out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Keynes would recognise our current economic problems and know that the answer is not austerity. Capacity utilisation is low, business is hoarding cash because it sees little in the way of investment opportunities and he understood that when interest rates are low and the economy isn’t moving the only way to get the economy creating jobs is for large scale deficit spending. Because interest rates are low governments can afford to pump prime the economy.

Many Oxfordshire residents protesting your budget know this, they understand that the cuts are ideological, that the structural deficit could easily be solved by chasing the tax avoiders. Your description of the protesters as deficit denier lefties is insulting. You may disagree with their knowledge and understanding of economic history but your deficit denier soundbite is not helpful when discussing solutions to our economic problems.

Oxford student Occupiers smeared by Liberal Democrats

Nov 30

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Oxford, Politics | 3 Comments

Smearing local students is fair game according to the Oxford Liberal Democrats if it provides an opportunity to attack your political rivals.

Tony Brett, a Liberal Democrat Councillor for the Carfax ward, an inner city ward for Oxford City Council attacked the Oxfordshire Green Party on his blog and then promoted his blog via a tweet which is where I noticed it. His attack on the local Green Party annoyed me because I am a Oxfordshire Green Party member. However his smearing of the students in order to make his attack made me angry.

His attack was in relation to a statement put out by the Oxfordshire Green Party in support of the students who occupied the Radcliffe Camera as part of their protest against the cuts, the cutting of the Education Maintenance Allowance, and the tripling of tuition fees.

Tony Brett was horrified to find that the “Oxford Green Party was proud to stand alongside those Oxford students who … undertook the occupation in Oxford.”.

He was horrified because “I am much more ashamed of all those who think it’s OK to practically vandalise one of Oxford’s most historic buildings”. The problem is there has not been any reports or evidence of vandalism or damage done to the Radcliffe Camera by the students.

He was horrified to find that the students had danced on the desks during the occupation thus practically vandalising the historical fabric of the building. Problem is that the desks aren’t part of the historical fabric of the building and they weren’t damaged.

He was horrified that the students occupying the library prevented other students from doing their necessary study. Problem is that it wasn’t the occupying students who prevented the other students from studying in the Radcliffe Camera. The occupying students were happy to work with the Librarians who had suggested that students needing to study could do so on the upper level and that access to books on all levels be made available. Instead it was the University authorities who banned access for other students to the Radcliffe Camera.

Lastly Tony Brett assumed that it was the occupying students rowdy behaviour that caused the closure of the Radcliffe Camera thus stopping other students from being able to study. Problem is that the rowdy activity of the dancing which clearly disturbs Mr Brett so much was only for approximately 10 minutes out of 30 hours of occupation and happened long after the University Authorities had already banned access for users to the Radcliffe Camera.

Because Tony Brett did not notice my comment that was held up in moderation on his blog, I was unable to correct his misapprehensions. Even so I am disappointed that he would choose to interpret events in this way and assume the worst of people.

A reminder that this is my personal blog, and anything written here is my personal opinion and does not represent the views of the Oxfordshire Green Party or the Green Party.

Another Alternative Vote (AV) System Lesson from Australia

Nov 27

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Politics | 4 Comments

For those who don’t have any experience of Australian politics you should know that State Government’s wield real power and the elections are hotly contested.

The final result for the Victorian State election is still to come in, but the results don’t look good for the Greens in the lower house compared to their hopes early on in the election campaign. Their first preferences votes were close to expected, but the problem for the Greens was the changes in the preferences distribution by the Conservatives (The Liberals) from the Greens to Labor. This change meant that what looked like a realistic chance for 3 lower house seats will probably end up being none. The reason The Liberals decided to change how their second preferences are distributed is because they understand that after the election of the first Green MP to the national Parliament The Greens are a real political force in Australia and preferencing a party to the left of Labor was not in their interests. They may have made this decision anyway but the Greens didn’t help themselves by their cockiness in relation to the inner Melbourne seats where it looked like they were going to win their first lower house seats in the State Parliament. But if they had not been so cocky the Liberals might not have taken notice, because in the seats involved the Liberals are not in the contest and were probably not paying much attention.

This is a significant blow for The Greens because in the seats where they have the strongest support it is likely that they will have to win on first preference votes alone because they can’t rely on any significant second preference votes when the contest is predominantly between them and Labor.

For The Greens to win where they haven’t won on first preferences they need Labor to come third in a three way race with the hope that Labor second preferences give The Greens enough votes to beat The Liberals.

If this happens too often though dont be surprised if Labor decides to do a preference deal with The Liberals in an attempt to keep the third party from getting any significant representation in Parliament.

The upshot is that for a minor party like The Greens the Alternative Voting System can mean that in the seats with the strongest green support they can win the largest number of first preferences votes but still lose the election.

What Lord Young doesn’t understand

Nov 20

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Politics | 1 Comment

This comment is about people in work, those of us whom Lord Young considers have never had it so good. The working and the middle class, who feel squeezed because unlike the rich they can’t avoid paying their taxes, who feel like what they get in return is diminishing, whilst at the same time they recognize that their pay is being eaten away by inflation.

Lord Young doesn’t understand, he has no conception of the concerns that most of these people have. This is the case for those of us who are in work who may not have suffered financially during this recession but will still be feeling anxious about their future career prospects, keeping their job, worrying about paying their bills and their mortgage as their pay is gradually eaten away by inflation. For those with mortages who bought at the height of the housing boom they will probably also be concerned about whether their mortgage goes into negative equity or not.

The commentators on the TV news have been talking about what do the stats say, is Lord Young right? but the stats miss nearly the whole of the story, and that is why they are pretty much irrelevant.

Salary rises have only been for those who are at the top end of the market. So even though average incomes rose during the recession, this has been completely due to salary increases for those at the top, whilst everyone else has found that their income has gone backwards. Looking at changes in average incomes tells us nothing about the experience of most people when all the benefits accrue to the top

The benefits of low interest rates for mortgage holders is also a deception. Not all of us have a mortgage, and not every mortgage holder has a variable rate mortgage. The low interest rates do not benefit as many people as Lord Young would have us believe.

But the biggest issue is anxiety, and this is reflected in the rise in suicides during the recession. Anxiety kills, it causes mental health problems, drinking problems and increases conflict in relationships.

If you’ve kept your job your worrying about losing it. If you have lost your job you worry about getting a new one. You worry about whether your partner’s job is safe. Or if they have lost their job you worry about when they will next get a job, because the cost of living in the UK is such that it is almost impossible to run a household on a single income. Whether you have got a job or not you are probably concerned about paying the bills because your salary is being eaten away by inflation.

Lord Young, David Cameron, George Osborne have never had to experience the worries that the rest of us have to. They are secure in the knowledge that they have their wealth to fall back onto if anything goes wrong. Yet somehow Lord Young feels he has the right to comment. Well bollocks to you mate. The Tories are not content with blaming the unemployed, the vulnerable, the foreigners, they are now going for everyone not part of their ruling elite. Marx would be proud as we return to the clear cut battle lines of the bourgeoisie versus the salary slaves.

Should Goldman Sachs win the Worst Lobby awards?

Oct 26

Posted by Oxford Kevin in Politics | 1 Comment

Goldman Sachs and the various market trading associations that it supports lobbied the US Government and its regulators to relax regulations that restricted the ability of financiers to speculate on food. Regulations that for many countries had been in place since the 1930s that had been implemented in response to the destructive speculation in the food commodities markets that occurred in the 1920 and 1930s.

Food commodity speculation can produce wild swings in prices, resulting in temporary high prices which makes food unaffordable. This speculation is also destructive for farmers as it makes it difficult for them to know which crops they should be planting for the following season. For many farmers by harvest time the speculators boom has turned to bust and the crop they have produced is no better than dust. When the financiers get involved in speculation on food prices through derivatives or hedges the changes in the prices of food no longer relates to a price set by supply and demand.

In 1991 Goldman Sachs lobbying efforts where successful and the US regulator accepted that the commodities trading company J.Aron a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs was given the rights to operate in the food trading market as if it was a company that was actually buying or selling food with the ability to hedge. Since then Goldman Sachs has gradually set itself up as the go to place for speculators in food commodities whilst also speculating its own money. By 2006 Goldman Sachs had latched onto a research paper that suggested that commodities markets where negatively correlated with shares and bonds and was touting the conclusions of this paper to anyone who would listen. As share markets started to collapse in 2007 investors piled into the commodities markets and Goldman Sachs kept promoting the value of these commodities markets, until finally the values were so far beyond any real world valuation that the markets slumped a few months later.

In the US politicians are once again looking at restoring the power of the regulators, and the EU parliament is also considering the implementation of regulations relating to the operation of speculators in the commodities markets. Unfortunately Goldman Sachs and industry bodies that it is a member of are lobbying hard to scupper these newly proposed regulatory frameworks or water them down so much as to be effectively useless. Voting for Goldman Sachs to win the worst lobby award will help to highlight the destructive influence of Goldman Sachs.

You can learn more about the impact of speculation by Goldman Sachs and their friends on food prices from the research done by the World Development Movement (WDM). You can learn more about the worst lobby awards and the lobbying that is still occurring today by Goldman Sachs and the industry bodies that it is part of to water down the proposed new EU regulations on the worst lobby awards pages.