Why share price falls will put the brake on consumer spending
By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 6:47am GMT 23/01/2008
Have your say Read comments
Yesterday morning, I nearly threw the radio out of the bathroom window. The cause of my temper tantrum was yet another air-head contributor claiming that what was going on in the City - sharply falling share prices - had nothing to do with life in the real world.
# Read more by Jeff Randall
It's a view that you might have expected from a 1970s social affairs lecturer, but not in post-Thatcherite Britain.
What happened on Monday, when the stock market fell by 5.5pc, its biggest one-day drop since the terror attacks of 9/11, will have a very immediate impact on ordinary consumers. Not just through a downturn in sentiment but via the pockets of millions who hold shares directly or in pension pots, tax-free Isas and other savings plans.
Earlier this week, I had a chat with Lucy Neville-Rolfe, a Tesco director, who told me that of the company's 300,000-plus UK employees, 179,000 own Tesco shares, most of which were accumulated through a save-as-you-earn scheme. These are not "free" options for senior managers, but small stakes in the company bought by supermarket staff who are not earning fortunes.
Tesco's shares have held up well compared with those of most of its retail rivals. Even so, the price has fallen by 15pc in recent weeks. By contrast, shares in Sainsbury's (with 60,000 employee investors) are down by nearly 40pc. At Marks & Spencer, 25,000 staff have seen their investments in the business fall by 45pc from last spring's peak. Where's St Michael when you need him?
Aside from retail, Britain's other main private-sector employer is financial services. At the big five banks, being a staff investor has proven less rewarding than dealing with an account manager in a Bangalore call centre. Many workers are nursing horrible losses on their employers' shares, which have fallen by 40pc-50pc. Money in the bank is not what it was.
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Add all this up, and you have yet another nasty turn of the screw on consumers' thumbs. Already feeling the pain of falling house prices, rising mortgage bills and higher utility payments, their hopes of easing the torture by cashing in profits from staff share schemes have been cruelly cut off.
This is not the parallel universe of venture capitalists, private-equity bosses, hedge-fund managers, investment bankers and futures traders. It is the unpleasant downside of being a bit-part player in a share-owning democracy.
It is true life - right here, right now - the upshot of which is that hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of pounds of disposable income have vanished. In some cases, the cash has already been spent, exacerbating debt worries. Or, as a friend at Barclays (40,000 staff shareholders) told me:
"I have a keen appreciation of how much poorer I am than I was at this time last year."
For the Endowment Generation, those, like me, who were told by mortgage advisers in the mid-1980s that the best way to fund a new home was through an endowment policy, the stock market's wobble spells double trouble.
We are relying on rising share prices to pay back a 25-year debt, but it's not happening. When these schemes still had more than 10 years to run, stock market "corrections" were merely a notional destruction of wealth. But as the clock ticks down to pay day - mine has only 18 months left - red-faced insurance companies are sending out urgent warnings to many thousands of policy-holders, informing them that what has been built up in their accounts will fall well short of the amount required to clear the mortgage.
Given that between 1977 and 1999, stock markets enjoyed their greatest-ever bull run - 21 years of growth, with only two years of decline - many leading fund managers have performed miserably. They lost so much ground in the dark days after the World Trade Centre atrocities that even though share prices later recovered strongly, with four positive years between 2004 and 2007, millions of endowment policies are full of holes, made worse by Monday's nervous breakdown.
So please, whatever your view on the rights and wrongs of council-estate capitalism, let's have no more comments about anxiety over falling share prices being the preserve of a Square Mile squirearchy. You may loathe Tesco and all that it stands for, but its shares are probably underpinning your pension.
If that's the case, you enjoyed temporary relief yesterday after the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 0.75pc, the biggest reduction for more than 20 years. Tesco's shares jumped by 16p to 426½p, as London responded positively. For the market as a whole, however, it still looks like a long haul back to the FTSE 100's peak of 6,900 in December 1999. The index closed last night at 5740.
In America, where stock market indices have outperformed their British counterparts since the bursting of the dot.com bubble, not even the prospect of much cheaper money could lift the gloom. If anything, the Fed's move has dented confidence further because it had a whiff of desperation.
The world's pre-eminent central bank is supposed to be driving the car, steering it away from dead ends and holes in the ground. Instead, the Fed's chairman, Ben Bernanke, looks increasingly like a back-seat instructor, screaming conflicting messages as the vehicle lurches dangerously.
Just as prime minister John Major did in the dying days of the last Conservative government, Bernanke appears to be responding to headlines, making up monetary policy to fit the latest poll on consumer confidence or dip in share prices.
As a result, many on Wall Street are losing faith in the Fed's ability to avoid a crash.
The Bank of England, under Mervyn King, should not go down the same road. It would be completely inappropriate to start slashing interest rates here, where the threat of inflation is real. There is no premium in panic.
“Blessed is the nation that doesn’t need heroes" Goethe. “Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.” Herbert Spencer. "My 80% friend isn't my 20% enemy" Ronald Reagan.
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Wednesday 23 January 2008
India's poor hold the key to its future
By Peter Foster
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 23/01/2008
Have your say Read comments
Worldstage: New Delhi
In a week when Gordon Brown has visited India and world markets have been rocked by fears of global recession, the stark contrasts between rich and poor in new India are more striking than ever.
# Peter Foster: Till we meet again
As this correspondent leaves the country for the last time, the disparities of wealth remain so vast, they are sometimes dizzying. How do you make sense of a world where you fly to Mumbai in the private jet of one of India's richest men one day and then spend the next in the teeming slums where nine million people live in conditions that, in Europe, would be declared unfit for animals?
Cows rest among the traffic in a busy street in India
Education and healthcare can remove the grinding poverty that afflicts most of India
One particular night, two years ago, the jet belonged to Vijay Mallya, owner of the Kingfisher beer brand and the man often styled as "India's Branson".
He was exhausted but very happy, having a few hours previously signed off on a new airline that would see his ever-present corporate banner take to the skies. He was brimming with excitement about the new India, a business story "of such humungous proportions", he said, that people in Europe and America "cannot comprehend".
As we lounged on the monogrammed upholstery, sipping a fine Chablis, Mallya punched a button on his arm-rest. A plasma screen television came to life and played a pilot of an advertisement for the new airline. It starred Mallya, exhorting would-be customers to "Fly the Good Times" with him, the self-styled "King of Good Times" in boom-town India.
As the plane touched down, its wing-tips seemed almost to brush the tin-roofed shanties that crowd the perimeter of Mumbai's airport, their sweet stink filtering through the air-conditioning system of Mallya's private Boeing.
On the tarmac, we went our separate ways - Mallya to his Bentley and penthouse; me and my notebook to a couple living in a hovel under a bridge in Dharavi slum.
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Shenaz and her husband, Subir, both in their early twenties, made their living sifting household rubbish for metal, squatting on the floor of their shack searching for anything that might be worth a few precious rupees - an iron bed spring, a brass door catch, a few strands of copper wire - anything that had a price with the scrap dealers. Like millions of others, they had come from a village in rural India to scratch a living in the city.
Theirs was - is - a pitiful existence, but as I rapidly came to realise on my travels in India, pity is a commodity that most people, however poor, don't have much time for.
Shenaz and Subir lived on the edge of an open sewer, in a wooden box not much bigger than two large packing cases, actually and metaphorically at the bottom of India's billion-man economic dust-heap. Surely village life was preferable to this, I wondered? Shenaz smiled. "Here we eat every night," she said, "and we even save some money."
Development, as the economists say, is a "messy business", but in India that particular truism is all too often an excuse for inaction and indifference.
Foreign visitors to India (and plenty of wealthy Indians besides) often allow themselves to think that India's poor - some 700 million people, depending on where you draw the line - are content in their poverty; that they know nothing else and somehow manage to keep smiling. But in my experience, that is not the case.
The truth is that India's poor are angry, and rightly so. Their schools are too often empty of teachers - India sits only above Uganda for absenteeism, according to a UN survey this year - and, without education, the poor have no chips to join in the game of global capitalism.
Public health is a disaster - almost half of all children in India are malnourished - a fact that can largely be ascribed to the fact that their political masters are running a kleptocracy, often of African proportions. Why else did the World Bank withhold £550 million in health-project loans to India last year, a humiliation also meted out to Chad, Kenya and Congo?
At times over the past four years it has been hard to love India (though very rarely Indians themselves), such is the contempt with which much of the country's elite treats the unwashed poor. Ministers deliver laudable speeches almost daily, economic summits are attended with back-slapping fanfare but the gap between intention and action remains Brahmaputra-wide.
Perhaps it is caste discrimination - still endemic in 80 per cent of Indian villages, says Human Rights Watch - that allows such indifference to the poor to prevail. Perhaps it is just that India's middle classes are enjoying themselves so much - the stock market increased by 50 per cent this year - that they don't see the connection between rural poverty and their own futures.
But like it or not, while the poor are India's burden today, they are also the key to it tomorrow. More than 70 per cent of Indians believe their country will be an economic superpower by 2020, according to a survey published last month by a German research organisation.
But that commonplace prediction won't come to pass unless and until Shenaz and Subir, and several hundred million people like them, receive the health and education they need to become the next generation of consumers and workers.
It is a matter of pressing self-interest, not charity, for India's elite classes, because, without that investment in the human foundations of India's economy, Mr Mallya and his customers might not be "flying the good times" for as long as they currently seem to think.
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 23/01/2008
Have your say Read comments
Worldstage: New Delhi
In a week when Gordon Brown has visited India and world markets have been rocked by fears of global recession, the stark contrasts between rich and poor in new India are more striking than ever.
# Peter Foster: Till we meet again
As this correspondent leaves the country for the last time, the disparities of wealth remain so vast, they are sometimes dizzying. How do you make sense of a world where you fly to Mumbai in the private jet of one of India's richest men one day and then spend the next in the teeming slums where nine million people live in conditions that, in Europe, would be declared unfit for animals?
Cows rest among the traffic in a busy street in India
Education and healthcare can remove the grinding poverty that afflicts most of India
One particular night, two years ago, the jet belonged to Vijay Mallya, owner of the Kingfisher beer brand and the man often styled as "India's Branson".
He was exhausted but very happy, having a few hours previously signed off on a new airline that would see his ever-present corporate banner take to the skies. He was brimming with excitement about the new India, a business story "of such humungous proportions", he said, that people in Europe and America "cannot comprehend".
As we lounged on the monogrammed upholstery, sipping a fine Chablis, Mallya punched a button on his arm-rest. A plasma screen television came to life and played a pilot of an advertisement for the new airline. It starred Mallya, exhorting would-be customers to "Fly the Good Times" with him, the self-styled "King of Good Times" in boom-town India.
As the plane touched down, its wing-tips seemed almost to brush the tin-roofed shanties that crowd the perimeter of Mumbai's airport, their sweet stink filtering through the air-conditioning system of Mallya's private Boeing.
On the tarmac, we went our separate ways - Mallya to his Bentley and penthouse; me and my notebook to a couple living in a hovel under a bridge in Dharavi slum.
advertisement
Shenaz and her husband, Subir, both in their early twenties, made their living sifting household rubbish for metal, squatting on the floor of their shack searching for anything that might be worth a few precious rupees - an iron bed spring, a brass door catch, a few strands of copper wire - anything that had a price with the scrap dealers. Like millions of others, they had come from a village in rural India to scratch a living in the city.
Theirs was - is - a pitiful existence, but as I rapidly came to realise on my travels in India, pity is a commodity that most people, however poor, don't have much time for.
Shenaz and Subir lived on the edge of an open sewer, in a wooden box not much bigger than two large packing cases, actually and metaphorically at the bottom of India's billion-man economic dust-heap. Surely village life was preferable to this, I wondered? Shenaz smiled. "Here we eat every night," she said, "and we even save some money."
Development, as the economists say, is a "messy business", but in India that particular truism is all too often an excuse for inaction and indifference.
Foreign visitors to India (and plenty of wealthy Indians besides) often allow themselves to think that India's poor - some 700 million people, depending on where you draw the line - are content in their poverty; that they know nothing else and somehow manage to keep smiling. But in my experience, that is not the case.
The truth is that India's poor are angry, and rightly so. Their schools are too often empty of teachers - India sits only above Uganda for absenteeism, according to a UN survey this year - and, without education, the poor have no chips to join in the game of global capitalism.
Public health is a disaster - almost half of all children in India are malnourished - a fact that can largely be ascribed to the fact that their political masters are running a kleptocracy, often of African proportions. Why else did the World Bank withhold £550 million in health-project loans to India last year, a humiliation also meted out to Chad, Kenya and Congo?
At times over the past four years it has been hard to love India (though very rarely Indians themselves), such is the contempt with which much of the country's elite treats the unwashed poor. Ministers deliver laudable speeches almost daily, economic summits are attended with back-slapping fanfare but the gap between intention and action remains Brahmaputra-wide.
Perhaps it is caste discrimination - still endemic in 80 per cent of Indian villages, says Human Rights Watch - that allows such indifference to the poor to prevail. Perhaps it is just that India's middle classes are enjoying themselves so much - the stock market increased by 50 per cent this year - that they don't see the connection between rural poverty and their own futures.
But like it or not, while the poor are India's burden today, they are also the key to it tomorrow. More than 70 per cent of Indians believe their country will be an economic superpower by 2020, according to a survey published last month by a German research organisation.
But that commonplace prediction won't come to pass unless and until Shenaz and Subir, and several hundred million people like them, receive the health and education they need to become the next generation of consumers and workers.
It is a matter of pressing self-interest, not charity, for India's elite classes, because, without that investment in the human foundations of India's economy, Mr Mallya and his customers might not be "flying the good times" for as long as they currently seem to think.
Tuesday 22 January 2008
Infidelity : 'Being unfaithful keeps me happy'
Infidelity : 'Being unfaithful keeps me happy'
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 22/01/2008
Continuing her investigation into Britain's adultery epidemic, Angela Levin talks to professional women who have affairs to bolster their marriages - and revitalise flagging sex lives
# The Infidelity files: Day 1 - Desperately seeking someone
Sylvia, 43, has a highly paid job in the City. Her husband is supportive and they have two children. She entertains at weekends, enjoys luxury holidays twice a year and has time for her friends.
Get some spice in you life: Many women turn to affairs to cope with a loveless marriage
Get some spice in you life: Many women turn to affairs to cope with a loveless marriage
To those in her circle, she seems to have an enviable life and to have mastered the difficult art of balancing work with home and family. What they don't know is that she has a higher libido than her husband and regularly takes a lover.
Sylvia belongs to a small but growing group of alpha woman - financially independent, confident and uninhibited - who, like men, have developed a similar pro-active, almost cynical approach to sex.
For them, it is no big deal to seek sexual fulfilment outside marriage and they claim to be able to separate lust from love.
"I am one of those women who want it all," she laughs. "My life is very hectic and I thrive on adrenaline. I really enjoy sex, but I don't want any complications. So I am only interested in men, preferably married, who want the same."
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Just how many women today are having sex with men who are not their husband is hard to pin down, but some sex researchers are claiming it is as high as 60 per cent.
Whatever the numbers, much has changed since Emma Bovary decided she couldn't take the humiliation of living life being branded an adulteress and committed suicide by taking arsenic.
The hard-nosed, predatory female of today is perhaps the evolutionary reality of a phrase originally coined by author Erica Jong in her taboo-busting 1973 bestseller, Fear of Flying.
She described a sexual encounter for its own sake, without emotional involvement or commitment and between two previously unacquainted persons, as a "zipless f***"; she also said it was "rarer than the unicorn".
Nearly 35 years on, these encounters are available with a click of the mouse.
Over a five-month period, I talked to almost 100 middle-class professionals, both male and female, who confessed to being unfaithful.
What was remarkable was that not one of the women said they felt guilty. And those who believed they might get emotionally involved tried to work out hard-headed strategies of dealing with it.
Although it would seem that no-strings-attached sex is the emotional equivalent of McDonald's - in that it can satisfy a certain hunger but is quickly forgotten and doesn't do you much good - many of the women I spoke to saw it as a better option than having an affair with someone they work with, which could put their career at risk.
Nor did they want to get involved with a family friend.
Lynne, a 45-year-old married administrator, thinks the growing popularity among women of no-strings relationships is a result of their success in the workplace. "Now we are as successful as men at work and other areas of life, women like me think, 'Why the hell not?' My lover won't jeopardise my work or family life. I am doing something that makes me happy, which, in turn, makes home happier, too.
"Women have come a long way in the last 20 or 30 years, so why should taking a lover without commitment be a male preserve? I just think, 'Lucky me.'?"
Jenny, 48, who runs her own business, thinks the trend for uninvolved sex is part of today's have-it-all society.
"In the past," she says, "a wife would think, 'I've got a decent husband and live in a presentable house, so I can't expect too much.' But now our expectations are much higher and we don't want to compromise. I've done it and don't feel guilty at all.
"I spend a lot of time caring for my husband and child and running my business, and I think of this as something for me. Women have always had sexual needs, but culturally we've not been encouraged to attend to them. Now we are more willing and able to make decisions about what happens to us. Some of us might choose to go to the cinema for a night out. Others might prefer to have sex."
So while more men are in tune with their feelings and want more from an extra-marital relationship - emotional companionship as well as physical contact - some women want less. Less involvement, less friendship, and more sex.
But can women really be quite so matter-of-fact and unemotional about infidelity? Can evolution be gradually turning women, whose priority was once to build nests and care and be cared for, into hunter-gatherers?
Are Byron's words: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence" really no longer valid?
Possibly. Most women are sexually experienced before marriage. They are financially independent. Nor is there a stigma attached to the adulterous woman.
As recently as 1970, if a woman was found to have had an extra-marital affair, she not only forfeited her right to maintenance but also risked losing her children.
It was a penalty Diana, Princess of Wales's mother, Frances, discovered to her cost. After years of an unhappy marriage to Earl Spencer, in the late 1960s she had an affair with wallpaper merchant Peter Shand Kydd.
She left her husband, taking their four children with her. He felt so humiliated by her adultery that although, at the time, women were routinely given custody of the children, he fought her in the courts and won.
The judge made much of branding her as an adulteress and seemed to take no account of her cross-petition on the grounds of cruelty. Now, when couples divorce, any sexual misdemeanours by the woman are considered on a par with a man's.
We do not yet, however, have a no-fault-based divorce system like Spain or Canada.
Nor are women who have extra-marital relationships confined to a particular age group.
While today's women of 40 and younger see having great sex as their right (some studies show that the more sexual partners a person has before marriage, the more likely she or he is to cheat on a spouse), many fifty- or even sixtysomething women, in common with their male counterparts, don't want to be left out.
These are the generation of women whose children have left home. They are fitter and better looking than their predecessors, thanks to HRT, Botox and plastic surgery, and seek new challenges.
While some choose physical challenges, a recent report from Germany cited that one in three fiftysomething women are looking for a sexual adventure. Perhaps they are catching up on all they missed during those sleep-deprived times when their children were small.
Teresa, who is 52, is one example. She has been married 27 years and, when her youngest left home she decided she wanted more excitement in her life.
"I have a good husband, but I have spent my life lying on my back thinking of England when we have sex. He's never been any good in the bedroom. He has a low libido and little interest. I knew that when I married him and he is a good man in every other respect.
"For years, I kept wondering what it would be like to meet someone who was really exciting in bed. Then about nine months ago I placed an ad on the internet just for the fun of it. I was inundated with replies, but mostly from losers. There was only one man who stood out. We met and there was instant chemistry between us. We met again on an occasional basis, but then I realised that psychologically I wasn't the type to be unfaithful. I would hate my husband to find out, so I stopped. But I don't regret it."
Julie, 49, who is married with one son and has a senior position in a health authority, knew she wanted more out of an extra-marital relationship than just sex.
"My husband and I haven't had sex for years," she explained. "He is 15 years older than me and although it wasn't a problem when we first got married 20 years ago, his approach to life now is that of an old man. We sleep in separate bedrooms and I don't think he sees me when he looks at me.
"For much of our marriage, I put my needs to one side and concentrated on my work and looking after my family. But about five years ago, I began to feel increasingly unhappy and unsettled. I wanted to do something about it, but didn't know how to go about it. The only men I met were my husband's colleagues or fathers of my children's friends. So I contacted a dating agency for married people. I was a little nervous of the interview, so I took along a close girlfriend.
"I only wanted to meet married men who wanted to stay married. I want to be happier, but not wreck my marriage. Although I'm not in love with my husband any more, he's becoming elderly and I wouldn't want him to be a lonely old man. I wanted to take a lover to keep me happy.
"I was offered a choice of three men. I contacted each one, we met for a drink, and I then spent about five months getting to know the man I most liked. It was important for me to develop a friendship and trust before we had sex. If I had just wanted sex, I could have tried to pick up someone in the local pub."
The relationship wasn't, however, as manageable as she hoped. "I broke off with him after a year because I found myself getting too emotionally involved and realised I would get more so if I continued. Although my partner, who is also married, enjoyed being with me very much, he didn't feel involved with me in the same way."
Other women, like Mary, 55, claim to have affairs to help them stay with their husbands until the children leave home. "I know that eventually I will leave my husband, but I don't want to while our children are still at home," she explained.
"I have a lover, our relationship has lasted two years, and I hope I don't have to have another one. Although it has made me slightly distant with my husband, I am also less irritable and if something happens in the relationship I don't like, I tell myself that I have different pleasures."
Others, like Anne, who is 54, chose to have an affair because she wanted to be indulged and spoilt. "I entered into a relationship because I wanted to be adored, desired and given lots of attention - all things I don't get at home. And that is what I have found.
"I meet my lover every two or three weeks in a hotel. He always pays and nearly every time buys me presents - nothing that would be awkward to explain, but perfume, chocolates and flowers. Of course, I can never take the flowers home and after our couple of hours together they end up in the bin in the hotel room, but he understands that."
Getting caught is not a pressing worry. "I hope I don't live to regret this," she continued. "But I honestly don't think it would occur to my husband that anything could be going on. If he did discover I've been unfaithful, he would probably be crushed. It makes me feel uncomfortable but not guilty. Guilt is a pointless feeling. Nor do I feel guilty about my lover's wife. His relationship with her is quite poor. He hadn't had sex with her for years, not just for a month or two.
"My daughter is a different kettle of fish. A short while ago, she commented that I seemed much happier than I had been. I fobbed it off. She once picked up my mobile and started playing with it. It gave me a fright as my lover regularly sends me sexy texts. I've since changed the pin number. I would hate to go down in her estimation."
She admits she doesn't always practise safe sex. "At the beginning of our relationship, I made sure he used a condom but when it looked as if it would work out, we both went to a clinic and got ourselves checked, showed each other the results, and then stopped using protection."
Several women, including Mary, mentioned how much they enjoyed the feel-good factor that comes from a fulfilling sexual relationship. "I've relearnt how to be a sexually confident woman, which is a good thing," she said. "I also take much more care of my appearance."
If a woman starts to feel vulnerable, Anne, 45, believes in handling it rationally. "Women are naturally more emotionally vulnerable than men," she conceded, "so we have to exercise self-discipline. Everything in life has its disadvantages and we have to learn to cope. It is easy to get too involved but we just have to stop ourselves and know where to draw the line.
"There's no reason why a multitasking woman can't handle extra-marital relationships in a similar way to a man. I multitask to an astonishing degree in my business life, and all I am doing is taking that ability into my personal life. It isn't a big deal.
"The point is, I don't believe one person, man or woman, can meet all your needs for the duration of your life. And having a discreet affair is one way of handling that."
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 22/01/2008
Continuing her investigation into Britain's adultery epidemic, Angela Levin talks to professional women who have affairs to bolster their marriages - and revitalise flagging sex lives
# The Infidelity files: Day 1 - Desperately seeking someone
Sylvia, 43, has a highly paid job in the City. Her husband is supportive and they have two children. She entertains at weekends, enjoys luxury holidays twice a year and has time for her friends.
Get some spice in you life: Many women turn to affairs to cope with a loveless marriage
Get some spice in you life: Many women turn to affairs to cope with a loveless marriage
To those in her circle, she seems to have an enviable life and to have mastered the difficult art of balancing work with home and family. What they don't know is that she has a higher libido than her husband and regularly takes a lover.
Sylvia belongs to a small but growing group of alpha woman - financially independent, confident and uninhibited - who, like men, have developed a similar pro-active, almost cynical approach to sex.
For them, it is no big deal to seek sexual fulfilment outside marriage and they claim to be able to separate lust from love.
"I am one of those women who want it all," she laughs. "My life is very hectic and I thrive on adrenaline. I really enjoy sex, but I don't want any complications. So I am only interested in men, preferably married, who want the same."
advertisement
Just how many women today are having sex with men who are not their husband is hard to pin down, but some sex researchers are claiming it is as high as 60 per cent.
Whatever the numbers, much has changed since Emma Bovary decided she couldn't take the humiliation of living life being branded an adulteress and committed suicide by taking arsenic.
The hard-nosed, predatory female of today is perhaps the evolutionary reality of a phrase originally coined by author Erica Jong in her taboo-busting 1973 bestseller, Fear of Flying.
She described a sexual encounter for its own sake, without emotional involvement or commitment and between two previously unacquainted persons, as a "zipless f***"; she also said it was "rarer than the unicorn".
Nearly 35 years on, these encounters are available with a click of the mouse.
Over a five-month period, I talked to almost 100 middle-class professionals, both male and female, who confessed to being unfaithful.
What was remarkable was that not one of the women said they felt guilty. And those who believed they might get emotionally involved tried to work out hard-headed strategies of dealing with it.
Although it would seem that no-strings-attached sex is the emotional equivalent of McDonald's - in that it can satisfy a certain hunger but is quickly forgotten and doesn't do you much good - many of the women I spoke to saw it as a better option than having an affair with someone they work with, which could put their career at risk.
Nor did they want to get involved with a family friend.
Lynne, a 45-year-old married administrator, thinks the growing popularity among women of no-strings relationships is a result of their success in the workplace. "Now we are as successful as men at work and other areas of life, women like me think, 'Why the hell not?' My lover won't jeopardise my work or family life. I am doing something that makes me happy, which, in turn, makes home happier, too.
"Women have come a long way in the last 20 or 30 years, so why should taking a lover without commitment be a male preserve? I just think, 'Lucky me.'?"
Jenny, 48, who runs her own business, thinks the trend for uninvolved sex is part of today's have-it-all society.
"In the past," she says, "a wife would think, 'I've got a decent husband and live in a presentable house, so I can't expect too much.' But now our expectations are much higher and we don't want to compromise. I've done it and don't feel guilty at all.
"I spend a lot of time caring for my husband and child and running my business, and I think of this as something for me. Women have always had sexual needs, but culturally we've not been encouraged to attend to them. Now we are more willing and able to make decisions about what happens to us. Some of us might choose to go to the cinema for a night out. Others might prefer to have sex."
So while more men are in tune with their feelings and want more from an extra-marital relationship - emotional companionship as well as physical contact - some women want less. Less involvement, less friendship, and more sex.
But can women really be quite so matter-of-fact and unemotional about infidelity? Can evolution be gradually turning women, whose priority was once to build nests and care and be cared for, into hunter-gatherers?
Are Byron's words: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence" really no longer valid?
Possibly. Most women are sexually experienced before marriage. They are financially independent. Nor is there a stigma attached to the adulterous woman.
As recently as 1970, if a woman was found to have had an extra-marital affair, she not only forfeited her right to maintenance but also risked losing her children.
It was a penalty Diana, Princess of Wales's mother, Frances, discovered to her cost. After years of an unhappy marriage to Earl Spencer, in the late 1960s she had an affair with wallpaper merchant Peter Shand Kydd.
She left her husband, taking their four children with her. He felt so humiliated by her adultery that although, at the time, women were routinely given custody of the children, he fought her in the courts and won.
The judge made much of branding her as an adulteress and seemed to take no account of her cross-petition on the grounds of cruelty. Now, when couples divorce, any sexual misdemeanours by the woman are considered on a par with a man's.
We do not yet, however, have a no-fault-based divorce system like Spain or Canada.
Nor are women who have extra-marital relationships confined to a particular age group.
While today's women of 40 and younger see having great sex as their right (some studies show that the more sexual partners a person has before marriage, the more likely she or he is to cheat on a spouse), many fifty- or even sixtysomething women, in common with their male counterparts, don't want to be left out.
These are the generation of women whose children have left home. They are fitter and better looking than their predecessors, thanks to HRT, Botox and plastic surgery, and seek new challenges.
While some choose physical challenges, a recent report from Germany cited that one in three fiftysomething women are looking for a sexual adventure. Perhaps they are catching up on all they missed during those sleep-deprived times when their children were small.
Teresa, who is 52, is one example. She has been married 27 years and, when her youngest left home she decided she wanted more excitement in her life.
"I have a good husband, but I have spent my life lying on my back thinking of England when we have sex. He's never been any good in the bedroom. He has a low libido and little interest. I knew that when I married him and he is a good man in every other respect.
"For years, I kept wondering what it would be like to meet someone who was really exciting in bed. Then about nine months ago I placed an ad on the internet just for the fun of it. I was inundated with replies, but mostly from losers. There was only one man who stood out. We met and there was instant chemistry between us. We met again on an occasional basis, but then I realised that psychologically I wasn't the type to be unfaithful. I would hate my husband to find out, so I stopped. But I don't regret it."
Julie, 49, who is married with one son and has a senior position in a health authority, knew she wanted more out of an extra-marital relationship than just sex.
"My husband and I haven't had sex for years," she explained. "He is 15 years older than me and although it wasn't a problem when we first got married 20 years ago, his approach to life now is that of an old man. We sleep in separate bedrooms and I don't think he sees me when he looks at me.
"For much of our marriage, I put my needs to one side and concentrated on my work and looking after my family. But about five years ago, I began to feel increasingly unhappy and unsettled. I wanted to do something about it, but didn't know how to go about it. The only men I met were my husband's colleagues or fathers of my children's friends. So I contacted a dating agency for married people. I was a little nervous of the interview, so I took along a close girlfriend.
"I only wanted to meet married men who wanted to stay married. I want to be happier, but not wreck my marriage. Although I'm not in love with my husband any more, he's becoming elderly and I wouldn't want him to be a lonely old man. I wanted to take a lover to keep me happy.
"I was offered a choice of three men. I contacted each one, we met for a drink, and I then spent about five months getting to know the man I most liked. It was important for me to develop a friendship and trust before we had sex. If I had just wanted sex, I could have tried to pick up someone in the local pub."
The relationship wasn't, however, as manageable as she hoped. "I broke off with him after a year because I found myself getting too emotionally involved and realised I would get more so if I continued. Although my partner, who is also married, enjoyed being with me very much, he didn't feel involved with me in the same way."
Other women, like Mary, 55, claim to have affairs to help them stay with their husbands until the children leave home. "I know that eventually I will leave my husband, but I don't want to while our children are still at home," she explained.
"I have a lover, our relationship has lasted two years, and I hope I don't have to have another one. Although it has made me slightly distant with my husband, I am also less irritable and if something happens in the relationship I don't like, I tell myself that I have different pleasures."
Others, like Anne, who is 54, chose to have an affair because she wanted to be indulged and spoilt. "I entered into a relationship because I wanted to be adored, desired and given lots of attention - all things I don't get at home. And that is what I have found.
"I meet my lover every two or three weeks in a hotel. He always pays and nearly every time buys me presents - nothing that would be awkward to explain, but perfume, chocolates and flowers. Of course, I can never take the flowers home and after our couple of hours together they end up in the bin in the hotel room, but he understands that."
Getting caught is not a pressing worry. "I hope I don't live to regret this," she continued. "But I honestly don't think it would occur to my husband that anything could be going on. If he did discover I've been unfaithful, he would probably be crushed. It makes me feel uncomfortable but not guilty. Guilt is a pointless feeling. Nor do I feel guilty about my lover's wife. His relationship with her is quite poor. He hadn't had sex with her for years, not just for a month or two.
"My daughter is a different kettle of fish. A short while ago, she commented that I seemed much happier than I had been. I fobbed it off. She once picked up my mobile and started playing with it. It gave me a fright as my lover regularly sends me sexy texts. I've since changed the pin number. I would hate to go down in her estimation."
She admits she doesn't always practise safe sex. "At the beginning of our relationship, I made sure he used a condom but when it looked as if it would work out, we both went to a clinic and got ourselves checked, showed each other the results, and then stopped using protection."
Several women, including Mary, mentioned how much they enjoyed the feel-good factor that comes from a fulfilling sexual relationship. "I've relearnt how to be a sexually confident woman, which is a good thing," she said. "I also take much more care of my appearance."
If a woman starts to feel vulnerable, Anne, 45, believes in handling it rationally. "Women are naturally more emotionally vulnerable than men," she conceded, "so we have to exercise self-discipline. Everything in life has its disadvantages and we have to learn to cope. It is easy to get too involved but we just have to stop ourselves and know where to draw the line.
"There's no reason why a multitasking woman can't handle extra-marital relationships in a similar way to a man. I multitask to an astonishing degree in my business life, and all I am doing is taking that ability into my personal life. It isn't a big deal.
"The point is, I don't believe one person, man or woman, can meet all your needs for the duration of your life. And having a discreet affair is one way of handling that."
Monday 21 January 2008
Infidelity: Desperately seeking someone
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 21/01/2008
In the digital age, having an affair has never been easier. Author Angela Levin spent five months interviewing middle-class professionals for an extensive study that charts the rise of the no-strings-attached* relationship. In the first of a three-part investigation, she reveals why the UK is in the grip of an infidelity epidemic.
'Been left parked in the garage of marriage too long, battery getting flat and needs somebody to give it a spark of life, full tank and ready to go.
Infidelity
Clincher: many unfaithful men blame their wives
"Present owner does not like going for a ride any more but am not up for sale. Seeking discreet lady mechanic, preferably married, to enjoy some NSA run-outs together."
This advert was posted by John, a 44-year-old married IT manager on a popular dating website favoured by men like him who want no-strings-attached (NSA) relationships.
"I try to make my adverts witty because I don't want sex with someone who doesn't have a sense of humour," the father-of-two explained. "At the same time, I want whoever she is to know from the start that if she is after a relationship, she can forget it.
"I have no intention of leaving my wife. I realise it sounds funny to say I care about her, but I do. I am just a bit bored."
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Quite how many married men and a smaller, but increasing, number of women are risking their emotional and physical health in this way is difficult to know, as few people ever tell the truth about their sex lives. However, a survey last week claimed that more than half of married people admit they are not completely happy in their relationship, and that 59 per cent of wives would leave their marriage if they could afford to do so. Seemingly trapped by their unhappy domestic situation, eight out of 10 couples will, at some time, be unfaithful to each other.
Of course, men have sought mistresses since time began. The difference is that we now seem to be in the middle of an infidelity epidemic. The dilemma seems less about whether to have an affair and more about finding the most convenient way of doing so. As a result, no-strings-attached relationships have become something of a cultural phenomenon.
In spite of a recent survey revealing that 70 per cent of married women and 54 per cent of married men don't know about the extra-marital affairs of their spouses, infidelity remains the most common reason for divorce - a situation that is currently affecting 40 per cent of all UK marriages.
But is it realistic in this day and age to expect decades of fidelity? And should society come to a new accommodation of marriage and long-term relationships? "An awful lot of both men and women commit adultery but don't want their marriage to end," says James Stewart, a divorce lawyer at leading London solicitors Manches. "They can be quite shocked when their spouse considers it a deal-breaker."
There are many reasons why more people than ever are having extra-marital affairs. We are all healthier and living longer, which means marriages can last decades more than they used to and there is an increasing chance of people growing apart or getting bored of each other. We also live in a me-generation, and fewer of us are prepared to compromise on the kind of life we want. Women today are more financially and psychologically independent than ever before, and more sexually active. They are far less likely to stick with a marriage if they are unhappy than ever before in history.
Viagra and other drugs help men stay sexually active for longer, while women have access to HRT, Botox and cosmetic surgery to keep themselves looking good. And - thanks to modern methods of communication, such as email, mobiles and text messages - affairs are far easier to run than ever before, at least in practical, if not emotional terms.
Over a five-month period, I spoke to nearly 100 men and women - all middle-class professionals with good homes, decent jobs and, on the surface, happy families - who have had extra-marital relationships. It was a random rather than scientific study but it confirmed that there seems to be a seismic shift in people's attitude to adultery.
What used to happen (and still does to some extent) is that an individual met someone, perhaps a colleague or their spouse's best friend, fell for them and as a result had an affair. Nowadays it is often the other way round and almost brutally clinical. Individuals decide objectively and in advance that they want an affair and then set out to find someone suitable. It's almost as if he or she is a commodity to be taken off a supermarket shelf. As it has never been easier to find illicit sex, the adulterous shopper is often spoiled for choice.
Type "discreet relationships" into Google and an astonishing 1,670,000 websites come up. These include marriedsecrets.com, illicitencounters.co.uk, rekonnect.com, meet2cheat.co.uk, askmen.com, philanderers.com, and the sizeable personals sections on sites such as gumtree.com and craigslist.org. They cater for people of all ages who want to advertise for sexual partners.
But a glance at the type of advert placed reveals the age old differences between the sexes. While the men are self-promoters and boast about their sexual prowess, the women tend to undersell themselves. "I am not a stunner, just average," begins one modest female. "I have no wish to lie about my circumstances. I am at the end of a long marriage but can't leave just yet because of the children," writes another.
John has been advertising on two sites with some success over the last nine months. "I'm doing it because my life has become dull and predictable," he says.
"My job's OK. I can pay my mortgage and go on holiday. My children are doing reasonably well at school. My wife works part-time and runs the home. But I want to feel adrenaline running through my body again and only great sex can give me that. I feel really excited when I place my advert. I have opened up a separate email account so it is unlikely that anyone at work or home can discover it. I've had a few short-term flings and haven't got it right yet. But it is addictive, so I shall keep trying. You don't know who is going to be out there."
Some older men admitted that they have advertised for a sexual playmate to relieve the boredom of early retirement. "I had a busy career but now that I am at home all the time, I find life very dull," one 60-year-old confessed. "I want what everyone else is getting. I can always get some Viagra if I find a much younger woman. I'm still very interested but my wife lost interest in sex long ago."
Blaming their wanderings on their wives' sexual rejection of them is a common way for men to justify their behaviour. Richard, who runs his own marketing business, shows unwavering confidence in his sexual prowess and has successfully found several casual encounters. His advert - "Another married guy, 54, looking for NSA married fun with married woman" - is pragmatic and to the point, but hardly enticing.
He insists his unemotional affairs are saving his marriage rather than putting it at risk. Like many men he doesn't want a divorce, partly to avoid the financial wrangling and also because he wants to stay close to his children.
"I've been married a long time and have a high sex drive. My wife doesn't. I've tried to talk to her about it, but she either gets angry, withdraws or cries and the atmosphere between us can be awful for days.
"But I don't want to leave her. We are good friends. We have a lot in common, including our children. So having an NSA arrangement suits me fine. I love the excitement of a different body and know for certain that without it my marriage would be over by now.
"I have sex with a woman, rather like casual friends might meet for a drink. I don't get emotionally involved. I enjoy the chase and can get very intense when I am after someone new. I send lots of flirty texts, and emails. Women are very susceptible to flattery. Most feel self-conscious about some part of their body and reassurance soon makes her mine.
"When the sex is good I feel 50 feet tall, confident and relaxed. Otherwise, I'm climbing up the wall, am bad tempered, difficult to be with and very critical of my wife. It's as simple as that." He believes men have been genetically programmed to stray: "Men can't resist temptation. I get a thrill from chasing new women. I prefer older married women, because they know what they want and have fewer hang ups."
The most likely times for a man to stray are after the first year of marriage, when the emotional high of finding the right partner subsides; after his first child is born, when he suddenly sees his partner as a mother figure rather than a lover; after between five and seven years of togetherness, when he's bored, doesn't want to settle into a cosy routine and yearns for excitement; and then at intermittent intervals.
Tony, 53, believes he could never be faithful, whoever he married and in whichever century he had been born. "If I wasn't involved in NSA relationships I might have had more complicated affairs or even used prostitutes. Most prostitutes today are drug addicts whereas most of the women I've been with have been quite respectable.
"I like the fact that I don't get involved in talking about mundane stuff like problems with the washing machine or little Billy's latest upset at school. I get those passion-killers at home. Instead, I wipe out everything that is going on in my life for a couple of hours.
"I've met some attractive women who are fed up with their husbands because they have gone to seed and lost interest in sex. All they have to do is understand the deal.
I am straightforward about it, always use contraception, and if they show signs of getting involved I move on."
All the men I spoke to were careful to take precautions and tried to ensure their wives didn't find out what they were up to. But they all persisted in the belief that if she did catch them out, she shouldn't take their behaviour seriously. "Although in some people's book what I am doing is immoral," said John, "I think it's pretty harmless. No man wants to swap a meaningless relationship for a marriage. Particularly if it's lasted a long time and you are good friends."
It is perhaps the only saving grace of an NSA relationship. If there is a scale of adultery, NSA liaisons surely come nearer the bottom than the top. They are essentially top-ups, a desire for variety and sexual thrill and not intended to break up an established relationship. "It's a bit like not wanting the same sauce on your pasta every single mealtime," one man told me.
An alternative, that simplifies the process for both sexes and saves time, is offered by David Miller, a self-styled businessman turned adulterers' guru. David, 53, runs lovinglinks.com, a London-based internet dating site that has 23,000 members all, in theory at least, married men and women who want to stray. He also runs "a bespoke one-to-one service" for a select few, where women pay £350 and men £1,500 every eight weeks for his services. ("Men pay more," he explains, "because the type of men I deal with are usually high earners. It also helps ensure they are respectable.")
David, who is twice divorced and now "extremely happy and faithful" in a long-term relationship, likes to think of himself as a cross between a service provider and a social worker. "I am not in the sex industry," he insists. "I am just a realist. People have these situations and want to deal with them elegantly."
He used to produce TV commercials but 13 years ago decided he wanted a change. "I toyed with the idea of opening a specialist dating agency but realised married people don't really want to get involved with singles. So I ran an ad in a Sunday newspaper with a PO box number that read, 'Attached? Married? Bored?'. I was inundated and it went on from there."
He meets each applicant personally and over a drink or two finds out his or her needs and desires. He then provides three carefully chosen individuals at a time for them to chose from.
His clients are wide-ranging. "I have all sorts of high-ranking professionals come to me and, recently, far more women. Many of my female clients are psychotherapists. I haven't a clue why.
"All the women tell me they feel safer if I vet men for them before they meet - while the men are often so busy they rely on me to find them someone discreet and personable. I've even had a woman bring her son-in-law to meet me. She could see that there were things going wrong in [her daughter's] marriage and thought a discreet affair might prevent a break-up.
"Nor are most of my clients only interested in the sex aspect. They also want to be able to talk intelligently with whoever they are with and even go out to dinner. They don't want something dirty, nasty or sleazy. They want fun and quality in their life and I try to find it for them. I am a romantic and I want people to be happy."
Isn't their happiness at the expense of their married partner? "People can get hurt," he agrees, "but they can get hurt anyway, and sometimes these type of relationships, if they are handled discreetly, are the Band-Aid a long-term marriage needs.
"Women have usually thought about it very carefully often for years before they approach me, and by the time they do they have already bought a separate mobile and set up an email account - whereas most of the men haven't even thought about how they will manage it. Women also can handle a portfolio of relationships, men can usually only handle one. And not just because they are so busy."
His liaisons are not for the emotionally vulnerable or faint-hearted and should come with a health warning. "Once people get involved in the type of situation I provide, it's hard for them to stop," he says. "They are the crack cocaine of relationships. People get addicted to the buzz and adrenaline rush of new encounters."
Anyone who seeks a casual fling needs to have a cast-iron emotional constitution.
Re-assurance or tenderness isn't part of the deal. It's a take it or leave it situation, although it's not always expressed in such basic terms. He, and particularly she, also needs to understand the difference between lust and love and try to protect their heart as well as their health - and that of their spouse. The health risks of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are well-known, but the risk of psychological damage, particularly for the vulnerable and needy, can be underestimated.
In the digital age, having an affair has never been easier. Author Angela Levin spent five months interviewing middle-class professionals for an extensive study that charts the rise of the no-strings-attached* relationship. In the first of a three-part investigation, she reveals why the UK is in the grip of an infidelity epidemic.
'Been left parked in the garage of marriage too long, battery getting flat and needs somebody to give it a spark of life, full tank and ready to go.
Infidelity
Clincher: many unfaithful men blame their wives
"Present owner does not like going for a ride any more but am not up for sale. Seeking discreet lady mechanic, preferably married, to enjoy some NSA run-outs together."
This advert was posted by John, a 44-year-old married IT manager on a popular dating website favoured by men like him who want no-strings-attached (NSA) relationships.
"I try to make my adverts witty because I don't want sex with someone who doesn't have a sense of humour," the father-of-two explained. "At the same time, I want whoever she is to know from the start that if she is after a relationship, she can forget it.
"I have no intention of leaving my wife. I realise it sounds funny to say I care about her, but I do. I am just a bit bored."
advertisement
Quite how many married men and a smaller, but increasing, number of women are risking their emotional and physical health in this way is difficult to know, as few people ever tell the truth about their sex lives. However, a survey last week claimed that more than half of married people admit they are not completely happy in their relationship, and that 59 per cent of wives would leave their marriage if they could afford to do so. Seemingly trapped by their unhappy domestic situation, eight out of 10 couples will, at some time, be unfaithful to each other.
Of course, men have sought mistresses since time began. The difference is that we now seem to be in the middle of an infidelity epidemic. The dilemma seems less about whether to have an affair and more about finding the most convenient way of doing so. As a result, no-strings-attached relationships have become something of a cultural phenomenon.
In spite of a recent survey revealing that 70 per cent of married women and 54 per cent of married men don't know about the extra-marital affairs of their spouses, infidelity remains the most common reason for divorce - a situation that is currently affecting 40 per cent of all UK marriages.
But is it realistic in this day and age to expect decades of fidelity? And should society come to a new accommodation of marriage and long-term relationships? "An awful lot of both men and women commit adultery but don't want their marriage to end," says James Stewart, a divorce lawyer at leading London solicitors Manches. "They can be quite shocked when their spouse considers it a deal-breaker."
There are many reasons why more people than ever are having extra-marital affairs. We are all healthier and living longer, which means marriages can last decades more than they used to and there is an increasing chance of people growing apart or getting bored of each other. We also live in a me-generation, and fewer of us are prepared to compromise on the kind of life we want. Women today are more financially and psychologically independent than ever before, and more sexually active. They are far less likely to stick with a marriage if they are unhappy than ever before in history.
Viagra and other drugs help men stay sexually active for longer, while women have access to HRT, Botox and cosmetic surgery to keep themselves looking good. And - thanks to modern methods of communication, such as email, mobiles and text messages - affairs are far easier to run than ever before, at least in practical, if not emotional terms.
Over a five-month period, I spoke to nearly 100 men and women - all middle-class professionals with good homes, decent jobs and, on the surface, happy families - who have had extra-marital relationships. It was a random rather than scientific study but it confirmed that there seems to be a seismic shift in people's attitude to adultery.
What used to happen (and still does to some extent) is that an individual met someone, perhaps a colleague or their spouse's best friend, fell for them and as a result had an affair. Nowadays it is often the other way round and almost brutally clinical. Individuals decide objectively and in advance that they want an affair and then set out to find someone suitable. It's almost as if he or she is a commodity to be taken off a supermarket shelf. As it has never been easier to find illicit sex, the adulterous shopper is often spoiled for choice.
Type "discreet relationships" into Google and an astonishing 1,670,000 websites come up. These include marriedsecrets.com, illicitencounters.co.uk, rekonnect.com, meet2cheat.co.uk, askmen.com, philanderers.com, and the sizeable personals sections on sites such as gumtree.com and craigslist.org. They cater for people of all ages who want to advertise for sexual partners.
But a glance at the type of advert placed reveals the age old differences between the sexes. While the men are self-promoters and boast about their sexual prowess, the women tend to undersell themselves. "I am not a stunner, just average," begins one modest female. "I have no wish to lie about my circumstances. I am at the end of a long marriage but can't leave just yet because of the children," writes another.
John has been advertising on two sites with some success over the last nine months. "I'm doing it because my life has become dull and predictable," he says.
"My job's OK. I can pay my mortgage and go on holiday. My children are doing reasonably well at school. My wife works part-time and runs the home. But I want to feel adrenaline running through my body again and only great sex can give me that. I feel really excited when I place my advert. I have opened up a separate email account so it is unlikely that anyone at work or home can discover it. I've had a few short-term flings and haven't got it right yet. But it is addictive, so I shall keep trying. You don't know who is going to be out there."
Some older men admitted that they have advertised for a sexual playmate to relieve the boredom of early retirement. "I had a busy career but now that I am at home all the time, I find life very dull," one 60-year-old confessed. "I want what everyone else is getting. I can always get some Viagra if I find a much younger woman. I'm still very interested but my wife lost interest in sex long ago."
Blaming their wanderings on their wives' sexual rejection of them is a common way for men to justify their behaviour. Richard, who runs his own marketing business, shows unwavering confidence in his sexual prowess and has successfully found several casual encounters. His advert - "Another married guy, 54, looking for NSA married fun with married woman" - is pragmatic and to the point, but hardly enticing.
He insists his unemotional affairs are saving his marriage rather than putting it at risk. Like many men he doesn't want a divorce, partly to avoid the financial wrangling and also because he wants to stay close to his children.
"I've been married a long time and have a high sex drive. My wife doesn't. I've tried to talk to her about it, but she either gets angry, withdraws or cries and the atmosphere between us can be awful for days.
"But I don't want to leave her. We are good friends. We have a lot in common, including our children. So having an NSA arrangement suits me fine. I love the excitement of a different body and know for certain that without it my marriage would be over by now.
"I have sex with a woman, rather like casual friends might meet for a drink. I don't get emotionally involved. I enjoy the chase and can get very intense when I am after someone new. I send lots of flirty texts, and emails. Women are very susceptible to flattery. Most feel self-conscious about some part of their body and reassurance soon makes her mine.
"When the sex is good I feel 50 feet tall, confident and relaxed. Otherwise, I'm climbing up the wall, am bad tempered, difficult to be with and very critical of my wife. It's as simple as that." He believes men have been genetically programmed to stray: "Men can't resist temptation. I get a thrill from chasing new women. I prefer older married women, because they know what they want and have fewer hang ups."
The most likely times for a man to stray are after the first year of marriage, when the emotional high of finding the right partner subsides; after his first child is born, when he suddenly sees his partner as a mother figure rather than a lover; after between five and seven years of togetherness, when he's bored, doesn't want to settle into a cosy routine and yearns for excitement; and then at intermittent intervals.
Tony, 53, believes he could never be faithful, whoever he married and in whichever century he had been born. "If I wasn't involved in NSA relationships I might have had more complicated affairs or even used prostitutes. Most prostitutes today are drug addicts whereas most of the women I've been with have been quite respectable.
"I like the fact that I don't get involved in talking about mundane stuff like problems with the washing machine or little Billy's latest upset at school. I get those passion-killers at home. Instead, I wipe out everything that is going on in my life for a couple of hours.
"I've met some attractive women who are fed up with their husbands because they have gone to seed and lost interest in sex. All they have to do is understand the deal.
I am straightforward about it, always use contraception, and if they show signs of getting involved I move on."
All the men I spoke to were careful to take precautions and tried to ensure their wives didn't find out what they were up to. But they all persisted in the belief that if she did catch them out, she shouldn't take their behaviour seriously. "Although in some people's book what I am doing is immoral," said John, "I think it's pretty harmless. No man wants to swap a meaningless relationship for a marriage. Particularly if it's lasted a long time and you are good friends."
It is perhaps the only saving grace of an NSA relationship. If there is a scale of adultery, NSA liaisons surely come nearer the bottom than the top. They are essentially top-ups, a desire for variety and sexual thrill and not intended to break up an established relationship. "It's a bit like not wanting the same sauce on your pasta every single mealtime," one man told me.
An alternative, that simplifies the process for both sexes and saves time, is offered by David Miller, a self-styled businessman turned adulterers' guru. David, 53, runs lovinglinks.com, a London-based internet dating site that has 23,000 members all, in theory at least, married men and women who want to stray. He also runs "a bespoke one-to-one service" for a select few, where women pay £350 and men £1,500 every eight weeks for his services. ("Men pay more," he explains, "because the type of men I deal with are usually high earners. It also helps ensure they are respectable.")
David, who is twice divorced and now "extremely happy and faithful" in a long-term relationship, likes to think of himself as a cross between a service provider and a social worker. "I am not in the sex industry," he insists. "I am just a realist. People have these situations and want to deal with them elegantly."
He used to produce TV commercials but 13 years ago decided he wanted a change. "I toyed with the idea of opening a specialist dating agency but realised married people don't really want to get involved with singles. So I ran an ad in a Sunday newspaper with a PO box number that read, 'Attached? Married? Bored?'. I was inundated and it went on from there."
He meets each applicant personally and over a drink or two finds out his or her needs and desires. He then provides three carefully chosen individuals at a time for them to chose from.
His clients are wide-ranging. "I have all sorts of high-ranking professionals come to me and, recently, far more women. Many of my female clients are psychotherapists. I haven't a clue why.
"All the women tell me they feel safer if I vet men for them before they meet - while the men are often so busy they rely on me to find them someone discreet and personable. I've even had a woman bring her son-in-law to meet me. She could see that there were things going wrong in [her daughter's] marriage and thought a discreet affair might prevent a break-up.
"Nor are most of my clients only interested in the sex aspect. They also want to be able to talk intelligently with whoever they are with and even go out to dinner. They don't want something dirty, nasty or sleazy. They want fun and quality in their life and I try to find it for them. I am a romantic and I want people to be happy."
Isn't their happiness at the expense of their married partner? "People can get hurt," he agrees, "but they can get hurt anyway, and sometimes these type of relationships, if they are handled discreetly, are the Band-Aid a long-term marriage needs.
"Women have usually thought about it very carefully often for years before they approach me, and by the time they do they have already bought a separate mobile and set up an email account - whereas most of the men haven't even thought about how they will manage it. Women also can handle a portfolio of relationships, men can usually only handle one. And not just because they are so busy."
His liaisons are not for the emotionally vulnerable or faint-hearted and should come with a health warning. "Once people get involved in the type of situation I provide, it's hard for them to stop," he says. "They are the crack cocaine of relationships. People get addicted to the buzz and adrenaline rush of new encounters."
Anyone who seeks a casual fling needs to have a cast-iron emotional constitution.
Re-assurance or tenderness isn't part of the deal. It's a take it or leave it situation, although it's not always expressed in such basic terms. He, and particularly she, also needs to understand the difference between lust and love and try to protect their heart as well as their health - and that of their spouse. The health risks of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are well-known, but the risk of psychological damage, particularly for the vulnerable and needy, can be underestimated.
Sunday 20 January 2008
Bush Announces “Stimulus” Plan
As Recession Fears Grip Washington
By Patrick Martin
19 January, 2008
WSWs.org
The announcement Friday by President George W. Bush of an economic stimulus package, after months and years of declaring that the US economy is “fundamentally sound,” shows that the vast dimensions of the financial crisis have become evident even to the most blinkered “free market” ideologues in Washington.
There was a distinct note of panic in the sudden issuance of a statement, only hours after Bush’s return to the US from a weeklong trip through the Middle East. Bush could give few details of the stimulus package, since they have not been worked out, but instead outlined what he called the broad “principles”: the package should be limited to 1 percent of GDP, or about $140 billion; and it should consist of tax cuts only, with no increase in social spending.
In rejecting any extension of unemployment benefits, greater funding of home heating assistance, or other direct assistance to those hardest hit by the economic crisis, the Bush administration is making it clear that its sole concern is to stabilize the financial markets and prevent a chain reaction collapse. Hundreds of thousands may lose their homes and their jobs, but the federal government is in the business of defending the hedge funds and investment banks, not working people.
In what seemed to be an effort to provide visual reassurance to Wall Street, Vice President Cheney—the former CEO of Halliburton—and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—the former head of Goldman Sachs investment bank—were placed behind the president during his seven-minute statement, creating a tableau reminiscent of the State of the Union speech.
Bush was careful not to use the word “recession” to describe the economic situation in the United States, claiming, “The economy’s still creating jobs, though at a reduced pace.”
In arguing for a stimulus plan that would not include any increase in social benefits, he declared, “This growth package must be built on broad-based tax relief that will directly affect economic growth, and not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy.”
The claim that tax cuts rather than increases in public spending have a more immediate impact in stimulating the economy is preposterous nonsense. Even bourgeois economists concede money distributed to the unemployed and poor is spent immediately on consumption goods, and therefore has the quickest possible impact on the economy. Tax cuts, particularly those for business and the wealthy, have a slower effect and may not stimulate economic activity at all, since they can be put aside in savings or used to speculate in the financial markets.
There is good reason to believe—without any details of the exact tax cuts envisioned—that the White House has simply seized on the current crisis as another occasion to pour billions into the pockets of the wealthy, offsetting at least a fraction of the losses incurred in the speculative frenzy in the subprime mortgage market. Bush certainly hinted at this when he concluded his brief speech with another appeal to the Democratic-controlled Congress to make permanent his 2001 tax cuts for the rich. These are currently set to expire in 2010.
The other purpose of the “stimulus” package is to provide political cover for the Republican presidential candidates, who have begun to clamor for some display of action from the administration as the primary campaigns enter their most critical stretch.
The size of the package demonstrates that it is purely a cosmetic gesture. The proposed $140 billion is less than the amount American consumers paid out to the oil companies in increased gasoline prices over the course of last year. It is less than one tenth the estimated losses in home equity suffered by American homeowners during collapse of the housing bubble. And it is utterly insignificant compared to the trillions of dollars at risk as the subprime debacle spreads into wider financial markets, including commercial paper, bank loans and derivatives.
Bush closed his speech with a reminder to his audience that market fluctuations were an essential part of capitalism and had to be allowed to take their course. “We cannot change that fundamental dynamic,” he said, adding, “eliminating risk altogether would also eliminate the innovation and productivity that drives the creation of jobs and wealth in America.”
There are, of course, many varieties of risk. Working people face the risk of losing their homes, their jobs, their economic future. Corporate bosses have golden parachutes like the $115 million that retiring Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo will rake in after his bankrupt home lending company was taken over by Bank of America.
Congressional Democrats immediately declared their willingness to work with the White House in a bipartisan effort to pass a stimulus package, accepting the broad outlines of the Bush plan, particularly its derisory size, without a murmur. They could hardly complain that $140 billion was peanuts, since the two leading Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, proposed stimulus packages only half as large last week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who met with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke Monday and has been in close touch with the White House, said that the stimulus plan could be approved by Congress even before Bush’s last State of the Union address, set for January 28. After a conference call Thursday between Bush and congressional leaders, a White House spokesman said, “I think there was a collective sense that there was no reason why we can’t get something done quickly. I think that was a unanimous feeling on the call.”
Bernanke has already given his blessing to the proposal, testifying before Congress Thursday that a stimulus program of $50 billion to $150 billion was “reasonable.” But he emphasized that it should be temporary because of the likely impact on the federal deficit.
Wall Street’s reaction to Bush’s announcement was one of obvious disappointment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had been up 180 points in the morning, fueled by higher profit numbers from GE and rumors that the Federal Reserve Board might order an interest rate cut before its scheduled January 30 meeting. After Bush’s remarks—and with no sign of action by the Fed—the New York Stock Exchange plunged 300 points, to 120 points down for the day, before rallying at the end to close with a net loss of 60 points.
The stock market plunge during the first three weeks of January has wiped out far more in paper wealth than Bush’s entire stimulus package. The Dow has lost nearly 9 percent in the first 13 trading days of 2008, and is down over 1,000 points for the year so far. The Dow average has fallen 2,000 points, nearly 15 percent, since the record high of 14,198 last October.
The financial rot goes far deeper than the hundreds of billions already lost in the stock exchange and the subprime mortgage collapse. Economic specialists have begun warning of the danger of a more far-reaching financial debacle.
Nouriel Roubini, an economist at the Stern School of Business at New York University, told the New York Times last week: “We’re facing the risk of a systemic financial crisis. It’s not just subprime mortgages. The same kind of reckless lending has been occurring throughout the financial system. And it’s not only mortgages: Now it’s credit cards and auto loans, where we see problems increasing. The toxic junk is popping up everywhere.”
On his blog, Roubini elaborates on some of the more arcane financial instruments which are now at risk, including such highly speculative forms of gambling as the “credit swap market,” which now accounts for some $43 trillion in paper values. Roubini estimates losses of over $1 trillion in bad investments in such markets.
The systemic aspect of the financial crisis is what frightens Wall Street the most. A case in point is the effective collapse of bond insurers such as Ambac and MBIA. Ambac announced Friday it was abandoning an effort to raise $1 billion in new capital because of the disturbed market conditions. Should such firms go under, the bond market itself could shut down, since no one would be willing to trade.
By Patrick Martin
19 January, 2008
WSWs.org
The announcement Friday by President George W. Bush of an economic stimulus package, after months and years of declaring that the US economy is “fundamentally sound,” shows that the vast dimensions of the financial crisis have become evident even to the most blinkered “free market” ideologues in Washington.
There was a distinct note of panic in the sudden issuance of a statement, only hours after Bush’s return to the US from a weeklong trip through the Middle East. Bush could give few details of the stimulus package, since they have not been worked out, but instead outlined what he called the broad “principles”: the package should be limited to 1 percent of GDP, or about $140 billion; and it should consist of tax cuts only, with no increase in social spending.
In rejecting any extension of unemployment benefits, greater funding of home heating assistance, or other direct assistance to those hardest hit by the economic crisis, the Bush administration is making it clear that its sole concern is to stabilize the financial markets and prevent a chain reaction collapse. Hundreds of thousands may lose their homes and their jobs, but the federal government is in the business of defending the hedge funds and investment banks, not working people.
In what seemed to be an effort to provide visual reassurance to Wall Street, Vice President Cheney—the former CEO of Halliburton—and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—the former head of Goldman Sachs investment bank—were placed behind the president during his seven-minute statement, creating a tableau reminiscent of the State of the Union speech.
Bush was careful not to use the word “recession” to describe the economic situation in the United States, claiming, “The economy’s still creating jobs, though at a reduced pace.”
In arguing for a stimulus plan that would not include any increase in social benefits, he declared, “This growth package must be built on broad-based tax relief that will directly affect economic growth, and not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy.”
The claim that tax cuts rather than increases in public spending have a more immediate impact in stimulating the economy is preposterous nonsense. Even bourgeois economists concede money distributed to the unemployed and poor is spent immediately on consumption goods, and therefore has the quickest possible impact on the economy. Tax cuts, particularly those for business and the wealthy, have a slower effect and may not stimulate economic activity at all, since they can be put aside in savings or used to speculate in the financial markets.
There is good reason to believe—without any details of the exact tax cuts envisioned—that the White House has simply seized on the current crisis as another occasion to pour billions into the pockets of the wealthy, offsetting at least a fraction of the losses incurred in the speculative frenzy in the subprime mortgage market. Bush certainly hinted at this when he concluded his brief speech with another appeal to the Democratic-controlled Congress to make permanent his 2001 tax cuts for the rich. These are currently set to expire in 2010.
The other purpose of the “stimulus” package is to provide political cover for the Republican presidential candidates, who have begun to clamor for some display of action from the administration as the primary campaigns enter their most critical stretch.
The size of the package demonstrates that it is purely a cosmetic gesture. The proposed $140 billion is less than the amount American consumers paid out to the oil companies in increased gasoline prices over the course of last year. It is less than one tenth the estimated losses in home equity suffered by American homeowners during collapse of the housing bubble. And it is utterly insignificant compared to the trillions of dollars at risk as the subprime debacle spreads into wider financial markets, including commercial paper, bank loans and derivatives.
Bush closed his speech with a reminder to his audience that market fluctuations were an essential part of capitalism and had to be allowed to take their course. “We cannot change that fundamental dynamic,” he said, adding, “eliminating risk altogether would also eliminate the innovation and productivity that drives the creation of jobs and wealth in America.”
There are, of course, many varieties of risk. Working people face the risk of losing their homes, their jobs, their economic future. Corporate bosses have golden parachutes like the $115 million that retiring Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo will rake in after his bankrupt home lending company was taken over by Bank of America.
Congressional Democrats immediately declared their willingness to work with the White House in a bipartisan effort to pass a stimulus package, accepting the broad outlines of the Bush plan, particularly its derisory size, without a murmur. They could hardly complain that $140 billion was peanuts, since the two leading Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, proposed stimulus packages only half as large last week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who met with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke Monday and has been in close touch with the White House, said that the stimulus plan could be approved by Congress even before Bush’s last State of the Union address, set for January 28. After a conference call Thursday between Bush and congressional leaders, a White House spokesman said, “I think there was a collective sense that there was no reason why we can’t get something done quickly. I think that was a unanimous feeling on the call.”
Bernanke has already given his blessing to the proposal, testifying before Congress Thursday that a stimulus program of $50 billion to $150 billion was “reasonable.” But he emphasized that it should be temporary because of the likely impact on the federal deficit.
Wall Street’s reaction to Bush’s announcement was one of obvious disappointment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had been up 180 points in the morning, fueled by higher profit numbers from GE and rumors that the Federal Reserve Board might order an interest rate cut before its scheduled January 30 meeting. After Bush’s remarks—and with no sign of action by the Fed—the New York Stock Exchange plunged 300 points, to 120 points down for the day, before rallying at the end to close with a net loss of 60 points.
The stock market plunge during the first three weeks of January has wiped out far more in paper wealth than Bush’s entire stimulus package. The Dow has lost nearly 9 percent in the first 13 trading days of 2008, and is down over 1,000 points for the year so far. The Dow average has fallen 2,000 points, nearly 15 percent, since the record high of 14,198 last October.
The financial rot goes far deeper than the hundreds of billions already lost in the stock exchange and the subprime mortgage collapse. Economic specialists have begun warning of the danger of a more far-reaching financial debacle.
Nouriel Roubini, an economist at the Stern School of Business at New York University, told the New York Times last week: “We’re facing the risk of a systemic financial crisis. It’s not just subprime mortgages. The same kind of reckless lending has been occurring throughout the financial system. And it’s not only mortgages: Now it’s credit cards and auto loans, where we see problems increasing. The toxic junk is popping up everywhere.”
On his blog, Roubini elaborates on some of the more arcane financial instruments which are now at risk, including such highly speculative forms of gambling as the “credit swap market,” which now accounts for some $43 trillion in paper values. Roubini estimates losses of over $1 trillion in bad investments in such markets.
The systemic aspect of the financial crisis is what frightens Wall Street the most. A case in point is the effective collapse of bond insurers such as Ambac and MBIA. Ambac announced Friday it was abandoning an effort to raise $1 billion in new capital because of the disturbed market conditions. Should such firms go under, the bond market itself could shut down, since no one would be willing to trade.
Just one more year! Good riddance to George W Bush
But what kind of mess will the next president inherit, exactly 12 months from today? By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 20 January 2008
Arabia is the land of illusion and desert mirages. And as he jetted last week from kingdom to sheikdom, to be regaled with feasts and falcons, jewels and ornamental swords, George Bush might have imagined that all was well with his presidency. But this, his longest and most ambitious trip to the Middle East, will surely be remembered – if it is remembered at all – as a gaudy, irrelevant footnote to a presidency that has long since failed.
Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush's eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.
Is he the worst President in US history? Mr Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only President to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Mr Bush surely compares with any of the above.
His first, albeit far from most important, bequest is seemingly inevitable defeat for his own party in November, ending almost 30 years of Republican dominance since Ronald Reagan took power. As David Frum, a one-time Bush speech-writer, put it the other day: "I fear the Republicans are heading to an epochal defeat, 1980 in reverse. Every gain we have made since then has been wiped out since 2002."
That, it should be noted, is a Republican speaking. But Frum's evidence is overwhelming, from the President's consistently abysmal approval rating, to the 70 per cent of the population who believe the country is "on the wrong track" (a level not seen in two decades, and that before all-but-certain recession began to bite), to the 51 per cent of Americans who identify themselves as Democrats. By contrast, just 36 per cent of Americans call themselves Republicans – the widest such margin in two decades. Even on the Republicans' signature issue of national security, Democrats are at level pegging. All other things being equal, it is hard to see them losing in November.
In politics, of course, all other things are not equal. The chances of Bush ordering military strikes on Iran may have receded, after last month's report by the US intelligence community that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. But some other foreign calamity, a lethal domestic terrorist attack or even a scandal could reshuffle the electoral cards.
Pace the result of last night's primary in South Carolina, the Republican with the best shot at victory is John McCain, the veteran Arizona Senator and a candidate with genuine appeal to independent and centrist voters. He has a chance precisely because he doesn't come across as a standard-issue Republican. But if elected, even he will have to set about cleansing a political version of the Augean stables.
In Greek mythology, Hercules washed away that mess by re-routing the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Whoever takes the oath of office next 20 January will face a similar task in repairing America, both at home and in the eyes of the world. By almost every yardstick, the country is in a worse state than seven years ago – a state virtually unimaginable when the new century dawned.
Mr Bush cannot be blamed for some of the difficulties. On illegal immigration, among the biggest concerns to voters, the reform he proposed, offering a legal path to citizenship, was sensible. Alas, by 2007 he was too weak to push it through.
Much the same goes for the economy. Presidents are the first to claim responsibility for the good times, but in fact have little power to influence events. The recession that now looms is not his fault; if anyone is responsible, it is the once-lionised former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, and the central bank's over-lax policies in the aftermath of 9/11. The accelerating downturn also proves how, contrary to assertions, the business cycle has not been abolished by the wizardries of hi-tech econometrics.
That said, the Bush era leaves its own nasty odour. Corporate cronyism has been rife. Globalisation and cuts driven by ideology have turned the wealth gap between rich Americans and the rest from an embarrassment into an obscenity. Since 2001 the real income of ordinary Americans has stagnated.
And the mind-boggling losses suffered by such pillars of the financial establishment as Merrill Lynch and Citibank, followed by humiliating foreign bail-outs, suggest something is fundamentally amiss with capitalism, American-style. Like Enron and WorldCom, these colossal financial shipwrecks will forever be associated with Bush's tenure.
A cartoon last week in The Washington Post caught the mood of laissez-faire drift. "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?" asks a voice from Air Force One as the President's plane flies over Manhattan on the way back from the Middle East. Below, a giant sign dangles from the skyscrapers of America's financial capital: "USA – Now a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Foreign Investors".
Of even more immediate concern will be the surge in inequality that affronts America's inherent sense of fairness. Nowhere is this more evident than in healthcare. As Mr Bush has fiddled, the sickness of the existing system, which leaves a sixth of the population without coverage while consuming a similar share of the country's entire GDP, has become near terminal.
Even more corrosive has been the damage inflicted on the US system of governance. This President may have blithely ignored mainstream science, pretended global warming was not happening and only belatedly grasped the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In one domestic activity, however, Bush has not tarried: that of perverting and undermining the constitution in the name of expanding the President's power to fight his "war on terror".
To that end, what everyone else considers torture has been sanctioned, the basic legal right of habeas corpus has been denied to designated "foreign fighters", illicit eavesdropping on US citizens has been authorised and fear-mongering has been turned into a political strategy. Somehow, the next President must restore Americans' faith in their own institutions.
In foreign affairs, the story is the same. The Iraq invasion may not be the greatest foreign policy blunder in US history. But it is among the greatest, utterly discrediting the country's intelligence services, hugely straining relations with key allies, handing a massive strategic victory to Iran and stretching the country's military close to breaking point.
Belatedly, the President has learned the virtues of diplomacy, and his troop surge has at least reduced the violence in Iraq. Even so, he has bequeathed a no-win dilemma to his successor. It is too late for victory. His successor must decide how to withdraw US forces without plunging the region into new chaos.
In the meantime, familiar issues such as the Israeli-Arab conflict have festered amid years of neglect, which this one trip to the region will not expunge. Soaring Bush promises of a democratic Middle East now sound like a bad joke, as Washington again embraces the ruthless autocracies it knows. US policy in Pakistan is in ruins, Osama bin Laden is still at large and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Not only has America lost confidence in itself, but a great tide of anti-Americanism washes across the Muslim world.
And that may be the greatest challenge of all facing a President Obama, Clinton, McCain or Romney. America, as Bush never tires of insisting, must lead. But it must lead by example, not just by military force. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, secret CIA camps, waterboarding and "extraordinary rendition" have all combined to give the lie to the US as champion of human rights.
The new occupant of the Oval Office can but hope today's dislike for America is directed at a leader, not at a country. That may well be, but one thing is for sure. Never again will the US occupy that extraordinary position of supremacy – military, moral and economic – that it held in the interlude between the demise of Communism and the attacks of September 2001.
To the 44th President falls the task of explaining that truth to the country, as well as dealing with the concrete day-to-day problems left by George Bush. Indeed, one wonders, why would anyone want the job?
Published: 20 January 2008
Arabia is the land of illusion and desert mirages. And as he jetted last week from kingdom to sheikdom, to be regaled with feasts and falcons, jewels and ornamental swords, George Bush might have imagined that all was well with his presidency. But this, his longest and most ambitious trip to the Middle East, will surely be remembered – if it is remembered at all – as a gaudy, irrelevant footnote to a presidency that has long since failed.
Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush's eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.
Is he the worst President in US history? Mr Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only President to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Mr Bush surely compares with any of the above.
His first, albeit far from most important, bequest is seemingly inevitable defeat for his own party in November, ending almost 30 years of Republican dominance since Ronald Reagan took power. As David Frum, a one-time Bush speech-writer, put it the other day: "I fear the Republicans are heading to an epochal defeat, 1980 in reverse. Every gain we have made since then has been wiped out since 2002."
That, it should be noted, is a Republican speaking. But Frum's evidence is overwhelming, from the President's consistently abysmal approval rating, to the 70 per cent of the population who believe the country is "on the wrong track" (a level not seen in two decades, and that before all-but-certain recession began to bite), to the 51 per cent of Americans who identify themselves as Democrats. By contrast, just 36 per cent of Americans call themselves Republicans – the widest such margin in two decades. Even on the Republicans' signature issue of national security, Democrats are at level pegging. All other things being equal, it is hard to see them losing in November.
In politics, of course, all other things are not equal. The chances of Bush ordering military strikes on Iran may have receded, after last month's report by the US intelligence community that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. But some other foreign calamity, a lethal domestic terrorist attack or even a scandal could reshuffle the electoral cards.
Pace the result of last night's primary in South Carolina, the Republican with the best shot at victory is John McCain, the veteran Arizona Senator and a candidate with genuine appeal to independent and centrist voters. He has a chance precisely because he doesn't come across as a standard-issue Republican. But if elected, even he will have to set about cleansing a political version of the Augean stables.
In Greek mythology, Hercules washed away that mess by re-routing the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Whoever takes the oath of office next 20 January will face a similar task in repairing America, both at home and in the eyes of the world. By almost every yardstick, the country is in a worse state than seven years ago – a state virtually unimaginable when the new century dawned.
Mr Bush cannot be blamed for some of the difficulties. On illegal immigration, among the biggest concerns to voters, the reform he proposed, offering a legal path to citizenship, was sensible. Alas, by 2007 he was too weak to push it through.
Much the same goes for the economy. Presidents are the first to claim responsibility for the good times, but in fact have little power to influence events. The recession that now looms is not his fault; if anyone is responsible, it is the once-lionised former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, and the central bank's over-lax policies in the aftermath of 9/11. The accelerating downturn also proves how, contrary to assertions, the business cycle has not been abolished by the wizardries of hi-tech econometrics.
That said, the Bush era leaves its own nasty odour. Corporate cronyism has been rife. Globalisation and cuts driven by ideology have turned the wealth gap between rich Americans and the rest from an embarrassment into an obscenity. Since 2001 the real income of ordinary Americans has stagnated.
And the mind-boggling losses suffered by such pillars of the financial establishment as Merrill Lynch and Citibank, followed by humiliating foreign bail-outs, suggest something is fundamentally amiss with capitalism, American-style. Like Enron and WorldCom, these colossal financial shipwrecks will forever be associated with Bush's tenure.
A cartoon last week in The Washington Post caught the mood of laissez-faire drift. "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?" asks a voice from Air Force One as the President's plane flies over Manhattan on the way back from the Middle East. Below, a giant sign dangles from the skyscrapers of America's financial capital: "USA – Now a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Foreign Investors".
Of even more immediate concern will be the surge in inequality that affronts America's inherent sense of fairness. Nowhere is this more evident than in healthcare. As Mr Bush has fiddled, the sickness of the existing system, which leaves a sixth of the population without coverage while consuming a similar share of the country's entire GDP, has become near terminal.
Even more corrosive has been the damage inflicted on the US system of governance. This President may have blithely ignored mainstream science, pretended global warming was not happening and only belatedly grasped the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In one domestic activity, however, Bush has not tarried: that of perverting and undermining the constitution in the name of expanding the President's power to fight his "war on terror".
To that end, what everyone else considers torture has been sanctioned, the basic legal right of habeas corpus has been denied to designated "foreign fighters", illicit eavesdropping on US citizens has been authorised and fear-mongering has been turned into a political strategy. Somehow, the next President must restore Americans' faith in their own institutions.
In foreign affairs, the story is the same. The Iraq invasion may not be the greatest foreign policy blunder in US history. But it is among the greatest, utterly discrediting the country's intelligence services, hugely straining relations with key allies, handing a massive strategic victory to Iran and stretching the country's military close to breaking point.
Belatedly, the President has learned the virtues of diplomacy, and his troop surge has at least reduced the violence in Iraq. Even so, he has bequeathed a no-win dilemma to his successor. It is too late for victory. His successor must decide how to withdraw US forces without plunging the region into new chaos.
In the meantime, familiar issues such as the Israeli-Arab conflict have festered amid years of neglect, which this one trip to the region will not expunge. Soaring Bush promises of a democratic Middle East now sound like a bad joke, as Washington again embraces the ruthless autocracies it knows. US policy in Pakistan is in ruins, Osama bin Laden is still at large and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Not only has America lost confidence in itself, but a great tide of anti-Americanism washes across the Muslim world.
And that may be the greatest challenge of all facing a President Obama, Clinton, McCain or Romney. America, as Bush never tires of insisting, must lead. But it must lead by example, not just by military force. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, secret CIA camps, waterboarding and "extraordinary rendition" have all combined to give the lie to the US as champion of human rights.
The new occupant of the Oval Office can but hope today's dislike for America is directed at a leader, not at a country. That may well be, but one thing is for sure. Never again will the US occupy that extraordinary position of supremacy – military, moral and economic – that it held in the interlude between the demise of Communism and the attacks of September 2001.
To the 44th President falls the task of explaining that truth to the country, as well as dealing with the concrete day-to-day problems left by George Bush. Indeed, one wonders, why would anyone want the job?
Oh come, come, headmaster - private schools are pretend charities
Simon Jenkins
When Eton college was founded in 1440 by Henry VI it was to teach “70 poor and needy scholars” from Windsor. To this end it was lavished with holy relics, pilgrimage rights and the freedom to pardon sins. That is what I call charity.
Today Eton has almost 1,300 boys and if any are truly “poor and needy” it is because their parents must find fees of £26,490 a year. Its holy relics are its old boys and the pardon it sells is privilege. What it does, along with 2,500 other private schools in Britain, is respond to a demand from parents eager to buy social status and a good education for their children, uncontaminated by contact with those who use the state sector.
There is nothing wrong in this. Britain is a free country and any curb on the right to spend money on one’s children would be intolerable. But private fee-paying schools are not charities, even if some of the things they do are worthy.
Last week Dame Suzi Leather, chairwoman of the Charity Commission, reminded Britain’s 190,000 charities that they were supposed to deliver genuine public benefit, not merely “do good things”.
The commission does not accept the American idea that “not-for-profit” amounts to charity for tax-avoidance purposes. It spends much of its time chasing outfits, especially so-called social landlords, which merely channel surplus income into directors’ fees.
Likewise arts charities may benefit nobody but their staff and a few customers. Medical research charities can raise cash just to sustain doctors’ lifestyles and invest in profitable drugs. Payment of bonuses to senior staff through foundations and trusts is often a way of laundering corporate surpluses into the pockets of individuals. The truth is that Britain’s £38 billion tax-deductible charity sector is in large measure a middle-class subsidy. Leather’s admonition suggests a modicum of guilt on the part of the regulator.
Nowhere does the guilt bite deeper than into private schools, more than half of which are registered charities. An exclusive education is not a public benefit – if anything, the opposite. It is far from the dictionary’s “voluntary granting of selfless help to those in need”. Many schools are to help rich parents compete for university places with those in need. As for tax relief, it is anything but voluntary. Under charity law it is a compulsory donation to these schools from the taxpayer.
Needless to say there are no flies on Eton. It points out that more than 200 Etonians have their fees diminished by scholarships or bursaries, including king’s scholars honouring the founder’s wishes. Through the London borough of Brent and others, Eton makes its sports facilities available to outsiders and promotes joint activities with local schools and clubs. It probably does more on this score than most similar schools.
Eton claims that such “charity” costs it £3m a year. This is on top of the £5.8m that the state would otherwise have to spend educating its inmates if it did not exist. Against this, the £1.5m that it gets in tax relief is a good deal for the taxpayer. To this battle cry, the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference and the Independent Schools Council all cry amen.
At one level this is like registering my car as a charity because it reduces my claim on public transport. Anyone can drum up some public benefit from what they do with their money and then demand tax relief for it. Is a farmer a charity worker because he keeps the landscape looking nice? Are religious sects charities, or opera houses, or artists? Is the Olympics, laden with wild fees and cost-plus contracts, a charitable enterprise?
The only sensible answer to most such questions is “no way”. The word charity has become monstrously abused. But as Lord Mancroft said of babies and monopolies, we see their virtues only when we have one of our own. For Eton or Winchester to parade as a charity would have 99% of the population hooting with laughter. Yet both rightly regard themselves as decent institutions doing good work for the young and striving to be nice to others.
Britain’s charities are a huge business, relieved of central and local taxes. But they are being nationalised by stealth. Almost 40% of their income is from the state, against just 27% from public subscription. Many aid charities are little more than government agencies and what the government finances it must account for to the public. But when the payment takes the form of tax relief – such as £1.5m to just one private secondary school – what form can that account take?
The government cannot deliver all communal needs. The marketplace often does so more efficiently and the voluntary sector more sensitively. Many people find public services so anonymous they prefer the concept of voluntary welfare, especially where the charity is small and donors can monitor where their money is going.
To this demand, charitable institutions offer diversity and choice. But they operate under a light regulatory touch – albeit now made heavier by the Charity Commission’s crippling 109-page code of practice. They avoid scrutiny over the sums they spend on overheads and expect tax relief for activities whose benefit to those in need can seem close to zero.
Push has come to shove over the £100m in tax relief to private schools. These are booming for two reasons, neither of which has to do with need. One is that there is more disposable income available to the middle and aspiring middle classes. The other is that the ending of state selective schooling in the 1970s confronted many parents, who had previously relied on grammar schools, with having their children educated alongside working-class ones in comprehensives.
This ending of state-sponsored educational segregation was itself intended to yield a public benefit. Britain (Tory as well as Labour) decided that allocating two-thirds of children to what were clearly substandard schools at the age of 11 was socially divisive and economically disastrous. If there was to be an educational divide in Britain, it should not be in the state system.
If this increased the social division of private education – to a degree unknown on the continent or in America – that was a lesser evil. But the resulting surge in private schools could not be considered charitable. It was an exercise of perfectly legal freedom by 7% of parents, by definition unlikely to be poor and needy.
This left hanging the question of charitable status for these schools. According to the commission, it is not met by the argument that schools compensate for state spending on education, any more than private health insurance should be subsidised for those opting out of the National Health Service. Not using a public service may relieve the state of a claimant, but it is not an act of charity to the needy.
Nor are bursaries to able pupils a public benefit. As Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington college, said last week, if schools conceded a quota of places to clever local children it might benefit those children, but the resulting creaming of talent from local comprehensives could not qualify as a public good. It might widen the social base of private schools to the edification of their inmates, but narrowing the social base of state schools would promote what Seldon called “social apartheid”. As with Margaret Thatcher’s assisted places scheme, the beneficiaries would tend to be the children of the less prosperous middle classes.
This leaves as “charitable” only the sort of joint projects and shared facilities proclaimed by Eton. Here the schools are on firmer ground, since they are offering not to remove bright children from the local community but to share some of their wealth with it.
They should be perfectly entitled to set such spending against the taxes they would otherwise pay as a normal trading company. For schools that continue with charitable status, involving tax relief of no more than 5%-10% of turnover, such local deals seem a reasonable quid pro quo to the taxpayer.
I believe that encouraging voluntary, philanthropic association is the only hope of restricting the power of the state. That is best achieved not through more grants – a gift to Whitehall control freaks – but through lighter touch tax relief.
That, in turn, means charities that wish to receive such relief acting fair. Private schools have pretended to be charities for too long and should now play the game.
When Eton college was founded in 1440 by Henry VI it was to teach “70 poor and needy scholars” from Windsor. To this end it was lavished with holy relics, pilgrimage rights and the freedom to pardon sins. That is what I call charity.
Today Eton has almost 1,300 boys and if any are truly “poor and needy” it is because their parents must find fees of £26,490 a year. Its holy relics are its old boys and the pardon it sells is privilege. What it does, along with 2,500 other private schools in Britain, is respond to a demand from parents eager to buy social status and a good education for their children, uncontaminated by contact with those who use the state sector.
There is nothing wrong in this. Britain is a free country and any curb on the right to spend money on one’s children would be intolerable. But private fee-paying schools are not charities, even if some of the things they do are worthy.
Last week Dame Suzi Leather, chairwoman of the Charity Commission, reminded Britain’s 190,000 charities that they were supposed to deliver genuine public benefit, not merely “do good things”.
The commission does not accept the American idea that “not-for-profit” amounts to charity for tax-avoidance purposes. It spends much of its time chasing outfits, especially so-called social landlords, which merely channel surplus income into directors’ fees.
Likewise arts charities may benefit nobody but their staff and a few customers. Medical research charities can raise cash just to sustain doctors’ lifestyles and invest in profitable drugs. Payment of bonuses to senior staff through foundations and trusts is often a way of laundering corporate surpluses into the pockets of individuals. The truth is that Britain’s £38 billion tax-deductible charity sector is in large measure a middle-class subsidy. Leather’s admonition suggests a modicum of guilt on the part of the regulator.
Nowhere does the guilt bite deeper than into private schools, more than half of which are registered charities. An exclusive education is not a public benefit – if anything, the opposite. It is far from the dictionary’s “voluntary granting of selfless help to those in need”. Many schools are to help rich parents compete for university places with those in need. As for tax relief, it is anything but voluntary. Under charity law it is a compulsory donation to these schools from the taxpayer.
Needless to say there are no flies on Eton. It points out that more than 200 Etonians have their fees diminished by scholarships or bursaries, including king’s scholars honouring the founder’s wishes. Through the London borough of Brent and others, Eton makes its sports facilities available to outsiders and promotes joint activities with local schools and clubs. It probably does more on this score than most similar schools.
Eton claims that such “charity” costs it £3m a year. This is on top of the £5.8m that the state would otherwise have to spend educating its inmates if it did not exist. Against this, the £1.5m that it gets in tax relief is a good deal for the taxpayer. To this battle cry, the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference and the Independent Schools Council all cry amen.
At one level this is like registering my car as a charity because it reduces my claim on public transport. Anyone can drum up some public benefit from what they do with their money and then demand tax relief for it. Is a farmer a charity worker because he keeps the landscape looking nice? Are religious sects charities, or opera houses, or artists? Is the Olympics, laden with wild fees and cost-plus contracts, a charitable enterprise?
The only sensible answer to most such questions is “no way”. The word charity has become monstrously abused. But as Lord Mancroft said of babies and monopolies, we see their virtues only when we have one of our own. For Eton or Winchester to parade as a charity would have 99% of the population hooting with laughter. Yet both rightly regard themselves as decent institutions doing good work for the young and striving to be nice to others.
Britain’s charities are a huge business, relieved of central and local taxes. But they are being nationalised by stealth. Almost 40% of their income is from the state, against just 27% from public subscription. Many aid charities are little more than government agencies and what the government finances it must account for to the public. But when the payment takes the form of tax relief – such as £1.5m to just one private secondary school – what form can that account take?
The government cannot deliver all communal needs. The marketplace often does so more efficiently and the voluntary sector more sensitively. Many people find public services so anonymous they prefer the concept of voluntary welfare, especially where the charity is small and donors can monitor where their money is going.
To this demand, charitable institutions offer diversity and choice. But they operate under a light regulatory touch – albeit now made heavier by the Charity Commission’s crippling 109-page code of practice. They avoid scrutiny over the sums they spend on overheads and expect tax relief for activities whose benefit to those in need can seem close to zero.
Push has come to shove over the £100m in tax relief to private schools. These are booming for two reasons, neither of which has to do with need. One is that there is more disposable income available to the middle and aspiring middle classes. The other is that the ending of state selective schooling in the 1970s confronted many parents, who had previously relied on grammar schools, with having their children educated alongside working-class ones in comprehensives.
This ending of state-sponsored educational segregation was itself intended to yield a public benefit. Britain (Tory as well as Labour) decided that allocating two-thirds of children to what were clearly substandard schools at the age of 11 was socially divisive and economically disastrous. If there was to be an educational divide in Britain, it should not be in the state system.
If this increased the social division of private education – to a degree unknown on the continent or in America – that was a lesser evil. But the resulting surge in private schools could not be considered charitable. It was an exercise of perfectly legal freedom by 7% of parents, by definition unlikely to be poor and needy.
This left hanging the question of charitable status for these schools. According to the commission, it is not met by the argument that schools compensate for state spending on education, any more than private health insurance should be subsidised for those opting out of the National Health Service. Not using a public service may relieve the state of a claimant, but it is not an act of charity to the needy.
Nor are bursaries to able pupils a public benefit. As Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington college, said last week, if schools conceded a quota of places to clever local children it might benefit those children, but the resulting creaming of talent from local comprehensives could not qualify as a public good. It might widen the social base of private schools to the edification of their inmates, but narrowing the social base of state schools would promote what Seldon called “social apartheid”. As with Margaret Thatcher’s assisted places scheme, the beneficiaries would tend to be the children of the less prosperous middle classes.
This leaves as “charitable” only the sort of joint projects and shared facilities proclaimed by Eton. Here the schools are on firmer ground, since they are offering not to remove bright children from the local community but to share some of their wealth with it.
They should be perfectly entitled to set such spending against the taxes they would otherwise pay as a normal trading company. For schools that continue with charitable status, involving tax relief of no more than 5%-10% of turnover, such local deals seem a reasonable quid pro quo to the taxpayer.
I believe that encouraging voluntary, philanthropic association is the only hope of restricting the power of the state. That is best achieved not through more grants – a gift to Whitehall control freaks – but through lighter touch tax relief.
That, in turn, means charities that wish to receive such relief acting fair. Private schools have pretended to be charities for too long and should now play the game.
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