I don’t normally watch Question Time, but I caught the last few minutes before This Week today. In it a member of the audience said that the Tories would cut public spending, and how was this going to make him (an employee of the Ministry of Justice) do his job properly, what with all the full prisons and that.

In reply, Liam Fox, the Tory representative on the panel, said that the Tories “would not cut public spending. We would just let public spending rise slower than the growth of the economy.”

What is that, if not a cut in public spending, in real terms?

Cory

I’m too preoccupied with essays at the moment to do any lengthy blogging, I’m afraid. But here are a couple of things you should read. One is essential, the other is so you can have a giggle.

First up, read Lasantha Wickrematunga’s piece on CiF now. Don’t do anything else. Just read it. All. NOW.

It was good, wasn’t it? A great reminder that a) Britain is NOT, yet, in any way shape or form a police state; and b) That it’s worth fighting to keep it that way.

Of course, it’s also more than that. It’s the spookily prophetic voice from beyond the grave of a principled and courageous man. Hopefully the newspaper he helped found will live on.

Secondly, somebody writing on the Daily Telegraph advocates a return to the Gold Standard. Nope, seriously. It’s so funny it’s tragic….

Cory

It’s nearly midnight, and I ought to be concentrating on essays (or sleeping to give me energy to concentrate on essays tomorrow). But I feel restless, and there are a few things I need to get out of my system. This is a rather personal post. I don’t usually blog about myself, usually just my opinions, because I am sure that a blog about me would be very boring for my reader(s). This is about a wider topic, but it has a very direct relevance to me. So let’s blog.

I have very few friends who blog. Adam, who originally started this blog with me in 2006 (time has flown!) no longer blogs, but is at the Sunday Times, doing well for himself. As far as I know he has not written anything on the internet for about a year now, but if you haven’t read his interview with an Iraqi in exile do so. I had the privilege to edit the article for Redbrick, and in my three-and-a-bit years of involvement with them, I think that’s the best article I’ve seen. Apart from the ones I write, obviously. Luke, who blogged here for a bit, now blogs on the cowfield regularly. Emmi and Danielle are about the only two other friends who regularly blog.

That is, apart from Mike. I ought to have given his blog more shout outs than I do; my excuses are that he writes about stuff I don’t know much about, and I haven’t blogged a lot recently. However, he has blogged about something close to my heart this time, and it gives me the chance to talk of a hot topic in my house at the moment: Just what the hell are we going to do after university?

Mike is trying to find work as a freelance writer, and is making fantastic progress considering he started from scratch in about September. You can see more details of what he’s done from his blog. During this, he was also trying to find work of the steadier, administrative variety, and being shafted by the welfare system. I will leave the welfare system for another day, but let’s now turn to his views on graduate internships. Mike was interviewed by a chap from the Sunday Times about the policy announcement that unemployed graduates may be given paid internships of three months. This is what he had to say in the article:

Mike Leader, who graduated in English from Birmingham University last summer, is still unemployed despite heading to London in search of a job.

“I applied for a few jobs in August and September but I didn’t hear back from any of those,” said Leader. “Then I decided to go to the Jobcentre and apply for work there. I don’t think I’ve heard back from any job I’ve applied for there.”

He has even struggled to claim benefits amid the bureaucratic maze of Gordon Brown’s welfare system. “I’m living with someone who has managed to get a part-time job in a coffee shop so I was turned down,” he explained.

Despite his degree, Leader remains unemployed. And, yes, his girlfriend, the coffee-shop worker, is also overqualified for her job: she is a graduate, too.

In his blog about the article Mike writes that he is unhappy at being used as an anti-New Labour mouthpiece. Which is definately fair comment - it isn’t “Gordon Brown’s welfare system”. It’s an institution - how can institutions be personalised? - but I’d rather look at what graduates are going to do.

I came back to the house in Birmingham this weekend, because term begins on Monday, and met my four housemates for the first time in a month. We are all final years in one way or another; there are two fourth-year students and three third-year students, and we are all graduating in 2009. A question we all asked each other was, “What do you want to do after uni?” and none of us knew the answer.

It would, of course, be different if any of us were doing more career-based degrees. We are all arts students, and took history in one form or another. One housemate is doing History and Geography, another History and Russian, two Medieval English and History, and I am doing a Masters in Medieval History. With degrees such as law, or medicine, there is a nice, simple, straightforward career path to employment, money and happiness.

Or perhaps not. 4000 junior doctors did not find a job last year, which must be a real blow after a five year degree. In The Gods That Failed, an entertaining, prophetic and increasingly relevant look at why everything has gone kaput in the last twelve months, one of the best chapters was about the current attack on the middle-class professions. Authors Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson detail how, private firms are intruding on traditional middle-class occupations: the bank manager (long dead in the Captain Mainwaring form), the solicitor, the GP and the sub-postmaster. Laws have been passed allowing private firms such as Tesco to offer legal services to customers, undercutting solicitors. Private companies are now also allowed to run GP services, whilst the closing of thousands of post offices threatens the existence of the sub-postmaster and postmistress, once ‘part of the very backbone of middle-class respectability’. It is another example of Britain’s current preoccupation with cutting costs and introducing private firms into running anything, rather than having friendly, labour-intensive, face-to-face, personalised service.

Therefore even those with a career-orientated degree are having employment problems. What are arts students going to do? Every arts student must have had a similar conversation to one I had with someone mum and I played bridge against last week:

Them: “So what are you doing at university?”
Me: “I’m doing a Master’s. In Medieval History.”
Them: “Oh right. (pause). So what can you do with that?”

To which the correct answer is, “Anything, you silly bint.” An arts degree is very flexible. But you still have the problem of wondering what to do with it. Obviously, for employers the skills one learns reading an arts subject are what makes arts students employable. Which is why it’s a bit worrying when the government talks of addressing the problem of long-term unemployed - which will include graduates like Mike and another potential 400 000 graduates entering the job market this summer - by more training. This means that either graduates aren’t learning enough skills in their degrees, or they are not learning the right skills. Neither prospect is a particularly happy one. The prospect of three-month internships with companies such as Barclays or Microscoft - who according to the article have signed up to the scheme - would be a happy one, but Mike hits the nail on the head here:

Contemplating his unemployment prospects, Leader also welcomed the idea of internships, but he, too, pointed out one simple drawback. “The bar will be raised for everyone,” he said. “When you go for a job, you’ll be up against people who have had three months’ internship.”

Put simply, there are too many graduates for not enough jobs. Labour’s target for 50% of youngster’s to attend university is illogical and artificially high. Now companies are scaling back on graduate schemes. A friend who was in my class last year secured a graduate scheme placement, but the company he was due to work for closed its scheme down, so he lost his job before he’d even started. As compensation he was paid £400; which hardly makes up for the loss of employment. I hear stories of ‘friends of friends’, who intern with a company, to be told that although they are very good workers, they are no longer taking any new staff on at present, and no position can be found for them. Other companies a friends’ fathers work for are putting a freeze on recruitment, and if any staff leave the remaining staff will just have to work more. Which is a ridiculous situation. There’s plenty of stuff to do, but no money for staff. This is just anecdotal evidence, but there is a whole trough of anecdotal evidence alongside official figures of rising unemployment coupled with falling demand for jobs.

Yet it’s not as if there is nothing to do. There are plenty of shabby-looking buildings, towns, roads, railways etc etc that need regenerating. It’s hard to argue with Nick Clegg’s proposal to create a huge green energy revolution which would create jobs whilst at the same time reducing fuel bills. While they’re at it, they can improve the green credentials of the Houses of Parliament itself, which apparently have a bigger carbon footprint than Kenya. Surely the tragic business of Baby P and the chronically overworked social workers show that we need more social workers? (although I admit that selling this line might be difficult) Services that care for the elderly, such as the Admiral Nurses, and the mental health charity Mind are always needing more money and more staff.

Except there is no money to pay for any of this, beause the world economy has gone down the sink. Which is what happens when you borrow in order to spend, and keep doing that until nobody will give you any more money.

So, the big question I know you’re asking is: what are you going to do, Cory? Well, thanks for asking. I have applied for a graduate journalism scheme with Reuters, and if I got that, it would be absolutely amazing. It’s probably my dream job at the moment, I just want to write, and there’s no better place to start. Possibly do a PhD, but what with the Olympics and everything the Department of Culture, Media and Sport haven’t got much money left to fund history doctorates. I want to pursue a career in journalism as far as I can go, then I will start looking for other things. Hopefully I won’t end up an unemployed student by the summer. The prospects for us, the first students to graduate in a recession for over a decade, are getting bleaker by the month.

Cory

You probably don’t need me to tell you that food prices are going up. You have probably noticed that the contents of your shopping basket cost more than they did this time last year. Food price inflation is now 5%, and may soon start to impact on the overall rate of inflation.

 

It’s not just student food budgets that are feeling the pinch. Indian restaurants (and we have a few of them in Selly Oak) are affected by the rising cost of basmati rice. Worldwide prices are increasing on an even bigger scale than in Britain. Flour prices in Pakistan have doubled. In Mexico, tens of thousands marched last year protesting against the cost of tortillas. Tortillas are the main staple food for the poor in Mexico, and their price has quadrupled in recent years. In Italy there were the so-called “pasta riots”, and food riots have also happened in places such as Yemen, Senegal and Morocco. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 37 countries are facing food crises. The FAO’s food price index has risen 40% in the past year, which has catastrophic implications for some of the world’s poorest. Put simply, the World Bank reckons that for each 1% rise in food prices, the calorie intake of the poor drops by 0.5%.

 

It is also the most vulnerable in the UK who are most affected by soaring food prices. Those on fixed incomes, such as the elderly on pensioners and those on benefits, are more likely to suffer. This is another version of Sod’s law: if something bad is going to happen, invariably those most affected are those in the worst position to cope.

 

Food prices are rising for a number of reasons. The high price of oil is obviously a factor. With a barrel of oil now costing over $90 a barrel, farming costs, such as transportation, are increasing. High oil prices are also leading countries, including the USA, to convert grain into fuel for cars rather than for food. In countries such as India and China, scarce water supplies are being used by the rising populations, rather than on agriculture. The Indians and Chinese are also eating more meat, which requires more grain to feed animals. Food production has always been affected by droughts and floods, but now climate change means that these droughts are becoming more frequent and at irregular intervals. This scarcity of both water and farmland is leading to speculation that this rise in food prices may be longer than expected, according a study out this week by Bidwells Agribusiness.

 

This is a very depressing picture, and may lead you to the depressing conclusion that we are all screwed, caught in several vicious circles. Have no fear: hope does still remain. Even those who know nothing about economics (I also come under this bracket) know that supply and demand are very important. As demand for food increases, it seems logical that farmers will increase supply. This should keep prices at a reasonable level. On the other hand, in 2007 food production reached its highest level ever, and still prices rocketed. Britain’s food industry is also very competitive, which should theoretically keep prices low. One must take into account the fact that most big businesses are greedy beggars. Late last year Sainsbury’s and Asda admitted that they had kept the prices of dairy products artificially high, which cost consumers £270 million. It is also hoped that Biofuel engineers can develop a method of biofuel that doesn’t require grain, which would leave more food supply. However, with the world’s population predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050, rising food prices is not going to be an issue which goes away too soon.

Cory

The Telegraph on their former owner being convicted of fraud:

Conrad Black case lacked evidence, say jurors

Conrad Black was found not guilty on the majority of fraud charges against him because of the lack of “paper evidence”, one of the jurors in the case said.

Of course, he was still guilty of three counts of fraud. Which, at the time of writing, is three more than both me and Adam combined. There is also the fact that perhaps if one was going to commit major fraud, one wouldn’t write all the evidence down. But meh.

The news did make me giggle though. Not in the same league as the news as Alan Johnston’s release, but marvellous nonetheless.

Cory

Lots of banks aren’t doing their job properly:

Several leading banks may be facing unlimited fines over allegations that they dumped confidential customer account details in bin bags on streets…

Mr Thomas said among the findings in bin bags were bank statements, loan applications which had been turned down and paying-in slips.

It comes after BBC investigators found customer names, addresses and account details when rifling through discarded rubbish.

Just rifling through discarded rubbish, they were. As you do.

This is pretty dreadful. Made even worse by that fact that one of the banks in question is my bank!

In response to all this, Yahoo has given us some guidelines on how to protect identity fraud. Now we ought to do that stuff, but there seems precious little point if your bank is just going to take your details and just dump them on the street.

Cory

…now that’s what I call business.

Cory

It’s nice to see the Tory party self-destructing again, after all Labour’s been through over the past few weeks.

Now we have right-wingers like John Redwood and Norman Tebbit banging on about tax cuts. Why do they want lower taxes to be part of Tory policy? Basically, because that’s what the Tories have always argued. Like in the 2005 election. And the 2001 one. The fact the Tories lost both these elections seems to have escaped Messrs Redwood and Tebbit.

They come armed with some papers from Thatcherite think tanks - including one slightly confusing one from the Taxpayer’s Alliance:

All the evidence shows that if you cut taxes, people work harder, you generate more growth and you get more money in the government’s coffers.

It was also argued that if tax rates were lowered, the super-rich would spend less time trying to evade paying tax. I’m sure it would, but don’t evade paying tax in the first place, you slimy selfish creatures of flith! Especially when director’s pay is up 28% this year - seven times the average wage increase.

The simple fact is that lower taxes means less schools and hospitals. It’s time the Tebbits of this world stopped tub-thumping. Not that I mind a huge schism in the Tory party that much…

Cory

No, not another article about Israel, but about this divorce settlement:

Insurance magnate John Charman has been ordered to pay his former wife a total of £48 million in what is believed to be the biggest divorce award in legal history, it emerged today…

In percentage terms, the judge held this to be just under 37% of the assets which he found amounted to just over £131 million, including trust assets…

…”I made a fair and open offer to my wife of £20 million, which would be impossible for any reasonable person to spend in their lifetime.”

Surely, if this chap owns £131million, than the thing we ought to be asking is why his wife didn’t receive more!

If £20 million is more than enough for a reasonable person to spend in their lifetime, then surely he’s got enough money with the £83million he has left?

Part of his defence was that he wanted the money for his family. But he already has put £25 million in a fund EACH for his two sons.

If I had my way, I’d take another £40 million from him and put it into our schools. Or hospitals…..(OK, I’ll end the militant lefty rant here).

I could understand the fuss if a bloke only owned ten grand and his wife was given three, but with £83 million left?!? Tish and pish, I say, not for the first time.

-posted by Roy

Following my earlier post on the Natwest Three, I thought I’d add some more detail. There’s a good article in Private Eye about the extradition I think you ought to read. I’m not going to quote any, because a) I’m not sure on copyright laws and b) if you want to read it all that badly you can buy your own (skinflints!), but here is the thrust:

There are several dodgy e-mails sent between the three as evidence, including this peach, from David Bermingham to Gary Mulgrew (two-thirds of the Natwest Three):

I will be the first to be delighted if he (Andy Fastow, their chief financial officer) has found a way to…steal a large portion for himself.

The case should be investigated by the Americans and not the British. The Americans have their case together first, therefore under the “rules” of international frauds, they should go ahead and prosecute. Many Americans who will stand as witnesses were very unlikely to come to the UK and testify anyway. And the allegedly dodgy account where the ”ill-gotten gains” was supposed to be paid into set up was in the Cayman Islands, not London.

There is more than enough case to answer (the criteria needed to extradite suspects) and so far the three have been staying in a hotel, not a prison. Hardly the squalor the British Press wanted us to believe these bankers would be placed in.

The prosecution have asked the defendants to serve seven to nine years in jail if found guilty. 35 years is merely the theoretical maxiumum. 

As I say, for the rest buy Private Eye. Too much has focused on the admittedly naff Treaty, rather than concentrate on the fact that these people are suspected of stealing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Surely it is in the interests of all concerned that the three face trial, and justice, rather than heed to the curious campaign led by rags such as the Telegraph.

For a BBC FAQ about the Natwest three, read this.

-posted by Roy