The Joy of Tax

The Joy of Tax

by

Richard Murphy

(extracts)

- It has been said that the only two things in life that are inevitable are death and taxes. This is not entirely true; while death has been with us from the time life dawned on earth 3.5 billion years ago, taxes have a recent written recorded history - 4500 years ago.

- Top UK taxes in (£) 2013-14

Income Tax -                    155 bn - 27.3%

National Insurance -         106.9 -   18.8%

VAT -                               105.1 -   18.5 %

Corporation tax -                40.1 -     7.1%

- Oxford dictionary on tax:

A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits, or added to the cost of goods, services and transactions.

This is misleading because; we also charge tax on income from invested savings, pensions and rent. We also charge tax on wealth and on inheritance as well as on occupation of property. The collective term for all this is 'the tax base'. The tax base is made up of things on which we want to charge tax.

There are major problems with the view that tax is 'a compulsory contribution to state revenue'. The whole history of tax, government and democracy is entangled precisely because those who have been taxed have demanded that their consent to taxation be sought before any such charge was imposed. In that case is it true to say that there is a compulsion?

Even if it is undoubtedly true that a great many people in modern democracies are disenchanted with modern politics they do have the right to vote in elections that result in the formation of the governments that set taxes in the countries in which they reside. Compulsion is hard to suggest in this case.

What follows on logically is that tax paid does not become the property of some alien body. It is the property of a government in which we have a stake and in which we participate i.e. the government is something that we want to exist and in whose operation we consent.

We also understand that the government is different from us; the democratic process creates the possibility that there will be governments and taxes that we would not have personally supported with our votes. We consent nonetheless because we recognise that within the democratic process there could be a will greater and different from our own.

- If we consent to the existence of government and willingly consent to its right to tax, the the favourite phrase of politicians, 'they are spending taxpayers' money' is not true. Tax is not taxpayers' money. It is the government's money and it is the government's rightful property.

This property right of the government has been created in exactly the same way as all other property in a modern democracy by statute law.

- Modern definition of tax

In a democracy with a universal franchise that provides every adult with a right to seek election, tax  is that property held in trust by an individual or a company that is due to the state whose rightful and legal property it is.

- Any attempt by an individual to reduce the property right of a state to claim the tax that is rightfully its property is an action like all others that are motivated by the desire to take away from someone something that is rightfully theirs. Conventionally they could be called theft, tax avoidance or tax evasion.

- Why does a government tax? Contrary to popular perception, no government has to charge tax to be able to spend on what it wants to do. The most obvious alternative to tax is for a government to print money to pay for its expenditure. Modern governments tax to meet the expectations they have raised among their electorate as to the services they will provide in exchange for their votes.

In reality the main reason to use taxation is that a tax lets a government reclaim the money it has spent into the economy, in order to stop the money supply from over expanding. It is just as necessary that the government has available to it a means of destroying the money it can create and spend at will into the economy, and that mechanism is taxation. Taxation literally counterbalances government spending by reclaiming all or part of it from the economy. But what it never does is pay for the spending in the first place because any government can spend without tax.

Another reason for demanding payment of tax is to make the local currency, issued, backed and controlled by the government, the only useful currency in that place. By creating a demand for its coins and notes to settle tax liabilities the state ensures that these same notes and coins become readily acceptable as payment for the goods and services the government itself wishes to buy within the economy it manages.

In countries where the shadow economy is very large, meaning that very little tax is paid, there is ample evidence that currencies other than that issued by the local government are often used as the preferred basis for trading.

Another reason for tax (as fiscal policy) is to reorganize the economy to ensure that it delivers the government's economic goals.

Yet another reason for tax is when the market price for goods and services do not reflect all the costs and benefits that result from trade in that activity.

- In brief the six Rs for tax:

1. Reclaiming money the government has spent into the economy for re-use.

2. Ratifying the value of money

3. Re-organizing the economy.

4. Redistributing income and wealth

5. Repricing goods and services

6. Raising representation. 

On leg spin - Straight from the wrist

Source: Cricinfo






Imran Tahir on Abdul Qadir: "He could easily mesmerise someone like the 17-year-old me. He was the guy I wanted to be"© AFP


INTERVIEWS BY NAGRAJ GOLLAPUDI AND GAURAV KALRA | OCTOBER 2015

It takes heart, it takes skill, it takes brains, and it makes for the most tantalising sight in cricket. Three legspinners with three decades of experience around the world tell us how it's done.

What skills are necessary to become a good legspinner?

Mushtaq Ahmed: You've got to spin the ball. That is the most important thing. Then you need to have the variations: legbreak, wrong'un, flipper, topspinner. Then your action needs to be very repeatable. You should know how to use the crease, know when to go round the wicket. Those are the basics.

You have to spin the ball with drift. I learned that in the last five years of my career. It was difficult for me because of my action, where my arm was very high. Drift is something that forces the batsman usually to get caught at the wicket, in slips and gully. I can never tire of watching a legspinner who can drift the ball in and spin the ball away from a right-hander.

Stuart MacGill: The number one attribute for a spin bowler is resilience. You have to take a pile of beatings before you can become an international bowler. You can't judge a legspinner based on the number of bad balls he bowls in an over. You have to judge him at the end of the day, based on the number of wickets he has taken. If a young spinner bowls ten or 20 bad balls, it is the ball he bowls that belongs in the Shane Warnevideo category that should keep him going the next day. If you are more interested in the batsman hitting sixes, then you should be a batsman. If you're the bloke interested in getting the batsman out when he's on top, then you stand a chance.

Imran Tahir: With time and experience you start learning the skills. For me what is important is, as a legspinner you need determination, especially in modern-day cricket. You need to feel that you can change a game. Legspinners are exciting characters. Look at guys like Warne, Qadir - they change results, they make things happen.

"You have to watch the batsman, read him. If somebody plays with hard hands you have to bowl slow. You have to deceive him with pace"MUSHTAQ AHMED

Did any bowlers from history have an impact on you?

Mushtaq: I was very lucky that I could imitate people easily. At school I used to act like Imran Khan by copying his bowling action. If Javed Miandad scored runs, I would walk like him, field like him. When I saw Abdul Qadir for the first time on TV, I liked his bouncing, dancing action. I copied him instantly. I did not have his height, but I felt that I could bowl legspin. For the first two years of my career I bowled exactly like Qadir bhai.

I met Qadir bhai for the first time in 1987. I played in a tour match against Mike Gatting's England. I was a schoolboy, but I took six wickets in the first innings. I was picked in the Test squad and met him in Karachi. I was shy so I did not approach him, but I watched him very closely. What I observed from his body language was that he was very confident. I have since believed, and I always tell this to young bowlers, the most important thing you need to have as a legspinner is confidence. Your body language should always be that of a fast bowler, but you need to think like a spinner. When somebody hits you for a six, you need to still look into the batsman's eye, but you need to be cool and keep in mind that you still have to spin the ball.

Tahir: Abdul Qadir was my main role model. I just wanted to be like him because for me he was only guy who no one could read. He was that good. His passion, his love for legspin, was unique. He would create new things all the time: flippers, sliders, three to four kinds of googlies, legspinners, topspinners. He could easily mesmerise someone like the 17-year-old me. He was the guy I wanted to be.

MacGill: "The pressure applied by Shane is far more significant than the pressure applied by me, and consequently it was easier for me to take wickets" © Getty Images

MacGill: My father and grandfather were first-class cricketers. Being born into a cricketing family, I was always gunning to play cricket. Most kids in the '70s and '80s wanted to be fast bowlers and emulate Dennis Lillee but my father was a legspinner. He was a very different bowler to me as he relied on accuracy and change of pace along with variation off the pitch.

Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O'Reilly were really big names in Australian cricket folklore. I have read Grimmett's books and it's amazing how their generation learnt through feel in the absence of technology. I really like them because they played together but were different bowlers and different personalities. O'Reilly sometimes bowled with the new ball. They succeeded to the point that rules were changed to protect the batsmen.

I met Warnie when we were at the cricket academy in 1990, shortly before he played for Australia. I never compared myself with Shane Warne. I wasn't even playing state cricket back then. In his success was my opportunity as we started to rely more and more on a spin bowler as an attacking component.

"You should never have fear in T20. Even if you are hit for 20 runs in an over, in the next over by taking two wickets you can finish the game"IMRAN TAHIR

How do you explain having a superior record to Warne in the games you played together?
MacGill: When I was bowling I was lucky I had Shane Warne up the other end. When he was bowling, he had me up the other end. The pressure applied by Shane is far more significant than the pressure applied by me and consequently it was easier for me to take wickets because they had to score off me as they were not scoring off him.

Warne came into the side when spin bowling was not used as front-line attack. We had some seriously attacking spinners like Ashley Mallett but then there was a gap. Bruce Yardley was another one, Greg Matthews became an attacking spinner in the second half of his career, but none of them got an extended run and became a core member of the team. Warne showed nations around the world the importance of having a diverse attack.

Was there a spell from your early days which gave you the confidence that you belong?
MacGill: I always cared about taking wickets and not the runs I gave away. In one of my first games of fourth-grade cricket I got hit for nine sixes by a first-grade batsman. But I got six wickets in the game the next week.

A calculated dismissal: Mushtaq Ahmed goes round the wicket and traps Michael Atherton at The Oval in 1996 © Getty Images

Mushtaq: It would be the 1992 World Cup final, when I got three wickets. I had 16 wickets in nine matches, just behind Wasim [Akram] who had 18 wickets in ten matches. After that I realised I can play international cricket.

After the World Cup, Pakistan toured England where we won the series. And even if Wasim and Waqar dominated, I still had 15 wickets. That gave me the confidence that if I get more opportunities I could dominate too. That belief was confirmed on the 1995 tour of Australia, where I got 18 wickets including nine wickets in Sydney. I remember Australian captain Mark Taylor saying Mushy was the most difficult legspinner he had faced. That was because he could not read my googly.

I had also become more accurate and versatile playing county cricket. I enjoyed the responsibility. In county cricket you play in different weather conditions - cold, hot, rainy - you play on slow, turning, green pitches, so once you experience all these varied conditions you become a very matured bowler.

"Your body language should always be that of a fast bowler, but you need to think like a spinner"MUSHTAQ AHMED

Tahir: That spell against Pakistan in Dubai when I got 5 for 32 was the most important. That is the only five-for I have got in my Test career. It had come against some of the best batsmen of spin on one of the flattest decks. I had played against most of the Pakistan batsmen, including Misbah-ul-Haq, as a youngster and that made it more special.

Is spinning the ball mandatory?

MacGill: Nowadays there's a temptation to turn everybody into Shane Warne. Being a wristspinner doesn't mean you need to have the same approach as Shane Warne. I loved watching Anil Kumble bowl. I thought he was great. People who said that he didn't turn the ball didn't know the huge amount of work he got into the ball. He generated a lot of revolutions and the ball did drop a lot through the air. His height was an advantage but he moulded his bowling around what he had physically. He was a superstar. People focus on what happens to the ball off the pitch but a great batsman is beaten before the ball pitches.


MacGill: "You can't judge a legspinner based on the number of bad balls he bowls in an over" © Getty Images

Mushtaq: My legbreaks, I did not spin them much. But there was enough spin to create doubts in the batsman's mind. When you are at your peak, when you are bowling your legbreaks, wrong'uns, and flippers and even the best batsmen are not reading you, for doing that you have got to be a good spinner of the ball.

I will cite the example of Kumble. His stats are brilliant. He was unplayable where the pitches were helpful. If the pitch was dry, turning, breaking, he was a very difficult bowler to play because he was tall, he would get bounce and had good pace behind the ball. But in Australia, South Africa and England, places where the pitches are not turning enough, it became difficult. Where pitches are unhelpful if you are not a big spinner of the ball, people can play you off the pitch or like a medium-pacer.

Tahir: No, it is not. I had spoken about the same thing with Shane Warne when I met him. I wanted to turn the ball like him, I told him. He said I should not bother about spinning more than the size of the bat otherwise I would not gain the edge. Perhaps he said that after having observed my bowling action. He did teach me a few grips, how he used to hold the ball, but he asked me to stick to my own action and focus on my strengths. In modern-day cricket there is no legspinner who turns the ball big.

"The googly and the slider are my favourite type of deliveries and I love it when batsmen try to cut or sweep me"IMRAN TAHIR

What's the process for developing the various deliveries that legspinners bowl?

MacGill: The process is that everybody has their stock ball, which I like to call their best ball. The ball you can fall back on and which you can bowl with your eyes shut. You then understand the angle of the wrist and the angle of the release. That is the only thing that matters. Pace through the air can be generated through your body. You can go a little bit wider or go round the wicket, but the angle of your wrist and point of release determines the type of delivery. There are gentle differences in the degree. If my palm faces the batsman, it's a legbreak. There are no magical deliveries. It's all about the angle of release.

I tried to get one at a time. The first and most difficult one was the googly, so I tried to spend a lot of time developing that. Unfortunately for me, I tried to develop it to the detriment of my legspinner. It took me six months to get my legspinner back. It took me longer to learn the backspinner as I found it difficult to incorporate it into my action. In the end it was one of my better variations.

Mushtaq Ahmed: "I learned drift in the last five years of my career. It was difficult for me because of my action, where my arm was very high" © PA Photos

How important is the stock ball?

Tahir: My belief is whatever be my stock ball, the key is to keep the batsman guessing every ball. I want him to think all the time. I should not be predictable to the batsman. If you spin the ball big like Shane Warne, then you are bound to trouble the batsman. But if you cannot, then you need to play mind games.

Mushtaq: People used to think my googly was my stock ball. As a legspinner, the stock ball for me is the legbreak. I would bowl it with a scrambled seam. Because I had a quick arm action, batsmen could not pick it from the seam or my hand. With experience I brought in the variations to the legbreak. You have to watch the batsman, read him. If somebody plays with hard hands then you have to bowl slow. You have to deceive him with the pace of the ball. If somebody is playing with soft hands you've got to push the ball quicker.

At times you have to bowl legbreaks wide of the crease, sometimes you pitch it from closer to the stumps. In between you bowl a wrong'un and topspinner from the same area, which makes it more difficult for the batsman. If he is good at reading the hand or reading your wrong'un then you should go round the wicket to put a doubt in his mind and then swap to over the wicket.

"The angle of your wrist and point of release determines the type of delivery"STUART MACGILL

Possibly a good example of that strategy could be you getting Michael Atherton out twice, both times on the final day, of the Lord's and The Oval Tests in 1996. You went round the wicket both times. What was the plan?

Mushtaq:I remembered Atherton used to be a legspinner, so he would play with very soft hands. He would easily push me to cover. He would put his front leg outside off stump and that way he would kill or put away my googly. Then I realised that I have to bowl from round the wicket because he is going across. By going round the wicket he would be forced to open up, which he was not used to. He had to play me from the leg stump and consequently he was caught at bat-pad and once at slip.

Can there be a temptation to overuse the googly? During the initial phase of your county career Martin Crowe, the opposition captain, asked his batsmen to play you as an offspinner.

Mushtaq: It really hurt when I was told about Crowe's plan. But what he said proved beneficial for me because I decided that I would improve my legspinner so much that even if they played me like an offspinner I could get them in my sleep. But I must admit that when I realised that a batsman could not read me I used to overcompensate with my googlies. After Crowe made that statement I started to spin my legbreaks more, spin my flippers more, spin my topspinners more. A lot of people would at times misread my topspinner, where the ball would stop and get extra bounce, as a googly.

Tahir: "Legspinners are exciting characters. They change results, they make things happen" © Getty Images

Who were the batsmen you enjoyed bowling most against?

MacGill: The batsman who destroyed spin bowling consistently was Brian Lara. I certainly enjoyed getting him out, though it didn't happen all that often. I liked bowling to him because that was the ultimate challenge. Lara smashed the daylights out of me at Adelaide in the early 2000s and I really lost the plot. I didn't bowl well for the rest of the innings to any batsman and I got dropped from the Australian team. I worked on a few things and then picked him up in Sydney in the first innings and had a dropped catch in the second innings. I could have had him in both innings, which was a good turnaround. I did enjoy that.

I enjoyed bowling to VVS Laxman because he was different and watching him bat was enjoyable. He is a nice guy. Bowling to him, I knew that if I bowled poorly, I'll get destroyed and if I bowled well, it didn't mean I'll necessarily get him out. I loved bowling to him at Melbourne [in 2003-04], where I bowled well. My reaction shows how highly Laxman's wicket was valued by me. I also enjoyed bowling to Rahul Dravid, as in 2003 his batting suddenly changed. I had bowled to him in the past where I could think of certain ways of getting him out. But in 2003 I could not think of ways to get him out.

"People focus on what happens to the ball off the pitch but a great batsman is beaten before the ball pitches"STUART MACGILL

Can you talk a little about how Lara played you differently from other batsmen?
MacGill: He hit me to areas that I hadn't been hit to before. When you're bowling spin, you should aim to hit the top of off stump. So I tried to pitch the ball outside his off stump, because if the ball is turning, the over-the-wicket angle provides you an advantage. The ball was turning a lot in that [Adelaide] match, but Lara was not perturbed about that. He was able to hit me off the front foot anywhere in the arc between mid-off and backward point. It was a sign of his mastery with the bat.

Mushtaq: Brian Lara was the batsman who came close to destroying my confidence. His feet and hands were quick. He could hit even your good balls for four. He has said that he never picked my hand, nor my googly. But his hand-eye coordination was amazing. Lara could hit the ball pitched in the rough in two different places. If the ball was pitched in the rough and spun in, Lara would cut the ball. And if I moved the fielder to defend the cut, Lara would hit the same ball to extra cover. He used to have that much time. If you can cut, sweep, punch on the back foot and use your feet, then you will be successful against a legspinner. Lara was one of them. The other guy was Darren Lehmann. He used to give me a proper hard time both in county cricket and in the few Test matches I played against him.

What do you do when you can't land a ball?

MacGill: It's only happened once to me and it's incredibly embarrassing because you know that you're better than that and you've got to do better not only for yourself but also for the guy at the other end. If I'm bowling absolute rubbish, I'm letting him down, it makes it much more difficult for them to do their job. The best you can do is fall back on your best delivery and hopefully it works.

Anil Kumble didn't turn the ball much but he put in a huge amount of work on the ball to deceive batsmen © Global Cricket Ventures-BCCI

Mushtaq: I have suffered such a fate lots of times, especially when I was under pressure. In such a situation the key is to try and come back to your basics. Do not try to spin the ball too much. At times it could be very cold weather, or when the conditions are wet you cannot grip and control the ball properly. I would shut out the batsman in such a situation. I would not bother about whether he was using his feet, whether he was going to hurt me. I would tell myself: "This is my action. This is where I am going to land."

Tahir: It mostly happens when the conditions are cold. You cannot grip the ball properly and it takes a few overs to warm up and settle down. The other reason can be duress. In my secondTest, against Australia, I could not land the ball consistently because of the pressure. I was bowling full tosses, short balls, but it was the early part of my international career. I bounced back strongly by taking three wickets in that innings.

What role do you see for a legspinner in T20 cricket?

MacGill: Spin bowlers have taken wickets in T20 cricket right since its inception. It's a game that is dominated by the bat but won by the ball. Spinners have dominated T20 cricket because the batsman is obliged to play shots. If you spin the ball, then you open up one side of the field. The batsman has to hit against the spin to hit to the other side. The turn as opposed to the spin is what gives you the advantage in T20 cricket, as you cut down on the scoring options. I don't think it matters whether you're a fingerspinner or a legspinner.

Mushtaq: Not just T20, even in ODIs the more successful spinner is the legspinner, especially with the two new balls. When the legspinner has a new ball he can bounce it, skid it, spin it. Delhi Daredevils played Amit Mishra and Imran Tahir in the IPL this season and both took wickets. In the early part of my career, Imran Khan saab played Qadir bhai and myself a lot in ODIs and a few Test matches. The reason a legspinner is more successful in T20 cricket is because of his variations and the bounce he can derive off the wicket. If a batsman tries to hit a legspinner over mid-on or midwicket you stand a good chance to get a top edge as he's playing against the spin.

Also remember this, if a legspinner can land the ball in a good spot the batsman cannot take an easy single. Against a left-arm spinner or an offspinner you can sweep or step out or push for a safe single to mid-off or mid-on. But against a legspinner the batsman is edgy to sweep for the fear of the ball skidding in or bouncing, or getting stumped if he charges down. If you get two or three dot balls in T20, the batsman starts looking for a boundary, and in that situation a legspinner stands a good chance of taking a wicket.

"Brian Lara was the batsman who came close to destroying my confidence. His feet and hands were quick. He could hit even your good balls for four"MUSHTAQ AHMED

Tahir: You should never have fear in T20. You need to go in with a big heart. You need to back your skills. You need clear plans. Even if you are hit for 20 runs in an over, and this is my advice to a youngster, in the next over by taking two middle-order wickets you can easily finish the game.

What was your favourite mode of dismissal?

MacGill: I loved bowling people, right-handers and left-handers. Obviously right-handers was a little more difficult unless I was bowling the googly. I really enjoyed bowling left-handers, and bowling to left-handers.

Tahir: The googly and the slider are my favourite type of deliveries and I love it when batsmen try to cut or sweep me and while attempting those strokes get lbw or clean bowled. I remember Misbah in the Dubai Test, who I feel had read my googly but was still beaten. It gave me immense joy because Misbah was my state captain in Pakistan when I was a young leggie and despite knowing my bowling and despite having picked the wrong'un, he still went for the shot and was deceived.

Mushtaq: Nothing gave me more joy than watching a batsman who would be lured into attempting a drive against a googly which he could not read and the ball pierced through the gap between his bat and pad and hit the stumps. That was my best moment. My favourite dismissal remains the googly that beat Graeme Hick [lbw] in the 1992 World Cup final. I still enjoy watching that ball. Steve Waugh, if I'm not wrong, was bowled in the Sydney Test [1995-96] trying to drive. David Boon was clean bowled in the Rawalpindi Test [1994-95], again attempting a drive.

The secret to self control - Jonathan Bricker

Tariq Ali: The Twilight of Democracy, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2015

From football to steel, we don’t have to be slaves to the market

Will Hutton in The Guardian


The southern corner of Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, reserved for fans from visiting teams, was eerily empty as the game against the Bundesliga champions, Bayern Munich, began last week. Instead, there was a banner. “£64 for a ticket. But without fans football is not worth a penny,” it read. After five minutes, the Bayern Munich fans cascaded into the stands to loud applause from the 60,000-strong home crowd. Everyone knew a powerful point had been made.

Except Arsenal do have a huge fan base and they do pay £64 a ticket because that is the price the market will bear. The clapping against blind market forces came as much from the management consultants, newspaper columnists, media multimillionaires, ex-central bankers and university vice-chancellors who now constitute Arsenal’s home base, as much as painters, plumbers and assembly line workers.

Yet everyone was united in understanding the Germans’ protest. Football has to be more than a money machine. Passion for a club is part of an idea of “we” – a collective identity rooted in place, culture and history – that defines us as men and women. £64 tickets redefine the Arsenal or Bayern Munich “we” as those with the capacity to pay.

Britain in 2015 is in a crisis about who the British “we” are at every level. Decades of being told that there is nothing to be done about the march of global market forces has denuded us of the possibility of acting together to shape a world that we want, whether it’s the character of our football clubs or our manufacturing base.

The same day that the Arsenal crowd was clapping the Bayern Munich fans, Tata Steel announced it was mothballing its steel plants in Scotland and Teesside. Over the last fortnight, Redcar’s steel mill has been shut as Thai owner SSI has gone into receivership, while manufacturing company Caparo is liquidating its foundry division in Scunthorpe. A pivotal component of our manufacturing sector, with incalculable effects across the supply chain, is being shut.

Yet when questioned, business secretary Sajid Javid’s trump answer is that the British government does not control the world steel price. He will, of course, do everything he can to soften the blow and help unemployed steel workers retrain or start their own businesses. But the message is unambiguous. Vast, uncontrollable market forces are at work. The government will not even raise the matter of how China exports steel to Britain at below the cost of production and intensifies the crisis.

It becomes purposeless to talk about what “we” might do because there are no tools for “us” to use. The new world is one in which each individual must look after her or himself. Even the trade unions and new Labour leadership, aghast at the scale of the job losses, do not have a plausible alternative – except to plead that the £9m proposed support package for unemployed steel workers in Scunthorpe is paltry.

There could have been, and still are, alternatives, but they are predicated on a conception of “we” resisted by right and left. A stronger steel industry, more capable of riding out this crisis, could have been created by more engagement with Europe and refashioning the ecosystem in which production takes place.

But since the collapse of Britain’s membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, governments of all hues have abjured any attempt to keep the pound stable and competitive, either pegging sterling against the euro and dollar or even – perish the thought – joining the euro. The pound, except for a short period after the banking crisis, has been systematically overvalued for a generation. Manufacturing production has stagnated as imports have soared. The trade deficit in goods in 2014 was a stunning £120bn, or some 7% of GDP. Yet dissociating Britain from all European attempts to manage currency movements and keeping the independent pound floating is as widely praised by John McDonnell on the left as John Redwood on the right. A devastated manufacturing sector, and now the crisis in the steel industry, is too rarely mentioned as part of the price. Alongside pegging the exchange rate should have been a determined effort to develop areas of industrial strength, with government and business working closely as co-creators. Yet even such a relationship – close to unthinkable in a British context – would have needed business keen on creating value rather than a high share price and a government setting some ambitious targets backed by spending the necessary billions.

Britain, for example, could have had a brilliant civil nuclear industry, a vibrant aerospace sector, the fastest growing windfarm industry, clusters of hi-tech business all over the country – and a hi-tech steel industry. Instead it is no better than a mendicant subcontractor. It does not have a share stake in Airbus, while France and China are building our nuclear power stations. Our green industries, once the fastest growing in Europe, are shutting. Only banks and hedge funds are protected and nurtured in a vigorous, uncompromising industrial policy, but they don’t buy much steel. They are the “we” behind which even ultra-libertarian Sajid Javid will throw the awesome weight of the state. Scunthorpe, Redcar, Teesside and the West Midlands are not; they can go hang.

And yet. Part of the reason the “northern powerhouse” is such a powerful idea is that it redefines the “we” so that the priorities and aspirations of the north are as valid as those of a hedge fund manager or the pampered board of HSBC. It is also obvious that newly empowered public authorities will have to co-create the vision with private partners and work with a Conservative government and the EU. There will be no “northern powerhouse” if it is locked out of European markets, nor is much progress likely with a third-rate transport and training infrastructure. It also needs a prolonged period of exchange rate stability.

Little of this easily fits the categories in which either Javid on the right or McDonnell and Corbyn on the left think. There is a powerful role for public agency and public spending, but it is much less directive, statist and top-down than traditional left thinking. Equally, the driver of any growth has to be vigorous, purposeful capitalism, but one co-created between private and public in a manner foreign to the traditional libertarian right. And there should be no place for hostility to Europe, also part of this reformulated “we”.

In this sense, there is a golden thread between the applause of the crowd in the Emirates and the way the “northern powerhouse” is taking shape, along with dismay at our dependence on China to build our nuclear power stations. There has been too much of a surrender to supply and demand. It is time to shape markets and football leagues alike. There is a “we”. It could be different.

My atheism does not make me superior to believers. It's a leap of faith too

Ijeoma Olua in The Guardian

 

I don’t believe in a higher power, but the fact we’ve never proven there isn’t one means there could be a God.

There are many different ways in which people come to atheism. Many come to it in their early adult years, after a childhood in the church. Some are raised in atheism by atheist parents. Some come to atheism after years of religious study. I came to atheism the way that many Christians come to Christianity – through faith.

I was six years old, sitting in my frilly yellow Easter dress, throwing black jelly beans out into the yard, when my mom explained the story of Easter to me. She explained Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection as the son of God, going into great detail. And when she was finished telling me the story that had been a foundation of her faith for the majority of her life, I looked at her and said: “I don’t think that really happened.”

I didn’t come to this conclusion because the story of a man waking from the dead made no sense – I wasn’t an overly analytical child. I still enthusiastically believed in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. But when I searched myself for any sense of belief in a higher power, it just wasn’t there. I wanted it to be there – how comforting to have a God. But it wasn’t there, and it isn’t to this day.

The same confidence that many of my friends have in the belief that Jesus walks with them is the confidence that I have that nobody walks with me. The cold truth that when I die I will cease to exist in anything but the memory of those I leave behind, that those I love who leave are lost forever, is always with me.

These are my truths. I don’t like these truths. As a mother, I’d give anything to believe that if anything were to happen to my children they would live forever in the kingdom of a loving God. But I don’t believe that.

But my conviction that there is no God is nonetheless a leap of faith. Just as we have been unable to prove there is a God, we have also been unable to prove that there isn’t one. The feeling that I have in my being that there is no God is what I go by, but I’m not deluded into thinking that feeling is in any way more factual than the deep conviction by theists that God exists.

I keep this fact in mind – that my atheism is a leap of faith – because otherwise it’s easy to get cocky. It’s easy to look at acts of terror committed in the names of different gods, debates about the role of women in various churches, unfamiliar and elaborate religious rules and rituals and think, look at these foolish religious folk. It’s easy to view religion as the root of society’s ills.

But atheism as a faith is quickly catching up in its embrace of divisive and oppressive attitudes. We have websites dedicated to insulting Islam and Christianity. We have famous atheist thought-leaders spouting misogyny and calling for the profiling of Muslims. As a black atheist, I encounter just as much racism amongst other atheists as anywhere else. We have hundreds of thousands of atheists blindly following atheist leaders like Richard Dawkins, hurling insults and even threats at those who dare question them.

Look through new atheist websites and twitter feeds. You’ll see the same hatred and bigotry that theists have been spouting against other theists for millennia. But when confronted about this bigotry, we say “But I feel this way about all religion,” as if that somehow makes it better. But our belief that we are right while everyone else is wrong; our belief that our atheism is more moral; our belief that others are lost: none of it is original.

Perhaps this is not religion, but human nature. Perhaps when left to our own devices, we jockey for power by creating an “other” and rallying against it. Perhaps we’re all part of a system that creates hierarchies based on class, gender, race and ethnicity because it’s the easiest way for the few to overpower the many. Perhaps we all fall in line because we look for any social system – be it Christianity, Islam, socialism, atheism – to make sense of it all and to feel like we matter in a world that shows time and time again that we don’t.

If we truly want to free ourselves from the racist, sexist, classist, homophobic tendencies of society, we need to go beyond religion. Yes, religion does need to be examined and debated regularly and fervently. But we also need to examine our school systems, our medical systems, our economic systems, our environmental policies.

Faith is not the enemy, and words in a book are not responsible for the atrocities we commit as human beings. We need to constantly examine and expose our nature as pack animals who are constantly trying to define the other in order to feel safe through all of the systems we build in society. Only then will we be as free from dogma as we atheists claim to be.

Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power

Constitutional crisis looms after anti-austerity Left is denied parliamentary prerogative to form a majority government


Ambrose Evans Pritchard in The Telegraph

Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest.


Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troika.


He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.

  “In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said Mr Cavaco Silva.








“This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.

"After we carried out an onerous programme of financial assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets,” he said.

Mr Cavaco Silva argued that the great majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for parties that want a return to the escudo or that advocate a traumatic showdown with Brussels.

This is true, but he skipped over the other core message from the elections held three weeks ago: that they also voted for an end to wage cuts and Troika austerity. The combined parties of the Left won 50.7pc of the vote. Led by the Socialists, they control the Assembleia.

The conservative premier, Pedro Passos Coelho, came first and therefore gets first shot at forming a government, but his Right-wing coalition as a whole secured just 38.5pc of the vote. It lost 28 seats.

Newly re-elected Portuguese prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho

The Socialist leader, Antonio Costa, has reacted with fury, damning the president’s action as a “grave mistake” that threatens to engulf the country in a political firestorm.

“It is unacceptable to usurp the exclusive powers of parliament. The Socialists will not take lessons from professor Cavaco Silva on the defence of our democracy,” he said.

Mr Costa vowed to press ahead with his plans to form a triple-Left coalition, and warned that the Right-wing rump government will face an immediate vote of no confidence.

There can be no fresh elections until the second half of next year under Portugal’s constitution, risking almost a year of paralysis that puts the country on a collision course with Brussels and ultimately threatens to reignite the country’s debt crisis.

The bond market has reacted calmly to events in Lisbon but it is no longer a sensitive gauge now that the European Central Bank is mopping up Portuguese debt under quantitative easing.

Portugal is no longer under a Troika regime and does not face an immediate funding crunch, holding cash reserves above €8bn. Yet the IMF says the country remains “highly vulnerable” if there is any shock or the country fails to deliver on reforms, currently deemed to have “stalled”.

Public debt is 127pc of GDP and total debt is 370pc, worse than in Greece. Net external liabilities are more than 220pc of GDP.



The IMF warned that Portugal's “export miracle” remains narrowly based, the headline gains flattered by re-exports with little value added. “A durable rebalancing of the economy has not taken place,” it said.

“The president has created a constitutional crisis,” said Rui Tavares, a radical green MEP. “He is saying that he will never allow the formation of a government containing Leftists and Communists. People are amazed by what has happened.”

Mr Tavares said the president has invoked the spectre of the Communists and the Left Bloc as a “straw man” to prevent the Left taking power at all, knowing full well that the two parties agreed to drop their demands for euro-exit, a withdrawal from Nato and nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy under a compromise deal to the forge the coalition.


President Cavaco Silva may be correct is calculating that a Socialist government in league with the Communists would precipitate a major clash with the EU austerity mandarins. Mr Costa’s grand plan for Keynesian reflation – led by spending on education and health – is entirely incompatible with the EU’s Fiscal Compact.

The secretary-general of the Portuguese Socialist Party, Antonio Costa, appears on Saturday after the election results are made public Photo: EPA

This foolish treaty law obliges Portugal to cut its debt to 60pc of GDP over the next 20 years in a permanent austerity trap, and to do it just as the rest of southern Europe is trying to do the same thing, and all against a backdrop of powerful deflationary forces worldwide.

The strategy of chipping away at the country’s massive debt burden by permanent belt-tightening is largely self-defeating, since the denominator effect of stagnant nominal GDP aggravates debt dynamics.

It is also pointless. Portugal will require a debt write-off when the next global downturn hits in earnest. There is no chance whatsoever that Germany will agree to EMU fiscal union in time to prevent this.

What Portugal needs to pay off (Source: Deutsche Bank)

The chief consequence of drawing out the agony is deep hysteresis in the labour markets and chronically low levels of investment that blight the future.

Mr Cavaco Silva is effectively using his office to impose a reactionary ideological agenda, in the interests of creditors and the EMU establishment, and dressing it up with remarkable Chutzpah as a defence of democracy.

The Portuguese Socialists and Communists have buried the hatchet on their bitter divisions for the first time since the Carnation Revolution and the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in the 1970s, yet they are being denied their parliamentary prerogative to form a majority government.

This is a dangerous demarche. The Portuguese conservatives and their media allies behave as if the Left has no legitimate right to take power, and must be held in check by any means.

These reflexes are familiar – and chilling – to anybody familiar with 20th century Iberian history, or indeed Latin America. That it is being done in the name of the euro is entirely to be expected.

Greece’s Syriza movement, Europe’s first radical-Left government in Europe since the Second World War, was crushed into submission for daring to confront eurozone ideology. Now the Portuguese Left is running into a variant of the same meat-grinder.

Europe’s socialists face a dilemma. They are at last waking up to the unpleasant truth that monetary union is an authoritarian Right-wing enterprise that has slipped its democratic leash, yet if they act on this insight in any way they risk being prevented from taking power.

Brussels really has created a monster.