All passages taken from Wikipedia
He voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq....He supported the idea of the American Surge and believes that it has been successful.
He has been an outspoken supporter of the war in Afghanistan
He has spoken on a number of occasions regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions and believes that all options, including the use of military force, have to be on the table.
Fox is a strong supporter of Israel and is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. In 2006 he said, "Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together or we will all fall divided." In January 2009, referring to Israel, he also said, “British support for any ally is never unqualified. International law and values must always be obeyed.’”
Here is a list of 223 U.N. resolutions ignored by our Israeli buddies with British and American support
Fox believes that Britain should maintain its continuous at sea, independent, submarine based strategic nuclear deterrent based on the Trident missile system.
Fox has pledged to restructure the defence procurement process in the Ministry of Defence. He has also stated that it would be a matter of policy to see Britain’s share of global defence exports increasing under a Conservative Government.
Goes nicely with this one...
Fox accepted a £50,000 donation from Jon Moulton, whose investment firm, Better Capital, later went on to own Gardner Aerospace, an aerospace metallic manufactured details supplier which includes component parts for both military and civilian aircraft.
And on expenses...
In March 2010 Fox appealed Sir Thomas Legg's decision that he had over claimed £22,476 in mortgage interest payments. Fox immediately repaid the money, then appealed the decision. Fox's appeal was rejected and the decision was upheld by Sir Paul Kennedy, a former high court judge......This reportedly made him the Conservative Shadow Cabinet member with the largest over-claim on expenses, and as a result, he has been forced to repay the most money.
It was reported in June 2009 that Fox claimed expenses of more than £19,000 over the last four years for his mobile phone
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Spotlight on George Osbourne, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Decided to check out our new cabinet. Starting with Osbourne, here's a few highlights straight from wikipedia
The Financial Times describes Osborne as "metropolitan and socially liberal. He is hawkish on foreign policy with links to Washington neo-conservatives and ideologically committed to cutting the state. A pragmatic Eurosceptic".
Requires a definition of neo-conservatives. Here's one: John McGowan, professor of humanities at the University of North Carolina, states, after an extensive review of neoconservative literature and theory, that neoconservatives are attempting to build an American Empire, seen as successor to the British Empire, its aim being to perpetuate a Pax Americana
"Osborne's wealth is estimated at £4.3m. He is also reported to be next in line to inherit a substantial share of Osborne & Little, his father's luxury wall paper company, which is thought to be worth over £1 billion"
Goes nicely with this one...
"[commited] to various tax cuts such as inheritance tax and national insurance, (which 100 economists recently said would be dangerous for the recovery). "
but inheritance tax cuts are of course for the good of the nation....
It's worth reading the whole section on his expenses claims...this is the man charged with spending taxpayer's money after all:
In 2009 he received criticism for the way he had handled his expenses, after he was found to have "flipped" his second home, changing which property he designated as his second home in order to pay less capital gains tax. The Lib Dems estimated he owed £55,000 to the public purse as a result of this. He had previously paid back £1,193 on overpayments on his mortgage and chauffeur fares and it also emerged that he had claimed £47 for two copies of a DVD of his own speech on "value for taxpayers' money".Osborne is currently being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over mortgage payments from 2003, and second home designation between 2001 and 2003.
The Financial Times describes Osborne as "metropolitan and socially liberal. He is hawkish on foreign policy with links to Washington neo-conservatives and ideologically committed to cutting the state. A pragmatic Eurosceptic".
Requires a definition of neo-conservatives. Here's one: John McGowan, professor of humanities at the University of North Carolina, states, after an extensive review of neoconservative literature and theory, that neoconservatives are attempting to build an American Empire, seen as successor to the British Empire, its aim being to perpetuate a Pax Americana
"Osborne's wealth is estimated at £4.3m. He is also reported to be next in line to inherit a substantial share of Osborne & Little, his father's luxury wall paper company, which is thought to be worth over £1 billion"
Goes nicely with this one...
"[commited] to various tax cuts such as inheritance tax and national insurance, (which 100 economists recently said would be dangerous for the recovery). "
but inheritance tax cuts are of course for the good of the nation....
It's worth reading the whole section on his expenses claims...this is the man charged with spending taxpayer's money after all:
In 2009 he received criticism for the way he had handled his expenses, after he was found to have "flipped" his second home, changing which property he designated as his second home in order to pay less capital gains tax. The Lib Dems estimated he owed £55,000 to the public purse as a result of this. He had previously paid back £1,193 on overpayments on his mortgage and chauffeur fares and it also emerged that he had claimed £47 for two copies of a DVD of his own speech on "value for taxpayers' money".Osborne is currently being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over mortgage payments from 2003, and second home designation between 2001 and 2003.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
The 13 year broken promise
Lots of talk about electoral reform at the moment, so I've been having a look at the alternatives.
However, seems the electoral reform on the first-past-the-post system is nothing new. In 1997 the Labour manifesto stated
"We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system." 1
The British public voted in favour of this manifesto, and labour retained power. In an attempt to fulfill this promise, the labour party set up the Jenkins' commission to review the electoral system in the UK. 2
The report states "The Commission's central recommendation is that the best alternative for Britain to the existing First Past The Post system is a two-vote mixed system which can be described as either limited AMS or AV Top-up" 3
The commission developed the AV+ voting system for the UK, a hybrid solution involving a constituency based vote for approx 500 members of parliament and an additional 'top-up' group of MPs selected from party lists in order to 'top up' the commons to improve proportional representation at the national level (see 4 for a better explanation of AV+).
Since the Jenkins' report was published in 1998 we have had a recommendation for a voting system that provides a suitable compromise between proportional representation and constituency-linked parliament members. For 12 years we have had an elected promise of a referendum to vote on this recommendation. Still waiting...
1. http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1997/1997-labour-manifesto.shtml
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_Commission_(UK)
3. http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm40/4090/chap-9.htm
4. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=56
However, seems the electoral reform on the first-past-the-post system is nothing new. In 1997 the Labour manifesto stated
"We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system." 1
The British public voted in favour of this manifesto, and labour retained power. In an attempt to fulfill this promise, the labour party set up the Jenkins' commission to review the electoral system in the UK. 2
The report states "The Commission's central recommendation is that the best alternative for Britain to the existing First Past The Post system is a two-vote mixed system which can be described as either limited AMS or AV Top-up" 3
The commission developed the AV+ voting system for the UK, a hybrid solution involving a constituency based vote for approx 500 members of parliament and an additional 'top-up' group of MPs selected from party lists in order to 'top up' the commons to improve proportional representation at the national level (see 4 for a better explanation of AV+).
Since the Jenkins' report was published in 1998 we have had a recommendation for a voting system that provides a suitable compromise between proportional representation and constituency-linked parliament members. For 12 years we have had an elected promise of a referendum to vote on this recommendation. Still waiting...
1. http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1997/1997-labour-manifesto.shtml
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_Commission_(UK)
3. http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm40/4090/chap-9.htm
4. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=56
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Analysis of the Clegg 5-point plan for banking
In the run up to the election, its worth analysing with a little depth, and from an economic stand point, the economics of some of the parties policies. For a first bash, let's drill down into Clegg's 5-point plan for banking reform.
Let's take a step back. The banking crisis was triggered by the collapse of the American housing market, which soon would bankrupt the massive Lehman Brother's bank due to their high exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market. Top Lehman staff lost millions in share options after the collapse of the bank. Why? They were already being paid heavily in share options as part of their bonuses. In fact, 30% of the bank was employee owned. So this incentive was already there, and remains unchanged.
So what effect will this have? Staff will be unable to spend the vast majority of their bonus for 5 years. Bonus values are linked to stock performance, which often fluctuates more with market conditions than company performance. Ultimately, this increases the cost of bonuses to investors in banking, and reduces the appeal of the payment to employees. The result is that top banking talent in the UK will seek employment in other countries and business will move elsewhere in the EU, irreparably damaging one of the key exporting industries in the UK while achieving nothing towards the original goal.
So in summary, when you look at the incentives placed on the individual actors of the financial sector in the UK, you begin to realise that there are no winners with these changes. Well, apart from other EU nations who are likely to see an influx of new banking talent and business expansion as a result of the exodus of london's banking sector. Personally, I'm not sure why a UK resident would vote for that.
No cash bonuses – We will require all bonuses in excess of £2,500 to be paid in shares. These shares will only be redeemable after five years; it will be written into the right of entitlement of these shares that they will revert to the company if they are pledged or used as security prior to the date of their redemption.On first glance, this appears to make sense. Provide all members of staff within a bank the incentives to look after the long term interests of the institution.
Let's take a step back. The banking crisis was triggered by the collapse of the American housing market, which soon would bankrupt the massive Lehman Brother's bank due to their high exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market. Top Lehman staff lost millions in share options after the collapse of the bank. Why? They were already being paid heavily in share options as part of their bonuses. In fact, 30% of the bank was employee owned. So this incentive was already there, and remains unchanged.
So what effect will this have? Staff will be unable to spend the vast majority of their bonus for 5 years. Bonus values are linked to stock performance, which often fluctuates more with market conditions than company performance. Ultimately, this increases the cost of bonuses to investors in banking, and reduces the appeal of the payment to employees. The result is that top banking talent in the UK will seek employment in other countries and business will move elsewhere in the EU, irreparably damaging one of the key exporting industries in the UK while achieving nothing towards the original goal.
No bonuses at board level – We will ensure there are no bonuses at the board level of banks. This is not to say that board directors should not be well paid, but that they should have the long term interests of a company at heart – bonus payments do not encourage this.Same principle as the first point, but here no share options are given as bonuses. This would appear to reduce incentives for board members to look after the long term interests of the company.
No rewards for failure – We will extend the Financial Services Act to ensure that no regulated institution which has made a loss can pay discretionary bonuses.After the fall of Lehman's, the world watched Dick Fuld and his motley crew walk away from Lehman's with self-gratifying golden parachutes. This reflects the need for a re-think of the way board members are paid their bonuses to prevent this from happening. It is not an indication that banks like throwing money at under performing employees at all levels. Banks normally push out under performing employees by throttling their bonuses. The large bonuses paid to some members of staff following poor company performance, is a retention payment for employees who held the bank afloat during a tough period. If you prevent struggling institutions from retaining the staff that are keeping them profitable, the struggling bank shortly loses its talented staff. This increases the risk of the bank failing.
Total transparency – We will require the publication of the names of all bank staff that have salaries and bonuses that are greater than the Prime Minster’s salary (which is just under £200,000). In addition we will require the FSA to publish its assessment of all regulated firms remuneration policy.An excellent way to introduce public sector problems into the private sector. One knock-on effect of blocking bonuses is that banks downsize their bonus schemes and increase salaries. This was evident when a 10% salary increase seen by employees in all the major city banks followed the 50% tax announcement on bonuses over £25,000. This gets worse with the previous points, so now salaries reflect the value of an employee to a bank to a greater extent, as the bonus scheme is much smaller. This gives employees the ability to know exactly what their colleagues are paid, and can value themselves against that. If you're happy, you say nothing, if you know you are now worth more, you ask for more. This puts greater pressure on banks. If banks can't meet the salary increase demands, the employee moves on. So more people will be moving on, there will be less feeling of 'ownership' on the bank and so less incentive to look after the long term interests of the bank.
Holding directors to account – We will extend the powers of the FSA to ensure that the directors of banks are personally fined if their institution breaks the current code of practice for remunerationI can't begin to see how this differs from the current system of FSA accountability. Currently, financial institutions registered with the FSA much declare specific roles for certain directors, such as risk management officer, chief financial officer etc... Now if the bank doesn't manage its risk effectively, the risk management officer is liable for prosecution. So this 5th point appears to change nothing.
So in summary, when you look at the incentives placed on the individual actors of the financial sector in the UK, you begin to realise that there are no winners with these changes. Well, apart from other EU nations who are likely to see an influx of new banking talent and business expansion as a result of the exodus of london's banking sector. Personally, I'm not sure why a UK resident would vote for that.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Male Child Preference and Fertility Rates
A recent article in the economist entitled ‘gendercide’ caught my eye today.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15636231&source=hptextfeature
The article addresses the increasing male to female ratio in certain cultures and regions and how that relates to China’s one child policy. However, it made me think more generally about the impact of gender preferences on population growth more globally. There have been a number of studies on the impact gender preference has on fertility, and of the ones I could find online, all concluded a link between increased fertility in families where the gender sequence begins with one or more female children (i.e. parents tend to choose to have another child if their first children are not male).
Another article I found supporting this also concluded that son preference became more prominent in areas undergoing modernization as a result of smaller families (I should also note here that Ms Das Gupta in the economist article argues that this social norm does disappear with modernisation, but it takes time). This would of course indicate that male child preference can act as an opposing force to declining fertility rates. Unfortunately I could not access the original PDF for the report, and have instead had to rely on google’s cache
The economist article goes on to note that South Korea has been effective in addressing its problem of male child preference through anti-discrimination laws and media campaigns.
The generally accepted view is that there are just a few components needed to (ethically) address population growth: family planning and modern contraceptive methods, female empowerment and female education. However, the above articles would suggest that a more comprehensive reform of the cultural and societal role and status of women is needed to eliminate gender discrimination. This would lower fertility rates by removing the incentive to have children to ensure you have a male child. However, it would also reduce the occurrence of child related atrocities reported, such as those that have come out of China in recent years. The knock-on effect would be a weakening of the arguments of those who oppose ethical approaches to population limitation.
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Democracy vs Science
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehcY37DW2og
Attached link is Professor David King's lecture on the challenges we face as a global community. A vast summary of today's major issues, but I only wanted to draw attention to one statement here. At about 13:50 in the video, we are told that science alone cannot govern, and democracy is needed also. The example given is that the Chinese government is the most scientifically savvy government in power today. I'm going to assume it is their success in achieving their goals that gets them credit here, and their human rights record that is used to demonstrate why democracy is needed also.
My thought on this one though, is how can democracy and science ever go hand-in-hand when the 'scientific savvy' of a government is much greater than the scientific savvy of the average voter? We are told that smear campaigns on GM foods by the media influenced the population of europe to reject GM foods, and this has been devastating for economies of countries reliant upon stable crop yields. Clearly the voting public cannot be relied upon to make scientific voting decisions on matters of scientific complexity.
Both professor Sir David King and the royal society have come out to say that we need nuclear power in the short to medium term to make up our energy requirements in the UK in order to give time for renewable energy technologies to develop into economically viable options. Yet nation-wide there is great support for the conservative, liberal democrats and even the green party, who are all opposed to nuclear power.
Can science ever be given the freedom to govern logically without an iron fist in a country where the majority of people are not scientifically minded and the media has the greatest influence on political opinions?
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Radical Economics Lost in Isolation
In the fourth of the open lectures I have begun attending within London’s city centre, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo presents a lecture about sales pitch for her book, ‘Dead Aid’. This book consists of a critique of financial aid as provided by governments and large multiorganisational companies to African states. A great shame that given a vast audience of eager young academics, the respected speaker begins by declaring that the lecture will contain limited content in order to encourage readers to buy the book to see what is left out. A woman who apparently cares deeply for the state of Africa and the suffering that comes with immense poverty, given an open stage on which to lecture tomorrow’s economists, focuses on personal monetary gain. The word sell-out springs to mind...
Not a great start, but onwards with an open-mind. Summarising then, the content of the lecture;
- 1) Corruption ensures the money is poorly spent, preventing aid reaching the people to which it was intended.
- 2) Countries suffer poor national governance, becoming completely dependent upon third party governance that provides the majority of the public services.
- 3) The well established view of the media of Africa as a collection of countries who all need help and can’t look after themselves has a damaging impact on the confidence of the inhabitants, discouraging entrepreneurship and ambition.
The solutions being to phase out these large hand outs, focus on development, usage of international financial markets for funding, the tackling of corruption through the growth of a middle class and some good PR and positivity. Dambisa seems to draw the line here, indicating she feels that an economist’s role ends at identifying the greatest levers to change as opposed to being an expert in policies for moving these levers (fair enough). All very good (technical difficulties of implementation aside...) and certainly seems to be an improvement over the existing model of “throw money at the problem until it goes away”.
Yet I found myself losing interest. This happened when I began to feel that the bigger picture was missing. Is not the (generally accepted) forecast for Africa devastation due to a changing climate, the spread of the Saharan desert to encompass the vast majority of northern Africa and depleting fresh water sources? What reason is there for an economist to seek ways of turning yet another continent into a thriving, carbon booming economy, charging blindly towards a greater demise? Is it even appropriate for an economist to not even mention this side of things, when discussing the long term future of an entire continent? Surely we can’t hope to address the problems of Africa in isolation?
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