Season Of Goodwill

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2010

Season Of Goodwill

The Major has made his view very clear:

"Why the bloody hell should we law-abiding taxpayers tolerate a bunch of freeloading welfare scroungers smashing up London? We spend God knows how much on these revolting students - and will still do so even after the fees increase. But just look how they thank us! Why should we give themanything?! If they want to spend three years dossing around and rioting, let them pay for it themselves. And I'll bet half those scum desecrating the Cenotaph yesterday aren't even students at all - they'll be anarchists. And we'll be paying them! Housing benefit, child benefit, incapacity benefit... you name it.

It's time to draw the line - anybody convicted of violent disorder should go to jail - hard labour - and then lose all their welfare benefits for ever. Period. In future, if they want to eat they have to work like everyone else. And if they think they can rob instead, we'll lock them up somewhere where they will have to work. I'll get my mate Gomulka to organise something with the Soviets out East - that'll soon wipe the smile off their faces."

Now, of course, nobody objects to peaceful protest. No, indeed.

Well, that is, nobody objects to peaceful protest as long as it doesn't inconvenience us. And as long as it doesn't require us to pick up some huge tab for police overtime. So long as it takes place on a Sunday afternoon in say, a field somewhere outside Milton Keynes, and so long as the protesters pay for the policing, like in a football match, then everything's cool. In fact, under those circs, we might even allow a little recreational effigy burning - a weekly bonfire night for young people to let off steam. Kind of idea.

But who exactly are these rioters, and who is paying to keep them alive?

According to police hunting down those involved in the previous riot - the one last month at Tory HQ in Millbank - they are mainly teenage students of one kind or another. They say:

"We are finding that many of these people are young students who do not seem to have been in any trouble before. It appears they may have been provoked by more anarchist groups.

From a parent's point of view it must be very concerning. These are young people committing really serious offences which I suspect may result in prison sentences for some." (The maximum sentence for violent disorder is 5 years)

Provoked by anarchists? Certainly when you look at the wanted poster, one or two do look older than teenage:

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But who are these anarchists exactly?

Google's anarchist UK trail leads straight to the Anarchist Federation. But can they be in any way credible? Are real anarchists allowed to participate in such a restrictive and preposterous construct as a federation? It sounds more like the Mothers' Union. Besides, there's something seriously hollow about an organisation that wants to abolish oppressive government on the one hand, while maintaining Big Government spending on the other.

Googling Operation Malone - the police man-hunt for November's rioters - gives some far more promising leads.

Ian Bone (great name) is a veteran anarchist of 63. During the 80s he ran a newspaper called Class War, featuring pix of beaten-up policemen. And here he is addressing a Class War meeting in 1985 (parental discretion advised - some of his opinions are seriously juvenile - precisely the kind of thing which might appeal to disaffected teenagers at the University of Neverpay):

Anyway, Bone has some blogposts on the current riots that simply blew the Major away. For example, under the headline What a magnificent inspiring day - the London mob is fucking back Mr B writes:

"I salute everyone who atacked the police, the treasury, the Supreme Court, the Royal family, the tax avoiders today – a quite heroic and brave acievement. Full report tomorrow – ALL HAIL – IT’S THE POLL TAX RIOT MARK 2 – ‘we come from the slums of London……"

Now that's more like it. According to his own autobiography, Bone is the son of a butler and a housemaid (no, really) and obviously carries deep psychological scars from his parents' life below stairs:

"It is fucking phenomenol. the rich are targets whether its the Bullingdon Club, the Royals or Sir Philip Green... Yesterday was reminiscent of both the poll Tax Riot and the Gordon riots as a rich hating mob stormed through the streets... Organise and celebrate yesterday comrades…but theres more coming the way of the fucking rich…..much more.’WE COME FROM THE SLUMS OF LONDON’

All of which is absolutely fine.

Well, fine except for any incitement to riot bits obviously.

But what we need to know is how does Bone support himself?

He has published three books, including the carefully nuanced "Bash the Rich". But given that B the R is currently standing at 76,361 in the Amazon best seller list, you'd have to guess he has some other source of income. And his website gives no other clues.

One of those oldies' jobs in B&Q? At 63 it's possible.

A family inheritance? Seems a tad unlikely.

Money from Putin? In the 80s, Class War and its ilk were widely thought to have been financed by the KGB, so that has to be a runner.

But the Major reckons Bone and his like must be on some kind of welfare deal.

Unfortunately we have no way of finding out.

In this season of goodwill to all men, let's hope someone round at the DWP is looking into the entire question right now.

****

Meanwhile on an altogether more seasonal level, we've just updated the TaxPayers' Alliance Tax on Christmas paper.

We reckon that taxes on Xmas spending this year will cost the average family £283. The overall bill will be £7.2bn, an astonishing 40% increase on 2008, when we last did the calc.

Part of the increase has been driven by the growth in Xmas spending, 2008 coming immediately after the Lehman crisis. But the majority of it reflects higher tax rates - the hike in VAT from 15% back up to 17.5%, plus increases in various fuel and excise duties.

And the really bad news is that VAT increases again on 4 Jan to 20%. According to Treasury forecasts, the rise will cost the average family nearly £500 pa, taking the average family VAT bill above £4000 pa for the very first time.

Happy Xmas everyone.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2010

Are We Spending Too Much On Education?

How more can be less

Education, education, education.

And sure enough, during Labour's time in office, they whacked up state education spending by an astonishing 73% in real inflation adjusted terms. By 2009-10 spending had increased to £88.3bn - around £8 grand pa for every pupil and student between 5 and 21.

But what precisely have we taxpayers had in return? Where's the pay-off?

You can forget all those fiddled tractor production stats - as everybody now understands, they're not worth the dumbed down exam papers they're written on.

Much more important is yesterday's report from the OECD - the 2009 results from their Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). That is based on a consistent and regular set of tests sat by 15 year olds across over 60 developed countries. And what it shows is us sinking further down the international league tables with each year that passes.

The Mail has a useful summary:

What should we make of that?

Some argue that it's largely a question of race - we're simply not as bright as the superbrains out East, and we just need to accept that as they build up their education systems we will sink ever further behind.

But even if true, that doesn't explain why we're so much worse than European countries like Finland and, gulp, Estonia.

Immigrants then. Some argue that Finland and others do well because they have far fewer immigrants dragging down the overall scores.

But while with 10.6% immigrant pupils we are much higher than say Finland, other countries with high immigrant percentages also do much better than us. For example, Canada and Australia both have higher percentages, yet both beat us in the league tables.

No, the real problem seems to lie with our school system rather than the pupil mix per se. Despite a huge additional injection of cash, we still aren't getting the results we need - in fact, we seem to be going backwards.

Which raises the obvious question as to whether spending all that extra money was worth it? And whether in these straitened times we ought to cut some of it back?

Because what the OECD report also highlights is that although we are now among the world's top education spenders, others achieve similar or better results while spending much less:

"Only seven OECD countries spend more per student than the United Kingdom...

[but]... moderate spending per student cannot automatically be equated with poor performance by education systems. For example, Estonia and Poland, which spend around US$ 40 000 per student, perform at the same level as Norway and the United States, which spend over US$ 100 000 per student. Similarly, New Zealand, one of the highest performing countries in reading, spends well below the average per student. While the United Kingdom spends almost US$ 85 000, Germany or Hungary achieve a similar average performance and spend around US$ 63 000 and US$ 44 000 respectively."

So if we cut spending back to say German levels, then according to Tyler's fag packet we could save an average $22k over each pupil's 10 years of school education up to age 15. Which works out at an annual saving to taxpayers of around £10bn pa. Not bad.

And it isn't just schools. When last sighted (2006) we were spending 5.9% of our GDP on education as a whole, whereas Germany was spending only 4.8%. Which is equivalent to about £15bn pa - money British taxpayers could save if we cut back to German spending levels.

And remember this - in this post-bubble world, Germany is beating the pants off us. Jeremy Warner has the picture story here including this chart that shows how much lower is their youth unemployment:

It seems German companies actually want to employ the products of German schools.

So what does Germany do right and we do wrong?

Hmm... now, let me see... what could it be... ah yes, selection. That thing nobody is allowed to mention here any more.

It is surely time to ask ourselves a serious question - can we any longer afford an education system that is run by the social engineering commissariat? Prizes for all and A*s all round was a lovely way of spending the last days of summer, but winter's here now.

In this new and tougher world nobody owes us a living. We need an education system that prioritises academic excellence for those with the ability to generate our future wealth, and a strong grasp of basic skills for those at the bottom - it is shocking that the OECD finds that after a decade or more of schooling, 20% of our 15 year olds are functionally illiterate.

Germany shows it can be done. We can get over the fact that our school pupils are not all Chinese. We can cope with the fact that over 10% of our pupils are immigrants. And we can even save £10 - £15bn pa in the process.

We just need to grasp one nettle.

And this time, we should do it properly and fairly (see this blog).

PS And while we're on the subject, Tyler keeps swallowing his false teeth listening to those future politicos who "speak for" the revolting students. You see, English literature degrees are not essential to the future of the nation. There is no God-given right for 18 year olds to spend three years getting pissed at taxpayer expense. The Browne recommendations on university funding and student loans are fair to everyone - both taxpayers and students (see this blog). And the thought of these future Jack Straws ruling over us for the next 40 years makes Tyler gag.

PPS Talking of English Lit degrees, Mr and Mrs T saw Rory Kinnear's Hamletlast night. Stunning - possibly the best live Hamlet Tyler has ever seen. Fresh interpretation, strong performances all round. Mrs T thought they'd slightly overdone the modern instances, but Tyler was... well.. stunned. Highly recommended.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 06, 2010

How Many Million Unemployables?

Tyler has just attended a rather depressing event hosted by a normally rather upbeat think tank. It was a seminar on a question we've mulled many times - Where will all the new jobs come from?

The correct answer of course is that nobody knows.

Nobody knows because nobody ever knows ahead of time where the new jobs will come from. And as we've blogged before, the best thing government can do to assist is to cut taxes, cut regulation, cut working age welfare and the minimum wage, break up public sector monopolies, decentralise, and cap mass immigration.

And that's pretty well all we can say. Other than reminding people that in the three decades following the invigorating pro-market reforms of St Maggs, our "Sick Man Of Europe" economy managed to throw off its bedclothes and create 6 million new jobs - and that net of 4 million fewer jobs in manufacturing (see this blog).

To be fair, none of today's panel members disagreed with the St Maggs' prescription for private sector jobs growth (well, OK, a couple of panelists weren't keen on welfare cuts). But that's mainly because her prescription wasn't really mentioned at all.

Instead, there was much talk of difficulties with people whose "labour market characteristics" make them unappealing to potential employers.

Labour market characteristics?

Yes, that's things you will know better as motivation, work ethic, and previous employment record. Labour market characteristics turns out to be a euphemism for unemployable. And according to one of the panelists, such characteristics now cripple large swathes of the working age population in the old high unemployment blackspots we've blogged so often.

So how many people are affected? Just how many million unemployables have we now got? We've taken a quick look.

Overall, Britain has 40 million people aged between 16 and 64 (the age band the ONS counts as working age adults). Of those, 11.7 million are not in employment. So that's roughly 70% of the working age population working, and 30% not working.

Fortunately, not all of those 30% are people suffering from labour market characteristics. A big chunk of the younger ones are still in full-time education, and hopefully will find employment in due course. And a big chunk of the older ones either have working partners supporting them, or they're plutocrats who don't need to work.

Stripping out those groups, the hardcore unemployables are among the 5 million people of working age who are entirely dependent on welfare handouts - about 12% of the working age population.

So how many of those 5 million are unemployable?

In truth we don't know. But up until 2008 our economy had experienced the longest period of boom since records began. Between the beginning of 1997 and mid-2008, 2.8 million new jobs were created (net). It's surely reasonable to think that anyone who really wanted a job should have been able to get one.

Indeed, so keen were UK employers to fill those jobs that they actually imported new workers from overseas. Foreign workers flooded in, and as things stand today, 86% of the new jobs created since 1997 are filled by workers born overseas. 86%!

Even at the peak of the boom, we still had 4.3 million working age people dependent on welfare - over 10% of our working age population.

4.3 million apparently unemployable people.

Depressing.

Both for us and for them.