"First of all I should say that I agree with davy" - Norman Tebbit.

I had a conversation yesterday about Jeremy Corbyn's proposal for a "People's QE". Why is it, they asked me, that when the Bank of England does QE the government says it's the right thing to do, but when Jeremy Corbyn suggests it it's wrong and dangerous.

It's a good question, and the simple answer is that BoE QE and Corbyn QE are different things. They use the same words, possibly to muddy the water and sell the idea to the public, but they are actually very different things indeed and it's well to be aware of that.

Now if you'd like I can do another, much longer, post explaining what the difference is, but I decided to stick this up as a warning. You see, I got to wondering if anything similar to Corbyn's People's QE had been tried in recent global history and after a bit of digging about I found yes, it had. Not in any of the usual suspects like Zimbabwe, but in Ghana which began a programme functionally identical to Jeremy Corbyn's proposal in early 2013. And it's instructive to consider what happened next:



So, yeah. That's why it's a bad thing.

Hope that helps.

Every year or so I do a long post about economics, outlining where I think we are and where we're going. However, I've not got much to say about the subject at the moment, as my position hasn't changed much since the post I did last year - we're in the rocky foothills of the biggest sustained period of economic growth in human history, there will be occasional recessions because there are always recessions, and those of you sitting in you Ozark compound counting your gold and guns dreaming of how the next big crash will prove you right have a pretty long wait ahead of you.

Instead of running through that again, this morning I got to thinking about a political phrase which I'm finding really annoying at the moment. It's 'ideologically motivated'. It's the latest in a succession of meaningless phrases - like 'fair' with which people use in an attempt to demonstrate why their motivations are pure and lovely and so forth whilst those of their opponents are just evil. Because that's what motivates people who disagree with you, you see.

I got to thinking about it after reading this article. Now, I don't know much - at all - about Australian politics, so the content really meant little enough to me. What jumped out, though, was that it's written by someone claiming to be an economist who accuses his opponents of being - yup, you guessed - 'ideologically motivated'.
It's a miserable phrase. What it basically says is "My opponents aren't thinking about economics or maths or anything like that. They're motivated only by what they believe. I, on the other hand, have only the wondrous mathematical world of perfection in mind, and so am above their base mortal considerations", and that's the point when my knuckles start itching and I get to wanting to punch them in the face.

The thing is, economics isn't the study of money like most people think it is. Or only in the broadest sense. What economics is the study of is the allocation of limited resources, how that allocation influence human behaviour, and the consequences of that behaviour. And it's perfectly possible to believe, for legitimate reasons, that some outcomes are more desirable than others.
As a friend of mine once put it "There's no such thing as left or right wing economics. That's like saying there's left or right wing gravity. There's just economics'.

To illustrate what I mean using gravity;

"If elected, my government would invest heavily in parachutes."
"Ha! If elected, my government would allocate funds to crash helmets!"
"Your ideologically motivated obsession with crash helmets just proves you want poor people to fall to their deaths!"
"Rubbish. Your neoliberal obsession with parachutes demonstrates you hate poor people and want them to be hit on the head with apples!"

And so on.

So when I see people claiming to be talking about economics whilst using terms like fairness, or ideologically motivated, or whatever, it tells me one important thing. They say they're talking about economics, but they're actually talking about politics. And what your politics are is how desirable you feel certain outcomes to be and whether you personally feel that desirability outweighs the consequences of allocating resources to those actions. It's not humanly possible to avoid an ideology, and so to criticise others for doing something you can't avoid yourself is like one of those American Preacher getting angry about people having sex getting caught in a motel room with Branddie and Krystal.

Take, for example, rent controls. There's not many things economist broadly agree on, but rent controls driving down the quality and availability of housing stock is one of them. However, if you think reducing landlord revenues is a desirable thing then the commensurate consequences to renters might be acceptable to you.

What 'ideologically motivated', as a phrase, isn't, is a worthwhile thing to say in economic debate. What it is is a badge proclaiming an erroneous intellectual and moral superiority, and should you hear someone use it, chances are you'll save yourself a lot of time by ignoring what they say.

Blade Runner, 2019:



Peking, January 2015:

Well, it's over and I think most people were surprised by the result, even me.

It was obvious that Miliband was never going to be PM, although many thought he would be, but I didn't see the scale of his wipeout coming and nor the rise of the SNP or the collapse of the Libdems. I actually thought the Libdems would do better and UKIP worse than they did. It's easy to be wise in hindsight and say I should have seen that all coming but I didn't. I'll learn from it next time.
There was a point where even I wavered in my conviction on the outcome. That day when the Conservatives unveiled their monumentally stupid Right to Buy Other People's Property pledge, I sincerely thought that was so bananas it might be an election-losing policy. However the next day Ed Miliband did something even more Ed Miliband-ish than usual, like trying to eat a blancmange on the Revolution at Blackpool Pleasure Beach or something, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
The clincher was when I noticed a couple of days before the election that on all the tightly run polls, 25% of the electorate were saying "Don't know". As a word to the wise, 48 hours before an election "Don't knows" aren't going to translate into a thumping win for the challenger. They go to the Better The Devil You Know.

Anyway, my friends list has been full of people reacting with horror at the result and generally calling everyone who didn't vote the same way as them selfish and evil and so forth, and it's that which has rather inspired me back to the ol' lengthy LJ posts of yesteryear.

I've always said that - all else being equal - what wins votes is Leadership and the Economy. The SNP did well in their referendum because they had the leadership, but lost it because they lost the economic argument. In the election, Labour had neither and so couldn't win.
Yes, I'm sure that Ed Miliband is a lovely man who cares deeply and thinks really deep thoughts and all that, but he's also a complete spanner. You know he is. Don't deny it. When Labour were bigging up his caring credentials, the entire nation were imagining him tipping soup over Barack Obama whilst trying to glad hand him, or falling off his chair whilst trying to threaten Vladimir Putin. And they were thinking "No".
Economically, Labour are completely compromised and in absolute denial about it. I talk about that below, but first I'm going to raise the reaction of how people are greedy, evil, stupid and generally dupes to have voted they way they did.
It's attractive and comforting to assume people don't agree with you because they're stupid. I know, because I've done it. Pop back and read my political posts from ten years ago and I was doing it all the time, but I stopped because it's incorrect. If you're someone who thinks that others are stupid, or evil, or duped, or whatever, not to have voted the same way as you, I'm going to ask you to take a leap of faith:

Other people are just as nice, honest, clever, well-informed, and selfless as you. They just disagree with you. And until you accept that, you will never understand why you lost.

If that's not something you can or will consider, here's a link to Russell Brand and Owen Jones. You'll be happier there, being told just how gosh-darned better and nicer and cleverer you are than other people.

Anyway. I'm not going to go on at length about why you lost. Instead, I'm going to look at what you can do to improve your chances in future. In many ways that's the same thing, I suppose, but still. You see, I rather like the executive to be held to account by a strong opposition. I thought the Blair majority was a bad thing for that reason, and I'd rather like a meaningful opposition against this government too. So here's my thoughts for you, the Labour party, and the left in general. Take them as you will.

1) Who are you for?
In 1926, Leon Trotsky observed that the Labour movement had emerged from the desire of the working man to better his lot through work and education. I’ve a serious question for you. Why would anyone who fits that description vote for you now?
I fit that description. I run a small business, and want nothing more than to be left alone to get on with it and stand or fall on my own merits. What are you offering me, or people like me? Nothing that I can see. If you did what the Labour party was created to do, I’d be first in the queue to vote for you, and I’m not. For that matter why would a one-man band plumber or someone who works in a call centre and is a bit worried about their job because they lost their last one in 2009 vote for you?

So if you’re not for me, who are you for? If you ask me who the Conservatives are for, they’re pretty clear – people with jobs. You might say that they’re lying, but they’re pretty clear about it. Or the SNP? They’re for Scottish people. I can sum up who they’re for in one quick, easy sentence. You? The best I can do is that you’re for the most vulnerable in society and against the rich. And I’ve got two pieces of bad news for you on that.

Firstly, not many people actually like to be told they’re the most vulnerable in society. People have dreams and aspirations even when they’re in the gutter and they like to have them recognised, which leads me on to the second bit of bad news. Most people would quite like to be rich. Most people have pub chats about what they’d do if they won the Euromillions.
They aren’t stupid. They know it’s a dream that’ll never happen, but people have to have dreams because without them life is meaningless. So when you say you’re for the most vulnerable in society and you’ll hammer the rich to help them, what they’re hearing is this: “You, Yes, you. That fellow in the shell suit. Yes, you. You need us because you’re a loser who will never achieve your dreams, and even if you do we’ll come round and take them off you again.”

And then you act surprised they don’t vote for you. Where are their dreams? Their aspirations? Their hopes in your message?
I had a conversation with a Labour activist before the last election where he ruefully acknowledged that they were perceived as “the party of immigrants and benefits cheats”. An exaggeration for effect, yeah, but by aggressively banging on about ‘the most vulnerable’, you’re not only missing out on the rest of us, you’re also alienating a lot of the people who don’t like to be reminded that their lives haven’t worked out as they’d like.

You need to know who you are for so you can...

2) Get your message straight.
You need a single, core vision that you can sum up in one sentence. The Conservatives had “We won’t bollock up the economy like the last guys did”. The SNP had “Scotland!!”, the Libdems had “We’re not any of the other parties” (With the benefit of hindsight that may have been contributory to their poor performance, but I didn’t twig at the time).

So, another question for you: Summarise for me, in a single, snappy sentence, the core message of the Labour campaign - because once again I can’t. The best I can do is “Vulnerable people…fairness…nationalise railways…Tories…Eton...greedy rich…mansion tax…NHS (more on that below)”, which isn’t a slogan you can really put on a banner that people will march behind whilst like it or not "You won't lose your job" is.

I've seen a lot of people saying the Conservatives ran a negative campaign, but so did you. It was all reasons why the world is bad and how you need Labour to protect you. That's not an aspirational message. Where is the "desire of the working man to better his lot through work and education" in that? Owen Jones says that a politics of hope might rise from the ashes of defeat, but for that to happen you need a message of hope. Not "You have no hope so you need us to protect you", which is what you spent the election saying.

Once you’ve got your core message you can hang corroloraries onto it but without one, you’re stuffed. So once again, what is your core belief or selling point? Make it something people can understand instantly what it is, as well. If you come back with something like “Social Justice”* or “Fairness”, you’ve already lost because they don’t mean anything. They’re badges of membership to a club of approved opinions. They’re catch all phrases for a self-selecting internet echo chamber that the people you need to vote for you don’t belong to and never will.

Those are the two major issues you had, but I’ll run through some secondary ones.

1) Take responsibility for your mistakes.
There’s a line which is quite popular amongst people who get their Memes from Another Angry Voice. It’s “The Tories have borrowed more than every Labour government ever put together! Where’s their claim of economic credibility now?”
The problem is it leaves out the largest economic crash in recorded human history which happened just before borrowing took off, and I know that if you mention it you get a long explanation of why that wasn’t the fault of the Labour government - it was instead Americans and bankers and absolutely everyone else who hadn't been in government making the regulatory framework for ten years.

Now, if I were to tell you that the de-industrialisation of Britain during the 1980s was as a result of an international shift towards a globalised economy, you wouldn’t buy it. Why not? Because Thatcher and Tories, that’s why not. So get used to it. Every time you say the crash was due to unrestrained banking and not you, nobody is listening. Why not? Because Brown and Lefties, that’s why not.
From a voter’s perspective, when you mention the crash and get told that it was the fault of everyone but the actual government, it just looks like a naughty child standing next to a broken Ming vase claiming a big boy did it and ran away. You broke it, you bought it.

You might even be right – I’m not looking to have that argument here – but the important thing is it doesn’t matter. You’re stuck with it, and you really need to accept that and get on with overcoming it. Trust me. I've been on the other side of this argument for twenty years and I know.
It took Labour 15-20 years to be given another chance on economic credibility after the three day week and the winter of discontent. It’s taken the Conservatives 30 years to get the debate beyond Thatcher, and you really need to recognise you’ve got another uphill battle in terms of economic credibility to go. With luck you’ll have regained a reputation for economic competence by 2035 – which, incidentally, will be just in time for the next crash, ironically enough.

The same goes for the Iraq war. If you bring that up the standard defense is “Oh, do you think the Tories would have done anything different?”
Well, if you stop and think about it, what you’re saying is “For all the difference it made you might as well have voted Conservative”. Which is what people just did, in their absolute millions. You need to think of a better defense. Or even better, swallow it and get on with getting over it.

2) The Tories will destroy the NHS/ Welfare state.
Look, you’ve said the Tories have been going to destroy the NHS or the Welfare state at very election since 1953 and it’s still there. There’s this bloody great building with “Hospital” written on it which I can see from my back garden. We spend roughly 60% of all government expenditure on the NHS and the Welfare state and that's not shifted much as a proportion since the last election even as the deficit has fallen.
So you’ll forgive us if we don’t believe you. If the evil Tories were going to destroy the NHS they’ve had plenty of chances and it’s still there.

You see, we’re not stupid. We know there’s a rather important debate needs to be had about the NHS and how it’s funded and where the money is going to come from, especially around areas like the demographics of an aging population and social care. But if you open it up with a tirade about the Tories destroying it, you can safely assume we’ve tuned out. Really. We aren’t listening, because it’s patently untrue. You’re the boy who cried wolf. Give it up. We don’t believe you. There have been seven days to save the NHS for sixty years. If you are fighting an election on the NHS, you can safely assume you're going to lose.

3) Stop listening to the shouty ones.
Yes, Owen Jones and Laurie Penny are very articulate, vocal and passionate young supporters of the cause. And you should never let them go on Question Time again. When you read their work, you should nod, take notes if you need to and then completely ignore them. If anything, do the exact opposite of what they suggest. Whilst you’re thinking “They’re articulately elucidating the cause!” everyone else is thinking “Stop lecturing me you annoying little tit.”
Think about it like this. You'll never see David Cameron observe that he thinks Katie Hopkins has made a good point for a very good reason, and assume that many see Jones and Penny in the same light when they're on form.

That goes triple for Russell Brand. He is not your friend.

The same goes for the people who graffittied Whitehall the other day. Stop equivocating about them. No more of the “Well you have to understand their anger…” stuff. When people scrawl “Fuck Tory Scum” on a war memorial and you aren’t outraged by it, what everyone else is thinking is “Yeah, I don’t much like the Conservatives, but you lot are complete wankers”. David Cameron kept that letter saying "Sorry, there's no money left" in his shirt pocket during the election so he could pull it out and show it to people in the street and at rallies and on the stump. Likewise, that photo of the Women of WW2 memorial is worth 100,000 Conservative votes at the next election, and, like a fairy dying every time you say you don’t believe in them, every time you say “It’s awful but…” you add another Tory voter to that tally.

Labour cut Militant loose back in the 80s with very good reason. You probably should do they same again.

4) Make your peace with market economics.

State ownership of the means of production is dead. It doesn’t work and the vast majority of people know it just because they’ve got eyes and they can see what countries where stuff is owned by the government are like compared to the ones where it’s not.
Don’t find yourself drifting into thinking “But the railways…”. Stop it. It’s over. Yeah, opinion polls say the public support the renationalisation of rail, but if you haven’t learned your lesson about opinion polls by now then I can’t help.
If you do want to nationalise anything, don’t mention it and then just do it once you’ve got elected and see if the voters approve the next go round. They won’t, but if you’re lucky they might have forgotten.

Look at the Scandinavian Social Democracies you would like us to emulate. They're more enthusiastic free-marketeers than we are. It's been said that Denmark has the most open and liberal economy in the world. They recognise that the social stuff they like costs a lot of money and they set about making it in the most efficient manner possible before spending it again. That's a perfectly legitimate position and it clearly works for them. What isn't a good starting point is saying that you'll do economic stuff that will make less money and you'll still spend more. People aren't buying that, so you may as well change it.

5) Don’t put Chukka Umunna in charge of your party.
Well, you can, because you’re going to lose in 2020 anyway, but if you want to win in 2025 put someone else in. A plant in a pot, David Blunkett’s dog. ANYONE.

6) Stop blaming other people for your defeats.
Murdoch, greedy people, stupid people. Whoever. This point is basic Sun Tzu. The cause of your defeat lies within yourself, and until you understand that, victory shall ever elude you, grasshopper.


*Like, half of my friends list describe themselves as social justice warriors, and I still don’t have a clue what one of those is. And I’m in an unusual demographic in that I hang out with you lot. The people you need to reach don’t hang about with people like you, and if I don’t know what the heck you’re banging on about half the time I stone-cold guarantee neither will they. All that social justice stuff might make you feel good, but nobody is going to vote for it because it’s just a couple of random words stuck together which mean whatever the person talking wants them to mean, and as far as I can make out that's usually "other people should do as I tell them".

So talk like a human being, would you?

In 1550bc, Hyksos King Apophis declared war on Pharaoh Seknenre because his pet Hippos were too noisy.

The tube of Savlon by the sink is not toothpaste.

Back when World of Warcraft was new - about 2004-5 - I spent an afternoon playing it on someone else's account to find out what all the fuss was about. I ran about waving a sword, killing goblins and nicking their stuff, and running errands for random bystanders. After a few hours of this I came to the conclusion that WoW was specifically designed to be addictive and I wasn't going anywhere near it again.

The human brain is an exquisitely well-designed reward-seeking machine, and as psychology as a discipline improves we're getting ever-better as ticking those reward boxes in the name of entertainment. Take Pringles, for example. There's a specific set of proportions of sugar, fat and salt in a food which if present makes the brain light up like a christmas tree in a scanner, and Pringles have that combination to perfection. "Holy Crap!", your subconscious says when you eat one. "These things are effin' boss! More!"
And that's why before you know it the entire tube is gone.

WoW, I reckoned, was designed the same way. If you play it in a goal-directed way, you got a little tick or a pat every twenty minutes or so. You go and find the ring of Zognar for the villagers, get some treasure and get a message saying "Well done, Kragnor the mighty! You have saved the village!" and the brain, reward-seeking little machine that it is, goes ping! and gives you some success chemicals which make you happy. Just that little kick, every twenty minutes, but it's enough to get people spending hours, days, even years of their lives pursuing just one more step before logging off and doing something else.
Like I say - knowing myself like I do I went nowhere near it ever again.

It's also this reason I've always reckoned the internet isn't a particularly psychologically healthy place to be - it's a mechanism whereby you can receive instant rewards for pretty much any behaviour you choose. Feeling down? Get hugs. Feeling funny? Get likes. Want to troll? There's bound to be someone who will rise to the bait. And the thing is psychological study after study demonstrates that getting rewards for little or no effort isn't really all that good for you. Despite that, however, it's still great fun.

I've written a few things over the years on here which have gone viral. Possibly the best known is the "British terror alert levels" chain email which still goes round every so often, which I've seen attributed to John Cleese and which I had to have an argument with Snopes.com before they gave me credit for it. It's an odd expereince, seeing others passing on your own work, often without credit, but I've got to admit it is nice. Addictive, possibly.

Anyway, I have in the past written a few pieces for the satirical news site Newsthump. North Korea Internet blackout blamed on TalkTalk account and England world cop pitch treated by the same people who did Rooney's hair, for example. It was an occasional thing. I'd think of a halfway decent joke, submit it to them and they'd run it if they liked it. A few hundred or a thousand or two people would like it, I'd get that little reward kick, and then I'd get on with my day. That was until a few weeks ago when I submitted Warning that scrapping Page 3 could leave footballers unable to find girlfriends. They accepted it, posted it, and I thought little enough more of it. Briefly. As what followed was one of the strangest afternoons I've had in a while. Like I say; I'd had stuff go round the internet, but I've never seen it happen in real time.

Within an hour, thousands of people had liked and shared the piece. At one point I was clicking refresh and finding I was getting an average of one 'like' every 2-3 seconds. Then Myleene Klass and Lauren Laverne stuck it out on twitter and it really went a bit nuts. I sat and watched as it racked up over 50,000 likes and shares over the course of a day and the reward centre in my brain went Awoogah Awoogah. It was an insight into the power of mass communication in a social media age and the attention and reaction was, clearly, addictive. I say clearly because I've submitted more to them since then - considerably more in than in the past, trying to catch the buzz again. I've had a few successes - my piece Russia's credit rating is just fine, says last surviving Standard & poor's analyst didn't set the world on fire in terms of reach, but it made it into the political and economic sphere and was retweeted by Toomas Ilves, the President of Estonia*.

I've written a lot for them over the last few weeks. By my calculations I've been responsible for more than 50% of their site traffic in the last month, which is good as I get paid by traffic, but on the other hand I'm clearly chasing the dragon of internet approval.

The only question is, it's harmless so should I stop? Writing jokes is fun and I'd be doing it anyway. And what should I write instead?

*I can only assume relations between Estonia and Russia are at a bit of a low ebb at the moment.

Highlights of the Spring season from the BBC.

The Days of Future Pasta: In an increasingly desperate attempt to come up with a new format in the tired cookery show genre, Mary Berry and special guest star Hugh Jackman are sent back in time to compare cooking in the 1970s to now.

Breaking Bagpuss: When Professor Yaffle is diagnosed with terminal woodwoom, he goes into business with the mice to improve their recipe for Crystal Methodone by adding breadcrumbs and butterbeans.

Julia and Ghoulia: When Julia Childs returns from the grave hungry for human flesh, blogger Julia Powell creates a whimsical bestseller based on her experience of cooking her friends in a desperate attempt to save herself from a ravening zombie.

You might not have noticed, but there's an election coming up. As everyone knows, election time is a tremendous time to be on social media - everyone is really friendly and reasonable and puts forth well-argued and polite points of view to support their case. But it's not what polite and reasonable complete strangers on the internet say which will decide things - it's what the political parties will say.

So, using the miracle of time travel, I've popped into the future and looked at what the various election manifestos will say and can now share a precis of the content with you.

Conservative: We've been a tremendously good government, and would have been even better were it not for the bunch of buffoons we were forced into coalition with.

Liberal Democrats: We've been a tremendously good government, and would have been even better were it not for the bunch of buffoons we were forced into coalition with.

Labour: There has never been a Labour government in the past, and so we cannot have ever done anything wrong. No, you're wrong, there hasn't. Don't ask any difficult questions. Er...Tories?

UKIP: We support nationalisation, protectionism, high unemployment benefits, loose monetary policy, a sovereign wealth fund and not liking puffs. God knows how, but we've somehow become the 1970s Trades Union movement.

Green The introduction of our policies would immediately result in a huge recession and a spike in aggressive nationalism. We'd not only deny responsibility for this, but wouldn't even understand it.

SNP: We'd like you to vote for the thing you just voted against. Please don't look at the oil price.

So where will you place your cross?

In response to suggestions by Labour, the LibDems and UKIP that they would engage with an "Empty Chair" if David Cameron didn't attend pre-election leaders debates, the empty chair has confirmed that it will be too busy to take part.
"I've got better things to do", said that chair in a statement. "Whilst I understand that Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband and Nigel Farage have plenty of time on their hands, I am very busy supporting the hard-working bums of Britain."

"The chair is frit", said Nigel Farage, tellingly using a turn of phrase which has been archaic for decades. "Frit, I say", he continued, compounding his error. Labour leader Ed Milliband attacked the chair for "not having a leg to stand on", and then was rendered speechless and unhappy when a spokesman for the chair got a loud laugh by responding that it actually had four.

Of the three, LibDem leader Nick Clegg was the most stinging in his rebukes of the chair. "What the voters of Britain need to realise is that we don't need the chair. I have spent five years in government just standing round. I haven't needed a chair in all the years I've spent hanging round outside David Cameron's office hoping for a quick chat about electoral reform, and we don't need one now. So there."

At time of writing the empty chair was reported to be propping a door open, which observers remarked made it more useful and a better candidate for Prime Minister than any of the other three challengers.