Tabish Khair in The Hindu
It is easy to blame political parties for the mess around the triple talaq issue. But before doing so, one has to put the matter in perspective: it is not political ‘manipulation’ that came first; triple talaq already existed. Can you really blame others for tossing stones into your house when you have a gaping hole in the roof?
True, only a minuscule percentage of Muslim men practised triple talaq, but still the number of afflicted women ran in the tens of thousands. There was no justification for it — legal, political or social. There wasn’t even a convincing theological argument in favour of it, as the Shias wisely accepted.
Rashly rejecting a constructive say in the matter (and, once again, failing to position itself on the progressive side of history), a section of the so-called Sunni leadership in India is now resorting to various other objections — some of which are justified and many of which are not — against the law that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government seeks to pass to stop triple talaq.
This unholy mix of objections has even confused Muslims who were against triple talaq, partly because of the general suspicion that Muslims bear towards the BJP. This suspicion is misplaced at times, but it is not groundless: if many Muslim leaders have failed to build bridges, many BJP politicians and (more often) their acolytes have also trumpeted their dislike for Muslims and everything Muslim. It has been a mutual failure of the sort that no nation can afford.
Need for a law
Despite the reasons for suspicion among Muslims, there is a pressing need to legislate on this issue. Triple talaq is not going to go away without a law against it. Perhaps this could have been a possibility if Sunni leaders had collaborated in delegitimising it publicly. But having chosen to miss that chance, they have left the government — BJP or not — with no option but to pass a law against triple talaq.
Legislation against triple talaq is not a law against divorce, as has been made out in some Muslim quarters. It is simply a law that ensures equal rights to the wife. Its purpose is to ensure that a husband does not abandon his wife outside a proper legal set-up, which may obtain some rights for the woman after years in a marriage. Of these rights, financial maintenance is central in a place like India, where often wives ‘do not work’ (read: wives work at home but without remuneration) or their earnings are appropriated by their husbands.
The greatest failure on the part of so-called Sunni leaders has been their inability to see triple talaq as part of a major social problem that has nothing to do with religion: wife abandonment. But viewing the matter through their own set of saffron-tinted glasses (as against the green-tinted ones of the Sunni leadership), the BJP too has failed to see triple talaq as a type of wife abandonment, which exists in other forms and other communities too. It is common knowledge that far more (Hindu) wives are abandoned by their Hindu husbands without a divorce than (Muslim) wives are ‘divorced’ with a summary triple talaq by their Muslim husbands.
Abandonment by the husband
Please note that wife abandonment is not the same as the decision by a married couple — Hindu, Muslim, or whatever — to live separately without suing for divorce, if this decision is mutual, legally negotiable by both parties, and without any undue pressure on either party. Wife abandonment involves a one-sided decision by the husband to live separately from the wife, without providing her with legal and mutually negotiated maintenance, and either refusing to divorce her, if she should so desires, or divorcing her arbitrarily and without equal legal recourse. Triple talaq is a form of such an arbitrary divorce, a travesty of divorce. But it is by no means the only form of wife abandonment — within or without Muslim communities.
If triple talaq is seen as a type of wife abandonment, the government could come up with a better law than the current proposal. The proposed law seems to actually recognise triple talaq as effecting a divorce, while penalising the husband with criminal sanctions. This is illogical and provides the wife with no real protection. Instead, triple talaq should be considered a type of wife abandonment, along with other versions in all communities. It should not be accepted as an effective divorce, but as abandonment by the husband and grounds for the wife to obtain a divorce in her favour. Its ‘use’ should be automatically converted into a case of legal divorce through the law courts, which can then implement the conditions of divorce in favour of the wife, with added penalties on the husband.
As men resort to triple talaq and other forms of wife abandonment only to shirk their financial responsibility, this would be a far more effective course than needless criminalisation.
No law is foolproof. Even laws against murder can be misused, and they do not eradicate the incidence of murder. One cannot demand a foolproof law or a non-punitive ‘law’ (as that would be no law in effect!), but one has every right to expect a comprehensive and fair law. Countries are built with such laws. And they can be written, if we take off our variously tinted glasses.
Tuesday 23 January 2018
Trump an evil genius who wrongfoots opponents who underestimate him
Gideon Rachman in The Financial Times
When Donald Trump described himself as a “very stable genius”, even some of his supporters sniggered. The US president is clearly not a genius in any normal sense of the word. Rex Tillerson, his own secretary of state, is reputed to have described his boss as a “f***ing moron”.
But Mr Trump has a legitimate claim to three other kinds of “genius”: political genius, instinctive genius and evil genius. Moral disgust with Mr Trump means that his opponents are reluctant to credit him with any kind of intelligence or success. But that kind of thinking, while understandable, is also dangerous. It is one reason why the president frequently wrongfoots his opponents.
As Mr Trump pointed out, when making his own immodest claim to “genius”, he achieved something unprecedented in modern American history. He was a complete political outsider who won the presidency on his first attempt. His enemies would point to the current government shutdown to suggest that the president is nonetheless completely unfit to govern. But Trump supporters will respond by pointing to a growing economy, and the passage of the first large-scale tax reform in more than 30 years.
Mr Trump campaigned on themes — protectionism, isolationism, opposition to immigration — that the political establishment was convinced were sure-fire losers, and even un-American. His political instincts told him otherwise. Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s estranged campaign manager, was the man with the grand theories about economics and culture, larded with references to obscure and sinister European philosophers. Mr Trump was guided by an instinct that told him that he could smash taboos and not just fail to pay a price, but actually be rewarded.
His ideas about race and immigration are nasty — but they are also widely shared, and not just in America
The number of Mr Trump’s offences against truth and decency are too long to remember, let alone list. But they have a common theme. Time and again the mainstream media (of which I am a proud member) would proclaim that he had gone too far this time and that he was surely finished. Time and again, Mr Trump would prove them wrong and come back stronger. The things that failed to kill him politically — in particular racism and misogyny — actually made him stronger.
That is why it is also legitimate to describe Mr Trump as an “evil” genius. He has deliberately used lies and offensive language to stoke up America’s culture wars and racial tensions, confident that he will benefit politically. There is a direct connection between the current row about the president’s complaint about immigration from “shithole countries” and the campaign that launched his political career — the “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the US.
Mr Trump and many of his supporters are tacitly defending the idea of America as a “white country”. The president’s opponents are right to describe this as a racist vision. But they may be wrong in thinking that this is a decisive argument. By the 2040s, the US is predicted to be “majority-minority”. Whites will be still be the largest ethnic group in the country, but they will be less than 50 per cent of the population. By railing against Mexicans, Muslims and Haitians, and calling for more immigration from Norway, Mr Trump is appealing directly to voters who feel angry about that racial and demographic shift. The current government shutdown is also linked to these issues, since it is caused by the president’s refusal to accept an amnesty for illegal immigrants who arrived as children.
It should never be forgotten that a majority of white Americans voted for Mr Trump. Are these voters likely to turn away in disgust now because of the president’s “shithole country” comments? Or are they more likely quietly to agree? The record suggests that Mr Trump knows exactly what he is doing.
His ideas about race and immigration are nasty — but they are also widely shared, and not just in America. Japan accepted 28 refugees in the whole of 2016, and precisely three in the first half of 2017. It is virtually impossible for non-ethnic Chinese to gain citizenship in the People’s Republic of China, whose citizenship laws make explicit reference to “Chinese blood”. The EU has been split down the middle by the Polish and Hungarian governments’ refusal to accept EU-mandated quotas of refugees. The demand to “take back control” of British borders was fundamental to Britain’s Brexit vote. And the decline in Angela Merkel’s political fortunes in Germany has been closely linked to the chancellor’s decision to open her country’s borders to more than 1m refugees.
No European country has yet elected a Trump figure. But the continent’s politicians are tying themselves in knots trying to combine liberal principles with practical politics. President Emmanuel Macron speaks the language of tolerance, but is actually speeding up deportations of illegal migrants and tightening border controls. And nobody in Ms Merkel’s CDU party is campaigning for the Hungarian government to rip down the border walls that helped to stop the flow of refugees into Germany.
The fears and hatreds that the US president exploits exist well beyond his base. Liberal politicians need to find more effective policies and language to deal with those fears — or the “very stable genius” may continue to outsmart them.
When Donald Trump described himself as a “very stable genius”, even some of his supporters sniggered. The US president is clearly not a genius in any normal sense of the word. Rex Tillerson, his own secretary of state, is reputed to have described his boss as a “f***ing moron”.
But Mr Trump has a legitimate claim to three other kinds of “genius”: political genius, instinctive genius and evil genius. Moral disgust with Mr Trump means that his opponents are reluctant to credit him with any kind of intelligence or success. But that kind of thinking, while understandable, is also dangerous. It is one reason why the president frequently wrongfoots his opponents.
As Mr Trump pointed out, when making his own immodest claim to “genius”, he achieved something unprecedented in modern American history. He was a complete political outsider who won the presidency on his first attempt. His enemies would point to the current government shutdown to suggest that the president is nonetheless completely unfit to govern. But Trump supporters will respond by pointing to a growing economy, and the passage of the first large-scale tax reform in more than 30 years.
Mr Trump campaigned on themes — protectionism, isolationism, opposition to immigration — that the political establishment was convinced were sure-fire losers, and even un-American. His political instincts told him otherwise. Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s estranged campaign manager, was the man with the grand theories about economics and culture, larded with references to obscure and sinister European philosophers. Mr Trump was guided by an instinct that told him that he could smash taboos and not just fail to pay a price, but actually be rewarded.
His ideas about race and immigration are nasty — but they are also widely shared, and not just in America
The number of Mr Trump’s offences against truth and decency are too long to remember, let alone list. But they have a common theme. Time and again the mainstream media (of which I am a proud member) would proclaim that he had gone too far this time and that he was surely finished. Time and again, Mr Trump would prove them wrong and come back stronger. The things that failed to kill him politically — in particular racism and misogyny — actually made him stronger.
That is why it is also legitimate to describe Mr Trump as an “evil” genius. He has deliberately used lies and offensive language to stoke up America’s culture wars and racial tensions, confident that he will benefit politically. There is a direct connection between the current row about the president’s complaint about immigration from “shithole countries” and the campaign that launched his political career — the “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the US.
Mr Trump and many of his supporters are tacitly defending the idea of America as a “white country”. The president’s opponents are right to describe this as a racist vision. But they may be wrong in thinking that this is a decisive argument. By the 2040s, the US is predicted to be “majority-minority”. Whites will be still be the largest ethnic group in the country, but they will be less than 50 per cent of the population. By railing against Mexicans, Muslims and Haitians, and calling for more immigration from Norway, Mr Trump is appealing directly to voters who feel angry about that racial and demographic shift. The current government shutdown is also linked to these issues, since it is caused by the president’s refusal to accept an amnesty for illegal immigrants who arrived as children.
It should never be forgotten that a majority of white Americans voted for Mr Trump. Are these voters likely to turn away in disgust now because of the president’s “shithole country” comments? Or are they more likely quietly to agree? The record suggests that Mr Trump knows exactly what he is doing.
His ideas about race and immigration are nasty — but they are also widely shared, and not just in America. Japan accepted 28 refugees in the whole of 2016, and precisely three in the first half of 2017. It is virtually impossible for non-ethnic Chinese to gain citizenship in the People’s Republic of China, whose citizenship laws make explicit reference to “Chinese blood”. The EU has been split down the middle by the Polish and Hungarian governments’ refusal to accept EU-mandated quotas of refugees. The demand to “take back control” of British borders was fundamental to Britain’s Brexit vote. And the decline in Angela Merkel’s political fortunes in Germany has been closely linked to the chancellor’s decision to open her country’s borders to more than 1m refugees.
No European country has yet elected a Trump figure. But the continent’s politicians are tying themselves in knots trying to combine liberal principles with practical politics. President Emmanuel Macron speaks the language of tolerance, but is actually speeding up deportations of illegal migrants and tightening border controls. And nobody in Ms Merkel’s CDU party is campaigning for the Hungarian government to rip down the border walls that helped to stop the flow of refugees into Germany.
The fears and hatreds that the US president exploits exist well beyond his base. Liberal politicians need to find more effective policies and language to deal with those fears — or the “very stable genius” may continue to outsmart them.
I founded Ukip. It’s a national joke now and should disappear
Alan Sked in The Guardian
I founded the Anti-Federalist League in 1991 to take Britain out of what became the European Union. The party was renamed Ukip - the UK Independence party – in 1993 and was a thoroughly mainstream one. It had policies on a wide range of issues but not immigration, not then seen as being controversial. Its membership form stated it had no prejudices against foreigners or lawful minorities of any kind. All that changed after I resigned as leader in 1997 to devote myself exclusively to academic life.
Before I left, I expelled Nigel Farage and two others from the party. They had convened a public convention in Basingstoke to examine why I had not won the 1997 general election. Media representatives and others were invited but not me. I, of course, would have explained that with fewer than 200 candidates, only £40,000 in the bank, no media coverage or name recognition, and with a wealthy Referendum party as well as the major ones to fight, there was never any chance of winning an election.
In any case, the Ukip national executive committee expelled them for bringing the party into disrepute, but really for their embarrassing political naivety and stupidity – qualities that they infused into the party when, after a costly legal battle Ukip could not afford to continue, they were restored to membership. Farage, of course, never ever managed to get himself elected as an MP in 20 years, or get any other Ukip candidate (save a couple of Tory turncoats) into parliament.
Yet, despite the lack of brainpower, Ukip was saved from oblivion by two external factors. First, in 1999, the EU changed the voting system for the European parliament, allowing parties with very low votes to enter. This allowed Ukip to become the default protest party in European elections, although its MEPs did little other than collect their salaries and expenses.
This enabled the party to appear on the BBC’s Question Time but brought no political gains domestically. Farage was not interested in ideas, policies or recruiting decent candidates. Only immigration mattered to him. He himself could joyfully describe Ukip’s 2010 manifesto as “drivel, sheer drivel”. The party that year secured only 3.1% of the vote, and fewer than one million votes. It is important to remember this.
However, it was now saved by another external factor. Nick Clegg took the suicidal decision to enter a coalition with David Cameron’s Tories, agreed to triple university tuition fees and back austerity. All this caused the demise of the Lib Dems and their replacement by Ukip as the default protest party domestically. This was already clear by the 2012 local elections and in the 2015 general election, when Ukip won more than 11% of the vote.
By then, of course, Cameron had committed himself to a referendum on EU membership, which he lost in 2016. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson secured Brexit; Farage, a toxic and divisive figure, was kept at arm’s length and success came in spite of him, not on account of him. (Only Donald Trump believed the opposite.)
Since the referendum Ukip has fallen apart. With a leave vote achieved and Farage gone, it has suffered from poor and eccentric leadership, falling poll ratings (less than 2% in the 2017 general election) and a general perception that Brexit can be left to the Tories.
The love life of its present leader has made it a national joke and the party’s MEPs and so-called front bench have deserted him. Indeed, Ukip may not be able to afford to run a new leadership election. As its founder I can only suggest that it should now dissolve itself. There may be a need for a party to hold the Tories to account over Brexit but that is not Ukip. It now lacks all political credibility and provokes laughter rather than sympathy. It is high time therefore for it to disappear.
I founded the Anti-Federalist League in 1991 to take Britain out of what became the European Union. The party was renamed Ukip - the UK Independence party – in 1993 and was a thoroughly mainstream one. It had policies on a wide range of issues but not immigration, not then seen as being controversial. Its membership form stated it had no prejudices against foreigners or lawful minorities of any kind. All that changed after I resigned as leader in 1997 to devote myself exclusively to academic life.
Before I left, I expelled Nigel Farage and two others from the party. They had convened a public convention in Basingstoke to examine why I had not won the 1997 general election. Media representatives and others were invited but not me. I, of course, would have explained that with fewer than 200 candidates, only £40,000 in the bank, no media coverage or name recognition, and with a wealthy Referendum party as well as the major ones to fight, there was never any chance of winning an election.
In any case, the Ukip national executive committee expelled them for bringing the party into disrepute, but really for their embarrassing political naivety and stupidity – qualities that they infused into the party when, after a costly legal battle Ukip could not afford to continue, they were restored to membership. Farage, of course, never ever managed to get himself elected as an MP in 20 years, or get any other Ukip candidate (save a couple of Tory turncoats) into parliament.
Yet, despite the lack of brainpower, Ukip was saved from oblivion by two external factors. First, in 1999, the EU changed the voting system for the European parliament, allowing parties with very low votes to enter. This allowed Ukip to become the default protest party in European elections, although its MEPs did little other than collect their salaries and expenses.
This enabled the party to appear on the BBC’s Question Time but brought no political gains domestically. Farage was not interested in ideas, policies or recruiting decent candidates. Only immigration mattered to him. He himself could joyfully describe Ukip’s 2010 manifesto as “drivel, sheer drivel”. The party that year secured only 3.1% of the vote, and fewer than one million votes. It is important to remember this.
However, it was now saved by another external factor. Nick Clegg took the suicidal decision to enter a coalition with David Cameron’s Tories, agreed to triple university tuition fees and back austerity. All this caused the demise of the Lib Dems and their replacement by Ukip as the default protest party domestically. This was already clear by the 2012 local elections and in the 2015 general election, when Ukip won more than 11% of the vote.
By then, of course, Cameron had committed himself to a referendum on EU membership, which he lost in 2016. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson secured Brexit; Farage, a toxic and divisive figure, was kept at arm’s length and success came in spite of him, not on account of him. (Only Donald Trump believed the opposite.)
Since the referendum Ukip has fallen apart. With a leave vote achieved and Farage gone, it has suffered from poor and eccentric leadership, falling poll ratings (less than 2% in the 2017 general election) and a general perception that Brexit can be left to the Tories.
The love life of its present leader has made it a national joke and the party’s MEPs and so-called front bench have deserted him. Indeed, Ukip may not be able to afford to run a new leadership election. As its founder I can only suggest that it should now dissolve itself. There may be a need for a party to hold the Tories to account over Brexit but that is not Ukip. It now lacks all political credibility and provokes laughter rather than sympathy. It is high time therefore for it to disappear.
Monday 22 January 2018
Pioneering Britain has a rethink on privatisation
Jonathan Ford and Gill Plimmer in The Financial Times
It was one of the most influential reports ever written by a modern British economist — and perhaps the most rushed.
Stephen Littlechild, then a little-known academic, was commissioned by Margaret Thatcher’s government in October 1982 to design a regulatory mechanism that would prevent Britain’s soon-to-be privatised telecoms monopoly, BT, from exploiting its position and gouging the public.
The work was urgent. The prime minister wished to push through legislation that would enable the company to be sold as soon as possible, making it a pioneer for the privatisation of public utilities that she hoped would create a new shareholding democracy in Britain. She needed the report by January 14 1983, which Prof Littlechild said gave him just “10 working weeks (allowing for Christmas!)”.
His formula “was invented between 5 and 7 January 1983” allowing just a single week “to write it up in a plausible way, test it against the specified criteria, [and] conclude that it was the best available option”, Prof Littlechild recalled.
Fortunately, “RPI minus x” passed muster not only with Mrs Thatcher, but also with BT’s investment bankers, SG Warburg, which thought it vastly preferable to the profit ceiling used by US utilities. “It was politically defensible and even attractive,” recalled Prof Littlechild. It won the day.
The Littlechild formula has gone on to serve as the template for all UK regulation of privatised utilities. In modified form, it sits at the heart of the mechanisms that still regulate prices set by electricity and water companies.
That means it is also at the centre of the divide in British politics, which in the past two years has fractured about the merits of allowing private companies to run essential utilities that are natural monopolies.
After a series of scandals and controversies over poor service, high prices and generous payouts to shareholders, the country that was the global frontrunner in privatisation is rethinking how to run its essential utilities. Almost three decades after they were sold off, critics — and many voters — believe that investors have run rings around the watchdogs set up by the government to regulate the industries.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour party has come out firmly for the renationalisation of rail, water, energy and the postal service.
At the Labour party’s annual conference in September, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, promised to bring “ownership and control of the utilities and key services into the hands of people who use and work in them”.
Labour’s attack has exposed the fragility of public consent for private utilities. An October poll conducted by the UK’s far-from-socialist Legatum Institute showed 83 per cent of respondents favoured the nationalisation of water. For energy, the figure was only slightly lower, at 77 per cent.
“If you look at this list, you see the public most objects to private ownership of natural monopolies — ones where there is little real possibility of injecting meaningful competition,” says Martin Blaiklock, an infrastructure expert and former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s power and energy division.
Prof Littlechild’s regulatory system was supposed to substitute for competition, giving consumers a fair price while also offering private owners incentives to innovate and find efficiencies. Charges were set to give operators a reasonable return on their capital assets, indexed for inflation (the retail price index) less a certain amount each year (x) to spur them to drive productivity.
What makes Britain’s regime different from the one for private US utilities, for instance, is that these returns are not capped. “We didn’t like the idea of an effective 100 per cent tax on efficiencies over a fixed rate of return,” recalls Prof Littlechild. “Margaret Thatcher’s economics adviser, Alan Walters, was particularly offended by the cap. He said: ‘We can’t do this. It’s socialism!’”
Instead, every few years the watchdog estimates the costs the company is likely to face in the next regulatory period. If the company can achieve greater savings, it is permitted to keep 100 per cent of the extra it makes.
This sounds logical enough. It has helped to usher dozens of utilities into the private sector and support huge investment. But critics allege the system has delivered neither the discipline nor the innovation that was promised. They think regulators have been too lenient in setting the efficiency targets that are used to justify extra returns for private capital.
Take, for instance, the water industry, which was sold off in 1989. Cathryn Ross, until recently the chief executive of Ofwat, boasted that her organisation’s efficiency demands had saved consumers £120 off bills (which currently average about £400) since privatisation. That may sound a large number, but it equates to an annual productivity improvement of just 1 per cent. It is well below even the anaemic 1.5 per cent average rate for the UK economy over the same period.
“By giving the companies an easy ride, the regulator has ensured that customers’ bills have risen more than they should have,” says David Hall, director of the Public Services International Research Unit at Greenwich university. In the case of water, they have gone up by about 40 per cent above the rate of inflation since 1989, although the steepest increases took place in the first decade after privatisation.
Second, regulators have paid too little attention to the way companies structure their finances. Finance costs are a key factor watchdogs weigh when setting prices. Yet they have consistently overestimated these expenses during a long period of falling interest rates.
That, combined with a reluctance to regulate companies’ balance sheets, has resulted in an orgy of borrowing, as this allows owners to achieve “savings” that have more to do with financial engineering than effort and enterprise. Stratospheric debts — including high yielding shareholder loans — have also suppressed tax revenues. Thames Water, for instance, has paid almost no corporation tax for the past decade.
In 1989, the water industry in England and Wales was privatised with no net debt. Yet almost three decades on, it has built up borrowings of £42bn.
All but three of the 10 English water companies have been taken off the stock market by private equity investors — many backed by foreign sovereign wealth funds and pension schemes. In the meantime, all the industry’s post-tax profits have been carried off in the form of dividends. Shareholders’ funds have barely budged since 1989.
A comparison with Scottish Water is instructive. The Scottish utility was not privatised in 1989, but remained in the public sector. Like its southern cousins, it has been forced into a heavy programme of investment, much of it at the behest of the EU.
Yet unlike the English utilities, it remains relatively unleveraged. Its borrowings of £3.8bn represent just 48 per cent of the value of its regulated assets, as against the 65-80 per cent that is prevalent in England. Meanwhile, the average bill from Scottish Water was £357 last year — 10 per cent lower than the English average of £395.
Some believe that tweaks to the regulatory regime could make the system function better. Prof Littlechild argues, for instance, that instead of keeping 100 per cent of any extra efficiency gains, these could be split with the customer. “That way there would be some community of interest,” he suggests.
Mr Blaiklock, a longstanding critic of excessive leverage in utilities, believes the watchdog should intervene much more in companies’ financial affairs, which he thinks are unsustainable in the long term, especially if interest rates rise. “The regulator should be given stronger executive powers to intervene in extreme financial engineering initiatives and aggressive tax tactics.”
Faced with mounting criticism, watchdogs are making changes. Ofwat is proposing to alter the payment terms for water companies so that more of their money comes from hitting performance targets.
Critics warn that this will make an already complex system even more baroque. “You have to question whether any system this involved can be transparent, when even people with an interest in getting to the bottom find it very hard,” says Mr Hall. The intricacy of the regulatory process also troubles Prof Littlechild, who notes that it takes about three years to decide the next regulatory settlement. “When we created it, I fondly imagined the regulator sitting down with the companies shortly before the expiry of each period and just setting a price,” he says.
Not everyone is convinced that tweaks are sufficient. Mr Hall argues that the regulatory system is inherently dysfunctional. “There is a fundamental contradiction between the regulator’s duty to protect consumers and its overarching duty to ensure that the companies have enough money to deliver investment,” he says.
Prof Littlechild’s original idea with BT was that the watchdog would simply hold the fort for the consumer until competition arrived like the US cavalry. Permanent regulation is vulnerable to industry capture. “The problem is that the regulator spends all its time talking to the company and its investors,” says Mr Hall.
Ofwat, for instance, has been criticised for its focus on investors rather than customers. While the watchdog sets aside two days a year to give presentations to the City of London, there is no forum for it to meet customers.
While regulators do have the power to strip companies of their licences, this has been invoked only once in the water sector — when the collapse of Enron in 2001 forced Ofwat temporarily to take control of its Wessex Water.
According to Mr Blaiklock, this lack of grip explains why privatisation has failed to achieve its primary purpose — of passing the operational and financial risks for the delivery of a public service to the private sector. London’s £4.2bn “super sewer”, for instance, is financed directly from customer bills, with households rather than the company bearing the risk of a complex project.
Few developed countries have copied the British model in selling off whole utility networks to private entities. In Europe, the model has generally been to separate asset ownership from service provision and to grant private companies the right to operate concessions.
In recent years, doubts about the governance and customer benefits have encouraged other countries to reverse this process — especially in water — and take these concessions back into municipal ownership. A study of French water services in 2004 found that the price of privately-delivered water was 16.6 per cent higher than in places where municipalities delivered the service.
Similar arguments buttress the Labour party’s plans to bring utilities back into public ownership.
Its proponents stress not efficiency, which they claim is much the same in either public or private sectors, but cost and accountability. A publicly-owned utility would not have to deliver the returns demanded by the private sector.
A study by Greenwich university claims that refinancing utility debt and equity with government bonds and scrapping dividends could save £2.3bn a year. That is equivalent to a saving of almost £100 off the average £400 water bill. Public ownership would also remove all the incentives that, Mr Hall claims, encourage bosses to favour financial management over customers.
“These are local amenities supplying a basic service that ought to be properly accountable to local people,” he says.
Other structural options involve introducing more competition by separating network ownership from the services, and auctioning limited concessions. The snag is that this would be extraordinarily expensive, requiring the state both to buy out the existing owners and then retender the operations. Taxpayers could end up paying twice — first to compensate existing investors and then potentially to reward the new operators.
Lastly, there is the possibility of placing utilities in not-for-dividend entities, akin to Welsh Water, which was restructured in 2000. Although they would remain regulated entities, companies could use retained earnings only to invest in their assets or to cut customer bills. Shareholders and executives would no longer be able to skim off all the cream.
There may be no cheap and easy answers to the problems facing Britain’s utilities, but the status quo is unlikely to hold. “What we can now see is that the regulatory regime is not robust enough,” says Mr Blaiklock. “We need to change that.”
It was one of the most influential reports ever written by a modern British economist — and perhaps the most rushed.
Stephen Littlechild, then a little-known academic, was commissioned by Margaret Thatcher’s government in October 1982 to design a regulatory mechanism that would prevent Britain’s soon-to-be privatised telecoms monopoly, BT, from exploiting its position and gouging the public.
The work was urgent. The prime minister wished to push through legislation that would enable the company to be sold as soon as possible, making it a pioneer for the privatisation of public utilities that she hoped would create a new shareholding democracy in Britain. She needed the report by January 14 1983, which Prof Littlechild said gave him just “10 working weeks (allowing for Christmas!)”.
His formula “was invented between 5 and 7 January 1983” allowing just a single week “to write it up in a plausible way, test it against the specified criteria, [and] conclude that it was the best available option”, Prof Littlechild recalled.
Fortunately, “RPI minus x” passed muster not only with Mrs Thatcher, but also with BT’s investment bankers, SG Warburg, which thought it vastly preferable to the profit ceiling used by US utilities. “It was politically defensible and even attractive,” recalled Prof Littlechild. It won the day.
The Littlechild formula has gone on to serve as the template for all UK regulation of privatised utilities. In modified form, it sits at the heart of the mechanisms that still regulate prices set by electricity and water companies.
That means it is also at the centre of the divide in British politics, which in the past two years has fractured about the merits of allowing private companies to run essential utilities that are natural monopolies.
After a series of scandals and controversies over poor service, high prices and generous payouts to shareholders, the country that was the global frontrunner in privatisation is rethinking how to run its essential utilities. Almost three decades after they were sold off, critics — and many voters — believe that investors have run rings around the watchdogs set up by the government to regulate the industries.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour party has come out firmly for the renationalisation of rail, water, energy and the postal service.
At the Labour party’s annual conference in September, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, promised to bring “ownership and control of the utilities and key services into the hands of people who use and work in them”.
Labour’s attack has exposed the fragility of public consent for private utilities. An October poll conducted by the UK’s far-from-socialist Legatum Institute showed 83 per cent of respondents favoured the nationalisation of water. For energy, the figure was only slightly lower, at 77 per cent.
“If you look at this list, you see the public most objects to private ownership of natural monopolies — ones where there is little real possibility of injecting meaningful competition,” says Martin Blaiklock, an infrastructure expert and former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s power and energy division.
Prof Littlechild’s regulatory system was supposed to substitute for competition, giving consumers a fair price while also offering private owners incentives to innovate and find efficiencies. Charges were set to give operators a reasonable return on their capital assets, indexed for inflation (the retail price index) less a certain amount each year (x) to spur them to drive productivity.
What makes Britain’s regime different from the one for private US utilities, for instance, is that these returns are not capped. “We didn’t like the idea of an effective 100 per cent tax on efficiencies over a fixed rate of return,” recalls Prof Littlechild. “Margaret Thatcher’s economics adviser, Alan Walters, was particularly offended by the cap. He said: ‘We can’t do this. It’s socialism!’”
Instead, every few years the watchdog estimates the costs the company is likely to face in the next regulatory period. If the company can achieve greater savings, it is permitted to keep 100 per cent of the extra it makes.
This sounds logical enough. It has helped to usher dozens of utilities into the private sector and support huge investment. But critics allege the system has delivered neither the discipline nor the innovation that was promised. They think regulators have been too lenient in setting the efficiency targets that are used to justify extra returns for private capital.
Take, for instance, the water industry, which was sold off in 1989. Cathryn Ross, until recently the chief executive of Ofwat, boasted that her organisation’s efficiency demands had saved consumers £120 off bills (which currently average about £400) since privatisation. That may sound a large number, but it equates to an annual productivity improvement of just 1 per cent. It is well below even the anaemic 1.5 per cent average rate for the UK economy over the same period.
“By giving the companies an easy ride, the regulator has ensured that customers’ bills have risen more than they should have,” says David Hall, director of the Public Services International Research Unit at Greenwich university. In the case of water, they have gone up by about 40 per cent above the rate of inflation since 1989, although the steepest increases took place in the first decade after privatisation.
Second, regulators have paid too little attention to the way companies structure their finances. Finance costs are a key factor watchdogs weigh when setting prices. Yet they have consistently overestimated these expenses during a long period of falling interest rates.
That, combined with a reluctance to regulate companies’ balance sheets, has resulted in an orgy of borrowing, as this allows owners to achieve “savings” that have more to do with financial engineering than effort and enterprise. Stratospheric debts — including high yielding shareholder loans — have also suppressed tax revenues. Thames Water, for instance, has paid almost no corporation tax for the past decade.
In 1989, the water industry in England and Wales was privatised with no net debt. Yet almost three decades on, it has built up borrowings of £42bn.
All but three of the 10 English water companies have been taken off the stock market by private equity investors — many backed by foreign sovereign wealth funds and pension schemes. In the meantime, all the industry’s post-tax profits have been carried off in the form of dividends. Shareholders’ funds have barely budged since 1989.
A comparison with Scottish Water is instructive. The Scottish utility was not privatised in 1989, but remained in the public sector. Like its southern cousins, it has been forced into a heavy programme of investment, much of it at the behest of the EU.
Yet unlike the English utilities, it remains relatively unleveraged. Its borrowings of £3.8bn represent just 48 per cent of the value of its regulated assets, as against the 65-80 per cent that is prevalent in England. Meanwhile, the average bill from Scottish Water was £357 last year — 10 per cent lower than the English average of £395.
Some believe that tweaks to the regulatory regime could make the system function better. Prof Littlechild argues, for instance, that instead of keeping 100 per cent of any extra efficiency gains, these could be split with the customer. “That way there would be some community of interest,” he suggests.
Mr Blaiklock, a longstanding critic of excessive leverage in utilities, believes the watchdog should intervene much more in companies’ financial affairs, which he thinks are unsustainable in the long term, especially if interest rates rise. “The regulator should be given stronger executive powers to intervene in extreme financial engineering initiatives and aggressive tax tactics.”
Faced with mounting criticism, watchdogs are making changes. Ofwat is proposing to alter the payment terms for water companies so that more of their money comes from hitting performance targets.
Critics warn that this will make an already complex system even more baroque. “You have to question whether any system this involved can be transparent, when even people with an interest in getting to the bottom find it very hard,” says Mr Hall. The intricacy of the regulatory process also troubles Prof Littlechild, who notes that it takes about three years to decide the next regulatory settlement. “When we created it, I fondly imagined the regulator sitting down with the companies shortly before the expiry of each period and just setting a price,” he says.
Not everyone is convinced that tweaks are sufficient. Mr Hall argues that the regulatory system is inherently dysfunctional. “There is a fundamental contradiction between the regulator’s duty to protect consumers and its overarching duty to ensure that the companies have enough money to deliver investment,” he says.
Prof Littlechild’s original idea with BT was that the watchdog would simply hold the fort for the consumer until competition arrived like the US cavalry. Permanent regulation is vulnerable to industry capture. “The problem is that the regulator spends all its time talking to the company and its investors,” says Mr Hall.
Ofwat, for instance, has been criticised for its focus on investors rather than customers. While the watchdog sets aside two days a year to give presentations to the City of London, there is no forum for it to meet customers.
While regulators do have the power to strip companies of their licences, this has been invoked only once in the water sector — when the collapse of Enron in 2001 forced Ofwat temporarily to take control of its Wessex Water.
According to Mr Blaiklock, this lack of grip explains why privatisation has failed to achieve its primary purpose — of passing the operational and financial risks for the delivery of a public service to the private sector. London’s £4.2bn “super sewer”, for instance, is financed directly from customer bills, with households rather than the company bearing the risk of a complex project.
Few developed countries have copied the British model in selling off whole utility networks to private entities. In Europe, the model has generally been to separate asset ownership from service provision and to grant private companies the right to operate concessions.
In recent years, doubts about the governance and customer benefits have encouraged other countries to reverse this process — especially in water — and take these concessions back into municipal ownership. A study of French water services in 2004 found that the price of privately-delivered water was 16.6 per cent higher than in places where municipalities delivered the service.
Similar arguments buttress the Labour party’s plans to bring utilities back into public ownership.
Its proponents stress not efficiency, which they claim is much the same in either public or private sectors, but cost and accountability. A publicly-owned utility would not have to deliver the returns demanded by the private sector.
A study by Greenwich university claims that refinancing utility debt and equity with government bonds and scrapping dividends could save £2.3bn a year. That is equivalent to a saving of almost £100 off the average £400 water bill. Public ownership would also remove all the incentives that, Mr Hall claims, encourage bosses to favour financial management over customers.
“These are local amenities supplying a basic service that ought to be properly accountable to local people,” he says.
Other structural options involve introducing more competition by separating network ownership from the services, and auctioning limited concessions. The snag is that this would be extraordinarily expensive, requiring the state both to buy out the existing owners and then retender the operations. Taxpayers could end up paying twice — first to compensate existing investors and then potentially to reward the new operators.
Lastly, there is the possibility of placing utilities in not-for-dividend entities, akin to Welsh Water, which was restructured in 2000. Although they would remain regulated entities, companies could use retained earnings only to invest in their assets or to cut customer bills. Shareholders and executives would no longer be able to skim off all the cream.
There may be no cheap and easy answers to the problems facing Britain’s utilities, but the status quo is unlikely to hold. “What we can now see is that the regulatory regime is not robust enough,” says Mr Blaiklock. “We need to change that.”
Sunday 21 January 2018
Is sex the answer to your relationship woes?
Amelia Hill in The Guardian
How does it make you feel when your partner is cold and distant? Or when they’re critical and prickly? Does it make you want to rip their clothes off, order in a vat of whipped cream and install a chandelier to swing from?
No? Well there’s your problem – according, at least, to Michele Weiner-Davis, the marriage-guidance counsellor whose Ted talk explaining her unconventional advice to warring couples has been viewed almost 3.5 million times online.
Her advice couldn’t be simpler: shag. Do it even if you don’t want to, do it especially if you don’t want to and, most important of all, do it frequently whether you want to or not. To make it even clearer, she’s borrowed one of the most famous advertising slogans of recent times: Just Do It. “Your partner will be grateful, happier and therefore nicer, too,” she explains from her clinic in Colorado. “It’s a win-win situation for both of you!”
Weiner-Davis’s self-confessed “zealotry” for marriage has its roots in the moment her mother blew her teenage world apart by announcing that her seemingly perfect marriage had been a sham for its 23-year duration. She was 16 at the time, and says she wasn’t the only one who didn’t recover from the bombshell: her mother never remarried and her two sons rarely speak to her.
If couples put the work in, they can fall back in love
The experience, says Weiner-Davis – who states that her greatest achievement is her own 40-year marriage – was transformative. She became a staunch believer in the fact that most divorces can be prevented; that the relief of a post-divorce life is temporary but the pain of divorce is permanent; and that if couples put enough work into staying together, they can fall back in love and live happily ever after.
Over the years, Weiner-Davis has honed her message. She’s now stripped it back to what she believes is the essence of a successful marriage. Gone is any therapeutic consideration of a couple’s history; of their emotional travails; of cause and consequence. Now she is entirely one-track minded: no matter how appalling the state of a marriage, she believes that kind, generous and frequent sex can bring it back from the teetering edge of collapse.
Her realisation was hard-won. “For decades, I was in the trenches with warring couples,” she says. “But there were times when I was not too effective. I realised that there was a pattern to the times I’d failed. There was always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch and because that was not happening, they were not investing themselves in the relationship in other ways.”
Weiner-Davis stopped focussing on the couples’ difficulties from an emotional angle and addressed them exclusively as sexual problems. that when the so-called “low-desire” partner – who is, she is at pains to emphasise, just as likely to be a man or a woman – was encouraged to have sex they didn’t particularly want, not only did they end up enjoying themselves but the high-desire partner became a much nicer person to be around.
There is always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch
“I heard the same story from my clients so often that I did some research,” she said, “and found several different sex researchers who confirmed what I was finding: that for millions of people, they have to be physically stimulated before they feel desire.”
Armed with this new theory, Weiner-Davis began encouraging her low-desire clients to be receptive to the sexual advances of their high-desire spouse, even if they weren’t feeling up for it. “I found that unless there was something a lot more complicated going on,” she insists, “there were usually substantial relationship benefits to making love with your high-desire partner.”
She rejects any suggestion that she’s advocating a sexually subservient, anti-feminist, “lie back and think of England” approach. , she says this is the embodiment of female empowerment.
“It’s not just telling women to spread their legs,” she insists. “This is not just about sex. For a high-desire spouse, sex isn’t usually about the orgasm: it’s about someone wanting to feel that their partner desires and wants them. I’m hoping that women will feel empowered that they are getting their own needs met through understanding their partner.”
No still means no, she says. “But it helps to not just say no. Instead, explain why you don’t want to make love, suggest a later date and ask whether there’s something you can do for your spouse right now instead. “But here’s the deal,” she adds: “There had better be a whole more Yes’s or Later’s than No’s because if the No’s win, it leads to the problems I have been talking about.”
Weiner-Davis points out that while it’s commonly accepted that couples should make all their important family decisions together, when it comes to sex, who ever has the lower sex drive makes a unilateral choice for them both. And, just to rub salt in the wound, she adds, the disenfranchised, high-desire one is expected to stay monogamous. No wonder, she says, they get cross.
I mention Weiner-Davis’s theory to some female friends of mine. The overriding response is: “Oh God, not another thing for my To Do list!” Weiner-Davis is quick to condemn this response. “Imagine if, when a woman said she wanted to have more intimate conversations or a date night, her husband said: “It’s just one more thing on my To Do list!” For a high-desire spouse who experiences love through touch instead of quality time, it’s exactly the same impact. I’ve had grown men crying in my office, crying about the sense of rejection they feel from their low-desire wives.”
I then regale her with the experience of a friend whose husband had started his own business which quickly went catastrophically wrong. The family finances were in peril and he couldn’t cope. His wife stepped in. Alongside her own job and while juggling the childcare, she worked late into the night for weeks to stabilise their security. During this time, she was scrupulous in not blaming her husband, either explicitly or implicitly.
With crisis narrowly averted, the stressed and sleep-deprived wife realised her husband was being snippy and sulky. When she asked what was wrong, he exclaimed: “We haven’t had sex for weeks!” Surely, I ask Weiner-Davis, this shows that not all demands for sex should be met with her Just Do It ethos.
Not at all, she says. “This woman knew his ego needed to be protected and tried to do that by not blaming him for his mistakes. But it sounds like the bigger statement for him was: ‘Am I still a man and do you still desire me?’”
But it’s the selfish, uncontrolled behaviour of a spoilt child, I insist. Weiner-Davis doesn’t disagree. “Women often say that they feel they have three children instead of two children and a husband,” she admits. “But the fact that this husband was telling his wife what he was feeling sad about is a really good sign: some people throw in the towel.
Is the deal explicit, I ask, does the low-desire one say: “OK, we’ll make love more often, but then you have to turn your iPhone off every once in a while so we can actually talk”?
Yes and no, Weiner-Davis says. “This isn’t about keeping score. Relationships are not 50:50. They’re 100:100. We have to take responsibility for doing everything that it takes to put the relationship on track – even if you’re not getting the response you want initially. That’s really hard.
“It’s about asking yourself,” she says, “when he or she speaks and acts badly, whether it’s because you have not had sex for four weeks. Is their anger actually about feeling hurt and rejected? If it is, the low-desire spouse needs to be more sexy – even though they will not want to do this. And the other one needs to ask themselves when the last time the couple spent quality time together.”
On the other hand, Weiner-Davis admits there is a limit. “I’d say that after several weeks, if nothing has changed in terms of reciprocity, then the couple do need to sit down and identify what’s missing in their relationship for each of them and what they would like to have.”
Michele Weiner-Davis’s cure for a sex-starved marriage
If you have a low sex drive try to adopt the Nike philosophy – and ‘Just Do It!’, even if you feel neutral towards having sex at that moment.
If you’re the one with a high sex drive, try to discover the way your partner wants to receive love. It’s typically through quality time, words of affirmation, thoughtful, practical acts of caring and material gifts.
If you don’t want sex at a particular moment, explain why and suggest another specific time - and ask whether you can do something else physical at that moment for your partner instead.
If you have a higher sex drive than your partner, try to empathise with them and accept they might never want wild or creative sex, but see the increased level of intercourse as a gift showing their love.
Remember there’s no daily or weekly minimum to ensure a healthy sex life. As a couple you need to work out together what works for you.
How does it make you feel when your partner is cold and distant? Or when they’re critical and prickly? Does it make you want to rip their clothes off, order in a vat of whipped cream and install a chandelier to swing from?
No? Well there’s your problem – according, at least, to Michele Weiner-Davis, the marriage-guidance counsellor whose Ted talk explaining her unconventional advice to warring couples has been viewed almost 3.5 million times online.
Her advice couldn’t be simpler: shag. Do it even if you don’t want to, do it especially if you don’t want to and, most important of all, do it frequently whether you want to or not. To make it even clearer, she’s borrowed one of the most famous advertising slogans of recent times: Just Do It. “Your partner will be grateful, happier and therefore nicer, too,” she explains from her clinic in Colorado. “It’s a win-win situation for both of you!”
Weiner-Davis’s self-confessed “zealotry” for marriage has its roots in the moment her mother blew her teenage world apart by announcing that her seemingly perfect marriage had been a sham for its 23-year duration. She was 16 at the time, and says she wasn’t the only one who didn’t recover from the bombshell: her mother never remarried and her two sons rarely speak to her.
If couples put the work in, they can fall back in love
The experience, says Weiner-Davis – who states that her greatest achievement is her own 40-year marriage – was transformative. She became a staunch believer in the fact that most divorces can be prevented; that the relief of a post-divorce life is temporary but the pain of divorce is permanent; and that if couples put enough work into staying together, they can fall back in love and live happily ever after.
Over the years, Weiner-Davis has honed her message. She’s now stripped it back to what she believes is the essence of a successful marriage. Gone is any therapeutic consideration of a couple’s history; of their emotional travails; of cause and consequence. Now she is entirely one-track minded: no matter how appalling the state of a marriage, she believes that kind, generous and frequent sex can bring it back from the teetering edge of collapse.
Her realisation was hard-won. “For decades, I was in the trenches with warring couples,” she says. “But there were times when I was not too effective. I realised that there was a pattern to the times I’d failed. There was always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch and because that was not happening, they were not investing themselves in the relationship in other ways.”
Weiner-Davis stopped focussing on the couples’ difficulties from an emotional angle and addressed them exclusively as sexual problems. that when the so-called “low-desire” partner – who is, she is at pains to emphasise, just as likely to be a man or a woman – was encouraged to have sex they didn’t particularly want, not only did they end up enjoying themselves but the high-desire partner became a much nicer person to be around.
There is always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch
“I heard the same story from my clients so often that I did some research,” she said, “and found several different sex researchers who confirmed what I was finding: that for millions of people, they have to be physically stimulated before they feel desire.”
Armed with this new theory, Weiner-Davis began encouraging her low-desire clients to be receptive to the sexual advances of their high-desire spouse, even if they weren’t feeling up for it. “I found that unless there was something a lot more complicated going on,” she insists, “there were usually substantial relationship benefits to making love with your high-desire partner.”
She rejects any suggestion that she’s advocating a sexually subservient, anti-feminist, “lie back and think of England” approach. , she says this is the embodiment of female empowerment.
“It’s not just telling women to spread their legs,” she insists. “This is not just about sex. For a high-desire spouse, sex isn’t usually about the orgasm: it’s about someone wanting to feel that their partner desires and wants them. I’m hoping that women will feel empowered that they are getting their own needs met through understanding their partner.”
No still means no, she says. “But it helps to not just say no. Instead, explain why you don’t want to make love, suggest a later date and ask whether there’s something you can do for your spouse right now instead. “But here’s the deal,” she adds: “There had better be a whole more Yes’s or Later’s than No’s because if the No’s win, it leads to the problems I have been talking about.”
Weiner-Davis points out that while it’s commonly accepted that couples should make all their important family decisions together, when it comes to sex, who ever has the lower sex drive makes a unilateral choice for them both. And, just to rub salt in the wound, she adds, the disenfranchised, high-desire one is expected to stay monogamous. No wonder, she says, they get cross.
I mention Weiner-Davis’s theory to some female friends of mine. The overriding response is: “Oh God, not another thing for my To Do list!” Weiner-Davis is quick to condemn this response. “Imagine if, when a woman said she wanted to have more intimate conversations or a date night, her husband said: “It’s just one more thing on my To Do list!” For a high-desire spouse who experiences love through touch instead of quality time, it’s exactly the same impact. I’ve had grown men crying in my office, crying about the sense of rejection they feel from their low-desire wives.”
I then regale her with the experience of a friend whose husband had started his own business which quickly went catastrophically wrong. The family finances were in peril and he couldn’t cope. His wife stepped in. Alongside her own job and while juggling the childcare, she worked late into the night for weeks to stabilise their security. During this time, she was scrupulous in not blaming her husband, either explicitly or implicitly.
With crisis narrowly averted, the stressed and sleep-deprived wife realised her husband was being snippy and sulky. When she asked what was wrong, he exclaimed: “We haven’t had sex for weeks!” Surely, I ask Weiner-Davis, this shows that not all demands for sex should be met with her Just Do It ethos.
Not at all, she says. “This woman knew his ego needed to be protected and tried to do that by not blaming him for his mistakes. But it sounds like the bigger statement for him was: ‘Am I still a man and do you still desire me?’”
But it’s the selfish, uncontrolled behaviour of a spoilt child, I insist. Weiner-Davis doesn’t disagree. “Women often say that they feel they have three children instead of two children and a husband,” she admits. “But the fact that this husband was telling his wife what he was feeling sad about is a really good sign: some people throw in the towel.
Is the deal explicit, I ask, does the low-desire one say: “OK, we’ll make love more often, but then you have to turn your iPhone off every once in a while so we can actually talk”?
Yes and no, Weiner-Davis says. “This isn’t about keeping score. Relationships are not 50:50. They’re 100:100. We have to take responsibility for doing everything that it takes to put the relationship on track – even if you’re not getting the response you want initially. That’s really hard.
“It’s about asking yourself,” she says, “when he or she speaks and acts badly, whether it’s because you have not had sex for four weeks. Is their anger actually about feeling hurt and rejected? If it is, the low-desire spouse needs to be more sexy – even though they will not want to do this. And the other one needs to ask themselves when the last time the couple spent quality time together.”
On the other hand, Weiner-Davis admits there is a limit. “I’d say that after several weeks, if nothing has changed in terms of reciprocity, then the couple do need to sit down and identify what’s missing in their relationship for each of them and what they would like to have.”
Michele Weiner-Davis’s cure for a sex-starved marriage
If you have a low sex drive try to adopt the Nike philosophy – and ‘Just Do It!’, even if you feel neutral towards having sex at that moment.
If you’re the one with a high sex drive, try to discover the way your partner wants to receive love. It’s typically through quality time, words of affirmation, thoughtful, practical acts of caring and material gifts.
If you don’t want sex at a particular moment, explain why and suggest another specific time - and ask whether you can do something else physical at that moment for your partner instead.
If you have a higher sex drive than your partner, try to empathise with them and accept they might never want wild or creative sex, but see the increased level of intercourse as a gift showing their love.
Remember there’s no daily or weekly minimum to ensure a healthy sex life. As a couple you need to work out together what works for you.
Whatever happened to cricketing common sense?
Ian Chappell in Cricinfo
I watched aghast as Hardik Pandya was needlessly run out/ in the first innings of the second Test against South Africa. I wondered: whatever happened to adhering to the basic principles of the game?
I'm not talking about coaches developing new techniques to enhance the power-hitting required in the modern game; or the tactics devised to curb the flood of runs caused by the increased boundary flow; I'm talking about simple, basic principles of the game. These principles apply in any form of the game and if ignored, they can lose you games, as Pandya's brain fade might well have done. "Always ground your bat when running between wickets": it should have been one of the first things Pandya was told by a coach.
There weren't many coaches when I was growing up, but fortunately I had a good one who didn't ignore the basics of the game. With so many coaches available these days, I'm wondering whether it's that they don't hammer home the basic principles or whether the players choose to ignore them.
Pandya's laziness, sloppiness, arrogance, call it whatever you want, it was unforgivable. Basic principles like grounding your bat, not turning blind, always balancing yourself with a slight foot turn before taking a catch in the slips - these should be adhered to. If they're ignored, it's a fair bet they'll bite you on the backside at the most inopportune time.
And no sooner was Pandya back in the pavilion ruing his needless error than in another part of the world, South African Under-19 opener Jiveshan Pillay was out, obstructing the field. This used to be out "handled the ball" but the law has been changed.
No matter what appears in the scorebook, it can easily be avoided. When I was nine years old, my father, Martin, was captaining a club side filled with young talent. An opposition youngster used his hand to stop the ball hitting his stumps and Martin appealed; the batsman was given out.
On the ride home, Martin asked me what I thought about the decision and I replied; "It's the law - you don't stop the ball with your hand when batting."
"Good," replied Martin, "I don't ever expect to see you given out that way."
In all my years of playing cricket, at every level, I never - never ever - touched the ball when I was batting. Never mind the laws of the game or the pretentious spirit-of-cricket doctrine, I didn't want the wrath of Martin coming down on my head.
"My concern with the proliferation of coaches at all levels is that cricketers will grow up relying on their advice at the expense of self-education"
It's like being Mankaded. If you back up properly, it won't happen. If you don't touch the ball when batting, you won't be out obstructing the field.
Recently I read an interview with former Indian, South Africa, and now Hobart Hurricanes coach Gary Kirsten. He talked about the role of the coach in cricket. "If you look at the coach or manager in other sports they play a fairly significant role," he added, "I think cricket's moving in that direction, in T20 cricket."
My concern with the proliferation of coaches at all levels is that cricketers will grow up relying on their advice at the expense of self-education. The best advice I received from my coach came at seven years of age: "It doesn't matter how good I am as coach," Mr Fuller told me. "I can't help you when you're out in the middle. The quicker you learn this game for yourself, the better off you'll be."
Which leads to another point. With the proliferation of coaches, is there too much emphasis placed on physical preparation rather than spending time on the mental side of the game?
Shane Warne once bemoaned being subjected to endless fielding drills prior to a day's play. "All I need," groaned Warne, "is to bowl a few balls in the nets, go back to the dressing room, have a shower, then enjoy a cup of tea and think about the batsmen I'll be facing today."
Pure common sense from Warne. Common sense, like basic principles, is to be ignored at your peril in the game of cricket.
I watched aghast as Hardik Pandya was needlessly run out/ in the first innings of the second Test against South Africa. I wondered: whatever happened to adhering to the basic principles of the game?
I'm not talking about coaches developing new techniques to enhance the power-hitting required in the modern game; or the tactics devised to curb the flood of runs caused by the increased boundary flow; I'm talking about simple, basic principles of the game. These principles apply in any form of the game and if ignored, they can lose you games, as Pandya's brain fade might well have done. "Always ground your bat when running between wickets": it should have been one of the first things Pandya was told by a coach.
There weren't many coaches when I was growing up, but fortunately I had a good one who didn't ignore the basics of the game. With so many coaches available these days, I'm wondering whether it's that they don't hammer home the basic principles or whether the players choose to ignore them.
Pandya's laziness, sloppiness, arrogance, call it whatever you want, it was unforgivable. Basic principles like grounding your bat, not turning blind, always balancing yourself with a slight foot turn before taking a catch in the slips - these should be adhered to. If they're ignored, it's a fair bet they'll bite you on the backside at the most inopportune time.
And no sooner was Pandya back in the pavilion ruing his needless error than in another part of the world, South African Under-19 opener Jiveshan Pillay was out, obstructing the field. This used to be out "handled the ball" but the law has been changed.
No matter what appears in the scorebook, it can easily be avoided. When I was nine years old, my father, Martin, was captaining a club side filled with young talent. An opposition youngster used his hand to stop the ball hitting his stumps and Martin appealed; the batsman was given out.
On the ride home, Martin asked me what I thought about the decision and I replied; "It's the law - you don't stop the ball with your hand when batting."
"Good," replied Martin, "I don't ever expect to see you given out that way."
In all my years of playing cricket, at every level, I never - never ever - touched the ball when I was batting. Never mind the laws of the game or the pretentious spirit-of-cricket doctrine, I didn't want the wrath of Martin coming down on my head.
"My concern with the proliferation of coaches at all levels is that cricketers will grow up relying on their advice at the expense of self-education"
It's like being Mankaded. If you back up properly, it won't happen. If you don't touch the ball when batting, you won't be out obstructing the field.
Recently I read an interview with former Indian, South Africa, and now Hobart Hurricanes coach Gary Kirsten. He talked about the role of the coach in cricket. "If you look at the coach or manager in other sports they play a fairly significant role," he added, "I think cricket's moving in that direction, in T20 cricket."
My concern with the proliferation of coaches at all levels is that cricketers will grow up relying on their advice at the expense of self-education. The best advice I received from my coach came at seven years of age: "It doesn't matter how good I am as coach," Mr Fuller told me. "I can't help you when you're out in the middle. The quicker you learn this game for yourself, the better off you'll be."
Which leads to another point. With the proliferation of coaches, is there too much emphasis placed on physical preparation rather than spending time on the mental side of the game?
Shane Warne once bemoaned being subjected to endless fielding drills prior to a day's play. "All I need," groaned Warne, "is to bowl a few balls in the nets, go back to the dressing room, have a shower, then enjoy a cup of tea and think about the batsmen I'll be facing today."
Pure common sense from Warne. Common sense, like basic principles, is to be ignored at your peril in the game of cricket.
Capitalism’s new crisis: after Carillion, can the private sector ever be trusted?
Will Hutton in The Guardian
It is one of the most spectacular corporate failures of recent years. Carillion’s collapse, with £2bn of debts, threatens to deprive tens of thousands of workers, directly or indirectly, of their livelihood. The company had only £29m of cash left. This broaches new levels of fecklessness and the impact will be felt across Britain.
For Carillion was not only a major construction company: it had entered the lucrative public service delivery business. The shockwaves have been felt not only on building sites but in multiple schools, hospitals and even prisons, where tens of thousands of cleaners, porters and maintenance workers have suddenly found their employer has gone bust.
The hospital and school workers on TV news, worrying about their next payslip, are a forceful reminder of how deeply privatisation has entered everyday life.
Schools are run by private academy trusts and school meals provided by companies like Carillion. Switch on the light, catch the bus, post a letter, turn on the oven, drink a glass of water, register for an apprenticeship, use a train, park the car or eat the food in the hospital canteen – it’s all provided by private companies.
The amount of activity now performed by organisations we all own and whose overriding purpose is public service is minimal. Day-to-day life now depends on private companies with private ambitions.
The intertwining of the public and private is not new: it is as old as the state. Elizabeth I’s navy was built in private shipyards; the warplanes and engines that won the second world war were built in corporate factories. There is nothing novel in contracting out or public commissioning; the debate is where to draw the line – and whether the contractors will deliver what they promise.
It was the advent of Margaret Thatcher that saw the first major redrawing of the line, with a wave of wholesale privatisations.
Private owners would necessarily perform better than any public owners because they were private, it was asserted. But that was only the beginning.
Why couldn’t the same principle be extended to the heartland areas of public provision in central and local government? Private companies, like Capita or Carillion, could accept commissions to run the functions of the state more cheaply than government could itself. The state could become no more than a commissioning and procurement agency. The public services delivery industry was born.
In the 1990s, John Major’s government flirted with going further, getting private companies to own and finance public facilities, such as hospitals and prisons. However, whatever the ideological attractions, private borrowing costs were prohibitively high.
It took New Labour’s zeal to get private borrowing off the public books, at any price, for the private finance initiative (PFI) to boom: nearly all Britain’s PFI deals – more than 700 of them – were done by New Labour.
It is one of the most spectacular corporate failures of recent years. Carillion’s collapse, with £2bn of debts, threatens to deprive tens of thousands of workers, directly or indirectly, of their livelihood. The company had only £29m of cash left. This broaches new levels of fecklessness and the impact will be felt across Britain.
For Carillion was not only a major construction company: it had entered the lucrative public service delivery business. The shockwaves have been felt not only on building sites but in multiple schools, hospitals and even prisons, where tens of thousands of cleaners, porters and maintenance workers have suddenly found their employer has gone bust.
The hospital and school workers on TV news, worrying about their next payslip, are a forceful reminder of how deeply privatisation has entered everyday life.
Schools are run by private academy trusts and school meals provided by companies like Carillion. Switch on the light, catch the bus, post a letter, turn on the oven, drink a glass of water, register for an apprenticeship, use a train, park the car or eat the food in the hospital canteen – it’s all provided by private companies.
The amount of activity now performed by organisations we all own and whose overriding purpose is public service is minimal. Day-to-day life now depends on private companies with private ambitions.
The intertwining of the public and private is not new: it is as old as the state. Elizabeth I’s navy was built in private shipyards; the warplanes and engines that won the second world war were built in corporate factories. There is nothing novel in contracting out or public commissioning; the debate is where to draw the line – and whether the contractors will deliver what they promise.
It was the advent of Margaret Thatcher that saw the first major redrawing of the line, with a wave of wholesale privatisations.
Private owners would necessarily perform better than any public owners because they were private, it was asserted. But that was only the beginning.
Why couldn’t the same principle be extended to the heartland areas of public provision in central and local government? Private companies, like Capita or Carillion, could accept commissions to run the functions of the state more cheaply than government could itself. The state could become no more than a commissioning and procurement agency. The public services delivery industry was born.
In the 1990s, John Major’s government flirted with going further, getting private companies to own and finance public facilities, such as hospitals and prisons. However, whatever the ideological attractions, private borrowing costs were prohibitively high.
It took New Labour’s zeal to get private borrowing off the public books, at any price, for the private finance initiative (PFI) to boom: nearly all Britain’s PFI deals – more than 700 of them – were done by New Labour.
There is now a sense, growing with every successive scandal, that the privatisation of the everyday has gone too far – a mood captured by startling opinion poll majorities of 80% in favour of renationalising utilities. The opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, struck a chord when he said Carillion’s failure was a key moment.
Carillion’s failure is part of a wider story of corporate mishaps and debacles. The financial crisis, starting with the run on Northern Rock and culminating with Royal Bank of Scotland teetering on the point of closure, was a tipping point: banks and building societies could no longer be trusted.
Since then, a succession of illustrious British names have become embroiled in varying crises. BT, Tesco and, most recently, GKN have all suffered from multimillion-pound accounting irregularities, with the resulting fall in GKN’s share price exposing it to an opportunistic £7bn hostile takeover last week.
The public service delivery industry, of which Carillion is part, is not exempt. Serco and G4S have had to repay £180m for the overcharging of tagged prison offenders.
Learndirect – privatised and sold to the private equity arm of Lloyds Bank in 2011 and, until recently, Britain’s biggest training provider – proved to be systematically failing up to a third of its apprentices; it is being investigated by the National Audit Office.
Stagecoach and Virgin say they will walk away from their East Coast mainline contract unless the government waives up to £2bn of contract payments.
PFI, aimed at getting debt off the government’s books, turns out to be organised hugely in the private sector’s interest. The taxpayer is up to £150bn out of pocket. And now Carillion.
But is it capitalism, or capitalism British-style, that is at fault? The Conservative party, as the promoter of capitalism and the private sector, sees no differentiation – and neither does the current leadership of the Labour party, who are in receipt of a political gift.
There must be an end to privatisation’s dogma and rip-offs, runs the attack by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell: the answer is plainly nationalisation and bringing contracts back “in-house”, which, if Labour were elected, would become a statutory requirement. There will be no more indulging of the private sector with the taxpayer picking up the bill. How could Carillion continue to be awarded contracts last year, including for HS2, after issuing a series of profit warnings? Above all, says Labour, it seems to be one law for workers and another for overpaid directors.
These are telling criticisms, but they do not get under the skin of why so much has gone wrong. Britain’s nationalised industries suffered from inefficiency and persistent underinvestment. Taking activity back in-house is a strong soundbite, but no panacea.
While some public sector delivery is outstanding, notably in parts of the NHS, the general pattern is more patchy. It is for this reason that governments for decades have been contracting the private sector to deliver goods and services. Trying to extend that principle is not unreasonable if high-quality private sector partners step up to the mark: the problem is they are in such short supply. Equally, a better-designed private finance initiative could have transferred risk and debt to the private sector more equitably. Why did British companies drive such an impossibly expensive and unfair bargain?
Carillion’s failure is part of a wider story of corporate mishaps and debacles. The financial crisis, starting with the run on Northern Rock and culminating with Royal Bank of Scotland teetering on the point of closure, was a tipping point: banks and building societies could no longer be trusted.
Since then, a succession of illustrious British names have become embroiled in varying crises. BT, Tesco and, most recently, GKN have all suffered from multimillion-pound accounting irregularities, with the resulting fall in GKN’s share price exposing it to an opportunistic £7bn hostile takeover last week.
The public service delivery industry, of which Carillion is part, is not exempt. Serco and G4S have had to repay £180m for the overcharging of tagged prison offenders.
Learndirect – privatised and sold to the private equity arm of Lloyds Bank in 2011 and, until recently, Britain’s biggest training provider – proved to be systematically failing up to a third of its apprentices; it is being investigated by the National Audit Office.
Stagecoach and Virgin say they will walk away from their East Coast mainline contract unless the government waives up to £2bn of contract payments.
PFI, aimed at getting debt off the government’s books, turns out to be organised hugely in the private sector’s interest. The taxpayer is up to £150bn out of pocket. And now Carillion.
But is it capitalism, or capitalism British-style, that is at fault? The Conservative party, as the promoter of capitalism and the private sector, sees no differentiation – and neither does the current leadership of the Labour party, who are in receipt of a political gift.
There must be an end to privatisation’s dogma and rip-offs, runs the attack by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell: the answer is plainly nationalisation and bringing contracts back “in-house”, which, if Labour were elected, would become a statutory requirement. There will be no more indulging of the private sector with the taxpayer picking up the bill. How could Carillion continue to be awarded contracts last year, including for HS2, after issuing a series of profit warnings? Above all, says Labour, it seems to be one law for workers and another for overpaid directors.
These are telling criticisms, but they do not get under the skin of why so much has gone wrong. Britain’s nationalised industries suffered from inefficiency and persistent underinvestment. Taking activity back in-house is a strong soundbite, but no panacea.
While some public sector delivery is outstanding, notably in parts of the NHS, the general pattern is more patchy. It is for this reason that governments for decades have been contracting the private sector to deliver goods and services. Trying to extend that principle is not unreasonable if high-quality private sector partners step up to the mark: the problem is they are in such short supply. Equally, a better-designed private finance initiative could have transferred risk and debt to the private sector more equitably. Why did British companies drive such an impossibly expensive and unfair bargain?
Some of the answers lie in the Carillion scandal. Its top directors were exceptionally well rewarded if they could keep the share price up, which meant running the company to minimise short-term costs and cap investment, with no margin for error. Carillion might have survived one mishap, but a succession inevitably bowled it over.
When the terms of directors’ pay was changed in the very small print of a remuneration report, so that extravagant short-term bonuses could still be paid even if Carillion collapsed, no shareholder noticed the change. Nor did any of the proxy voting agencies to whom many shareholders delegated their votes and decision-making rights. Indeed, when Carillion was begging the government for a short-term £150m loan at the very last, no investors were alongside them, mounting or supporting a rescue package. The main shareholder activity was to sell the shares short.
This was an ownerless company denuded of any purpose except seemingly to enrich its directors and keep its rootless multiple shareholders happy from one profit-reporting period to another. There was no mission to deliver, no drive for excellence, no pride in service. Workers were disposable notations on spreadsheets. Yet it could be different.
This malaise is at the heart of too many British companies and is what lies behind the litany of disasters and economic under-performance. One leading international investment manager, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that British companies suffer from a disproportionate number of irregularities, fines, missed profit forecasts and malpractice compared with the companies in which he invests in other countries. It is part of a wider picture in which British companies tend to under-invest and under-innovate – even while executive pay has grown at a startling rate to become, per pound of turnover, the highest in the world.
So what to do? One of the striking distinctions of the British system, as the Big Innovation Centre’s Purposeful Company Taskforce revealed in its 2016 Evidence Report (full declaration: I am the co-chair), is that British quoted companies do not have “anchor” shareholders owning a critical mass of their shares (blockholders in the jargon) – engaged owners who will support them through thick and thin. Instead, British companies have the most diffuse, disengaged and transactional shareholder base of any corporate sector in the advanced industrial world.
With so many shareholders, the voice of any single one is easy to ignore. The yardstick becomes immediate financial performance. A preoccupation with the short-term share price becomes inevitable, with shareholders linking executive pay to achieving just that.
On top of this, there is a culture, imported from the US and legitimised by the dominant free market theories of the 1970s and 80s, that the sole purpose of a company is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible.
In Professor Milton Friedman’s conception, a company can only make a lot of money if it is delivering economic and social good. But maximising shareholder value has become corporate Britain’s intellectual god.
British company law does not require companies to declare any purpose when they incorporate: indeed, the whole British ecosystem is organised to put short-term financial priorities first, and all the other things that make a company great – its people, its relationship with its customers, its capacity to innovate, its declared reason for being – in second place. Bad economics married with Britain’s unique institutions delivered what we now have: a rogue form of capitalism.Q&A
What went wrong for Carillion?Show
The task now is to repurpose that capitalism – a task with no single solution, but rather a range of initiatives that cumulatively will move the dial.
The first step is to make declaring a purpose beyond profit-making mandatory, and incorporating it in the constitution of the company – its articles of association. Another is to harden up the requirements to incorporate wider stakeholder interests into corporate decision-making. Companies should be required to put their reason for existing to a regular shareholder vote, a “say on purpose” beyond merely maximising profits.
Every effort should be made to widen company types beyond the public limited company. There should be more co-operatives and employee-owned companies – companies consecrated to delivering a public benefit first and foremost. The £7 trillion asset management industry should take its obligations as owners much more seriously: every inhibition to forming “anchor” shareholding groups should be dropped, every incentive to become more active long-term stewards encouraged.
Directors’ bonuses should be paid only after a period of between five and seven years, so that boards think long-term. Trade unions should be encouraged, their voices heard and built into company decision-making. Pension funds should be encouraged to invest in purposeful companies; up to £100bn could be earmarked. The 40,000 pension funds should also be consolidated into many fewer entities, so they have genuine clout. The under-resourced and under-powered Financial Reporting Council should become a proper business regulator.
There is a movement for change, but it is on the margins. In Britain, along with the Purposeful Company Taskforce, there is Tomorrow’s Company and Blueprint for Better Business all arguing for systemic change. Internationally, the thinktank Focusing Capital on the Long Term makes a similar argument, as does the “inclusive capitalism” movement. The TUC, under Frances O’Grady, is pushing a parallel agenda.
The best and most reflective people in the business lobby are alarmed by the growing “trust gap” and want to close it. There is intellectual support: the new economics is attempting to integrate the best of free-market, Keynesian and even Marxist traditions. Companies cannot be seen as solely profit machines, but as complex problem-solving organisations, bound together by the social glue of shared purpose, in which tensions and power battles between management and stakeholders will be inevitable. How companies are owned, purpose expressed, directors paid and stakeholder interests traded off will be of fundamental importance.
More Carillion-style disasters lie ahead as the economy slows down. The government cannot continue to ignore these failings, nor can the Labour party simply promise to nationalise everything. The debate about our capitalism can only deepen. For the ordinary Briton, the sooner it is resolved the better.
When the terms of directors’ pay was changed in the very small print of a remuneration report, so that extravagant short-term bonuses could still be paid even if Carillion collapsed, no shareholder noticed the change. Nor did any of the proxy voting agencies to whom many shareholders delegated their votes and decision-making rights. Indeed, when Carillion was begging the government for a short-term £150m loan at the very last, no investors were alongside them, mounting or supporting a rescue package. The main shareholder activity was to sell the shares short.
This was an ownerless company denuded of any purpose except seemingly to enrich its directors and keep its rootless multiple shareholders happy from one profit-reporting period to another. There was no mission to deliver, no drive for excellence, no pride in service. Workers were disposable notations on spreadsheets. Yet it could be different.
This malaise is at the heart of too many British companies and is what lies behind the litany of disasters and economic under-performance. One leading international investment manager, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that British companies suffer from a disproportionate number of irregularities, fines, missed profit forecasts and malpractice compared with the companies in which he invests in other countries. It is part of a wider picture in which British companies tend to under-invest and under-innovate – even while executive pay has grown at a startling rate to become, per pound of turnover, the highest in the world.
So what to do? One of the striking distinctions of the British system, as the Big Innovation Centre’s Purposeful Company Taskforce revealed in its 2016 Evidence Report (full declaration: I am the co-chair), is that British quoted companies do not have “anchor” shareholders owning a critical mass of their shares (blockholders in the jargon) – engaged owners who will support them through thick and thin. Instead, British companies have the most diffuse, disengaged and transactional shareholder base of any corporate sector in the advanced industrial world.
With so many shareholders, the voice of any single one is easy to ignore. The yardstick becomes immediate financial performance. A preoccupation with the short-term share price becomes inevitable, with shareholders linking executive pay to achieving just that.
On top of this, there is a culture, imported from the US and legitimised by the dominant free market theories of the 1970s and 80s, that the sole purpose of a company is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible.
In Professor Milton Friedman’s conception, a company can only make a lot of money if it is delivering economic and social good. But maximising shareholder value has become corporate Britain’s intellectual god.
British company law does not require companies to declare any purpose when they incorporate: indeed, the whole British ecosystem is organised to put short-term financial priorities first, and all the other things that make a company great – its people, its relationship with its customers, its capacity to innovate, its declared reason for being – in second place. Bad economics married with Britain’s unique institutions delivered what we now have: a rogue form of capitalism.Q&A
What went wrong for Carillion?Show
The task now is to repurpose that capitalism – a task with no single solution, but rather a range of initiatives that cumulatively will move the dial.
The first step is to make declaring a purpose beyond profit-making mandatory, and incorporating it in the constitution of the company – its articles of association. Another is to harden up the requirements to incorporate wider stakeholder interests into corporate decision-making. Companies should be required to put their reason for existing to a regular shareholder vote, a “say on purpose” beyond merely maximising profits.
Every effort should be made to widen company types beyond the public limited company. There should be more co-operatives and employee-owned companies – companies consecrated to delivering a public benefit first and foremost. The £7 trillion asset management industry should take its obligations as owners much more seriously: every inhibition to forming “anchor” shareholding groups should be dropped, every incentive to become more active long-term stewards encouraged.
Directors’ bonuses should be paid only after a period of between five and seven years, so that boards think long-term. Trade unions should be encouraged, their voices heard and built into company decision-making. Pension funds should be encouraged to invest in purposeful companies; up to £100bn could be earmarked. The 40,000 pension funds should also be consolidated into many fewer entities, so they have genuine clout. The under-resourced and under-powered Financial Reporting Council should become a proper business regulator.
There is a movement for change, but it is on the margins. In Britain, along with the Purposeful Company Taskforce, there is Tomorrow’s Company and Blueprint for Better Business all arguing for systemic change. Internationally, the thinktank Focusing Capital on the Long Term makes a similar argument, as does the “inclusive capitalism” movement. The TUC, under Frances O’Grady, is pushing a parallel agenda.
The best and most reflective people in the business lobby are alarmed by the growing “trust gap” and want to close it. There is intellectual support: the new economics is attempting to integrate the best of free-market, Keynesian and even Marxist traditions. Companies cannot be seen as solely profit machines, but as complex problem-solving organisations, bound together by the social glue of shared purpose, in which tensions and power battles between management and stakeholders will be inevitable. How companies are owned, purpose expressed, directors paid and stakeholder interests traded off will be of fundamental importance.
More Carillion-style disasters lie ahead as the economy slows down. The government cannot continue to ignore these failings, nor can the Labour party simply promise to nationalise everything. The debate about our capitalism can only deepen. For the ordinary Briton, the sooner it is resolved the better.
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