I was curious to note a couple of adjacent headlines in an email from the FT, received this morning. They looked like this:
Three years ago I wrote The Courageous State in which I described the current state of politics in the UK as The Cowardly State. We had, I argued, governments who ran away from their responsibilities. Now we have headlines making clear that this is what people think the UK is doing.
The confidence of the Scots to challenge for independence is at least in pat based on a lack of confidence in what the UK has to offer and a belief that they can build a better country for themselves.
And the UK so lacks confidence in itself it wants to run away from Europe. What is extraordinary about the whole EU exit lobby is not its positive vision - because it is hard to find one, but its negativity.
All these factors are in their own way measures of the impact of the thinking of the Cowardly State. A great many Scots want what they have always wanted - a more Courageous State. Banks think the UK has lost vision. The EU exit is a sign of politicians without vision only able to sell the idea of a negative narrative.
Why the lack of confidence. I'd have to suggest, in part, you need to read the book to explore that issue. But there are other clues in the morning press. The average gap between the pay of the top earners in FTSE companies and the average pay of their staff has increased to a ratio of 1:143. That, of course, means that in many cases it is very much higher. WPP and Next, both with top earners closely associated with the current government, are vases where the gap is much higher. And as the FT notes in an article this morning, people in the UK have a much better than average perception of what the real income distribution in the UK is than do people in, say, Germany, France and the USA. We know as a result that we are being exploited and that there is an elite that is using the current policy of the government as a mechanism for personal enrichment and that the government is complicit in this process. No wonder there is disenchantment.
What is so odd is that there is no strong countervailing political narrative being offered - barring the Greens - that seeks to embrace this disenchantment. And that too is a reason for people's negativity and disengagement with the process itself. All of which is deeply depressing for a Monday morning.
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Yes but it would be even more depressing if you were not writing about it .
Richard
My jaw dropped this morning when I read your views, if that’s what they are, on the iPhone and public services. Surely that was a momentary lapse on tor your part. If not, what action would you propose the Courageous State takes.
Read the Courageous State
You clearly have not
No I haven’t read and I won’t be. When you say “read” you mean “buy” and you refuse to make an argument until you are paid to do so. Frankly I don’t think it’s ethical.
So we’re left with what seems like quite a bizarre statement that you will refuse to explain.
I am not going to repeat whole chunks of my book here for your sake, no
You want to know why I said it: I have told you where it is available
PS Do you have a problem with the market?
Use a library.
I requested a copy for Suffolk libraries read it and then had to buy it!
No, just with shake down merchants trying to make a cheap buck. In fact I’m tapping this out my iPhone now.
I guess we’ll just have to take your word for it that there is a reasoned argument in your book along the lines of iPhone or Health Service and not that it was just something silly you tweeeted.
Dominic-Richard’s question “What do we need more? The iPhone 6 or a properly funded #nhs ?” I a perfectly reasonable one. To me it is illustrative of the absurdity of supply side economics which creates waste, obsolescence (immediate on purchase) and lacks human focus, not to mention the direction of human creative energy on puerile transience.
I don’t understand what you object to here.
Mr Murphy. Your use of logic knows no bounds.
What is so odd is that there is no strong countervailing political narrative being offered — barring the Greens — that seeks to embrace this disenchantment.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Greens wholeheartedly back independence…
Simon/Richard (who I believe owns an iPhone)
Where would you stop boys? The iPhone? Perhaps all mobile phones? Perhaps the motor car? Or steam trains? At what point do you decide that this innovation matched with consumer choice – y’know The thing that has driven our incredible advances over the past 200 years – stopped being good and became puerile transience, a waste and supply side madness?
Also, are there any textbooks to which you can refer me or is it only your own genius you are relying ?
The dangers of advertising to create a false climate if consumption have been suggested by many. They Neal Lawson for example. The whole Green philosophy of excess consumption us based in it
There is nothing in it that opposes innovation – far from it, in fact. It opposes wasteful consumption created only by advertising produced by the only industry dedicated to making people unhappy – the advertising industry
And if you are going to be rude I will still delete you even if you are now using a false name
Rude? The owner of an iPhone tweets “iPhone or NHS” and expects no challenge? Please show see courage; where would turn draw the line on cos umpteen? Can you actually provide an answer? Have you genuinely thought this through?
Go and read my book
I will not say it again
I have written a whole theory on this behaviour there