The 'right school'? No, parents staying together is the best way to help children

Children with a stable home life do better at school. Focus less on catchment areas and more on relationship counselling

• 
• • Joanna Moorhead
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 18 December 2013 14.59 GMT

'The more stable a home life children have, the better they will be able to concentrate at school, and the better grades they will have.' Photograph: Eye Ubiquitous / Alamy/Alamy

Parents do anything they can to give their kids the best chance to succeed. According to a report published by the Sutton Trust, a third of "professional parents" with children aged between five and 16 have moved to an area because they think it has good schools, and 18% to a specific school's catchment area.

Some go further: 6% of the 1,000 parents surveyed admitted attending church services when they hadn't previously to help their children get a place at a church school; 3% admitted using a relative's address to get children into a particular school; and 2% said they had bought a second home and used that address to qualify for a place.

As well as a fair few white lies, it all adds up to a colossal amount of money spent on trying to improve your children's chances of doing better educationally – and the point the Sutton Trust wants to make is that the more money you have, the more you can do to "buy" an advantage. Its recommendation – that the government should step in and encourage ballots for school places, to make selection fairer – seems a good one. After all, the drive to make things as rosy as possible for your offspring is inherent in all us parents: it's what we're designed to do, to achieve the best possible life chances for our children. That doesn't, or shouldn't, amount to fraud – it's a braver person than me who would cast the first stone and condemn parents for trying to give their kids the best start.

So it seems strange that parents, while focusing so intently on school, seem often to ignore a much cheaper way of improving their children's educational lot. Because the more stable a home life children have, the better they will be able to concentrate at school, the better behaved they will be in school, and the better grades they will have on leaving school.

There's plenty of research to back all this up: a recent study by the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre found that children aged seven and older tended to do more poorly in exams and to behave badly at school if their parents split up. Another report funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, released at the end of last year, found that a stable family life meant children were more likely to take in what's being offered in the classroom. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, teenagers whose parents are fighting or separating may find it difficult to concentrate at school.

Of course, many marriages are completely on track, 100% hunky dory, and here the only thing worth stressing about is a school's Sats and GCSE results. But it may not be you, and I have to admit it's not me either: I've been married for more than a quarter of a century, and the one thing I'm sure of is that it's not a bed of roses. I've also got four children aged between 11 and 21; and while I'm truly grateful to the many teachers who have taught them, and the schools they've been pupils at, I've become more convinced as the years go by that a stable home is an absolutely vital ingredient in how they're getting on – and certainly much more crucial than where their school sits in the local league table.

So shelling out a few hundred quid for a course of Relate counselling sessions (and if you're on a low income, it can be a lot less, or even free) could be a much better use of the family's funds than spending thousands on moving house. Sure, your children might end up at a school whose exam results aren't quite so glowing – but that's more than offset by the fact that they are likely to do better for having happier parents (and moving house, after all, puts even more pressure on a relationship).

According to Relate, 80% of clients who went for adult relationship counselling said their partnership had been strengthened as a result. According to a whole pile of research stretching back across many decades, children tend to do best when they're raised in a stable family. I can't help wondering whether the only sure winners from the scramble to live by the best school gates are estate agents rather than the very children the move is designed to help.

Time for a ‘Right to Healthcare’

RAGHUVIR SRINIVASAN in the hindu

   

The HinduTamil Nadu and Kerala defy the presumption taht the government can't do anything. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

 

Amartya Sen says India ranks alongside Haiti and Sierra Leone when it comes to government spending on health as a share of the total health expenditure of the people

Any self-respecting country has to regard provision of health-care to its citizens a primary responsibility and it’s amazing that the Indian government never thought of that, says Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate and Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. Excerpts from his interview with Raghuvir Srinivasan:

After Right to Work and Right to Food, do you think that the time has come for a Right to Healthcare legislation given the poor state of public healthcare infrastructure in this country?

Absolutely! Let me just say that it is incredible that we have got to this state. If you take any country in the world with the possible exception of the United States among the richer countries, they have always regarded it as absolutely elementary for people to have a right to healthcare. The fact that you have to do it through a separate Act itself indicates how backward we have been. Consider the history of the world.

With the end of the Second World War, European countries gave the right to healthcare to all residents and other countries, including in Asia, went in that direction. Japan already had a very well established medical system but they extended that. Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan also had it. China had healthcare for all but when it marketised in 1979, they made it necessary like in the U.S., which was affecting their thinking very much at that time, for the citizens to buy their insurance cover themselves. So the coverage of health insurance which was automatic until 1979 moved from 100 per cent to 12 per cent. It took them a quarter of a century from 1979 to 2004 to admit that they made an error. And they moved to cover everyone. Now, 96 per cent of the population is covered.

Basically any self-respecting country has regarded this to be a primary responsibility of the government. Therefore it is amazing that the government of India never thought of that. The whole engine of Asian economic development has been the expansion of human capability and the recognition that there is nothing as favourable not only for development but also for economic growth. Since this country is single-mindedly concerned with growth rate, to maintain high growth rate for a long time there is no better recipe than to have a healthy, educated population. So, coming back to your question, if the government won’t do it, will it be right to force the government to do it through a Right to Healthcare Act? Yes. But why shouldn’t the government do it? Why isn’t this a big public issue? Even the Aam Aadmi Party didn’t raise it. The media has a role to play here. In general, the Indian media, print and electronic, should pay much more attention on this subject.

That brings me to the next question. More than 85 per cent of the revenue of Indian publications comes from advertisements which are aimed at the affluent and middle-class readership. Therefore, its focus is on issues that concern this segment of the population rather than on the poor and the deprived. How do you get over this handicap?

I’ll say three things on that. One, yes, it is a problem. Two, is India unusual in depending on advertisement revenue? No, it is not. How come this is not a problem in say, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Brazil or Mexico? We are not uniquely dependent on ads. It is a question of with what imagination and with what level of independent reasoning can newspapers, acting together, deal with advertisement revenue. There should be some convention on that. We have a vibrant media which has made many innovations. It can get more innovative on this. Third, the advertisers are competing with each other and they are playing one newspaper up against another. It should be possible for newspapers to have a code wherein certain types of news are covered and that code is important to seek.

This is about the two-way relationship between growth and enhancement of human capabilities. How do you break the chicken and egg situation of which comes first?

No, no, there is no chicken and egg situation at all. It is a win-win situation. Every bit of growth generates more revenue that you can spend on health and education. More spending on health and education solidifies the foundation of growth as well as development. You can start anywhere anytime and each of them will work. It’s not that you wait until one gets down and start working. Unfortunately I know that some economists talk like that but that’s a terrible way of thinking about economics. It is one of the things that Adam Smith said with absolute clarity in 1776.

Asked a question why is it that they want to go for a political economy, the answer he gives is that it makes an economy advanced. What is the advantage of that? First, it increases the people’s income. A higher income gives people the ability to do things which they value doing. And it increases public revenue which allows the government to do those things which governments alone can do such as education.

But you have this anomalous situation in India where the government is practically absent in areas such as education and health care leaving them to the private sector and is present in strength in manufacturing steel and refining oil which are better left to the private sector….

That’s just unclear thinking. You should clear out unclear thinking. Every time I come here, a lot of people tell me that the government cannot do anything at all and therefore education and healthcare should be left to the private sector. They don’t recognise, for example, that governmental share of health care in India as a percentage of total health expenditure that people make is one of the three lowest in the world. We are in the company of Haiti and Sierra Leone. We spend one quarter of what the Chinese government spends on health care. We spend 1.2 per cent of GDP while China spends close to 3 per cent. And there is no evidence for this idea that the private sector can do better.

At the level of basic health care it doesn’t work like that. Even the intervention schemes that exist don’t cover preventive medicine or preventive health care but if you become catastrophically ill then the government will pay the money, often to the private hospital, to treat you. That is no way of running public health care.

And this whole idea that the government cannot do anything, you have to look at the examples of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh. When we discussed them a long time ago that they were doing well, I was told that they cannot sustain it because Kerala, for example, is a poor economy. But now it has the highest disposable income per capita in India. The same thing that improves the quality of your life also enhances the economic development. And that story you will not hear. You will hear that [Narendra] Modi has brought such transformation that his State’s growth rate is much higher than [that of] the others. We had a hurricane recently which was expected to be in the news for a month. But it ended the first day because the government could move a million people off the coast. And this was a hurricane five times bigger than Katrina. The problem is that we have convinced ourselves that the government cannot do anything and we give it to the private sector, provide additional money and tie ourselves into a knot from which we cannot exit.

There are some interesting developments in the recent elections. We have a party formed out of a civil society movement which has captured the imagination of the electorate and we are seeing a resurgence of centre-right politics manifested by the success of the BJP. How do you see these developments?

The practice of democracy depends very much on what kinds of issues are brought into the public domain and into the debate connected with elections. The Delhi election was the more interesting one because it brought in many issues which people had neglected in the past. It didn’t bring in all the issues that we want to emphasise as much. It didn’t talk so much about the neglect of education, the lack of public health care and so on. It was concerned more about the delivery of existing services in an efficient and non-corrupt way.

That is important too but I would have liked a broader agenda discussed. However, one cannot get everything and certainly not in one go. But I’m happy that the AAP did bring in some public concerns into the politics of the election. The fact that they could get the people to focus on these issues rather than on issues of religion or caste is also a very positive thing, as also the fact that they won the election in many areas of Delhi without getting into these issues.

The rest of the elections were not unpredictable. The results were connected with traditional politics where religion and caste have played a part. The BJP has been able to project the image of a party that led powerfully even though the nature of the leadership raises deep questions in people’s mind, including mine. The Congress has looked rudderless. So, there’s nothing terribly exciting. Is that an indicator of what’s going to happen in the general election? Is it a wake-up call for Congress? Well, it’s not clear that Congress can be woken up!

David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful

David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful

The Bhagawad Gita for Students

Purposeful Living

On Batting: Go forward, not back

Why an initial back-foot trigger movement may not be a great idea

Sanjay Manjrekar

December 18, 2013

 

Alastair Cook: too late into position in Perth © Getty Images

A fireman once said, "We are crazy guys, you know. When a house is on fire, people are running out and we are running in." A batsman has to do something similar when a bowler like Mitchell Johnson is steaming in, hurling thunderbolts at 150kph.

Like for the firemen, it is like an inferno approaching a batsman from 22 yards away, and like the fireman, the batsman has a job to do, and it does not include running away. Watching some of the England batsmen in this Ashes series, I have been reminded of this analogy.

When Johnson runs in to bowl, they take a significant step backwards in the crease before the ball is delivered. That is fine when the ball is short, but when it is full - and Johnson bowls a lot of those along with bouncers - they become extremely vulnerable, as we have seen.

----

Also Read - Martin Crowe on Gavaskar's technique

----

Look at Alastair Cook's dismissal in the first innings in Adelaide and in the second in Perth. Both times, the ball was pitched up, but he was just too late to get into position to defend it solidly, which would not have been the case if they were short deliveries. We talk about how great those deliveries from Johnson and Ryan Harris were, and they were good, especially the Harris one in the second innings in Perth, but if Cook had got forward to them quicker, they would have been just two other pitched-up balls that a batsman defended safely.

I am not a big fan of the big back-foot movement - the one batsmen make with their feet before the ball is delivered - unless it's made in order to propel another movement forward. Both the England openers have that initial back-foot movement and only when are set do they use it to spring forward - until then, they seem to hang back a bit and so become vulnerable to balls pitched up, and miss a few scoring opportunities to balls pitched up.

	A short, quick delivery is best handled by a batsman when he is reacting instinctively to it - whether he is playing an attacking shot or defending

With a big initial back-foot movement, you are committing yourself completely to a delivery of a particular length, short. So when the ball is short you seem to have plenty of time to play it, but when it is full you are invariably late on it, and if your luck as a batsman has run out, as Cook found out, that full, seaming ball will come early in the innings, hit the right spot and get through your defence.

As a batsman you ideally want the smallest trigger movement, so that you are prepared for all kinds of lengths and lines. In this Ashes, Michael Clarke, Steve Smith, Joe Root, and also Ben Stokes, have shown that kind of technique, with no pronounced prior commitment to any length. Because of that they have looked much better positioned to balls that are pitched up. Batsmen make the initial move in the crease because that way they feel they are setting themselves up for the challenge. Very often it's just a matter of "mental preparedness". Some do it to be in a good position to face a particular kind of delivery that they feel they are susceptible to.

My view is that if you have to move your feet before the ball is released, it's better to have a front-foot movement instead of a back-foot one: looking to move forward before the ball is bowled rather than back. That way, you are better prepared to handle the ball that gets most batsmen out in this game - the one that is full in length.

What about the short ball then, you ask? Doesn't the front-foot movement make you a sitting duck against it? Well, there you need to trust the instincts that we have all been gifted with as human beings, born of our evolution over millions of years and our survival instincts against physical threats. That short ball from a fast bowler is a physical threat to a batsman. Look at how batsmen react to a short ball from a spinner as opposed to one from a fast bowler.

	Batsmen like Hashim Amla have shown you can be extremely successful with big initial back-foot movements © AFP  Enlarge

As a batsman you will be amazed at how quickly you get on the back foot - though you are telling yourself to go forward - when the ball is short and quick. This back-foot movement happens automatically; it is a case of natural instinct taking over. My argument is, why deliberately try to do something that is going to happen automatically; instead, why not train yourself to do something that is against your instinct? Like getting forward to a fast bowler, because the ball that is pitched up is the one that's most likely to get you out.

The other great benefit in trying to get forward is, that way you also handle the short ball better. I believe that a short, quick delivery is best handled by a batsman when he is reacting instinctively to it - whether he is playing an attacking shot or defending.

During the course of my batting career I had two distinct phases, one when I handled the short ball well and the other when I didn't. It was quite obvious to me that when I was in good form and in a good frame of mind I would look to go towards the fast bowler, try to get on the front foot, and that was when I handled the short ball comfortably. When you are looking to get forward, the head tends to stay forward, and with it the body weight. That is the perfect kind of balance you want to have as a batsman, whether you are playing off front foot or back.

When you are out of form, with a big back-foot movement, the head tends to stay back that fraction of a second longer, and because you are expecting a short ball, the head also stays quite high, which means you are poorly prepared for the full delivery.

Having said all this, there are still many extremely successful contemporary batsmen, like Hashim Amla, Graeme Smith, and Cook himself, who have big back-foot movements. Their success can be attributed to all the other strengths they have brought into play to succeed, but you will see even they look vulnerable early in the innings to balls that are pitched up and seaming.

As a batsman you should have a technique you can fall back on when you are out of form and low on confidence. Your other strengths will have deserted you by then, and your technique will be the only thing you can count on. You need a technique that can get you back into form from a bad patch, and that's where I have a problem with the big back-foot trigger movement.

Cricket - The Gavaskar lesson on batting

The new breed of Indian batsmen need to carry the flame that Sunny, Sachin, and Rahul kept burning for so long

Martin Crowe in Cricinfo

December 17, 2013

 

	Sunil Gavaskar: Head still, feet at the ready, moving according to the movement of the ball © Getty Images  Enlarge

Wisdom is priceless. When you get on a learning path, it is the best time of your life. Every day means something, every lesson provides the clarity you clamour for. You move forward, evolve, grow, and become more fulfilled as the big picture, the dream even, emerges from the shadows and into the light.

I will never forget the moments when I had the opportunity to acquire a touch of acumen, a piece of pure pansophy (Pansophism, in older usage often pansophy, is a concept of omniscience, meaning "all-knowing". In some monotheistic belief systems, a god is referred as the ultimate knowing spirit.). I was desperate to get a heads-up on life, especially about how to bat at the highest level. And so when I heard or saw that a walking encyclopedia on batting was nearby I went on a mission to trap the great man, whoever and wherever he was.

It started with meeting many fine players during my scholarship year at Lord's at age 17, under the watchful care of coach Don Wilson. I brushed up to Colin Cowdrey, Geoff Boycott, Fred Trueman and more, as Old England toured the land. Among the stories of endeavour they would tell were pearls of wisdom. It was an informal education on how to play the game.

When I returned a year later in 1982 and took up the groundsman-and-overseas-player role at Bradford's Park Avenue in North Yorkshire, I didn't quite realise how lucky I would be. When India played Yorkshire that summer, they did so on my patch and dubiously prepared pitch. This was where I met Sunil Gavaskar, one of the all-time greats and at the time the best player in the world alongside Viv Richards. I had to get inside this man's head, even if for a minute.

Being the groundsman gave me the chance. Over the four-day fixture I picked my moment and swooped like a vulture. "Sir, when playing the Windies, what is the single most important thing you must do to combat their pace and bounce?"

"Son, it's your eyes. Before I go out to bat, I find a wall and position into my stance with my right ear hard up against the wall. By doing this I feel my head and eyes level, my balance perfect, my feet light and ready to move. The wall is ensuring that I stay still. In the middle I pretend the wall is still there. Head position and balance. From there my eyes are in the best position to see the ball and to stay watching it until the shot is played."

Minutes later, back in the dusty shed, I found my wall. I could stand in position forever, my balance perfect. The mind and body got used to the balance, the more I did it. It was a lustrous piece of advice I never ever forgot. When my form dropped I went back to Gavaskar's elementary instruction.

Whenever I watched Sachin Tendulkar I thought he must have spoken to Sunny about the same thing, for Sachin always displayed a still, balanced stance and head position.

Now it's up to others to carry the torch. In the cauldron of South Africa it's up to a new breed of Indian batsmen to carry the baton that Sunny and Sachin did so incredibly, for so long.

These two men are not tall, so bounce was always their greatest enemy. Yet they trusted that if they saw the ball in a balanced position, with feet at the ready, they would move according to the movement of the ball, whatever shape that took. Eyes, then footwork. In that split second, once they saw the trajectory, the feet went to work, allowing the eyes to stay watching.

Dealing with bounce became just another obstacle, another movement to deal with. The key was their mental strength to clear the mind of any doubt, any second- guessing. When I first played West Indies, in Port-of-Spain, I assumed I needed to be ready a split second early, so I started moving before I saw the ball. I got 3 and 2 as Holding and Marshall easily trapped a moving, nervous target. It was a hopeless performance.

I went back to Sunny's sage advice and used the wall technique. A week later, in Georgetown, albeit on a flatter track that gave me a chance to build a more positive mindset, I batted so much better. After that I realised fully what Sunny had meant. It was the start of my international career proper.

	India's top five need to work out what shots are working for them and what shots are too risky. Importantly, they need to get a feel for the occasion

Over the next month, against Steyn, Philander and Morkel, India can counter the home advantage, the pace and bounce, the second-guessing. Firstly, they must have a premise for success, and Sunny and Sachin, their master predecessors, have paved the way. They did it, and therefore it can be done again. They must draw upon that wisdom and apply it to their own game.

It takes courage to stay still with the head and trust the footwork when time is of the essence. You buy time when you see it early and play it late. It is when you see it late and play it early that the wheels fall off. Also, as Sunny, Sachin and Rahul Dravid proved, there are points where you have to be prepared to wear the opposition down, mentally and physically. You have to be patient. This way you can break it down to only the one ball that comes at you, one five-second block of concentration to deal with. Then another, and another.

Obviously, all this has to be done collectively, as a batting unit. The mind can deceive you when wickets are falling at the end, no matter how well you may have a grasp on your own situation. It has to be a combined commitment to fully embracing the challenge and working on the response.

Playing shots is important, as long as they are the right shots. You can't play them all. It's not like a T20 match. India's top five need to work out what shots are working for them and what shots are too risky. Importantly, they need to get a feel for the occasion, the opposition, the pitch, the air in which the ball travels quicker, especially in Johannesburg. They don't have much practice or time to get ready, given the nature of tours these days. So they must prepare in the mind and the imagination is perfectly equipped to provide a sense of calm within, before facing the heat in the middle.

For the top three, Dhawan, Vijay and Pujara, they only need to imagine Dravid in battle mode. He was the wall for a good reason. Rahul backed his eyes and his feet. For Rohit Sharma and Kohli it will be Sachin they can remind themselves of. These two icons showed time and again how it can be done, and those two learnt from Sunny, the master of compiling long innings against the might Windies.

Life is not about doing it alone. It's about learning from those who have already climbed great heights, and adding that history to one's own make up. Combining the love of the game and one's own ability with the wisdom of the ages is the essence of what we are here to do.

South Africa will throw all they have into these next two Tests. They are the No. 1 Test side by a long stretch. They have been messed around recently regarding this tour. They are highly motivated, there is no doubt. And they will steam in.

India need to provide the wall of resilience. Sunny used it, Sachin breathed it, Rahul was it. Kohli and Co can prosper by adding another brick in the wall of Indian batting mastery.

So what if the pope were a Marxist?

By querying the the absolute autonomy of the marketplace, Pope Francis is hardly making a radical critique. But such 'red scares' have long history

• 
• • Priyamvada Gopal
  • theguardian.com, Monday 16 December 2013 18.35 GMT

Pope Francis has been denounced as a Marxist by rightwingers for criticising 'unfettered capitalism'. Photograph: Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis

Some of his best friends are Marxists, Pope Francis announced last week. Well, not quite, but he has insisted that he knows some "Marxists who are good people". While making it clear that "Marxist ideology is wrong", the pontiff claimed he wasn't offended by being denounced as a Marxist by the US shock-jock, Rush Limbaugh. The conservative radio host and other rabid free-market ideologues have taken umbrage at the recent "apostolic exhortation" which criticised "unfettered capitalism" and the "globalisation of indifference" it has created.

The use of "Marxist" as a slur – along with kindred terms such as "socialist" and "communist" – is not a uniquely American phenomenon but is most familiar to us from the era of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, established in 1938 and, later, Joseph McCarthy's committee.

In that context, and during the "red scares" which followed it during the cold war, these were appellations used to identify and punish any criticism of capitalism, however sympathetic or merely reformist. Indeed, any dissent from mainstream dogma was "un-American".

America's first "red scare" took place in the wake of the 1918 Bolshevik revolution. To be a dissident from capitalism in any degree was to be a socialist or a "commie" and, therefore, "anti-American": the net of denunciation was cast wide enough to include immigrants, conscientious objectors, blacks and Jews.

American public culture is saturated with stories of "commie plots" and conspiracies and many, like the Hollywood Ten, the playwright Lillian Hellman, the actor Paul Robeson, and the writer Richard Wright were famously blacklisted for alleged communist connections. Even Martin Luther King has been accused of Marxism, as has John Kerry and, more recently, President Barack Obama was denounced as a "socialist" for bringing less well-off Americans into the ambit of corporate, very much capitalist, healthcare provision.

In Britain, while many Victorian liberals and radicals were careful to distance themselves from socialism, engagement with both Marxism and socialism has been historically less hostile than in the US. Nevertheless, the use of Marxist as an insult also indicating a treasonous lack of patriotism has been stepped up in recent years, featuring most prominently in the attacks on Ralph Miliband as "the man who hated Britain".

It is no accident that such terms are deliberately deployed as pejoratives at a time when an unregulated, rampant capitalism and its ideologues are in the dominant position but also fear growing unpopularity and subsequent challenge. In this context, "Marxism" refers not merely to thinking influenced by Karl Marx's magisterial three volumes laying bare the unavoidable exploitation at the heart of capitalism – it becomes a random, ill-conceived slur to stave off any and all criticism of its operations.

For a mainstream and still fundamentally conservative figure, Pope Francis has indeed gone further than many by poking the sacred cow that is trickle-down economics and querying "the absolute autonomy of the marketplace". These are not radical critiques of capitalism and have been made before by many, including Keynesian economists who would not consider themselves at all anti-capitalist but are more concerned with saving the system from its own ravages.

While Francis now appears to boldly advocate a church that is poor and "for the poor", he isn't about to tear up the Vatican's vast investment portfolio. We can welcoming the opening that his exhortation has provided for a discussion of the economic regime under which we labour and from which a few profit much more than others. Yet, it is also important to recognise that such criticism is of the sort which ultimately seeks to inoculate capitalism from disastrous meltdown by feeding it measured doses of healthy caution.

Perhaps it is time to properly revisit Marx's own insights into the workings of capitalism and ask how these remain relevant to understanding how the global economy functions. The pope's denunciation of the way in which "human beings are themselves considered consumer goods" was much more thoroughly anticipated in Marx's brilliant analysis of the commodity form which saw this process as central to capitalism, not merely an unhappy side effect of poor regulation.

"Exclusion" and "inequality" are similarly not happenstance spin-offs from a "new tyranny"; they are fundamental to a now old economic dynamic which seeks to concentrate the wealth in a few palms by extracting the labour from many hands. Of course capitalism is rife with "moral corruption", but we would also do well to look at how inequality is central to its very material workings.

There can be no moral regeneration that is not also a complete rejection of capitalism's essential immorality. It is futile to keep talking of "including the poor" within the ambit of capitalist opportunity: any good capitalist like our chancellor, George Osborne, understands very well that inequality and impoverishment (codename "austerity") is absolutely central to the creation and concentration of wealth. Anything less is simply to further the politics of illusion.

Un-bankable institutions

BILL KIRKMAN

   

 

If the deteriorating faith in banks is to be checked, immediate, and effective, changes in the system are necessary.

What do I expect of my bank? Thirty years ago, my answer to that rhetorical question would have been simple: I expect financial expertise and complete trustworthiness in the provision of a service. My answer to the question today is far less reassuring. I have grave doubts about the bank’s financial expertise. I view the behaviour of the bank’s officials as dubious, to put it mildly — and I would be most reluctant to approach a bank for financial advice.

That may be an over-reaction, but of course it reflects an attitude induced by the latest banking scandal: the behaviour of the Co-operative Bank, and its (now departed) chairman, the Reverend Paul Flowers, a Methodist Minister.

The story of what has happened with the bank, leaving aside the personal scandals of Mr. Flowers, is scarcely credible. It is a story of bad judgments, notably over its merger in 2008 with the Britannia Building Society, and its failed attempt to take over 631 branches from Lloyds Banking Group. Apart from bad financial judgments, it is also a story of weak management. There is a complication because of the links between the bank and the Labour Party, which has benefited from favourable loans from the Bank, which are inevitably now under scrutiny. To put it bluntly and simply, the whole thing is a right mess.

At a certain level, it is easy to apportion blame. For example, it has emerged, as the story has unfolded, that Mr. Flowers had very limited financial knowledge. When one begins to consider that, it quite quickly becomes clear that there are serious failures in regulation to be taken into account. Why, for instance, was the appointment of Mr. Flowers allowed by the Financial Services Authority (replaced now by the Financial Conduct Authority), given his rudimentary financial knowledge? Why did the Co-op Bank not have on its management board people from outside the Co-op, with financial experience?

I wrote early in this article that my expectation of what service will be provided by a bank is inevitably coloured by the fact that there has been a galaxy of banking scandals and crises in recent years. Banks have collapsed, and have had to be rescued by government. Senior bank staff have had to leave their jobs in disgrace. Not surprisingly, all this has led to great public suspicion of banks. No longer are they seen as monuments of financial expertise, led by people with impeccable credentials, and unchallengeable skill.

Negative public attitudes have been exacerbated by the way in which many senior bankers have been demanding vast salaries, and unbelievably high bonuses. The question raised, obviously, is salaries for doing what.

There is another issue which affects public attitudes. One has to recognise, of course, that many of the services that banks provide are not services to “domestic” customers. The fact remains that many of the “domestic” services are becoming less easily accessible except online. Many local bank branches are being shut. The reasons are clear, and probably realistic. The changes, however, do not enhance the respect which ordinary people feel for banks.

It is clearly important to clean up, and effectively regulate, the banks, so as to ensure that another Co-op situation cannot occur. Part of that regulation must include insisting that the board of a bank must include people with full banking skills — and must include also outsiders with such skills. Part of the problem at the Co-op arose from the fact that the Co-operative movement is a partnership — a mutual. So, however, is the highly successful John Lewis trading group, and they took the decision seven years ago, when embarking on a major modernisation, to appoint independent non-executives to the board. It can be done, and in the Co-operative Bank, it clearly should be done.

In my view, something else is necessary for the whole of the banking system. It must be forced to recognise not only what a large part of the national economy it constitutes, but also the duty which that imposes on the system, and on individual banks and those who run them, to provide an honest, and efficient, and trusted service. The personal scepticism which I described at the beginning of this article is just that: personal. I do believe, however, that it reflects something far more important, namely a widespread lack of trust in the contribution which banks are making to the well-being of the country.