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Creativity Motivation – What is motivation – Corey K Katir
Advertising From http://www.creativitymotivation.com Describes motivation process for creativity with emphasis on intrinsic motivation by Corey K Katir The chances of a British referendum on EU membership are growing
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THE war drums are pounding among those dreaming of a referendum on EU membership. As noted in a post last week, Peter Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, co-inventor of Blairism and ex-European Union trade commissioner, stirred things up with a lecture at Oxford University, suggesting that pro-Europeans (of whom he is one) should support such a vote, if and when euro-zone integration deepens to such an extent that Britain finds itself an associate member of a two-tier club. Lord Mandelsonas democratic analysis was hard to dispute. He noted that 56% of respondents want a referendum on British membership. He also noted that the mandate secured by the government of Edward Heath in the only ever British referendum on Europe, in 1975, “belongs to another time and another generation”. A few days after Lord Mandelsonas speech, the Spectator magazineas political editor, James Forsyth, quoted a source aintimately involved in Tory electoral strategya who stated that it was abasically a certaintya that the next Conservative general election manifesto would contain a promise to hold an EU referendum. The goal of such a wheeze, as analysed by Mr Forsyth, is twofold. First, to shut down the threat from UKIP, the anti-European party which is currently siphoning votes from disgruntled right-wing Tories. Second, to ashoot the foxa of Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London who is on record as supporting a referendum on Europe. Something clearly being up, I made some calls yesterday to well-placed Conservative and Labour sources. I put it to one Tory source that the briefing smacked of Number 11 Downing Street to me, and George Osborne. This merely triggered a lot of mumbling and coughing, alas. But I note that this morning Paul Goodman of ConservativeHome is firmly fingering the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the basis that (a) Mr Osborne has a fondness for such bold gambles, and (b) Mr Osborne might one day find himself in competition with Mr Johnson to succeed David Cameron as Tory leader, so has an interest in shooting foxes belonging to the mayor. Now, I suspect that I start from a different place to Mr Goodman and Mr Forsyth on this question, for the simple reason thatawhile I enjoy a debate about internal Tory politics as much as the next hackaI donat actually want Britain to leave the EU, so find all this blithe talk about who would gain from a referendum a little alarming. But Mr Forsyth is on the money, as far as I can tell, with his reporting that inside Tory high command there is a sense that Mr Cameron may not have very much choice about calling a referendum if UKIPas surge carries on, and ifaas senior Tories suspectaLabour makes its own referendum pledge in its general election manifesto. As the Spectator reported, one favoured option would be to propose a renegotiation of Britainas terms of membership after the election, to be followed within 18 months by a referendum on the results of those negotiations. I cannot improve on Mr Goodmanas pithy analysis of the risks for Mr Cameron if he were to promise British voters a new deal with Europe, to be endorsed by them at a referendum at the end of negotiations with the other EU nations. As Mr Goodman points out, the rest of the EU, led by Germany and France, might tell Mr Cameron to get lost, at which point he would face the unpalatable choice of campaigning to stay in the union anyway (a vote he might lose, and which would split the Tory Party), or campaigning to leave (a vote he might lose, and which would split the Tory party). Mr Goodman offers a third scenario, which I admit I think less likely, in which France and Germany take a pause from trying to save the euro, at immense pain to their public finances, and agree to give Britain what it wants, ie, low-cost, low-regulation free-rider membership of the single market. In that case, Mr Goodman asks, what happens if Mr Cameron puts his concessions to the country and gets a No vote anyway, because the public wants to kick the government? So, is there going to be a referendum? I donat think it has been decided, but it cannot be ruled out. There are lots of rational reasons for Mr Cameron to fear any sort of referendum pledge. Most simplyathough Bagehot accepts that this is an argument that makes many people at Westminster yawn in boredomasuch a referendum might lead to Britainas departure. And although he finds the EU exasperating in lots of ways, the prime minister does not actually want to leave the EU. He does not love the European project, instead regarding membership as something to be nudged by a cool cost-benefit analysis. And weighing those costs and benefits today, Mr Cameron thinks that the right of his party are simply miscalculating where the balance lies. For him, the benefits still trump the costs, a close ally insists. William Hague, the foreign secretary, ends up in the same place when he conducts his cost-benefit analysis, other sources tell me, even ifaemotionallyathere are aspects of European membership that he finds harder to swallow than the prime minister. Yet the Tory leadership could end up being forced into promising a referendum, agrees a senior source, either because of a surge by UKIP in the run up to the next general election, or because the Labour Party promised an EU referendum of their own. Might Labour promise an EU referendum in its next manifesto, knowing that such a pledge would act as a wedge to split the Conservative Party? If Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor and long-time sceptic about the European single currency, were the party leader, he would probably be atempteda, a senior Labour MP says. In contrast, Ed Miliband genuinely is instinctively pro-European. He thinks of himself as a European social democrat, and is surrounded by close aides, such as Stewart Wood, who think the same way. His own family background (his family came to Britain as refugees from the Holocaust) inclines him to run a mile from nativist and nationalist arguments. Moreover, Mr Miliband fears that a referendum promise would create substantial economic uncertainty for Britain in such fields as foreign inward investment, I am told. Labour also aburned its fingers in the pasta by promising a referendum on the abortive EU Constitutional Treaty, only to renege on that promise when the Constitution was voted down in France and the Netherlands and was turned into the Lisbon Treaty. It would perilous for Labour to make the same mistake again, says the MP. It is true, I am also told, that some in the party wanted the leadership to be more opportunistic in October 2011, and to ally themselves with Tory Eurosceptics in the division lobbies in the vote that saw 81 Tory MPs rebel over whether to hold a referendum on EU membership. Yet there is a good case that such opportunism would have been counter-productive. Had Tory rebels known that Labour MPs were going to be whipped to vote against the government then many of the 81 would have abstained or simply absented themselves from Parliament. By standing back from an internal Tory squabble and abstaining, awe probably maximised the Tory rebellion,a says a Labour source. Yet as with Mr Cameron, the decision could be taken out of Mr Milibandas hands by a UKIP surge. If UKIP wins the 2014 European elections, aall parties would come under really intense pressure to hold an EU referendum,a says the same Labour source. aIt would be pretty hard to resist at that stage.a As to whether an in-out referendum would be winnable, few British politicians are willing to bet on that any more, given the breakneck pace of events in the euro zone. aWeave a better chance of winning a referendum if Labour is in power,a is all a Labour MP will say. A final thought. If this debate strikes non-British readers as amazingly navel-gazing, given what else is going on in the euro, I understand that. Butaunfortunately for Euro-rationalists like meathe chaos in the euro zone feeds directly into the British debate, turbo-charging the rage of those who want out of a European project they see as statist, sclerotic, spendthrift and doomed. The debate of a British referendum on the EU is also being watched closely in at least some other capitals, I can report. Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, is particularly concerned. Though a bit of a trimmer and waverer, Mr Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister, is a free-market liberal and free trader, and an Anglophile. In his view, a British departure would be a disaster for the European project, condemning it to become much more statist and protectionist. A figure close to Mr Barroso, passing through London a few days ago, was certainly keen to know whether a referendum might be promised here. Standing on the pavement in St Jamesas after the meeting, the visitor from Brussels asked me, out of the blue, what the odds were of Britain leaving the EU by 2020. My instinctive response: 40%. A day or two later, I think that might be a bit low.
Are British newspapers a menace to democracy?
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BAGEHOT spent today in Singapore on the final leg of a trip watching the British foreign secretary at work in Asia. A future column will discuss Britain’s new foreign policy plans, but this week’s print columnawritten from the roadaexamines a furore back home triggered by the latest hearings of the Leveson inquiry into press ethics. Ripples from the debate about the British press, and its unhealthily swaggering relations with the country’s political leaders, reached Asia all week. To my slight surprise, I found myself watching Leveson coverage live at Hong Kong airport, courtesy of CNN, caught up on more footage late at night on streaming video, and my Blackberry hummed with endless headlines.
Why is a row about British domestic press regulation global news? Is it because British newspapers and newspaper tycoons really are a menace to democracy? I am not sure. In part, of course, it is because Ruper Murdoch, the tycoon whose evidence made most waves this week, is a global media baron. But in part, I argue in this column, Britain simply has a very odd media market. Here’s the column:
WHEN Britainas biggest tabloid claimed credit for a Conservative general election victory with the front-page headline aItas the Sun wot won ita, its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, was not pleased. Giving evidence on April 25th to a public inquiry on press ethics, Mr Murdoch explained that he had administered aa terrible bollockinga to the Sunas then editor, Kelvin MacKenzie. A atastelessa claim, he said. aWe donat have that sort of power.a
The inquiryachaired by Lord Justice Leveson, a judgeathis week shone a light on ties between the media and politicians. The most dangerous revelations were e-mails apparently detailing contacts between News Corporation, Mr Murdochas company, and David Cameronas government during the firmas abortive bid to buy BSkyB, a satellite-television outfit. The relationship was sometimes friendly, sometimes tense, but always closeaand rarely craven on the part of the media firm.
Another milestone in the Sunas political coverage does not seem to have earned a proprietorial rebuke. It happened in 1992, on the night that Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The prime minister of the day, John Major, telephoned Mr MacKenzie to ask how the Sun would be covering the story. aActually,a Mr MacKenzie replied, aI have a bucket of shit on my desk, prime minister, and Iam going to pour it all over you.a Asked if this tale was true during his own appearance at the Leveson Inquiry, Mr MacKenzie enthusiastically re-enacted it.
Mr Mackenzieas cheerful thuggery is unusual, even in Fleet Street. But the fact that he talked to a prime minister that way and kept his job suggests that relations between the British press and politicians are pretty unusual. Does that mean that the press wields democracy-threatening power?
The answer is complicated by the oddity of Britainas media market. In America, News Corporation is just one of five important media firms. In contrast, its British arm is a local titan. The Sun has 2.6m readers in a country of 60m people: scale that up, and an American equivalent would sell 13m copies a day. Seven British dailies have circulations larger than the biggest-selling French national newspaper.
That many titles have been out of control is not in dispute. Just ask Lord Justice Leveson, hearing allegations of illegal phone-hacking, bribery and paparazzi intruding on funerals. But press savagery towards the rich and powerful also taps into an ancient British tradition, that of instinctive derision for the strutting toff or politician, amid the battle-cry: aWho does he think he is?a
If prodded, politicians will insist (through gritted teeth) that press savagery is vital to democracy. They are more skittish about whether they think newspapers decide elections.
In his memoirs, Tony Blairawhose 1997 win was preceded by an endorsement by the Murdoch pressawrites about a 1995 flight to address a News Corporation conference in Australia (a pilgrimage that outraged the left). Mr Blair explains himself with a rhetorical question. Murdoch newspapers had hitherto been arancorous in their opposition to the Labour Partya. On being invited into the alionas dena, Mr Blair argues: aYou go, donat you?a
Addressing the Leveson inquiry, Mr Murdoch told how relations with Mr Blairas successor, Gordon Brown, soured after his newspapers switched their support from Labour to Mr Cameronas Conservatives. Once he and Mr Brown swapped tales of Scottish ancestors and their young children played together, he said. When his papers turned, Mr Murdoch claims that Mr Brown called to declare awara on his companies. As for Mr Cameron, when the furore about press abuses took off in 2011, he declared that all party leaders had turned a blind eye to warning signs, because they were aso keen to win the support of newspapersa.
Newspaper campaigns clearly influence policy-making. Former Blair aides have credited Mr Murdoch, a tireless Eurosceptic, with helping to keep Britain out of the euro. But arguably their greatest day-to-day influence is indirect. British political leaders are drawn from an increasingly narrow, metropolitan pool. When tabloids bellow that they know the mind of the ordinary voter, it requires some self-confidence for an Oxbridge-educated, sushi-munching minister to ignore them.
Britain is an outlier in other ways. In lots of European countries politics encompasses angry extremes, with the hard-right and far-left attracting hefty votes. By contrast, newspapers in such countries are often small-circulation, centrist, and prim. Britain does things the other way round. Partly because of first-past-the-post voting, the big parties cluster at the political centre. The brass-band blare of dissent comes from a fiercely partisan press.
Call my diary secretary
Optimism may be hard this week. But the current stink could signal a general cleaning of the stables. Political leaders have already opened their diaries to disclose meetings with proprietors and editors. In parallel, fresh scandals over party fund-raising have revived efforts to reach a cross-party deal on donations, perhaps by capping the sums that individual donors can give.
Such reforms could help, says a senior politician. Donors, editors and proprietors have less influence than is commonly assumed. But they have enjoyed excessive access to party leaders, who for years devoted too much time to meeting them. Transparency over diaries should reduce such contacts. A cap on donations would do the same. If politicians meet media bosses and donors more sparingly and simply as professional contacts, that would be a good thing.
Such a change is overdue. Journalists and politicians can never be truly friends. Lowly reporters and MPs always knew this: given a big enough story, each will turn on the other. For too long, their respective bosses seemed to forget. Not any more.
Britain’s educational secret weapon: chilly rigour
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aYOU donat see many white people round here,a said the American lecturer, visibly startled to encounter Bagehot at the Banking Academy of Vietnam, a sprawling finance college in a far-flung district of Hanoi.
Actually, on this particular morning there were two more Europeans upstairs, giving an economics lecture on the optimal level of managerial ownership in a British company (not too little, but not too much either, I can report, otherwise managers start hoarding cash).
But learning was not really the point this morning. This visit by two academics from a branch of London University was really a thinly-disguised sales pitch, advertising the joys of studying in far-off Britain.
Vietnam is a young countryaa quarter of the population are under 15aand its local universities are a source of endless complaint among the rising middle class. The teaching is pretty patchy, and students are obliged to leave their core studies to study such irrelevances as family planning, military drill and aideologya.
As a result, Vietnam is seen as a boom market for western universities, notably in Britain, the top overseas destination for students from Hanoi (the southern middle classes from Ho Chi Minh City favour American and Australian colleges, reflecting both the legacy of American influence in southern Vietnam, and family ties to A(c)migrA(c) communities in Australia and North America).
Your correspondent is in south-east Asia with William Hague, the British foreign secretary, reporting on his governmentas drive to deepen relations in fast-growing corners of the world such as south-east Asia.
Education is a high-profile part of the British pitch in this corner of the world, and on this leg of the trip I was keen to break away from the official delegation, if only for a morning, to get a glimpse of how Britainas wares are seen on the ground.
After taking a straw poll among local students, the tentative answer is that Britainas reputation is good. But it could be damaged if some universities and colleges lower standards too far in their hunger for foreign students and the fees they pay (Vietnamese undergraduates might pay APS12,000 a year in Britain, apparently, and as much as APS16,000 a year for a business-related Masters).
To quote one education professional who sees students return to Vietnam from Britain each year: aI am amazed. Some come back with a degree, even with a distinction in an MA, but they are not confident in their English. How come?a
British colleges have been aoverdoing ita when it comes to recruitment, is the feeling. At education fairs or via sales visits to their colleges, students meet endless British professors and business development officers, all clutching glossy brochures and statistics about how high their institution features on student satisfaction rankings, staff-to-pupil ratios and the like. The recruiters aoffer so much that very ordinary students think they can pick and choose, or ask for a scholarship,a I was told.
As it happens, the story from British universities is generally the opposite, with lots of grumbling about the country becoming unwelcoming to foreigners. Speak to British university bosses and their top concern is a recent tightening of visa rules for students: part of a general push by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to reduce net immigration.
Flying here via Hong Kong, the front page of Mondayas South China Morning Post carried a report focussing on the rules that require would-be students to demonstrate a higher standard of English than is currently the case, and which tighten the rules on seeking work in Britain after they graduate. An accompanying cartoon in the SCMP showed a Hong Kong student being handed his degree by a British vice-chancellor, with the caption: Hereas your degree, now go home.
Instinctively, it does seem an own-goal to make Britain less friendly to foreign students at the same time as the government is backing a big expansion in overseas student recruitment. But speaking to students and professionals at the Banking Academy and later on at the British Council, where Mr Hague took questions from a group of students, I have to admit that a counter-intuitive point kept coming up. In such a competitive market, it seems, Britainas unique selling point is precisely that it is not very friendly.
The sort of middle class Vietnamese able to contemplate an overseas degree has a pretty strong sense of the big players in English-language higher education. Australia is arelaxeda, and afuna. The weather is good and there are lots of Vietnamese. Canada is a new market, and attractive because students believe it is easier to stay on after their studies, finding a job or making a new life there. America is adynamica and aenergetica and business-friendly, but is also seen as perilously relaxed.
Britain is amore old-school, more carefula, said Do Hoang Quan, a 20 year old from the countryas best college, Vietnam National University. So should rule-tightening British border authorities and Home Office officials in fact be hailed, for making it harder to go to Britain and inadvertently preserving the countryas overseas brand? That is precisely the view of Nguyen Thi Nhu Nguyen, director of The Education Company, a private agency that advises Vietnamese families on where to send their children for an overseas education. Dr Nguyen sends about 100 students a year to Britain, receiving a commission from the colleges that accept them. She sends students to Australia and America as well, but takes especial pride in sending students to aprestigiousa British colleges (she also recruits for English boarding schools for children as young as 12 or 13, whose appeal to nervous Vietnamese parents includes the fact that Britain is seen as conservative and asafea).
aI think it is quite good that the UK border is tightening up,a she told me. She likes the fact that it is harder for higher education institutions to gain ahighly trusteda status as visa sponsors, closing down rogue colleges. She is pleased that students who fail their exams will no longer to be allowed to stay in Britain and look for another courseaor ajust hang about doing nothing,a as she puts it. She is delighted by stricter English language tests. All this rigour is agood for the image of the UK,a is her conclusion.
A final word goes to Hoang Anh, a basketballer-height undergraduate met at the Banking Academy. Under impertinent questioning from your reporter, he admitted to hearing that the British are not very friendly to foreigners, or as he put it, that athey do not want to talk to thema. Yet he is already deep into internet research on British universities. He has a sister studying in America now, he explained, and she has put him off. aShe says her studies are very easy,a he said. aBut easy is not good.a
Why elected mayors matter
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MY PRINT column this week is from Bristol, one of ten English cities that on May 3rd are holding a referendum on whether to have a directly elected mayor. There are larger cities holding votes on the same day, such as Birmingham, and cities that are convulsed by angrier rows about the quality of their local councils, such as Nottingham. But Bristol offers a particularly pure case study of what is at stake.
Power has changed hands many times in the last decade in Bristol City Council, with coups, ambushes, partial elections and backroom deals bringing down minority administrations and wobbly, ad-hoc coalitions. As a result, by the count of Conservative ministers in London the post of council leader (chosen from among the 70 elected local councillors after deal-making among the dominant party blocks) has changed hands seven times in the past ten years, though this is disputed by the current council bosses. Add in a quirk that the council holds partial elections in three years out of every four, and the sad result is that many Bristolians are thoroughly sick of local democracy. In the words of a piece of graffiti sighted in the tough St Paul’s district of the city: “Whoever you vote for, the council wins”.
All this rule by fudge, huddle and horse-trading has undermined accountability, and weakened any sense that voters can sanction policies they dislike, and reward those that they like.
Into this mess, if pro-mayor campaigners win next month’s referendum, will step a single boss for the city, elected with a direct personal mandate and able to push through policies with the support of a third of the city’s elected councillors. Enthusiasts say that such a champion is needed to get things moving in a dangerously sleepy city of 430,000 people. Opponents say that an elected mayor risks being an overmighty bully, trampling the delicate webs of consensus and consultation that come with rule by a group.
If the dividing lines feel rather familiar, that’s because they are: the fight over elected mayors is oddly reminiscent of older arguments pitting Britain’s first-past-the-post election system (which has traditionally led to majority rule by a single party, which is good for efficiency and accountability) against more proportional voting systems, which produce endless coalitions (but are arguably more representative). Accountable or representative? Efficient or consensual? Take your pick.
Other divides can be seen. I had to work a bit to find locals who had given the debate much thought yet (and final turnout could well be woefully low). But it was striking that some of the most vocal supporters of an elected mayor are entrepreneurs with a strong dash of impatience about their home city, which they feel has been resting complacently on its undoubted charms (a pretty, recently-restored harbour, varied architecture, two universities and lovely countryside just outside the city limits). While some of the most vocal opponents of change were locals with a fierce sense of pride in their community as it is now.
In short, the debate about having an elected mayor is more interesting than you might think, going well beyond dry questions of municipal governance. Speaking to people inside the government and in the Labour leadership this week, there is considerable doubt that Bristolians will vote Yes, and a sense that perhaps only a handful of the ten cities will choose a mayor. That would be a shame: dynamic cities need dynamic leaders, and this country needs more dynamic cities.
Few are more fired-up on this subject that Charlotte Leslie, the new Conservative MP for Bristol North West and a native Bristolian (well, ever since she was two years old). People in the city are fed up with the city council, she says. Bristol is an amazing place with vibrant creative industries, green tech and high-end manufacturing on the doorstep. But it also has terrible transport, and some of the worst-performing state schools in the country: “Anyone who thinks that Bristol is doing well is guilty of an unforgivable underestimation of what the city could do.”
In these times of austerity and anti-politics anger, the most potent argument of the anti-mayor campaign is the possible cost of a change. Bristol City Council have produced a supposedly neutral information leaflet which costs a mayoral election at APS400,000 a time, and which suggests that the new mayor would have no more powers than today’s council leader. Nonsense, say Conservative ministers in London: the election would not cost half that much, and the whole idea is for new mayors to come to Whitehall with their personal mandates, bang the table and demand more powers over such policies as transport, housing or economic development. That is what London’s mayors have done, ministers note. The government wants to hand powers to the local level: that is the whole idea.
Yet in a straw poll of locals, that figure of APS400,000 elections came up again and again, together with the salary that would be paid to a new mayor. The Bristol vote is going to be a tight one.
Ms Leslie has a final argument to try on her constituents: “I have said to people, if the city says no to a mayor, I never want to hear another squeak of complaint about local politics again.” That is them told. Here’s the column:
LIKE many entrepreneurs, Rob Lawadesigner of the Trunki, a wheeled childrenas suitcase that can be ridden by small, tired ownersais impatient with established ideas. A cross between a toy and luggage, his creation at first baffled buyers from big shops and was turned down by aDragonas Dena, a televised talent show for inventors. He has since sold more than 1.25m of them.
Mr Lawas design studio in the south-western city of Bristol is built to resemble a space-station, boasting dummy portholes offering galactic views and an escape slide to carry staff between floors. Next month he will bring a big chunk of production back from China to a factory in Englandabetting that shorter lead times, lower transport costs and a redesign eliminating two dozen parts will make British manufacture pay.
On May 3rd Bristol will be one of ten English cities to hold a referendum on whether to stick with rule by council committee or hand powers to a directly elected mayor. Mr Law is keen on change. The Bristol area is a good place for businessahome to two universities, aerospace firms and the animation studios behind Wallace and Gromit. But it could be better, he says. Transport is a mess, and key bits of infrastructure are missing. Bristol is atreading watera, says Mr Law. It needs a champion to get things moving, just as Londonas mayor champions the capital.
Another businessman, George Fergusonaan architect and owner of a theatre, brewery and independent retail complexawill stand as an independent if the mayoral referendum passes. Mr Ferguson, a Liberal councillor decades ago, now thinks non-partisan mayors have the best chance of representing a diverse city of sharp inequalities. He quotes graffiti from a tough city district: aWhoever you vote for, the council wins.a
Though the big national parties are divided over mayors, three of Bristolas four MPs broadly favour change. One, the Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams, says he may run for the post himself. Charlotte Leslie, a Conservative, argues that the status quoaby which council leaders are chosen from among the cityas 70 councillors amid much horse-tradingadrives local disgust with politics. It does not help that Bristol holds partial council elections in three out of every four years. Bristolians are fed up, she says. If they realise that choosing an accountable mayor is a vote against politics as usual, then the referendum can be won.
The municipal establishment broadly opposes elected mayors. Their reasons include the risks of populism and reduced influence for local councillors. The current council leader, Barbara Janke, a Liberal Democrat, adds that the precise powers of city mayors have not been spelled out. Moreover, she sniffs, America has lots of elected mayors and aquite a fewa have been corrupt.
Bill Martin, a Labour alderman and head of Bristolas No campaign, is concerned that the new mayors will be able to take decisions with the backing of just one-third of councillors. To him, that smacks of a Tory plot to ram through changes such as the privatisation of council services. Campaigners against an elected Bristol mayor stress that such a city boss will cost moneyaalmost a pound per resident for each mayoral election, they claim, plus a salary for a new apolitical fat cata. In short, both the No and the Yes campaigns are appealing to the anti-politics mood.
To be fair, not all those wary of change are local grandees. Beast, a clothes shop, makes T-shirts celebrating local speech that are famed city-wide (and sold to homesick Bristolians worldwide). Top-selling shirts proclaim aGert Lusha (slang for agooda), aArk at eea (look at/listen to that) and aCheers Drivea (used when stepping off a Bristol bus). Beastas co-founder, Lucy Wheeler, is akind of happy with how things area. She worries about giving one person too much power, preferring rule by a group.
When it comes to attitudes to elected city bosses, the dividing line is not a neat one between left and right. Tony Blairas Labour government promoted directly elected mayors; some Tories think them a gift to Labour, dominant in many cities.
Democracy out of shape, Bristol-fashion
Listen to the debate around Bristolas referendumaset to be among the closest-fought of the tenaand the two sides do not wholly disagree. Above all, opponents fear that mayors are intended to push radical reform. They are right: that is why mayors are a good idea. Arguably, the dispute is between those who prize solidarity and consensus as bulwarks of a good society, and those who place their trust in staying competitive in a fast-changing world. Those who favour mayors are in the latter camp: a city only needs a champion if it plans to compete.
Steve Hilton, David Cameronas outgoing policy chief, sees cities as ideal test-beds for experimentation. When the prime minister visited America in March Mr Hilton ensured thatabetween White House ceremonies and meetings with Wall Street bigwigsahis boss found several hours to tour grittier Newark, whose reformist mayor, Cory Booker, is a Downing Street hero.
Elected mayors will have a personal democratic mandate to adeliver changea, says the Conservative cities minister, Greg Clark. Council leaders have no such city-wide mandate, nor the accountability that comes with high visibility. Mayors will have at least the powers of a council leader. Mr Clark expects most to demand more powers, over transport, housing and so onajust as Londonas mayors have grabbed powers over policing and planning. They will find a government aready to negotiatea.
Will that be enough to produce Yes votes in next monthas referendums? Turnout will be low, making results hard to predict. Yet the governmentas yearning to break up municipal vested interests is real. That lends credibility to talk of devolving powers to mayors. It would be depressing if the publicas anger runs so deep that, just now, political power cannot even be given away.
So what happened to Budget purdah?
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NOBODY was quite running a book, but your blogger can report that there was keen speculation last night on the House of Commons terrace about the punishment that the Speaker of the House of Commons will mete out today for the recent torrent of leaks about the 2012 Budget.
There have been a lot of these disclosures, many of them ascribed quite openly to “Treasury sources”. Great chunks of the 2012 budget have been handed to the press long before the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, was ready share them with the Commons, later today. Gone are the days when a chancellor, Hugh Dalton, had to resign when he blurted down details of his budget to a reporter.
It’s a natural consequence of being in a coalition government, said one Conservative MP, loyally shifting the blame to the Liberal Democrats (who have been a bit leaky, it is true). Yet a passing minister suggested that the Speaker, John Bercowaa former Tory who is (a) a stickler for the precedence of Parliament and (b) not fond of the governmentawould exact revenge, by obliging Mr Osborne to stay on his feet answering questions from every MP with the stamina to put one. “I reckon Bercow will punish him with half an hour per leak,” said my source cheerfully. “He could be on his feet for four hours.”
Reclaiming tax transparency from the angry right
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IN NORTH America, politicians on the right like to talk about the salutary effects of “tax rage”, by which they mean the useful anger felt by hard-working citizens when they contemplate how much they pay for public services.
In Britain, a Thatcherite think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, each year announces “Tax Freedom Day”, meaning the date on which they calculate that average taxpayers have paid a year’s worth of direct and indirect taxes and are finally working for themselves (in 2011 it was May 30th). The Taxpayers’ Alliance, an equally flinty small-state lobby group, produces a stream of press releases designed to persuade the British that the public sector is bloated and crammed with waste. The TA’s greatest hits include announcing their public sector “non-job of the week” and calculations showing that the government spends public money at a rate of APS22,218 a second.
This being a democracy, such outfits have a perfect right to advance their arguments. The state is too large in Britain. But pouring scorn on public spending is a strategy with clear limits.
Most British voters support big chunks of public spending, from the money spent on universal free healthcare via the National Health Service to free schooling. Many millions of Britons receive welfare, tax credits (a form of wage subsidy) or work directly for the public sector, especially after 13 years of Labour rule during which Gordon Brown used an array of stealth taxes and levies on the profits of the boom years to move Britain in a socially-democratic direction, consciously expanding the pool of voters who were the beneficiaries of state largesse.
The problem is most acute for the Conservatives, who can only win a majority at the next general election if they do much better among some of the groups that most directly benefited from the Brown-era spending increases, such as women, public sector workers and voters living in urban areas outside the south-east of England.
The British are also pretty keen on high taxes, as long as someone else is paying them. Today marks the eve of the 2012 Budget, in which the Conservative chancellor, George Osborne, is reportedly planning to cut the top rate of income tax from 50% to 45% for those earning more than APS150,000 ($238,000) a year. According to some reports, he is also going to soften plans to remove child benefit (a universal tax rebate/benefit paid to those with school-age children) from any household that includes an earner on more than APS43,000 a year, by raising the income threshold to APS50,000.
The child benefit cuts, announced last year to bolster Mr Osborne’s claim that the British are “all in it together” as they enter years of austerity, has caused anger on the Tory right. The Daily Mail today accuses the government of an “insane” plan that will harm families with “stay-at-home mothers who embody the Tory ideal for bringing up the next generation”.
Yet soaking the better-off seems to be rather popular. The Guardian published ICM polling this morning asking voters if they would like to (a) to keep socking high-earners with a 50% top rate, or (b) pursue the alternative Liberal Democrat plan of imposing an annual “mansion tax” on those with unearned wealth in the form of properties worth more than APS1m. Like Winnie the Pooh offered the choice between honey or condensed milk, voters replied: “Both”.
To quote the Guardian‘s helpful summary: Fully 67% of voters want to keep the top rate, which is charged on annual incomes above APS150,000. This strong support is spread remarkably evenly across the country, the social spectrum a and the political divide. Even among Conservative supporters, 65% want the top rate retained, emphasising just what a hard sell the chancellor will have if he decides to press ahead with abolition.
There are also wider signs of a desire to sting the rich. Sixty two percent of respondents would like to see new charges on costly homes, such as the mansion tax on APS1m-plus properties that Liberal Democrat ministers had been pushing, but which is no longer expected to make it into the chancellor’s statement on Wednesday.
Support for this option is somewhat lower among Tory voters (48%) and in the south (55%), which might explain some of the resistance on the Conservative benches, which appears to have killed the idea off.
The government’s plans to withdraw child benefit from families where either parent pays higher-rate tax due to earning APS42,500 or more is endorsed by 47% of the electorate. While this option is less widely supported than the 50p rate and mansion tax, it is still strikingly high, in spite of its impact on people in a much more modest income bracket.
Overall, 92% of respondents would support at least one of these three options for forcing more of the economic pain onto the better-off, as against just 6% who would prefer that none of them were pursued. A clear majority of 58% would like to see two or more being pursued In short, the debate around public spending has looked depressingly tribal in recent weeks. Instead of an informed discussion about what Britain might look like after a move to more sustainable public spending (and once an ageing population starts placing ever-greater strains on government budgets) the temptation has been for the right and left to corral their supporters into opposing camps and point accusingly at one another.
Yet if the debate moves onto the higher plane after tomorrow’s budget, then thanks will be due to the young, bespectacled figure of Ben Gummer MP, a new Conservative backbencher for the marginal seat of Ipswich. Mr Gummer (the 34 year old son of a former Conservative cabinet minister, John Selwyn Gummer) has pulled off a big win for tax transparency, andabest of allain a way that avoids easy partisan categorisation.
For some time, Mr Gummer has been campaigning for every British taxpayer to be sent an annual tax statement. He pushed for this statement to show all 29 million working adults in Britain how much of their income they had taken home in a given year, how much was taken in direct income tax and national insurance contributions, and thenaand this is the important partabreaking down where their own individual tax contributions went department by government department and pound by pound.
The Sun newspaper came out strongly in support of Mr Gummer’s plan. Your blogger, at a more modest level, asked senior Treasury types about it in the run-up to this week’s budget. It’s an attractive idea, murmured government sources a few days’ ago. All credit to Ben Gummer for bringing the idea alive, and for producing clever mock statements showing how it might look for an individual taxpayer. But the practicalities are rather daunting, they sighed. Millions of taxpayers do not have any direct communication with the tax authorities, instead receiving their pay net with taxes and NI already deducted for them by their employers. George Osborne, I was duly told, was looking at a less ambitious “sort of online thing” involving an online tax calculator that would be made available to those taxpayers (a minority) who fill in a self-assessment tax form on the internet.
That seemed a bit pointless, to be honest. The whole attraction of Mr Gummer’s plan was that it stood to expand, greatly, the wider electorate’s knowledge about how much of their income goes in taxes, and where it goes. The sort of people who assess their own taxes online seemed likely to know quite a lot about their finances already.
Somehow, at some point, Mr Osborne seems to have budged. According to Treasury briefings, Mr Gummer’s personal tax statements will be going out from 2014/2015, initially to the 20m taxpayers whose addresses are already in the revenue’s computers (a group made up of the eight million who fill out self-assessment forms plus the 12m who, in an average year, receive letters from the taxman about changes to their tax code). The final nine million will be reached at a later date, is the hope.
There will be much for the right to cheer. Average earners, on about APS25,000 a year, will discover that a fifth of their income goes in tax and NI. Of that, almost APS2000 goes on welfare, they will learn, while almost APS1000 goes on healthcare (a figure that some Tory MPs hope that taxpayers will compare with what they might pay for private health insurance). They will learn that APS700 of their money goes on education each year, and fully APS363 goes on interest charges incurred by the national debt. You can see the numbers for low, average and above-average earners here, and a mock-up of a tax statement here.
Yet it is not only the right that stands to gain from tax transparency. Voters on the doorstep, prodded by tabloid headlines, routinely tell MPs and party canvassers how they are enraged by the huge sums being spent on overseas aid and the European Union. Mr Gummer’s tax statement reveals the actual numbers: an average earner contributes APS57 a year to Britain’s overseas aid budget, and APS28 to the EU.
Even the left will be able to seize on some of the data revealed. For instance, the same tabloids like to talk of jobless scroungers bilking the state while railing against the idea of delaying the state retirement age. They will now have to reckon with tax statement numbers showing that an average earner contributes APS57 a year to the bill for unemployment benefit, but APS800 a year towards old age pensions.
As it happens, Mr Gummer’s political profile is equally hard to pin down. A fiscal hawk, in common with most of the 2010 Tory intake, he is discreetly liberal on such issues as penal reform and prisons policy (he is a patron of the Longford Trust, a body that promotes education in prisons and the rehabilitation of offenders).
Mr Gummer himself says he hopes that all parties will see the merit of tax statements. The left, he notes, are now calling for matching personal statements showing how much citizens receive from the state, in terms of public services. That’s fine by him, he says, if they can overcome the technical challenges involved.
In an age when public spending is only set to contract, the big win comes from about aligning the information available to taxpayers with the information given to MPs when they debate different policies in Parliament, he says. “Once you start breaking spending down, department by department, people can make judgements about what they value.”
Well, yes. And assuming that Mr Osborne does indeed unveil these tax statements tomorrow, it is hard to see any future government, of whatever political complexion, daring to scrap them. A small but definite blow has been struck for openness, and for grown-up debate.
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