Archive for Bestowal

How Labour and the Trade Unions Destroyed the Construction Industry’s Marxist Utopia

February 6, 2012 jonathanbishop 2 comments

Pre-2007 many workers in the construction industry of which I was part were de-facto Marxists – they were self-employed and could decide when they worked and when they didn’t, and how much they were willing to work for and which they wouldn’t.

But then at the request of the trade unions, the Labour Government forced nearly all these workers to become employed by the private firms. In effect, they were working against the Marxist ideal of the workers controlling their own lives without being dictated to by business owners, by forcing them onto employment contracts that meant private business owners had more say over their working terms and conditions than before! Whereas before they could take a holiday whenever they wanted, now they had to do it whenever it was best for the firm. They may have had more employment rights, but this was at the sacrifice of other perks, like having allowable expenses and paying a flat 20% tax. So, a Labour Government in effect, in order to please the unions and get a few more bucks for the tax man, took the dreams of its party’s founders, of an end to domination of people’s lives by big capitalist firms, and replaced it with further domination by capitalist firms by taking away the rights of workers to withdraw their labour on their terms without having to ballot a trade union for the right to do so.

Any Marxist sympathisers who would rather willingly work for someone else’s private firm than set up their own on either a self-employed or sole-shareholder limited company basis therefore, is too much talk and not enough action. How exactly do they expect capitalism and the state to fall if they are each day of their working lives sucking their metaphorical teet?!

Any socialist who willingly works for a private firm that they or their family don’t own are capitalist sell-outs also. If they truly believed in their ideology they would do what I have done:

Take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange by becoming self-employed and the sole shareholder of their own firm, while co-operating with others through mutually owned co-operatives.

It seems to me on most issues, the people who claim to believe that the workers should own the means of production, distribution an exchange, are all too happy  for the status quo of a government, trade union, and big business oligopoly to continue rather than take the risk of going it alone as Marx envisaged.

Bestowal, Boundlessness, Breadth, The Official Weblog of Jonathan Bishop

Great idea for internet safety

December 24, 2011 jonathanbishop One comment

I WAS pleased to read the article in the South Wales Echo about the launch of a scheme to raise awareness of young people in internet safety issues (“New child safety DVDs and website”, December 12).

As a prize-winning author on trolling, the practice of posting messages on the internet to provoke or entertain, I know initiatives such as School Beat are important to raise awareness.

As those who attend my Trolling Academy (www.trollingacademy.org) know, online safety is something that is multi-faceted and needs to be explored from various angles.

The School Beat programme which involves schools is important.

At the Centre for Research into Online Communities and E-Learning Systems in Swansea, I am researching new computer systems that could make discipline in schools easier.

This would involve each student in a class having a laptop and accessing a tailored computer program which monitors them and assigns rewards if they act within the class’s behaviour contract.

I envisage a time in the future where, far from child poverty being tackled by giving parents handouts, that young people will receive vouchers to spend themselves if they show they can be disciplined in the classroom.

I know this works because it is what happened at the specialist private school I attended, and discipline was achieved without resorting to violence, which in SEN pupils like I was would only make things worse.

Acquisition, Application, Articulation, Bestowal, Boundlessness, Consideration, Economic, Info-scientific, Letters and other Op-Eds, Socio-legal

Policy on tax and welfare

December 11, 2011 jonathanbishop No comments

I think the market has a lot of virtues. For instance, competition drives up innovation and improves standards in customer service. But one thing is certain about the market, and that is, without intervention from the government it will fail to provide for everyone’s needs on the basis of equality opportunity. I therefore think that in order to have an equitable Adam Smith like market we need a Keynesian like tax system, but not just with macroeconomic intervention in the form of business and income taxes, but microeconomic as well, in the form of vouchers funded out of taxation for instance.

Ask any economist and they will agree that they will never agree on tax policy. So therefore as the market changes so will my ideas of what needs to be done with tax, but I will set out the basic premises of my tax ideas:

  • All people, whether rich or poor, will seek to maximise income and minimise tax burden;
  • The rich will be more effective at this through tax avoidance of direct taxes like income tax
  • In order that the poor do not face a disproportionate tax burden, then indirect taxes like VAT, Fuel tax and pensions tax should be used to make the rich pay their fair share of tax so it can be redistributed to the poor. Indirect taxes like VAT if made variable could also be used for fiscal management, such as to control supply/demand/inflation.
  • Progressive income tax and means-tested benefits discourage their poor from earning more as the risk of going from benefits to work and that work not working out so losing entitlement is often too high. Therefore health and education should be free at the point of ‘special need’, so when it is needed it is free and tailored to a person’s specific needs. This can be achieved through vouchers and greater access to medical records between health and education providers for instance.
  • Welfare benefits should be a safety-net not an alternative to work. They should take the form of loans (e.g. like student loans) and income tax should be levied on them at a higher rate than when it work, which should be used to pay the loan off when on welfare benefits.
  • Behaviour tax arrangements, like green taxes, speeding fines, alcohol/cigarette taxes should be more about encouraging responsible behaviour than raising revenue. So anything that ‘entraps’ tax payers into paying the tax should be outlawed, such as speed cameras put in places where people will naturally have difficulty slowing down or speeding up.
  • Employers take big risks taking on unskilled workers which many welfare claimants are. They should therefore be offered wage subsides to mitigate this risk. There should also be less obligations such as a tax free period for taking on long-term unemployed.
  • Welfare to work programmes should be about transferring disadvantaged people like those who are disabled people from out-of-work benefits to in-work-benefits. People who are disabled need more help when in work and not less.

 

Bestowal, Boundlessness, Consciousness, Economic, Notices and Announcements, Socio-legal

A fairer deal for all in their retirement

December 8, 2011 jonathanbishop No comments

John Owen (Letters, Dec 7) says I am wrong to call the strike of the public sector workers disgusting (Letters, Dec 2).

How many times have I heard that before only to be told, “you know, you were right”? It was not Margaret Thatcher who destroyed manufacturing in Wales, as he claims, any more than it was Margaret Thatcher who saved manufacturing in Northern Ireland.

Margaret Thatcher’s special education reforms, which I benefited from, may result in a new manufacturing revolution in Wales if the intellectual property she gave me the chance to develop through this education comes to fruition.

Equally, G Cornfield (Letters, Dec 7) critiques my view of the benefits of migrant Polish plumbers making UK ones “unemployed”.

If he had read the Western Mail on July 1, 2004, he’d have seen Swansea College lecturer Nick Couling say: “It is quite well known that there is a national shortage of skilled tradesmen such as plumbers.”

As he may know, Poland joined the EU on May 1 in the same year, and the UK plumbers, who were paid even more than public sector workers at the time, got their share of market forces, which meant they could no longer charge the public so much because there was now stiff competition.

Mr Owen and Mr Cornfield may think it is fair that the public sector is getting a better deal than the people in private sectors, with its pension scheme “running at a profit”, but I want a system fair for all.

If we were to repeat the revolution in savings with ISAs by creating compulsory “Individual Pension Accounts” absorbing current schemes as happened with TESSAs and PEPs, where the higher the percentage of your income you put in the sooner you can retire, and where this would involve the highest income contributors having some of their deposits redistributed to the lowest income depositors, then I think everyone in society would get a fairer deal in retirement.

Bestowal, Economic, Letters and other Op-Eds, Socio-legal

Why the Con Dems need to be more Thatcherite

December 1, 2011 jonathanbishop No comments

If Margaret Thatcher was still well enough to be a back seat driver in the Conservative Party, she would be screaming the hell out of David Cameron and his co-pilot George Osborne knowing they are heading for a huge crash.

Many people attack Thatcher, not knowing how great a statesperson and economist she actually was. She radically reformed the education system, so learners with special needs like me could get extra support and go to the best school for our needs, wherever in the country it was.

Many in the Labour Party criticise her economics policies. But without the monetarism that she created there would probably be no euro with a fixed interest rate and certainly no ‘quantitative easing’.

The essence of Monetarism, from my perspective, is that it is the top priority to keep inflation down, and to ensure that there is enough money in the economy to get growth, but not so much there is inefficiency which would further inflation and slow growth.

If you look at what the Con Dems are doing with their ‘deficit reduction’ policy – they are taking money out of the economy, so that the only thing that is bound to happen is a further recession.

The Con Dem Government wants to reduce public spending to cut the deficit and therefore its debt, arguing it costs so much in interest repayments to fund public spending and investment through borrowing. But what they don’t tell you is that most of that borrowing is from persons outside of the United Kingdom. So basically what the government is doing is taking money out of the UK economy and sending it to places like China! While that money is not in the pockets of the lenders, it is in our economy. Paying the money back means the UK economy can only shrink.

Thatcher knew this – she was the innovator of what led to quantitative easing, which is the PC term for a poor kind of Keynesian/Thatcherite hybrid (ff. Crass Keynesianism). Keynesian basically means increasing demand for goods and services through intervening in the market, and Thatcher’s Monetarianism basically means putting more money into the economy so it can grow and by varying interest rates the inflation can be kept under control.

Most people have credit cards. We know that when we borrow money on our credit card to pay for things like our children’s clothes or a new suit for a job we are investing in our and our family’s future. We will have to pay the credit card back again, but if we were to sacrifice essentials such as food and socialising in order to be debt free, then we will not grow as people, just as the economy can’t grow if there is less money going around it so we can’t fund essentials like healthcare and education. Reducing the size of our household budget to pay off our credit cards does not make our household grow in terms of prosperity, if anything the opposite.

The problem in Greece is lack of money in the economy. The eurozone want to tackle this with printing money (quantitative easing / crass Keynesianism). The only way to do without the high inflation that got Greece into trouble when it joined the euro, is to borrow money from other countries with surplus wealth, so their country can grow through interest payments and the eurozone can grow through without inflation due to there being real money in the economy. With the Con Dem management of the economy, we are heading for Greece like conditions where the only option for us to get out of it might be to join a much more interdependent eurozone with the European Central Bank as the lender of last resort.

 

Bestowal, Boundlessness, Economic, The Official Weblog of Jonathan Bishop, Writing and Opinion

Do European laws give pro-choice rights on abortions to fathers?

November 18, 2011 jonathanbishop One comment

It is a basic premise of both European Human Rights Law and European Union Law that a right to do something also includes the right not to do something.

Take the ECHR right to found a family. This also includes the right not to found a family. So should men, who have conceived a child, have equal rights to have their potential child aborted as the women they’ve impregnated? I think so.

The ECHR equally says that someone should not be deprived of their property without proper compensation. I think seeing as an absent father could be expected to pay child maintenance for a child for at least 16 years, then if he chooses not to found a family and the mother wants to keep the child, he should have to be compensated in some other way if he is being deprived of his financial property because his human right to not found a family is being broken.

European Union Law prescribes that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of sex. So by not giving men the right to abort their inseminated foetus they are being treated less favourably than women.

I think if women want the benefit of a natural man’s DNA without their full consent, then they should be responsible for the costs of maintaining the use of that DNA.

An lonely on-looker's diary - The world through the eyes of an Aspie, Bestowal, Boundlessness, Economic, Law, Socio-legal

Policy on cannabis and other recreational drugs

November 14, 2011 jonathanbishop 3 comments

My position on the manufacture and supply of cannabis and other unregulated ‘street drugs’ is now pretty simple. If we are going to allow them to be lawfully used, then regulation and not decriminalisation is the only course of action I’m willing to support.

Decriminalisation of cannabis is, in my opinion, a charter for legalising organised crime, including forced prostitution, organised paedophilia, human trafficking, etc.

Regulation would be the only realistic option, as the manufacture and distribution could be ensured to be made up of lawful activity only and could have the benefit of driving the organised criminals out of the market.

But my fourth way question is – why legalise a millennia old drug like cannabis, which has well documented risks from long-term use, when there is potential profit to be made by the pharmaceuticals designing and patenting new and safe recreational drugs? This could drive up innovation in the economy, and mean that the checks and balances in place for medical drugs could be in place for recreational drugs.

So my policy on recreational drugs is that their design, manufacture and distribution should regulated and they should only be available for sale if they pass what I call the ‘safe sex pill test’. That is, if the risks to the person using them are easily as understandable as the contraceptive pill, and pose no more harm to them than that potentially can do, then it should be available in licenced premises  for recreational use.

 

Application, Auto-Wiki, Bestowal, Consciousness, Economic, Info-scientific, Law, Notices and Announcements

The Ethics of Lying

October 26, 2011 jonathanbishop No comments

Is it ethical to lie? I get very uncomfortable if I think I have lied or been dishonest, even when I did not realise that I was being so at the time, if you understand what I mean.

I’m going to look at common situations prone to lying and look at the ethics of the situation.

Does my bum look big in this?

If a woman can get her partner to clothes shop with her it is stereotypical she asks, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’. If their partner answers ‘yes’ they have scorned, or if they answer ‘no’ and she thinks ‘yes’ they have scorned.

So is honesty the best policy? If she does actually look big it in, then to not say so could lead to her to experience harmful comments from others if she actually accepts her partner’s word. So which is the bigger hurt, the immediate telling of the truth, or the long-term consequences of withholding the truth?

The Boogie Man

Parents will often use specific characters to attempt to control their children’s behavior. For example, near Easter they may say that the Easter Bunny won’t bring their chocolate eggs if they don’t comply. They’ll say some mythical creature will come and get them near Halloween. They may even claim that they are on first person terms with Santa Clause, who won’t bring their child presents if they don’t comply.

Whether this lying is ethical might depend on the interests of the child. If they say it to the child so they get ‘out of their hair’ while they are watching TV for instance, then it might be unethical. If they use it to keep the child out of danger such as avoiding them harming themselves or others then it might be considered ethical.

But would overuse of these techniques amount to the parent offering ‘improper disincentives’ when it may be more appropriate they develop more truthful strategies?

The Public Interest

Sometimes the politicians withhold or misrepresent the best truth for their own gain. They might at other times do so because it is in the public interest, such as the times in World War II that Churchill did not intervene to prevent a bombing strike as it would have let the Germans know their code had been cracked. I would argue that the politicians who lie about or misrepresent their personal or their party’s true opinion in order to get elected or gain some other advantage should face severe penalties.

Acquisition, An lonely on-looker's diary - The world through the eyes of an Aspie, Articulation, Bestowal, Socio-legal, The Official Weblog of Jonathan Bishop

Is prostitution a human right in Europe?

September 9, 2011 jonathanbishop No comments

Prostitution is they say the oldest profession so why are so many against it? Many feminists are disgusted by other women becoming prostitutes, but are they any better wanting abortions? If feminism means women have to right to control their body by aborting a child, surely others have the right to sell their body either for sex or for photographs for lads’ mags?

Based on my interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) alone I think that it is a human right to be a prostitute or receive services from one.

The ECHR says everyone has the right to marry and to found a family. As with all European Rights they have a right not to found a family or marry. Therefore it should be a right for those outside marriage to practice their right not to found a family with the help of a prostitute.

The ECHR says we have a right to privacy. Therefore if the state interferes in our right to receive sexual services then it is infringing on our privacy, including the privacy of our home if we have call outs.

The ECHR says we have a right to associate with those we choose and to have freedom of thought conscience and religion. So if the state does not allow us to associate with prostitutes for which activity with them is on our conscience then they are denying us our human rights.

So now turning to the rights of the prostitute. Under the ECHR it is a right not to be forced or compelled to perform any particular form of labour such as forced prostitution. Therefore prostitutes have a right not to provide services. Also they have the right not to take part in inhuman or degrading treatment, which forced prostitution would be.

There is a human right not to be deprived of ones’ property. So by not allowing prostitutes to ‘live off earnings from prostitution’ then some states who prescribe this may be denying prostitutes their human rights.

 

 

Bestowal, Economic, Law, Socio-legal

Using National Insurance and the Student Loans System to Reduce Crime and Burdens on Employers while protecting Employees, the Self Employed, Agency Workers and Victims

September 8, 2011 jonathanbishop No comments

When the Coalition came in the promised no more red tape for small business owners and the self-employed of which I’m both. Then the Agency Workers Directive came in and then rather than do what the French do, which is to ‘translate’ the directive to be compatible with their ‘civil code’, which in our case would be ‘common law president’ they basically just did everything it said the way it said it. Every EU Government has the power to use ‘proportionality’ to interpret laws and the French make the biggest use of this. This basically says that any government can interpret an EU directive on the basis of what it was intended to do on no on the technical detail with which it is written.

As someone who holds a Masters in the Economics of Information Systems it is my golden rule that one should never introduce a new information system, such as a way of collecting tax, without first exhausting possibilities of expanding the use of existing information systems.

The information systems I’d like to expand are National Insurance, to reduce burden on small businesses who engage agency workers or self-employed subcontractors as well as traditional employees, and the student loan system, to replace welfare benefits and collect fines and other orders to pay money more efficiently to disincentivise crime.

I would like Employee National Insurance to be optional, with the exception of a ‘basic element’ to cover holiday pay, A&E, and other essential services. I’d like Employers NI contributions to be abolished. With this optional NI, employees would be able to subscribe to any number of social insurances that central government would provide, or not do so and take out private or people insurance with other providers such as private insurers or mutual health trusts. The social insurances NI could be used to fund are:

  •  Public health insurance (i.e. the NHS hospitals and primary care and sight tests, all prescriptions)
  • Public parental leave insurance (to replace SMP, SPP)
  • Public incapacity insurance (to replace SSP, IB, ESA)
  • Public payment protection insurance (to replace Mortgage interest relief, Job Seekers Allowance, and other costs that arise due to redundancy, etc.)
  • Public emergency relief insurance (to protect people in areas at risk of flood or victims of Acts of God that private insurance companies won’t fund, such as those in my ward of Treforest living near the River Taff).

There could be many other schemes that could be introduced, such as to provide low cost energy to vulnerable groups like pensioners or disabled. The actual payment out of these insurances could be done using the new information systems the UK Government is creating for ‘Personal Independent Payment’ to replace Disability Living Allowance. All it would mean is adding a few more categories to include non-disability related elements, such as pregnancy, maternity and paternity.

I’d like NI to be paid by and the insurances paid out to any UK citizen of working age wherever in the EU they are whether they are in work as an employee, self-employed or director, or whether they are out or work claiming welfare or in education receiving a student loan or grant.

People out of work or whose income falls below a certain amount each month, instead of being entitled to the various welfare benefits should have to take out a maintenance loan, using the information systems for the student loan scheme. They would pay their National Insurance out of this loan. All the people out of work on say incapacity benefit or ESA would have to take out this loan and each year, and like I as a student see, they will get a statement every year showing how much they were paid out and the amount of interest they are paying on it. It might be that a ‘carrot and stick approach’ could be used where those who do any work, even just a couple of hours, wouldn’t have to pay the interest. Like students they wouldn’t have to pay the loan back until their income was over 21,000GBP.

People trained in economics and IT, and who like me have been through the whole benefits and tax system, from claiming income support, incapacity benefit, housing benefit, disability living allowance, and tax credits, as well as the rest of the system paying Class 1 and 2 NI and income tax, paying dividend tax, filing VAT returns, PAYE statements, CIS statements, paying corporation tax and doing self-assessment as well as receiving student loans have a more intrinsic understanding of the system than may others who may only have been exposed to one part.

So I think great credence should be given to how I think the system could be improved with minimum cost in terms of new information system, and how to overcome the following fears which I and others have had

  • The fear of coming off benefits and going back into work in case it doesn’t work out
  • The fear of losing essential benefits like free sight-tests and prescriptions due to increased income
  • The fear of making a wrong calculation on PAYE, VAT, CIS and the 2000GBP fine that could follow
  • The fear of being fined due to errors or omissions on the complex self-assessment system
  • The fear of not being able to pay for life’s essentials due to loss of employment or being forced of benefits
  • The fear that because I have a good day where my disabilities aren’t as bad as usual that the government will use it as evidence to take all my support away

The maintenance loan could also be used as a supply side policy to get rid of rogues like loan sharks and payday loan providers. Employees who can’t afford a new washing machine or need money to pay for essentials like food should be able to use this extension of the student loan system to fund it safely then pay it back through the payroll like they would a student loan.

This maintenance loan system in place of benefits could also be used to collect fines for parking tickets, fixed penalty notices, County Court Judgments, child support and compensation payments. If someone’s maintenance loan was reduced or the ‘student loan’ component of their wages went up when the person was issued such an order then they may see the consequences of their actions more clearly and act more appropriately in future.

Bestowal, Boundlessness, Consideration, Economic, Information Technology, The Official Weblog of Jonathan Bishop
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