Austerity is spending

It’s about three weeks since I last blogged – not through lack of enthusiasm but simple lack of opportunity. Our house renovations continue – although I think that we are now on the “run in” – but more importantly, I have been busy with other matters. My football writing has been taking a good deal of time and we escaped the coldest week of the English winter by visiting  Lanzarote for a week in the sun – and very pleasant it was too.

So, back to blogging – but where to start?

On Saturday Pat and I visited a huge shopping retail park just outside Nottingham. There is a vast IKEA store there and a large number of other glossy retail outlets. It was a pretty bad idea from the word go – and when we eventually arrived this was confirmed as we trawled endlessly around the car park looking for a car parking space.  The world and her husband were there! We weren’t looking to buy anything in particular – rather to see what there was now that our new kitchen, office and shower room are almost complete. Together with thousands of others we shambled around IKEA comparing, measuring, arguing, dismissing the items on display and in the end came away with just a few bits and pieces.

As I walked around, becoming increasingly irritated and disenchanted, it struck me that this was austerity Britain! The politicians, the TV news, the newspapers, the Eurozone, the Bank of England and every other political, financial and media agency throughout the world tells me that we are in dire financial straits and have been telling me so for the last three or four years. The proportion of unemployed  rises inexorably,  the housing market is depressed because no one can get a mortgage, more and more people allegedly are slipping into debt and below the poverty line, we are finding it increasingly difficult, it is said, to fund basic services like health and education and certain groups – the less well off, the young and the old are, we are told, hit harder than others. And so the list goes on. Politicians of every hue tell us we are all in this together and that we must tighten our belts – financial Armageddon is just around the corner.

Thousands gate crash Selfridges sale in
London to grab a bargain coat or
dress or i-pad - is this austerity?

And yet.......and yet......this is not what I saw yesterday, or indeed what I see if I go into Nottingham (or any other large city in the UK). What I saw were thousand out spending money – on what essentially was unimportant trivia – not the essentials of life. Each time I go into Nottingham I see people returning home with three or four shopping bags filled with shopping – again, not food and other essentials but clothes, household goods, CDs and the like. If I go into Nottingham (any night of the week from 6 o’clock onwards) I will see thousands of people, mostly youngsters, dressed up and partying, pubs heaving, many  drunk, restaurants full, queues of people standing at cash machines or  outside night clubs waiting to get past the bouncers on the door.  As I walk through Nottingham shopping malls I see mobile phone shops and the like filled with people purchasing and discussing the latest must have i-phone or piece of technology. Only a few weeks ago in the post Christmas sales thousands were queuing all night outside fashionable stores of our big cities to get bargains – not food or warm clothes to ward off the cold winter, but designer handbags, dresses, coats and the like often costing hundreds of pounds.  I read in my paper recently that sales of luxury cars are at their highest levels ever and this seemed to be confirmed as I trawled around the IKEA car park looking for a parking spot - I commented on the number of expensive vehicles 4 x 4s, Volvos, Mercedes and the like – no sign of austerity there!  And our Chancellor, the lovely George Osborne, tells us “we are all in this together” and in a sense he is right. I am part of this culture and  a good example of this alleged austerity – I’ve just had a week away in sunny climes in a 4 star hotel, I’m spending many thousands of pounds having my house renovated  and only a few hours before my trip to IKEA Pat and I had enjoyed a lovely meal at our favourite pub. Yes, times may be hard but in reality there are many, many thousands - indeed millions - like me who don’t really understand the meaning of austerity. In these allegedly financially straitened times millions of us are, lemming like, racing to spend money that we may or may not have on items that we don’t really need!!

Margaret Thatcher once famously commented – and received much deserved criticism for it -  that there was no real poverty in the modern UK. Of course, she was wrong  - poverty is a relative word – but in another sense she had a point which I reflected upon on Saturday. There will be many millions in the UK (and across the developed world) who are poor and who are truly suffering in the present conditions as they are thrown out of work, are forced to live in desperate conditions - but the vast majority of the population, it seems to me, are merely inconvenienced rather than in pain. Austerity for them is rather about their savings are not earning quite the level of interest they would have hoped for, it is about having to pay a few pennies more for their petrol, it is about perhaps only eating out once a week rather than  twice, it is about waiting a bit longer for that luxury. What it is not about is poverty.

And....austerity is spending!

Now, of course, the clever economist would say that I am missing the point. He or she would tell me that what I say might be true but the fact is that people are not spending quite so much as they previously did.  And, he or she would continue, “this is having disastrous consequences on our economy and putting people out of work”.  And I would agree. The economist would say that “we have to keep spending to keep the economy going – this is the nature of the economic system that we have”. And I would agree again – but in doing so cannot escape the feeling that this is some Orwellian nightmare rather like that it “Nineteen Eighty Four” where Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth brainwashes everyone with the slogans “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”. Our modern day equivalent is “austerity is spending” – we have an obligation to spend money that we allegedly haven’t got in order to  keep the economy going. Orwellian indeed.

And  I might say to the clever economist or the politician that for me there is a flaw in their argument. As a confirmed Keynesian I believe profoundly in stimulating growth.  Unfortunately, however I do not believe that the  current practice of putting money into banks (what the government euphemistically call “quantitative easing” ) has not and will not stimulate the economy and create jobs – it simply stimulates bankers’ bonuses and makes banks more profitable. As a good Keynesian I want to see money in the pockets of people so that they can spend and create demand for the products that are manufactured. This in turn will mean that manufacturers will employ people to make these products, giving them a job, money and security and ensuring that they pay tax into government coffers to pay for all society's needs. The circle, as it where, will be squared.

But as I walked around IKEA and the other big retail outlets like NEXT at the weekend I shook my head – I realised that in modern Britain  even my  Keynesian economics, I fear, will not work. Yes, the spending of the thousands there was keeping the shop assistants in work and no doubt many back room staff at IKEA or NEXT. But as I looked at the products the overwhelming were imported from far eastern countries – this was globalization in its purest form – and very little of what was being spent would eventually generate jobs, security and long term prosperity in the UK. As a nation we have over the past decades consistently run down our manufacturing base – the chrome toilet brush we bought from NEXT was made in China, the stainless steel hot plate stand from IKEA was made in Thailand – few British workers, it seemed to me,  would benefit from our Saturday afternoon spending.

My  shopping trip seemed to impress two factors on my mind. Firstly, the reality of the present situation is that  there is still a lot of money washing about. It’s unevenly spread and many groups are being hit disproportionately hard. When I drive into Nottingham now it is not unusual to see young people standing in the cold on street corners with a placard advertising the local pizza parlour – sandwich board men and women like throw backs to the great depression of the thirties. In the town centres more and more shops are boarded up and if they do  re-open they open as pound shops. By all known indicators poverty is on the increase but despite this there are many, many more, like me for whom financial meltdown  is still largely academic, merely an inconvenience. 

Dennis Healey when he was Labour Chancellor in the 1970s   promised to “squeeze the rich till the pips squeaked”. No  politician could get away with that quote now – and perhaps that is more the pity because if the world is indeed  facing the financial meltdown  then  the millions of “haves” like me who were walking around IKEA on Saturday buying largely unneeded trivia manufactured in far off places and climbing into their 4 x 4s and Mercedes’  perhaps need to be squeezed more and reminded of financial realities. And secondly, the government needs to reverse the policy of quantitative easing (or to use my preferred term, subscribing to the banker’s benevolent fund) and pour the money instead directly into rebuilding a manufacturing  base so that the products that people buy at IKEA and Next are creating jobs and security in the UK – this latter point goes against all my instincts and beliefs  but to do otherwise, it seems to me is simply pouring good money after bad. We are currently  spending  money that we may not have but to no discernable benefit to our society - it is benefitting only multinationals like IKEA or NEXT or nebulous “entrepreneurs” like Philip Green  -  and that cannot be right.

Another day in Paradise!

I read this morning of our Prime Minister’s latest words on the subject of immigration. I am determined not to rise to the bait – I’ll save that for another blog! Indeed, as each day passes, I find that rather like the mythical 'Angry of Tunbridge Wells' in his or her letters to the Times or Telegraph there is so much I could (and perhaps should) rail about in relation to government, politics,  people, society, the world at large, bankers, etc. etc. etc!

1930's Nottingham family

But no, this morning I will strike a more positive note.

In the past year or so we have all complained about banks, austerity, changes to the health service, Wayne Rooney, educational issues, the price of petrol – the list is endless. And it is true there is much to complain about, there is much to change for the good of all, there is much that we should not be pleased about. There are indeed many – too many - in our society who are deprived and on the wrong end of the good life. On a more pessimistic day I might argue that the present government (if indeed that is what it is!) are doing their damndest to ensure that the disadvantaged group becomes even greater and more disadvantaged – but , no, I will be optimistic!

The reality is that for the vast majority and indeed for society as a whole we live in what many would describe as paradise. When thinking about this I’m often reminded of the Phil Collins' song 'Another Day in Paradise' or the even more poignant and biting 'Streets of London' by Ralph McTell

So how can you tell me you're lonely, 
And say for you that the sun don't shine? 
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London 
I'll show you something to make you change your mind

There are indeed many in our society who usually though no fault of their own are seriously disadvantaged or living in situations and conditions that the rest of us cannot appreciate. But, for the majority we are better off than we have ever been.

Childhood illness and deformity was
 commonplace until relatively recently

In 1957 Macmillan famously said 'You’ve never had it so good......'  and no matter how much we might think otherwise he was right then and still right now. The policies pursued by Macmillan and his contemporaries – especially Atlee - meant improvements for ordinary people that only a few years before would have been quite unbelievable. Oh, for politicians of the intellectual and moral vigour of Macmillan and Atlee today – instead we get PR men completely devoid of ideas, intellect or moral fibre and who are 'stage managed' like puppets in thrall to unelected advisers and big corporations of the Murdoch type.

But to return to the positive. Look back at old photographs and films and the living conditions of most of the population were far removed from today’s expectations. Go into any major city any day of the week and see ordinary people coming back with shopping bags and car boots laden with purchases – many of them undeniably 'luxury goods' – in the sense that they are not 'necessities'. Credit cards mean instant gratification and although the bill ultimately has to  be paid, the reality is that people still enjoy the 'good life'. Houses with bathrooms, hot water, labour saving machines, dining out, a well stocked fridge, a car on the drive, a doctor easily available if required, hospital treatment 'free' when needed, major diseases a relative thing of the past because of the improved hygiene and living conditions available, our refuse taken away on a regular basis, a free school for our children to attend and so on. What is there not to like about it?

Go to many third world countries and residents there would very quickly swap their conditions for ours. No, compared with many and compared with the past most of us live in paradise.

But of course we do moan, we find fault. Perhaps it is part of the human condition. Perhaps we have become 'soft' and dependent. Perhaps the maxim 'familiarity breeds contempt' has a resonance. Perhaps, like the society envisaged in H.G. Wells’ 'The Time Machine', we have become a society of lotus eaters who are unable to grasp reality because our every need is met.

A Sheffield miner after the shift
in his 1930s 'bathroom'

I read this week a number of letters in the Guardian where readers complained at the 'poor service' they got in relation to the collection of their rubbish – too many separate bins to fill, only collected every second week etc. Now many of the points might have some validity but my bins have been collected this morning on their usual two weekly cycle – one week for household rubbish and the second week for paper/cans and garden waste. All I have to do is put out my bin the night before and by breakfast time next day my rubbish has gone. What is there, when one is realistic, to complain about? I was talking a couple of weeks ago to a man of my generation who complained bitterly and refused to separate his rubbish – everything went on the same bin – 'I’m not doing the council’s job' he said. Hmmm. Not sure about that!

My late mother always said that in her day people were so much more honest – 'you could leave your front door open and no-one would enter or steal anything' she would pronounce and perhaps she was right. I think that there perhaps was a more moral and honest atmosphere. But, I also think, that it had something to do with the fact that most people didn’t have much worth stealing! No DVD players, plasma screens, flash cars on the drive, mobile phones, computers etc. The house I grew up in was furnished with second hand furniture and what money we had was in mother’s purse – not a lot to want to steal! Today ordinary people have wealth and possessions that our grandparents could not imagine.

No, whichever way I look at it, the vast majority of us are better off today – but perhaps we don’t always appreciate it. At  a personal level, I was reading through the old documents that I inherited from my mother. I found my grandfather’s death certificate. He died at 61  (in 1953) of 'congestive heart failure'. My mother died in 2002 aged 82  of 'congestive cardiac failure'. And a year or so ago I was diagnosed with heart failure. Bit of a family tradition! The difference is that such is  medical and social progress that I am supported by a battery of pills, regular check ups and blood tests, my own heart failure nurse at the end of a telephone or e-mail 24 hours a day and if I am hospitalised, go into a cardiac unit resembling a 5 star hotel. I am told that if I take my pills, keep a reasonably healthy life style and the like, the heart failure should not be a problem and may well slowly improve. And this all for 'free'! What is there to complain about. And yet I do moan - if go to my GP for my regular blood tests and have to wait I moan, if I can't get an appointment for a few days or a week or so, I moan.  But deep down I know that I am lucky.  If I go to A & E, as I did some months ago when I  cut my finger, I had to wait a couple of hours – my injured finger was rightly not judged to be life threatening. But if I go suffering breathing difficulties or symptoms that might be 'heart related' I am whisked into the emergency rooms and seen immediately. What is there to moan about? A far cry this from just over half a century ago when the doctor’s bill had to be paid and the weekly wage had run out.

When I visit Nottingham city centre I see youngsters
 in expensive  trainers - I can't remember the last time I
saw teenagers with bare feet.

As I walk around my kitchen and switch on the dish washer, check that the washing machine is nearing the end of its cycle, stand by the radiator to warm my hands, peer into the freezer to select what I will have for my tea, visit my downstairs loo, I am minded that it is a million miles away from the house I grew up in during the post war years. One sink in the kitchen with a cold water tap. No bathroom, a lavatory at the top of the back yard which my mother stocked with torn up pieces of the Daily Mirror to use as toilet paper, no dishwasher or washing machine. A fireplace in the front room but no other form of heating in the two up two down house. The larder largely empty, partly because with no fridge food could not be kept, but mostly because mother shopped as required – when she had the money. It was not uncommon that by Thursday lunch we had run out of money and my mother would borrow from her  sister who worked in the mill – this to see us through till my dad got his wages later on Thursday or Friday or even Saturday. As a long distance lorry driver Dad was sometimes 'away' until Saturday and in that event couldn’t pick his wages up till he got back on Saturday morning – then we had real money problems! One of my abiding memories is of the day my mother got her first Hoover - for which she had saved up. She really did think herself blessed - no more sweeping with a brush - and when she at last managed a fridge -well, a her worries were over! But we weren’t unusual – that was how it was for so many people and in fact compared to many we were 'well off'.  Today people would pop out to Comet and buy a Hoover or fridge and not even think about it. No, for most, today is paradise indeed.

Of course, the reality is that for many 'paradise', the good life, isn’t really happening – disadvantage, employment, education whatever means that many cannot access the 'luxury' that most of us experience. This, however, does not mean that for the majority things are not better – despite austerity, despite cut backs, despite banker’s bonuses we have 'never had it so good.' And in a strange way I believe that when those of who are in paradise moan about the situation and how it affects us we are somehow taking the spotlight off those who  really are in difficulties. Perhaps this is the increasing challenge for politicians of all parties and for our society to ensure that all can access what the majority already has. But that might be the subject of another blog – be warned!

A weekly bath or the paddling pool -
but I can remember a tin bath filled with
 boiled up water  on a Friday night.

At the height of the tuition fees protest a few months ago BBC News interviewed a number of students who were rightly protesting and understandably anxious about their future in the light of the government’s proposals to introduce a significant rise in fees. A young man was interviewed and he complained bitterly about the government’s proposals. He had just completed his 'A' levels and done very badly – the result being that the university place he thought he had was no longer available. He was therefore going on a gap year. He complained that this was going to cost his parents some thousands and that it would delay his eventual entry into university and he might therefore be subject to the proposed increase in fees – costing both his parent’s and eventually himself money. I could see his logic and had a certain sympathy. 'Where are you going for your gap year?' asked the interviewer – the response was 'Thailand – I’m going to get a job in a beach bar'. He continued 'I think that it will be good – it will help my CV and give me the skills to  get a better job'.

At that point I lost the will to live – this seemed to me like the personification of Wells’ lotus eaters – totally out of touch with reality. Here is a young man complaining (not unreasonably) about a government policy that may well affect him. He is complaining that the fees increase will cause him and his parents financial hardship but in the same breath saying his parents and he will shell out significant money to spend a year on the beach in Thailand! Hmmmm. He furthers his argument by telling us that this year on a beach will enhance his CV and give him skills he was unable to access or develop in his previous twelve plus years in one of the finest educational systems in the world. I wonder on what basis he believes this? Having spent all that time in full time education he had still 'blown' his 'A levels but somehow thinks that a year working in a bar on a beach will make up for this and do what twelve plus years in school and the benefit of his parents’ support have not done. No matter how I try I cannot work out the logic of this. There seems no thought that 'I’ll use the year to improve my  academic qualifications  , or put the money I would spend in going to Thailand towards my increased potential university fees, or get some other work in the UK to boost my earning and my CV at the same time' – no a year on the beach in Thailand is going to solve all his problems. My feeling is that the young man needed a reality check.

No labour saving devices!

And this is the problem.  Although there are many things wrong in our society and many who are seriously disadvantaged, the majority are in relative paradise but don’t see it that way. The young man in question felt that the way to deal with a particular set of problems was to go off to a beach on the far side of the world. It is the same as the rest of us complaining that the government’s cuts will cause us great suffering – for many they will, but for most they will not.  I might be a little worse off, I might have to wait a bit longer in A & E, I might not get quite the expected interest on my savings, I might have to pay a bit more for my petrol, I might have to consider whether I can afford to go to the pub a couple of times a week or dine out with the same regularity – but for the majority few of these are life threatening decisions. They are choices – and the young student also was making choices – although there was a serious situation in relation to his qualifications and his future education or job prospects the opportunities were still there – if he did the right thing - if he made the right choice. His relative wealth and the safety net provided by society meant that he had, like the rest of us,  options and choices  and a beach in Thailand was his choice, his preferred option! In years gone by he may well have not had that choice - the failed qualifications may have meant an end to his aspirations, his parents may simply have been unable to have considered funding his gap year - whatever. I wish him well – except if I ever interviewed him for a place at university or a job I might be unimpressed by his life style choices and his logic! 


But in our way we are all like him - increased wealth, changes in society  and the like have meant that for the vast majority of us it is all about choices and not hard life and death decisions. The safety net of the welfare state, the benefits of our health and education system, the quality of our housing and the rest mean that the vast majority do not have to make the same tough decisions about life and death  that our grandfathers and grandmothers had to make. Compared with our grandparents we are in paradise. The vast majority of the decisions that we make are about  how we can make life a bit more comfortable rather than whether we have anything to eat  - when that is the decision one has to make it focuses the mind somewhat and thoughts of a beach in Thailand become of less significance or do not even come into the equation!   

'Oh think twice, it's just another day for you, 
You and me in paradise'.