If a referendum were held on the UK’s membership of the EU with the options being to remain a member or withdraw, how do you think you would vote?
Would definitely vote to leave the EU = 28% Would probably vote to leave the EU = 18% Would probably vote to remain in the EU = 20% Would definitely vote to remain in the EU = 18% Don’t know = 17%
Category Archives: Politics
Googlepower challenged? Not really
This morning’s Observer column:
To those of us who follow these things, the most interesting thing about Thursday’s announcement is the way it highlights the radical differences that are emerging between European and American attitudes to internet giants. The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that the US Federal Trade Commission had investigated similar claims about Google’s abuse of monopoly power in 2012 and that some of the agency’s staff had recommended charging the company with violating antitrust (unfair competition) laws. But in the end, the FTC backed off.
Now it turns out that its staff had been in regular communication with the European commission’s investigators in Brussels, which means that the Europeans knew what the Americans knew about Google’s activities. But the commission has acted, whereas the FTC did not. Why?
Sunset over the (Patriot) Act
EFF video.
The concierge economy
I’ve written about this before, but Anand Giridharadas is a very astute observer of it. In this NYT OpEd piece he recollects how, for the Indian affluent classes, everything was done by “sending your man” to do it.
The culture of send-your-man was jarring to me, having grown up in an America where even rather privileged people did many things for themselves, including things easily outsourced. They drove themselves and their children around, went to the supermarket themselves, contested their own parking tickets in person. While living in India, I remember seeing a photograph of a United States Supreme Court justice driving himself into work and thinking to myself: No lowly municipal judge in India would do that.
But as India’s economy has begun to surge and the country to modernize, send-your-man culture has foundered. As new possibilities open to those who might have been peons, the tiresome complaint at rich-people parties in New Delhi and Mumbai is how hard it is to find a servant. Well, they should come to America, because that, evidently, is where all the servants have gone.
Uber’s chauffeurs and couriers, Instacart’s grocery deliverers, Handy’s home cleaners, Zeel’s on-demand masseurs, Seamless’s bicycle warriors of takeout, Alfred’s butlers, Amazon Home Services’ electricians and plumbers — all of this is the slick, mobile-enabled, venture-capital-backed servitude of our time. As Lauren Smiley wrote in the online magazine Matter recently, “In the new world of on-demand everything, you’re either pampered, isolated royalty — or you’re a 21st-century servant.” Now in America, too, you can have yourself a man.
It’s a very good, insightful essay. For example:
Is technological innovation the handmaiden of progress? People tend to use the two concepts interchangeably. But it’s possible that we live in a peculiar age that, in America at least, is innovation-rich and progress-poor. Just as we came to learn that democracy and liberalism don’t necessarily go together, that there can be illiberal democracies (Argentina, Iraq), perhaps we are starting to discover something we might call regressive innovation.
This isn’t, on its own, dispiriting. It just means that innovation, like democracy, is without content. Democracy doesn’t automatically safeguard women and minorities. Those are layers we have to add. Likewise, perhaps, innovation doesn’t necessarily make the world flat, free and equal. It just gives us new ways of achieving the aims, good and bad, that have motivated us forever.
Osborne’s car-crash interview
Fascinating. Who would have thought it of Marr — normally a relatively soft-soap interviewer? This one will join Paxman’s celebrated exchange with Michael Howard all those years ago.
Interesting also that there are structural similarities between the two interviews. I wonder if Marr decided to follow the Paxman template.
What’s also very interesting is the astute use that Labour has made of the interview video. They edited it cleverly and then posted it on Facebook.
Thanks to Tom for the original link.
Dog-whistle politics
The Tories are proposing that the exemption threshold for Inheritance Tax (IHT) should be raised to £1m. They’re doing this despite getting the following advice from Treasury civil servants:
This comes from a leaked Treasury memo courtesy of Richard Murphy’s invaluable blog.
This new exemption wheeze will not, of course, affect 99.9% of voters [see correction]. But it might keep wavering Tories in line, especially in the South East.
And here’s Ben Goldacre on why Inheritance Tax is a good idea.
Correction Government statistics reveal that 97% of all estates in 2011-12 were below the current IHT ceiling. On those figures, the new Tory concession benefits only about 3% of the population. Guess who most of them vote for?
Non-doms not wanted here
For me, the first really interesting moment in the election came last week when Ed Miliband announced that if Labour got into power he would abolish the ludicrous loophole which allows 110,000 fabulously wealthy people to live in Britain full time while pretending to be domiciled elsewhere, thereby paying tax only on whatever income they funnel to themselves in the UK.
Even more interesting — and depressing — was the resulting ‘controversy’ about the pledge, which seemed to revolve entirely around whether Miliband’s policy would result in more or less tax being gathered by the Inland Revenue. This is another illustration of the extent to which neoliberalist iron has entered the souls of the political elite. At base, the non-dom issue isn’t about the pragmatics of taxation; it’s about whether something is morally right or wrong — whether there should be one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. Even if there were a net loss to the Exchequer, the loophole should be closed for the simple reason that it is iniquitous.
And then, in a real you-couldn’t-make-it-up development, we find that (a) the Governor of the Bank of England and (b) Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, have non-dom status. Even more bizarrely, Rothermere inherited the status from his father.
Politics and the English language (again)
“Pretending we are all separate but equal conceals the the effects of real power and capacity, real wealth and influence. You describe everyone as having the same chances when actually some people have more chances than others. And with this cheating language of equality, deep inequality is allowed to happen much more easily”.
The late and much-lamented Tony Judt, quoted by Nick Cohen in a fine column about how euphemisms in British politics “mask a savage attack on the menatally ill”.
Net Neutrality, walled gardens, Internet governance and anonymity…
… were a few of the topics covered when I was interviewed by Tim Garton-Ash at the European Studies Centre in St Antony’s College, Oxford in February.
What the election ought to be about
“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty. The first needs criticism, precaution and technical knowledge; the second, an unselfish and enthusiastic spirit, which loves the ordinary man; the third, tolerance, breadth, appreciation of the excellencies of variety and independence, which offers above everything, to give unhindered opportunity to the exceptional and the aspiring.”
John Maynard Keynes, Collected Works, Vol IX, p. 311.