The Case For Our State ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the broadband scam

the GPO could have not been worse and arguably much better than these gangsters

[eighthobstruction]

....more blooming STUFF going down my information super highway making me sad and mad....I do write to my MP about things like this, but these days not a day goes by (fracking, SFO, BBC, Gove, NHS, DWP, Legal Aid, HS2 etc etc)when i do not want write an involved letter about something or other ....which is (a) impossible and (B) just leads to the label: ranting madman....

[amateur51]

....more blooming STUFF going down my information super highway making me sad and mad....I do write to my MP about things like this, but these days not a day goes by (fracking, SFO, BBC, Gove, NHS, DWP, Legal Aid, HS2 etc etc)when i do not want write an involved letter about something or other ....which is (a) impossible and (B) just leads to the label: ranting madman....

i tend to write only when invited to by 38 Degrees or avaaz.org. Do you get replies eighth? I do but they tend to be rather bland and catch-all.

[eighthobstruction]

I have got very detailed and bespoke replies several times....I think the trick is to ask exact questions, rather than general 'feeling' pieces....but I too have had the generic catch all disingenuous blaaaaaaaaaaaaaa type too....esp if writing ref a public campaign where they receive thousands of similar letters....

[ahinton]

....more blooming STUFF going down my information super highway making me sad and mad....I do write to my MP about things like this, but these days not a day goes by (fracking, SFO, BBC, Gove, NHS, DWP, Legal Aid, HS2 etc etc)when i do not want write an involved letter about something or other ....which is (a) impossible and (B) just leads to the label: ranting madman....

You omit mention of the noises that David Cameron appears once again to be making about his desire for the abolition of the Human Rights Act which I hope and like to think will be silenced (as indeed they were in the run-up to the last UK General Election) before the UK government gets privatised and Parliament sold off to an offshore private equity firm...

[eighthobstruction]

I'd add House Price Inflation....which really needs looking at....

[ahinton]

I'd add House Price Inflation....which really needs looking at....

I can't see the point of "looking" at that, really; since it's entirely market driven; there's been very little of it in UK in the past five years and even to the extent that there's a sign of rather more of it happening now largely fuelled by long-term low interest rates, the moment they do start to increase I suspect that it will stall again, partly because most people's pay isn't keeping pace even with the relatively low levels of other inflation and partly because ever more people will find themselves unable to stump up deposits to buy their own homes.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

er support from HMG for home buyers innit? rash of let to buy and inflated prices; perhaps what 8O was on about ....

[eighthobstruction]

er support from HMG for home buyers innit? rash of let to buy and inflated prices; perhaps what 8O was on about ....

yes, i'm just headlining....but the fundemental thing is SUPPLY>.... no/low house building....high demand for existing stock....££price inflation from that quarter too....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

ms Mazzucato refreshes her argument


her criticism of the linguistics of the neo liberal view becoming the standard view are important, as if the whole world or all of us have to use Osborne's Compass ... No Ta

[amateur51]

ms Mazzucato refreshes her argument


her criticism of the linguistics of the neo liberal view becoming the standard view are important, as if the whole world or all of us have to use Osborne's Compass ... No Ta

Well that tooks me three readings to get my head around most of it - a function as much of yy Sunday Morning Head as of the complexity of the Prof's discourse.

This section reflects on this Board's current preoccupations:

"To foster growth we must not downsize the state but rethink it. That means developing, not axing, competences and dynamism in the public sector. When evaluating its performance, we must rediscover the point of the public sector: to make things happen that would not have happened anyway.

When the BBC is accused of "crowding out" private broadcasters, the difference in quality of the programmes is considered a subjective issue not worthy of economic analysis. Yet it is only by observing and measuring that difference that we can accurately judge its performance. The same is true for the ability of public sector institutions not only to subsidise pharmaceutical companies but actually to transform the technological and market landscape on which they operate."

I'll PM french frank with the second para - she'll be thrilled!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this is a gem

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Mr Mason gets the point

If the proponents of modern laissez-faire economics could point to a single economy where technology and markets had worked, alone, to create a vibrant, confident, high-growth economic model, their arguments would be stronger. But it’s China, Singapore, South Korea and Brazil where the success stories happened. The state was at the centre of every one.

[Serial_Apologist]

Mr Mason gets the point

As good as far as it goes, but, would you trust someone's opinion when he uses a split infinitive in the first sentance?

Seriously though, the overlooked elephant in the room in that article is in the non-follow up to the comment that:

"If the information revolution creates the possibility of a 'third capitalism' - as different from the industrial era as it was from the age of Sir Francis Drake - then it is, so far, a possibility unrealised".

I fiorgive him because he says "different from" instead of the customary quotidian "different to" or the American "different than"; but the real problem consists in the reality that any information revolution produces nothing but information - confusing the menu for the meal - whereas wealth, as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and most other classical economists from the time wealth really was created pointed out, wealth can only be created by making actual solid, touchable, consumable things with added upbuilt value at every stage. The idiots of unbridled wealth failed for some unacountable reason to see this during the hi-tech investment boom of the early '90s, when "venture capitalists", i.e. vainglorious bastards, invested billions just on the offchance that internet companies would make them loadsa money. In fact (of coarse ) there was no money in them at all, it was all casino speculation, and lots of people, many of them pensioners who'd innocently (or as a consequence of being persuaded by their share portfolio prospecti and The Sun that Karl Marx had been wrong all along, lost most of their savings. At least my dad, a neoliberal capitalist before Sir Keith Jospeh was even a twinkle in his dad's left testicle, always said: always invest in production, never property or speculative ventures.

The above is given glib semi-oversight in the observation from Mr Mason concerning:

"... [T]he evaporation of venture capital funding for technological startups in the UK ..."

But he then goes on to dismiss

"... [P]lanned allocation of goods or state provision"

as no longer pertinent to conditions he has already designated worthy of the kinds of government action that were only possible when such actions were optional even for conservative governments, eg the nationalisation of Rolls-Royce by the Heath government in 1971 as indispensable to national security.

No, the main problems of post-war consensual state interventionalism (which I've been on about enough times on here) was their top-down, non-consultative of the population (let alone non-involving of them) character, coupled with nationalisations of already disadvantaged, non-competitive, inefficiently run industries in private hands, when had it been successful firms with confident efficient workforces that had been nationalised the whole nationalisation model would not have become a target for disparagement, but on the contrary seen as the superior basic model of the modern state. Then maybe - but only then - one could speak of compensation for those who had built up those companies to the point where they were ripe for state ownership.

[vinteuil]

As good as far as it goes, but, would you trust someone's opinion when he uses a split infinitive in the first sentance?

... but then, would you trust someone's opinion when he makes such a spelling mistake in his first sentence?