Author: tomkilcourse

If I may presume to advise the new leader of the Labour party, he must remember that he has to pursue socialist goals within a capitalist framework. That places serious limitations on what can be achieved. In my view, it would be a mistake either to confront capitalism head on, or to embrace it unreservedly.

While it would be futile to ask for the abandonment of egalitarianism in a social context, he is most likely to achieve socialist goals by doing just that in dealing with a capitalist economy. In the economic sphere, discrimination is good. He must learn to discriminate in taxation and employment policy, favouring manufacturing and small business.

Even America, the vault of capitalism, is learning that when Nigel Lawson discounted the importance of manufacturing, he was talking nonsense. There is no possibility of service industries, high tech developments or entrepreneurial opportunities providing employment opportunities on the scale that manufacturing does for the poorly educated or unskilled population. Therefore, if you are to help the people who look to Labour as their champion, it makes sense to discriminate in favour of manufacturing.

By the same logic, you should favour the small business, and discriminate in favour of the small entrepreneur. Big organisations have two drawbacks as far as your socialist objectives are concerned: they use advancing technology to cut costs, and headcounts, and they dominate markets, so preventing small firms from competing. Hypermarkets, for example, invariably take business away from small shops, often turning the high street into a commercial desert.

It simply does not make sense, in terms of socialist objectives, to apply laws generally to big and small alike, treating the employer of, say, a dozen people, as if the firm was a commercial giant, lumbering the small firm with bureaucratic tasks that it can ill afford.

I suggest that discrimination on the lines mentioned here is necessary to the self-sufficiency of many. The alternative may be an ever increasing dependency on benefit handouts.

During my adult life in Britain I was exposed to a number of fables, much less enjoyable or wise than those of Aesop, to which I was introduced in childhood. Three, in particular, have lodged in my memory.

The death penalty is not a deterrent.

Is it an unconnected coincidence, then, that the once rare crime of murder is now almost a daily occurrence?

Physical punishment of children teaches them to use violence.

Since the clamp down on the parental smack, youth violence has grown to horrendous levels.

Banning hand-guns will make Britain safer.

Today, only criminals possess guns, and gun crime is at a record high.

Sadly, those who spouted these fables in the past, continue to do so, apparently oblivious to the frailty of their case.

Which of today’s fables have I overlooked, do you think?

During a discussion on the radio this morning, someone remarked that the Pope ‘had pulled no punches’ when speaking of the threat to Christendom. The perceived threat was secularism, which, I learned earlier this week, is seen as of the greatest danger to the Christian faith.

As someone who, in some respects, could be described as a secularist, this came as something of a shock.  I had not been aware that supporters of a secular state were persecuting Christians around the world, or planting bombs in public places.  So, I might be more admiring of the Pope’s ‘no punches’ candour had he directed it elsewhere.

Coming soon, to a field near you. The French wont have them, nor the Italians, so when they hear about Britains benefit system: guess where.

The European Commission has threatened to drag France before the European Court over the issue of Roma expulsions. Sarkozy has responded with a promise to dismantle all illegal camps in France. Italy has openly backed France, but I wonder how many others are watching from the sidelines with silent sympathy.

This is an interesting clash between the Commission, and a democratically elected government of an important member of the EU: a founder member, indeed. Sarkozy knows that the mass of French people are behind him on this, and he is not going to genuflect to Brussels too readily. My bet is on the Commission finding a fudge.

This morning’s Today Programme included an item on a Women’s Institute group of songsters. Sarah Montegue addressed the group as ‘you guys’, but at the end of the piece spoke of them as ladies. Is this a sign of Montegue’s confusion, or news of a liberal WI policy towards hermaphrodites?

During a discussion on the radio this morning between Ian Fletcher, author of ‘Free Trade Doesn’t Work- What should replace it and why’, and Philippe Legrain, author of ‘Aftershock’, the latter stated that a tariff is a tax on the consumer. While strictly true, the remark typified the kind of thinking in boxes that has led us into the present mess. It overlooks the simple truth that consumers are largely employees under another heading. By setting capital footloose in the world we have cheapened the goods we consume, but at the cost of employment. As employment continues to decline, so must consumption of non-essentials, cheap or not. This is a race to the bottom. I have not read Fletcher’s book, though I have just ordered it, but I suspect that much of his argument reflects concerns that some of us have held for years.

At a time when the ‘experts’ in the CIPD were advising companies that they must ‘empower’ their employees, I argued that empowerment was dead in the water as a concept. “Deregulation and technological development have stripped away forever the protective walls behind which western employees were able to organise in order to wring concessions from employers and government alike on terms and conditions. Capital is now free to seek out the cheapest sources of labour anywhere in the world and to move to where poverty and authoritarian government combine to ensure a compliant labour force.” (‘Human Resource Development-a contingency function?’ by Tom Kilcourse. Journal of European Industrial Training. Vol 20. No. 9. 1996)

I predicted in the nineties that “Their employer, if they have one, will probably be a labour only contractor offering them a short-term of employment. It is possible that they will not have a contract of any kind. We could see the white collar equivalent of the old tally system used on the docks whereby workers reported for duty in the morning with no guarantee of work that day.” (‘Empowerment and other myths’ by Tom Kilcourse. The Leadership and Organization Development Journal. Vol 17. No 5. 1996). We are not there yet, but the increasing number of agency workers indicates that we are heading in that direction. Increasingly workers, including the highly skilled, are not employees of the firm they work in, but of outfits like ‘Manpower’.

Broken Britain? You aint seen nothin’ yet, and in America too. The politicians and their big business backers have sold the people out.

Listening to Sarah Montegue interview Michael Howard this morning, I was surprised to learn that Howard is ‘one of Ken Clarke’s successors’, her words. Silly old me had him marked as a predecessor. It reminded me of the recent interview, also on BBC, when someone was told that X was the interviewee’s long dead descendent, the interviewer meant ancestor, of course. Does it really matter if BBC staff no longer use the correct words? After all, yer no wot dey mean, doncher.

Critical of others he thinks islamophobic, one blogger on MyT asked for some positive suggestions as to how the ‘problem’ might be dealt with. It was apparent that the ‘problem’ required some clearer definition.

In my response I suggested that the problem was largely about identity. Whereas immigrants and there British born offspring have a strong culture that tells them who, and what, they are, the indigenous population has been denied this because native British cultures have been consciously eroded to promote ‘multiculturalism’. Whereas the common cry from the left was ‘all cultures are equally valid’, they actually adopted negative positions against the native cultures, and positive positions towards those of immigrants. As a result, the alien cultures grew in strength and confidence, while the British cultures were weakened. This has led to some nervousness and antipathy in the indigenous population.

That is how I would describe the problem. Continue reading “The Cultural Problem”

I have never been a great one for watching television. When living in England my viewing was confined to the news programmes, comedy series and documentaries. Of this last category, one of my favourite presenters was David Attenborough. He was unobtrusive, a voice-over adding to what was happening on the screen with interesting detail. The programme was not about him, but about the topic. That situation appears to have changed.

Last night, I watched part of a documentary on silverback gorillas. I did not catch the name of the presenter, but he worked in the Attenborough mode, allowing one to study the gorillas without distraction. I then switched to BBC 1 to watch something called ‘Secret Britain’. What a contrast! The camera was dominated by the two presenters, particularly by the woman. Spending all of two or three minutes on the ‘secret’, the pair were pictured walking from one spot to another, speaking directly into camera or standing to admire the view being described. The producers of this shallow tripe clearly thought the viewer would be more interested in watching the behind of the female presenter as she walked, than in the view she was there to present. This was straight egovision, and uninteresting for it.