The FT published this as an editorial last night:
They are right, of course.
But this does not just apply to pensions. It also applies to tax. And corporate reporting. And the environment and so much else.
But this requires three other things.
The first is that business should realise that regulation exists for a purpose.
The second is that they should stop the talk of the burden on business: fair competition that does not leave innocent victims behind is not a burdensome activity; it's a necessity, but so are the rules that let it happen.
Third, the law should be enforced and right now in tax, company law and I am sure many other areas that is not done because of a lack of resources and a importantly a lack of willing on the part of a government that doe not really believe in its own role.
Business ethics are vital. But so is the rule of law. It's time both sides changed their attitudes to make sure that we get the very best business we can. We're too often a long way from there right now.
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Quakers have two great business exemplars from the 19th C, the libertarian John Bright and the socialist George Fox. I believe that Bright was profoundly wrong in his small-state ideology then, and the ideology now has reached fever-pitch. T-May is as unknowingly a slave to that ideology as Corbyn is, perhaps more knowingly, to that of Marx, equally mistaken. T-May has as little chance of enacting anything to protect BHS workers, or any workers, as Corbyn has of power. The argument for the big state needs visionary thinkers to turn the tide. Mariana Mazzucato is one of them, perhaps.
In similar vein, Richard, see Paul Mason’s piece on a ‘charter for workplace rights’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/25/sports-directs-staff-are-treated-no-better-than-georgian-era-factory-workers
Yet another policy that could be adopted in totality by Labour and which would be a vote winner as nearly all employment sectors now suffer to a greater or lesser extent from the return of management practices that many of us once thought had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Of course, that was before it became apparent that the excesses and exploitative nature of neoliberalism actually unleashed forces that will take us to an even darker, neofeudal, future. And that the likes of the Mike Ashley’s and Phillip Green’s of the world, and their worshipers and tame politicians are only too happy to facilitate.
In that context it’s also worth reading Aditya Chakrabortty’s excellent piece on exactly what is broken in Cameron’s (remember him) ‘broken Britain’.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/26/broken-britain-lives-on-in-sports-direct-and-bhs
I agree
Labour needs to move
And be radical
Aditya’s piece says it all really – there is little to add.
In another time, this sort of behaviour would be treasonable.
What it say we’re not short of ideas
Let’s have the chance to use them
Labour.
Radical.
Radical=no chance of being elected.
Unless the media are on-side, Labour have no chance at all.
Wandering through twitter, I note that on anything on J Corbyn is infested with a large variety of trolls, many just being insulting (to be kind).
Same with every other Labour person, and many of the insults are now outright extreme…
So, looks like social media is also being controlled….although, to be fair, some Conservative feeds feature similar.
4 years to go for the next GE….so I expect the control of social media to be more subtle by then…and practically all on-line stuff is already subject to attack now anyway…and Mrs Mays rather extremist views on data control practically guarantee online attacks and sophisticated spy software injection will become the norm.
And since the Grauniad is featured further up ^ …. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
Fortunately, I use none of the well-infested OS…android/windows….although, of course, I nore that if “her” attitude to security persists, I may find myself in possession of illegal cyber technology…like my computer, and my mobile phone, or anything which uses unbreakable encyption (whatsapp…imessage…etc)
Even my use of a foreign system to store encrypted email on may be illegal (icloud)
Nice little communist regime we may soon have more of, isn’t it!