Tutition fees, the rich and Labour - red Steve rants.

My wife was in London yesterday and saw the demonstration. She mentioned that one of the main cries was "tax the rich". Weirdly, the Labour party are failing to cash in on the growing, widespread resentment against big business and the very wealthy.

Tory policies, while being dressed up as "progressive", are often only progressive re. the less well off, not the very rich. Take child benefit. That's cut for families earning over a certain amount. This is "progressive" we're told, but of course it's a way of directing cuts onto the middle classes, not the rich, who will lose the exact same amount whether they are on £42k or £2 or £20 million a year. It's a poll tax on everyone over a certain threshold.

Ditto the fees policy. The poor, for the time being, receive some help, and no one pays the loan back till they earn £21k, so it's "progressive" we are told. But only re. the less well off. The rich will just pay up front, will not accrue huge amounts of interest over decades, and most importantly, will pay the same fee as everyone else (which will be no more than they are currently paying for Lucinda and Henry's private schooling). Again, the middle classes get hit hardest, the rich the least.

The common factor with the poll tax is this: in every case, Tories act to push the costs of running the state downwards on to the majority and protect a small but very rich minority. The difference this time is that this is being dressed up as "progressive".

We are told "there is no alternative" to the current proposals. Well, here's one. Introduce a 1, 2 or 3 percent (whatever is needed) income tax increase for education levied on every graduate earning over a certain amount, with (most importantly) no upper limit or upper amount taken. This would apply to current graduates, so would not be disproportionately loaded onto the next generation leaving the current generation to get away Scot free but new grads saddled with £50k debt each. The pain would be spread fairly across society. Most importantly, it would be genuinely progressive, because the rich would pay the same proportion of their income, i.e. take the same amount of pain.

My guess is the vast majority of people in this country would say that this was genuinely fair, and certainly much fairer than loading lower middle class youngsters with 50k of debt each. I'd quite happily pay the extra tax. But it will never happen. It will certainly never happen under the Tories, because the Tories are bankrolled by the very rich (much like the Republican party is, which has just got its $700 billion tax cuts for the rich forced through in the middle of a financial crisis).

Currently, there are divisions between the middle and lower classes that are being exploited by the tabloids, with the Mail, etc. moaning about the middle classes being hit hardest while 'dole scroungers' and immigrants cash in. This is a "divide and rule" tactic - in fact the middle classes are not being hit harder than the poor, but they are both being hit very, very much harder than are the rich. Yet while middle class anger is focused on dole scroungers and immigrants, the rich will get away with it.

Actually, even the middle classes are beginning to notice the unfairness. It was middle class sixth formers, among others, who were carrying placards saying "tax the rich".

So I think Labour spin doctors should be encouraging and exploiting a different, rather more warranted, "us and them" attitude. With multi-millionaire old Etonians and Bullingdon club members destroying public services but making sure their rich friends and backers, e.g. bankers, etc. don't have to pay any more, Labour really should be making hay. It is indeed a "class war", a war that they, the Tory party, are clandestinely waging on the vast majority of us on behalf of the rich.

P.S. this is an observation about "divide and rule" strategy. I realize that the very rich constitute such a small percentage of the population that increasing the amount they pay won't have that much of an impact on the deficit. But that's irrelevant. The Tories are terrified of the public waking up to the fact that they are bankrolled by and always act in the interests of big business and the rich, and try to drown out the suggestion by loudly shouting "politics of envy", "class war", etc. the moment it crops up. They encourage us to think we should "move beyond" that old "us and them" thinking - they want us to think we are all in it together now in a "Big Society". If I were a Labour spinner, I'd be thinking now's the time to bring back class war in bucket-fulls. Just pick the right class.

There's a great deal of both working and middle class grass roots feeling about big business and the very wealthy getting away with not paying their fair share - as demonstrated by the growing demos outside Top Shop and other shops which happily trade here, yet won't pay tax here.

By getting more radical, Labour could really tap into that grass roots movement. They could present clear education funding alternatives such as the one outlined above, for example.

There are alternatives to loading tomorrow's teachers and nurses with £50k of debt each at the start of their career on which the interest grows each day.

Remember, this entire mess was caused by the greed and stupidity of certain very rich people - bankers (now back on massive bonuses, of course). Who pays for the financial carnage they caused? Not them. Your kids and mine - each of whom has just been told, "Here's a bill for £50,000. Now pay up, or forget about going to university."

Upcoming books

Books I am publishing shortly...

CFI UK events in April

In partnership with The Oxford Literary festival CFI UK has the following events lined up in April 2011 (held at Christ Church College, University of Oxford).

A.C. GRAYLING - THE GOOD BOOK: A SECULAR BIBLE

Grayling launches his latest book in the glorious Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford University on Sunday 3rd April, 12pm.

NATHAN PENLINGTON – URI AND ME

Magician/skeptic/entertainer/poet Penlington presents his Edinburgh Festival show Uri and Me for CFI UK. About Uri Geller….. Sunday 3rd April 10am. Venue TBA.

PROF JUSTIN BARRETT – BORN BELIEVERS

Justin Barret, Prof. of Psychology at University of Oxford, explains we he believes we have an innate tendency to religious belief (he is religious himself). He’ll be presenting some fascinating experimental results. 4pm Wed. April 6th. venue TBA.

DOES GOD EXIST?

Stephen Law (author, a Very Short Introduction to Humanism, The Philosophy Gym) debates with Prof Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion and A Fine-Tuned Universe – The Quest For God in Science and Theology.) Thursday 7th April, 6.30pm Venue TBA.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, THE PAPACY AND THE HOLOCAUST

John Cornwell, author of Hitler’s Pope and David Ranan, author Double Cross, debate the relationship between the Church and The Holocaust. Friday 8th April 10.oo am. Venue TBA.

Tickets will be available from The Festival website at http://www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com/

Matt Tee communicates

I find this 30 minute talk by Matt Tee unbelievably irritating, and have been wondering whether my adverse reaction is really warranted, and whether it actually says more about me than about him. What do you think? The talk is here.

It is a 30 minute talk by Matt Tee, the current Permanent Secretary for Government Communications. Tee earns in excess of £160,000 per year. He is a communications professional who seems to have had a very successful career.

My problem with this talk is, I think:

1. Tee reminds me of David Brent. This is not his fault, and not a legitimate reason to criticise what he says.

2. He has little to say, surely? Strip out the “successful behavioural outcomes”, “partnership”, "stakeholder”, “co-creation”, “we’re on a journey” jargon and rhetoric, and his message boils down to:

• The public used to be seen by Government as passive recipients of information, not as customers to engage with, which they now are, ‘cos of the internet, twitter, etc. Citizens can now provide feedback on services.

• There should be more effective working together between government departments.

• Government needs to apply psychological research if Government wants to affect behaviour, not just make ads saying: “stop smoking”, “eat less fat”, “do more exercise”, “get a job”, etc.

Now, surely, all of this is pretty trite and obvious, not cutting edge insight? Won't everyone in the audience already know this? Most of us know it, surely. It’s platitudinous.

3. Much of what Tee says seems to serve primarily as a device for reminding us of how successful he has been. The talk is in large part a puff for himself and his career.

4. Is Tee himself a good communicator? I found this presentation dull, uninformative, and I suspect it’s unlikely to motivate his audience to do anything different. The one concrete bit of advice he gives them is: think of how your next communication might be tweeted.

As I say, Tee earns over £160,000 per year of taxpayer's money (equivalent to, say, the combined salaries of three university professors). Maybe he’s very good at managing. But I’d say he’s a rather poor communicator and, on the basis of this performance, a bit light on ideas.

But perhaps I am being jealous and unfair? Wouldn't be the first time...

POSTSCRIPT. Perhaps one way of bringing out the sheer inanity of what Tee has to see is to apply the denial test. Who might conceivably say, "Matt, I disagree with you: let's not listen to to the public but just treat them as passive receivers of information, let's not have more effective working together between departments, and let's not apply psychological research to produce more effective communications."

Also note the zeitgeist, buzzword flavour of the ideas. He's following the common formula of offering obvious suggestions of the sort any reasonably intelligent person given five minutes to think about the subject might come up with, but dressed up as "synergy", "joined-up-thinking", "stake-holding", "partnership" and "co-creation", or whatever the current vocabulary is, etc. At times it seems to me to come close to pseudo-profundity.

The Plank and Double Effect

Doctrine of Double effect

It is morally permissible to perform an action with bad effects (e.g. killing one person to save another) iff:

 1. The act itself, considered in independently of its effect, is not wrong.
 2. Only the good effect is directly intended (the bad is merely foreseen).
 3. The bad effect is not a means for achieving the good.
 4. The good effect outweighs the bad

In a nutshell: An act is not permissible if the intention is to do a bad thing to achieve a good consequence of that bad thing. But an act is permissible if the intention is to do a good thing that simply has bad consequences (outweighed by the good).

Double effect in action

Consider:

1. Dropping a bomb on a military base, knowing it will result in hundreds of civilian deaths. But the destruction of the base will end the war, resulting in many more lives saved.

2. Dropping a bomb on civilians, resulting in hundreds of deaths, the resulting terror leading to surrender and many more lives saved.

Notice the consequences are identical. According to Double Effect 1 is permissible but 2 is not. Many find this intuitively right. Now consider...

The Plank

Case 1

Two unconscious men are lying at either end of a plank suspended from a runaway balloon by a fraying rope that will soon break, plunging both men to their death. The plank passes a window. You can save one man by grabbing him. But that will tip the plank and kill the other. What should you do? Grab one man and you save him. But as a result of your action the other will immediately die. Or do nothing, and they will both soon die.

Intuitively, it seems right to me to save one even if as a result the other immediately dies. It seems right to kill an innocent person so that a life might be saved.

Doctrine of Double Effect concurs. But now consider...

Case 2

Two unconscious men are lying at either end of a plank suspended from a runaway balloon by a fraying rope that will soon break, plunging both men to their death.

The plank passes your window. You can save one man by firmly shoving the other, nearer man off the plank to his death (he is far to heavy for you to grab). Shove him off and the plank will tip and the other man will drop safely onto an adjacent roof. Do nothing and both men die. What should you do?

Intuitively - push the man to his death. In Case 2, it also seems right to save one man by directly and intentionally killing the other (his death is not an unintended but foreseen bad consequence), just as in Case 1. But Double Effect says you should not shove the man off the plank. You should do nothing, with the result both die.

But does it really make any moral difference that one is grabbing a man rather than shoving him off? Isn't this difference morally irrelevant?

Tory leaders intellectual lightweights and student yobs?

Wikileaks: We discover Obama sees the Tory team as "lightweights" and that Mervyn King said about Cameron and Osborne that they had a "lack of experience and tendency to see issues only in terms of politics".

Osborne had also been identified by Labour as the "weak link" in a supposedly already intellectually dubious team.

Incidentally, George Osborne did not just change his name from Gideon. It's a very little know fact that Osborne also changed degree part way through. He switched to Modern History while at Oxford (from PPE, I believe - Politics, Philosophy and Economics). Switching degrees after the first year is a fairly unusual thing to do, usually prevented or at least strongly discouraged by colleges and universities unless there are very good reasons for doing so. But who knows the actual reason for George's switch? So far I have only heard a very interesting as yet unsubstantiated report from a contemporary of his that he switched because he found the economics too hard. Be very interested to hear from anyone else who knows more about George's reasons for switching degree after a year....

Perhaps, as is widely suspected, Osborne is not the sharpest pencil in the box. But student yob? Before pointing a finger at students who broke windows in the recent tuition fee protests, indignant Tories should note that Osborne was a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club while at Oxford. Here's wiki:

The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining club at Oxford University. The club has no permanent rooms and is notorious for its members' wealth and destructive binges. [1] Membership is by invitation only, and prohibitively expensive for most, given the need to pay for the uniform, dinners and damages.[2]

Yes, damages:

Today, the Bullingdon is primarily a dining club, though a vestige of the Club's sporting links exists in the support of an annual point to point race. The Club President, known as the General, presents the winner's cup and the Club members meet there for a champagne breakfast. The Club also meets for an annual Club dinner. Guests may be invited to either of these events. There may also be smaller dinners during the year to mark the initiation of new members. Membership elections are held twice a year, when successful new members are visited in their rooms, which are then 'trashed' as a symbol of their election. The Club's modus operandi has often been to book a private dining room under an assumed name, as most restaurateurs are wary of the Club's reputation for causing considerable drunken damage during the course of the dinners.

Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson [also a member], reported about the club in the 1980s [when George Osborne was a member S.L.]: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. [...]

The difference between these toffs and the recently protesting students who broke some windows is, I suppose, that the latter didn't brandish a wad of notes afterwards and say, "There you are my good man - that should take care of it. Now fuck off."

Photo is of Osborne in his Bullingdon club outfit. Cameron was a member too.

The New York Times told its readers in 1913 that "The Bullingdon represents the acme of exclusiveness at Oxford; it is the club of the sons of nobility, the sons of great wealth; its membership represents the 'young bloods' of the university".[9]

The acme of exclusiveness indeed.

Michael Behe talk

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={42F345D1-A875-41AD-8591-71515CB69803}

Above link: Intelligent design proponent Michael Behe talks rubbish (that's not my view, that's the view of the Christian Kenneth R. Miller and many other religious scientists). Her's Miller, who is an excellent and highly knowledgeable speaker. If you're tempted to think that there's maybe something to all this ID stuff, listen to Miller. Notice he starts with a prayer....


PS fine-tuning arguments are anther matter entirely. They, at least, are not a joke.