business » 21stCenturyFix.org.uk

The importance of knowing what our leaders HAVEN’T done

a con, business, business leaders, laws, politicians, politics No Responses »

Apr 282013

It’s really getting tricky to work out exactly what is going on. Two examples come to mind:

firstly, as per the Libor revelations – and others, still more awful, in the process of tumbling out – we discover how banking corporations are not obliged to compete with each other: the legislation simply hasn’t been designed to cover their processes and procedures in terms of the framework of free markets we always believed to be the case;
and secondly, as per the ugly tardiness surrounding the recent privatisation of the NHS: the legislation simply hasn’t been passed to ensure interested legislators cannot vote on matters which financially occupy them;

Which brings me to this recent epetition requesting that someone devise laws that would cover at least the latter case:

Ban MPs from voting on matters in which they have a financial interest

Responsible department: Office of the Leader of the House of Commons

We call on HM Government for new legislation to ensure that:

i. No member of Parliament may speak or vote in a debate on legislation which could financially benefit any commercial operation in which they have a financial interest; and

ii. No member of Parliament may speak or vote in a debate on legislation which could financially benefit any commercial operation which has made – or currently makes – donations to themselves personally or their political party.

We believe this is necessary to prevent corruption. It is also in accord with the spirit of political reform supported by the government.

And this is why I point this out to you today: mainly because I don’t believe the real issue to hand is working out what our leaders HAVE done. That is the job of journalists and other politicians – that is the job of all those who oversee how things work. No. I think the real issue to hand is quite another one. As I tweeted a few minutes ago:

Leaders have spent last 30 years passing laws to control us in order we didn’t notice laws which for their own benefit they haven’t passed.

And when I say leaders, I do mean both business and political. It’s what they DON’T do which should really be occupying us now.

Why has our democracy stumbled into the 21st century with no legislation of import in place to prevent those with certain financial interests from voting on a matter they will benefit directly or indirectly from?

Why have our allegedly free markets been built upon the foundations of a money-pricing system which allows the major banking corporations to collude in fixing their levels?

What other aspects of latterday democratic life simply choose to ignore pressing legal matters such as these – and prefer, instead, to pass laws relating to a whole host of curiously repressive regimes which only really affect the ordinary people?

And where they also – gently but persistently, and into the bargain – end up improperly distracting us from the above.

After all, we’ve had a plethora of constructive and revealing websites and organisations which continually register, define and explain what our leaders have been getting up to and are doing. Isn’t it time, now, that we began to do the same with everything else – that is to say, everything else they quite deliberately HAVEN’T done?

Time for yet another Internet list then?

The hugely important list of all the major pieces of legislation, which those whose intention it is to seriously hobble democracy and free markets have made bloody damn well sure should never happen.

So anyone know where we might start?

Bite-sized replies on a virtual postcard, please!

In a perfect world, no one wants to be dependent; in the real world, mostly everyone is

business, business opportunity, dependency, entrepreneurs, unclassifiable, welfare, Welfare State 1 Response »

Apr 082013

I wrote this a while ago on the subject of dependence (oh, and excuse the loose use of economic concepts in this post – I didn’t fully understand the complexity of the terminology at the time):

It’s a truism to say our political system is anything but conciliatory. And so it is I am minded – in these strife-ridden times – to argue that important concepts which might otherwise liberate are being lost to such strife.

One example, which I bring to this post from my teaching experience, involves providing the right environment to encourage students to become independent learners. This, in such experience, is not always an easy task. There are many language students out there who are looking for the continued emotional support of the teacher. You may provide them with the materials and content which a modicum of self-learning would serve to multiply by a thousandfold their progress – but no, they will insist on leaving most of the work to the classroom and the teacher.

Or they prefer to spend years in the company of the same teacher, using such learning to act out social instead of training needs.

Good teachers should, however, be like good dentists: so good at what they do that they do themselves out of a job. And yet it doesn’t seem to work like that. People often don’t want – or don’t know how – to be independent.

I then went on to argue:

So now I’m going to make myself unpopular. Let it first be understood I am entirely on the side of those who would remove through democratic means all vestiges of this Coalition government. It would, however, be remiss of me not to argue – as I have already mentioned above – that some potential good is being lost to the blunt battlecries of our current crop of politicians.

They demonise benefit fraud; they look to remove disability and incapacity allowances; they blame the unemployed for not finding jobs when jobs are not to be found. And yet, if given a different slant, all these ideas could be grounded in positivity. For example: benefits are good as amelioration strategies for short-term distress but should not create a social environment of dependence as has often happened. Supportive alternatives (and the word here is “supportive”) should kick in as soon as they can with the objective of ensuring people remain as proactive and independent as possible.

And what about blaming the unemployed for not being able to find those non-existent jobs? It’s the wrong tactic all round. We should be encouraging – not rhetorically but practically – as many people as possible to want to strike out into an economy of the proactive.

Business should not be a fearful beast but something people find absolutely fascinating.

And yet whilst our large monopolistic corporations supply our consumer fantasies with the gadgets and prices the latter dream of, the former can only distort and make so unfairly competitive the free-market economies which supposedly populate Western society.

No wonder the unemployed don’t want to set up new companies. If their customers won’t pay and the wider economic prospects are so grim, who on earth would choose to be an independent worker in times like this?

Only to conclude that:

Big corporations love us to become dependent on their products and services.

Big politicians love us to become independent of the state.

We can have one or the other – but it’s going to be mighty difficult to juggle both behaviours at the same time.

In a successive post, I went even further:

A quotation attributed to Ralph Nader came my way this morning which made me think that perhaps the answer is to be found somewhere here. It goes as follows:

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” — Ralph Nader #business #leadership

As far as I can see, Cameron & Co understand quite the contrary. And it’s absolutely clear that they don’t want to remove the dependency culture at all.

Instead, what they really want to do is transfer our sense of dependency from the state to their private sector buddies.

Not change us at all, then – just rearrange the furniture for the benefit of their deep-pocketed sponsors and bosom business pals.

Leadership? You gotta be joking. The Coalition know as much about the true tenets of leadership as did the Pied Piper of Hamelin. They don’t want to amplify our initiative – they just want our docile consumer complicity.

And that’s a really long way from encouraging independence of action.

Finally, some time around the middle of last year, I suggested:

Of course, in a very great sense, big business encourages its participants, customers and employees to be as dependent on its services as possible. They’re not looking in the least to create independent – that is to say, disloyal – subjects who pick and choose as the fancy takes them in an unpredictable and dangerously freedom-loving way; or who might either switch brands or even set up their own competing ones. The very dependency culture which people like Iain Duncan Smith criticise in the public sector and Welfare State mindsets is – quite paradoxically – promoted aggressively and actively in that private one I describe above.

Working as an employee for a large corporation is to be cocooned in an environment where every few months little rewards come along to make you give up on the idea of spreading your wings; of leaving your safe and secure little role; of moving out of that comfort zone. Buying as an end-user from a large corporation is to be cocooned in an environment where spreading similar wings to other providers is either dangerous or uncool; either risky or unwise; a choice the advertising messages pumped out daily encourage you to believe can’t exist.

Big business is as (perhaps corruptingly) effective at deliberately creating a dependency culture as the public sector and the Welfare State could ever be accused of.

With the single proviso that the Welfare State doesn’t seem to do it intentionally, whilst big business most definitely does.

And so to my main question – and the reason behind this post: big business – or at least banking big business (which is where my experience of such organisations lies) – is a web of dependent relationships. Now I’m not saying this is necessarily bad – for myself, as an employee, and at a particular moment in my life, it actually proved very positive. But if we can see in the private sector positives to be taken from such a set of relationships, why do we argue that in the public sector and the Welfare State the same cannot apply?

To (quite reasonably I think) conclude:

Why is it good to be dependent in the private sector but not in the public?

Why is dependency only to be contemplated as permissible by those who run transnational organisations?

And what does this mean for the morality of those who create such empires; their behaviours and attitudes; and, indeed, the wider ability of society to generate the entrepreneurial spirit that creates new economies?

In these three pieces, then, we can see how a reasonably thinking person like myself has tracked and reacted over the past two years to the unthought-through analyses of the processes at work here: no real end-to-end comprehension of what we might want to do from scratch; no real desire to assess the totality of what might be fairest; no intention at all to aim for a perfect world; no wish to leap out of a most unpleasant real world.

Instead, just tinkering around the edges. And, finally, blaming the Welfare State for using the same tools of outright dependency that Big Business has used all along.

The only difference being that whilst they claim the Welfare State leeches off the real economy, in truth with all their externalisations, their tax avoidance and evasion and their pretty widespread living-off the state and all its works, those who really live out this dependency fantasy are the sponsors of political parties everywhere: the transnational institutions which provide so many of our Western democratic experiences.

It’s time we did something about it. And fast.

As I say in my first piece linked to right at the top of today’s post:

From independent learners, then, to independent workforces, we most definitely have a challenge here as we attempt to convince people otherwise. And where we can most definitely criticise the Coalition is in the prejudices which underlie the anti-dependence rhetoric they have used: they need go no further than their nearest language class to understand that the instinct to dependence is far broader and more widely shared throughout all levels of society than they might think.

Maybe an instinct so very broad and shared we should begin to consider capitalising on it – instead of demonising it cruelly as we are! After all, as all sensible entrepreneurs will tell you: “Where there’s a resource, there should be a way of taking advantage of it.”

So why should only the corporates be allowed to make full use of dependency? Do please answer me that …

Bureaucracies – our saviours or our assassins?

bureaucracy, business, business leaders, corporations, in a hole, NHS, politicians, pork-barrel politics, private bureaucracy, private sector, privatisation, public sector, pyramid politics, pyramidal organisations 4 Responses »

Mar 072013

Rick has a lovely piece on defending bureaucracy as a Good Thing. It starts off like this:

Gus O’Donnell presented a thought-provoking programme on Radio 4 this morning, In Defence of Bureaucracy. He presented two arguments. Firstly, you can’t get much done without basic organisation. Secondly, bureaucracy, with its formal rules, offers protection from the arbitrary whims and prejudices of those in power.

I suggest you read it in its entirety. It’s not just a piece about bureaucracy in government. It’s also a piece about bureaucracy in the private sector. This paragraph, for example:

Bureaucracy is the corporate equivalent of the rule of law. It protects people from arbitrary decisions inside the organisation. Rules and procedures give people clarity about their roles, their scope for decision making and their boundaries. Like the rule of law, they protect employees from random and vindictive treatment by their bosses. It has become very fashionable to deride bureaucracy but working in organisations with fewer rules and procedures can be just as unpleasant. Trying to second guess the whims of a maverick autocratic boss can be every bit as energy draining and innovation stifling as working in a bureaucracy.

In essence, as a set of democratic societies, we could not have arrived at where we are if it hadn’t been for the law-engendering instincts of overarching rules, processes and procedures.

It’s clear, therefore, that our impulsive perceptions of bureaucracy need a makeover. We need to perceive it with a greater sense of its complex contribution to latterday civilisation. Therein the rub, of course. There’s plenty of evidence that bureaucracy – and its fairly widely independent relationship to political masters – makes it a perfect vehicle for doing ill too. Just because a bureaucracy religiously ensures that rules, processes and procedures are followed to the letter doesn’t mean that only good may necessarily spring forth: if the rules, processes and procedures in question are malignant in nature, the result will be unkind. What’s more, pretty consistently – even remorselessly – unkind.

The most obvious example is how the Nazis appropriated the Weimar Republic’s institutions. But we also have an example much closer to home:

Patient interests were neglected for years by NHS mangers as hospitals concentrated on cutting waiting times at the expense of good care, the head of the service admitted today.

Sir David Nicholson accepted that he was “part” of an environment where the leadership of the NHS “lost its focus” and which indirectly led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of patients at Stafford Hospital.

Now it still seems the latter case is being the subject of much political football – the Tories have recently blamed the previous Labour government for, I assume, its attachment to targets (perhaps, in this case, the wrong ones – that is to say, the easiest ones to measure); meanwhile, the Labour opposition is calling for Nicholson to resign his current responsibility as driver of highly unpopular government-organised change at the NHS.

As I’ve said on a previous occasion:

If you think about it, the pyramid which reaches pointy-headed to the sky is actually totally absurd. As the work gets more complex and challenging, we use fewer heads to decide what needs to be done. The chances of committing errors, of stressing oneself into illness, of failing to achieve one’s targets … these are all bound to increase with the traditional pyramid we are all used to.

Surely this is madness.

Surely we need if not a cylinder, at the very least a pyramid without a considerable part of its upper superstructure.

And as Shuggy concisely points out:

From the Hootsmon:

“Excessive hierarchy must become a thing of the past. Upward communication must be encouraged and constructive criticism should be positively received.”

The remedy for this is, apparently, to give those at the top of the hierarchy more power:

“Headteachers should be seen as the chief executives of largely autonomous organisations…”

Kier Bloomer being desperately stupid in a way that only intelligent people can be. I’ll make this my last post on education for some time because this stuff makes me so depressed I can’t stand it.

Again as I’ve said on other occasions, where we currently find ourselves is here:

Where managerialism takes over, and where hierarchies reduce the number of people involved as the tasks get more complex, we get the big-hitter striker syndrome: a man or woman at the top on whom everyone is focussed. A man or woman on whom everything depends. A man or woman who will one day fail; or perhaps, over time, frequently fails – but has the physical presence to convince us they are, even so, actually succeeding; and so deserve the massive salaries they command. [...]

Bureaucracies and top executives – or corporate law and CEOs, if you wish – are complicated relationships, after all. It’s true, of course, that bureaucracies can act as a dead hand on individually dangerous and maverick leaders. But as the Nazis showed us, and as the concept of charismatic leadership more widely demonstrates, a stratospheric leadership structure can just as easily use a bureaucracy to escape conviction and control as that very same bureaucracy can serve to ameliorate the former’s wilder instincts.

If we want to continue to believe we can use bureaucracy as a force for good, we need – first and foremost – to sort out the ever-growing dysfunctionality of pyramidal structures, as well as the inefficient concentrations of wealth that accompany it.

Labour must choose between business and humanity

business, in a hole, journalism, Labour No Responses »

Feb 212013

I was reading an article from the Guardian on the subject of post-journalism, and whether amongst other things the skillset was becoming irrelevant, when I stumbled across this comment (the bold is mine):

Journalism is, in other words, failing miserably in its role as the Fourth Estate, having been stripped of most of its resources, year on year, ever since the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Talk of new “business models” for journalism are fatally flawed, when it is exactly that – business models – that have bashed journalism to its knees.

This then set off a tangential train of thoughts. Earlier in the day I had struggled – finally managed – to replace a toilet seat. We’d bought it from Aldi and it was sold under their own brand, having been manufactured in China. It was sturdy enough, very cheap at the price. About half, in fact, what the previous one had cost us – also cheaply – from IKEA.

And so I began to wonder about business and its place in our lives. I can’t imagine the Aldi purchasing department acted out of the kindness of its heart when it negotiated its order with its Chinese suppliers. I can’t imagine a very hard bargain wasn’t driven on both sides – indeed, for ordinary people to enjoy cut-price toilet seats, I think we can assume some pretty nasty characters would have to nastily thump hard tabletops, cajole workforces and impose their overarching and undemocratic wills on organisations.

So there we have it: from toilet seats to journalism, business models rule this mass we call humanity. Yet, as we can see, business models are anything but humane. It seems to me that this difference between basic assumptions is what is lying at the very nub of the massive disagreements currently dividing our society and politics here in England. Whilst our ministers and leading political lights on both sides of the political fence cannot reject the brutality of business, other more ordinary people – who depend on the Aldis and IKEAs of this world to deliver the deals they can generally afford – are looking to live quite dissimilar lives. Yes. As long as we cannot see – or even just lightly perceive – the cruelty that goes on behind the scenes, we go along with the game.

The problem lately, of course, is that business-positive and commerce-friendly individuals, who – in the past – were happy to run their inhumanities below our radars, are now only too keen to apply such techniques and strategies to other areas we used to believe would be reserved for the softies amongst us. From disability support to expanding young minds and souls, it seems that the niceties of humanness are no longer our destiny.

I learnt today that the word “weird”, as noun, is archaic Scottish for “a person’s destiny”. It seems entirely appropriate to me that the intellectual baggage which surrounds the terms “destiny” and “weird” should – in this, as yet, curiously undefining 21st century – coincide violently in such a way.

And this is what leads me to address my own political party in the following terms: it’s time that Labour choose between business and humanity. Too often its Marxist heritage has drawn it to tinker at the margins with the sourer implications of business and its methods. There is, it is true, no people so blind as those who would prefer not to see. But, even so, I would like to think it’s still not too late to understand. Just as journalism’s business models have been the main and precise reason for its decline, instead of a potential and invigorating solution, so Labour’s – where not labour’s – attachment to the industrialisation of human relationships, and to the impossibility of reversing the direction in which such influences take place, has probably meant – in part at least – that its ability to fashion anything notably distinct from received opinion has been severely subdued.

Where not entirely eliminated.

Humanity and business are no longer compatible.

Of course, it’s also true to say that they never were. It’s only now, however, in the full glare of citizen-driven communications, that sufficient evidence is becoming so fashionably and profusely written in enough virtual tablets of shareable stone for ordinary people to understand the truth. Where drip-fed journalism – run by allegedly successful publishing magnates and their correspondingly correct business models – used to control the direction of our societies through careful and strategic positioning of scandal, so drip-fed social networking now operates equally efficiently.

Just not so clearly in favour of the business-positives.

Yes. It does actually sound kind of like a medical condition, doesn’t it? To be business-positive.

An illness that requires us to shun or embrace its sufferers?

I wonder.

Though my instincts would and should always be the latter, I fear – if you love what’s best about humanity – that, pretty soon, only the outright rejection of business-positive mindsets will serve to guarantee a kindly future of any viable sort.

And it’s really time, I’m beginning to think, that politicians considered the value of making the same choice.

Particularly those who like to claim they work on behalf of the workers.

Particularly those who believe in that humanity I so hanker after.

Feb 092013

The Observer reports tonight on a story which will no doubt run and run (in an equine sense if no other):

Sources close to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Food Standards Agency said it appeared that the contamination of beefurgers, lasagne and other products [with horsemeat] was the result of fraud that had an “international dimension”.

Substitute some of the actors with our friends in the financial services community – even the Financial Services Authority shares the same TLA with the Food Standards Agency – and you’ll see why I’m beginning to get the feeling that horsemeat DNA on a criminal scale bears an uncanny resemblance to Libor fixing on a criminal scale. In both cases, it would seem that insiders have been stuffing outsiders – and the outsiders have been suffering the consequences, generally unknowingly. A mafia is a mafia, however genteel or besuited it may show itself to be. We are, it would appear, in the grip of such mafias.

In fact, to state – as the Observer does in its headline – that the “Horsemeat scandal [is] blamed on international fraud by mafia gangs” is just a tad disingenuous: it may be true, of course, but a) it doesn’t half let the government and the regulatory authorities off the hook of ultimate responsibility and b) it doesn’t half beg the question why whoever’s doing the blaming didn’t realise this any earlier.

The process and sequence of events is exactly the same as that which assailed us during the 2008 credit crunch. All of it essentially down to light-touch regulatory mindsets which believe stupidly in the magical powers of utterly unleashed corporate environments: environments which start out – in our hopeful and ever-optimistic politico-economic models – as virtuous circles of efficient business, only to end up being populated with dysfunctionally greedy individuals, systemic failures no one could have predicted or even – as in this case – Eastern European mafias.

The all-too-predictable result of a hands-off and responsibility-abdicating approach to the business of government and governance.

By trusting the market to run itself, by not inspecting the opportunities for greed and irresponsible behaviours, by believing that organised crime won’t care to get involved in the daily operation of customer choice, these latterday governments of ours are destroying the very integrity of our economic checks and balances.

And that their mentality should argue that customers vote freely with their purchases every day of the blessed week is appalling in the extreme: whilst we cannot take our own personal DNA testers to every prepared meal, and prick them and poke them before every purchase, we are at the mercy of those processes we should surely have every right to trust.

The Independent concludes in the following way its report on the obfuscation currently at play:

‘Bute’ aside, the unlabelled horse may indeed be safe to eat. But that’s not to say that people wanted to eat it, nor, more importantly, that anyone in the food supply system was aware of the existence of what seems to have been a massive undetected fraud.

It was just the presence of an unknown substance – prions that caused BSE (and the ensuing complacency and cover-up) – that led to a collapse in confidence in British farming.

Judging by the events and attitudes of the last few weeks, the lessons have not been learnt.

Not learnt indeed. That is all too clear.

But what’s even more clear to me tonight is that business today, whether white collar or abattoir, needs a massive kick up the backside from about as fearsome and heavy-touch legislative and inspection regimes as we can possibly manage to invent and devise.

If for no other reason than to guarantee the safety of hapless human beings in a complex and interdependent century – human beings who still don’t come complete or supplied with their own portable laboratories.

A market for cheap and easy-to-use DNA testers then?

Perhaps the need is wider than that. Maybe the market that’s really waiting to be exploited is for an algorithmic comparer of prices and products, which automatically suggests the potential presence of fraudulent behaviours in any supply chain.

For until we as consumers get far more access to information about what goes on behind the scenes in such B2B transactions, there is little we can do but to resign ourselves to further and ever-increasing fraud in banking, technology and food products various.

Is Britain becoming a police state – only without the police?

a con, Britain, business, entrepreneurs, HMRC, Independent, police state, policed state, spying on neighbours No Responses »

Jan 142013

This report came my way via Patrick on Twitter just now. It’s published over at the Independent and describes the following set of circumstances (the bold is mine):

From October 2011 to the end of September 2012, HMRC was given 172 authorisations for “directed surveillance” – covert surveillance, mainly in public places – down slightly from the previous year.

HMRC refused to disclose how many times it had been given warrants to intercept and read peoples’ private emails, or listen to their phone calls. This is the most intrusive type of surveillance, which needs to be authorised by the Home Secretary. It also refused to disclose the number of times it had carried out “intrusive surveillance”, which can include covertly filming a person’s house, or bugging their property or car.

As a specialist in tax law goes on to state:

Adam Craggs, a partner and tax specialist at law firm RPC, said: “It is not immediately apparent why such communications data would be useful to HMRC for the purpose of tax investigations. Why does HMRC require details of the nature of web sites visited, which may be perfectly legal but potentially embarrassing, such as dating sites?”

To be honest, I think that’s the least of it. Embarrassment, I mean. Whilst we can all agree that measures and procedures must be in place to protect us from the really bad guys in society – the paedophiles, terrorists, fraudsters and assorted expense-accounted MPs – it gets a little harder when we begin to wonder if exactly the same measures as the above-mentioned might instead be used to interfere with the development of small and medium-sized businesses.

Especially in an Internet world where barriers to entry are really rather low.

Spying on the enemy has always been sold to the public at large as necessary to defend freedom and democracy – but it is surely of far greater utility when the big-business-and-government nexus of revolving doors decides its interests need protecting over that of approaching political and commercial upstarts.

Just think what a government department which had cosy relationships with massive corporations, which frequently agreed massive tax deals behind closed doors and which was accustomed to steering clear of public disagreement with transnational bodies of all kinds, might be able to engineer with such commonplace activities and instincts as the Independent reports. It is, after all, one small step from “intrusive surveillance” to “active interference in the internal workings of a company”.

How easy would it therefore be to go beyond watching and waiting for tax infractions to proactively sabotaging new ideas and giving existing players the economic and logistical breathing spaces they needed in order to regroup and, as a result, maintain the status quo so sought after by politicians and business leaders alike.

A police state, that is – only without the police.

Not a politically repressive regime.

Rather, an economically repressive regime.

So is this what we’ve now arrived at? Something cloaked in democracy but smelling as rank as any one-dictator republic?

Something perhaps as bad as anything 20th century Communism was able to dream up?

The collapse of capitalism: time to destroy or time to engage?

business, capitalism, David Miliband, Labour, latterday capitalism, Next Left, party politics, politics, unclassifiable 3 Responses »

Dec 042011

This is the clearest evidence one can have – if evidence was needed – that capitalism has failed:

Almost two-thirds of people believe the current generation of children will have a lower standard of living than their parents, as concern about the economic crisis hardens into long-term pessimism, a new poll shows.

And I say this because an essential part of capitalism’s dynamics is the belief and confidence its subjects have in the future. Without these two elements, people do not invest; do not battle with the challenges; do not take risks. So it is that capitalism is mortally wounded.

The temptation must be very great – as we are always going to be sons and daughters of previous generations – to do an Iraq on capitalism even as it is on its last legs: bomb it to bits (figuratively speaking, that is) and then wait and see what flowers all on its lonesome.

I would, however, prefer to believe we are capable of avoiding getting involved in such a destructive cycle for the second, third or fourth time in a generation and – instead – learn from such experiences to a wider societal benefit. Two initiatives do make me wonder if other people think the same. First, this rather idiosyncratic presentation (no web-based context – just an almost automatic download of a .pdf file) of how important the concept of business should be to Labour (more context from Next Left to this project can be found here). Its Foreword provides sufficient background thus:

Foreword
Chuka Umunna
I welcome this collection, which brings together
many important contributions to the discussion on the new
economy we seek to create, and crucially the role of enterprise
within it.
Our economy faces huge challenges, both in terms of increased
competition from the emerging economies of Asia and
Latin America, but also the fact that it is not working for enough
people in the way it can and should. Because of the government’s
decision to cut spending and raise taxes too far and too fast, our
recovery was choked off well before the crisis in the Eurozone.
Living standards are being squeezed harder than in living
memory, unemployment is at its highest in seventeen years and
the ‘British promise’ – the understanding that each generation
will benefit from better opportunities than the last – is at risk
of being broken.
But underlying this are deeper, structural problems which
urgently need to be addressed. Since 2003 wages for middle
and lower income earners have stagnated while rewards at the
top have grown exponentially and so for many in our society,
pay has not kept up with the rising cost of living. Growth has
become too dependent on a small number of sectors and too
few regions, making us more vulnerable to external shocks.
We need an economy structured to deliver the jobs and growth
of the future; which is focused on sustainable, long-term success
rather than the fast buck; which enables us to complete globally;
and which creates high-skilled, better paid jobs for our workforce.
In addressing and overcoming these challenges, the role of
enterprise is paramount: we are clear that growth must be private
sector led – so we need more people setting up, leading
and working in businesses. Our record here is strong – in our
thirteen years in government, over a million new businesses
were created and the turnover of small and medium sized enterprises
grew by over a third.
But, as this collection reflects, we need to do more to champion
entrepreneurship: those who go into business, turning their
ideas into reality, generating profit and creating employment
in the process, taking pride in their work providing consumers
with greater choice or even a new product or service. These
are the values Labour represents. We do not underestimate
the capacity for enterprise to act as a motor of aspiration and
social mobility, providing a ladder of opportunity and enabling
people to make the most of their ingenuity and talents. As ever,
we are ambitious for British business.
Where we fundamentally disagree with the government’s
approach is that we see the state playing a crucial role in
creating the conditions in which businesses thrive. Where
they see the best government as that which does the least, we
see the capacity for active, intelligent government acting as a
partner, enabler and friend, setting the rules of the game, with
the capacity to shape and even create markets. For example, the
last Labour government set the target for all new homes to be
carbon neutral by 2016 – this helped create whole new markets
in architecture, retrofitting and green design.
Government has a wide range of tools at its disposal
including regulation, procurement, competition policy and
taxation – and must use these to support business, developing
and driving an ambition for the new economy. This means
ensuring that markets are competitive, encouraging innovation,
working with business to drive success and backing business
approaches which invest in the long term and do right by
employees, customers, country, and communities.
Clearly, this requires change on the part of government. We
cannot ignore the debate going on in the business world about
how productive businesses can add value to the bottom line
in the form of profit and do the same for the communities in
which they are located – businesses and their communities are
after all interdependent.
That is why the contributions in this book are so important,
exploring how enterprise can deliver the better outcomes we
need: spurring a return to growth and creating jobs, as well as
addressing the longstanding challenges which face our economy.
I have no doubt that Labour’s Business will help inform
and shape this debate as we move forward.
Chuka Umunna MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills

As I pointed out yesterday:

It’s not time to reinvent politics – for politics simply piggybacks on the prejudices and mindsets of business. Politics is the mouthpiece – no longer (was it ever?) the agent.

No. We need to go much further that.

It’s now time to reinvent business itself – for only then will we half a chance of rescuing our scalps. The root problem is business – and so the solution must also lie there.

Meanwhile, today in the Observer we find David Miliband spot-on, at least in this phrase I pick out of his thoughtful piece:

[...] The point of politics is not to compromise values. It is to understand dynamic forces in economy and society, and inch forward changes in the reality of life according to your values.

I think I can agree with many of the things I have quoted from in this post – or, at least, I can agree with them if I take an entirely textual approach to their content. If I forget about who has written them and the political baggage they carry along with them – their biography and and their attributed psychology – then, in a sense, the option of valuing with greater equanimity does become possible.

Time to destroy, then, or time to engage? Do we follow Bush Sr or Bush Jr?

I would hope we could be wise. If politics were as it should be, I would be able to say it’d be up to you and me to decide.

But it’s not.

So the question hangs heavily in the air: who will really decide – and, indeed, when? And how will they choose? Will they engage or, alternatively, destroy everything that is before them?

And will they do it for us all – or simply for themselves?

Signs that crash like cymbals of our times

a con, bad business, bad capitalism, big business, business, small business No Responses »

Nov 192011

I saw a TV ad this morning for Armani perfume. The product was called “Code”. It was a his-and-hers perfume. Two actors. One stage. Thirty seconds. An ad for our times.

For I imagine the main cost of making and selling a new perfume lies in its marketing. A his-and-hers perfume is a perfect way of cutting such costs by half. Both men and women’s perfumes need men and women in their narratives. Both men and women’s perfumes need thirty seconds to make their pitch. Put them together in the same TV spot – and you must be cutting costs of some sort there.

Surely.

More signs of our times which crash like cymbals. I said this on Wednesday (the bold underlines for the purposes of today’s post the idea which draws my attention):

It does, of course, beg the question: what on earth are Osborne and Cameron up to? In my mind, I think the only sensible reply is to say: “Exactly what they set out to do!”

Increase unemployment – in order to tip the balance of negotiating power in the direction of employers; destroy that part of our monopolistic “free market” which, even now, was giving the bigger companies grief – in order that the only businesspeople left on the killing-field are the big-money sponsors of the Tory Party; shake out all those feelgood policies New Labour had engineered to tie the disparate social elements of this country together – in order to better control the chaos that is left; and – finally – deactivate all chances of making socialism work for the oh so conservative British.

Whilst at the end of October I pointed out (again, the bold being for the purposes of today’s post):

What’s really frightening me about the encroaching crisis we are only now beginning to properly fear is that we’re all sitting lobbing foolish pebbles at each other – from within our corporate and socio-political bunkers – whilst outside a chaos of unimaginable consequences is beginning to make itself clear. And yet no one seems to know how to make the first move to creating a more efficient business and economic environment. Concentrations of money and resource of the kind we are currently witnessing are not only examples of bad morals – they’re examples of bad business. If money only circulates round a few chosen few, the victory is bound to become pretty pyrrhic one of these days.

Which reminds me of a tweet from the always excellent Richard J Hughes which came my way only yesterday:

@shanegreer Beating tax abuse and havens creates level playing field for honest, innovative small businesses & create jobs. Your problem is?

As far as I can see, all the above only goes to indicate those signs of the times I’ve already mentioned. Whilst we talk endlessly about innovation and progress, and how capitalism’s very essence lies in renewal and imagination, the majority of our business infrastructure is really only ever interested in aping and copying what’s already been done.

Our business environment is evermore set up to benefit existing players at the expense of the new.

And, eventually, we are all going to suffer the consequences – whether we currently judge ourselves rich or poor.

How about we unfairly dismiss a few of these Coalition slackers?

a con, big business, business, Coalition, Coalition capitalism, Coalition cuts, David Cameron, George Osborne, small business No Responses »

Oct 262011

I read this over at Craig’s place today and felt a real shudder go down my spine. His first paragraph starts thus but is not the bit that made me shudder:

I am not blogging about the EU summit. It is pointless. It will of course produce a communique to reassure the markets. It makes no difference.

The last paragraph finishes thus (the bold is mine):

That is why I am not blogging about today’s EU meeting or a specific statement of the US Federal Bank Chairman. They are all pissing into the wind that is shortly to be a tornado. I expect before I die I will see a genuine social revolution. I expect that, as always happens, middle class liberals like me will start by being elated by it, and end up being shot by those who seize on the change, to take their turn to use the power of the state to corner resources for themselves.

And now I hope you join me as you tremble. And if you do not tremble, then you are still exactly as were the Jews when in the 1930s they thought it could not get any worse.

For it was then the turn of the Guardian to bring me this piece of news:

In a report seen by the Daily Telegraph and commissioned by Downing Street, the venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft suggests British workers should be banned from claiming unfair dismissal so companies can sack them and find more capable replacements, saying this would boost economic growth. The document has generated a furious response from trade unions.

As it might very well do so.

But even those supposedly on our side only speak of the morality of the issue as an afterthought. Far more important for them is the health of our collapsing economy:

But Norman Lamb, chief adviser and parliamentary private secretary to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said taking away protection from unfair dismissal would damage the economy because it would increase workers’ fears that they could be arbitrarily sacked.

Lamb, a former employment lawyer, said: “I think it would be madness to throw away all employment protection in the way that’s proposed, and it could be very damaging to consumer confidence.

“What we are talking about here is every single employee in the land being in a position where their employer could arbitrarily terminate their employment – and the impact that could have on consumer confidence, fear of losing your job, would potentially be very damaging.”

Only to lamely remember that:

“I just think it’s also not right to throw away that sort of scheme of protection.”

Almost a year ago I said the following:

It’s not that this Coalition government doesn’t have principles. It does.

It just so happens that its principles are limited to two: sock it to the poor and train them to understand their only salvation is that of wage slave to the wealthy. Problem is that innovation doesn’t work like that. Ideas need space, confidence and trust to flourish. Cameron’s understanding of the future needs of a society which adds value by generating and implementing ideas is so tawdry and basic that all he will achieve is a mass emigration of the clever to places where they will be better understood.

And as I continued by saying:

This government is not only going to show us how bad it is at the welfare state, it’s also going to show us how very bad it is at anticipating the needs of business – all business, that is. Innovation does not come out of slotting bright and intelligent individuals into the round holes that already well-formed organisations are prepared to allow. For true innovation to surface, everything must start from the ground up. There must be that cycle of birth, growth and maturity which joining an existing organisation could never provide.

So it is that in amongst all the unrest of a capitalism going dangerously sour, we have the seeds of total collapse. And our government’s response? Invest in the future? Look to release the imagination of the very best of our nations? Consult and debate ways of ensuring we can all be in this together?

Nope. Our government’s response is to make it easier to dismiss the workers who already fear for their jobs – and have already cut back on their spending.

I tell you what. I jolly well do feel that it’s time to unfairly dismiss some of those government ministers responsible for this chaos.

Before closing up shop tonight, then, let us just run that idea past ourselves one more time. Exhibit A – The Coalition Thesis: a stumbling capitalism is due to inefficient workers who are too confident of keeping their jobs. Exhibit B – The Coalition Solution: a flourishing capitalism will come out of making us feel all awfully insecure so we stop all our spending out of fear.

And, in exchange, the proponents of all this tawdry politicking get a) to hang onto their jobs; b) assure their future employment; c) line the pockets of their pals in big business; and d) prance around on very public stages spouting the kind of disgraceful rubbish which makes me think Craig might – after all – one day turn out to be right.

This Coalition government isn’t only mad – it’s bad; isn’t only rank – it’s inefficient; isn’t only anti-good industrial relations – it’s anti-good business.

And if you don’t believe me yet, you better start soon. Because if you don’t believe me soon – believe me, it’ll won’t be long before it’s far too late.

Convergent evolution or cartels galore?

a con, big business, business, cartels, convergent evolution, small business No Responses »

Oct 152011

Modern big business claims for itself the virtues of the free-market economies. It differentiates itself from old-style centralised government planning by arguing that it lives, heaves and survives in an environment of continuous competition. Whether just large or actually massive, these organisations provide the very best outcomes for their clients and consumers at the very lowest prices.

I believe, in fact, that this was the argument used by the banks in the UK recently when they made their submissions to the independent investigation into banking structures and stability. Essentially, they said, it didn’t matter how big the very biggest companies were: what was far more important was the total number of players – whether big or small – in the marketplace.

What a naive and yet noble belief in the power of the hidden hand.

I was perhaps unfair to businesspeople almost everywhere yesterday when I suggested that cavalier attitudes were prevalent in the private sector. This I did in order to explain why some politicians – especially those closest to big business – behave as they do. I suggested the real problem was not incompetent politicians but, rather, competent businesspeople who did insist on being in the wrong frame.

That is to say, the frame of politics.

Today, however, I read a piece which has come my way via Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling – and whose thesis runs as follows:

However, for most of those I have spoken to over the years, the aggro they have had with government departments is nothing compared to the runaround they have been given by the large private sector monoliths and, more specifically, the banks and utility companies. On Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, government minister David Willetts suggested that cartels are operating in both these sectors. This will come as no surprise to those business owners who have had to deal with them. There may be a variety of suppliers but they all seem to adopt the same industry standards, with systems and processes that can’t (or won’t) adapt to customer needs.

The writer goes on to conclude more widely that:

A couple of years ago, Simon Caulkin noted that, while the Cold War might be over, Soviet-style centralised planning is alive and kicking in the private sector oligopolies. In service organisations, retaining control and reducing complexity means, as far as possible, designing out the customer. As John Seddon says, designing out the customer leads to ‘failure demand’. But, if all your competitors do things in the same way, then why worry? The customers can only go to another supplier which will subject them to the same treatment. Most, therefore, will just grin and bear it. The smaller businesses, without the financial muscle to exert any influence, usually just seethe in silence.

So here we have a supposedly free market, where – everywhere – the customer is actually being designed out of the procedures and processes. Everywhere you go, the helplines don’t help and the systems systematically prioritise the interests of the supplier over the interests of the customer or end-user.

I have seen this myself – and know it is true. I have seen new IT systems being implemented after a takeover – and have seen the defender position being taken in terms of what benefits the real customer in all of this: the shareholder and end-of-year profits.

Meanwhile, the consequent degradation in customer service – as they lose years of online documentation and functionality galore – is sold, in a blitz of orgasmic PR, as a set of huge improvements all round.

Convergent evolution or cartels galore? Either way, the market is no longer free.

A case of competent business methods and people – but in the full glare of democracy?

business, in a hole, Liam Fox, Oliver Letwin, politics, professional politicos 3 Responses »

Oct 142011

Two cases. First, Liam Fox. Second, Oliver Letwin. And I do find myself wondering if these are examples of the foolish and incompetent at work – or, more likely, cases of pretty standard business methods and people exposed to the garish lights of democratic oversight.

As I pointed out on Tuesday:

The problem with Tory proposals on almost anything these days (I say Tory because the Lib Dems are now simply a virtual footnote to the first British coalition government of the online age) is that we can’t help feeling they’ve modelled themselves on the American Republican Party – friend and defender of business to the hilt. [...]

My highly limited and humble experience of big business – on the one hand, I helped provide language services in Spain to car components companies and, on the other, found myself here in Britain as a menial office clerk on the receiving end of the uncoordinated flailings of a massive corporation – has led me to believe that businessmen and women could only contemplate surviving in politics if they decided, by hook or by crook, to avoid the irritations of public interest. And I say “by hook or by crook” advisably. Please understand: I’m not criticising business for stretching the envelope of behaviours – especially the kind of business that sets up and engineers new ideas. Particularly apposite to this point is a tweet that came my way the other day from Ruhani Rabin:

What’s the difference between pretending to be what you are not, and pretending to be what you intend to become? #quote

In that circular and disconcerting assertion lie many of the virtues and sins of modern innovative business.

So it is not the purpose of this post to criticise those behaviours. Simply, I’m looking to point out that no democratic government worth its votes would ever dare to sanction the behaviours that both Liam Fox and Oliver Letwin have so casually demonstrated. And yet, in business I am sure cavalier attitudes like these often pay off.

So is what we are seeing with this Coalition, as it begins to give the impression it might be crumbling from within its own contradictions, a set of curious examples of sheer and total incompetence – or, actually, a pretty OK competence simply being exerted in the wrong place?

Put another way: should professional businesspeople simply stick to what they know best – and those who would be professional politicians simply profess that profession they best know?

Business and politics – maybe it’s not so simple

business, in a hole, politics No Responses »

Oct 082011

We’ve all been writing quite a lot recently on the shady connections between business and politics. Today, in the light of Liam Fox’s woes, I wonder whether it’s as simple as it looks. Not, specifically, in the context of this case; but certainly, more widely, in the context of other behaviours. We’ve seen them in health; we’ve seen them in the legal profession; to those who wish to spread the pain, we’ve seen them in New Labour too.

So who’s to blame? Is it mainly down to the politicos aggressively climbing their greasy poles of power? Or is it more because of the business sorts who get so used to cutting corners in the name of competition – and, what’s more, getting away with it – that quite blithely, and without any real intention to subvert the ideals of democracy, they go ahead and subvert?

A clash of mindsets then – instead of bad and naughty people doing bad and naughty things?

I don’t know.

I guess you’ll probably call me naive. And I guess you’re probably right.

Trust and the business of deregulating business

big business, Big Society, business, Ed Miliband, politics, private sector, public interest, trust, unclassifiable No Responses »

Sep 272011

Our politicians talk all the time about gaining our trust. Ed Miliband, in his speech to Labour Conference today, said the following:

The Labour Party lost trust on the economy.

And under my leadership, we will regain that trust.

I am determined to prove to you that the next Labour Government will only spend what it can afford.

That we will live within our means.

That we will manage your money properly.

As someone who believes that government can make a difference, I have a special responsibility to show you that every pound that is spent, is spent wisely.

Now maybe politicians like Mr Miliband say these things because they are perceptive and accurate in their understanding of the reality out there. On the other hand, the more cynical amongst you will argue that they say precisely what we need to hear – precisely what politicians generally don’t allow us to do. That is to say, they claim to aim to gain our trust and confidence because they know – exactly – they are not worthy of either.

Another part of Miliband’s speech today, though, is pertinent to the case in question – that of trust:

Take Fred Goodwin, who ran the Royal Bank of Scotland.

He was at the heart of the banking crisis.

Compare him to Sir John Rose, former Chief Executive of Rolls Royce, a great British business leader.

Creating wealth and keeping jobs in this country.

He is the true face of British business.

The vast majority of our businesses that have the right values and do the right thing.

Rooted in their communities.

Committed to their workforce.

And creating real, lasting value.

But at the time of the financial crisis, Fred Goodwin was paid over three times more than Sir John Rose.

I tell you something, Fred Goodwin shouldn’t have got that salary.

And I tell you something else:

We shouldn’t have given Sir Fred Goodwin that knighthood either.

Which is why this question occurs to me: if business wants government to deregulate its activities, and politicians understand – even if emptily – that they are obliged to gain our trust, why don’t businesspeople also feel just as obliged to convince us of their goodwill?

Why don’t businesspeople also feel just as obliged to “do the right thing” - to do “something for something”?

Why do businesspeople – as voters – expect their governors to do what they promise but reserve a completely different set of standards for their own pecuniary behaviours?

Why, indeed, in this Big Society environment, can’t we extend the concept of the public interest and apply it to those who work in the private sector?

Can a public company ever be anything but private?

big business, business, on a high, open source, Rosebud, small business, sorted, Spain, transparency, www.opensource.com No Responses »

Sep 222011

The word “public” is a strange word. When used by Americans about companies, it refers to organisations which are obliged – by law – to hide important details of their functioning from their workers and their customers, whilst far more important constituencies such as shareholders are not duly informed first. In Britain, on the other hand, we use the word to describe schools which are actually private – ie do not belong to the state.

And then, of course, there are “public revelations” – which no one in public life would ever like.

So whilst “public” might – in the first instance – appear to be a word you’d really rather like to be associated with, there is a reasonably long list of negative connotations and contexts in which you can find the word.

The website opensource.com has an interesting article on this very same subject this week:

But for public companies, the benefits of an open approach are often overshadowed by the risks. During my time at Red Hat (a publicly-traded company for much of my tenure), our approach was traditionally to “default to open,” sharing as much information as we could, both inside the company and with the outside world.

Yet, as a public company, there were many financial and legal obstacles that stood in the way of openness. It was challenging to find the right balance between being open with our thinking and information, yet respectful of the legal and financial responsibilities that come with being a public company.

In the company I most recently worked for, there was a definite tendency on both management and union sides of the negotiating table to use these legal and financial responsibilities in order to precisely avoid setting that “default to open”. In an environment – the financial services sector – where heavy top-down governance ruled for almost everyone out there – except, it would seem, in the event, the big guns who from up on high continually helicopter-viewed the landscape – the cloak of convenience which such governance offered both parties was a temptation too fine to resist.

The opensource.com article goes on to offer a couple of solutions which relate more to people setting up new businesses than those who may suffer the burden, in the interests of greater transparency, of re-engineering existing ones.

Well worth a read, then – especially if, as I say, you’re new to business; and with the grand virtue, in an executive summary kind of way, of being brief and to the point.

Meanwhile, a piece I wrote two years ago now reminds me of my own continuing interest in openness. A short quote from it today, to whet your appetite perhaps, in this article I entitled “Openness, not Rosebud, is the key to sustainable organisation”:

We do not disavow the need for organisation. What we request, deserve and battle on behalf of is the kind of organisation that underlies a Spanish shopping experience.

Openness, honesty, fairness and justice – all at the same time, all without unnecessary hierarchy or prioritisation.

If we must be repressive, let us be fairly so

a con, big business, Blackberry Messenger, business, Channel 4, repression, riots, small business, social media, social networks, Theresa May No Responses »

Aug 112011

I’m astonished by this piece of information which came my way via Channel 4′s Twitter feed not a moment ago, reporting on declarations by the British Home Secretary Theresa May:

#May: among the issues we will discuss is whether we should disrupt messaging services when trouble is being planned

My response could hardly have been otherwise:

@channel4news Death knell of Blackberry, this. Do we also do the same for corporate networks where tax evasion is planned?

Obviously, here I assumed – without having double-checked – that the messaging service described did actually refer to the encrypted and difficult-to-trace version which runs on the Blackberry – a business smartphone par excellence which, in a new and unfortunate lease of life, at least according to mainstream media, has been widely used by rioters to organise the recent wave of violence.

Although May might also have been referring more broadly to all manner of communication networks – including, that is, the doughty and ancient SMS texting infrastructures. Whilst there have even been certain tweets today which indicated Cameron’s government was looking to consult the Chinese authorities on how best to filter and intervene communications on social networks.

Anyhow, as I mentioned a day or so ago, it’s heavily ironic that a messaging system designed to assure the integrity of business communications has now been turned against that very same business sector – as well as, of course, a wider society. And where business has an imperious need which requires filling, there will be very few governments in the world capable of convincing it otherwise. So I do wonder how likely it is that, apart from the short-term political advantage mediocre politicians are looking to gain from this, anything long-lasting will be achieved by such declarations.

But, as I point out in the title of this post, if we must be repressive, let us be fairly so.

So what do I mean by that?

Cogitate, if you will, this fact – if, indeed, it is true – which I picked up whilst surfing the Internet this morning:

“Benefit fraud is 0.5% for DLA. 0.8% for IB. Tax evasion is £120 billion [...].”

If the criminal activity recently committed – on both property and the integrity of people’s peace of mind – deserves such a draconian solution as this overt and unabashed interrupting and intervening of communication networks (for who will deny it doesn’t already happen covertly), and in particular when acts of serious public disorder are allegedly “planned”, then let us apply the legislation far more widely (that is to say, far more cogently) than is currently being outlined by parts of our political class. Let us apply it, then, to all kinds of criminal activity where such networks are used to plan illegalities.

As I ask in my tweet: “Do we also do the same for corporate networks where tax evasion is planned?”

And as I can only see myself concluding: “Big and small business beware. With this proposal of May’s, you really might not know what impulses you are letting yourself in for. And you may end up living to seriously seriously seriously regret them.”
____________________

Update to this post: some further reading came my way yesterday evening via a dear acquaintance on Twitter – a short description of what the Americans define as “wire fraud” and how it gets dealt with. Anyone know how this crime is considered in the UK – if, indeed, it is considered at all? For it would be a pity if we began to contemplate its punishment by reserving its sentencing for the underclasses only.

Meanwhile, Peter Oborne writing in the Telegraph this morning summarises most powerfully things so many of us have been feeling and writing over the past few days. Once again, hammer on head-of-nail time.

The problem isn’t Enterprise Zones but, rather, this government’s particular implementation of them

a con, big business, business, business opportunity, Enterprise Zones, George Osborne No Responses »

Mar 242011

There’s an interesting article over at Liberal Conspiracy today which criticises the government’s proposal to bring back Thatcher’s Enterprise Zones:

In a display of loyalty to the memory of Margaret Thatcher, George Osborne yesterday announced he’s bringing back Enterprise Zones.

There will be 21 in total. Ten locations have been chosen by Osborne, so we will see EZs in Birmingham and Solihull; Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Greater Manchester, the West of England, the Tees Valley, “North Eastern” (whatever that means), the Black Country, and Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire.

The criticism comes later on in the piece (the bold is mine):

Specifically, the Budget says that once established, an Enterprise Zone will enjoy access to:

- A 100% business rate discount worth up to £275,000 over a five year period.

- Business rates growth within the EZ will be retained and shared by the local authorities for at least 25 years

- Government and local authority help to develop radically simplified planning approaches in the zone;

- Government support to ensure superfast broadband is rolled out in the zone.

The clear intention here, in classic Shock Doctrine style, is to exploit a clear need for economic investment to force the country to lavish gifts on the corporate interests in whose interests the Conservatives govern.

Over a quarter of a million pounds in cold, hard cash for each company. Permission to build inappropriate developments that reduce quality of life, deplete environmental resources, undermine local economies, or all three. We, the taxpayers, will even pay your multinational company’s phone bill.

I have to say that very unfortunately the author is almost certainly right in their overarching cynicism. But equally – with just a little tweaking – all the above could have, instead, a most positive impact; a quite different impact.

If, that is, the government cared to tweak.

It makes me very sad, does all this. Mainly because the Coalition is succeeding in what I am sure is a deliberate attempt to put up the barricades between multinational innovation on the one hand and democratic socialism on the other. The two are not intrinsically incompatible. But dyed-in-the-wool socialists – on occasions, myself I am sorry to say included – are always much more comfortable choosing to bash business practices from the outside than getting involved with improving them from the inside.

Enterprise Zones, then, I would suggest, are a very good idea. And the problem isn’t the idea itself but, rather, Osborne’s very own implementation and version of them.

So. A plea to the thinking left – and hopefully I can begin to count myself as an example: don’t rubbish the idea of Enterprise Zones – rubbish just the execution.

And remember we all need business to be ambitious – in a sustainable and including way that respects and supports communities just as much as it aims to expand and stretch our mindscapes. That should be our philosophy and goal – that should be what we try to balance.

To borrow a phrase from a mogul of publishing very few on the left here in Britain would now have time for, we should always be prepared to “believe in better”. For we do need to be on the side of good business always, even as – equally – we should never allow the right to locate us in that dark and unproductive place which criticises all business activity as venal and tawdry and anything to do with wealth generation a compromising of principles.

Money is a tool, an extension of what we are as human beings. It’s a seductive tool – but good people can do good with it. The important thing is to remain good in its presence.

Osborne and his ilk are not examples of good business, for they have clearly given in to money’s seductive side.

As democratic socialists, then, let us discover and support good business where we do find it.

Let us argue in favour of Enterprise Zones which promote good practice, but let us argue against this government’s particular version where it doesn’t.

Page 1 of 2 1 2 Older Entries