The Royal Mail sell-off is not simply about bean-counting

Behind talk of needing to balance the books is a far-reaching project to unleash market forces into all domains of our lives

• 
• • Ha-Joon Chang
  • The Guardian, Thursday 10 October 2013 20.31 BST

Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

Balancing the books – or counting beans, if you want to be dismissive about it – is what this is all supposed to be about. The cuts in social spending are regrettable, we are told, but they have to be made because the government cannot have more outgoings than its income, as no sensible household should. Didn't Adam Smith, the grandfather of economics, tell us that what "is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom"?

The argument for book-balancing has been used even to justify the privatisation of Royal Mail, not least because the usual argument about inefficiency of public enterprises does not apply to it. The sale will increase government revenue and thus reduce budget deficits, it is said. In the same vein, the government has patted itself on the back for selling (and planning to sell) the shares of the bailed-out banks at a profit, further reducing deficits.

Don't be fooled by all the boring language of bookkeeping, however. Behind it lies an ambitious project to restructure British society fundamentally by expanding the domains of our life that are subject to market forces. In the last few years, regulation has been strengthened for the financial sector, although not as much as you would have thought, given the mess that it created. But in almost all other areas of life, the trend has been an unleashing of market forces. And the results have been rather stark – and will become more so, if the project is allowed to continue.

Thanks to cuts in social spending, the disabled and the elderly have had to buy more expensive supports from the market – or, more typically, put up with greater discomfort and indignity. With cuts in unemployment benefit, an increasing number of workers have been forced to accept zero-hour contracts and other employment conditions that are more fitting for developing countries, if not exactly for the Victorian era.

Privatisation and contracting-out of government services have meant that more and more services that used to be provided on the basis of citizenship are now distributed according to how much people can pay. As we have already seen with energy, water and railways, privatisation of "natural monopolies" means higher prices and/or lower quality services, unless regulation severely constrains market forces, as it does in countries such as Japan. In the most extreme cases, privatisation of natural monopolies can mean more deaths – ranging from casualties of rail accidents caused by under-investment in safety to untimely deaths of pensioners weakened by inadequate heating.

When Royal Mail joins this list, we can be assured that deliveries to remote areas will become less frequent and/or more expensive, while postal workers will have greater workload and less time for human contact.

The point is that markets are run on the principle of "one pound, one vote", which means that those who have enough money can fulfil even the most frivolous of their desires, while those who don't may starve to death. And it is because we don't want such outcomes that humanity has learned to control market forces through public regulation – ideally decided on the "one person, one vote" principle of democracy.

As a result, over time, many things have been taken out – at least partially – of the market: human beings (slaves), child labour, public offices, basic education, healthcare and so on. Even for the marketed things, how you can make money out of them has come under increasing restrictions. For example, in the old days drugs did not require an approval before sales, and companies did not have to reveal anything about themselves when selling shares.

Of course, in the past few decades, the trend towards such "de-marketisation" has been reversed in many countries, especially in the UK. However, that was not because the boundaries of the market as they existed in the 1960s and 70s had been drawn in violation of some natural laws, as the proponents of deregulation and privatisation like to suggest. It was mainly due to the shift in political balance of power towards the moneyed classes, which has unfortunately been accelerating in recent years.

The argument that there are no natural boundaries of the market is best illustrated bySingapore. This successful country is often portrayed as the paragon of free market, but it is actually something quite different. All of its land is publicly owned, 85% of housing is supplied by the public housing corporation and more than 20% of national output is produced by public enterprises, in industries ranging from shipbuilding and semi-conductors to airlines and banking.

Saying that there is no one correct way of drawing boundaries around the market is, of course, not to say that we can do without markets. Vibrant markets are essential for generating prosperity and improving human welfare, as the counter-examples of the Soviet bloc countries show. But that does not mean that more market forces are always better, in the same way in which salt is essential for our survival but too much of it is harmful.

Markets are in the end man-made devices for utilitarian purposes, not a force of nature that we should not try to resist. If they end up serving the interests of only a tiny minority, as is increasingly the case, we have the right – and indeed the duty – to regulate them in the interest of greater social good.

More than jihadism or Iran, China's role in Africa is Obama's obsession

Where America brings drones, the Chinese build roads. Al-Shabaab and co march in lockstep with this new imperialism

• 
• • John Pilger
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 9 October 2013 20.15 BST

Hu Jintao, who stepped down as Chinese president last year, in Tanzania on a tour intended to cement China's ties with Africa. Photograph: STR New / Reuters/REUTERS

Countries are "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world", wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.

The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. "When they are made to hate each other," wrote a British colonial official, "good governance is assured."

Today Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF "structural adjustment" programmes, and saturated with modern weapons – notably President Obama's personal favourite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was "well received by the people in the areas it controlled", reported the US Congressional Research Service, "[but] received negative press coverage, especially in the west". Obama crushed it; and last January Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. "Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government," effused President Hassan Mohamud. "Thank you, America."

The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this – just as the Twin Towers attack and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and injustice. Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with the return of unfettered imperialism.

Since Nato reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last obstacles to Africa have fallen. "Scrambles for energy, minerals and fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity," report Ministry of Defence planners. As "high numbers of civilian casualties" are predicted, "perceptions of moral legitimacy will be important for success". Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a continent, the arms mammoth BAE Systems, together with Barclays Capital and BP, warns that "the government should define its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens". The cynicism is lethal. British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures beckon retaliation at home.

With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games a "soldier to soldier" doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. The British did this in India. It is as if Africa's proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master's black colonial elite – whose "historic mission", warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the subjugation of their own people in the cause of "a capitalism rampant though camouflaged". The reference also fits the son of Africa in the White House.

For Obama, there is a more pressing cause – China. Africa is China's success story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossil fuels. Nato's bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is Washington's obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a "policy" known as the "pivot to Asia", whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.

This week's meeting in Tokyo between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, and their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect of war. Sixty per cent of US naval forces are to be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the rightwing government of Shinzo Abe, who came to power in December with a pledge to build a "new, strong military" and circumvent the "peace constitution".

A US-Japanese anti-ballistic-missile system near Kyoto is directed at China. Using long-range Global Hawk drones the US has sharply increased its provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Both countries now deploy advanced vertical take-off aircraft in Japan in preparation for a blitzkrieg.

On the Pacific island of Guam, from where B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US marines. In Australia this week an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of Sydney is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a hub of US spying in the region and beyond; it is also critical to Obama's worldwide assassinations by drone.

'We have to inform the British to keep them on side," McGeorge Bundy, an assistant US secretary of state, once said. "You in Australia are with us, come what may." Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for Washington. However, China is Australia's biggest trading partner and largely responsible for its evasion of the 2008 recession. Without China, there would be no minerals boom: no weekly mining return of up to a billion dollars.

The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where Rupert Murdoch, the patron of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, controls 70% of the press. Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the "choice" that the US wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve "blinding" Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would "consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption … and a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability". In his address to the nation last month, Obama said: "What makes America different, what makes us exceptional, is that we are dedicated to act."

Subramanyam Swamy Speaks

Some of the reasons behind the fall of the Indian Rupee

Subramanian Swamy talks on Islam

Some details on Dar al Harb can be found here:
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dar_al-Harb

Ed Miliband isn’t offering socialism – but the Tories are still terrified

Owen Jones in The Independent

The rule of capital is “unimpaired and virtually unchallenged; no social democratic party is nowadays concerned to mount a serious challenge to that rule.” If he was still with us, the socialist Ralph Miliband would have noted two big changes since he wrote these words not long before his death in 1994. Firstly, he’d observe – with little surprise – that capitalism has plunged itself into yet another almighty mess. Secondly, he would undoubtedly be consumed with pride that his youngest son had assumed the leadership of one of these social democratic parties. Momentous events indeed: but his wistful conclusion would have remained the same.

That in mind, I wonder what Ralph Miliband would have made of his son’s transformation from a “laughable blank sheet of paper” to “frothing-at-the-mouth Communist who is going to nationalise your mother quicker than you can say ‘Friedrich Engels had a cracking beard'”. Ed Miliband’s suggested crackdown on land-banking (once endorsed by Boris “Commie” Johnson) and a temporary freeze on energy prices (backed by arch-Leninist Tom Burke, the former Tory special adviser on energy) have provoked comparisons with undesirable elements ranging from Robert Mugabe to the Bolsheviks. After he stood on a soapbox in Brighton and indulged a bystander asking when he would “bring back socialism”, the British right have behaved as though Labour are planning to finish what Lenin was doing before he was so rudely interrupted.

In part, it is the sinister red-baiting of Ed Miliband through his dead father, culminating with the Daily Mail accusing the Labour leader of planning to drive “a hammer and sickle through the heart of the nation so many of us love”. Pass the spliff, Mr Dacre. “Like a good Marxist,” writes The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore, “he detects the cowardice latent in capitalists,” accusing Miliband of being “part of an ideology” which is “ultimately pauperising and totalitarian.” Jeremy Hunt odiously endorsed the Mail’s lunacy, arguing that “Ralph Miliband was no friend of the free market and I have never heard Ed Miliband say he supports it.” George Osborne, meanwhile, accuses Ed Miliband of making “essentially the same argument Karl Marx made in Das Kapital.”

This is what is really going on. The right are so drunk on three decades of free-market triumphalism, so used to the left being smashed and battered, that they believe even the mildest deviation from the neo-liberal script is unacceptable. They thought all of these battles had been won, that they were rid of all their turbulent priests, and now they are incandescent at the alleged resurgence of defeated enemies. Don’t you know you’re supposed to be dead? It’s not even the most moderate form of social democracy that the right are trying to drive from political life. Anyone who does not advocate yet more aggressive doses of neo-liberalism – more privatisation, more cuts to the taxes of the wealthy, more attacks on workers’ rights – is liable to come under suspicion, too.

The British right’s strategy is pretty clear. They want to do to “socialist” what the US right have done to “liberal”: turn it into an unequivocally toxic word that no-one in public life would want to associate with, and use it as a means to smear political opponents deemed to deviate from Britain’s suffocating neo-liberal consensus. Bemusing, to say the least, given Labour first officially declared itself a “democratic socialist party” under Tony Blair in 1995 as a sop to the left in the party’s new revised Clause IV. He even wrote a Fabian Society pamphlet entitled Socialism. Yes, granted it meant nothing more to him than motherhood and apple pie, and he had more leeway than Miliband because it was rather more difficult to pin him down as a heartfelt lefty, but the point is even New Labour could happily bandy “socialism” about.

But let’s get a bit of perspective here. Socialism? I don’t think so. Labour have – wrongly – committed themselves to Osborne’s spending plans in the first year of a new government. As Michael Gove gobbles up the comprehensive education system for dinner, Labour’s response has been, to say the least, muted. Medialand may be wailing about 1970s socialism being back with a vengeance, but given polls show 69 per cent want the energy companies nationalised, the Labour leader still found himself to the right of public opinion. No commitment on rail renationalisation, either, which some polls show is even the preferred option of Tory voters. There’s suggestions Labour would hike the top rate of tax up to 50 per cent again, but polls show the public would be happy to take it to 60 per cent. Not exactly the full-scale expropriation of the bourgeoisie, is it?

In truth, Ed Miliband strikes me as an old-style social democrat, perhaps what would have been described as the “Old Labour Right” before Blair’s Year Zero. He generally seems well-intentioned about dragging the political centre of gravity away from the Thatcherite right, but appears to fear a lack of political space to do so. He has made moves towards a mild social democracy in limited areas – but it is just that, mild, although even that is too strong for those now imitating the hysterical rhetoric of Barack Obama’s Tea Party opponents.

It is difficult, sometimes, not to be overwhelmed by the  hypocrisy of the right. They don’t mind a bit of statism, as long as, generally speaking, it’s propping up the wealthy. Banks bailed out by the taxpayer, not free-market dogma; infrastructure, education, and research and development that all businesses depend on, paid for by the state; private contractors who owe their profits solely to state largesse; even mortgages now underwritten by the state. It is only when it is suggested that the state might help those near the bottom of the pile that the right cries foul. In their world, “moderation” means the biggest cuts since the 1920s, the driving of over a million children into poverty, privatising the NHS without public consent and dropping bombs on foreign countries. “Extremism” is curbing energy prices, asking the booming wealthy to pay a bit more tax, and stopping construction firms squatting on land during a housing crisis. So let’s start telling it as it is: they are the extremists, however much they squeal disingenuously about the “centre ground”.

Real democratic socialism would not mean the odd curb on energy prices. It would mean a living wage instead of subsidises for poverty pay, and allowing councils to build housing rather than taxpayers lining the pockets of private landlords. It would mean arguing for social ownership – from banks to the railways – giving real democratic control to workers and consumers.

That is not currently on offer from Labour. But the right fear that, if even mild social-democratic populism proves popular, the door might open to more radical ideas. Their whole Thatcherite consensus could prove imperilled. And that is why the British right are starting to sound like bad-tempered Joseph McCarthy clones who stigmatise even timid social democracy as dangerous extremism to block any further shift away from free market extremism. But a word of warning to the right. Look across the Atlantic. How has the Tea Party-isation of the US right worked out for them? Because that is exactly where you are heading.

Obamacare begins – and the right is terrified that it will work

Rupert Cornwell in The Independent

In a week in which all the talk was of shutdown, the most notable development here in Washington was something that opened up. I refer to the launch of the online federal and state health exchanges that are a key feature of Obamacare, allowing those without health insurance to shop around for the best plan.

Readers who have managed to keep up with the latest antics of what passes as the United States Congress will be aware that the reason Republican hardliners shut down the government was to force the President to delay – or to put it less politely, dismantle – his signature legislative achievement. Yet in a splendid two-finger gesture by fate, on the very day that veterans' services, national parks and a host of other government functions were closing, the health exchanges, symbol of everything those Republicans detest about Obamacare, were opening for business.

True, the moment was pretty shambolic. Overwhelmed by visitors, the websites virtually seized up on day one, though things seemed to improve slightly as the week wore on. But it was a start, and let it never be forgotten what Obamacare is attempting: to bring the US in line with every other advanced industrial country and provide healthcare for all its citizens, irrespective of their means.

Others had tried it before. Harry Truman called for universal health insurance in the late 1940s, only to be described by Republican adversaries as a crypto-communist. Two decades later, Lyndon Johnson did push through Medicare and Medicaid for elderly and poor Americans. Not, however, before a certain aspiring conservative politician named Ronald Reagan predicted that Medicare would see Americans "spending their sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like when men were free".

Then came Bill Clinton. Alas, he created the impression that a coterie of White House officials, led by his wife, Hillary, was trying to foist its pet ideas upon a suspicious country and he, too, failed. But in 2010, after a monumental fight, Obama's plan was finally approved by Congress.

Yet still Republicans continue their Canute-like refusal to accept the rules of democracy. No matter that the measure was signed by the President and ratified by the Supreme Court, or that Republicans resoundingly lost the 2012 presidential election in which Obamacare was a prime issue. The law, their leaders say, is a "monstrosity," a "trainwreck" that must be fought by every means, even if that means closing down the government.

Now, no one would argue that the reform is perfect. Even without the distortions and abuse peddled by the right- and left-wing media alike, it is extremely hard to understand. Nor will it cover absolutely everyone. If you started from scratch, you would almost certainly go for some form of single-payer system, a universal, government-funded scheme of the sort that Truman advocated.

Determined not to make the Clintons' mistake, Obama consulted with every interested party: Democrats and Republicans, hospitals, private insurers, doctors and the pharmaceutical companies. He bent over backwards to retain the existing structure of employer-based coverage, even dropping proposals for a "public option" favoured by the left as a way of keeping the private insurers honest. In doing so, he bowed, in effect, to the conservatives' argument that an alternative state-run insurance scheme would pave the way for a single-payer system.

But, as Obama has painfully discovered, offer Republicans an olive branch and they'll use it to whip you. Since 2010, the Republican-controlled House has passed no fewer than 42 resolutions seeking to overturn Obamacare (albeit knowing that the Senate would reject every one.) Now it has shut down the government, even though 70 per cent of the US public disapproves of the tactic, and even right-wing commentators argue that the way to get rid of Obamacare is via the ballot box, not blackmail. Elect a Republican president and a Republican Congress, they say, then repeal the thing.

At state level, where Republicans dominate, the sabotage of Obamacare is endless. Many states have failed to set up health exchanges. Citizens are being urged to flout the law and pay a fine rather than obey the individual mandate that requires them to buy insurance. Most inexcusable of all, a swathe of red states is refusing to expand Medicaid, which helps the poor. That will be critical for the success of Obamacare – even though the federal government is picking up 100 per cent of the cost for the first three years, and 90 per cent thereafter.

Why this scorched-earth opposition? After all, the mandate was originally a Republican idea, put forward by the impeccably conservative Heritage Foundation some two decades ago. Obamacare, moreover, is based on the healthcare reform enacted in Massachusetts in 2006 under the state's then governor, Mitt Romney – the Republicans' White House candidate in 2012. And at a simple human level, why oppose a law providing cover for 28 million people who don't have it?

One reason is Republicans' visceral dislike of Obama, on political, personal or racist grounds – or a blend of all three. Ideologically, they are terrified not that healthcare reform will fail, with the dire consequences they predict, but that it will succeed.

Success would strike at the very core of Republican belief, that government is bad for you and should be reduced to the bare minimum to sustain a functioning state. Despite public wariness of the law as a whole, several of its main provisions are extremely popular (as the once reviled Medicare now is.) If Obamacare works, Americans would feel better about government in general; the terrible monster erected by Republican demonology would be seen to be benign, after all. What price the party's electoral prospects then?

Cricket: The game is about dealing with failure

MS Dhoni wasn't cocky but there wasn't any false modesty either: Greg Chappell

Jonathan Selvaraj Posted online: Sun Oct 06 2013, 01:51 hrs

In Visakhapatnam with the under-19 team, Greg Chappell talks about Australia's changing cricketing mindset and his eventful coaching stint in India. He opens up to Jonathan Selvaraj as he revisits the dressing room that had ageing seniors, an out-of-form captain and a rookie wicket-keeper who was a natural leader.

In what capacity are you connected with the Australia under-19 team?
I’ve come in as National Talent Manager. I’m chairman of our youth selection panel. I’ve been in charge for three years now and I normally travel with the U-19s as a youth selector and manager. But when Stuart Law took up the Queensland job, then we had to do some reshuffling. And that’s why I came back as the coach.


Of late a number of Australia U-19 players have been blooded into first class cricket and the senior team ...
Five years ago we came to the conclusion that it was taking on average four years for the U-19 players to get on state contracts. That was too long. So the Second XI competition was changed to a U-23 competition (Futures League). I think it has been quite successful. Twelve of the players who played the 2010 Junior World Cup went on to get state contracts as did 13 from last year’s World Cup. That’s considering three of our best bowlers — Pat Cummins, Ashton Agar and the wrist spinner James Muirhead — were injured. Those three boys also went on to state contracts and of course Cummins and Agar have played international cricket.


Why do you have to give them a push?
The international programme has become busier and T20 cricket has made it busier still. International players don’t play domestic cricket. And after professionalisation at our domestic level, those players don’t play club cricket. That’s had an impact on the younger players. We have come to the understanding that our club cricket and our domestic cricket can’t do the job that it once did. So we have to identify the ones we think have potential and invest in them.


So doesn’t domestic cricket and the experience that comes with it count?
Playing for ten years doesn’t necessarily give you 10 years’ experience. It could just be that you had one year’s experience ten times. If you are not getting better, then your experience is useless. Performance in domestic cricket up to a point is important but once somebody with the skills that you require shows the ability to score runs or take wickets at that level, the sooner you get them to the next level, the better.


How different is it to coach a U-19 team from a senior team. Are the players scared of you?
No, they are not scared. They are respectful but they are not in awe of me. I am a resource like the rest of our support staff. My role at this level is different from the role at state level and the role at international level.


What is it that you look for in a young cricketer?
It is about assessing their potential. Have they got the skills that historically do well in Test cricket. Can they bowl fast? Are they someone who gets bounce? Can they swing the ball? Do they put some revs on the ball? The first thing I’m interested in, in a batsman is can they read lengths well because that means they are watching the ball. If they are going forward to balls they should be back to then there is a problem. How do they read the game on the field? I am looking for things that the scorecard can’t tell me.




Could you give an example of someone you noticed who read length well during your stint as India coach. What about MS Dhoni?
MS Dhoni came into the one-day team just before I joined as coach. Most people saw him just as a front-foot hitter. One day I saw him batting against Ajit Agarkar on a very slow wicket at the Chinnaswamy Stadium and he was very comfortable on the front foot. Ajit has a very good bouncer and I thought I would like to see how he responds to that. So Ajit bowled him the perfect bouncer and the next thing you know he had hit the ball to the top of the roof. So I said 'Ok he reads length well'. It wasn’t as if he was constantly looking to get to the front foot and that was his only skill.


Was that the only thing that set him out?
His reading of the game was incredible. He had a calmness and an inner strength which wasn’t something I had seen a lot of in other cricketers. He was very confident. He wasn’t cocky but there wasn’t any false modesty either. If he thought he could do something, he would go ahead and say he could do it. Both in India and Australia you have a lot of players who are afraid to stand up because they feel they might be thought of as being ahead of themselves or setting themselves up for failure. He had no concerns about that. He was supremely confident in his own ability. He had some work to do with his wicketkeeping but you could see he had the basics. I saw him as far more than a one-day cricketer. I could see him as a Test cricketer. And I could certainly see him as a captain.


Why do you say that?
His ability in the Indian dressing room to move between the seniors and the juniors was unique. There was nobody else I saw that could compare. Even some of the seniors struggled with other seniors. Not just physical strength but also an emotional strength … a spiritual strength. He knew who he was. He didn’t have any doubts about his ability to play at that level.


It wouldn’t have been easy for him. He comes from a state not really known for its cricket.
That’s interesting. We had a camp in Bangalore early on. I wanted the guys to talk about themselves. I had come in knowing some of the senior players because I had seen them play and I had met many of them before. But I wanted to know about their life and cricket. And it was an amazing story of where he had come from and how he had learned his cricket playing on the streets with his friends and at each level how he had to prove himself again because each time he came in he was the new boy. He talked very well about how each of those steps had given him something. Some confidence, some experience, some knowledge.


What were you looking for in these sessions?
I was looking not just for cricketing talent but also something extra which would help them succeed. Not everyone was cut out for a life as a professional cricketer. These guys are on the road for ten months of the year. You are separated from your friends, family and support structures. Not everyone can cope with it. I was looking for that inner strength. That ability to be able to be self-contained. Also you have to have a sense of humor.


Why sense of humour?
This game is about dealing with failure. Bradman batted 80 times in Test cricket and he only got 29 hundreds. So he failed 51 times. The rest of us have had a huge struggle. It’s only those who accept that they are going to fail a lot and have a belief that their method will work will be able to keep at it. Dhoni’s method was and is unique. Not many people play like him, but he has immense confidence in it. And that’s all that really matters.


What did you see in Suresh Raina?
There was an X factor there. He had the ability to score runs quickly. He read length well and he had shots all around the wicket. He was a brilliant fielder, a more-than-useful all-rounder. I saw him first at a camp in Bangalore. This was simply a way for me to see some talent. We had a camp for the bowlers and for the batsmen. There were a lot of good players but only a few had that X factor.



Anyone else with X factor?
Another one was Sreesanth. I was standing on the far side of the ground and I moved to second slip where I had fielded my whole career and that’s a good place for me to get my look at him. And I kept seeing the ball coming through to the keeper. He had a very easy action and there was some pace there. And as I said before, genuine pace excites me. So I spoke to others and they said 'oh no he is from Kerala and he doesn’t get wickets'. So I talked to other people and they said he doesn’t get a lot of wickets but he gets a lot of nicks. He just never had players who could catch the ball. So as I have said before, it isn’t about wickets, it’s about how many times you beat the bat. How often do you get the outside edge, how many times do you hit them on the pads. It could be how many times you can draw a false stroke.



How do you remember your time in India?
Far from regretting the experience, I look back at my time in India with great fondness. Most of my experiences here were very good. There were parts that I could have done without. But that happens. When I look back it was overwhelmingly positive. It was a wonderful opportunity and a great honour to be asked to coach someone else’s country. I couldn’t coach Australia. Coaching India wasn’t the next best thing, it was the best thing. India is the hub of cricket in the world these days and to work in that environment and try and understand it a bit better… I consider myself very fortunate.


How did you try to understand the culture? You read a lot. Did you go through books?
I have a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. I read it, I still read it. I have a copy of the Koran. I read that as well. I’m interested in all of that. (Ramesh) Mane the team physio was a Brahmakumari (follower). We went with him to the temple in Bandra. My wife went to the Hare Krishna temple in Bangalore where they serve meals to thousands of kids. When we went to Pakistan, Saeed Anwar took me to a teaching mosque outside Lahore. I wanted to understand that a bit more because we had Muslim players in our team — Wasim Jaffer, Mohammad Kaif, Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan. I felt I needed to understand something. I mean I couldn’t speak the language, and I just wanted to understand their world a little bit better, in the hope that that would help me, help them.



Did the players appreciate that you were trying to understand their world?
They might not have been aware of some of it. I went to Irfan’s home in Baroda and of course they couldn’t speak much English and of course I couldn’t speak any Urdu. But you look into someone’s eyes and you can understand. Irfan’s mother spoke to my wife and she said “thank you for looking after my son". And we got a thrill from the fact that they appreciated that we were looking after their kids. And they were like our kids. Because they were young, they were vulnerable and they needed someone to look out for them.



So what were the high points of your stay?
My only interest in the time that I was in India was what was best for the Indian cricket team. The whole thing was a spiritual experience. The education point of view was one thing that we really focused on. India was struggling in one-day cricket, particularly chasing. And we made a process of getting the team to understand how to chase. And when we had seventeen wins in a row that was an enormous achievement. And it wasn’t an achievement for me, it was an achievement for that group. They had to buy into it. Rahul Dravid as captain had to buy into it. There were a lot of risks. There were criticisms we were changing the team, we were changing the batting order.. And the fact that we got the guys buying in was tremendous.


What went wrong when you were coach of India?
AS you know in that role, the spotlight is such that nobody wants to understand what is going on underneath. All they saw was what they wanted to. If it had worked, you would be a hero and if it hadn’t, you would have been a zero. Generally what I have found in life is what you see isn’t necessarily the whole story. But no one was really looking at what Greg Chappell the coach was saying, and try and understand Greg Chappell the person. I tried to explain what we were trying to do, but in fact, it was counterproductive. People just used it against me.


Have you made your peace with not just what happened but some of the people involved?
I haven’t spoken to some of them, but you move on. I was in Kolkata earlier in the year and I learned that Sourav’s father had passed away and I rang him and spoke to him at that time and passed on condolences.


Was he surprised?
I’m sure he was a little surprised but he said he appreciated it very much. As I explained to him at the time it wasn’t anything personal (about the decisions I made). I rather liked Sourav and I admired him as a cricketer but at that point he probably wasn’t the best person to be in that position.




Could you have avoided some of the decisions?
When you take a decision, you go with it all the way regardless of what happens. I believed and it was agreed that this was the best team for Indian cricket and the team at that stage. Sections of the media wanted to portray that it was me against Sourav. But it was nothing to do with that. It was purely to do with the cricket. In fact I quite liked Sourav and I have had some great experiences with him. He had been with me in Sydney before the tour of Australia in 2003, and it was a wonderful experience. And I said it before and even subsequent to the issues that we have had that Sourav considers me the best batting coach he ever had. So we had a mutual respect but I hardly expected him to agree with some of the decisions I made. But our relationship was separate from our job. If he had been my brother I would have done the same thing.

What kind of a recovery is this when so many people are crippled by debt?

Financial despair, often fuelled by payday lending, poisons the present and undermines hope and opportunity

• 
• • Stella Creasy
  • The Observer, Sunday 6 October 2013

Anti-payday loans campaigners at Brighton for the Labour conference. Photograph: David Levene for the Observer

Britain is once again being talked about as a place of prosperity. We are told to be relieved that the worst of the financial crisis has passed; the nation is becoming, according to David Cameron, a land of opportunity. Yet the same government that talks tough on national debt turns a blind eye to the personal debt the public have racked up on their watch. So while confidence may return to Britain's elite, millions of others endure sleepless nights about their future.

These are the people drowning in debts built up coping with the consequences of a recession in which wages froze but prices continued to rise. With little help from the government or banks, payday lending filled the gap. That leaves many people trapped, balancing multiple loans with multiple companies. They are trying to put food on their tables and heat their homes while paying off high-cost debts. One constituent was juggling eight different payday loans, to try and cover lost hours at work. She eventually lost her flat and only cleared her debt with her redundancy payoff; she is now back in rental property.

Last week, a Sure Start in Walthamstow, north-east London, told me of 30 clients served with eviction notices the day the benefit cap was introduced. Parents not even given a chance by landlords now face an overcrowded private rental sector that shuns housing benefit claimants. Several have been referred to social services as fears about debt and homelessness create unbearable stress.

Benefit cuts are the tip of the iceberg of pressures pushing the public into the red. As working hours have been slashed, so a wave of part-time jobs has led to underemployment and wasted productivity. Rail and energy prices have rocketed without competition from government to drive down the costs of getting to work or keeping warm. Asking those with thousands in unsecured personal debt – our current national average is £8,000 and growing – to take on risks and responsibilities is a non-starter. What hope saving for old age or social care costs, sending children to university or a housing deposit when the end of the month, let alone the end of the year, appears so distant for so many?

Which is why the toxicity of payday lending doesn't just feed today's cost of living crisis, but affects tomorrow's country of opportunity too. Cameron talks about prospects, but by his inaction we know his vision is one for the privileged few.

The failure of Project Merlin to lend to businesses shows coalition incompetence; the failure to provide affordable credit to our communities in such circumstances is inexcusable. Little wonder payday lenders now make £1m each week bleeding cash from consumers desperate to bridge the gap between a rocky jobs market and rising everyday expenses.

Such borrowing only compounds budgeting problems. Debt charity StepChange report 22% of payday loan clients have council tax arrears compared with 13% of all other clients, and 14% of them are behind on rent compared to 9% of all other clients. Such difficulties are music to the ears of companies for whom the more in debt a customer is the more profit they make.

Not every customer gets into financial difficulty, but enough find the price they pay for credit means they have to borrow again; 50% of profits in this industry come from refinancing, with those who take loans out repeatedly creating the largest return. One company makes 23% of its total profit from just 34,000 people who borrow every month, not able to cover their outgoings without such expensive finance. In turn, such loans devastate credit ratings, leaving users few other options to make ends meet.

Plans from the Financial Conduct Authority to limit rolling over of loans and lender access to bank accounts offer some progress. Yet until we deal with the cost of credit itself, there is little prospect of real change or protection for British consumers. Capping the total cost of credit, as they have in Japan and Canada, sets a ceiling on the amount charged, including interest rates, admin fees and late repayments. This allows borrowers to have certainty about debts they incur and firms have little incentive to keep pushing loans as they hit a limit on what they can squeeze out of a customer.

Lenders aggressively campaign against such measures knowing their profits, not customers, would take a hit. They threaten that caps would drive them out of business and push borrowers to illegal lenders – when evidence from other countries shows the reverse is true. Labour's commitment to capping in the face of such industry and government opposition reflects not just different priorities but different perspectives about in whose interests to act.

Only this government would make a virtue of defending companies that most now agree are out of control. The Office of Fair Trading is so concerned it has referred the entire industry to the Competition Commission. Its report into payday lending details how consumers are repeatedly sold loans they cannot hope to clear. The Citizens Advice Bureau found 76% of payday loan customers would have a misconduct case to take to the Financial Ombudsman. Despite overwhelming evidence of the toxic nature of their business model, these companies are being allowed to continue trading as if the consumer detriment it causes is a matter for the borrower to navigate rather than of public interest to address. Wanting to get regulation right should not prevent us from acting to avoid what, if left unchecked, will no doubt become the next mis-selling debacle akin to PPI.

In its willingness to front out concern about the fate of its 5 million customers, the danger is that this industry – and this government – wins the argument. They portray financial regulation as anti-competitive, anti-personal responsibility and anti-British, conveniently overlooking the market failure their behaviour represents.

This fosters a pessimism that the best we can do is pick up the pieces of the lives ruined, homes lost and credit ratings destroyed by companies exploiting the desperation of a country living on tick. Supporting alternative credit is vital, but so, too, is securing an alternative credit market and collective consumer action.

The longer we wait to learn the lessons of other countries on the use of caps, real-time credit checking and credit unions, the more people these legal loan sharks will snare into a cycle of inescapable debt – and a future where that land of opportunity is all too far away.

Stella Creasy is Labour MP for Walthamstow