Time to move the capital?
27th January 2010 In light of the fury surrounding MPs expenses and their failure to curb reckless banking practices, might this be a good moment for Prospect to dust down an idea from its December 2002 edition and once again call for our capital and national parliament to be relocated out of London?
Back in 2002 Prospect wrote of “Britain’s over-centralisation [in the southeast] of networks of power and energy,” and asked readers—somewhat tongue in cheek—to propose where parliament might best relocate. I suggested Stoke-on-Trent—among other things for its hub location, civic identity, cultural quarter and the boost to both business and to the badly decayed regional housing stock that such a move would bring.
After all that has transpired at Westminster since 2002, what shake-up could better purge and revitalise the national body-politic? By offering the electorate such an unexpected and uncompromising way of expressing anger and disillusionment with politics, Prospect could help to steal a march on the sinister forces bent upon exploiting that anger for less desirable ends. Martin Bradley Tamworth, Staffordshire
Slums won’t save the world
3rd February 2010 Stewart Brand’s proposals (February) on squatter cities certainly deserve serious attention. However, once 80 per cent of the countryside has been cleared of peasants and small farmers—who have been packed off to live in festering slums like rats in a behavioural sink—the land freed of their inconvenient presence will become a happy hunting ground for Monsanto, Novartis and the rest: turned over to growing beef for McDonald’s, or haricot beans for Tesco. As an old ’68er, I remain loyal to John Seymour, the guru of self-sufficiency, who argued that the best basis for a stable and healthy society is a free and self-sufficient peasantry. Seymour has history on his side, while Brand’s “magic” slum utopia has a distinct air of patronising condescension—mixed with more than a touch of wishful thinking. Roger Jones Fullerton, Andover
Health risks revealed
31st January 2010 As a public health doctor, I was delighted to read Nigel Hawkes’s article (January) on how risk is presented in health research and practice. A great deal of my working life is spent explaining these very issues to the public and professionals alike. But his suggestion that public health specialists might actively misrepresent risk for their own (allegedly) nefarious ends is wrongheaded. An essential part of our NHS training is designed to avoid exactly this. That we are not always successful in doing so merely reflects the small part that we play in large and complex health systems, riven with conflicting interest groups—from politicians to big pharma and healthcare providers. Numbers, like words, have meanings dependent upon their context. Bruce Bolam Trainee in public health
Euro schadenfreude
5th February 2010 The passage of time can be cruel for predictions. Oliver Kamm (January) said that the member states of the eurozone had “fared much less disastrously than, say, Iceland.” With Greece now in intensive care and Portugal and Spain queuing for admission, this judgement looks distinctly premature. All three will be in purgatory for a long time without the freedom to devalue their currency that Britain enjoys, and the impact will be felt throughout the eurozone. John Willman London SE24
Perfume error
30th January 2010 Your chart of relative prices of liquids (Data, February) had me filling up with indignation at the manufacturers of printer ink, until I realised your price for Chanel No 5 was out by a factor of ten. A litre of that would cost you £1,100, making the perfume bar on your chart at least three times as high as the ink bar. If you had picked a scent by Amouage, the bar would have shot off the top of the page. Alison Cearns Wirral
Tobin tax nonsense
3rd February 2010 Stephen Nickell (February) points out that the prospective return from a Tobin-type tax on all financial transactions could yield the British exchequer around 6 per cent of GDP. That figure is true—but far too good to believe. It would be enough to allow the standard rate of income tax to be abolished, and implies that the gross profit from financial activity must itself account for a multiple of 6 per cent of GDP. This is ridiculous.
The fact is that, while a Tobin tax at the suggested rate of 0.05 per cent on turnover sounds minimal, it actually represents a very high proportion of the trading margin on transactions. Indeed, much business is based on very low profits on very large amounts of money—often less than the 0.05 per cent proposed tax rate.
As put forward originally by the American economist James Tobin, the tax would have been confined to foreign exchange transactions, in order to make large speculative deals unprofitable, while leaving genuine commercial operations unaffected. Thus the success of the tax could almost have been measured by how little revenue it raised. But the tax would also reduce trading profits of financial firms, and thus the yield of corporation tax, as well as the tax levied on the (reduced) incomes and bonuses of traders, not to mention tax payments on dividends. It is quite extraordinary that both governments and many figures in the highly sophisticated financial world should now fall for such an illusion. Harvey R Cole Winchester
Social lawlessness
12th February 2010 Nigel Warburton’s essay on the “new era of social lawlessness” (February) departed from legal logic as well as philosophical coherence. He conflated civil offences (like traffic offences) with criminal ones (burglary and copyright infringement). Such things are just not comparable; neither are they related attitudes. For example, the phrase “taking the law into your own hands” seldom involves imposing personal legal concepts on an offender, but rather instinctive self-defence in desperate, impromptu situations. I doubt that Warburton has ever personally encountered burglars in his own home or muggers intent on violence. At such moments, as I can testify from experience, the law’s protection is so out of reach as to become academic—and an infinity away from jumping red lights or exceeding speed limits. Whatever philosophical problems are posed by these dilemmas, they are not the ones he has put forward. Graham Wade Withernsea, East Yorkshire
27th January 2010 In light of the fury surrounding MPs expenses and their failure to curb reckless banking practices, might this be a good moment for Prospect to dust down an idea from its December 2002 edition and once again call for our capital and national parliament to be relocated out of London?
Back in 2002 Prospect wrote of “Britain’s over-centralisation [in the southeast] of networks of power and energy,” and asked readers—somewhat tongue in cheek—to propose where parliament might best relocate. I suggested Stoke-on-Trent—among other things for its hub location, civic identity, cultural quarter and the boost to both business and to the badly decayed regional housing stock that such a move would bring.
After all that has transpired at Westminster since 2002, what shake-up could better purge and revitalise the national body-politic? By offering the electorate such an unexpected and uncompromising way of expressing anger and disillusionment with politics, Prospect could help to steal a march on the sinister forces bent upon exploiting that anger for less desirable ends. Martin Bradley Tamworth, Staffordshire
Slums won’t save the world
3rd February 2010 Stewart Brand’s proposals (February) on squatter cities certainly deserve serious attention. However, once 80 per cent of the countryside has been cleared of peasants and small farmers—who have been packed off to live in festering slums like rats in a behavioural sink—the land freed of their inconvenient presence will become a happy hunting ground for Monsanto, Novartis and the rest: turned over to growing beef for McDonald’s, or haricot beans for Tesco. As an old ’68er, I remain loyal to John Seymour, the guru of self-sufficiency, who argued that the best basis for a stable and healthy society is a free and self-sufficient peasantry. Seymour has history on his side, while Brand’s “magic” slum utopia has a distinct air of patronising condescension—mixed with more than a touch of wishful thinking. Roger Jones Fullerton, Andover
Health risks revealed
31st January 2010 As a public health doctor, I was delighted to read Nigel Hawkes’s article (January) on how risk is presented in health research and practice. A great deal of my working life is spent explaining these very issues to the public and professionals alike. But his suggestion that public health specialists might actively misrepresent risk for their own (allegedly) nefarious ends is wrongheaded. An essential part of our NHS training is designed to avoid exactly this. That we are not always successful in doing so merely reflects the small part that we play in large and complex health systems, riven with conflicting interest groups—from politicians to big pharma and healthcare providers. Numbers, like words, have meanings dependent upon their context. Bruce Bolam Trainee in public health
Euro schadenfreude
5th February 2010 The passage of time can be cruel for predictions. Oliver Kamm (January) said that the member states of the eurozone had “fared much less disastrously than, say, Iceland.” With Greece now in intensive care and Portugal and Spain queuing for admission, this judgement looks distinctly premature. All three will be in purgatory for a long time without the freedom to devalue their currency that Britain enjoys, and the impact will be felt throughout the eurozone. John Willman London SE24
Perfume error
30th January 2010 Your chart of relative prices of liquids (Data, February) had me filling up with indignation at the manufacturers of printer ink, until I realised your price for Chanel No 5 was out by a factor of ten. A litre of that would cost you £1,100, making the perfume bar on your chart at least three times as high as the ink bar. If you had picked a scent by Amouage, the bar would have shot off the top of the page. Alison Cearns Wirral
Tobin tax nonsense
3rd February 2010 Stephen Nickell (February) points out that the prospective return from a Tobin-type tax on all financial transactions could yield the British exchequer around 6 per cent of GDP. That figure is true—but far too good to believe. It would be enough to allow the standard rate of income tax to be abolished, and implies that the gross profit from financial activity must itself account for a multiple of 6 per cent of GDP. This is ridiculous.
The fact is that, while a Tobin tax at the suggested rate of 0.05 per cent on turnover sounds minimal, it actually represents a very high proportion of the trading margin on transactions. Indeed, much business is based on very low profits on very large amounts of money—often less than the 0.05 per cent proposed tax rate.
As put forward originally by the American economist James Tobin, the tax would have been confined to foreign exchange transactions, in order to make large speculative deals unprofitable, while leaving genuine commercial operations unaffected. Thus the success of the tax could almost have been measured by how little revenue it raised. But the tax would also reduce trading profits of financial firms, and thus the yield of corporation tax, as well as the tax levied on the (reduced) incomes and bonuses of traders, not to mention tax payments on dividends. It is quite extraordinary that both governments and many figures in the highly sophisticated financial world should now fall for such an illusion. Harvey R Cole Winchester
Social lawlessness
12th February 2010 Nigel Warburton’s essay on the “new era of social lawlessness” (February) departed from legal logic as well as philosophical coherence. He conflated civil offences (like traffic offences) with criminal ones (burglary and copyright infringement). Such things are just not comparable; neither are they related attitudes. For example, the phrase “taking the law into your own hands” seldom involves imposing personal legal concepts on an offender, but rather instinctive self-defence in desperate, impromptu situations. I doubt that Warburton has ever personally encountered burglars in his own home or muggers intent on violence. At such moments, as I can testify from experience, the law’s protection is so out of reach as to become academic—and an infinity away from jumping red lights or exceeding speed limits. Whatever philosophical problems are posed by these dilemmas, they are not the ones he has put forward. Graham Wade Withernsea, East Yorkshire
