Davy Jones Consultancy

I am struggling to understand something. Let me run it by you and see if you can help.

The much-lauded private sector, in the shape of the banks, has through incompetence, irresponsibility and greed, caused the biggest international financial crisis for 50 years. The public sector, in the shape of Governments, has bailed out the private sector with squillions and squillions of pounds. And the consensus across the main political parties is that the way out of this financial crisis is ........to slash the public sector ! And then, to force the public sector to farm more work out to........ the private sector !

The logic is baffling !

I put this paradox to a Tory MP recently and while "he understood my point", he lamented that Governments could not control the private sector, so the public sector would have to suffer. Well, I think it is intellectually bankrupt to suggest that governments simply have to go along with whatever the private sector says or does.

Rather than bail out the banks, nationalise them. Make them work FOR the taxpayers, not against them. Use them to fund a huge EXPANSION of the public sector rather than cuts. The banks could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, supporting a real green new deal of essential public works such as home insulation and public transport programmes. We could se control of the banks to transform the role of the post office into a local bank at the heart of every local community.

And while we are about it, use our control of the banks to pull the plug on all the morally and environmentally irresponsible investments these banks are making around the world.

Next time, you get a lecture from a (private sector) consultant or media pundit about how the public sector needs to learn from the private sector about efficiency and value for money, just repeat after me: "BANKERS" !

Economy and State

The latest intellectual offering from David Cameron argues for less government or more self-reliance, a smaller state and more social capital. Many of us will recognise much of his diagnosis of the problem. But in arguing over the size of the state, he implies that the economy is neutral. It is not. The capitalist economy by its nature causes inequality, by its nature is in conflict with the views and aspirations of citizens, by its nature reinforces individualism and competition rather than collective approaches and social capital. It's the economy, stupid !