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What do the 2 May local election results tell us?

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

3 May 2010. This week the UK demonstrated one old political maxim - all politics is local -- and one new one -- all spin is national.   

In yesterday's local elections Conservatives and Liberal Democrats suffered significant losses.

Now for the spin.

Conservatives, who lost most, “got the message.”  And the message? The Conservatives are right, of course. The electorate want what Conservatives are doing. The electorate are just “impatient” for it. Never mind the losses, the government just needs to do a better job messaging. Time to put UKIP under "scrutiny."    

Pundits had a field day. The only thing better than egg on a politician's face is a story of dramatic political change.  

Their "big story” was UKIP’s performance 

UKIP did well and better than predicted.  It certainly is a story that should be told. UKIP’s share averaged 25 percent, a substantial increase from last year's 7% in national polls or the 13% reported in the Sun poll this morning. 

More importantly, there are now four Stallions in the corral with the mares. 

UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, claims a “C-change” in UK politics.  Many pundits agree. Others say it could be the start of something big. Maybe they'll prove right. But maybe it's overcompensation for not taking UKIP seriously enough in the past. 

I agree most with Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon. Gibbon said the one thing clear to him is there's increased potential for a hung Parliament.  

But there was another story

The progressive Labour and Green Parties also made gains. In fact, at 291, Labour picked up more than twice as many seats as UKIP.  Green also gained.  But the story commentators told was Labour disappointing expectations by some measure or another.  

BBC further turned speculation into news. BBC reported their projection of what the results would have been nationally if it had been a national election, which it wasn't, and if  UKIP's share remained constant, which is dubious, as if this projection was somehow news.  BBC ignored Chuka Umunna's point that most of yesterday’s races were in previously Conservative jurisdictions.  How does one turn a gain twice UKIPs in previously Conservative jurisdictions into a Labour disappointment? If UKIP’s victory was a potential C-change, it seems more than odd that results nearly twice as large only disappointed.  

Why is this important? 

This is important because politcos and the electorate now consider the election's political and policy implications.  

Commentators who only the day before failed to predict the outcome spent the entire day today telling the public what those implications are.  Some argued Parties will have to shift to the Right. Others argued that at the very least Parties will have to address UKIP’s focal issues differently.  Many questioned whether one could consider Labour a true contender to take power in 2015.  While Labour’s success rose throughout the day the story line remained essentially unchanged.   

Premature

It seems premature to me to come to such conclusions.  

Did the UK's Triple Dip "escape" signal a "healing" economy?

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

25 April 2013.  It’s official. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the UK avoided the dreaded Triple Dip Recession -- at least for the first quarter of 2013. Based on 44% of the “required output determination” ONS estimates the UK grew 0.3% the first Quarter of 2013 over the last Quarter of 2012 and .4% over the first Quarter of 2012. The usual suspects celebrated the news as vindication of the Chancellor’s Plan A. But a cross section of economists and independent think tanks remain skeptical.  

The skeptics include me.  In this piece I will suggest a perspective I think more consistent with observable reality.  The theme is, absolute numbers grow, but their value diminishes.   

Consider Exchange Rate 

I regularly convert US dollars into UK pounds. I’ve become very aware of the impact of fluctuating rates on the value of the converted currency.  

In a prior FOI request I asked ONS how they account for these fluctuating rates in their estimates. ONS informed me they don’t, but they do adjust for inflation.  I've asked ONS to confirm that is the case with the last figures.   

From the perspective of one who makes and spends his or her money in the UK the impact of exchange may appear less important than inflation or subsumed in its calculation.  But when one must consider what it will cost in outside currency (an asset) to buy pounds (a commodity), it's an important consideration and an indicator of the strength of the UK economy.  Moreover, in the end, I as a consumer must still buy at inflating prices -- and pay taxes -- with pounds of fluctuating value.   

So I regularly ask, what will it cost in US dollars to buy £4,000 for the month’s living expenses. I also regularly ask the trends and whether the timing’s best to take care of a US obligation rather than convert dollars into pounds to spend in the UK. That is in its small way just what transnational investors and businesses do when they make investment decisions.  

Based on this experience I decided to look at the ONS headline figures through the prism of the exchange rates. I asked, what did it cost in US dollars to buy £4,000 per month in each of the quarters ONS compared.  

The detailed work sheet can be found here Download Exchange Rate Worksheet . 

Briefly, it cost me $650 more to buy £12,000 pounds during the last Quarter of 2012 than it did during the first Quarter 2013 and $241 more during the first Quarter of 2012 than the first Quarter of 2013.  Restated another way, the £12,000 for first Quarter 2013 was of lesser dollar value than either of the comparison Quarters. The drop in value was 3.4% and 1.3% respectively.  While the absolute numbers grew .3% and .4% respectively their value relative to the dollar shrank.  

Does that put the .3% and .4% GDP growth figures into a different perspective?  

Employment 

Where else have we seen an increase in absolute numbers but a contraction in their value? Employment.  Between 2008 and 2012 the net number of persons estimated employed at least one hour per week for pay increased 402,000, but the percentage of working age adults actually working for pay shrank from 59.6% in 2008 to 58.7% at the end of 2012.   Moreover the majority of new employment was part time, for which the average wage was £155 per week.  

US Gun Control, a non British British issue

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

18 Apr 2012. Last night the gun lobby defeated even the least intrusive of the measures US President Obama sought to enact into law in the wake of a tsunami of gun violence. I regret that nothing could get past the gun lobby but I am not surprised.  

Here in the UK the British of all political persuasions watch with slack jawed horror and utter disbelief.  I have been hard pressed to explain it.  

To control or not to control 

I myself did not favour gun control per se. I favoured reasonable time, place, manner of storage and discharge of ammunition.  

But it is clear now that even my different approach would itself be a non starter. Even were the gun lobby to entertain any control legislation from any President they clearly aren’t going to do so from President Obama. It’s personal. 

I did not favour gun control per se because 1) I knew it had no chance and 2) I, unlike many who support gun control, am uncomfortable with the argument the second amendment was only ever intended to provide for a militia for the common defence in a time before a strong national military.  It is an appeal for a liberal cause to a conservative principle of interpretation with which I have heartburn. 

The principle of interpretation is important 

It may be historically true that the framers were only thinking of their circumstances at the time, but for a good 150 years the Constitution has been interpreted by the preponderance of distinguished jurists in light of the mores of their time not the framer’s time. The law is said to be “living” not static. In the past 50 or so years a competing principle of interpretation arose as conservatives sought to limit “social engineering” and “activist” judges who allegedly “make” the law instead of interpreting it.  Proponents of original intent argue the Constitution should be interpreted in line with what the framers were thinking at the time in the absence of more recent amendment.  

I am a living law kind of guy. But I am also a stare decisis kind of guy. I  think you can’t have your judicial interpretation cake and eat it too. If I apply original intent to the second amendment to limit its weight to providing a militia for the common defence I feel compelled to apply it to “cruel and unusual punishment.” Visa versa, if I apply living law to “cruel and unusual” punishment I think I must do so with the second amendment. Whatever the historical original intent the second amendment has come to protect private ownership of guns.  

The Householder’s Purse, a Legend of the Fall

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

10 April 2013.   As all the world already knows, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is dead.  Today, the Speaker recalled the House of Commons to special session to pay tribute to the late Prime Minister.  

It was in-of-itself a befittingly and ironically controversial decision. Each MP is now able to claim £3,750 in expenses they would not have been able to claim had the House of Commons only waited until Monday. The funeral isn’t until the 17th. Reputedly the Speaker balked at the idea.

Memories of a Legend  

As reflected in news coverage, the parties reportedly celebrating her death and the discussion in the Commons today, memories of the late Prime Minister’s career are as vivid and divisive today as Mrs. Thatcher was during her tenure as Prime Minister. Critics think Cameron seeks to milk Mother Margaret for all she's worth but if that's the idea it is a risky strategy.  Mother Margaret's fans don't always see Cameron as her heir, enemies do. Resurfacing the cult of Margaret Thatcher may well benefit UKIP and Labour far more than Cameron.

Margaret Thatcher the person will be missed by those who loved her.  But, some who claim to miss her now shunned her for years. As one friend, Lord Tebbit said today in the House of Lords that he regretted leaving his friend to her friends. She was swept from office not by the electorate but by her colleagues.  

Another Tory politician this week claimed Thatcher “had to break a few eggs” in reference to the shutting down or privatization of whole industries at a severe cost to those the industries employed. Presumably, this was “necessary” in order to make omelets for her friends. For me, I count relatives among the eggs she cracked for their omelet. But I don't want to be a hypocrite. I've broken eggs too.

Prime Minister Cameron says Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saved the nation and made it "great" again.  One wonders about his definitions of save and great, but the verdict on the late Prime Minister now belongs to history and historians not politicians. Her legacy may well be written by China.  

Her least debatable impact may be as the person who most framed political and economic debate ever since. Perhaps the mark of her impact is, no opposition leader since has managed to escape that framework.  It is that framework that concerns me now.  

The Householder’s Handbag 

Margaret Thatcher famously "handbagged" Europe. She also handbags us today. George Osborne and David Cameron remain constrained by one PR gimmick in particular we owe to the late Prime Minister-- the Householder’s Purse analogy. “Any householder knows,” so the analogy goes, “you can’t spend money when there’s no money in the purse.”  It was the government’s mantra as it first sought to sell austerity to the public.

Social Security, a growing problem

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

5 April 2013. Politics often seems to come in two phrases. The first is, “Me, I want.” The second is, “Mine, you can’t have.”  They are the alligators in all the swamps the dedicated hope to drain. They infest every public policy issue. They handicap every effort to face facts and effectively respond. Social Security is one such public policy issue where fundamental facts present difficult questions for every side in the debate. 

Is it Social Security or is it Welfare 

It is “Black April” in the UK.  The Coalition implements several “reforms.”  Some argue these reforms dismantle social security rather than reform it, penalizing the poorest and most vulnerable for the reckless gambling of the richest and most protected.  Others argue the reforms improve the system, making it fairer.  They call the system “welfare” not “social security.”  They describe the system as a safety net not social insurance and its benefits as "dole." They say the dole entraps. It undercuts the self confident, self reliance essential to earn one's way in the world.   

But the language of unbridled hate undergirds many proponents' arguments. Many, especially the Chancellor, divide the UK into “aspirational strivers” -- the good guys --- and “work shy shirkers” -- the bad guys -- who hide “with the blinds drawn” while the good guys go to work to not only “earn their way in the world” but also support the shirker.   It should not be that one can do better on benefits than in work, an argument made by comparing the extreme end of benefits in London to the lowest wage earners throughout the country. The Coalition argues they still provide for the "deserving" poor but in so arguing create yet another divisive distinction separating countrymen.  

While they say they provide for the most vulnerable, what they actually do is cut both the eligibility and the support the eligible receive. They give little. They more than take that away with a multitude of cuts.  They argue they make work pay, but they have done nothing to increase individual wages, benefits or hours of employment. They only made benefits hurt more severely than the lowest paid work.   

In rhetoric and design it is a naked appeal to “Mine, you can’t have.”  

I am on the other side of this argument. I am committed to social security as an expression of the social responsibility fundamental to a functioning society.   But I, like others who hold my view, struggle with the question, how are you going to pay for it.  

Channeling My Father for Easter

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

30 March 2013. Lytham St Annes, Lancashire.

Easter was one of my two favourite days once upon a very long time ago in a place now 7,500 miles far, far away.  Contemplating Easter as it approaches, I can hear my father turning cartwheels in my head, but not in a good way. He's not happy. Not happy at all. 

Easter

Easter Sunday churches across the United Kingdom and the United States heave with families feeling their way around a sometimes unaccustomed environment. Young women in fine hats join the regulars, the older women wearing Lavender. Men sport polished shoes & pressed suits, stretching necks discomforted by the tightness of neckties last worn Christmas service.  The old regulars wear no tie at all. Both the regulars and the Christmas and Easter crowd eye each other maybe with just a little judgment (kept to themselves of course).

The faithful gather in plain wooden structures or in remarkable, richly adorned palaces called Cathedrals. They sway, singing the old hymns, performing the old, corporate rituals. Some smile those utterly vacuous, vacant smiles which more accurately imitate a drug ecstasy than a religious experience. Some plumb the depth of Easter's meaning with earnest contemplation. All churches smell of abundant flowers & orris root perfume. The social halls echo to the sounds of children eagerly anticipating Easter egg hunts & Chocolate bunnies.

All is joy & warm fuzzies ... except ...

... except for the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable, the widow, the “demobbed” (newly separated) soldier, the debtor, the redundant (laid off), the homeless, the mother without a husband and the children who would be without any food this Easter but for overworked food banks.  These languish willfully unseen by officialdom, disconsolate and feeling abandoned by their neighbours, many of whom, this Easter, stuff the pews. 

A host of draconian new measures go into affect in the United Kingdom the day after Easter. In the past benefits recipients were relieved from Council tax (a local property tax paid by the resident not necessarily the owner). Not as of April 1. As of April 1 they will also pay a penalty if they have a "spare" room, dubbed the bedroom tax. While inflation rises their grants are now capped below inflation. They are forced to accept any work that presents itself including without further compensation or suffer draconian sanctions. 680,000 thus far have been. The list goes on and on of the changes to welfare that grow the food banks, children on the streets, suicides and hate crimes against the disabled, but not the promised way out of "the welfare trap" to almost any.

Leveson the Final Chapter (until the next one)

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

18 March 2013. Today Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Leader Nick Clegg, Labour Leader Ed Milliband and the House of Commons passed the test of democracy in a way  the US Congress could perhaps find instructive.   At 2:30 AM, after intensive negotiations, all parties came to an agreement on a method to implement Judge Leveson’s recommendations with regard to the regulation of press ethics and excesses. 

The specifics of the agreement were nobody’s first choice. Yet the the specifics do represent real progress.  Especially in light of a breakdown in those very talks the previous Friday, the compromise those specifics represent was a welcome surprise.  

Cynics will argue it came about only because the Prime Minister faced a severe defeat in a vote set for the evening of 18 March. In the days ahead the compromise will be dissected and analyzed. The Press Barons will squeal. Unintended consequences will emerge. We will find reasons to be disappointed.   It is by no means a certainty that today's deal will hold up over the days ahead. The Press Barons can not be expected to stop their full court press.  Some knees may weaken.

But the bottom line is, the Prime Minister compromised. The Deputy Prime Minister compromised. The Labour Leader compromised.  The House of Commons compromised. This is critical because compromise -- not my way or the highway -- is the essence of democratic governance.   

It is important -- especially for those of us who so often feel free to criticise the Prime Minister -- to recognize, support and encourage the Members and the Leaders for doing so even though it is not yet a final done deal. In reality rarely is anything ever a final done deal in politics.

In the days ahead one only hopes the Members and the Leaders have the courage to hold to their decision. The hard reality of politics is one can do much good if one is willing to accept its fundamental cost - one will make enemies by doing and one or more of those enemies will one day get one. To compromise on a very difficult subject like press regulation, affecting arguably one of the United Kingdom’s historically strongest interest groups is an exemplary act of political courage.

Congratulations to all involved. 

No Frames No Boundaries Revisited

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

I have vivid memories of the night of 13 December 1984.  On 13 December 1984 Beyond War and the USSR State Committee for Television and Radio jointly presented “Spacebridge."  

I was there.   

Spacebridge

A crisp clear night embraced San Francisco's Masonic Auditorium.  Inside, excitement built among the more than 3,000 attending.  Television would soon link us with Muscovites. We would see each other as we talked -Skype before Skype but on a mass scale.    

The occasion was the first annual “Beyond War Award,” presented that night to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.  Bernard Lown, MD and his Soviet counterpart, Evguenni Chazov, MD accepted on behalf of the organization.   

I belonged to Beyond War -- a movement birthed by Creative Initiative Foundation of Palo Alto (to which I also belonged). I had already volunteered over 20 hours per week for over a year by this time.  Less than 500 couples launched Beyond War at Stanford Chapel.  By 13 December 1984 the movement exceeded 20,000 committed participants.  

No Frames No Boundaries was Beyond War's video statement of faith. Rusty Schweickart's experiences in space, narrated by the former astronaut, play a pivotal role in the development of the video's theme.  

Beyond War as an organization may have differed somewhat from what you might expect. Many at the centre of the movement were Republican leaning businessmen and professionals.  The influence of Stanford University was omnipresent.  This was not a poor people’s movement. It was not a worker's movement. It was a Silicon Valley/ Bay Area movement.  

They were a high powered lot. Creative Initiative's revered founder had been a Stanford Law School professor. One member was a physician engaged in the joint US-USSR space medicine programme. Another was the "R" in ROLM Corporation. A third had been a White House fellow, an entrepreneur who retired in his early 30's.  A fourth had been counsel to the US Defense Department under President Ford. 

The event did not disappoint.   

Mel Swope, a well known Beyond War member, was Spacebridge's creative consultant. Dan Dippery, another member, directed audio visial.  Dippery had been Vice-President of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne.   

Bill Burch of “Fame” fame directed the music. Etta James performed an original song, “Beyond War,” she composed for the occasion. William Goldstein contributed an original musical score. Goldstein had previously composed the “Celebration Overture” for the National Symphony Orchestra’s US Bicentennial celebration at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Paul Winter and Paul Halley performed Winter’s beloved hymn, “The Blue-Green Hills of Earth,” from his famed “Missa Gaia/Earth Mass.”  The Gosteleradio Childrens Chorus of Moscow joined them, along with the San Francisco’s Boys Chorus.     

But the most moving bit had to be the Spacebridge itself.