SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 2010
Lowest Class - Vicious, Semi-criminal
The Major has long believed in the criminal class. That is to say, he believes thereis a criminal class, and it carries out most of our crimes. As you may imagine, this week's headlines have given him the opportunity to remind us all of his bracing views:
"You do realise the scumbag who robbed Mr Hussain had 50 previous convictions. 50 for God's sake! And they still haven't locked the bastard away! We should have banged him up years ago - permanently. Three strikes and you're out - that's it! And as for those two little savages who tortured the kiddies in Doncaster, it is beyond belief that the so-called authorities hadn't locked them up in an approved school. I mean, everyone seems to have known they were out of control and dangerous, and yet bugger all was done. Why the hell do we put up with it? The only way of dealing with the criminal class is to lock them away."
"But Major," I said, "this is 21st Century equal opportunities Britain, not Victorian London. They can't help being criminals... they haven't had the chances you've had. What about rehabilitation? What about re-educating these people to be productive members of society?"
The Major snarled. "Are you trying to wind me up? For one thing, I've had to make my own opportunities in life. And for another, nobody has the faintest idea how to rehabilitate the criminal classes. It simply can't be done - or at least it can't be done with enough certainty to make the rest of us safe. Locking them up is all we can do, and I'm just amazed we don't insist on it."
"But Major - even if I agree with you about adult criminals - these two appalling boys in Doncaster are kids themselves. It's not their fault."
"Well, you can say that if you like, but dangerous wild animals still have to be locked up. Anyway, it's the parents we need to focus on. According to the papers, the mother was a drug addict, the father a violent alcoholic, and they lived entirely on benefits - benefits, I might add, that have been hugely boosted by this brainless socialist government of yours. It is literally insane that we actually pay the criminal classes to have kids. Is it any wonder we get things like this happening?" He fixed me intently with his good eye. "I've said it before -we need to stop them breeding... by all means at our disposal."
*****
In 1898-99 the businessman and philanthropist Charles Booth published his famous poverty map of London. It mapped the city's streets in terms of their social composition, identifying seven separate classes.
At the top were the Upper Middle and Upper Classes, described a "wealthy" and marked on the map in yellow. Right at the bottom - below the Comfortable, and the Poor, and the Very Poor, were the Lowest Class, marked in black and described as "vicious, semi-criminal".
Has anything changed?
Yes, sure, the material poverty has long since disappeared - swept away by Beveridge. But if there's one thing the last 50 years should have have taught us, all the socialist largesse in the world cannot make people live better lives. In fact, it all too often tends to deprave and corrupt (we've blogged before- eg here -how things came seriously unglued when the 1950s Prog Con extended the welfare state way beyond Beveridge's minimalist safety net).
As we saw when we looked at Shannon Matthews' council estate in Dewsbury (see this blog), there are now whole areas of the country plagued by high crime, poor education, high unemployment/incapacity/lone parent welfare dependency, and family dysfunction. Booth could doubtless produce some very striking maps.
But what to do about it?
Indeed, can we do anything?
According to the Major's theory, we ultimately have to stop these people breeding,by all means at our disposal.
But for those of a more sensitive disposition, there is a gentler approach we should try first - the one we hope Mr BrokenBritain Cam has in mind.
According to the Charles Murray underclass theory, the essential problem is that over-generous welfare benefits have encouraged the growth of a jobless criminal underclass, especially through the creation of single parent families with no male role model in the household. We could reverse all this simply by cutting back on benefits, especially child benefits. In particular, we need to stop rewarding single women for having kids.
Ah, you say, but that wouldn't have stopped those yobs in Doncaster, because the parents were married, and there was a male role model on the premises. It's just that he was the wrong type of model.
And you're right. Changing the welfare system would not necessarily have helped in that particular case. Maybe they really are members of the irreducible criminal class, the ones identified by Booth long before the welfare state.
And for cases like that there may be no alternative to the Major.
PS It was sickening to see the abominable Balls slithering around on Newsnight, trying to explain why his published summary of the Edlington serious case review is so grossly misleading. According to Newsnight, who have a leaked copy of the full review, details of the child protection system's most catastrophic failings have been deliberately suppressed. Our expensive childcare service is a dangerous shambles.
PPS As it happens, almost all Tyler's Victorian forebears were poor or very poor - just like yours probably. But Tyler likes to think his great great grandparents were the respectable working class, and even when they were struck down by illness and job loss, they stayed honest. Well, that's what he likes to believe anyway.
POSTED BY WAT TYLER AT 11:39 AM COMMENTS (6) | TRACKBACK (0) 
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2010
Power Without A Plan
And just to put our plight into its broader horrific context, take a look at the somewhat dense chart above (click on image to enlarge) from this week's McKinsey report on Debt and Deleveraging. For each of ten OECD economies, it shows the ratio of total debt (ie government debt plus private sector debt) to GDP - otherwise known as a country's leverage ratio. And it shows how that ratio has changed over the last two decades.
As we can see, the UK (light green line) has clocked up by far the biggest increase in debt of any country bar possibly Spain. And we are now right at the top of the debtor's league, more indebted than any other country bar Japan. And most of it accumulated on Brown's watch.
Now as we've blogged before (eg see here), the bulk of this debt was not incurred by the government directly. It was incurred by individuals and companies. But by effectively nationalising the liabilities of our banks, the government has now taken much of the debt onto its - ie taxpayers' - shoulders. Moreover, right now, it is the government itself which is doing most to add to the national debt mountain through its ballooning fiscal deficit.
So back to the Plan, or lack of it. To recap (see this blog), Cam and George will need to close a structural fiscal deficit that is both the biggest in the developed world, and the biggest in our own peacetime history. It is estimated by the OECD at 10% of GDP - around £150bn pa.
Labour has so far pencilled in cuts and tax increases amounting to just over 3% of GDP - although one-third of that comprises tax increases (mainly the new tax on jobs via NICs), and they have outrageously failed to provide any detail on what specific areas of public spending will be cut (other than admitting that capital expenditure will be slashed).
George has so far promised specific cuts totalling £7bn, but has failed to explain whether they are in addition to Labour's cuts, or simply a bit of detail within Labour's existing totals. And Cam has compounded the problem by excluding the NHS and overseas aid from the cuts (thereby loading all the pain onto the other 80% or so of spending).
So what are they actually going to do come 6th May? Yes, Cam will stand in the sunshine on the steps of No 10, looking great with Sam by his side, and deliver his homily. But what happens once he goes inside and that wonderful old door closes behind him?
Here's what: the tradesmen's entrance from No 11 suddenly bursts open and an ashen faced George races in waving the secret Treasury file spelling out the real options:
- Lean and mean - immediate 20% cut in all Departmental Expenditure Limits, increase in State Pension Age to 70 by 2015, outright abolition of Child Benefit and other working age benefits, 5 year freeze on all public sector salaries and pension entitlements.
- Siege economy - whack up taxes - double VAT, 30% standard rate of income tax, 60% higher rate, 35% Corporation Tax - manage loss of competitiveness by leaving EU and imposing Bennite tariff wall.
- Weimar Republic - rescind Bank of England independence, fire up the presses, inflate the debt away
- Whistling in the dark - do none of the above and hope the economy somehow grows us to salvation before the markets take fright
Whistling in the dark, aka growing out of debt, is the most attractive, involving least pain, and least loss of GDP in the process of deleveraging (ie reducing the ratio of debt to GDP). Unfortunately, McKinsey could find only three cases where that has happened, and they all involved WW2 or oil booms.
Weimar Republic, aka high inflation, has been the way out in a quarter of cases, so it's definitely a runner. But it doesn't always pan out altogether for the best, as Weimar showed all too clearly. And with today's skittish globalised bond markets it could easily end in a Götterdämmerung of high interest rates and collapsed sterling. Which might not be that great.
Massive default is a possibility not explicitly covered in the secret Treasury file - yet. But McKinsey reckon it too has been deployed in a quarter of cases. We'd just need to decide if we wanted to rank alongside Mexico and Argentina, and give up any hope of international credit for a generation or two.
Still, the clear winner - the approach that's been deployed in half of all cases - is what McKinsey call simply belt-tightening. The most common response of over-indebted countries is to borrow and consume much less.
Of course, individuals and companies know that, and many are already taking action to cut their debts. But governments are not always so bright. Or so decisive.
So as they contemplate maybe putting together some kind of plan, Cam and George might care to note a specific concern McKinsey raise:
"Current projections of government debt in some countries, such as the UK... may offset reductions in debt by households and the commercial sectors. We therefore see a risk that the economies may remain highly leveraged for a prolonged period, which would create a fragile and potentially unstable economic outlook over the next five to ten years."I hope someone at the Treasury remembers to highlight that point with a particularly flourescent marker.
We cannot afford any more faffing around.
Posts
