Economics isn't just about spreadsheets. It's about people, power, and place.
In this video, filmed in Ely, where I live, I explore what my friend Danny Blanchflower calls 'the economics of walking about', which is the idea that you learn more about the real economy by walking through it than by staring at data. From Ely Cathedral to Oliver Cromwell's house, this is a story about how power shapes everything — from feudal rents to modern mortgages.
(And we know the video isn't perfect, but we'll get better at this).
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
For the first time, I'm making a video for this channel where I'm well out of my comfort zone. In other words, I'm not sitting in my office in front of our normal camera. I'm out and about. I've got one of those action cameras in front of me, and as you can see, I'm standing in the open on what is called Cathedral Green in Ely in Cambridgeshire, where I live.
And I'm not here for any random reason. I'm here because walking about is part of political economy. My friend Danny Blanchflower, who was once a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee and is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the USA, created this term 'The economics of walking about.'
And he did it in part to talk about the fact that if you actually relate to ordinary people and ask them what they think about the economy, they are most likely to have a better view of what is really going on than professional economists who stay inside their offices and look at spreadsheets and data and pretend that formulas represent the real world when people know they don't.
But there's another dimension to the economics of walking about, and that's this one, which is simply understanding economics in the real world as you travel through it. And so I'm standing here in front of Ely Cathedral. There's a deliberate reason for doing so. Ely Cathedral is, of course, a symbol of power. And the whole of political economy is all about the relationships of power within the economy and how they affect the allocation of resources within it.
It wasn't an accident that when the Normans arrived in this city in 1066 or very soon thereafter, they began to build this edifice right in front of me at the moment. They didn't finish it for quite a while afterwards, and in fact, some parts fell down. You can see that there's one wing missing, and, in fact, behind the tower, you can see there's another one, which replaced a middle tower, which in turn fell down in 1322.
But the point is, this has been here as a symbol of the power of the church and in turn, of course, the Norman authorities, and so the crown in the UK - the establishment, if you like - ever since.
And there was in fact a cathedral before this one. The cathedral in Ely was established sometime in the seventh or eighth century, and they knocked the old one down to build this one. Again, a symbol of power; something that we're seeing happening right now in the USA, where Trump is knocking down part of the White House to make a new symbol of his own power. Architecture has always been about power.
And just look to the right of me, and there we have the old Bishop's palace. The bishops lived in style in Ely. They basically ruled East Anglia from Ely in their day. And it wasn't a chance that they built themselves an enormous palace to celebrate that from, because they were incredibly wealthy people, basically aristocrats who had been given a title as a bishop instead of as a lord or whatever. And from there, they collected the rents that were due to the church.
This is not just a place of worship. Let's not pretend that it is. It is a symbol of a rentier economy, a feudal economy, an economy that existed by extracting payment from the people of this city and a vast area around it. And that is important because quietly, that economy still exists.
Ely now exists as a place where large numbers of people live in what is now a dormitory town servicing Cambridge. And I suspect a very large number of the people here have mortgages, and they are paying their own form of rent. Either they're renting a property or, on that mortgage, they're paying interest. And in either case, they're still making payments to the elite for the right to live in this place that they call home. That is political economy in action.
And now, if I turn around, we can see another symbol of power. And let me just walk towards it because this is a cannon from the Crimean War. It's been sitting here on Cathedral Green for as long as I can remember, and apparently, it was never fired in anger. I think it was a Russian cannon, and it was captured by the forces in the Crimean War, but it's here to symbolise something which is so heavily associated with that cathedral behind me.
In the cathedral, you will find the flags of regiments and RAF squadrons and all sorts of things. The association between the church and the armed forces is very strong. The hospital in this town is called the Princess of Wales Hospital, but it was formerly the RAF hospital. That's how important the link is. We didn't have our own hospital. We had to rely on a force's one, and that is still remembered in the way in which it is structured.
So, there is power all around us. And now I'm going to go on another walk, and this walk is going to take us a little further, so you'll join me again in a moment.
And so now I've walked a little further, not very much further. The cathedral remains just over there, but I'm now looking at what appears to be a Tudor house. It isn't. This is an artificial frontage put on an older house around 1900, and it is Oliver Cromwell's house, right here in the middle of Ely. Cromwell lived in Ely. He was the MP for Huntington. He was an East Anglian, and this was his home. And from here, he undoubtedly helped plot the demise of King Charles I.
That's power. That's real power. That's an alternative power. Now, I'm not a complete fan of Oliver Cromwell. Anybody who knows what he did in Ireland and who has an Irish name is not a complete fan of Cromwell because what he did there was terrible, and you could argue that what he did in England was terrible as well, because he didn't deliver democracy. But he did challenge power. And that's the importance, and that's why I'm standing in front of this house. What it shows is that power ultimately lay with people.
For all the grand edifice of the cathedral, Cromwell shut it down. For all the power that the elite had at that time, he put in place an alternative. It is an option.
Power is not absolute. Power is always dependent upon consent, and we have to understand that in political economy as well. Walking around and just looking at these relationships is quite extraordinary.
Now, where you live, there might not be quite as marked contrast in power as there is between the cathedral, and its effective establishment of royalty in this place, and the power of the elite in this place, and the contrast with Oliver Cromwell and what he did. But there will be other symbols of the same sort of thing, and that's what matters.
If we look around us, if we understand what the political economy is doing around us, we begin to see the possibilities. Cromwell showed a possibility, a possibility that the order as it was could be changed. And to me, that matters. If we understand that, we'd realise that a different world is possible, and that is what political economy is all about, as far as I'm concerned.
Walking about is a powerful tool in my understanding of just what I want to achieve by undertaking this activity, which I call political economy.
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Thanks to you, and your team, for a production which is also an excellent and essential form of history which is valid and lively for the times presented, for now and for a future!
Thanks
We will be doing this sort of thing again. I liked the challenge of toally unscripted outside recording, and Thomas edited it well for a first go. We will get better.
Of course you Fen Tigers are a rebellious lot – Hereward the Wake (woke?), Oliver Cromwell, Richard Murphy… (Me too, by the way.)
🙂
It was freezing makimng that video!
Government by consent in normal times ought to be about the central issue of balancing supply and demand but like olden times today we still have the moronic distraction of “flag shagging” Reform Party supporters. Fools who can’t understand if you don’t want immigration to counter a declining birth rate then you’d better attend to the first central issue I’ve stated!
Very fine vid & commentary. Excellent observations.
“he did challenge power”.. +/- this has been a feature of those below the King since +/- the time of King John (1st the barons+ Runymead etc, then the deposition and murder of Eddy II and so on and so forth). Henry VIII kept the aristos in line by distributing monastries. However, power was shifting and both the civil war and the settlement end 17th cent when William rolled up reflected that – with the Stuarts well out of step with developments as England moved from medievil, to early modernish (obvs the land settlement was preserved & remains problematical). BTW: is the russian cannon bronze?
Re the last – no idea!
An excellent departure!
I enjoyed it.
Seven minutes completeluy unscripted, too.
Really impressed you can deliver that, unscripted.
Respect.
Thanks
Keir Starmer doesn’t get it – many voters perceive the Houses of Parliament as the Houses of Betrayal and that he’s a massive part of that betrayal!
I wrote a comment on the Times this morning saying that trading a company’s shares doesn’t transfer money to that company. Reading about Ely, an analogy is that buying an existing house doesn’t transfer any money or rights to the original builders. Build, get paid, over. Perhaps people who believe the first — buying shares is investment — might think about the second.
I’m impressed enough that your mic did not pick up the obvious wind blowing about! Nice job!
MBWA – do it myself on my housing schemes – builders bullshit you anyway, so you have to go and look for yourself if your job is to manage. How could you not?
People are walking and driving about all the time – noting pot holes, traffic and street lights not working, drains that need unblocking (huge puddles), weeds and overgrowth, worn away road markings, unswept roads and streets, uncollected leaf fall, even sewage outlets in our rather low rivers can be seen easily these days in the city where I work.
It all creates a feeling of malaise, that no one is in charge and it is another nail in the death of democracy, another step toward Orwell’s 1984. Here though it is private opulence and public squalor.
I note that you have a post about nationalism today – just noting that portion of Ely looked lovely when you filmed this – we have some nice places in this country of a beauty all of their own and equal to anywhere else. For how much longer – one wonders?
The dedicated linked mic on the Insta 360 did a great job, but so did Thomas post production I think. It was noisy and very windy out there.
If only people walked more they would be much better off. I live less than a mile from the cathedral: it is amazing how many drive that short distance never thinking to walk and see the world around them.
I enjoyed that.
I was very impressed that there was no traffic noise. How did you achieve that?
A dedicated mic (cost £50). Sound suppression on. Post production studio sound edit in by Thomas. But I was surprised how effective it was.
Excellent first attempt. More please. And my intrepretation of “walking about” is “asking about”. Dare you chat to some locals?
Journalists don’t just sit in their offices “and look at spreadsheets and data”, they regurgitate the content from the wire services. At least BBC journalists do get out and about and talk to people even if you can’t understand what they a saying a lot of the time.
Give me time…
That may happen, but I have to be very confident with the camera first.
Great idea Richard! Hope you do many more walks. Ely seems a brilliant place to live.
I’ve always loved the flaneur idea – and have done many myself. Even in a humdrum North London suburb within twenty minutes we’ve got remnants of power relationships with the struggle over the Royal hunting grounds, and commoners rights , Keats friend’s house – gaoled for sedition-, what used to be the mansion of Duke of Marlborough’s sidekick who’s fortune was siphoned off public money, and hint of a mansion of an ex Lord Mayor where the Tsar and Queen Victoria were rumoured to have dined. And the miracle of early 17th century engineering the New River etc etc
And walking, you can switch from the grand cathedral scale to the immediate – the small scale – the bricks of a garden wall can tell a story, as can an 800 year old oak tree..
Much to agree with. And I am aware of my fortune. And, relatively speaking, it is affordable.
On a visit to Lichfield Cathedral a long time ago,I came upon a memorial of a prominent military officer which listed the battles of his campaigns in India.
It seemed very incongruous inside a building supposedly dedicated to compassion.
Similarly,most royal males enter military service.Pity,they don’t find a more socially relevant profession like teaching,working in the NHS or accountancy.
Agreed.
There are chapels in the Cathedral that I use for quiet contemplation. Call it prayer, if you like. As a local I can get in without charge. Others feel very alien, bedecked with ‘colours’ from eras past around which some people probably died.
I think there might have been a few safeguarding issues with the King’s oldest brother as a teacher.
Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with the ‘economics of walking about’ I think that we must acknowledge that there was little that could be called improvement under Cromwell, particularly for the lay-person. He merely replaced one power structure with another.
Under Oliver Cromwell, the lives of ordinary people in Britain did not generally improve compared to life under the monarchy. While his rule brought some stability after the Civil Wars and expanded trade opportunities for merchants and the Puritan middle class, most people faced heavy taxation and strict moral laws that restricted traditional customs like festivals, theatre, and drinking. Cromwell’s Puritan government favored Protestant dissenters but persecuted Catholics and Anglicans, and his brutal campaigns in Ireland made life far worse there. Although he abolished the monarchy and claimed to promote liberty, his military-backed Protectorate was effectively authoritarian. For most lay people, everyday life under Cromwell was more controlled, less joyful, and little better economically than under the monarchy.
Your sentiment about change is entirely valid of course….we just don’t need another Cromwell.
Even with such a massive upheaval as Cromwell brought about it merely serves to illustrate that ‘trickle-down’ never was, or can be, a ‘thing’ and a truly radical change in the economy for the majority is going to need to be profoundly fundamental.
We had a massive outbreak of people power inspired change about a decade ago. It got rid of the sitting PM and a 40 year legal relationship with our nearest neighbours. Let’s hope the next time the people force change it works out better than Brexit!
Your nose looking a wee bit rosy – was it cold?
Good video, thanks. I enjoyed the new format.
It was very cold
Really enjoyed watching, very good points – thanks!
Can I suggest that your next outside YouTube in my hometown of Bury St Edmunds? It is very near Ely, and it has the Abbey Gardens, and the remains of the Abbey, and Bury being one of the flashpoints of the 1381 Peasant’s Revolt.
We’ll see