Brian Rushton Local motion

Brian Rushton,

All change, pet

MORE people in England travel to work by bus than by all other forms of public transport combined—about 12% of the working population. Bus passengers make 5 billion journeys a year, three times as many as train passengers. And yet English buses are spluttering.

Outside booming London, bus passenger journeys have fallen by 37% over the past three decades. Critics believe that deregulation has played a part in the decline: in 1986 Margaret Thatcher privatised the then publicly run bus networks outside the capital. Several commercial bus companies have come to dominate parts of England and Wales, and their fares have increased by at least 35% more than inflation between 1995 and 2013. “There can be few business sectors where profits continue to rise while customer numbers fall so significantly,” says Nick Forbes, leader of Newcastle city council.

So he, and others, are trying to re-regulate their regional networks. The aim is not renationalisation but taking control of the franchising of routes run by commercial operators. Recent commitments by the government to regional devolution have...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Little Satan leverages hell

Brian Rushton,

Satan’s little helper

ON AUGUST 23rd Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, reopened Britain’s sumptuous embassy in Tehran. It was a highly symbolic act. The embassy had remained closed since 2011, when it was stormed by angry protesters demonstrating against sanctions. Now Britain, like other Western countries, is anxious to resume relations, after a deal was reached curbing Iran’s nuclear programme six weeks ago in Vienna. Most sanctions are expected to be lifted in a few months, after the first stages of the deal are completed and verified. There was much talk of starting new chapters in Anglo-Iranian relations, both in Tehran and London, where the Iranian embassy to the Court of St James’s was also reopened.

Yet no one is under any illusion that relations will just return to normal, as they might do for other European countries. The embassy in Tehran abounds with reminders of this abnormality, such as the graffiti on the wall left behind from four years ago, including “Death to England” scrawled above a portrait of the queen. The main road outside is named after Bobby Sands, an IRA member who died on hunger...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Too good to be true

Brian Rushton,

WITH his promises to introduce a “maximum wage”, nationalise energy companies and even reopen coal mines, one might not expect Jeremy Corbyn to enjoy much support among economists, at least this side of Moscow. But the socialist MP, who looks likely to be elected leader of the Labour Party on September 12th, has been shoring up his economic credentials. His team has produced a letter from “leading economists” (including a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary-policy committee) backing his anti-austerity stance. Some of his less bombastic policies—including reforming the tax system and printing money to boost investment—sound plausible. Should people take Corbynomics more seriously?

Mr Corbyn is not alone in questioning the priority given to cutting the budget deficit, which stands at 5% of GDP. Many economists accept that five years of budget cutting have acted as a straitjacket on growth. Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford University reckons that a conservative estimate for the cumulative cost of austerity would be 5% of GDP, or nearly £100 billion (about $150 billion). Debate rumbles on as to whether it was, nonetheless, necessary.

Mr Corbyn’s emphasis on boosting investment also meets with approval from many analysts. As a percentage of GDP, Britain’s government investment is the seventh-lowest of 26 countries tracked by Eurostat...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Pouring in

Brian Rushton,

In the summer when it drizzles

ON A gloomy Wednesday morning, the threat of yet another torrential downpour does little to halt the flow of tourists into the British Museum, the country’s most popular attraction. Visitors march in, a mass of fluorescent waterproof jackets huddled under flimsy umbrellas. It is on such fortitude that the British travel industry runs.

Despite the near certainty of inclement weather, tourism is in rude health. Following four years of growing visitor numbers, 16.8m people journeyed to Britain in the first six months of 2015, the best first half of a year on record. Domestic holidays have also become more common. Since the recession, which encouraged people to save money by heading to Torquay rather than Tuscany, holidaymakers have developed a taste for staying in Britain, says Louise Stewart of VisitEngland, the national tourist board. Hotels are making the most of the extra demand: the average price of a room is 3.4% higher than last year, according to STR Global, a research firm.

But things could be better still, claim critics. Although the number of global tourists has grown by an...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton The statecraft of Davela Merkeron

Brian Rushton,

WHILE wandering in the Peloponnesian countryside, Philopoemen, an Achaean general, would gesture to folds in the landscape and ask his friends: “If the enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here with our army, with whom would be the advantage?” Machiavelli cites this in “The Prince”, his treatise on power, to support his argument that a leader should remain on a war footing during peacetime. Without acting as if an enemy is always over the next hill, he argues, the prince will lose the discipline and loyalty of his sergeants and people. He will lose his edge.

Bagehot commends the example to David Cameron, whose Conservative party is without significant external foe. On August 25th a poll by ComRes put it on 42%, its best result since 2010. The Labour Party is tearing itself apart and will imminently make Jeremy Corbyn, an unelectable albatross, its leader. Even the right-populists of UKIP are mired in infighting. For the first time in his decade-old leadership of the Tories, Mr Cameron is experiencing something that only two other recent prime ministers (Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair) have known: hegemony.

Yet political dominance is...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Turned out not so nice

Brian Rushton,

No silver linings

SOME partnerships are regarded as so sacrosanct that they are expected to survive hurricanes, tsunamis and other acts of God. And so it was with two venerable British institutions—the BBC and the national meteorological office. The Met Office, founded in 1854, has provided every forecast on the Beeb since the first one in 1922, giving British people the information they need each day to avoid talking about anything meaningful with people of other social classes.

But on August 23rd the BBC announced that the Met Office had not made it to the final round of the tendering process to provide forecasts from next year. Reports suggest the finalists are a Dutch and a New Zealand company.

The BBC says it is “legally required to go through an open tender process” to secure the best value for money for its licence fee, the tax levied on television owners to fund it. “This is disappointing news,” said Steve Noyes of the Met Office, with understatement.

Experts were less restrained. “It’s terrible news. The Met Office predictions are among the most accurate in the world,” says Grant Allen...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Pay-as-you-go government

Brian Rushton,

IN A court in Highbury, north London, a resigned-looking 59-year-old with a thick beard and alcohol on his breath pleads guilty to assault. The judge hands down a fine of £65 ($100), but waives the offender’s obligation to contribute to prosecution costs: his weekly disposable income is just £40 in welfare payments, after he pays the rent in the supervised hostel where he lives. But the judge has no discretion over a “criminal courts surcharge” of £150, an innovation introduced in April. Had the man pleaded not guilty and then been convicted, the charge would have risen to £520, or £1,000 had the crime been a more serious offence. The Ministry of Justice expects the new charge to bring in up to £85m a year.

Strapped for funds, central government departments and local councils are scrabbling to find new ways to balance their books. Ministries outside the departments for health and education have seen their budgets cut by an average of nearly one-quarter since 2010–11. Local councils have seen 37% of their central government funding disappear. And that is just the beginning: departments have been asked to find further savings of up to 40%, as...Continue reading

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