When I was quite young, but which I mean of primary school age, I recall having one book of poems. It must have been my mother's choice; my father thought then and to the end of his life that poetry was a complete waste of time. It was one of the many things on which we differed.
In that book there was a poem that went something like this:
I want to be the leader
I want to be the leader
Please make me the leader
Thank you, I am your leader
Now what shall we do?
I fear that the last line is an optimistic interpretation of what might be happening today. I doubt Boris Johnson has the wisdom to ask,
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It’s Roger McGough…
“I wanna be the leader,
I wanna be the leader,
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee, I’m the leader
I’m the leader
OK, what shall we do?”
Constructive suggestions, anyone???
OK…..
Thanks!
Great news for the Channel Islands.
Boris loves our Finance Industries which is getting so busy, work is coming out of our ears.
You should come and join us Richard, and pack this TJN nonsense up mate.
Have you noticed I have not held office in TJN for 7 years?
I got a nice e-mail today which answers the ‘what shall we do?’ question.
‘Getting Brexit done by 31st October 2019. Investing in our NHS. Giving GP surgeries and hospitals the resources they need. Investing in our schools. So every child has the opportunity to succeed. Giving young people the chance to buy their own home. And getting a grip on rising crime — with an extra 20,000 police officers. So they can get out on the streets and keep us safe.’
Not a bad wish list.
The badly remembered poem would work better if the last line was ‘I know what I want, shall we do it well?’
And you seriously believe such a ludicrous email? Presumably this is from the Conservative party? I hope you’re aware that people who’ve worked with Johnson, or employed him, are of the opinion, derived from experience, that he is utterly untrustworthy. The one constant in his whole career is self promotion and egostism.
He has been exposed as a liar and fraud time and time again. There is no point whatsoever in listening to a single word he says, any more than there is in the case of Trump.
He needs to be opposed tooth and nail. And hopefully, he will be the shortest ever serving British PM.
It does sound suspiciously similar to what Theresa May said at the same stage and, apart from the Brexit bit, just about every other incoming Tory Prime Minister. Perhaps Boris is more believable and/or trustworthy than the others (cough, cough.)
I’m reminded of the ending of The Candidate when Redford’s character, having won, asks, ” What do we do now?”
Boris is for landowners and banks. Richard, what is your view on land value taxation (LVT) and 100% land value taxes?
http://kaalvtn.blogspot.com/p/arguments-for-lvt.html
Taxation is the price of a civilised society; civilised society and public services create land values, so let’s fund public services out of ‘service charges’ on land values. Current landowners will bleat loudest about LVT, claiming it would make them worse off (which it might do, if they own lots of land and have little earned income). Most of them would be better off anyway, but taking all current and future landowners together, the LVT has no impact on them at all. The current owner’s loss is the next owner’s gain. The same cannot be said for taxes on income. They are a burden on today’s earners and will be the same burden on tomorrow’s earners ad infinitum.
LVT has a role
But it cannot replace all taxes, just council taxes
If we scrapped CT altogether and had councils funded entirely in a responsible manner (no gold plated taps in the executive washrooms) by central govt, would our curent levels of taxation, properly enforced, take care of any possible inflationary results, do we think?
The difficulty of that is the destruction of local democracy follows, and I think it vital
I’ll assume that’s a qualified yes then. Could not autonomy could be exercised on top by the implementation of local currencies? Difficult perhaps for the smaller areas as individuals but they could arguably join together, create a smallshire coin or something similar?
Local currencies have to be convertible into pounds to be useful
I see their merit, but they are no miracle cure either
Could they not be accepted by councils in payment for business rates, then used by the council to buy essential services locally leading to endless local circulation? If people want to start businesses then it’s voluntary whereas people have no discretion about paying CT so I’m thinking that would be a fairer way of raising funding if central govt couldn’t be persuaded to cough.
The Bristol pound is accepted in this way, and has a parity value with sterling
But they are not a solution to macro policy is my point
I agree that local currencies are no panacea, but surely if they can be earned and then spent on goods and services that you want that automatically makes them useful. There are exchanges that can convert between different local currencies which can make them more useful and surely all it needs is someone who can use plenty of a local currency to be prepared to buy it with the national currency, possibly at a small commission but hopefully not, in the cooperative spirit, then you have convertibility without involving the usual financial services. The amounts involved are usually relatively small anyway.
I am not dismissing them, but in macroeconomic terms I think they are insignificant
Their micro role can be quite useful if a community embraces them
A few have
“Local currencies have to be convertible into pounds to be useful”
I thought the whole point of local currencies is that they are an alternative exchange currency independent of the national currency. If your local currency is exchangeable for Sterling it’ll all end up in the Square Mile and the tax havens so what would be the point ?
I know you aren’t particularly a fan of local currencies, Richard, but I’m not entirely understanding why, given the importance of having one’s own national currency. I don’t understand why the logic doesn’t scale-down. It seems to me that it should although I accept there would remain the need for ‘foreign exchange revenues’ to meet Sterling obligations some, if not many, would still persist.
There is only ever room for one currency in a community if there is ever to be any form of effective macroeconomic policy
Two is a recipe for tax abuse
And macroeconomic anarchy
Well, it’s not every day that your blog makes me laugh, but this is one of them. Love it.
Perfect poem for our new leader. The tone especially. Fit for a spoilt brat.
The only thing the fraud will do is break his toys, roll on the floor blaming others, and demand more toys.
This country has simply become a playground for those with money and the right connections. Such people used to hire politicians to pretend to rule but now they cannot even be bothered to do that anymore. They’d rather do it themselves and try their hand at the tiller too and why not? Johnson and his ilk all to often have everything they want but they always want more, more and more.
My hope remains that what we are seeing are now seeing are the last days of Thatcherism. Boris has got this job because of a pitifully small bunch of people said he could have it. When all is said and done, he is an illegitimate prime minister until there is a GE.
Well, the priorities should be:
1. Putting in place a programme to deal with the climate breakdown.
2. Measures to deal with growing inequality.
3. International cooperation to deal with the excess power and abuse by
multinational corporations and billionaires such as tax evasion and unfair
trading practices.
What will Johnson’s “new” Conservative government do?
1. Very little. They will still be in hoc to the fossil fuel companies and kow towing
to big business and business-as-usual.
2. Very little. Despite rhetoric about “ending austerity” and increasing spending
on the police, social care etc only token gestures will be taken in these fields.
The barbaric Universal Credit social security scheme will continue with even ore
chaos and deprivation.
3. In the international field Johnson will slavishly follow Trump in complete
negation of any form of international cooperation on facing down corporate
power and will side with the billionaires every time.
Boris and wisdom ? Dream on………Question is – who is pulling his strings……….?
Disaster capitalists, the shock doctrine mob. Britain’s Chicago Boys.
Re LVT has a role
“But it cannot replace all taxes, just council taxes”
I suspect it could do a bit more than that, but there would still need to be some degree of redistribution between areas similar to the current rate support grant. How that takes place – who wins and who loses will always be inherently political; party political. In that respect I don’t see that we would be in a very different place.
“The difficulty of that [scrapping CT altogether] is the destruction of local democracy follows, and I think it vital.”
I don’t see why that necessarily follows. Irrespective of where the money ‘comes from’ control of local spending would surely (?) remain the responsibility of elected Councillors, albeit heavily prescribed by central government dictat. I would agree that anything which undermines local democracy would be a further step in the wrong direction we have been travelling for decades. I suppose you have a point that people don’t always value what they think they are getting for nothing, and maybe that link is vital to maintain any interest in local government which is already at a low ebb judging by election turnout figures.
In response to Bill’s query, it seems to me that the council tax revenue must be a significant sum and would need to be more or less matched by tax revenue from some other source. Anything that made local taxation more progressive would be timely.
If people do not think their vote impacts tax the evidence is that they do not vote
The presence of tax drives democracy
Testable claim. What does the evidence from the back catalogue of economics and political economy papers have to say on the subject?
I am not sure I follow your logic
So spell it out, please