The Myth Breaker

The Great Tory Lie, and the Truth Behind the National Debt

Every pronouncement by ministers in this government contains the same excuse for every unpleasant policy and every perfidious financial act. The mantra goes like this; “we have to repay the debt created by Gordon Brown”, and: “we inherited this mess from the incompetent Labour government which came before us”. These statements are repeated time and time again and have now become almost an act of faith and are widely believed by the general public and their coalition partners. The fact that both statements are in fact lies is now hidden by repetition.

The Myth of Educational Opportunity

Education

The conventional wisdom in the education debate is that all children should be given an equal opportunity to gain the most appropriate education and equal access to the best schools and colleges.

We do not like privilege and we do not like failure. But children have a range of ability and schools are of many kinds and qualities. And in any event is such an ambition useful for our society?

In pursuit of this aim we have built a public education system that is supposed to ensure all children an equal opportunity to gain the best education available. The only problem is that we can’t agree among ourselves what the best education really is. We keep worrying about the fact that the more academic tracks through education to university seem to be populated by the children of middle-class parents. Politicians cry out that educational institutions must ensure that a fair number of children from less advantaged backgrounds have access. What they really mean is from what we used to call the working class. And as soon as one says that, one realises that this is not just a question of appropriate education, but of appropriate class.

Death of the Gatwick Express

Transport

We mourn the passing of the Gatwick Express.

A casualty of untrammeled competition foisted on the railway system by a doctrinaire government. Such competition, even with regulation, means that outcomes are driven solely by financial considerations which ignore wider social costs and benefits. It results in narrow and eventually damaging commercial decisions, which mean that good and useful services are sacrificed. This is the story of the Gatwick Express.

What Are Banks For?

Economics

Everybody seems to have grasped that the banks are at the core of our problems today. They are too big and too rich. But most would admit that they do not really understand why.

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Misinformation about the EU

Economics

This is a letter I sent to Polly Toynbee on 25^th October 2011 after the debate in Parliament concerning a referendum on membership of the European Union.

Dear Polly,

You seem to be one of the few people in public debate who is prepared to acknowledge the truth of the political and economic situations we find ourselves in. I am today hugely depressed by the level of the public debate. Voices like yours are rare and very welcome. I find the present crop of politicians not only limited, in that few of them seem to have a background in any other activity than politics, but also I doubt their intellectual capacity as well. [Read more…] about Misinformation about the EU

Margaret Thatcher: A Warning (written 27/4/2010)

Politics

Though still with us in body, the spirit of Margaret Thatcher still marches at the head of today’s Conservative Party.

And it is clear now that she is a founder member of New Labour. They are both the inheritors of ‘thatcherism’ and therefore cannot be trusted. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of Great Britain from May 1979 to November 1990 (4,285 days) and thereby the longest serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century and the longest since Lord Liverpool in the nineteenth.
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