Society

I am always surprised by hitherto sensible people not seeing what is obvious. Sadiq Khan, London’s Mayor, has been systematically making London’s roads terrible simply, to make them as car free as possible. He has had the nerve to use COVID-19 as an excuse to extend multiple
footpaths, reducing the amount of space available to cars…like the space on a footpath is ever likely to be an issue in London again.

Mr Khan’s master plan started long before anyone had heard of this virus, that is clear. The disaster that is the Old Street roundabout, the re-mapping of Baker Street and Gloucester Place, the nuts removal of 2 lanes on Euston Road, empty cycle lanes as big as those for cars on the Embankment and Finchley Road, dummy blockades on dozens of road simply to inconvenience drivers – with no apparent road works. This is just cynical control freakism that is systematically destroying the quality of life for Londoners in the process, at a time when the city is on its knees.

Its just a pity that many voters don’t see it. London’s roads now have traffic jams by design; bear in mind there are way fewer cars are on the road compared to 2019. A cab journey of 4 miles takes 45 minutes….

Mr Khan; stand up and take responsibility for once for anything in fact to do with London. In Japan you’d be a shamed civil servant bowing to the public for forgiveness.

Meanwhile all the City Hall cronies draw full salaries and accrue lovely pensions at Londoners expense. What a joke.

Observers of society over many centuries have commented on the evolution and development of their own cultures. Today, in a world dominated by faceless global communication, it is very much easier to make these cultural observations. The internet makes information freely available with no real barriers (China aside perhaps), seemingly pushing humanity towards varying degrees of homogeneity.

As many cultures will end up acting the same through the inevitable social pressures of democracy, our opportunity to observe others and their micro cultures merely improves. We can travel overseas on short trips using budget airlines or capture the latest news on cable television – nothing is really that far away any more.

TCE has just returned from a family ski trip to the Valais region of Switzerland, having visited the country dozens of times since the 1980s for business and pleasure. It was on this latest trip however that an obvious behavioural shift was observed.

Switzerland has been one of the few developed countries to survive the world’s economic malaise relatively unscathed. Although the country’s reputation was severely dented as a result of the UBS failure, the private banking industry survived broadly intact. As many developed nations were forced to raise taxes in an attempt to cover budget deficits, a large number of the worlds wealthy chose to make fiscally attractive Switzerland home for themselves and their businesses.

The resulting influx of revenue to the professional Swiss service providers as well as the likes of real estate agents, hoteliers, restaurants, taxi companies, etc, came regardless of effort, ability, or quality of service.

Switzerland’s reputation for stability and fiscal prudence meant that during the economic troubles, investors fled away from less attractive currencies into the likes of the Swiss Franc (CHF). In the past three years the CHF strengthened by around 30% (a rough average). Hence the cost of everything denominated in CHF, property, restaurant meals, taxi trips, and of course unit cost of labour, rocketed in foreign currency terms. As a result, what has always been seen as an expensive country with a modest service culture in recent years has moved completely out of sync, and as a result is wholly unattractive to its European neighbours as a place for business or pleasure.

Of course price isn’t everything when the service level and quality of goods is commensurately high. However on the week long Swiss trip it was very obvious to TCE that staff in the hospitality industry at least had become complacent with seemingly little interest in providing anything but a halting service level. Things, it would seem, have simply been too easy for them; with high salaries and easy working conditions and virtually guaranteed employment.

It’s just unfortunate for Swiss businesses that for the majority of people visiting and doing business with the country (oligarchs excepted) both price and quality of service still matter.

Looking at 2011 and beyond TCE is not optimistic regarding the prospects on this aspect of Swiss culture as the Swiss themselves remain blissfully unaware, and show little interest in, how they are perceived from abroad. This isolationism lies at the centre of the problems that lie ahead for the country as a reversal of this micro cultural shift is absolutely necessary. Why should a Swiss hotelier hire locals when he can employ other hard working Europeans for considerably less money? Why should tourists visit the Valais when Austria offers a higher quality family ski trip for much less money? Have goods and services improved by over 30% in the past three years or so? – Swiss businessmen and foreign visitors must be asking themselves such questions.

Looking forward, Switzerland must be affected by deflation. The very wealthy may well not change the way they structure their economic affairs, but Switzerland is no longer an information safe haven, and the private banks fail to offer anything unique. The irony is that having had things easy, the Swiss need to brace themselves for a period of relative austerity with poor prospects for employment. In three to five years the CHF may have weakened enough (essential!), and lessons been learned, for foreigners to look at the country with interest once again.

Professional Tennis

As Wimbledon strolled to its moribund conclusion we were once again reminded that at the top level men and women are only equal when it comes to prize money. What a nonsense. In a tournament where one match covered 3 days in the men’s draw, the Cynical Eye feels that the 67 minute women’s final didn’t quite deliver fair value. Get real ladies and take a pay cut.

UK Government ‘Spending Cuts’

Only in the eyes of the vast body of civil servants can a cut occur to something that has yet to exist. What nonsense. This is clearly an attempt to exert the rhetoric of the ‘kept classes’ which has been so apparent for the past 13 years. Good riddance.

The World Cup

The world’s most popular sporting event sadly drifted into farce at the final. The Prima Donna ‘sportsman’s’ inability to play football amplified by honed skills in the arena of fouling. What a nonsense. How much do these people have to be paid to be bothered to perform? The clear star of the tournament, Paul the octopus, born in England, giving some hope that Britain can indeed perform at the top level.

En Primeur Bordeaux 2009

The profiteering of the first growth vineyards actively indulged by the wealthy ‘keeping up with the oligarch’ classes is a nonsense. The majority of wine producers around the world bottling good quality wine, struggle financially. Robert Parker doesn’t need to tell us that Margaux is good wine; or that a ‘98 pointer’ is better than a ‘92 pointer’. Thanks but no thanks Robert.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

The attempts of Mr Obama to divert attention from his floundering term in office by dictating terms to a corporation like BP. A UK oil company that had hired local US ‘expertise’ that have since walked away without blame. What nonsense. Is the world’s biggest consumer of oil becoming even more protectionist?  Time for Britain to move on and find another ‘special’ relationship.

As much as the public like to blame everyone else when things go wrong, the voters in UK general elections ultimately determine the leaders and decision makers, and therefore have only to look to themselves if things don’t work out.

For TCE, the spring of 2009 will be remembered as a period of time cemented in the mind albeit for all the wrong reasons.

As Alistair Darlings farcical April budget speech ended, the whole notion of Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ felt very distant and even the more ridiculous. For this was a seminal moment, the precise day, the precise hour, when the Chancellor described in the language of political spin, that we living in Britain, were %$*&ed.

In a year or so Britain will be entering the league of countries that impose super high income tax rates. Is this somehow meant to motivate the mid and high earners to keep paying for the growing sections of British society on the take? Surely many will simply leave the country?

Northern European countries like Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, manage a culture that appears to suit all bar the ultra high net worth. They have found that if taxes are spent on health and social wealth fare, as well as infrastructure, public transport, and leisure, that most remain happy to contribute and stay to enjoy the resulting higher standard of living. You don’t have to be a high tax country to enjoy a good quality of life as Switzerland admirably demonstrates, although within Europe it generally seems a common pre-requisite.

Taxes can only provide so much information about a country of course, and how they effect and are reflected, in the economy of a country. Taxation is a dynamic and for Britain higher taxes are being imposed out of necessity as a direct result of the Labour government’s mismanagement of the public purse. Britain’s debt mountain has been out of control for years and whilst in a recession, a severe threat to national economic stability. The S&P agrees having Britain on watch for a credit downgrade.

-No wonder then for those contributing to the economy that a persistent feel bad factor lingers in the UK.

In the 1990s New Labour took the political middle ground by looking after the super rich under directives from Tony Blair.

These non-domicile wealthy benefitted from Brown and Blair but ironically show no signs of leaving Britain en masse (arguably they have been the least effected as they have access to many tax rebate and offset schemes and only pay tax on money remitted or earned in the UK).

Recent fiscal actions are nonetheless unwelcome and needlessly sow the seeds of doubt regarding prospects for the future.

What is more obvious to the majority (i.e. those earning up to say twice the average UK income) is that the quality of life in Britain is dropping quicker than Gordon Brown’s credibility, and is just another piece in the puzzle of a Britain on the decline.

Although statistics to measure the quality of life are not perfect, where the research data is comprehensive, they do enable valid comparisons. The measures and the weightings often vary depending on the purpose of the research; however it is clear from those freely available, that Britain is also the sick cousin of the developed world offering amongst the lowest quality of life to its residents.

If we segment British society into three age groups, the young, the working, and the retired, the observations are quite sobering.

For the young;

According to a UNICEF study Britain’s children are rated as the unhappiest out of twenty one industrialised nations. They drink the most, smoke more, and have more sex than their peers. Using forty indicators including relative poverty, child safety, crime rate, amount spent on education etc, Britain and the USA are at the bottom of most of the ratings.

In a study a quarter of Britain’s young teens rated their health as fair or poor. The worst result for any OECD country. In the past decade the number of school age binge drinkers admitted to hospital has risen by over fifty percent, and across all age groups the number has doubled.

The number of children living in poverty (defined as less than 60% of the median household income) has doubled in the past thirty years and at its peak in the late 90’s, was the highest in the EU. In a 2008 report by London Child Poverty Commission, over 40% of children living in Greater London were living in poverty and 50% in inner London.

For the working;

Already with some of the highest marginal tax rates in the world and increasing, disposable income has dropped quicker than the value of the over priced houses that we British live in.

Ann Robinson, Director of Consumer Policy at uSwitch.com, said: “We may earn substantially more than our European neighbours but, when it comes to quality of life, we remain the ‘sick man of Europe’. Soaring food prices and inflation – not to mention high property costs – are placing the biggest squeeze on disposable incomes in well over a decade. With below average investment in health and education, it appears that we are getting a raw deal from the government for the fruits of our labour”.

UK motorists pay the highest prices for diesel in Europe around 18% above the average, and the second highest price for unleaded petrol, at 6% more than average. Brits pay over 40% per cent more for gas and 5 % more for electricity, making it the third most expensive country in Europe for fuel.

Sadly public transport is poor, often unreliable, and too expensive; so we can’t give up our cars just yet.

British private sector workers also suffer when it comes to holiday entitlement, typically enjoying 28 days a year (including bank holidays). This compares to the French, who receive an average of 40 days, well above the European average of 33. The Poles work the most hours per week (41 compared to an average of 37) but have nearly two weeks more holiday than workers in the UK.

Public sector workers fair considerably better than their private sector cousins in the UK (i.e. the bit of society that actually pays for everything and creates the wealth). Not only do they enjoy higher average salaries but also have higher holiday entitlement and better retirement schemes in the form of final salary pension schemes.

Recent scandals regarding expenses for MPs has highlighted the scale of the abuse of the public purse in the civil service, and across local authorities in general.

No surprises to see workers in Britain sit below most countries in Europe (even Poland) when it comes to a variety of quality of life measures.

For the retired;

You would think that things would somehow improve for the retired British, but alas this does not seem to be the case.

Private sector workers in Britain not only have to suffer the shortest holiday entitlement whilst working, a week below the European average, but also has the third highest retirement age.

The UK government spends around 8% of GDP on healthcare, well below the European average of 8.6%, with life expectancy at 78.9 the third lowest.

According to another study that compares the economies of 183 countries, Britain does not even make the top 40 in the list of hospital beds per 1,000 people.

So not only have the British retired worked longer when they retire, they are looked after relatively poorly thereafter.

In summary:

It is fair to say that for Brits it is much easier to find aspects of British living that negatively affect the quality of life.

Even if British workers had the extra holidays to take they would have to go travel overseas to enjoy some extra sunshine. The UK has some 17% fewer hours of sun than the European average

The Brits have not been oblivious as they have been voting with their feet for years with tens of thousands across all skill levels leaving annually, emigration increasing at a rate of some 5% per annum. Maybe the weather is important, after all Spain gets the most sunshine with 50% more hours than the average European average!

Unfortunately in mass immigration Britain tends to attract the lower paid from poorer countries, the net effect of which is to take employment away from the local UK workforce. The benefit system in Britain is much to blame as immigrant families tend to stay as they receive much better provision than their homeland should they fail to find work. Britain kindly paying benefits back to their homeland!.

There must be something good about Britain? Is loyalty to the Crown reciprocated?

Well of course not.

The armed forces have been recruiting Gurkhas for several generations because of their tenacity in battle, yet they have found themselves denied residency.

This disgraceful situation finally righted with the help of a very tenacious Joanna Lumley, the government embarrassed into finally addressing this outrage.

Britain is broken and sadly without a timetable for the many fixes needed.

If you are a civil servant, an immigrant from a poorer country, a refugee, or part of the rich non domicile set of course you’ll stay. For the rest of us, the attractions have been fading for a decade, the British government relying on apathy to keep Britons here rather than seeking a potentially better life found elsewhere.

Men should really stop whineging about how bias society is towards women. All they need to do is take co-ordinated action and replicate the methods successfully applied by women, and then with time, balance will be restored.

The promotional skills of the fairer sex have indeed resulted in bias at all levels and bizarrely this would not have been possible without some passive collusion from men.  For example, in the past decade employment laws have made it very unattractive to hire women into senior positions because of the inherent risks of being sued when employment does not work out for whatever reason. Yet senior women are still hired by men. The outlandish payouts female workers have achieved in the City for example, a testament to male persistency in hiring woman almost regardless of their ability.

Courts have the uncanny ability to make it seem that the employer is at fault, so inevitably it’s often easier to agree some sought of payoff rather go down longer and even more expensive routes. Women have multiplied their redundancy payouts on the premise that employers had hired no other women hence demonstrating sexual discrimination. In many cases no woman had actually applied for positions.

In TCE’s experience women are mainly hired in the City to create a natural balance in the work place. 90% of the applicants for meaningful City jobs are male, although if Harriet Harman had her way employers would be obliged to hire the female candidates regardless of merit.

Women, we are led to believe by women, are down trodden and deserving of extra special treatment because of society’s systemic bias towards men, and yet evidence only exists to the contrary.

In recent headline divorce cases women have managed to extract scandalous amounts of cash from self made men who have not relied on their non working wife’s ‘contribution’ in any way. In many cases the marriages were short and typically started years after the wealth had been generated. These poor ladies of leisure had ritually sacrificed their own ‘careers’, we were told. The courts normally ruling that the ladies should be set for life with settlements many times realistic career earnings. After all, they have to maintain the lifestyle gifted to them by the man in the first place.

As Britain has passed somehow seamlessly to the systemic and extreme bias in favour of women, the likes of Harriet Harman ‘Minister for Women’, remain unsatisfied. The anti father campaigner, will do her best to further society’s drive against men. But take heart men, she’s flailing; first the loan scandal,  the anti stab vest bungle in Peckham, and the Sir Fed Goodwin rant on TV, have removed what little credibility she had left.

Men, insist on the election of a ‘Minister for Men’, insist on equal retirement age for men, insist that women campaign on causes like cancer for both sexes not just the type that hits them, insist that men can actually bring up a young family if they were financed in the same way as women, tell the world that looking after children is a great deal easier than earning a living (looking after children is simply a repetitive, dull, and less skilled occupation).

Simply insist that equality is returned, and that politic correctness is not simply a term created by women to ensure that society favours them.

Is TCE the only one who thinks that football is now more than ever detached from the real world? When Joe Punter moans about the state of the economy caused by rich bankers spending his money, he manages not to mention the overpaid manager or player at his favourite team; burning his cash and racking up unserviceable debts.

Football is a financial folly of the highest order in which only the outsiders (the vast majority) are foolhardy. The insiders at the PFA and the FA feel the need to massively overpay themselves, mainly because overpayment is expected and hence normal in football culture. Typical upper division footballers get paid multiples of those that decided to get an education and to be in the top 0.1% of a university, to go through rigorous selection procedures at financial firms, to pass, and then to train for many years to be at the top of their respective leagues.

Let’s not pretend that football is a meritocracy, after all Chelsea has spent tens of millions of pounds paying off woefully underperforming managers, making most bankers severance packages look like a bargain.

So Mr Capello, what did attract you to the highest paid management job in football?

The Blair and Brown Labour policies of the past decade have encouraged the level of household debt in the UK to run away, making UK households the most over leveraged on earth. In TCE’s view, the process was a deliberate attempt to create a veneer that the British economy was strong, that simply back fired.

Labour in reality has only ever had two plans. To keep interest rates dangerously low to inflate asset prices, whilst dramatically increasing the number of civil servants effectively falsifying the unemployment numbers. So Labour, please don’t blame the banks for this mess; blame the debt addicted voting masses for wanting to live on the ‘never–never’ encouraged to think that house price increases will always bail them out, and of course yourselves for gross incompetence.

This government’s answer to dig Britain out of this hole has been to reduce the number of people employed in the private sector i.e. those that actually contribute to the UK coffers, and paying the average civil servant more than the average private sector worker. This, whilst encouraging wealthy foreigners to leave the country through onerous fiscal enforcement.

Gordon Brown; control freakism and spin, apparently the two main skills of your party, won’t get Britain out of this Labour created mess.

There are very few topics that are as actively discussed and generate such strong and differing opinions, as property prices and house ownership in the UK.

Property and property prices, it seems, have been topics of conversation for decades at mother and baby coffee mornings, the hairdressers, the pub, the local wine bar, and dinner parties, alike. This is not a surprise, as residential property has been, and still remains, the biggest asset of the average Brit even after sustained periods of house price volatility and recent malaise; after all “house prices don’t go down , do they?”

In the 80’s much was made of the substantive drop in prices and associated rise in personal and corporate losses, with over extended borrowers not able to meet mortgage payments on their once solid assets. Record numbers of houses were repossessed by the banks and sold on to extract what little remained of the potential equity.

After five years or so of price falls and consolidation up to the mid 1990’s, the foundation was set for a sustained corrective recovery in the housing market. Cheap and available capital drove substantial price upswings in pockets of the South East especially, supporting a new breed of so called ‘property developer’ and buy-to-let landlord. So widespread was this activity and so easy was it to jump aboard this skill less gravy train, that rather than just having to talk about property at dinner parties, worst still one had to keep the company of this new breed too. As the number of players taking part in this property game increased, the greater the upward pressure on house prices became and apparent increase in enthusiasm for banks to lend them money.

When one takes a retrospective, and for the purposes of being applicable to 80% of households rather than just the very wealthy or the less well off, it is astonishing the ease at which banks gave cash away for basically anything. As the nation’s economy became more dependant on house prices it seemed as though the Bank of England kept an agenda to support them too.  

The new ‘low level’ of interest rates experienced since 1994 (basically at the same level as Q2 2008) can never really be justified purely from an inflation standpoint. Personal inflation for most consumers has done nothing but race away during the present government’s tenure, appearing to have little correlation to the indices used to guide monetary policy.

Britain simply became a nation of amateur landlords fuelled by greed and ignorance whilst happily being funded by banks trying to build assets and market share. No surprise then that the gravy train eventually ran dry.

One only has to look at the stark reality of commercial property and the substantial hit taken at the end of 2007 to realise the effects. But look on the bright side, there’ll be less airtime for shows on television about how to make your fortune in property; with no financial, technical, engineering, or personal skills needed.