Thoughts on a 'Brave New World' (2023)

 

While taking a walk in the local woodlands recently, I was surprised to find a sign at the end of a trail with words along the lines of 'People camping. Homeless so the council can find us - no other reason' [sic]. I may be wrong, but I'm guessing this has something to do with there being so few council houses that they are only available for those with absolutely naff all, which you may even think sounds OK until you consider the sky-high rents that private landlords are charging and the kind of salary you need to get a mortgage on even the most basic flat.

It has often been said that if you put a frog in water and gradually turn up the heat it won't notice that the water has become unbearably hot. This seems a great metaphor for the property market to me. In spite of all that has happened in recent years (killer-viruses, megalomaniac invasions...), the result of the drive to keep house prices accelerating above the rate of inflation is surely still the biggest drain on most people's monthly budgets, where the cost of just having a roof over your head is outstripping the kind of wages being paid for jobs that society needs. Since when did a home become a luxury item?

Back here in deepest Kent the only homes being built in my village are priced from approximately half a million upwards. For me, it is impossible not to ask whether or not society is truly being run for the majority. And is any political leader up to the challenge of doing something about it? Er... don't answer that!

I often feel that many who believe that the world is basically fair simply don't want to think about it. Or maybe it's just more comfortable to believe that you are closer to the millionaire class than to homelessness.

At the same time I hear that almost all railway station ticket offices are earmarked for closure due to the majority of tickets now being bought at machines. It is true that younger, more technologically-minded people might choose to use a machine over human interaction, but older people generally don't, yet it feels that they have been coerced into doing so because many ticket offices are now only taking card payments and older people are more likely to use cash. Thus, it does feel as if the rail operators have engineered this situation somewhat. I get a similar feeling in supermarkets where you can choose to use the self-service checkouts or queue up to see a lone cashier.

I am informed that there may still be somebody assisting customers to use the ticket machine and that it is unlikely that a small village station will get to keep its ticket office when even central stations in large cities are earmarked for ticket office closure, and I guess nobody is going to pay somebody to twiddle their thumbs.

However, in a general sense, if the majority of jobs are going to be performed by machines in the future, what will happen to the workers that are laid off? For instance, what will happen to all the driving roles when driverless vehicles finally stop crashing into walls? You can't stop progress, but my concern is that the jobs being phased out generally aren't being replaced with other jobs that the majority of people can do. Politicians seem to only focus upon 'high quality' jobs, which let's face it, only a minority will be able to get. It seems like it's going to be like a game of musical chairs with jobs. And gosh, won't the wealthy kick up about having to pay more tax in order to support the newly jobless masses? As with climate change I guess our leaders will finally start thinking about it when it's too late.

The optimistic logic of TV programmes like BBC's 'Tomorrow's World' in the 1980s was that if machines are going to be doing all the work, we will all have more leisure time and be able to work less. Life was going to be one big holiday with the leisure sector booming. The problem with this is that managers and shareholders rarely want to share the savings. Look at how the water companies have failed to invest in infrastructure in spite of huge profits. It's trickle-up economics, right?

Also in the news, the NHS recently celebrated its 75-year anniversary, but this came with a warning that it will not make a hundred years if we carry on the way we are. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it often seems as though things are just being left to slowly fall apart so that anyone who can afford to switch to private healthcare will do just that, but what happens to the rest of us? It seems pretty obvious that most don't have the spare cash kicking around for private healthcare.

It all seems to come back to ideology at the end of the day. The NHS was founded with a view to society looking after its citizens regardless of wealth, whereas today it seems to me that the prevailing view is that if you don't have the bread it's your problem. As establishment figures are often seen in cathedrals for events such as coronations, I wonder how these advocates of the 'modern' view manage to make that fit with their supposed religious beliefs. Anyone would think they're just pretending!

The economist Richard Layard in his book 'Happiness' provides plenty of graphs showing that the greater the gap between rich and poor is in a country, the greater the prevalence of social problems. I no longer have the book but the graphs were plotted for things like illiteracy, violence, homelessness, drug abuse, etc. It was a pretty comprehensive list that sounds like your average episode of 'Eastenders!' I have found that in pointing this out, one can often be taunted as being a 'communist,' a 'Marxist' or worse, but in truth the solution is never black and white. Any system with no restraint generally ends up destroying itself, and unrestrained capitalism is no different. If life gets seriously bad for a large proportion of the population you tend to get a revolution. Do we really want this? Or should we put the brakes on a bit? Business leaders would probably say 'no, we shouldn't,' while those living in a Kentish wood because they have no other option would surely say it's gone too far already.

Closing the debate down by viewing all criticism of our society as heretical is certainly not my idea of freedom. It sounds more like the something George Orwell would have written about. Keep minds open and speech free at the point of use!

Sorry it was a bit heavy this time. I actively try to avoid seeing too much news, and I guess you can now see why!

The Recession Part I - What is it?

(From Hamstreet & District Parish Magazine November 2011)

At the risk of being accused of getting 'stuck in the groove' I am going to elaborate on an issue which seems unavoidable these days. Every time you turn on the radio or TV, it's there; open a newspaper and it's splashed across every page; in fact, from what I am hearing it is now affecting many people's daily lives. Yet few people know exactly why recessions happen and quite frankly the media aren't likely to tell you.

Having looked into this online and attended presentations about this topic in London I thought I'd pass on the gleaned information. Apologies if it's a bit heavy but you may just find this interesting!

Now, it seems that recovery is always viewed in terms of how much people are borrowing - the more we borrow, the better the the economy is doing. But wasn't this crisis caused by debt in the first place? So how is starting the debt-snowball rolling again going to provide any kind of long-term solution?

Let's find out why they like it so much then!

Banks are allowed to lend out nine tenths of the total actual money within their keeping, although it is still available to the depositer, miraculously being in two places at once! When somebody borrows money, this is credited to their bank account (usually with a different bank).

This bank in turn can then lend out nine tenths of that money (along with all the rest in their keeping). The next bank in the chain can lend out nine tenths of what they receive and so on. When you add up the chain of loans made possible by the actual capital in the first bank it amounts to nine times the 'real' money. Interest will of course be levied on all of this. So, where is all the money to pay the interest on nine times every pound that is in circulation going to come from?

That's right – you've got it – ultimately it will come from more loans!

In other words the debt will always increase and as a result repossessions, bankruptcies and recessions will always happen with this system.

Once you realise that the availability of money has nothing to do with any actual value that it has in terms of the goods and labour you can buy with it, the gaping holes in the way things are done become obvious. This wasn't always the case, as once upon a time banks had to back up all currency with gold reserves.

Ditto for the fractional reserve 'nine times' loaning system. Inflation was virtually zero for hundreds of years until this system came about. In other words, we didn't have this nonsense before so we don't have to have it now!

Right, is everybody still with me, as it gets more complex still?

When the debt gets out of hand a 'solution' called quantitative easing is often used. I have heard two slightly differing accounts of how this works:

Either way, the Bank of England electronically creates a sum of money out of thin air for the banks to loan out. Some sources state the BofE receives bonds or assets from the Government for doing this; others say that they receive investments from the banks in return. Either way, creating the money requires little more than pushing a button and the rewards are massive.

Now, does any of this sound fair? If I print my own money it is illegal and I get nothing (other than a spell in the slammer). So, here's an idea, why not create this same money electronically (for nothing) and give it to the NHS, public transport, education, etc. and all the things that benefit the public but are having their budgets slashed instead? The devaluation of existing currency would be no worse than creating the same sum and giving it to banks, and the overall standard of living of the masses would improve – now isn't this what politicians are supposed to do – look after the best interests of the majority?

Current cuts are merely a temporary (and for many, painful) fix to an underlying problem, being that the way we do things is simply unsustainable. An economy cannot grow forever to pay off an ever-increasing sum of interest that doesn't exist.

Why? Because we live on a finite planet. How on earth do they think constant growth is going to be possible? Are we going to start drilling for oil on Mars?

Even if you support the cuts, I have witnessed what it is like for my friend in Hackney who recently had her front door kicked in by neighbours, yet the police have told her that they don't have the resources to pursue such 'trivial matters' in court.

And would you be pleased to be one of those cancer patients told you can't have any medication because of a prediction about your life expectancy (as it's clearly more important that the banks have the money)?

Good system hey?

Quite how we put a stop to this madness is the tricky part as the whole world now uses this crackpot system. What's more Britain seems to have staked its entire future on the banking sector. I think the only thing concerned people can do is take on as little debt as possible and spread the little-known facts about how it all works until pressure for change becomes unignorable. Some people say to me 'You're naïve to think it will ever change'. They probably said the same kind of things to those who wished to abolish slavery.

Sadly for those who are borrowing just to buy basic provisions, it seems they are already in way too deep. And those in the city who will benefit from all this are no doubt laughing all the way to the...