So, that's settled then
Comparing public and private sector pay is difficult. For a proper comparison would be of compensation - so, job security, flexibility, hours, holidays as well as wages - which crucially must include pensions. This being something that those arguing for higher public sector pay tend to not wish to include. For as soon as we add pensions then the public sector is significantly better paid even when we control for age and qualifications and all that.
So, we need to find some manner of deciding this. Are pensions to be included or not in our comparisons?
Stephen Timms, chairman of the work and pensions select committee, called on the Monaco-based billionaire to pay up again, three years after he agreed to pump £363m into the pension fund of the collapsed BHS.
Mr Timms, who will write to the pensions regulator tomorrow to underline the importance of protecting pension scheme members, said: “This is a dreadful time for Arcadia staff to be worrying about their jobs and their pension. “Whatever happens to the group, the Green family must make good the deficit in the Arcadia pension fund.”
The claim is that pensions must, must, be paid whatever else happens. Even if the cause of the deficit is - at least partly and we’ll allow others to argue over how much - a result of government policy in reducing interest rates. Yes, this matters, falling interest rates lead to pensions liabilities increasing more than asset prices rise.
Pensions must be paid so much that the call is being made to ignore the corporate veil even, to overcome limited liability.
We don’t think much of that idea to be honest but it does give us an indication of how we should be accounting for pensions as a part of wages or compensation. If they’re so important as to overturn near the entirety of law and practice on the division between corporate and personal finances then yes, we really should be thinking of them as firmly fixed and part of compensation, shouldn’t we?
That is, public sector pensions must be included in our estimations of the compensation being paid to public sector workers. Clearly so, that’s settled.
We are amused
Apparently the world of international corporate taxation has changed:
Netflix is to finally start declaring the £1bn-plus revenues it makes from millions of British subscribers each year to the UK tax authorities, a move likely to ramp up pressure on tech firms such as Google and Amazon to stop funnelling revenues through overseas tax jurisdictions.
Netflix, which has funnelled UK-generated revenue through separate accounts at its European headquarters in the Netherlands since launching in Britain in 2012, is to notify its almost 13 million UK subscribers on Tuesday about the change, which starts from January.
The change is likely to increase the amount Netflix pays in UK corporation tax and is expected to add to pressure on Google, Amazon and other tech firms that have been accused of funnelling revenues to low-tax jurisdictions to avoid tax.
No doubt there will be much patting of backs and lashings of ginger beer among the varied tax campaigners who will insist they made this happen. Sadly for such self-congratulations actions here in Europe have had near nothing to do with this. Diverted profits taxes, people gluing themselves to shop windows, marches and campaigning outfits just haven’t made any difference at all.
The claim always was that if profits could be wafted away out of the UK to somewhere less taxing then those profits would be entirely untaxed. This wasn’t entirely true, they would be taxed if shareholders were ever to get them but they could indeed be parked without having paid tax. So, therefore, there was good incentive to attempt to so waft - it is a standard tenet of economics that incentives matter.
What has changed is that the incentive is no longer there. Those European profits, wafted offshore, that accrue to US based companies - and this always was what it was about - are now taxed in the US. Profit shifting in Europe now makes no difference to the total tax bill of a corporation for European taxes paid are deductions from that US tax bill to be presented.
The company - that mixture of shareholders and legal personality that makes it up - doesn’t actually care who collects the cheque, only what the size of it is. So, if the tax bill will be of - exactly - the same size, wafted or not, why bother with the wafting? Which is why those American corporations aren’t - that tenet of incentives matter once again.
Which is where the amusement comes in. For the change that led to this was a change in American tax law. One suggested and, to the extent that the President gets to do this in the American system, imposed by Donald Trump.
Yep. The demands of Tax Justice, Richard Brooks, Richard Murphy, Alex Cobham, UKUncut and the rest of the dreary list of them have been met by The Donald. Not that any of them will ever be able to bring themselves to admit it, nor write a thank you note, but then that’s where the amusement is, isn’t it?
Here's an idea - let's not do things that don't work
The Guardian tells us of an idea that we should learn a lesson from:
Berlin's rent cap offers a new way of thinking about Britain's housing crisis Alexander Vasudevan
Yes, OK, let us use this example as an aid to our thinking.
The rent cap in Berlin also offers an object lesson in the rather different role that city governments might play in the UK
Indeed, this is something we should consider.
The rent cap has many detractors in Germany, including landlords’ associations, who have argued that the cap will only lead to housing shortages and scare off investors.
Well, yes, that’s possible.
A rent cap should not be seen as a panacea.
Well, that depends really. What actually has been the effect of this rent cap in Berlin?
Within a year, the supply of rental apartments in Berlin fell by 41 percent - according to the result of an analysis by the real estate portal "Immoscout24". At the same time, demand rose by 172 percent.
Ah, OK, it doesn’t work then. People having a place to lay their weary heads is replaced by long waits to have a place to lay a weary head. It’s not just that it doesn’t solve the problem it is in fact entirely counter-productive. Let’s not do that then, eh?
Of course, we already knew this. Assar Lindbeck spent some of his time working out who should receive the Nobel in economics:
“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing."
When even a Swedish socialist is able to see the stupidity of an economic policy it’s something best avoided.
So, yes, we do have that example of Berlin before us, as we’ve others over the years and generations. We can and even should consider the idea of rent control. OK, now we’ve considered it and it’s a massively stupid idea. Let’s not do it then. eh?
Wrong end of the stick firmly grasped over electronics recycling
We may have muttered, over the years, that it’s not necessarily the brightest and best of a generation that pursues politics as a career. Our latest test of this calumny is a report on electronic waste from the environment committee of the House of Commons.
The tsunami of electronic waste was throwing away valuable resources vital to a sustainable future, the report published on Thursday said.
Globally, thrown-away computers, smartphones, tablets and other electronic waste have a potential value of $62.5bn each year from the precious metals they contain, including gold, silver, copper, platinum and other critical raw materials such as tungsten and indium.
No, they don’t. That is the - theoretical - value of the metals once collected, processed, refined and made available for reuse. There are costs associated with doing all of that, the largest being the collection. This means the expenditure of resources to do all of those things.
We also know that it requires the expenditure of more resources to do those things than is gained by having done them. This is simple in a market economy - anyone trying it makes a loss which is why it is not done. A loss is the price system’s method of telling you you’re doing something stupid - or, here, expending more resources to recover fewer resources.
By the way, anyone who thinks that human labour, a major component of the resources required, is not an economic resource can come around and mow our lawn on Saturday. For free, obviously, because their time is worth nothing, is it?
From the report itself:
We ask the Government to set ambitious long-term targets including for the collection, re-use and recycling of E-waste to be undertaken to a very high standard. We ask that these targets focus on reducing resource consumption; the environmental impact of the industry and on capturing and retaining value including critical raw materials.
Therefore, to save resources, we must not recycle electronics - exactly the opposite of the committee’s recommendation.
We ask the Government to ban the practice of intentionally shortening the lifespan of products through planned obsolescence.
That could actually be useful, oddly enough. The thing to do would be rescind the ban on the use of lead in tin solder. The reason for the lead being to prevent the growth of tin whiskers which, after a few years of use, cause electronics to go “zzzzzt!” and short circuit. So, rescinding the last environmental rule might be a good start to the new one.
Our high streets are under severe pressure and current regulations, coming into force from 2021, could unfairly entrench the competitive advantage of online retailers and marketplaces like Amazon. As a matter of urgency, and at the latest by the end of 2021, online retailers and marketplaces must have an equal obligation to collect electronic waste from customers. To prevent take-back only being offered at remote, inconvenient warehouses, we believe that the exemplary innovation shown by some companies should become a minimum—meaning all large online retailers and marketplaces must arrange and pay for like-for-like electronic waste collection from a customer’s home on delivery of new electronics. They must also offer to collect any electronic waste defined as “small” at the same time.
Even if we were to desire an electronics recycling system that isn’t the way to do it. Instead we should impose a deposit upon each piece of equipment which would be repaid - in full - when the piece is handed into a recycling centre. That would be the actual place where the recycling factory is, not even a network of collection places.
For we do have excellent recycling schemes for metals. Some 99% of all gold ever produced is recycled and there’s hardly a hamlet in the country where you cannot enter an ounce or two into that system. The reason being that it has value. Such value means that we can rely upon simple capitalist greed to get it to the refiner.
So, if we want thing which do not have value to be collected assign - twist the price system - a value so as to invigorate those covetous juices. A £10 deposit on every laptop will have - just as an example you understand - the Boy Scouts running a collection every whatever Bob a Job week is called now. Possibly more pertinently the electronic waste that is ink jet cartridges can be handed in, for money, in any town because they’re worth money as things to be refilled.
So, the considered thoughts of the ruling class seem to be that we should do something we shouldn’t be doing, do it in the wrong way and not do the thing which would aid in solving the problem identified. It might be that it’s not a calumny to posit that the brightest and best of a generation don’t go into politics.
We've been waiting for this change of strategy from Oxfam
Oxfam tells us that they’re going to stop fighting poverty and concentrate on the battle against inequality instead:
Why Fighting Inequality Is at the Heart of Oxfam’s New Global 10-Year Strategy
They really are quite clear about it:
We used to talk only about poverty. No more.
Those who merely wish to alleviate poverty out of that desire to aid a fellow human will have to look elsewhere then.
Oxfam’s new mission is that we will fight inequality to end poverty and injustice.
We’ve seen this before. Here at home in the UK. There was a time when all points left - and classical liberals were definitely part of that back then even as we insist we are now - wanted to alleviate poverty. So, that’s what was alleviated. As Barbara Castle pointed out in 1959, destitution was a thing of the past by then. We did in fact go and conquer that poverty. By economic growth, the thing best promoted by capitalist free marketry.
Much of the rest of the world still suffered it of course. Then that neoliberal globalisation took hold and we had the greatest reduction in absolute poverty in the history of our species. Current best guesses are that it’ll be entirely gone, that $1.90 a day destitution, within the decade. That happening as it did here domestically, economic growth through capitalist free marketry.
That domestic disappearance was a problem for those who wanted something to moan about. Therefore the definition of poverty was changed to a relative measure - to inequality. Now we’re seeing the same internationally. What point an international organisation, like Oxfam, to beat poverty if poverty is beaten? Quick, quick, change the goal so that there’s a reason for the continued existence of the corpus bureaucraticae.
There has to be, after all, some reason why those against capitalist free marketry can have an excuse to agitate against capitalist free marketry. If that neoliberal globalisation has beaten poverty then find something else. Without, of course, celebrating or even acknowledging the victory caused by that thing so despised.
We would say that this is a bureaucracy thrashing around to find a reason for its continued existence. But then we would say that, wouldn’t we?
Look on the bright side though. If the rich world upper middle classes who actually get those indoors, no heavy lifting, jobs at Oxfam insist that a new justification for their gravy train must be found then we do indeed have good evidence that poverty - proper, real poverty - is well on the way to being beaten, don’t we?
Just to hammer the point home:
Practically, we will focus on four interconnected areas: advocating for fairer, just economies; striving for gender justice and for the rights of women in all their diversities; pushing for climate justice; and ensuring that the powerful are held to account.
We would interpret that as they’re going to stop actually doing anything other than issuing press releases. Pity, they used to actually do some rather good actual work.
Draft text of The United Kingdom Free Speech Act
I was caught off guard by the warm reception of my latest ASI paper: Sense and Sensitivity: Restoring free speech in the United Kingdom.
It was covered by Guido and the Telegraph, as well as shared thousands of times across multiple platforms. A number of political types have also reached out to express interest in discussing these ideas further. I couldn’t be happier to see people so engaged.
But it occurs to me, 72 hours later, that I forgot something.
The paper called out government shenanigans with freedom of expression and proposed for five concrete policy changes:
Removing the words “abusive” and “insulting” from the Public Order Act 1986.
Limiting the scope of Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 to threatening language only.
Replacing the harassment component of Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act with a harassment/cyberstalking statute similar to 18 U.S. Code § 2261A, with its higher thresholds for criminal conduct as a replacement.
Repealing the Malicious Communications Act 1988.
Enacting the UK Free Speech Act.
Item 5 is where I came up short. I didn’t offer any proposals for what the UK Free Speech Act might actually say, although I did state what I thought it should seek to accomplish.
I am cognizant that a discussion draft is always a more helpful starting point than a proposal. Therefore, for discussion purposes, I propose the following:
UK FREE SPEECH ACT [2021]
An Act to secure the free and open flow of information and ideas for the people of the United Kingdom.
Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
SECTION 1. FREEDOM OF SPEECH
(1) The right of any person, and of the people, to freedom of speech shall not be violated by the state.
(2) Freedom of speech encompasses but is not limited to the right to engage in spoken or written expression of any idea pertaining to any matter of public interest, morality, philosophy, or politics, which is not a threat or direct incitement.
(3) “Direct incitement” means speech or writing which is directed towards inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
(4) Schedule 1, Part I, Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 is hereby repealed.
And that’s it.
The text here is not designed to be all-encompassing, but rather to permit the judiciary to do its job in ascertaining the proper application of the statute in situations which Parliament may not have intended or been able to conceive of at such time that a Bill like this was passed.
Section 1(1) states that “freedom of speech” is not to be violated. The right is expressed to be both individual and collective. The exact boundaries of this right are left to be determined by the judiciary. It is expressed to be enforceable against the state. This should be read as applying to any public body and any private body performing a public function, and not to any other private body or private person. The exact details, including standards of judicial scrutiny to state actions which infringe these rules should be left to the courts, which are toying with playing a greater constitutional role (see e.g. the 2019 prorogation of Parliament) and will eventually do so one way or another.
Section 1(2) states an irreducible core of the new freedom of speech which cannot be restricted in nearly any circumstance, and which protects speech on matters of public concern which are neither a threat nor direct incitement. It limits itself to speech or writing and deliberately does not address weird performance art or the assembly of objects e.g. Tracey Emin’s Unmade Bed. This section does so because speech and writing which is neither threatening nor incitement is the least likely type of expression to cause any person to suffer direct physical harm or to create standard-of-review constitutional issues that British courts are, doctrinally speaking, poorly equipped to address. These forms of expression are also easy to avoid by those who do not wish to read or listen to them.
The wording should grant latitude for the courts to both expand the right where appropriate (as in the case of performance art) and restrict it in the case of private concerns (e.g. harassment or defamation) while also drawing a bright red line around speech which is most essential and most threatened by the Law Commission and the Scottish Parliament. But above all this sub-section would ensure that the core right – to speak and write – cannot be touched.
Section 1(3) incorporates the “imminent lawless action” test from Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), which operates to limit the scope of speech protection to only that speech which is likely not to incite others to commit a crime while also permitting advocacy which is unlikely to cause incitement. This is designed to bring the English system “up to speed” with the only system of speech regulation in the world that has so far held up in the face of censorial onslaughts for several hundred years. In other words, it allows the courts to stop truly dangerous people but prevents them from doing much about the merely annoying. The inclusion of this definition is necessary to abolish any common law residuum from the decades-long political misuse of the Public Order Act 1986 and similar rules.
Section 1(4) repeals Article 10 of the Human Rights Act and the European Convention. The right contained in this UK Free Speech Act is more robust than the Article 10 right and supersedes it, so the Act might as well repeal it. The rest of the Human Rights Act, which can just as easily be used to curtail rights as expand them (see the lengthy list of derogations permitted in the name of Article 10(2), for example) should eventually be scrapped and replaced with robust, enforceable civil liberties protections in domestic law similar to this one.
And that’s my proposal, offered for discussion and your reading enjoyment. Happy to hear anyone’s thoughts on its content. I’m easy to find.
One of those little problems with Modern Monetary Theory
Modern Monetary Theory - the magic money tree - is one of those ideas that contains within it the proof of its own problems:
Moreover, as these governments can repay their debts in their own currency, they always have the option to print money. This is a privilege not available to any household with their mortgage. This is a welcome departure from the austerity narrative preached by governments around the world in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
OK, that is MMT. Then we are told:
Most importantly, many poorer countries already face dangerous amounts of indebtedness, with 64 countries currently paying more on debt servicing than on healthcare. This is not the fault of the countries themselves, but the legacy of decades of neoliberal policies and the longer history of colonial inequality. As this debt is increasingly owed in foreign currencies, these countries do not have the privilege of printing money to repay their creditors.
Hmm, so, why are those countries not able to borrow in their own currencies? Why is it that people will only lend to them in monies that the borrowers don’t control the volume, issuance and thus value of?
The obvious reason being that lenders don’t trust them and their power over that issuance of money. To the point that they won’t lend to people who obviously do just print more money to pay off their debts.
That is, MMT only applies to people who, historically, haven’t used MMT. Which is something of a problem for the idea moving forward as when those who haven’t start to then the same will happen again.
The conservative revolution is in fact happening
The conservative that is, not Conservative, revolution:
About eight months ago, a fascinating social change began to ripple through hundreds of British neighbourhoods. Given the deluge of news that has happened since, it is easy to forget how remarkable it all seemed: droves of volunteers who were gripped by community spirit coming together to help deliver food and medicines to their vulnerable neighbours, check on the welfare of people experiencing poverty and loneliness, and much more besides. From a diverse range of places all over the country, the same essential message came through: the state was either absent or unreliable, so people were having to do things for themselves.
It’s possible to argue with that “have to” instead of desire to but still, the finding now is that it is preferred:
There and elsewhere, the key story of the Covid crisis has been that of town and parish councils enabling people to participate in community self-help.
Community self help might be this year’s buzzword for the process. But this is just - or perhaps is gloriously - Edmund Burke’s little platoons deploying for action. That appropriate technology - a method of organisation is a technology - for so many of life’s activities and problems. The voluntary association of those concerned to deal with what is in front of them. What’s not to like?
From the other side of politics, it is worth reading a recent report by the Tory MP Danny Kruger, commissioned by the government to look at “sustaining the community spirit we saw during lockdown, into the recovery phase and beyond”. Kruger proposes a new Community Power Act, using deliberative democracy, participatory budgeting and citizen assemblies “to create the plural public square we need”.
Well, obviously, there’s always someone out there willing to spoil a good thing. We’ve just found out that certain parts of life are better run without politics so politics must be reintroduced to them?
This is also of course the classical liberal as well as conservative position. That voluntary association provides the best method of dealing with many, but not all of, life’s processes. Sometimes it will be those little platoons. Sometimes it will be larger such voluntary cooperation - a supermarket chain is exactly that, a group of people that cooperates in order to produce retail services for the rest of us. Sometimes, if rarely, such spontaneous order doesn’t in fact work and then government is necessary.
But isn’t that an interesting finding from the recent pandemic? That the “rarely” is a lot more rare than our system previously assumed? At which point roll on the neoliberal, even if conservative and Burkean, revolution.
Legislators should legislate; governments should govern
As Britain’s best-known classicist, Boris Johnson, should know, the verb govern comes from the Latin gubernatori—what the helmsman does in taking the ship towards its intended destination. In this case, steering the ship of state. The state, of course, has three branches: parliament (the legislators), the judiciary and the government (the executive). The helmsman does not make the rules; the captain (i.e. Parliament) does. He sets and maintains direction, rather than running around the ship trying to fix whatever he thinks needs fixing.
The trouble with power is that it is addictive: instead of sticking to governing, the party in power fiddles with legislation (as has been especially apparent during the Covid pandemic) and tries to manage the many activities it should leave to others. Government would perform better if it focused on governing. As Lord Udny-Lister, now the PM’s Chief of Staff, once put it “If I'm to do the job properly, I've got to understand it, how it [in this case government] works, what makes it tick.”[1]
Lord Sumption has reminded us that government has no power beyond that prescribed in law. In practice, however, the distinction between the powers of government and parliament has become murky. Primary legislation is solely a matter for parliament but government has acquired excessive control over the Commons’ time availability and agenda.
Secondary legislation—statutory instruments (“SIs”)—are created by ministers, not MPs. A Commons Library briefing summarised their scale: “An average of 2,100 UK SIs were issued annually from the 1950s to around 1990. This then rose to an annual average of 3,200 in the 1990s, 4,200 in the 2000s, and fell to around 3,000 a year on average during the 2010s (to June 2019).” According to the Hansard Society, only 0.01% (11) were rejected between 1950 and 2017. The number of SIs has declined sharply since 2015: only 757 were laid before parliament in 2015/6, the lowest number in 20 years, yet they still comprised 7,783 pages of legislation. A few MPs spent a total of less than eight hours debating them, an average of four seconds per page, and then waved them all through.
If our legislators are so ignorant of their own laws, how can the rest of us be expected to know them? A law is useful only if those who are supposed to obey it are aware of it. The world’s oldest surviving parliament is not Westminster but Iceland’s Althing, founded in 930. As there were no written records, each session of the Althing began with the speaker reciting, from memory, all Iceland’s statutes. Any laws he forgot were no longer laws. This seems an excellent precedent.
Although excessive regulation is usually blamed on the EU, the House of Commons Library estimated that an average of only 13.2% of SIs, passed between 1993 and 2014, were EU-related. Nor are all SIs trivial: secondary legislation can be used to amend primary legislation. Around 20% of SIs are significant enough to require impact assessments on how they are expected to impact the private or voluntary sectors and the economy in general—providing a more realistic picture of the legislation decided by government.
From a high of 664 in 2011, the number of impact assessments steadily dropped to 170 by 2017. Alok Sharma’s Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy department deserves credit for that. Impact Assessments began about 20 years ago following the publicity given, notably by the British Chambers of Commerce, to over-regulation which was thought, in 1997, to be costing about £100bn pa or 10% of GDP. Regulation was critically reviewed by the Commons Regulatory Reform Committee in 2008 with 29 recommendations, including closer scrutiny by parliament.
The logic of legislators legislating and government governing leads to the conclusion that SIs should be replaced by four categories:
“Regulations,” accompanied by impact assessments, should be scrutinised, amended and decided by committees in both Houses when the private or voluntary sector is affected. The 29 recommendations of the 2008 Commons Regulatory Reform Committee should be reconsidered. Example: The Ionising Radiation Regulations SI 201/1075.[12]
“Legal amendments” of no impact on, or interest to, the general public or, probably, government, should be scrutinised, amended and decided by a specialist committee of the House of Lords only. Examples: Crown Court Amendment Rules SI 2017/1287, The Communications Act 2003 and the Digital Economy Act 2017 (Consequential Amendments to Primary Legislation) Regulations 2017 SI 2017/1285
“Local bye laws”, such as temporary road closures, flights over Edinburgh during Hogmanay (SI 2017/1299) and transferring small funds between Church of England schools (SI 2017/1294), should be devolved to local authorities.
The remaining SIs which should not be legislated at all, e.g. exhorting one government department to work with another, are matters for government, not parliament.
The role of legislators should also concern our Attorney General, Suella Braverman, but what about the rest of government? Clearly it should decide policies and use current law, guidance and the taxpayers’ money to bring them about. Using funding to influence behaviour makes sense but it needs to sharpen up its approach to guidance. The Department for Health and Social Care sprays out about 2,000 bulletins a year, a mix of guidance and “open government” with no targeting to the right people: one can either opt in and receive them all or opt out and receive none.
Neither is thought given to whether guidance is expressed in ways that would achieve compliance. Quite a few give the impression that they are legal instructions when they are not (or should not be). The guidance to care homes to keep people from seeing dying relatives is an example: “This supplements the legal position set out in the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020.” Care homes took it as instruction to keep visitors out but actually it was simply advice that care homes and families “should work together” to decide the right balance.
For clarity and effectiveness, government guidance should:
Indicate that it is advice, not instruction, where that is the case. If it is instruction, the relevant legal authority should be cited.
Be targeted at relevant members of the public. People with no weight problems do not need guidance on their calorie consumption. Press releases should just go to the media.
Understand, from the recipient’s point of view, how the guidance will be received and therefore its likelihood of changing behaviour.
Not be issued at all if it will not help achieve the desired policy outcomes. Bulletins, such as officials’ travel expenses, which we only need to know if they are improper, should be placed on departmental websites with open access but not circulated.
In short, as Michael Gove has said, “we surely know the machinery of government is no longer equal to the challenges of today.” The performance of both Parliament and government will be improved if the former does all the legislating and the latter sticks to setting policies and using current law, guidance and its income to achieve them.
Allow us just to translate this particular report for you
There is, often enough, a certain difference between what is said and what is meant. That leads to there being a value in a translation, from the words used to the underlying meaning:
Middle-class problem drinkers who have turned to alcohol in lockdown are missing out on help because health services “are not designed for them,” says the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Leader of trade union for professionals wants to explain what we, the nation, can do for the members of his profession.
Dame Carol Black’s report is a rare opportunity to overhaul addiction services. It must commit to properly funding services by reversing the cuts and investing £374million into adult services over the coming years.
Give us lots of money.
Addiction services were taken out of the NHS and given to local authorities where contracts are re-tendered every three years. This creates a race to the bottom with contracts going to the cheapest bidder at the expense of specialist staff and training places.
Stop that silly nonsense of asking “How much?” and just hand it over. Don’t you know it’s uncouth to ask professionals to account for what is spent and how?
For many years, addiction services have borne the brunt of swinging cuts with funding slashed by over 25 per cent since the Health and Social Care Act was implemented in 2013.
You’ve all been entirely beastly for years now, not giving us enough of your cash.
The justification is that some of you have been having a second gin and tonic during lockdown. No, really:
But the reality is that alcohol dependence is rife in our warm and comfortable houses. It’s seen at the dinner table when that second bottle of wine is uncorked or when another large gin and tonic is poured, all done under the guise of socially acceptable drinking.
We will decide what is socially acceptable, thank you very much, because we’re the professionals here. And don’t be absurd and claim that mere members of society get to do that - what do you think this is, a liberal polity?
Now that we have that accurate translation we must all consider our reaction to the plan, the demand. We suspect that the correct one involves an Anglo Saxon Wave or two, somewhere in it…..