Travel

Peru: Callao, Lima

 So we flew in, stayed overnight at the airport hotel (just across a zebra crossing from the airport terminal) and on the way back from la Paz, were left with just 6 hours to kill, too short a time for the more traditional tourist neighbourhood of Miraflores.
& that is how we arrived on a walking (and lunching) tour of Callao.
callao-monumental-4The port district of Callao was founded in 1537 by Spanish colonists and quickly became the principle port for Spanish commerce in the Pacific. At the height of the Spanish Viceroyalty, almost all goods from Peru, Argentina and Bolivia bound for Spain passed through Callao, and then on to Panama before the Atlantic crossing.
It flourished in the 19th century, which saw the building of grand plazas and South America’s first railway. Its fortunes began to decline in the 20th century and historical monuments, such as the Real Felipe fortress, Plaza Grau and other architectural gems seemed destined for oblivion.

A sign on the streets of Callao reads, Del puñal al pincel (from dagger to paintbrush). A couple of years ago, few visitors to Peru would have set foot here.

More than just down-at-heel, this main port district of Lima was downright dangerous, notorious as a haunt of gangs smuggling cocaine worldwide.

From an era of economic boom and the affluence that comes with it, Callao had suffered progressive economic decline in the ensuing years. Basically the area became, and still shows more than a few signs of being a slum.

You would not choose to walk around it alone of a night. But projects like Callao Monumental are at least trying to bring regeneration and visitors to the area, so it’s a great time to visit the fresh and edgy district as part of any tailormade trip Peru.

Callao Monumental is an art project, showcasing some of the country’s best street art, contemporary galleries and artists. It showcases contemporary urban art, champions local artists and engages with the community through its outreach and regeneration work. The hero of the initiative is an Israeli. Roughly translating as shooting star, “Fugaz” is a private initiative by an Israeli businessman and art lover, which aims to restore Callao through art and culture, and offers locals an alternative to a life of theft and drug trafficking.

The transformation began with 18 artists, 15 walls and one fractured community. “We didn’t want the locals to feel like we were invading; we wanted them to join in. Especially as Callao is the only place in Lima where, when you die, a graffito of your face is painted on the grave,” Angie Pelosi from Fugaz told me.

The heart of the project is located in the historic Ronald Building, a covered market built by a British engineer, and renovated specifically for this project. It consists of six floors of independent restaurants, artesanal fabric boutiques, galleries and studio spaces for resident artists.

It provides a starting point, plus an opportunity for retail therapy, lunch or just a cup of coffee and sit down after a walk around the barrio.

  • callao monumental

On the ground floor, you walk through an impressive arcade of galleries and boutiques. The high vaulted stained glass roof allows light to pour in and reflect off the white marble floors. Wondering up through the maze of hidden staircases and corridors you discover exhibitions of paintings, photography and installation art.

Interior of design store Balkanica, Callao.

On a busy Friday we came across resident artists at work, setting up for a photography exhibition, chatting with them about their work.

 

callao monumental

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All six floors of the crumbling Casa Ronald, built in the early 20th century by English-educated financier Guillermo Ronald, with cathedral-high ceilings and marble columns, has been restored by Fugaz and transformed into an arts hub.
Elsewhere in Callao, independent galleries such as Evolución and Bufeo have opened, design stores including Lima Modern and Balkanica are moving in, and leading sculptor Victor Delfin has set up shop there.While artworks costing hundreds of dollars are aimed at the wealthy Limeños who are now discovering this formerly no-go barrio, the galleries all commit to working with the community and employing local people. Young chalacos work as guides and can attend creative workshops, life-coaching talks, Muay Thai classes for those that perform well at school and English lessons.

callao-monumental-6There is also a rooftop terrace, well worth a stop for the spectacular view of the surrounding area, including the harbour and the modern commercial port, the naval base and the historic Real Felipe fortress.At the weekends, when the community project tends to arrange more events, there’s a bar up there and sometimes live music – a great spot for a sun downer, taking in the view.

  • callao monumental
  • callao monumental
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  • callao monumental

callao monumental

callao monumental

Murals by local and international street artists now grace the walls but that was only the beginning of the new face of Callao Monumental, the historic centre. Artists, businesspeople and chalacos, as Callao residents are called, have all got involved: they include grandmother Cristina, whose children are all in prison, and Luis, better known as El Padre, who takes in street children.

An exhibition inside Casa Ronald, an early 20th-century townhouse that has been restored as an arts hub

 

A mural painting with crouching figure in Callao, Lima

The change in Callao has been remarkable, with crime reported to have fallen dramatically. “I’ve noticed how people are coming together,” Pelosi says. “They’re starting to care about their community. Even the police have seen an improvement.”

Rants&Rambles, Travel

Altitude

Everyone warns you before travelling to Peru, sometimes a bit too enthusiastically, about altitude sickness. In fact our recent trip was quite well planned, skipping over Lima at sea level to the relatively low lying Machu Pichu (2430m) through the Sacred Valley around Ollantaytambo (2792m)  to Cuzco (3399m) and the heights of La Paz  (3640m) and Uyuni (3700m)

And once you arrive the advice is generally good and sensible stuff: take it easy, go slowly, drink lots of water, eat light foods only, don’t drink or smoke.

Even so, whilst walking along the flat becomes straightforward and downhill a breeze, even after two weeks anything more than a couple of steps up and we were all wiped out. Just rushing to get things ready in the morning could leave us panting for breath,

And they don’t warn you about the very basic impact of such dry air – your nose dries out making night time sleeping less pleasant than it could be. Your mouth and throat become very dry so you drink more and more. The UV light will burn easily and the bright light will persuade your brain that it should feel hot, whilst the wind actually keeps you quite cool. Vaseline on the nose and mouth isn’t a great look but was surprisingly practical.

But absolutely no one tells you about what it will feel like when you return to sea level, how wet the air will feel and how full of “stuff”

It was a good trip but I’m glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed. Mostly.

Science

Still

I had both of my babies at home, the first in a small two up two down terraced house, the second in the slightly larger house that we still live in, just a couple of streets away. Both are within 5 minutes drive of a major teaching hospital.

My girls were born safe and healthy, with no problems or complications. I was lucky.

Bad things happen.

In my first delivery, the midwife arrived early, which is to say, she set out after the second phone call because, she’d had a bad experience the night before (the cord caught around the baby’s neck as it was being pushed out, and she had struggled to keep the baby alive). Since it turns out that I’m the kind of woman who has 3 hour labours (the average is closer to 12 hours)  if she’d left it much later she’d have arrived too late.

The second midwife (one attends for the mother, one attends for the baby) failed to arrive in time. Since she’s the one who brings the pain relief (air and gas) it was a short but painful birth, with a first degree tear (not stitched – should have been stitched, never rely on nature to fix a raggedy labial tear).

But in conversation about the Vicky Foxcroft article afterwords, I took exception with one commentator who suggested that planned home births were the reason for the high still birth rate in the UK. It’s just not factually correct.
Babies are classed as stillborn if they die at any point after 28 weeks of pregnancy, up to the birthing process itself which is when half occur. Over 98% of stillbirths happen in low and middle-income countries. Pakistan has a rate of 43.1 for every 1,000 children born – that’s one in every 23 mothers finding out their baby is dead.

But bad things happen everywhere.

For every 1,000 babies born in Britain, 2.9 are stillborn (based on at least 28 weeks of gestation) – more than twice the rate of 1.4 in Iceland. Britain is now 21 out of 35 of the world’s wealthy countries according to the Lancet Stillbirth Series (2016). Croatia, Poland and Czech Republic have better stillbirth rates than the UK.

Equally worrying is the UK’s annual rate of reduction, which is now just 1.4% – placing us 114th globally for progress on stillbirths.

So what aren’t we doing as well as we might?

The Netherlands, which has cut its rates by almost 7%, hasn’t just improved care during the birth, but focused on women’s health while they are pregnant and even before that too. In particular, it has had a huge programme to reduce maternal smoking, as well as structured investment in analysis and understanding of each stillbirth.

Here in the UK, underlying the overall rate of 2.9 per 1000, the survey found mothers in the most deprived areas were up to twice as likely to experience a stillbirth as the country’s most affluent mums – although that research only covered the years up to 2005. Poorer mothers are more likely to smoke and more likely to be either significantly overweight or underweight, all risk factors for stillbirth.

And this is why I think I was so offended by the references to home birth in the context of still birth. In order to reduce the rate of stillbirth in the UK, it’s important to understand the risks, where they arise and what can be done to mitigate them.

Both the UK and Iceland have tiny levels of home births, both around 2% of annual births. Stillbirth, like most birth, is a hospital phenomena in the main (98%) of cases. If we want to improve our rates of stillbirth, we need to tackle the real causes.

  • 10 babies are stillborn every day in the UK.
  • In women with a BMI over 30, the risk rises to 1 in 100 (from 2.9 per thousand). An increasing BMI is associated with an increased incidence of pre-eclampsia, gestational hypertension, macrosomia, induction of labour and caesarean deliveries.
  • Underweight mothers also have an enhanced risk of stillbirth where being underweight (a BMI of < 19.9 kg / m2) has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of preterm deliveries, low birth weight and anaemia and a decreased risk of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, obstetric intervention and post-partum haemorrhage
  • Women who smoke have an enhanced risk of stillbirth. In meta-analysis research carried out by BMC Public Health smoking during pregnancy was significantly associated with a 47% increase in the odds of stillbirth.
  • Around half of all stillbirths are linked to placental complications.
  • Other causes include bleeding before or during labour, placental abruption, pre-eclampsia, a problem with the umbilical cord, obstetric cholestasis, a genetic physical defect in the baby, pre-existing diabetes, and infection in the mother that also affects the baby.
  • Reduced fetal movement is a good indicator of stillbirth, with slowing down of movement noticed by the mother in two out of three stillbirths.

Still, Dr David Richmond, consultant gynaecologist and president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, describes the survey as a “wake-up call”.

In the UK, there is still much to be done to ensure our rate of progress is as good as the best in Europe.

Through the Each Baby Counts initiative, we are this year beginning to undertake a structured review of each and every stillbirth that occurs during labour in term pregnancies to help identify common risk factors, learn from what went wrong and apply the lessons in maternity units across the country.

– DR DAVID RICHMOND
A recent report by the NHS Saving Babies’ Lives – NHS England gives recommendations that aim to reduce the rates of stillbirth by half by 2030.

One of the most striking observations is how often poor fetal growth corresponds with stillbirth, consistent with a recent Panorama programme that suggested regular scans could halve the UK rate of still birth by tracking growth and highlighting failure to thrive. The latter can often be addressed by inducing early births.

The four key recommendations are based on extending best practice around the country and include:
  • Reducing smoking in pregnancy
  • Risk assessment and surveillance for fetal growth restriction
  • Raising awareness of reduced fetal movement
  • Effective fetal monitoring during labour

None of these relate to home births. All of the recommendations require joined up, consistent maternal care with time to be spent monitoring, managing, helping women to manage their lives and their pregnancies.

Rants&Rambles

Comment

Why do people write into comments sections on the web? What are they trying to achieve?

Driving along listening to BBC Radio4, I was struck by the “Thought for the Day” speaker. Before speaking or writing, according to Hindu scripture, we obliged to consider:

  • are we being honest?
  • is what we are saying true?
  • is it necessary to say or write?
  • will someone be hurt or offended by what we are saying or writing? and.
  • can we be kinder, more respectful in what we say or write, if this is really something necessary and required?

Mostly when I look through the comments sections, I find comments that are dismissive, sometimes of the article, but often of the author just because…. Comments are often off topic, often abusive and unhelpful. They are very often rude.

Sometimes there seems to be an attempt to show off, to demonstrate a superiority of understanding or knowledge. It often falls apart if challenged and then the so-called “experts” often become rude and obnoxious when the absurdity of what they’re saying becomes clear.

The weirdest ones, are where misogynists start posting comments after a vaguely feminist article. The comments are short and dismissive, consistent and repetitive, building a steady rhythm, to a crescendo. Reading through them, it becomes very clear that they are groups totally committed to stroking each other’s egos more than anything else. It’s like one long mastubatory sequence, short key strokes, pressing each other’s favourite keys and buzzwords.

They need to get a room.

Very, very occasionally comments are positive. Even where people disagree, there are rare occasions where they do so politely and with respect.

 

Political

Expense

In order to balance the books, the UK government can either raise more money through taxes or cut the amount of money it spends. For the last few decades, the emphasis has all been on cutting costs, in particular the cost of welfare though the emphasis has always been placed on culling “undeserving poor” rather than pensioners.

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The overall breakdown of spending lumps a great deal together under the heading “social protection” which needs to be broken down further in order to understand where the money goes.

Other large areas of expenditure are health and education but these are difficult to cut without offending great swathes of the population.

Public-spending-460

Government departments are essentially organised to manage these budgets.

The welfare budget total is temptingly large and yet political sensitivities make it difficult to cut. It’s also important to remember that the UK spends less on welfare relative to other developed countries.

The charts show that about half of welfare goes to pensioners, a very sensitive group since they are sensitive to small changes and tend to vote in significant numbers. The next largest amounts go to families with a disabled person, and support and housing for low income families,the majority of whom are in work.

Less than 1 in 5 households receive any housing benefit. Unemployment benefits make up a very small percentage of all social spending.

Currently UK pensioners are guaranteed a state pension the increases in line with the so-called triple lock, the lower of 2.5%, any increase in living costs or any increase in average wages. The amount paid is not generous at just £6,200 but still, there is no rationale for setting a minimum of 2.5% in times of low inflation and flat salaries unless you believe pensions are too low.

As a demographic group, pensioners are no longer the worst off in UK society so I would look to abandon the triple lock and reduce it to the lowest of either inflation (living costs) or salary increases.

Inflation is currently running at 0.6% whilst salaries are flat. Abandoning the commitment to 2.5% increases would save the government around  £1.3m (1.9% of £70m) in the first year and potentially every year thereafter.

The story of the left ought to be a narrative of hope and progress. The greatest problem with the academic left is that it has become fundamentally aristocratic, writing in bizarre jargon that makes cliches seem abstruse. If you can’t explain your ideal to a fairly intelligent 12-year-old, it’s probably your own fault. We need a narrative that speaks to millions of ordinary people. It all starts with reclaiming the language of progress.

So we are moving into an age where people may or may not work, due neither rhyme nor reason within their own control. Jobs are increasingly temporary, precarious and either multiple or absent. Think of the technology changes that have brought us uber as a working model.

Working poverty is going to be increasing feature of our lives. Rather than rushing to reinforce a rather Calvinist view of all paid work as morally good and uplifting, in and of itself, whilst totally disregarding and undervaluing the unpaid contributions of carers everywhere, let’s reinvent the model.  How? Universal basic income.

Every adult in the UK should be paid the equivalent of the standard pension ie. currently £6,200 with unto £2,000 paid for people also looking after children.

It isn’t a huge sum for an individual to live on. It is set at the amount of pension, just below the JRF estimate of a living wage (about £7,000 per person per annum) for purely political reasons: it would be impossible to justify paying more to the unemployed of working age, than to the unemployed post-retirement, even though the latter should probably be enjoying a life post mortgage with greater disposable income.

No one of working age is going to want to live on such a small amount alone. People will still find plenty of reasons to work. It is no more than a safety net that should work in our brave new precarious world.

To be practical, it’s a benefit that could only realistically be offered to British citizens, the pull factor from poorer countries would just be too big to offer it as an unconditional benefit. Currently everyone in the UK reaching the age of 18 is given a national insurance number, a universal identifier that in theory allows our tax and benefits system to work efficiently and personally. The universal income could therefore only be paid to those people living in the UK with a national insurance number, which would be dependant upon either being British born and turning 18 or living and working in the UK.

Personal taxation would require companies to pay national insurance contributions to cover the universal basic income (say £6,200) for each and every job, probably through 50% deductions of salary. At this rate an individual would have to earn £ 12,400 to cover their welfare cost.

An individual earning the equivalent of today’s average salary £27,000 pa, would more than cover any cost of this benefit for themselves – they would receive £6,200 from the state and £20,800 from their employer directly, subject to income tax rules.

The rates of tax would have to change.

Without change, the new universal credit would be deducted pre-tax, then a £10,000 tax exempt band applied and only then  would the 25% tax rate be applied to  £10,800. They would pay (net) just £2,700 tax rather than the current tax liability of £4,250 which would be unaffordable. If basic rate tax was increased to 40%, the tax paid under the new system would end up being much the same ie. £4,320 after receiving £6,200 from the state directly, plus £10,000 from the employer tax free, plus £6,480 taxed (£22,680).

Although an individual ends up paying very slightly more in tax, they have a lot more certainty in their income thanks to the universal income.

People are no longer able to work themselves out of the poverty they were born into. Reforms? Let’s reinvent the welfare state and eradicate poverty for good – now that’s an investment that will pay for itself.

This could be the basis of a fundamental change to the way we look at work and welfare, possibly the only practical, humane response to the changing work patterns we are seeing in the developed world. It could form the basis of a positive, socialist message, one that could be the basis of an ongoing and constructive engagement with the electorate.

Efficiency, Productivity? That should be the point of centre-left socialist policy.  Every pound invested in a homeless person returns triple or more in savings on care, police and court costs. Let’s imagine what the eradication of child poverty might achieve. Solving these kinds of problems is a lot more efficient than “managing” them.

But first, the underdog socialists will have to stop wallowing in their moral superiority. Everyone who believes themselves progressive should be a beacon of not just energy but ideas, not only indignation but hope, and equal parts ethics and hard sell. Ultimately, what the underdog socialist lacks is the most vital ingredient for political change: the conviction that there truly is a better way.

Money, Political

Income

The UK Government income is based around tax receipts, typically:

  1. Income tax (main tax rate is 20%)
  2. National Insurance
  3. VAT (20% most goods and services)
  4. Corporation tax (main rate 21-20%)
  5. Council Tax (local government)
  6. Business rates
  7. Excise duties (alcohol, cigarettes)
  8. Other taxes include (stamp duty, carbon tax, airport tax, inheritance tax, capital gains)

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Most tax is collected by HM Revenue and Custom.

However, the central government also get revenue from other sources which can be identified through {public sector finances at ONS (less detailed). Total tax revenue was around £90 billion.

Since the UK government has mainlined on balancing the books, and we live in an ever more expensive world where we all want more and more “stuff” including the government, then essentially every UK government is faced with either cutting spending or increasing revenue.

Since taxing more is unpopular, the emphasis has always been on trying to cut spending but we have had quite a few stealth taxes, increases to the lesser know or lesser observed taxes such as national insurance. One other wheeze is to push expenditure off onto local government, whilst limiting them to raise additional taxes through the local Council tax thus making local government the villain of the piece.

So if I was in charge of the government, what would I think about doing?

Honesty. Transparency. Fairness.

Let’s start with openly combining income tax and national insurance. In peoples minds they monitor the former very tightly and the latter barely at all and yet, they are all essentially the same tax, used interchangeably.

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So although the headlines focused on raising the tax limit for income tax to above £10,000, it totally ignores the NI contributions payable from £8,060. Although the base rate of tax discussed is said to be 20%, taking into account NI means the lower effective rate of tax that most people pay is actually more than 30%.

We should be honest about this.

Honest. Transparent. Fair.

Income tax in the UK is largely taxed at source, deducted from pay packets before people have access to it and therefore for most people entirely unavoidable. It is essentially a progressive tax which takes a bigger % of income from higher earners. It is therefore also a fairly redistributive system.

It seems unreasonable to charge anyone more in tax than they are able to keep. Something feels unreasonable or unfair about the idea of taxing more than 50% of a person’s efforts but looking at the graphic above, it seems clear that aside from some very minor tweaks when child benefit is taxed and allowances lost, the highest effective rate of tax is just over 40%.

So what would happen if we set the basic rate threshold at £10,000 for the new combined all-income tax (income tax + NI) setting the rate at the current effective level of around 32%? This would be with a view to tweaking the rate up or down once people had got used to the combined all-income tax and the effects could be quantified in practice.

More of the poorest people should be taken out of tax entirely by avoiding NI contributions. Most people would pay slightly more at the lower rate (£600×32%- £192) which would hopefully pay for the lost NI income

And then suppose we leave the higher rate threshold unchanged but set the higher rate of combined all-income tax at 50% ie. higher than the current effective rate of 42% but not gouging. We should abandon all the claw-backs for child benefit and lower tax thresholds. The system would be simpler and easier to understand. It feels honest, transparent and fair.

Although the income tax system is progressive, other taxes are more regressive.

At 20% VAT tends to be more regressive. People on low income have a higher marginal propensity to consume. Therefore, the VAT they pay is a higher % of their total income. People on high income will spend more and will pay more VAT, but they will have a lower marginal propensity to consume (People on high incomes can afford to save a higher % of income). Therefore, VAT will be a smaller % of income spent. The regressive nature of VAT is slightly compensated by the fact that in theory, necessities like food (e.g. cold pastries, cabbages) don’t have VAT. VAT is supposed to be targeted at luxury goods. It’s also worth noting that a significant amount of income received by people on low income comes from the state in the form of benefits.

Other taxes like excise duties on cigarettes and taxes on alcohol are much more regressive. Smoking rates tend to be higher amongst people with lower incomes. Also, it will be a much bigger % of income than for rich smokers. We persuade ourselves that these taxes are for the health benefit of the individuals involved.

We could therefore consider intruding a sugar tax, on similar grounds, that high-sugar foods, especially those targeted at children are bad for their health. This is likely to be highly regressive since obesity is more commonplace amongst people on low income but it’s also likely to be popular with the voting public because of it’s health benefit.

Council Tax, a UK tax on domestic properties, can also be quite regressive and arguably unfair. People living in expensive areas end up having high housing costs, but also a higher council tax band. Arguably a fairer method of collecting local tax would be a local income tax but there are sizeable barriers to implementing any change. the minute a widow is forced out of her large (and expensive) house to pay her tax bill, is the minute a government gets into trouble.

Business rates are the property taxes charged on non-domestic problems and have recently been amended to allow local government to retain 50% amount raised rather than paying into a central pot and having money allocated back.

Inheritance tax raises a relatively small amount of money each year, at around £4.6 million a year but obviously this is in part because of significant tax planning for large scale landowners. The new Duke of Westminster will inherit control of an estate (held in trust) worth in excess of £9billion and pay no tax whatsoever.

It is not the business of the government to encourage the build up of inherited wealth within the hands of the privileged few. Any inheritance should be taxed as a receipt by the beneficiaries in the year in which the gain is realised, as part of the combined all-income tax. For people on low income, an inheritance would be subject to the standard tax bands and rates, treated as a top layer of income.

Since of most people the bulk of any inheritance is property, and the capital gains on houses are not the result of any intrinsic hard work or merit, it seems unreasonable to encourage windfalls for the next generation through any tax system.

It also seems unreasonable to ask the state to fund care in old age in order to preserve any such inheritance for the next generation. Treating any inheritance as windfall income should reduce the temptation to preserve wealth at the expense of paying for a decent standard of living, including care costs in old age.

Another much discussed problem with the UK tax system is the scope for having offshore accounts and avoiding paying tax through tax avoidance schemes.  Tax avoidance is often easier by people with high incomes. Unfortunately it is also perhaps the most expensive problem to address since high income people can afford high fees for good advice.

So my no doubt incredibly unpopular suggestions for change on the “income” side of the puzzle include:

  • Combining Income Tax and National Insurance
  • Set the threshold for basic all-income tax at £10,000
  • Set the tax rate for higher rate tax payers for the new all-income tax at 50%
  • Abolish the various tweaks re: child benefit and removing nil bands
  • Introduce a sugar tax
  • Abolish inheritance tax and treat any inheritance as a windfall to be subject to the all-income tax as a top layer of income.

Not going to happen.

Political

Morning Glory

Every morning this last week, I have woken up, and switched on the news over my first cup of coffee, half expecting to hear that Trump has declared war on N Korea via twitter.

Most recently I heard he had not ruled out military action against Venezuela.

And yet this is a man strangely unwilling to call-out the terrorist actions of a white neo-nazi in America, driving his car into the ranks of anti-racism protestors. Even though he felt no compunction about wading into the furore surrounding a British guy who similarly drove into pedestrians half way across the world in my home city, at around 6am US time.

And since I subscribe to the NYT, I’m struck by the number of comments in a liberal NY newspaper suggesting that someone has to tackle NKorea, sooner or later, so maybe Trump should just go ahead.

Actually, no. No.

There is no benefit to starting a nuclear war early. None

Starting a war with a country as piss poor as N Korea might seem cheap but then you have to take into account it’s neighbour and ally, China. You have to take into account the millions of people living in SKorea who will be killed as a result of Amercian aggression.

 

Political, Rants&Rambles

Bothered

On one day in June last year, just over half of the people who could be bothered to vote, voted to leave the EU. I voted the other way.

And people voted for all sorts of reasons, but people were not ignorant or stupid, unless they chose to be. There was plenty of information out there. Basically if you believed in the economic argument you voted remain and if anything else was important you voted leave, which essentially meant you voted to leave if “immigration” or “sovereignty” was the important issue.

& it is probably a step too far to say that those voting on the basis of immigration were out and out racists, though clearly a racist argument was made by the leave campaign and people voting for that reason have failed to distance themselves from that argument. But fear of immigrants, of the foreign, is xenophobic at the very least.

& sovereignty is a tricky topic because the word can mean so many different things to different people. At some level it’s tempting to view this as a cleaned up version of immigration ie. control over our borders and anxiety about foreigners. At another maybe it’s anxiety about the role of the EU in setting rules and regulations that apply to the UK, and the relatively low status and lack of respect paid to EU MEPs in this country, a lack of understanding about the UK’s ability to influence and effect change within the EU context and structure.

Either way, if you voted for leave because of immigration or sovereignty, you have been taken for fools. According to government ministers, immigration numbers post-brexit will increase. The government of the day has used the brexit process to attempt a power grab from parliament throughout and continues to undermine and diminish parliamentary sovereignty at every opportunity. The government plans to transfer all EU legislation onto the UK statute book where it will ossify. It takes cross-party support to change, amend or repeal statute and as a consequence the UK government structure is incredibly badly suited to deal with such a huge body of statute.

As time goes by, the EU will amend it’s own laws and the UK has no practical process to amend the legacy laws written onto its books.

No surprise – I believe that brexit will be a disaster for the UK.

But not every brexit platitude can or should be ignored. As the NYT wrote in a recent article, just because it’s something that Trump says, doesn’t mean it’s wrong or trivial.

What brexit issues need to be addressed? Here’s my list:

• immigration needs to be seen to be controlled. Freedom of movement in the EU was never meant or required to be without constraint or limit. People are allowed to move to find work, no more and no less. Foreigner in Belgium who fail to find a job after 3 months are deported. We should do the same. & that would require introducing an ID card and system. It would mean requiring people to register, to show their ID cards before claiming healthcare or welfare. All of this could have been done decades ago and wasn’t because it will inevitably cost more money than it’s worth, but it seems necessary to reassure people that someone somewhere is managing the process.

• The immigration argument is in part racist, in particular feeding off anxiety about uncontrolled immigration from muslim countries such as Turkey, and refugees naturalised elsewhere in the EU making their way to the UK. it’s important to recognise that parts of the Muslim world have a problem with pluralism — gender pluralism, religious pluralism and intellectual pluralism — and suggesting that terrorism has nothing to do with that fact is naïve; countering violent extremism means constructively engaging with Muslim leaders on this issue. It means visible active engagement with everyday Muslim citizens

• The British people want a government focused on growing the economic pie, not just redistributing it. We have a problem with globalisation,  with automation wiping out middle-skilled work and we need to generate more working class jobs to anchor communities. We have a problem with the rise of precarious, short term, high risk employment and the resulting financial insecurity. We have a problem with the concentration of wealth in London and other metropolitan areas, within the Service sector.

The brexit vote was significantly different to the election of Trump in many ways yet similar in one striking fashion: people voted with their emotions in large numbers. Brexit gave many people an opportunity to say loud and clear that they were unhappy with the status quo, whether that meant poverty, the haves and have-nots, or the scale and speed of change within an ever more diverse society.

The UK government needs to re-connect with the electorate. And when you connect with voters, they feel respected, and when they feel respected, they will listen to anything — including big issues that are true even if socialists believe them. Such as the fact that a majority of their children and grandchildren like being Europeans as well as British.