Category Archives: Rants&Rambles

Political, Rants&Rambles

Shiny

A recent article in the NYTimes asks: “Is America’s Military Big Enough?”

Trump has proposed a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which he said would be “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”

U.S. defense spending

Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Spending (in 2017 dollars) with POTUS changes marked

Past US administrations have increased military spending, but typically to fulfill a specific mission. Jimmy Carter expanded operations in the Persian Gulf. Ronald Reagan pursued an arms race with the Soviet Union, and George W. Bush waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Trump has not suggested a new mission that would require a military spending increase which kind of begs the question about why. Erin M. Simpson, a national security consultant, called Mr. Trump’s plans “a budget in search of a strategy.”

At $596 billion the United States has higher military spending than any other country partly because its foreign policy goals are more ambitious: defending its borders, upholding international order and promoting American interests abroad. In comparison the UK spends around $55billion

“Our current strategy is based around us being a superpower in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific,” said Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We’ve sized our military to be able to fight more than one conflict at a time in those regions.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s statements have suggested a reduced footprint for the United States military.

He criticized America’s role as a global military stabilizer. Last month, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, he said the United States had “defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open. He also called for defusing tensions with Russia, the United States’ chief military competitor. But he has also taken positions that point to a more aggressive military posture. He has advocated challenging China and Iran more directly. He wrote on Twitter that America must “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.”

These statements have left analysts unsure about the role Mr. Trump wants the United States military to play in the world.

1 Troops

The United States has approximately 1.3 million active-duty troops, with another 865,000 in reserve, one of the largest fighting forces of any country.

The United States also has a global presence unlike any other nation, with about 200,000 active troops deployed in more than 170 countries. Many are stationed in allied nations in Europe and northeastern Asia. Mr. Trump has criticized these alliances, saying the United States does too much to defend its allies. It seems unlikely, then, that Mr. Trump intends his spending increase to bolster those deployments.

“The general concept of readiness often happens without a conversation about what the forces are for,” said Benjamin H. Friedman, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “They don’t know exactly what they want to do, except that they want a bigger military.”

Mr. Trump wants to increase the number of active-duty military personnel in the Army and Marine Corps by about 70,000 — a rise of about 11% over the current total of 660,000.

The United States increased troop levels in the early 2000s for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but has scaled down as it has withdrawn from those conflicts. Mr. Trump has been critical of those missions, suggesting that he does not plan to ramp up operations in either conflict.

Gordon Adams, a former senior White House national security budget officer, said, “Unless you decide you’re going to war — and going to war soon — nobody keeps a large military.” Arguably a large military creates it’s own problems. It needs to be paid, fed and watered and kept occupied. Large groups of young fit men need active engagement if they’re not to become a social menace.

2 Air Power

The United States has around 2,200 fighter jets, including about 1,400 operated by the Air Force. Mr. Trump wants to add at least 100 more fighter aircraft to the Air Force.

Analysts informally categorize fighter aircraft by “generations” and there is a broad consensus that American aircraft are more advanced than those of other nations. The military already has plans to spend an estimated $400 billion on new F-35 fighter jets, a fifth-generation plane. But Mr. Trump has not provided any details on which programs he would expand.

Because different warplanes serve different roles at different costs, it is difficult to know what problem Mr. Trump is trying to address by adding 100 fighter aircraft.

3 Naval Power

The United States Navy has 275 surface ships and submarines. Mr. Trump wants to increase that number to 350, including two new aircraft carriers.

The new carriers would add to America’s already overwhelming advantage: More than half of the world’s 18 active aircraft carriers are in the United States Navy.

The world’s 18 active aircraft carriers, by country

In early March, Mr. Trump said that the United States Navy was the smallest it had been since World War I. Most analysts reject this comparison. Technological advances mean that individual ships are far more powerful and versatile than they were a century ago, allowing a single ship to fulfill capabilities that would have once required several ships.

Mr. Trump has not specified new missions that would require additional carriers, which could take years and billions of dollars to build. Expanding the fleet size could come at significant cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that building a fleet of around 350 ships could cost about 60 percent more per year than average historical shipbuilding budgets, with a completion date of 2046.

But a larger fleet could help reduce pressure on the Navy, according to Brian Slattery, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “They’ve had to push those deployments longer and longer because the Navy needs to be in all the same places in the world, and there are fewer ships to do it,” he said.

Others argue that the Navy’s resources are stretched because they have too many deployments and that a more modest strategy around the world would alleviate the strain. “To the extent that they are not in great shape, it’s because they have too many missions,” Mr. Friedman said.

4 Nuclear Weapons

After Mr. Trump tweeted his pledge to expand America’s nuclear capability, he told the talk-show host Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

He has not specified whether he hopes to build more warheads or develop new weapons systems for delivering them.

The United States and Russia possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear warheads, although both have reduced their arsenals under a series of treaties. Mr. Trump criticized the latest of those treaties, a 2010 agreement with Moscow called New Start, as “just another bad deal,” according to Reuters.

He has not clarified whether he will consider abrogating the treaty, which could open the way for the United States and Russia to expand their nuclear arsenals and capabilities.

Analysts say Mr. Trump’s call for a nuclear “arms race” could potentially cost billions. But as with other spending plans, he has not articulated a strategic goal.

While Mr. Trump has said that he wants to defeat the Islamic State, he has not explained how increasing the size of the military would accomplish that.

Mr. Trump’s focus on big-ticket items is mainly “useful in more conventional military campaigns,” said Michael C. Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies military leadership. “The kind of investments you would make if you were primarily focused on counterinsurgency campaigns are very different.”

Mr. Trump’s announcements appear to emphasize optics as much as strategy, Mr. Horowitz said. “To the extent that tangible pieces of military equipment symbolize strength, those are things that I think the administration is interested in investing in.” He appears more interested in buying bright and shiny toys for “show and tell”, more money spent to demonstrate size and virility?

One of the worries is that having invested all of this money, potentially buying a lot more kit, the president might feel in need of a war or similar in order to play with these new shiny toys.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Something Positive, Sort of

In many respects, the vote to leave the EU was paradoxical. It was a vote for change that made positive change harder to achieve, but change of some sort much more likely. First and foremost, our economy is in need of deep, fundamental change. During the referendum, Remain campaigners argued that things were fine when they were not and, since the result, Brexiters have argued that things will be fine when without serious change they will not be.

Even now, some Remain voters have retreated into the comforts of pointing to a base and deceitful campaign by the Brexiters, rather than seeking to define or to solve the deeper problems that led to the vote against the status quo.

At the heart of both the Leave and Remain failure is an inability to identify, acknowledge and understand the reality of daily life for many people and communities in modern Britain, the refusal to acknowledge that the current economic model is not working for many people.

It is argued that immigration has become such an important issue precisely because free movement of labour is the crucial enabler of the low skill, low productivity, low wage economic model that has been imposed on much of the country. It is this economic model – combined with the cultural and identity challenge of large-scale immigration – that has created such discontent with the status quo.

But of course, freedom of movement has had a different response in the parts of the EU. The UK’s move towards a  low skill, low productivity, low wage economic model is a very British interpretation of freedom of movement, not an inevitability. leaving the EU, is unlikely to change an economic model that the British have chosen to follow. We are now told by government representatives that immigration is unlikely to fall, unlikely in fact to change very much at all, as a result of brexit.

The version of brexit that we are heading towards is likely to deliver “more of the same” rather than addressing underlying problems within our economy.

There is of course nothing progressive about declining to invest in skills in this country, while plundering poor countries of nurses or doctors or carers and then approaching immigration as if people were commodities to be bought up on the open market.

But when challenged about the costs of Brexit, leading Leave figures continue to argue that the UK can enjoy all of the benefits of membership, such as frictionless, tariff-free access to the single market, while bearing none of the burdens. When asked about the challenges, they respond with false reassurances that everything will be fine, and nostalgia for our past, as if this is a prescription for the future.

Brexit is the summit of their ambitions for Britain, not the starting point to solve our future challenges. Indeed, it has never mattered to the Brexit campaign leaders that leaving the EU will make it harder to confront Britain’s economic and social problems.

Theresa May offered her analysis of the problems facing Britain on the steps of Downing Street moments after kissing the Queen’s hand in July. Chancellor Philip Hammond offered an “upbeat assessment” of the British economy. Just like his predecessor, Hammond chose to focus on the top-line numbers while ignoring the deeper problems below the surface.

Relatively good headline growth figures mask a more troubling story about the fundamentals of the British economy. A few quarters of reasonable economic growth serve only as a rebuke to the more alarmist predictions of Remain campaigners.

There are multiple symptoms of a distressed economy, many of which stretch back for decades. Brexit is not the cause of these problems, but it should force us to face the diagnosis. We need a new national economic policy that is pro-growth and pro-economic justice.

The first problem identified is one of investment. Investment is the engine of the economy, driving wealth and prosperity now and in the future. For a quarter of a century, the proportion of the UK economy dedicated to investment has been declining. We lag behind comparable countries in the west, and miles behind fast-growing economies in the east.

Businesses in Britain are failing to invest in order to create good quality jobs. Brexit compounds the challenge by undermining two central parts of the investment case in Britain: political stability and unfettered access to the single market of 500 million people.

Cheap and plentiful labour from across the European Union has led firms to add more workers at low cost rather than to invest in plant, machinery or new forms of automation that drive up productivity. Some British corporations appear to have given up on investment, preferring to return more cash to shareholders than to invest in the future. This has led to the rather astonishing situation where British companies have become net savers rather than borrowers.

The second major problem is poor productivity. Low investment leads in turn to low productivity, and thence to low wages. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman observed: “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.” Since the financial crisis, productivity growth in the British economy has stalled, leading to a stagnation in living standards for the majority of households.

The third problem is trade. It is all well and good to aspire to be a “great global trading nation” but today we have a massive trade deficit. If countries are queueing up for a free trade deal with Britain – and it’s not clear that they are – it is because we’re an importer, not an exporter. The last time we sold more to the rest of the world than we bought was in the mid-1990s, and sustained surpluses have not been achieved since the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Our enormous trade deficit means that the British economy is dangerously dependent on the “kindness of strangers”, who we need to sustain investment in our economy.

The difference between what we sell and earn from the rest of the world and what we buy from it has grown to 6% of the entire British economy, financed by expanding debt and selling off British assets. Were it not for the sale of ARM Holdings, Britain’s largest tech company, to Japan’s SoftBank for £24bn in July, the position would be even worse.

The fourth problem is inequality between households. In the 1980s, the gap between the richest and poorest in society accelerated rapidly, where it has stubbornly remained ever since. The richest 10% of households have incomes that are 11 times those of the poorest 10%; in France and Germany, the difference is seven-fold, and in Denmark it is five-fold.

These differences accumulate over time, meaning that there is an enormous gap in wealth as well as income.

Theresa May faces questions during the EU summit in Brussels last week.

The fifth problem is the profound regional imbalance of our economy. London is the wealthiest region in Europe and, together with the south-east of England, accounts for 40% of national output. Meanwhile, all other regions of the UK lag behind most other regions of northern Europe. Outside London and the south-east, every other region has below average productivity.

The most striking fact about these problems is that they are all of long standing, in some cases going back three or more decades. They are not temporary weaknesses in an otherwise sound model. they are not due to membership of the EU. They show that fundamental reform of the British economy is necessary.

As well as facing up to the deep and persistent problems in the economy today, we need to prepare ourselves for a decade of disruption. The changes on the horizon have the potential to reshape our economy and society – for good or for ill, depending on the quality of our response.

During the referendum campaign, there was no articulation of the challenges that we face in the decades ahead and why and how they might be easier to confront in partnership with our neighbours than alone. With better leadership, the EU might have been transformed into a safe harbour in an era of profound challenges from globalisation.

During a campaign that revealed the public’s appetite for change, Remainers had fought an uninspiring campaign for the status quo. There was no attempt to make the positive case for international co-operation. No account was given of how Britain had shaped the EU, nor any roadmap offered for how we might influence its future to better respond to the big drivers of change.

But that boat has sailed.

The first driver of change is what has been described as the fourth industrial revolution: exponential improvements in new technologies. Accelerating computing power, machine learning and artificial intelligence, automation and the “internet of things” have extraordinary power to utterly reshape how we live and work, to reorganise our social, economic and political institutions and to redistribute power and reward in society.

Without deliberate policy, technological change is likely to increase the share of rewards to those who have capital, whilst diminishing the rewards that go to workers for their labour. The rich will get richer. Moreover, the rewards for the highly skilled will continue to accelerate whilst diminishing for everyone else.

The second big driver of change is demographics. Our population will continue to grow, with the UK set to become more populous than France by 2030, and exceeding Germany’s population by 2040 to become Europe’s biggest country. At the same time, the population is set to age significantly, with a 66% increase in the number of people over the age of 75. With this change comes huge challenges in housing, health and social care. Between now and 2030, the working age population will grow by just 3%, while the number of people over 65 will increase by one third.

The continuing shift in economic power eastwards is the third driver of change. By 2030, emerging economies will have emerged: they will account for half of global output, up from a quarter today. Nearly 60% of global middle-class consumption will come from Asia, and 17 of the top 50 cities by GDP will be in China. With American leadership of the post-war global order increasingly in question, the shape of global institutions is likely to shift considerably.

The final driver of change is the new geological era we appear to have entered, where human activity has become the dominating influence on nature.

Today, we are consuming resources at 1.5 times the ability of the earth to replenish them. This requires a radical economic response in the coming decades to mitigate and reverse environmental damage. The transition towards a low-carbon world is crucial to the vision of an economy fit for the future.

There are two possible broad choices to be made in responding to these changes.

One is to embrace greater international co-operation, act in the belief that a problem shared is a problem halved; that just as capital flows and firms operate across borders, so there will be a greater premium on nation states working together in the future. That argument – the positive case for the EU – was never really put to voters. Exiting the EU makes this path significantly harder.

The other choice is to argue that the extraordinary pace of change means that it will be agility – the ability to respond rapidly and flexibly to change – that will matter. If this is true, then Britain might be better placed to prosper outside the clunky framework of European regulations and institutions. This argument was only ever made in the abstract, devoid of any substantive actions.

Yet it is precisely in their response to the challenges of the future that Brexiters reveal themselves. Lacking any substantive answers, they respond by attempting to shut down debate by condemning “remoaners”. They do not even attempt an argument that future success will be determined by the agility that Brexit might create, let alone offer meaningful ideas or proposals. In truth, their version of Britain’s future is a nostalgic past that never really existed.

We are living at a moment when an old economic settlement is in crisis, but a new settlement has yet to be formed.

The politics of the future will belong to those leaders who are prepared to face up to our present problems and future challenges – and to articulate a new destination for our economy and society. As our politicians navigate the Brexit storms, they would do well to keep an eye on the new horizons which will come to define the new era of British politics.

Political, Rants&Rambles

For whom?

Sometimes, most times these days, I’m left who brexit is for exactly. If you voted “remain” clearly it’s not for you so that’s 48% population screwed.

If you voted because of immigration, the recent White paper and comments from government minister have made clear that numbers might well rise, so that’s the 52% disappointed.

If you voted to take back sovereignty, well the shenanigans of the Tory government trying to avoid parliamentary scrutiny, have certainly disappointed, and that’s the two main reasons for anyone who voted “leave” rendered totally meaningless.

In the meanwhile, stuff people really want to happen like trade and looking after citizens located outside their place of birth, have long been sacrificed.

 

Political, Rants&Rambles

NATO

Another week another pointless argument started with America’s allies by it’s president.

The German defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, on Sunday rejected Donald Trump’s claim that Germany owes Nato and the US “vast sums” of money for defence.

“There is no debt account at Nato,” Von der Leyen said in a statement, adding that it was wrong to link the alliance’s target for members to spend 2% of their economic output on defence by 2024 solely to NATO.

“Defence spending also goes into UN peacekeeping missions, into our European missions and into our contribution to the fight against [Isis] terrorism,” Von der Leyen said.

Trump, who was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, said on Twitter on Saturday – a day after meeting the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Washington – that Germany “owes vast sums of money to Nato & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”

His words prompted criticism, also published on Twitter, from a former permanent representative to Nato under President Obama.

Ivo Daalder, permanent representative from 2009 to 2013, wrote: “Sorry, Mr President, that’s not how Nato works. The US decides for itself how much it contributes to defending Nato. This is not a financial transaction, where Nato countries pay the US to defend them. It is part of our treaty commitment.

Trump has urged  Germany and other Nato members to accelerate efforts to meet Nato’s defence spending target.

Von der Leyen said everyone wanted the burden to be shared fairly and for that to happen it was necessary to have a “modern security concept” that included a modern Nato but also a European defence union and investment in the United Nations.

German defence spending is set to rise by €1.4bn ($1.5bn) to €38.5bn ($41.4bn) in 2018 – a figure that is projected to represent 1.26% of economic output, the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has said. In 2016, Germany’s defence spending ratio stood at 1.18%.

During her trip to Washington, Merkel reiterated Germany’s commitment to the 2% military spending goal.

 Each member country pays into the NATO budget in accordance with an agreed cost-sharing formula based on relative Gross National Income (GNI).

NATO is actually divided into three different budgets:

  • civil budget
  • military budget
  • NATO Security Investment Programme (NSIP)

The USA is indeed the main contributor, around 22%. Then comes Germany (14.5%), France (11%) and UK (10.5%).

But it’s important not to conflate the money contributed towards Nato with the overall military budget of a country. The US spends a huge amount on it’s military, an amount set to rise under it’s new president according to his recently announced budget. This is a political choice, one each country is free to make or not.

A recent Wall Street Journal article conflated NATO budgeted expenses with member’s military expenditure the data can be found easily on the NATO database (Nato funding).

But of course spending a great deal on your own military escapades, does not necessarily make you useful to the defence of your allies

Just remember the huge cost of the American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This military cost is included in US military expenditure, though obviously both Germany and France, two major contributors to NATO, refused to participate in the intervention in Iraq and did not pay a dime on it.

The USA has a large military budget. It is a significant part of how the country self-identifies. It’s a political choice.

Rants&Rambles

Healthy 20

The NYTimes has just run an article suggesting the health habits worth picking up in your 20s, to serve you well in later life. It’s so obviously true that youth is wasted on the young, and also that believing themselves immortal, no 20 year old ever cared enough to take this advice, yet I will persevere and run these ideas past my daughters just in case:

 

 

Staying healthy in your 20s is strongly associated with a lower risk for heart disease in middle age, according to research from Northwestern University. That study showed that most people who adopted five healthy habits in their 20s – a lean body mass index, moderate alcohol consumption, no smoking, a healthy diet and regular physical activity – stayed healthy well into middle age.

 

So the healthy 20s list goes something like this:

Weigh yourself often – I am conflicted about this one, which probably says more about my own issues with my weight than anything to do with either healthy advice or my children. The advice given is to buy a bathroom scale or use one at the gym and weigh yourself regularly. There is nothing more harmful to long-term health than carrying excess pounds, and weight tends to creep up starting in the 20s. It is pretty easy for most people to get rid of three to five pounds and much harder to get rid of 20. If you keep an eye on your weight you can catch it quickly. At the same time, a later piece of advice is to practice portion control ie. be aware of what you’re eating and max out on the fruit and vegetables whilst moderating sweets. alcohol and processed foods. Maybe I could summarise this as “be aware”.

Learn to cook – My daughters know how to cook, how to follow recipes and how to put together a meal. They’re not experts but they’re on the path to a whole level of enjoyment. The official advice of course was less focus don enjoyment and more on “Learning to cook will save you money and help you to eat healthy. Your focus should be on tasty ways to add variety to your diet and to boost intake of veggies and fruits and other nutrient-rich ingredients”. Hmm. L:et’s add in a bit of advice to stay away from anyone who hasn’t bothered tolerant to cook. If they’re male, it speaks to an upbringing steeped in the patriarchy that no daughter of mine needs to deal with in her life. If they’re female, they’ll expect you to nurture and look after them whilst I see that as something they should do for themselves.

 

Cut back on sugar- The next advice was to try to avoid excessive simple sugar by eliminating the most common sources of consumption: 1) sugared soft drinks 2) breakfast cereals with added sugar and 3) adding table sugar to foods. My advice would probably be something along the lines of “know your sugar” ie. a bit of cake at teatime isn’t going to kill you but be aware of hidden sugar, casual pointless sugar that isn’t really adding any value such as soda drinks. Excessive sugar intake has been linked to obesity and diabetes, both of which contribute to heart disease.

 

​Live an active life – Build physical activity into your daily life. Find a way to get 20 or 30 minutes of activity each day, including riding a bike or briskly walking to work. While many people can’t find time for a scheduled exercise routine, that doesn’t mean you can’t find time to be active.

 

 ​​Eat your veg – My kids have been brought up to eat a range of vegetables and it would be sad to see that variety disappear. Nutrition science is complicated and debated endlessly, but the basics are well established: Eat plenty of plant foods, go easy on junk foods, and stay active. The trick is to enjoy your meals, but not to eat too much or too often.

 

​Adopt a post-party exercise routine – If you engage in a lot of drinking and snacking, ensure you exercise a lot to offset all those extra calories from Friday to Sunday that come with extra drinking and eating. We found in a study that on Friday through Sunday young adults consumed about 115 more calories than on other days, mainly from fat and alcohol.

 

​Find a job you love- Ohio State University research found that work life in your 20s can affect your midlife mental health. People who are less happy in their jobs are more likely to report depression, stress and sleep problems and have lower overall mental health scores. I want my kids to find a job they feel passionate about. This passion can keep them motivated, help them find meaning in life, and increase expectations about their future. That in turn will make them more engaged in life and healthier behaviors, which will have long term benefits for their well-being.

 

Rants&Rambles

Divorce

All of my life I have worried about money, not in a “desperate to make it” kind of way, but rather desperate to have enough, just enough. And then you ask yourself what enough might mean and for me, the answer has always been “enough to walk away”

Money is a means to an end, and the end is independence. When I tell my partner that everyday I wake up and decided whether to stay or to leave, he laughs. Various friends and acquaintances are shocked or even horrified, and I’ve never really understood why. Surely at some level this is something we should all be doing, would all be doing if we felt we had a real choice. Who wants to share their life with a partner forced into keeping them company? What would that say about them and their relationship, less a partnership than a commercial enterprise.

And now with a friend trapped in a loveless marriage, not by money but by ties to her children, I’m made aware that money cannot of course solve all of the problems. She loves her children, not so much the husband who (for all she makes reasoned explanations of his behaviour, stress, pressure at work, sick parents) treats her like shit on his shoe far to often. Her own parents divorced when she had just gained independence and she found it traumatic. She wants to delay that trauma for her children until they’re older, until at least they have left home for university.

And so she puts up with him. She tells me it’s not so bad “He’s away a lot” and the rest of her life, the bit without him in it, is good. But she also worries that her kids will start to normalise their father’s behaviour and see this as an acceptable way to treat women, that the violent arguments when he’s around will impact their own emotional well-being. Is it better to stay or make the break, for the sake of the children?

When her youngest boy starts to swear at her and treat her with contempt, is it teenage hormones or a child copying the way he see’s his father behaving? When she points out to the child that he doesn’t like it when his dad treats him like this (apparently not uncommon) so why would he behave this way to her, he apologises and they move on. Is it enough to call it out for what it is, family bullying, a pattern of behaviour you don’t want to travel down the generations?

When her oldest boy is stressed out by exam pressure compounded by his father’s extreme expectations (Oxford Maths or a failure) and seems to be suffering from an eating disorder, what do you do? Is it better to hope that he succeeds and gets out of the house to sunny Oxford, or that it all fucks up early and he get’s some help in rebuilding himself the way he’s happy with not his father’s mini-me?

Four years is a long time to live miserably.

His retirement is just around the corner. Will it make the situation bitter or worse? Without the kudos of a big, well-paying job, what will this mean little man do to prop up his ego? He could just relax into the swing of his “third-age” playing golf, taking up some voluntary work and chilling out. It might well be the making of him and possibly his marriage.

I couldn’t forgive him. I couldn’t let go of the spite, the nastiness. Not for ten years or more. Whatever the reason, and I’m sure he has many, there’s no need to bundle up all of that anger and use it to hit out emotionally at your partner, your helpmeet and friend.

I couldn’t stay, not for a week never mind four more years.

At least when it’s over, she has enough money to walk away. Most women don’t.

Barbara Reeves, a partner at Mishcon de Reya, has decades of experience in family law. She says risk is inevitable in divorce – and managing it is crucial. “There is a perception that women in England do well out of divorce – with London being described as the world’s divorce capital,” she said. “But it’s important to remember that if this is the case, it is only so for the wives of the super-wealthy. The reality for most women is that they have often created homes, raised children and supported their partners while their own careers have stood still, or progressed at a considerably slower rate.

“The money these women could have earned – and consequently their potential to save for their own future long-term needs, including retirement – has been significantly compromised.

“Divorce has always been a daunting prospect for the financially weaker party, and historically this has been the woman. It is not so much the cost of the proceedings that is daunting – but the aftermath. As the CII report shows, typically it’s women who absorb the risk: those in middle age can find themselves unemployable in an industry they may have thrived in before their marriage and/or having children.

“Once their children have grown up and any maintenance payments begin to dry up, they are often forced to rely on state provision. As Sian Fisher of the CII points out in the report, the historic support systems are receding: ‘We’re all expected to look after ourselves. On top of this, [women] may be caring for elderly parents and contending with their own mental or physical health issues.’ ”

But Reeves adds: “Divorce is a far less daunting prospect for women than non-marital separation: we still see women who have spent decades as a homemaker, raising children … being forced to walk away at the end of their relationship with nothing. If she was married, the ‘homemaker’ has a right to share a partner’s pensions. However, this is a share of the pension assets at the time of the divorce.

“Following divorce, the financially stronger party – historically the man – can continue to earn at his full earning potential and top up his pension pot; meanwhile, the woman may have a reduced earning potential following years out of the employment market while she was building the home and bringing up children. And for women who are unmarried, there is no entitlement to a share in their former partner’s pension. Risk is inherent in relationships for women. While the gender pay gap between men and women in their 20s has closed, the gap opens and widens in later years – in quite a significant part because of women taking time out of employment to have families.”

A relationship, she went on, is the biggest financial risk women take. “Any woman embarking on a relationship should at least hear the facts and be aware of the risk she is adopting.”

Political, Rants&Rambles

Looking Forward

By the end of this month, perhaps as early as next week, the prime minister will have signed and dispatched a letter notifying the European Council of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union through the provisions of article 50 of the Lisbon treaty. There will be no turning back. The most serious negotiation in our post-war history will commence. It must conclude within two years – unless the remaining EU member states determine that the negotiating period can be extended. It will shape our new settlement for decades to come.

It has been suggested that there is a 50:50 chance that no deal will be struck and the UK will bounce out of the EU onto WTO rules only. The UK government as represented by David Davis and Boris Johnson could not even bring themselves to agree as to whether any contingency plans for WTO rules were being in put in place on Sunday.

At this juncture in our history, we face a crucial choice. Will this be a moment for national renewal, where we courageously confront our problems, or will we simply attempt to muddle through? Nothing would be more British than the latter – and that would appear to be where both sides of the Brexit divide are taking us. I am now entirely convinced that whilst we are where we are, none of the leading “out” campaigners currently in government, and certainly none of those in government who campaigned to remain, believe that brexit is going to be good for the country.

As time has passed, committed brexit campaigners such as David Davis and Liam Fox, have come face to face with the many many complexities staring them in the face as part of the negotiations, not least of which is managing the still rand expectations of some Tory back-benchers.

So if the government is increasing aware of the looming disaster, and is with the best intentions set upon mitigating the disaster whilst delivering on the referendum mandate, what happens next?

We muddle through. We pay the price for a poor decision to call a simple referendum on a complex questions after years of demonising and blaming the EU for UK government mistakes and unpopular decisions.

But there is also a case for the other approach – for using Brexit as a moment to bring about the change that Britain needs. If we are to embark on fundamental changes, we must first frankly acknowledge our problems. The rancour over the referendum, plus the fundamental ambivalence by the people who won the vote makes the acknowledgment of problems near impossible but it is the only way to make something positive, to turn the sow’s ears into silk.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Elite

There was an excellent article in the Spectator by Matthew Parrish that I have decided to take to heart. I have decided to enjoy brexit going forward. This does not mean I agree that it was a good idea, in any way shape or form. I think we’re fucked. I genuinely believe that we have taken a turn in the wrong direction and millions of British citizens will be poorer as a result.

But that’s not on me. That’s entirely the responsibility of those people who voted “leave” and I’m not one of them.

So when the discussions turn to the rights or otherwise of British citizens living in the EU, I am calm. I have done my best for them. I voted “remain” to maintain their rights so the current turbulence, the lack of security and serenity is entirely due to “leave” voters.

Maybe all of the many many pitfalls and pratfalls I see opening up in front of our country will never come to pass. It’s possible that pessimism is overstated.

But each and every time something goes wrong, I can clearly and easily acknowledge the fact that this is not my doing. I did not vote for this. And if you did, well shame on you because you were definitely warned.

Rants&Rambles

Best Intentions

The Comptroller and Auditor General in the UK and England is an old post that came into being in 1866. Now as the 17th occupant of the office,  is to head the National Audit Office (NAO) and to support Parliament in holding government to account for how departments and agencies spend public money.  He has just published a report on the LSE site

He explored some of the elements of strategic financial management and planning, a potentially dry topic but ultimately one that determines success in any major government reform programmes. His specific context was how central government introduces reforms to locally delivered services so as to achieve its policy objectives, and the effect of its approach on funding, budgeting and efficiency.

There is a strong case for considering this area in the light of recent practical experience, alongside the problems created by a lack of joined-up thinking.

He said nothing particularly surprising, or anything that any of the senior figures involved would argue with, though they might not like his conclusion. He did not challenge any policy objectives nor the basic principle of seeking to use public resources as efficiently as possible and make economies where possible. He talked about the ‘how’, not the ‘what’ – in short: intelligent implementation and its context of budgeting and funding.

He set out the fundamental issue. The examples of connected systems used were local government, adult social care (delivered by local government) and the National Health Service in England.

The policy background is that since 2010 central government in Whitehall has been progressively ‘freeing’ local government from central government by first the push for localism and culminating in financial self-sufficiency; then English devolution plans to transfer more services to local government, including health, along the lines of the ‘Greater Manchester model’; and there has been a desire to drive up quality and manage the health needs of an aging population.

Underlying everything has been the Government’s austerity agenda.

Joined-up decision-making and funding arrangements between connected systems – central government and local bodies for instance – have often been missing, leading to deleterious consequences. Within these connected systems, this gives rise to:

  • unforeseen conflicting objectives for local bodies;
  • cost shunting between parts of connected systems; and ultimately
  • risks of financial, or service, failure locally.

Central government has been slow to adjust – often acting only when serious failure occurs.

Part of the reason for this is an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ culture. It is relatively easy to for central decision-makers to allocate savings to be made by those operating outside a department’s boundary or with a different mandate, without necessarily understanding their effect. When public sector decision-makers are making big decisions and cost reductions, they need to be able to validate those decisions very well and they haven’t.

Decision-makers have an obligation to have good evidence, to have explored the secondary effects of their potential decision, and to have explored the downsides. They need to take a ‘one government’ approach – including local government – to managing the overall government finances for the best overall outcomes. Without this, the consequences of hasty decision-making have come home to roost, sometimes quite quickly.

Local government

He looked at some examples. Since 2010 central government has progressively cut support to local government, meanwhile giving it new powers including a general power of competence under the Localism Act. More recently, DCLG took the first steps towards local government retaining 100% of business rates by the end of this Parliament, making local government ‘financially self-sufficient’.

But the ability to retain local taxes must be set against background where local authority spending power – covering the day-to-day costs of running services – fell by around 25% in real terms from 2010 to 2016, with another 6% cut in spending power planned up to 2020.

The inference and expectation was that there is waste in local government so more could be delivered for less, and local government will be able to generate its own income through fees, charges and commercialisation schemes.

At the beginning, local government responded with new, more efficient ways to deliver services. However, over time this has shifted from ‘more for less’ to ‘less for less’.

This is because, during this progressive reduction in funding, there has been no evidence-based effort to reconcile funding to local needs. The policy objectives for local government and the local government statutory duties have not been properly weighted against potential efficiency savings. The 2015 Spending Review made some headway here but it was not a comprehensive approach. Accordingly, what we see are ‘deficit behaviours’ such as:

  • the invisible rationing of services; and
  • quiet drops in service quality.

Users are now coming into the system later with greater needs. These are local councils’ only real options to square the circle as they are prevented by law from going into financial deficit or to borrow to fund revenue spending. This has obvious direct effects on service users, but also reduces local government resilience, and its ability to contribute discretionary resources to central initiatives, however attractive. But those ‘deficit behaviours’ are hidden, since there are few local government sector-wide leading indicator statistics to give a clear indication that the system is in distress and where the gaps in services are occurring.

NAO reports into this area tell us that there have been large, real-terms, planned reductions in spending between 2010 and 2015, for instance reductions of:

  • 36% for cultural services;
  • 47% for housing services; and
  • 53% for planning and development.

Once funding passed directly to schools is removed, it becomes clear, however, that local authority expenditure is dominated by social care for both children and adults. Local authorities have also sought to protect spending on social care because of the high number of statutory responsibilities that they have.

Nevertheless, there has been an overall 7% real-terms reduction in spending on adult social care by local authorities between 2010 and 2015. And areas with the greatest needs lost the most. Besides the direct effect on care service users, this reduction has a destructive effect on the NHS, which is, in part, highly connected to the social care system.

Costs are effectively being shunted from one part of the connected system to another. For instance, hospitals’ ability to discharge patients with care needs on time is affected when patients who are not supported to live independently tumble into A&E and acute health provision – a leading indicator of primary care and social care shortfalls.

That is not the whole story for the health care system however. Since the introduction of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 – the Lansley reforms – there have been significant changes to the NHS. These were, and are, aimed at improving patient care at a time of rising demand.

Again, in addition to the reforms themselves, this was at a time when there was, as with local government, an agenda of increased financial pressures arising from austerity. And again, the implication – that there was slack in system and more efficiencies were possible.

For the NHS, this came in the form of the ‘Nicholson challenge’, named after the former NHS chief, Sir David Nicholson. The parameters of the ‘Nicholson challenge’ collectively added up to a demand for the NHS to find £20 billion in efficiency savings by 2015 to close the gap between need and available funding.

The latest iteration of which is the Five Year Forward View, which assumes that the NHS will deliver a further £22 billion of efficiency savings out of a flat real budget. Initially the Government had an efficiency target of 4% but this was reduced to 2% in 2016-17 – which was deemed a more reasonable requirement.

Nevertheless, over the entire period, the financial position of NHS bodies has continued to decline.

The number of trusts in deficit has steadily risen. 66% of NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts are now in deficit. Ironically, these trusts were selected a few years ago for foundation status because NHS England assessed them as independently financially viable.

Where deficits become the norm, trust managers no longer feel ‘singled out’ and they probably worry more about the hard-nosed judgements delivered on health care standards by Care Quality Commission.

The Care Quality Commission has led a drive to name hospitals that were not operating to the right standards. In these circumstances, unreconciled pressures face hospital chief executives, many of who are highly experienced, highly skilled managers. The implementation approach for both efficiencies and reforms did not take a full and realistic account of the context within which the healthcare system was operating. The implementation approach also failed to consider the result of other policies being put into effect simultaneously.

As early as 2014 there were a number of ‘leading indicator’ statistics – including cancer referral to treatment times and ambulance response times falling below national standards – showing the system is quite clearly struggling to cope. In short, service standards are under strain, as is the financial sustainability of our health care system.

Rather than heed the early warning signs, however, ministers appeared largely to plough forward with their efficiency regime. The government introduced a range of further initiatives that it wants the NHS system to take on-board, including the seven-day service and new strategies for cancer and mental health. All of these may be, no doubt, good ideas and desirable developments. But they represent signals to build demand in a system already under severe resource pressure.

There has been no real dialogue between central government and healthcare bodies regarding the mix between rationing, efficiencies and services provided. The health service has, in fairness, attempted to do this with Sustainability and Transformation Plans for 2017-18, and this is accompanied by a front end boost in spending. This might have the effect of stabilising NHS England but the Plans, or Proposals as they are now called, are built around a forcing strategy rather than consensus. If they do not meet NHS England’s requirements in terms of matching demand with resource the trusts will lose money.

The political assumption remains that there is excess capacity that can be taken out of the system – or that demand can be made to fit the resources available. Perhaps such a position was true at a certain point, but who believes that it remains true? When was the clear point at which the number of trust in deficit became untenable and the system moved into a state of distress?

Of course, the centre of government cannot avoid making informed assumptions about efficiencies that may be available. However, they can do much more to understand how these assumptions are likely to affect government’s objectives, and to promptly manage major risks. That is why many of the recent audit reports highlighted the need to identify critical assumptions, work through their implications and monitor them closely. That is also why, since 2014, there have been a series of reviews of the financial sustainability of local services, including reports on local authorities, police forces, fire and rescue services and the health service. The aim has been both to help central government understand how changes in responsibilities and funding are affecting local services and to help identify and share good practice.

As an aside, it seems likely that the education system may be the next to experience these pressures. Schools have to make £3 billion in efficiency savings by 2020 against a background of growing pupil numbers and a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil. I hope that this will be much more closely monitored and managed.

Almost every conversation these days is dominated by brexit, but the implications will be felt long and wide. First, local bodies could be put under further resource pressure by the loss of EU funding streams to local areas with no specific plan so far to replace them.

Second, Brexit is highly likely to divert senior talent time and attention in quite a number of departments, never mind the diversion of talent into the main Brexit department and multiple trade deal negotiations of the future. In all likelihood, this means less senior talent time for resolving funding and reform challenges for local bodies.

Finally – and this hardly needs saying – local services are, to a significant degree, depending on workers from EU countries. Without EU doctors and care workers there could be further strain on the system unless alternative arrangements are in place.

Those in the centre can be a lot more agile about getting out of their silos and understanding the complex interlocking reform environment, recognising negative trends, and shifting their position quickly to limit damage.

In the examples described the reaction from central government has been slow, perhaps because of silo problems between spending departments and the Treasury, and there has been little real change of direction. Did the centre know, do they know now, when the boundary between mainly efficiencies, more for less, was crossed and we started into the territory of less for less?

Central savings may have been secured, but significant damage has been done.