Happy Halloween: students of makeup design at Vancouver Film School display their creations
Missed warning about the City
In the September issue of Prospect, Howard Davies revealed he sent Gordon Brown a “valedictory despatch” when he left his job as chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2003. The letter is something of a warning against Labour’s lack of regulation in the City. “I detect an unhealthy reverence for the wholesale financial markets,” Davies wrote. “The City is seen as a goose that lays golden eggs, and therefore one to which it is dangerous to say ‘boo’... Yet the major firms are riven with conflicts of interest, and have demonstrated that it is dangerous to rely on their internal ethical standards.”
Davies did not get a reply from Brown, who finally admitted in April 2010 that “we should have been regulating them more, so I’ve learnt from that.” But Michael Dugher MP, who worked for Brown in No 10 and is now parliamentary private secretary to Ed Miliband, responded to Prospect: “The truth is nobody foresaw the global financial crash. To say otherwise is revisionism to the point of complete delusion.” Davies himself declined to comment further.
Mervyn’s short triumph
Thanks to the Vickers Commission on banking, we know that financial reform takes a very long time: the proposed changes will not come into effect until 2019. But another reform, that of the FSA, is taking almost as long. The coalition’s decision to break up the FSA and send most of its regulatory powers back to the Bank of England was reported as a triumph for the Bank’s governor Mervyn King back in June 2010. Less widely remarked upon is that the transfer of powers will not be complete until early 2013. As King’s second term ends in June 2013, his triumph will be short-lived.
Lefty economists against tax
Senior Lib Dems suspected the involvement of Conservative HQ in the recent letter to the FT, signed by 20 leading economists, calling for a drop in the 50p top rate of tax. However, it was little noticed that several of the signatories—including Bob Rowthorn, Paul Ormerod and Nick Bosanquet—are leftists. Bosanquet is a Lib Dem, and Paul Ormerod—who, like Rowthorn, is a longstanding Prospect contributor—still uses left-wing language, although he now sees the public-sector middle class as the main enemy of the working class. Meanwhile Bob Rowthorn, a Communist party member for many years and now emeritus economics professor at Cambridge, subsequently clarified that he was not against using tax to reduce inequality, but thinks a permanent property or wealth tax would be more effective.
Blue Labour aims big
So Maurice Glasman, architect of Blue Labour, thinks his ideas can become as influential in the Labour party as the Institute of Economic Affairs was for the Tories in the 1970s (see “The next big thing?” by David Goodhart). That is no modest claim. In his History of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr declares the IEA “undoubtedly the most influential think tank in modern British history.” It is true that Glasman’s allies are popping up in interesting places. The Oxford academic Marc Stears is heading an IPPR inquiry into the left’s response to the Big Society, and Glasman’s close friend Duncan Weldon has just become senior policy officer at the TUC. But there is a long way to go. It is also worth recalling how Will Hutton’s stakeholding ideas, similar to Glasman’s in many ways, were flavour of the month on the centre-left in the mid-1990s—only to have virtually no influence when New Labour came to power.
Dr Heffer, I presume
The columnist Simon Heffer has made his forthright views on Boris Johnson widely known. Perhaps his comments should be awarded extra respect now that the Daily Mail has bestowed upon him the byline: “Simon Heffer PHD.”
The inner facts of JG Ballard
John Baxter’s new biography of JG Ballard, The Inner Man, accuses the late novelist of widespread sloppiness with facts, including getting both his parents’ birth dates wrong in his memoir Miracles of Life. Baxter also states that: “Even after Thatcher was eased out of office in 1990, public life didn’t lack women with her quality of schoolmarmish aggression…” and lists, as evidence, Barbara Woodhouse, Mary Whitehouse, Esther Rantzen, and Germaine Greer.
Greer was indeed going strong then. But Barbara Woodhouse had been dead two years by 1990; Mary Whitehouse was a spent force after a spinal injury in 1988; Esther Rantzen’s campaigning TV show That’s Life was on its last legs, and she was on to heartwarming tales of ordinary heroism in Hearts of Gold.
Turkey’s “managed democracy”
Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently outlined his vision for a Turkish model of democratic capitalism: “management of people, science and money.” Precisely what “management” means is now becoming clear. The government has brought various public bodies under direct state control, including the Turkish Academy of Sciences (Tüba) and the scientific funding agency Tübitak. The move has appalled many Turkish scientists, who fear they will have to be increasingly careful about what they say, teach and research. One obvious concern is whether the authorities will use their new power to suppress Darwinism. Turkey already has the lowest public acceptance of the theory of evolution in all of Europe. Stem-cell research is also unlikely to find favour.
An audience with Thatcher
Ever found yourself stuck in traffic wishing you were in the company of Margaret Thatcher? If so, good news. AudioGO, the home of BBC audiobooks, is releasing a series of classic interviews with major figures including Paul McCartney, Alfred Hitchcock and Lady Thatcher. With radio appearances spanning 1975-1990, “BBC Archive Voices: Margaret Thatcher” covers Thatcher’s love of science, porcelain and The Two Ronnies, her response to media attacks early in her career and her worst moment as prime minister, during the Falklands war.Prospect is offering ten readers a chance to win a copy on CD or download. Visit www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/archivevoices
One to watch
George P Bush—or “P,” as he is known—is the eldest son of Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and nephew of George W Bush. Aged 35, he only recently got involved in politics and is not yet standing for any office, but is already being touted as heir apparent to the family’s political dynasty.
It is useful that his mother, Columba, is Mexican. At the last presidential election, only 33 per cent of Hispanics voted Republican. Just like newly-elected Floridan senator Marco Rubio, “P” could become key to wooing them back. He has founded the Hispanic Republicans of Texas: an organisation that aims to “recruit and train Hispanic Republican candidates.”
He has impressive credentials: a background of military service, and academic, sporting and business prowess. In his day job, he is a partner at a real estate private equity firm. The political commentator Jeb Golinkin may have understated it when he said: “a Hispanic with degrees from Rice and Texas Law, a record of military service, backed by an organisation devoted to making Hispanic Republicans players in Texas politics, and with the last name Bush? Sounds like the kind of candidate [who] might be able to win.”
Missed warning about the City
In the September issue of Prospect, Howard Davies revealed he sent Gordon Brown a “valedictory despatch” when he left his job as chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2003. The letter is something of a warning against Labour’s lack of regulation in the City. “I detect an unhealthy reverence for the wholesale financial markets,” Davies wrote. “The City is seen as a goose that lays golden eggs, and therefore one to which it is dangerous to say ‘boo’... Yet the major firms are riven with conflicts of interest, and have demonstrated that it is dangerous to rely on their internal ethical standards.”
Davies did not get a reply from Brown, who finally admitted in April 2010 that “we should have been regulating them more, so I’ve learnt from that.” But Michael Dugher MP, who worked for Brown in No 10 and is now parliamentary private secretary to Ed Miliband, responded to Prospect: “The truth is nobody foresaw the global financial crash. To say otherwise is revisionism to the point of complete delusion.” Davies himself declined to comment further.
Mervyn’s short triumph
Thanks to the Vickers Commission on banking, we know that financial reform takes a very long time: the proposed changes will not come into effect until 2019. But another reform, that of the FSA, is taking almost as long. The coalition’s decision to break up the FSA and send most of its regulatory powers back to the Bank of England was reported as a triumph for the Bank’s governor Mervyn King back in June 2010. Less widely remarked upon is that the transfer of powers will not be complete until early 2013. As King’s second term ends in June 2013, his triumph will be short-lived.
Lefty economists against tax
Senior Lib Dems suspected the involvement of Conservative HQ in the recent letter to the FT, signed by 20 leading economists, calling for a drop in the 50p top rate of tax. However, it was little noticed that several of the signatories—including Bob Rowthorn, Paul Ormerod and Nick Bosanquet—are leftists. Bosanquet is a Lib Dem, and Paul Ormerod—who, like Rowthorn, is a longstanding Prospect contributor—still uses left-wing language, although he now sees the public-sector middle class as the main enemy of the working class. Meanwhile Bob Rowthorn, a Communist party member for many years and now emeritus economics professor at Cambridge, subsequently clarified that he was not against using tax to reduce inequality, but thinks a permanent property or wealth tax would be more effective.
Blue Labour aims big
So Maurice Glasman, architect of Blue Labour, thinks his ideas can become as influential in the Labour party as the Institute of Economic Affairs was for the Tories in the 1970s (see “The next big thing?” by David Goodhart). That is no modest claim. In his History of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr declares the IEA “undoubtedly the most influential think tank in modern British history.” It is true that Glasman’s allies are popping up in interesting places. The Oxford academic Marc Stears is heading an IPPR inquiry into the left’s response to the Big Society, and Glasman’s close friend Duncan Weldon has just become senior policy officer at the TUC. But there is a long way to go. It is also worth recalling how Will Hutton’s stakeholding ideas, similar to Glasman’s in many ways, were flavour of the month on the centre-left in the mid-1990s—only to have virtually no influence when New Labour came to power.
Dr Heffer, I presume
The columnist Simon Heffer has made his forthright views on Boris Johnson widely known. Perhaps his comments should be awarded extra respect now that the Daily Mail has bestowed upon him the byline: “Simon Heffer PHD.”
The inner facts of JG Ballard
John Baxter’s new biography of JG Ballard, The Inner Man, accuses the late novelist of widespread sloppiness with facts, including getting both his parents’ birth dates wrong in his memoir Miracles of Life. Baxter also states that: “Even after Thatcher was eased out of office in 1990, public life didn’t lack women with her quality of schoolmarmish aggression…” and lists, as evidence, Barbara Woodhouse, Mary Whitehouse, Esther Rantzen, and Germaine Greer.
Greer was indeed going strong then. But Barbara Woodhouse had been dead two years by 1990; Mary Whitehouse was a spent force after a spinal injury in 1988; Esther Rantzen’s campaigning TV show That’s Life was on its last legs, and she was on to heartwarming tales of ordinary heroism in Hearts of Gold.
Turkey’s “managed democracy”
Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently outlined his vision for a Turkish model of democratic capitalism: “management of people, science and money.” Precisely what “management” means is now becoming clear. The government has brought various public bodies under direct state control, including the Turkish Academy of Sciences (Tüba) and the scientific funding agency Tübitak. The move has appalled many Turkish scientists, who fear they will have to be increasingly careful about what they say, teach and research. One obvious concern is whether the authorities will use their new power to suppress Darwinism. Turkey already has the lowest public acceptance of the theory of evolution in all of Europe. Stem-cell research is also unlikely to find favour.
An audience with Thatcher
Ever found yourself stuck in traffic wishing you were in the company of Margaret Thatcher? If so, good news. AudioGO, the home of BBC audiobooks, is releasing a series of classic interviews with major figures including Paul McCartney, Alfred Hitchcock and Lady Thatcher. With radio appearances spanning 1975-1990, “BBC Archive Voices: Margaret Thatcher” covers Thatcher’s love of science, porcelain and The Two Ronnies, her response to media attacks early in her career and her worst moment as prime minister, during the Falklands war.Prospect is offering ten readers a chance to win a copy on CD or download. Visit www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/archivevoices
One to watch
George P Bush—or “P,” as he is known—is the eldest son of Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and nephew of George W Bush. Aged 35, he only recently got involved in politics and is not yet standing for any office, but is already being touted as heir apparent to the family’s political dynasty.
It is useful that his mother, Columba, is Mexican. At the last presidential election, only 33 per cent of Hispanics voted Republican. Just like newly-elected Floridan senator Marco Rubio, “P” could become key to wooing them back. He has founded the Hispanic Republicans of Texas: an organisation that aims to “recruit and train Hispanic Republican candidates.”
He has impressive credentials: a background of military service, and academic, sporting and business prowess. In his day job, he is a partner at a real estate private equity firm. The political commentator Jeb Golinkin may have understated it when he said: “a Hispanic with degrees from Rice and Texas Law, a record of military service, backed by an organisation devoted to making Hispanic Republicans players in Texas politics, and with the last name Bush? Sounds like the kind of candidate [who] might be able to win.”
