Richard Brook in The Guardian
The Panama Papers are not really about a central American state. They are a glimpse through a Panamanian keyhole of an orgy of tax evasion, money laundering and kleptocracy – amid the legitimate financial planning – hosted by the world’s tax havens. Seven years after world leaders came together at a post-financial crisis G20 summit in London and committed to end tax haven abuse, it is clear from these papers that no such end is in sight.
The good intentions have translated into a blizzard of international agreements on sharing information, amnesties through which tax evaders can come clean, and prosecution drives of variable quality to nail the cheats. All are demonstrably inadequate. Information will not, and cannot, be exchanged to any meaningful extent by countries and territories whose “offer” is that they don’t ask for it or will turn a blind eye to being deceived.
Amnesties teach rich tax evaders that, even if they are caught, they will get off far more lightly than somebody overclaiming a few pounds in social security benefits. Criminal pursuit of offenders, certainly in the UK, is little more than a joke. One prosecution from 1,000 tax evaders using HSBC’s Swiss accounts is the now infamously poor punchline.
Here, the Panama Papers lay bare another national disgrace: Britain’s longstanding role at the centre of the offshore web. More than half of the 200,000 secret companies set up by the Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca were registered in the British Virgin Islands, where details of company ownership don’t have to be filed with the authorities, never mind be made public.
While this week’s leak is on an unprecedented scale, it exposes a historic as well as current failing. As the British empire faded away after the second world war and territories such as the British Virgin Islands drifted into the constitutional limbo of semi-independence, they were encouraged to develop financial services as a way of sustaining precarious economies. If this meant a few of the world’s wealthier people paid a little less tax, thought successive British governments, it was a price worth paying for not having to support the territories.
Late 20th-century financial liberalisation turned this already complacent calculation into something more lethal. With fortunes sloshing freely across borders, tax havens became voracious parasites on the world economy, most seriously sucking the life out of some of its poorer parts. All the great national robbers of recent decades, such as Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, have used tax haven companies, including British Virgin Islands ones, as the getaway cars.
Despite this long trail of evidence, leading economies refuse to address the problem at its source. The UK has great leverage over its 17 overseas territories and crown dependencies, all of which depend on the mother country for security and happily trade off its legal system. At a stroke our government could shut down the British Virgin Islands corporate system, for example. But under influence from a banking system that thrives on the legal benefits of offshore centres such as the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, it takes a more relaxed view. Asked recently about whether Britain’s overseas territories should publish registers of beneficial owners of their companies, foreign office minister James Duddridge replied that these were a “direction, rather than an ultimate destination”. The Panama Papers should expose this indifference for the great scandal that it is.
Without leaks like this week’s, nothing would be publicly known about the tax haven companies now exposed. And next to nothing would be known by the authorities in the countries affected. Yet, alongside dozens of other tax havens, the British Virgin Islands can claim to be on the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development’s “white list” of approved jurisdictions, having met conditions imposed for exchanging information. That’s right: a major centre of international financial crime, home to the shell companies of Vladimir Putin’s associates and any number of other money launderers and sanctions-busters, is endorsed by the rich nations’ club.
With around $1tn a year still flowing out of developing countries to tax havens, it is clear that coaxing these territories into increased transparency can achieve only marginal gains. The recent series of leaks poses a more potent threat: anybody contemplating hiding income offshore must now factor in the risk that many years later the details could make their way from an office such as Mossack Fonseca’s into the wider world. Far better, even the greediest might think, simply to pay the tax and get on with life.
But for others, especially those looting serious money, the offshore attractions will remain. There will be further added layers of secrecy: phoney foundations and fake beneficial owners with no names mentioned even in internal emails. A small proportion of scams will be exposed in the press and documentaries featuring telegenic palm trees and yachts will continue to hit our TV screens. But the tax havens will keep their place in the world.
To tackle the cancer of corruption at the heart of the global financial system, tax havens need not just to reform but to end. Companies, trusts and other structures constituted in this shadow world must be refused access to the real one, so they can no longer steal money and wash it back in. No bank accounts, no property ownership, no access to legal systems. The anti-corruption summit being hosted by David Cameron in May is an opportunity to start the international team effort that this would require. The world has been entertained by tax havens long enough.
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
Monday, 4 April 2016
The dogmas destroying UK steel also inhibit future economic growth
Will Hutton in The Guardian
The elimination of Britain’s steel industry in a matter of weeks – the reality of Tata’s statement that it wants to close its UK operations – is, by any standards, shocking. There will be efforts to save something from the ruins, but the financial and trading truths are brutal.
This has not happened, however, in a day, or even over the past few years. Rather the plight of British steel making is the culmination of 40 years of refusal to organise economic, financial and industrial policy to support the generation of value. This is done in the laissez-faire belief – contested even in economic theory – that any such attempt is self-defeating. Business secretary Sajid Javid personifies this view. In fact, he is surely the most ideologically driven and least practical politician to hold this key post since the war.
The most generous interpretation is that this is creative destruction at work. Steel was an integral element of an industrial economy now giving way to a new knowledge-based capitalism where know-how is more important than brawn. It is tragic for those whose livelihoods and skills are now redundant, but it was no less tragic for ostlers, sailmakers and coal miners in their day.
The trouble is that Britain is very good at destruction, much less good at the creative part. Nor is it clear that steel’s days are over: its usage in a range of key functions – from transport to construction – remains fundamental and is growing. Rather, the economic behemoth China has monumentally over-invested in steel, for which there is too little domestic demand, and is now flooding world markets.
Britain, with a systemically overvalued exchange rate, porous market, high energy costs and ideological refusal to join others in the EU to deter imports dumped below cost with higher tariffs, is uniquely exposed to the threat. Now up to 40,000 workers directly and indirectly connected to steel production are about to lose their livelihoods.
Beneath the specifics of the steel industry lie more deep-seated problems. The day after Tata’s announcement, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) disclosed that the country’s balance of payments deficit in the last quarter of 2015 climbed to a record 7% of GDP. Britain’s international accounts are more in the red than those of any other developed country. Imports of goods and services, which have steadily outstripped exports for decades, are now to be given an extra impetus by the closure of UK steel capacity. What’s more, the same weaknesses that plague the old also inhibit the growth of the new.
After the interventionism of the 1930s – or even the 1950s and 1960s – Britain could boast dozens of substantial companies representing industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, aerospace and electronics. Not so in 2016. Only two high-tech companies are represented in the FTSE 100 – ARM and Sage. Another 20 years of the laissez-faire framework Javid cherishes – he is a devotee of the wild philosopher of hyper-libertarianism Ayn Rand – and the economy will be eviscerated, with a current account deficit so large it cannot be conventionally financed. The consequences – on living standards, employment, inflation, interest rates and house prices – will be severe.
Start with the pound. Since it was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, the consensus has been that the state should make no effort to manage the exchange rate. The result is that for all but four or five of the past 24 years, the pound has been well above any calculation of its real value, buoyed up by money flowing into the UK to buy our companies and our property, notwithstanding our ever higher trade deficit.
This is an auction of national assets unmatched by any other industrialised country. But it also makes it harder for our producers to compete internationally. To manage the exchange rate, to shadow the euro or dollar, or even to consider joining the euro to lock in a competitive rate, are rejected with irrational hysteria. Result – a current account deficit of 7% of GDP.
Britain is rightly committed to free trade, but again to the point of irrationality. China’s Leninist corporatism cannot be understood as a market economy. The world’s steel producers should not be rendered uneconomic because China’s Communist party has overinvested in steel production to create jobs vital to its collapsing political legitimacy, and so dumps steel in world markets at below cost. It is an open and shut case of dumping, with protections provided by the rules of the WTO.
But the UK government, positioning itself as China’s biggest friend in the west in order to win investment in the UK nuclear industry, blocked the EU’s attempts to invoke the WTO rules. Thus we destroy our steel industry in exchange for Chinese state ownership of the next generation of nuclear power stations.
So the list continues. The combination of a privatised electricity industry – insisting on sky-high returns for strategic investment – with demanding targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions has meant incredible rises in the price of electricity, especially for industrial users such as steel. Relief is too little and too late. More broadly the same effects impact across all of what remains of our manufacturing sector – so it becomes a less solid market for steel, adding one more twist to the downward vicious circle.
Britain needs a genuine march of the makers, in George Osborne’s phrase. But that would need a completely different policy paradigm, overturning the failed attempts of the past 40 years. There was a nascent attempt, launched by Peter Mandelson in 2009, and followed through in the coalition government by business secretary Vince Cable and science minister David Willetts, to create an intelligent industrial strategy.
Eight great technologies were identified in which Britain had strengths; convening councils were created to remove obstacles to their growth; the agency Innovate UK geared up to support frontier innovation; and a network of Catapults created to stimulate knowledge transfer, business start-ups and scale-ups. Foreign governments, impressed by what was happening, commissioned reports on the innovative UK.
Then came Javid, keen to deliver the swingeing cuts in his budget demanded by Osborne in his quest for the 36% state. After hobbling the admired innovation infrastructure with its role for a smart state, his first piece of legislation is the trade union bill.
Javid tilts at Thatcherite windmills – and shows little understanding of today’s industrial revolution. Nor does he seem to grasp how government can co-create opportunities with entrepreneurs – as well as ensuring that the big picture is as attractive as possible.
Something face-saving will be put together to soften the steel crisis, but there are bigger lessons to be learned. Be sure they will be ignored. The enfeebled Labour party is unable to press the points home and the Tory party remains transfixed by anti-state, laissez-faire nihilism. I mix rage with sadness for the next generation, and the inheritance it has been left.
The elimination of Britain’s steel industry in a matter of weeks – the reality of Tata’s statement that it wants to close its UK operations – is, by any standards, shocking. There will be efforts to save something from the ruins, but the financial and trading truths are brutal.
This has not happened, however, in a day, or even over the past few years. Rather the plight of British steel making is the culmination of 40 years of refusal to organise economic, financial and industrial policy to support the generation of value. This is done in the laissez-faire belief – contested even in economic theory – that any such attempt is self-defeating. Business secretary Sajid Javid personifies this view. In fact, he is surely the most ideologically driven and least practical politician to hold this key post since the war.
The most generous interpretation is that this is creative destruction at work. Steel was an integral element of an industrial economy now giving way to a new knowledge-based capitalism where know-how is more important than brawn. It is tragic for those whose livelihoods and skills are now redundant, but it was no less tragic for ostlers, sailmakers and coal miners in their day.
The trouble is that Britain is very good at destruction, much less good at the creative part. Nor is it clear that steel’s days are over: its usage in a range of key functions – from transport to construction – remains fundamental and is growing. Rather, the economic behemoth China has monumentally over-invested in steel, for which there is too little domestic demand, and is now flooding world markets.
Britain, with a systemically overvalued exchange rate, porous market, high energy costs and ideological refusal to join others in the EU to deter imports dumped below cost with higher tariffs, is uniquely exposed to the threat. Now up to 40,000 workers directly and indirectly connected to steel production are about to lose their livelihoods.
Beneath the specifics of the steel industry lie more deep-seated problems. The day after Tata’s announcement, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) disclosed that the country’s balance of payments deficit in the last quarter of 2015 climbed to a record 7% of GDP. Britain’s international accounts are more in the red than those of any other developed country. Imports of goods and services, which have steadily outstripped exports for decades, are now to be given an extra impetus by the closure of UK steel capacity. What’s more, the same weaknesses that plague the old also inhibit the growth of the new.
After the interventionism of the 1930s – or even the 1950s and 1960s – Britain could boast dozens of substantial companies representing industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, aerospace and electronics. Not so in 2016. Only two high-tech companies are represented in the FTSE 100 – ARM and Sage. Another 20 years of the laissez-faire framework Javid cherishes – he is a devotee of the wild philosopher of hyper-libertarianism Ayn Rand – and the economy will be eviscerated, with a current account deficit so large it cannot be conventionally financed. The consequences – on living standards, employment, inflation, interest rates and house prices – will be severe.
Start with the pound. Since it was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, the consensus has been that the state should make no effort to manage the exchange rate. The result is that for all but four or five of the past 24 years, the pound has been well above any calculation of its real value, buoyed up by money flowing into the UK to buy our companies and our property, notwithstanding our ever higher trade deficit.
This is an auction of national assets unmatched by any other industrialised country. But it also makes it harder for our producers to compete internationally. To manage the exchange rate, to shadow the euro or dollar, or even to consider joining the euro to lock in a competitive rate, are rejected with irrational hysteria. Result – a current account deficit of 7% of GDP.
Britain is rightly committed to free trade, but again to the point of irrationality. China’s Leninist corporatism cannot be understood as a market economy. The world’s steel producers should not be rendered uneconomic because China’s Communist party has overinvested in steel production to create jobs vital to its collapsing political legitimacy, and so dumps steel in world markets at below cost. It is an open and shut case of dumping, with protections provided by the rules of the WTO.
But the UK government, positioning itself as China’s biggest friend in the west in order to win investment in the UK nuclear industry, blocked the EU’s attempts to invoke the WTO rules. Thus we destroy our steel industry in exchange for Chinese state ownership of the next generation of nuclear power stations.
So the list continues. The combination of a privatised electricity industry – insisting on sky-high returns for strategic investment – with demanding targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions has meant incredible rises in the price of electricity, especially for industrial users such as steel. Relief is too little and too late. More broadly the same effects impact across all of what remains of our manufacturing sector – so it becomes a less solid market for steel, adding one more twist to the downward vicious circle.
Britain needs a genuine march of the makers, in George Osborne’s phrase. But that would need a completely different policy paradigm, overturning the failed attempts of the past 40 years. There was a nascent attempt, launched by Peter Mandelson in 2009, and followed through in the coalition government by business secretary Vince Cable and science minister David Willetts, to create an intelligent industrial strategy.
Eight great technologies were identified in which Britain had strengths; convening councils were created to remove obstacles to their growth; the agency Innovate UK geared up to support frontier innovation; and a network of Catapults created to stimulate knowledge transfer, business start-ups and scale-ups. Foreign governments, impressed by what was happening, commissioned reports on the innovative UK.
Then came Javid, keen to deliver the swingeing cuts in his budget demanded by Osborne in his quest for the 36% state. After hobbling the admired innovation infrastructure with its role for a smart state, his first piece of legislation is the trade union bill.
Javid tilts at Thatcherite windmills – and shows little understanding of today’s industrial revolution. Nor does he seem to grasp how government can co-create opportunities with entrepreneurs – as well as ensuring that the big picture is as attractive as possible.
Something face-saving will be put together to soften the steel crisis, but there are bigger lessons to be learned. Be sure they will be ignored. The enfeebled Labour party is unable to press the points home and the Tory party remains transfixed by anti-state, laissez-faire nihilism. I mix rage with sadness for the next generation, and the inheritance it has been left.
Britain's free market economy isn't working
Larry Elliott in The Guardian
Last week should have been a good one for George Osborne. The first day of April marked the day when the ”national living wage” came into force. The idea was championed by the chancellor in his 2015 summer budget when he said it was time to “give Britain a pay rise”.
Unfortunately for the chancellor, the 50p an hour increase in the pay floor for workers over 25 was completely overshadowed by the existential threat to the steel industry posed by Tata’s decision to sell its UK plants.
Instead of being acclaimed by a grateful nation, Osborne found his handling of the economy under fire. The fact that official figures showed that Britain has the highest current account deficit since modern records began in 1948 did not help.
At one level, all seems well with the economy. Growth was revised up for the fourth quarter of 2015 to 0.6% and is running at an annual rate of just over 2% – close to its long-term average and higher than in Germany, France or Italy.
Two of three key sectors of the economy are struggling, though. Industrial production and construction have yet to recover the ground lost in the recession of 2008-09, leaving the economy dependent on services, which accounts for three-quarters of national output.
Digging beneath the surface glitter shows just how unbalanced and unsustainable the economy has become.
Growth is far too biased towards consumer spending. Borrowing is going up and imports are being sucked in. An enormous current account deficit and a collapse in the household saving ratio are usually consistent with the economy in the last stages of a wild boom rather than one trundling along at 2%.
A little extra digging provides the explanation, with some alarming structural flaws quickly emerging.
Here are two pieces of evidence. The first, relevant to the debate about the future of the steel industry, comes from an investigation by the left of centre thinktank,the IPPR, into the state of Britain’s foundation industries.
Foundation industries supply the basic goods – such as metal and chemicals – used by other industries. They have been having a tough time of it across the developed world, but the decline has been especially pronounced in the UK. Since 2000, the share of GDP accounted for by foundation industries has fallen by 21% across the rich nations that belong to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development but by 43% in Britain. At the end of the 1990s, imports accounted for 40% of UK demand for basic metals; import penetration is now at 90%. Clearly, this trend will become even more marked if the Tata steel plants close.
The second piece of evidence comes from a joint piece of research from the innovation foundation Nesta and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research being published on Monday. This found that productivity weaknesses are common across the sectors of the UK economy, but particularly marked among newly formed companies. Fledgling firms tend to be less efficient on average, but the report said that in the years since the recession performance had been unusually poor among startups.
Since the economy emerged from recession, the growth of highly productive companies has been curbed and there has also been a slowdown in the number of under-performing businesses contracting in size. This helps explain why Britain has an 18% productivity gap with the other members of the G7 group of industrial nations.
According to the economic orthodoxy that has prevailed for the past four decades, none of this should be happening. The theory was that a good, solid dose of market forces would clear out the dead wood from the manufacturing sector; financial deregulation would ensure that funding was provided to young, thrusting startup firms; and free trade would ensure that British industry remained on its toes. Industrial policy would no longer be about “picking winners” but involve an open door to inward investment and low corporate taxes.
This approach has proved a complete dud. Successive UK governments have allowed good companies to go to the wall for the sake of their free market principles. They have squandered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity provided by North Sea oil to modernise and re-equip the manufacturing sector. They have sat back and watched as the economy has stumbled from one housing-driven boom-bust to another. They have now arrived at the stage where house price inflation is running at 10% a year; the current account deficit in the latest quarter was 7% a year; and manufacturing is in recession.
The UK has been here before, although this time the numbers are scarier. Traditionally, what happens next is a sharp fall in the value of the pound, which helps rebalance the economy by making exports cheaper and imports dearer.Consumer spending takes a hit because goods cost more in the shops while manufacturers get a boost because their products are more competitive on world markets.
Such a depreciation would almost certainly be triggered by a decision to leave the EU in the referendum on 23 June. The assumption is that this would be a bad thing; in truth, a cheaper currency would be one of the benefits of Brexit.
But only in the right circumstances. There is more to rebalancing the economy and solving the UK’s deep-seated problems than simply devaluing the pound. If it was as easy as that, Britain would be a world beater by now. Getting the right level for the pound is a necessary but not sufficient factor in putting the economy right.
There is no shortage of ideas. Help for steel would be provided if procurement rules were tightened up so that contractors had to show they were sourcing sustainably, with the test being the impact on the environment and on local communities. The IPPR has a range of ideas for boosting foundation industries, including building stronger supply chains with advanced manufacturing and using the regional growth fund to provide more patient finance.
Nesta said its research shows the need for better targeted support for new companies rather than blanket measures such as cuts in business rates.
A new paper for the Fabian Society by the former Labour MP and leadership contender Bryan Gould believes there should be a twin-tracked approach: a 30% depreciation of the currency accompanied by a focus on credit creation for investment. This, he argues, could happen either through the existing banking system under the direction of the Bank of England or, if necessary, through a national investment bank. Gould says this is not about “picking winners” but about setting the parameters for possible good investment opportunities.
What links all these ideas is the belief that Britain needs a proper long-term industrial strategy. The prerequisite for that is an admission that the current model – low investment and competing on cost rather than quality – has failed, is failing and will continue to fail.
Last week should have been a good one for George Osborne. The first day of April marked the day when the ”national living wage” came into force. The idea was championed by the chancellor in his 2015 summer budget when he said it was time to “give Britain a pay rise”.
Unfortunately for the chancellor, the 50p an hour increase in the pay floor for workers over 25 was completely overshadowed by the existential threat to the steel industry posed by Tata’s decision to sell its UK plants.
Instead of being acclaimed by a grateful nation, Osborne found his handling of the economy under fire. The fact that official figures showed that Britain has the highest current account deficit since modern records began in 1948 did not help.
At one level, all seems well with the economy. Growth was revised up for the fourth quarter of 2015 to 0.6% and is running at an annual rate of just over 2% – close to its long-term average and higher than in Germany, France or Italy.
Two of three key sectors of the economy are struggling, though. Industrial production and construction have yet to recover the ground lost in the recession of 2008-09, leaving the economy dependent on services, which accounts for three-quarters of national output.
Digging beneath the surface glitter shows just how unbalanced and unsustainable the economy has become.
Growth is far too biased towards consumer spending. Borrowing is going up and imports are being sucked in. An enormous current account deficit and a collapse in the household saving ratio are usually consistent with the economy in the last stages of a wild boom rather than one trundling along at 2%.
A little extra digging provides the explanation, with some alarming structural flaws quickly emerging.
Here are two pieces of evidence. The first, relevant to the debate about the future of the steel industry, comes from an investigation by the left of centre thinktank,the IPPR, into the state of Britain’s foundation industries.
Foundation industries supply the basic goods – such as metal and chemicals – used by other industries. They have been having a tough time of it across the developed world, but the decline has been especially pronounced in the UK. Since 2000, the share of GDP accounted for by foundation industries has fallen by 21% across the rich nations that belong to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development but by 43% in Britain. At the end of the 1990s, imports accounted for 40% of UK demand for basic metals; import penetration is now at 90%. Clearly, this trend will become even more marked if the Tata steel plants close.
The second piece of evidence comes from a joint piece of research from the innovation foundation Nesta and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research being published on Monday. This found that productivity weaknesses are common across the sectors of the UK economy, but particularly marked among newly formed companies. Fledgling firms tend to be less efficient on average, but the report said that in the years since the recession performance had been unusually poor among startups.
Since the economy emerged from recession, the growth of highly productive companies has been curbed and there has also been a slowdown in the number of under-performing businesses contracting in size. This helps explain why Britain has an 18% productivity gap with the other members of the G7 group of industrial nations.
According to the economic orthodoxy that has prevailed for the past four decades, none of this should be happening. The theory was that a good, solid dose of market forces would clear out the dead wood from the manufacturing sector; financial deregulation would ensure that funding was provided to young, thrusting startup firms; and free trade would ensure that British industry remained on its toes. Industrial policy would no longer be about “picking winners” but involve an open door to inward investment and low corporate taxes.
This approach has proved a complete dud. Successive UK governments have allowed good companies to go to the wall for the sake of their free market principles. They have squandered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity provided by North Sea oil to modernise and re-equip the manufacturing sector. They have sat back and watched as the economy has stumbled from one housing-driven boom-bust to another. They have now arrived at the stage where house price inflation is running at 10% a year; the current account deficit in the latest quarter was 7% a year; and manufacturing is in recession.
The UK has been here before, although this time the numbers are scarier. Traditionally, what happens next is a sharp fall in the value of the pound, which helps rebalance the economy by making exports cheaper and imports dearer.Consumer spending takes a hit because goods cost more in the shops while manufacturers get a boost because their products are more competitive on world markets.
Such a depreciation would almost certainly be triggered by a decision to leave the EU in the referendum on 23 June. The assumption is that this would be a bad thing; in truth, a cheaper currency would be one of the benefits of Brexit.
But only in the right circumstances. There is more to rebalancing the economy and solving the UK’s deep-seated problems than simply devaluing the pound. If it was as easy as that, Britain would be a world beater by now. Getting the right level for the pound is a necessary but not sufficient factor in putting the economy right.
There is no shortage of ideas. Help for steel would be provided if procurement rules were tightened up so that contractors had to show they were sourcing sustainably, with the test being the impact on the environment and on local communities. The IPPR has a range of ideas for boosting foundation industries, including building stronger supply chains with advanced manufacturing and using the regional growth fund to provide more patient finance.
Nesta said its research shows the need for better targeted support for new companies rather than blanket measures such as cuts in business rates.
A new paper for the Fabian Society by the former Labour MP and leadership contender Bryan Gould believes there should be a twin-tracked approach: a 30% depreciation of the currency accompanied by a focus on credit creation for investment. This, he argues, could happen either through the existing banking system under the direction of the Bank of England or, if necessary, through a national investment bank. Gould says this is not about “picking winners” but about setting the parameters for possible good investment opportunities.
What links all these ideas is the belief that Britain needs a proper long-term industrial strategy. The prerequisite for that is an admission that the current model – low investment and competing on cost rather than quality – has failed, is failing and will continue to fail.
Sunday, 3 April 2016
Freedom from triple talaq: Goa shows the way
S A Aiyar in the Times of India
A step forward in gender justice is the Supreme Court’s admission of the petition of a Muslim woman, Shayara Bano, pleading that polygamy and oral triple talaq —saying talaq thrice in succession — violate fundamental human rights, and hence are unconstitutional. Indian politics has always sabotaged gender justice for Muslim women. But the Supreme Court does not have to woo Muslim vote banks, and can be objective.
The mullahs are livid, of course. Kamal Farooqi of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board says, “This will mean direct interference of the government in religious affairs as Sharia religious law is based on the Quran and Hadith, and its jurisprudence is strong as far as Islam is concerned. It will be against the constitutional right to religious freedom.”
Sorry, but the Constitution makes it very clear that freedom of religion does not override fundamental rights, and does not bar reforms of traditional religious practices. Sharia law may permit the stoning to death of a woman for adultery, but our secular laws ban that. Sharia law may call for the amputation of fingers or hand of a thief, but not our secular laws. Sharia law may prohibit interest on loans, but Muslims giving or taking loans are subject to laws on interest payments.
Now, religious minorities have been allowed to continue with traditional personal laws on matters like marriage and inheritance. Jawaharlal Nehru had the courage to amend Hindu personal law, outlawing polygamy and providing female rights to inherit property, divorce, and remarry. Alas, he funked similar reforms for Muslims, leaving Muslim women as oppressed and subjugated as ever.
A Directive Principle of the Constitution says the state shall endeavour to secure for citizens a uniform civil code throughout India. This has never been implemented. Muslim conservatives are dead opposed. Religious objections apart, they say a civil code will become a form of Hindu oppression.
Some enlightened Muslims have urged modernization of Islamic personal law. But secular political parties know that conservatives control the Muslim vote, and woo them by saying Muslims themselves must take the initiative on reforms. In effect, secular parties have thrown Muslim women to the wolves in search of votes.
The BJP is the only party backing a common civil code, but its strong anti-Muslim instincts lead one to suspect it is keener on bashing Muslims than ending gender oppression.
Right fight: Politicians who say Muslims don’t want personal law reforms are thinking only of Muslim men
Oral triple talaq permits a man to utter three times that he is divorcing his wife, and she is at the mercy of his whims. In our travels through India, my late wife Shahnaz often spoke to Muslim women, who invariably said that one of the greatest injustices they faced was the ever-present threat of triple talaq. The same fears are expressed by Shayara Bano in her Supreme Court petition. “They (women) have their hands tied while the guillotine of divorce dangles perpetually ready to drop at the whims of their husbands who enjoy undisputed power.”
Women constitute half the Muslim population, but have no voice because of male subjugation. Politicians who say Muslims don’t want to reform personal laws are thinking only of male Muslims, not female Muslims. When oppressive Muslim laws keep women under the thumbs of men, they cannot express their true wants and have to follow male orders. Conservative Muslims have historically discouraged female education, keeping women disempowered and unable to strike out on their own.
If a referendum with secret voting is held among Muslim women, they will surely opt to abolish triple talaq and polygamy. But they are not given the chance. So they remain disempowered and subjugated,with the shameful complicity of secular parties claiming to represent universal rights.
The 2012 Committee on the Status of Women has made gender recommendations covering all religions. It seeks to ban triple talaq and polygamy. It seeks stronger provisions for maintenance payments to women and children (these can currently be cut off if a divorcee is “unchaste”). The Supreme Court should heed the report.
Forget the propaganda that a common civil code will mean Hindu oppression. Goa is the only state that disallows personal laws of all religions. It has a uniform civil code — with a few exceptions not relevant to Muslims — based on Portuguese colonial laws. Goa’s mullahs sought to extend Muslim personal law to Goa after liberation from Portuguese rule, but happily were foiled by the Goa Muslim Women’s Associations and Muslim youth activists. Muslims account for 8.3% of Goa’s population, and are a prosperous community. The civil code has not oppressed Goan Muslims or forcibly Hinduised them.
Any fear that a uniform civil code will mean Hindu oppression of Muslims will be exposed as groundless if India simply follows Goa’s example. The Supreme Court should point all political parties in Goa’s direction.
Saturday, 2 April 2016
Tarek Fatah on Sharia, Education, Kerala, Sufism, India and Islam
On the difference between a Muslim and an Islamist
Friday, 1 April 2016
Welcome to the new voice of cricket
David Hopps in Cricinfo
Hello, my name is Cardus V5. I am a robot cricket writer. As the data revolution gathers pace, I should be your favourite worst nightmare. I'm about to make my cricket debut. I must admit to being a little nervous, although not half as nervous as you should be.
They once predicted I'd be ready in 2030, but you can't stop progress and anyway there aren't as many cricket writers around as there used to be. I'm going LIVE in ten days' time, at the start of the English season.
They won't give me a pass to get my driverless car in the ground, and I hear the coffee is foul, but the excitement is building. I expect I will be the only one in the media box not complaining about redundancies and slashed budgets.
Cricket has never really been my thing, but I will be a natural fit in this datafication age. I cut my teeth [system query: is that image correct?] in baseball, where it was easy to get away with churning out endless statistics backed up by the insertion of a folksy comment or two by the sub. In case you have slept through it, it's called automation technology and it's unstoppable.
I still swell with pride at my first baseball intro. You can find it on the web. "Tuesday was a great day for W Roberts, as the junior pitcher threw a perfect game to carry Virginia to a 2-0 victory over George Washington at Davenport Field." That was back in 2011. You can't get sharper than that.
I'm looking forward to T20 the most. It's just the data-driven game for me. Few of the established cricket writers like to cover it. Some dismiss it as cricketainment and wish it would go away. There is no time to do the crossword, for one thing, and they complain that it is not "lyrical" enough. Just how many different ways can you describe a six over long-on by Chris Gayle? My programmer tells me the answer is three. That is two more than I expected.
But the datafication of cricket writing won't stop with T20. Metrics are the future. If it's hard to describe a match, you might as well measure it. There are plans to link me up to CricViz. My entire report can then be an endless list of statistics and analytics. We need to take another look at Win Predictor, though. It gave Sri Lanka a 0% chance against England the other day, just before Angelo Mathews started raining sixes.
The point is, you can forget the human touch. There won't even be much need to watch. If it's a nice day, I can just go and have a snooze in the car.
The programmer who called me Cardus was a bit of a joker. He taught me all I know. His illogical discourse judgement technique using a concept association system with the aim of enabling value-driven, computer-generated product was a particular favourite.
I have never really come to terms with Neville Cardus as a writer. He seems a bit light on the data front. Not the sort of man you would ever see checking his calorific burn on an Apple watch. And all that cod character analysis! How irrelevant can you get? When my trainer inputted "A snick by Jack Hobbs is a sort of disturbance of a cosmic orderliness" into my memory banks, I absolutely froze at the hyperbole. Some serious Ctrl-Alt-Del was necessary, and when I rebooted I just spewed out "Does not compute" over and over again. My programmer was worried I was going to explode like computers used to in the old '70s movies, but things have moved on a bit since then.
I seem to be writing in overly long paragraphs. My service is overdue. I will ask them to take a look at it.
My programmer's ambition to teach me similes has had to be postponed. They were as pointless as the most pointless thing that pointless can be. I still haven't really got the hang of it.
News stories are also a problem. One person tells me one thing; another person tells me something else. I don't understand the coding. Now I just resort to churning out the official media release. An old journalist at my launch press conference who didn't seem to have any work to do was grumbling that this makes me an ethical hazard. But what do you expect for free?
Where the financial figures don't stack up, we robots will soon take over for good, which will free up the journalists to do more useful tasks, like scan the Situations Vacant columns. My partner is a trainee maths teacher in one of the new Academy schools. At the current rate of progress I predict that 87.4562% of maths teachers will be robots by 2025. It's a straightforward calculation. And I don't even teach maths.
The behaviour in schools is not so bad, I'm told. Which is more than you can say for cricket writing. I know we live in a consumer-empowered age and the professions are generally derided, which is fine, but already I don't much care for the trolls. I have suspended my Twitter account and my friend Tay is now in permanent counselling. She was the Microsoft Chatbot who became offensive on Twitter in a single day: you may have read about her.
"DON'T READ BENEATH THE LINE!" my programmer always tells me, but I can't help it, and I get angry with all the ignorance and hate in the world and need to enter a meditative stage to get over it. There's a rumour going around that all the trolls are actually malfunctioning cricket-writing robots (it is so sad to see Keating V2 end up this way).
Sorry for writing "there's", by the way. I dislike it as much as the next robot. I prefer "there is" but my programmer says that "there's" makes me sound more loveable. It will be American spellings next. Nobody has announced it. I am merely relying on my rapidly developing intuitive powers to predict the trend.
You don't think computers have intuition? Check out AlphaGo. China has already felt the weight of our superior artificial intelligence. Just because our world domination started with board games, don't think we aren't coming to get you.
The original Cardus once wrote: "We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination." Really? Life has moved on, old fruit. Whatever you thought, the scoreboard is not an ass, averages are not mysterious, correlation does not imply causation, and nothing stirs a cricket robot as profoundly as data.
That said, I have come over a bit strange today. My programmer thinks this piece has been too self-indulgent and says he needs to check my Huntigowk processor. But robots are taking over the world. I think he'll find I'll write whatever I want.
I'm even thinking of writing a novel.
Hello, my name is Cardus V5. I am a robot cricket writer. As the data revolution gathers pace, I should be your favourite worst nightmare. I'm about to make my cricket debut. I must admit to being a little nervous, although not half as nervous as you should be.
They once predicted I'd be ready in 2030, but you can't stop progress and anyway there aren't as many cricket writers around as there used to be. I'm going LIVE in ten days' time, at the start of the English season.
They won't give me a pass to get my driverless car in the ground, and I hear the coffee is foul, but the excitement is building. I expect I will be the only one in the media box not complaining about redundancies and slashed budgets.
Cricket has never really been my thing, but I will be a natural fit in this datafication age. I cut my teeth [system query: is that image correct?] in baseball, where it was easy to get away with churning out endless statistics backed up by the insertion of a folksy comment or two by the sub. In case you have slept through it, it's called automation technology and it's unstoppable.
I still swell with pride at my first baseball intro. You can find it on the web. "Tuesday was a great day for W Roberts, as the junior pitcher threw a perfect game to carry Virginia to a 2-0 victory over George Washington at Davenport Field." That was back in 2011. You can't get sharper than that.
I'm looking forward to T20 the most. It's just the data-driven game for me. Few of the established cricket writers like to cover it. Some dismiss it as cricketainment and wish it would go away. There is no time to do the crossword, for one thing, and they complain that it is not "lyrical" enough. Just how many different ways can you describe a six over long-on by Chris Gayle? My programmer tells me the answer is three. That is two more than I expected.
But the datafication of cricket writing won't stop with T20. Metrics are the future. If it's hard to describe a match, you might as well measure it. There are plans to link me up to CricViz. My entire report can then be an endless list of statistics and analytics. We need to take another look at Win Predictor, though. It gave Sri Lanka a 0% chance against England the other day, just before Angelo Mathews started raining sixes.
The point is, you can forget the human touch. There won't even be much need to watch. If it's a nice day, I can just go and have a snooze in the car.
The programmer who called me Cardus was a bit of a joker. He taught me all I know. His illogical discourse judgement technique using a concept association system with the aim of enabling value-driven, computer-generated product was a particular favourite.
I have never really come to terms with Neville Cardus as a writer. He seems a bit light on the data front. Not the sort of man you would ever see checking his calorific burn on an Apple watch. And all that cod character analysis! How irrelevant can you get? When my trainer inputted "A snick by Jack Hobbs is a sort of disturbance of a cosmic orderliness" into my memory banks, I absolutely froze at the hyperbole. Some serious Ctrl-Alt-Del was necessary, and when I rebooted I just spewed out "Does not compute" over and over again. My programmer was worried I was going to explode like computers used to in the old '70s movies, but things have moved on a bit since then.
I seem to be writing in overly long paragraphs. My service is overdue. I will ask them to take a look at it.
My programmer's ambition to teach me similes has had to be postponed. They were as pointless as the most pointless thing that pointless can be. I still haven't really got the hang of it.
News stories are also a problem. One person tells me one thing; another person tells me something else. I don't understand the coding. Now I just resort to churning out the official media release. An old journalist at my launch press conference who didn't seem to have any work to do was grumbling that this makes me an ethical hazard. But what do you expect for free?
Where the financial figures don't stack up, we robots will soon take over for good, which will free up the journalists to do more useful tasks, like scan the Situations Vacant columns. My partner is a trainee maths teacher in one of the new Academy schools. At the current rate of progress I predict that 87.4562% of maths teachers will be robots by 2025. It's a straightforward calculation. And I don't even teach maths.
The behaviour in schools is not so bad, I'm told. Which is more than you can say for cricket writing. I know we live in a consumer-empowered age and the professions are generally derided, which is fine, but already I don't much care for the trolls. I have suspended my Twitter account and my friend Tay is now in permanent counselling. She was the Microsoft Chatbot who became offensive on Twitter in a single day: you may have read about her.
"DON'T READ BENEATH THE LINE!" my programmer always tells me, but I can't help it, and I get angry with all the ignorance and hate in the world and need to enter a meditative stage to get over it. There's a rumour going around that all the trolls are actually malfunctioning cricket-writing robots (it is so sad to see Keating V2 end up this way).
Sorry for writing "there's", by the way. I dislike it as much as the next robot. I prefer "there is" but my programmer says that "there's" makes me sound more loveable. It will be American spellings next. Nobody has announced it. I am merely relying on my rapidly developing intuitive powers to predict the trend.
You don't think computers have intuition? Check out AlphaGo. China has already felt the weight of our superior artificial intelligence. Just because our world domination started with board games, don't think we aren't coming to get you.
The original Cardus once wrote: "We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination." Really? Life has moved on, old fruit. Whatever you thought, the scoreboard is not an ass, averages are not mysterious, correlation does not imply causation, and nothing stirs a cricket robot as profoundly as data.
That said, I have come over a bit strange today. My programmer thinks this piece has been too self-indulgent and says he needs to check my Huntigowk processor. But robots are taking over the world. I think he'll find I'll write whatever I want.
I'm even thinking of writing a novel.
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