Ros Scott: 20,736 votes (72%)
Lembit Opik: 6247 votes (22%)
Chandila Fernando 1799 votes (6%)

*feels smug*

“The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility ; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family. ”

SOCIAL INSURANCE AND ALLIED SERVICES
REPORT BY SIR WILLIAM BEVERIDGE

You can pick out instances where outsourcing has had a negative effect on services (e.g. cleaning services where the new private provider slashed costs by cutting wages leading to reduced standards), but this tends to reflect the standards of the private industry. Where the private providers are providing a good service at a competitive price outsourcing can work well. The private cleaning industry can be quite a nasty cut throat place, the private printing industry generally isn’t. As you’ve pointed out it’s important to set standards. Also, wherever there can be a competitive market there should be a competitive market. Services should be privatised whenever this will increase competition. Otherwise, I think we should take a pragmatic approach to outsourcing services.

The problem with the state monopolising the provision of services is that it restricts choice. Without choices and the means to pursue them you’re not free.

There is also the issue that socialists have traditionally come to see the state as the solution be that in it’s more leftist Marxist guises or even in it’s social democratic incarnation. Here there is scope for legitimate improval on the part of socialism and it is here that I find myself on more common ground with liberalism. We all accept that the state is neccessary in some form but really is it the solution to all our ills??

It is there purely for when people cant be; I am for example, in favour of devolving control of things like healthcare down to the actual service users as far as is possible and practicable. As long as it is not a backdoor for the opening up of the NHS to the market I see it more as an extension of democracy and thus something that can be supported from a progressive point of view.

Point is, Mat – I’m not demonising the Tories on my blog per se – I’m just going out to Tory councils and talking to people about their actions there, and reporting back. That reporting of the facts demonises the Tories, because the facts of their actions are just – well, demonic.

The problem I’m having with the Lib Dems as above is that I’m hearing a lot of talk about freedom and democracy – which is good – but bugger-all about the ways that you’re going to ensure everybody has adequate access to both. A fairer – read more distributive – tax system is probably part of the answer, but I fail to see how you’re going to guarantee decent schooling and healthcare for all – and how you’re going to control the excess that comes at the expense of others – without legislating. Every time someone like me mentions legislating, I’m howled down for suggesting a bigger state, or bigger government. If you don’t legislate in favour of decent wages, against outsourcing, in favour of trade union freedoms so that the low-paid have at least some means of protecting themselves – how do you ensure that the less well off have opportunities and have some protection from capitalism’s excesses?

on the issues that I think are most important, for a short term time, given a choice the Tories are less bad

Note the emphasis there, it was deliberate,

If we have to choose between the current Labour government and a Tory government, and that’s the only choice we have (which is a falsitude that the Labour party seek to perpetuate), then we need to get Labour out in order they can sort themselves out. One term of Tories, especially given their promises on spending commitments, will damage people but not irrevocably.

But it’s a choice I reject as false. I want MPs committed to changing the system and sorting out long term problems. In order to get that we need electoral reform and political freedom. The Lib Dems are the only party committed to both, but on those issues Labour has broken its promises (whereas the Tories are honest in saying they oppose, albeit for spurious reasons), and the Tories, being in opposition and thus seeing the damage it causes, are Better than the current government on issues of political freedom.

yes, they mostly want freedom for the white middle class shires, but I want freedom for all. That’s why I’m a Lib Dem, and oppose the system that gives absolute power to any party.

I want as many Lib Dem MPs in the house as possible in order to stop the worst excesses of both the idiot parties, and maybe be able to work with reformers to sort the genuine problems out, while stopping the stupidity.

I grew up under the Tories, live in a Tory town now (where we’re a strong second) and my old home town has one of the best MPs in the house on all the issues I care about, so I’ll be helping him when I can at the next GE as well.

Neither of the idiot parties is any good, that’s the whole point of this thread, but constantly demonising the Tories plays into the hands of the other idiots. The Lib Dems are, under the current electoral system, the only choice we’ve got, and it really bothers me that so many people just can’t see it.

Get a better electoral system and all bets are off.

To all: Support detention without charge, ID cards, SOCPA and surveillance databases, or oppose it. If you don’t think ID cards aimed at demonising migrants are something worth going to the wall for then voting Labour and thus supporting them is your choice.

But if you want to support that sort of policy, stop calling yourself a liberal.

What’ll they do to public services? They’ll outsource everything to the kind of people who’ve been raping us in the city for the last ten years and we’ll get to the point where you can’t get an education or an operation without opening yr chequebook very, very wide…

We’ve got ample evidence of what the Tories are like – let’s have a look at the havoc the’ve wreaked in newly-Conservative councils like Hammersmith and Fulham in the last two years for a moment, shall we? Scuse the self-promotion, but I did a whole series of articles and interviews in that borough last year:

http://hangbitch.com/node/78

about their viciousness towards the voluntary sector and people who need help and support most. I’m agog at yr observation that they’re better on democracy – you only need to look at Hammersmith and Fulham to understand that sentence of yours should read ‘they’re better on democracy… as long as you’re well off and white.’

Please. It’s only socially useful being better at democracy if you’re a government in charge of a democracy in which everyone has a chance of participating, regardless of their race, financial background, etc… the Tories will create a ‘democracy’ in which you’ll need to be very well heeled to survive, let alone take part. Your comment above suggests to me that the Lib Dems will create that kind of democracy as well. I thought more of you until now.

You can bang on all you like about romantic notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ but the facts are that you need some legislation and public services in place to make sure everyone gets to enjoy those lofty notions for real. It’s not about creating a bigger state – it’s about setting standards. The Tories are about paying staff as little as possible, and delivering as little as possible for the masses on the cheap. There’s plenty of evidence that they’re at least as bad as Labour, and probably worse.

I THOUGHT MORE OF YOU.

Blast.

Indeed. But not for want of popular support. It fell at the hands of the vested interests and privilege in the House of Lords. The Land Tax is the reason we had the Parliament Act 1911 and two General Elections in 1910. But it was ultimately sacrificed to get the rest of the budget through before the House of Lords could be artially castrated.

Neither party is good. But on the issues that I think are most important, for a short term time, given a choice the Tories are less bad. My ideal would be 100+ Lib Dem MPs standing firm and repealing Labour’s bollocks but not propping up an illiberal bunch of Tories. But in a less than ideal world, Labour need time to retrench and smell the coffee.

If they hadn’t broken their ’97 promise to reform the system of government properly, we wouldn’t even need to have this conversation.

So, are you saying that Labour’s program next time will be identical to the Conservatives one?? That was the only point I was rasing here that it is wrong to pursue the ‘there is no difference’ line…

People should be free to take drugs, providing they’re consenting adults. Drug addicts who want to quit should be given help by the state if they require it.

[51] Jock, I think you should submit an article on LVT to this site. I have to admit that I’ve tended to regard it simply as a different base for taxation, albeit with a few positive side-effects, rather than a means of revolutionising society. Was Lloyd George’s Land tax not unsuccessful?

If you met a fellow who bragged of the pleasure he took in hurting women you wouldn’t feel yourself in a position to disapprove of him?

make you look like an imbecilic arsehole who can’t even be bothered to engage.

The liberal Harm Principle applies. Do us all a favour and engage with what’s said rather than pointless ad hominem bollocks?

I think that’s a particularly bad example, because the “signals” the state (and often *not* society at large) sends in the case of drugs, cause more problems than the consequences of individuals’ choices. As seems often to be the case.

Herbert Spencer’s liberal logic, of the survival of the fittest rather than the infantilization of all, was impeccable, if unpalatable when taken to some of his extremes.

All the current situation does is prove the maxim that crime doesn’t pay. In this case, it’s the fraud that has pervaded our financial system for a *long* time to the benefit of the few and the detriment, even destruction of the many.

“Why can’t consumption be an end in itself?”

Look around you at what is happening to economy and you have a pretty decent answer there I think.

Society has every right to signal, through the State, that some individual choices are wrong because of the consequences they have. By your logic, we’d close down all the drug rehabs – again, I don’t believe you want that either.

Let’s not just blame the banks for this. Eddie George made clear that it was policy that, aside from targetting inflation, the Bank was to ensure that property prices kept on rising in order that we could keep on spending so that we might avoid the domino effect of US recession in the early naughties reaching our shores. He even said that they knew they were storing up trouble but that that was the job he left for his successors to sort out.

The policy makers wanted it that way. Gordon Brown’s “age of irresponsibility” can be traced back to much closer to our political “masters of the universe” than they will want us to believe.

Longer term, it can of course be traced back to two men and the global banking families that own the Fed and started this bubble with the overindulgence in debt money seventy years ago – but the politicians still had to agree to that deception even back then. And so long as one of those men’s companies, John Pierpoint Morgan Jnr, survives, our latest crop of political retirees will still be quids in.

Pigs, troughs and screw the proles.

I think it’s a bit misleading to describe the current crisis as deriving from an ideological predilection for owner occupation. The crisis was caused by lenders choosing to take on too much risk, which was a poor business decision on their part. With appropriate state support for Homestake schemes and mutual housing schemes like Jock’s we could expand owner-occupation in a sustainable way. Using NINJA mortgages wasn’t sustainable, but it also wasn’t a deliberate attempt on the part of government to expand owner-occupation. All the government did wrong was to fail to rein in mortgage lenders because everyone was happily making money. Vince Cable knew better.

Why can’t consumption be an end in itself? I think it should be up to each individual to choose their own ends. I don’t think I’m in a position to prove that one end is superior to another for anyone except myself. Is it really implausible to suggest that someone could derive more satisfaction from living in a big house and driving a Ferrari than from living in a commune with some hippies and a goat? Do politicians need a general concept of the good life? Surely such a concept is just a limit on our being liberal and tolerant?

Although, sharing a platform with Vince Cable at Liverpool in spring, it was clear that he at least understands the arguments, and now wants practical ways he/we can make policy out of them.

Wait for next year I say – the centenary of the land tax budget of 1909!

As to your view that consumption is an end in itself, I despair. It’s a means to an end – if economics had nothing to do with or say about happiness why did the sub-discipline of welfare economics get started in the first place? And I certainly don’t want to live in a society in which people only go to work in order to get money to spend – I want full lives, not half-lives. Again, Sennett’s concept of “craftsmanship” (I’m sure he doesn’t mean to be sexist!) applies here.

To return to the Lib Dems for a moment (who this thread was orginially about!) their analysis certainly attracts me to the extent that, as good Ricardians, they recognise three factors of production and wish to tax land in the interests of labour and entrepreneurship. Unfortunately for them most people aren’t Ricardians, but follow the neo-classicals (or indeed Marx) in subsuming land into capital as a factor of production. This suggests to me that they are either poor social psychologists, or else need to run a major “hearts and minds” campaign on the subject. At the moment they just pass conference resolutions to make themselves feel better.

Workers are valued under the current system to the extent that they consume. Thus it is perfectly plausible to offer them tax-breaks to enhance their ability to consume basically and any kind of reform that enhances this capability is not only plausible but often advocated by political parties. It is not a matter of ‘happiness’ but of sound economics that if the products produced cannot be consumed then then the system doesnt work and what was identified as a crisis of overproduction sharpens.

Is that not what we are in effect dealing with now?? A crisis of overconsumption in the financial sector; banks have made a qucik buck by offering generous credit which of course has been snapped up by people who are egar to consume. However, so much of it exists and has caused this crisis and left the economy in what in psychological terms is called a double-bind ie, a lose-lose situation. The banks can no longer offer the credit and people can no longer afford to repay; thus the banks go bust and the people that took on the debt fall along with them.

Thomas, if you think that sexual intercourse is necessarily transactional, I can only say that I, too, once suffered from extreme poverty in my inner life. Sennett is making a point in moral philosophy – that the good life is relational, the empty life transactional. Of course we all participate in both – what I want to see is the return of an ethical dimension to progressive politics (as an alternative to impossibilism, identity-group sterility and abject surrender) and to provide a touchstone by which we may judge the merit of various proposals.

If I could resist the repeated entreaties that I should join (including by a member of the Political Committee) from the British Communist Party in the 1970s and 1980s I am hardly likely to be an apologist for “state socialism” to-day. Communism was the trahison des clercs of an earlier generation: to-day’s equivalent is the belief that markets can be regulated or deregulated in some magical way to maximise human happiness. If happiness were simply a matter of consuming goods and services that might be so, but all the studies show that beyond a certain level more money brings very little increase in welfare. My GP responded to his 20% pay rise by cutting his hours by more than 20%.

I agree that in any plausibly reformed world, exchange will continue and with it markets. Nothing I have said denied that: it’s simply that I regard both markets and the State as being like fire, a good servant and a bad master.