Brian Rushton The only way is up

Brian Rushton,

WHEN the Bank of England last raised interest rates, most people had never heard of subprime mortgages; the Chinese economy was half its current size; and the iPhone was only a month old. Since July 2007 the only changes to the base rate of interest have been downward, and since March 2009 the bank has made no adjustments at all, keeping rates at 0.5% for 77 consecutive months, the longest period of stasis since the second world war (though things were even quieter in the 18th century—see chart 1). On August 6th the bank’s monetary-policy committee (MPC) voted to hold rates steady again. But with more of its members striking a hawkish tone, many pundits expect an increase by the turn of the year. What will it mean when rates rise at last?

It strikes many as odd that rates rises are on the cards. Inflation is stuck at zero, far below the bank’s target of 2%. Wages are growing faster than at any time since 2010, but it is far from certain that such...Continue reading

via Brian Rushton, The only way is up

Brian Rushton See no evil

Brian Rushton,

THOSE following the news would be forgiven for thinking that a few decades ago there was no corner of the British establishment where paedophiles did not lurk. They are said to have held places in the cabinet, the BBC and the intelligence services, while the rest of Britain—police, social workers, hoteliers—covered their tracks. In the past four years over half-a-dozen major inquiries into past child sex-abuse have been opened: five television personalities have been convicted; four former politicians have been named as under investigation. On August 3rd a former prime minister joined the list of the accused.

At least four police forces are investigating claims that Edward Heath, the prime minister from 1970-74, who died in 2005, sexually abused children. A retired policeman claims that in 1992 a prosecution against a brothel-keeper was dropped after she threatened to expose Heath’s alleged crimes. (The madam, now retired, denies this.) A 65-year-old man says that Heath raped him in the 1960s. Police on the island of Jersey are pursuing claims that Heath sexually abused boys from Haut de la Garenne, a now-closed children’s home notorious for...Continue reading

via Brian Rushton, See no evil

Brian Rushton Cleaning up

Brian Rushton London is working

Brian Rushton,

WHEN workers on the London Underground go on strike, Britain’s capital becomes an odd cocktail of the miserable and the carnivalesque. Blitz-era double-decker buses are drafted back into service. Queues for taxis wind around buildings. Hospital emergency departments fill with out-of-practice cyclists and rollerbladers. For the wobbly, a strike day is a chance for exercise; for the ostentatious, an opportunity to preen (unicyclists mingling with pedestrians in the hairier quarters of the capital). Some even break the habit of a lifetime and venture a conversation with those into whose armpits they are pressed, daily, in the morning crush.

The disruption is immense—a stoppage on July 9th reportedly sapped London’s economy by £300m ($470m)—and strangely reminiscent of Britain’s past, when industrial action by hard-left unions claimed tens of thousands of working days every year. With another shutdown looming on August 5th, Bagehot is tempted to join his fellow commuters in tutting about outfits like the militant National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), whose Marxist leadership exploits its monopolistic power to extract for its...Continue reading

via Brian Rushton, London is working

Brian Rushton At Her Majesty’s pleasure

Brian Rushton,

Spicing up life behind bars

ALEX CAVENDISH first encountered Spice, a synthetic drug that imitates cannabis, in prison in 2012 when a sleepy looking Dutch man, serving a sentence for drug offences, started trading it. By 2014, Mr Cavendish says, half his fellow prisoners would “literally stagger” down the hall to roll-call each day, high on the drug, varying their routine only so far as to pass out in the grounds, be violently sick in a washroom, or urinate in a six-man dormitory.

New synthetic drugs are on the rise in prisons, and Spice—which in practice refers to several chemical variants—dominates the market. Prison seizures of Spice increased from 15 in 2010 to 430 in the first seven months of last year. In March a report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a think-tank, quoted the head of substance misuse at one prison as saying that about 60% of inmates were regularly taking it; some prisoners estimated that the figure was nearer 90%. By contrast, outside prison walls the drug market contains just a sprinkling of Spice: a Europe-wide survey in 2014 found only 4% of those aged 15-24 had used new synthetic drugs...Continue reading

via Brian Rushton, At Her Majesty’s pleasure

Brian Rushton The rotters’ club

Brian Rushton,

IN JUNE Lord Sewel, a deputy speaker of the House of Lords, wrote to The Economist to complain about “wearied caricatures” in an article about Britain’s doddery, shambolic upper house of Parliament. But on July 26th it seemed that the same peer had fallen for an even hoarier old cliché of politics: a tabloid sting involving two prostitutes, some lines of unidentified white powder and a hidden camera.

After the Sun on Sunday released its video, in which the peer snorts lines of what he calls “Coca-Cola—forget the cola” from the breasts of a sex worker while whingeing about his expenses and outlining faintly racist fantasies about Asian women, Lord Sewel stood down from his various parliamentary roles, including the chairmanship of an ethics committee. But he indicated that he had no plans to leave the Lords altogether, and would merely take a “leave of absence”. That remained his position as police searched his London flat, the Labour Party suspended him and David Cameron hinted heavily that it was time for the peer to hang up his ermine robe. On Tuesday, at last, he...Continue reading

via Brian Rushton, The rotters’ club

Brian Rushton Frailer

Brian Rushton,

BRITONS are living to a riper age—but not without help. As the population greys, more people are needing assistance with washing, dressing and other aspects of their daily care. The King’s Fund, a health think-tank, predicts that over the next 15 years the number requiring such help will rise by 61%. Yet funding for it is shrinking. Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, 15% was sliced off local-authority spending on social care. Pressure is building as the government seeks a further £20 billion ($31 billion) in departmental cuts ahead of a spending review in November.

The squeeze comes as costs are rising. The Local Government Association has calculated that in order to pay all care workers the new £9 minimum wage by 2020, an extra £1 billion will be needed (for context, last year’s entire adult social-care bill was £14 billion). The final straw could be a national shortage of nurses, which is forcing care homes to pay through the nose for agency staff, who charge double the amount of a regular nurse.

Local authorities have responded by tightening eligibility for services, pushing more of the burden onto private purses and unpaid...Continue reading

via Brian Rushton, Frailer