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George Osborne 's horror stories about the national debt cover for the ideology of reductions that threaten economy
Politicians on the right love to scare us. George Osborne, in his Mansion House speech cited "fears" over government solvency and sovereign debt crises. David Cameron has declared the fiscal deficit a "threat" to "our whole way of life," and "a clear and present danger to the British economy". This is nonsense. The threat we face is ideologically driven cuts that risk causing a double-dip recession.
Incidentally, this is not Keynesianism: it 's only accounting, familiar to all of macroeconomics.
The fiscal deficit adds to the stock of government debt owed to us, and it is true that we do not want that debt to grow as a proportion of GDP forever. But relative to GDP, the stock of national debt in the UK remains below that of the US, France and Germany. And when the economy starts to recover, the deficit will decline in any case, as investment and tax receipts rise. Household saving will also decline with time from its current high rate: saving rose because we became so indebted during the boom years, running down our savings and buying goods on credit. Having built up so much debt we now want to pay some of it off. But once we have paid off enough of that debt, our saving rate can decline and private spending pick up, further helping reduce the deficit.
What of the argument that the fiscal deficit crowds out private investment? This can only happen if the fiscal deficit pushes up interest rates, making investment more expensive. When the economy is doing well, this can certainly happen. But we have a fiscal deficit precisely because the private sector doesn't want to invest as much as we want to save, whatever the interest rate â€" which remains extremely low. The government still faces nominal interest rates of only 3.5% on 10-year bonds because we the people are demanding these bonds â€" ie, we are demanding the fiscal deficit so that we can save.
What, then, of Osborne's complaint in his Mansion House speech about "annual debt interest payments that will soon exceed what we spend on schools"? Is this a "terrible, terrible waste of money", as Cameron has called it, taking money from our schools and hospitals? No. The vast majority of those interest payments are going back to us, the people, who lent the money to the government in the first place â€" since only 20% of UK public debt is held by foreigners (one of our major differences with Greece) . Cameron's claim that "for every single pound you pay in tax, 10p would be spent on interest" is frankly dishonest: 8p of the 10p is cashback for us! If we, as a democracy, decide that we are not spending enough on schools and hospitals, we can simply have the government tax the equivalent of that interest back again.
This reveals the underlying reason why politicians on the right really want to reduce the deficit: expenditure cuts today imply tax cuts and smaller government in the long run. And once we see that the fiscal deficit is our saving with the government, it becomes obvious that Cameron and Osborne's claim that the deficit has us "living beyond our means" is nonsense. Any politician who cares more about public services than tax cuts should be relaxed about a few years of fiscal deficits.
Frankie and Heartstrings fly the flag remarkably fertile scene Sunderland. Says Dave Simpson as the classic kitchen-sink drama and the miners strike 'still alive in their music
Frankie and the Heartstrings played at Sheffield Leadmill not long ago, part of a tour of the country. There was barely anybody there, but frontman Frankie Francis wasn't fazed. Running a hand through his shaking quiff, he gave a commanding performance, all quivering hips and gyrating bottom, and frequently ended up in the middle of the meagre audience. By the end of the night, Francis's showmanship and the Heartstrings' rumbustious, spiky soul had transformed a graveyard atmosphere into a party, with the handful of people there queuing up to shake his hand.
"We've got a policy where you can never rely on the crowd," he says. "A gig isn't their job. It's ours. You've got a responsibility to put on a show even if it's to just one person."
Like Dexys, the Heartstrings have a stance, an aesthetic running through everything from Francis's quiff (modelled on James Dean) to guitarist Michael McKnight's penchant for plus fours. "When we supported the Paddingtons, everybody laughed at us," admits McKnight, who is clearly the most obsessive about the band's moral crusade against chain-store tops and tracksuit bottoms. "People can get quite aggressive with you for dressing a bit dandy, but it never put me off. I'd just prance around town and deal with it."
"Cheeky" is a word that peppers their conversation, and describes an attitude that covers everything from asking the owner of the Italian cafe where we meet if he has any waitresses available, to insulting other bands. At just two singles old, Frankie and the Heartstrings have already claimed to be "bigger than Jesus" and "better than the Beatles", while both U2 ("shit") and the Drums (whom they recently supported) have been cheerily dismissed.
\\ "It 's all part of the fun to be in the group," shrugged drummer Dave Harper, who could have stepped straight from the 1950 platform. "We never take it personally when other people slag us. A man came up to me quite a few better" than the Beatles? You 're not the best team in Sunderland. 'We finished with a good laugh. "
Banda will go back. Francis and McKnight were in college together. Harper and McKnight played in groups for many years. They came together as a group, when Francis said he 'd bought a bass and asked him to jam.
"He was the worst bassist ever," says Harper. "Asking him to sing was the only way to get him off the bass." Francis turned out to be a natural frontman. "Two gigs later he was on the floor, pushing his quiff back and serenading whichever young lady was in front of him at the time."
The three made their debut as a four-piece when pal Steve Dennis joined on bass. But the fifth member was pivotal. Keyboardist Pete Gofton was once better known as Kenickie drummer Jonny X â€" he's also Lauren Laverne's brother â€" and did more than knock the music into shape: he used his contacts to get it heard, and they duly signed to indie heavyweight Wichita. "I'd always thought of record labels as a little man in a big chair," says Harper. "But they were a big man in a little chair, in a room piled high with records. They are the loveliest people and they don't have a bad band on the label."
The Heartstrings are idealist and romantic about pop. The band's record sleeves are beautifully designed, featuring photographer Keith Pattison's images from the 1984-85 miner's strike â€" not that their provenance is immediately obvious. "We didn't want a policeman wrestling a guy to the ground," Francis says. "But if you look at those children's faces [on the sleeve of Tender], they haven't eaten for 24 hours and they're queuing up for food. You can see the confusion and hurt."
The band will play the launch of Pattison's book, and the strike has clearly cast a long shadow over the band's families and upbringings. Both McKnight's grandfather and Harper's father were striking miners in the pit village of Murton. Harper says that while he was always educated about the strike, he has only just heard his father's stories in detail: "They never talk about them. I'm not a guy to cry, but I cried my eyes out."
McKnight looks from his coffee and sweep back, sassy edge, noting that while the shock was terrible, the camaraderie that was built within communities is still talked about today. It 's what Wearside Soul Brothers want to achieve with the help of pop music.
"We've grown up in households where we were taught the enjoyment of sharing things with other people," he says, while Harper adds, slightly cheekily, "We're a very caring, sharing, tactile sort of band."
Frankie and the Heartstrings play Glastonbury on 26 June.
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Razor manufacturers pump out the next greatest razor ever made about every six to twelve months. The shelves are full of razors that rotate, vibrate, lubricate, illuminate, wiggle, jiggle, wobble, play MP3's, text your girlfriend, trim your nose hairs, record voice memo's, and open your mail. How many blades are the new guys up to now? Six or seven? Ridiculous. Good News razors set the standard that others try to imitate, but have yet to surpass, despite the bells and whistles and baubles and bangles that they dangle from their new fangled shaving implements.
I just want a twin blade razor that gives a smooth shave without leaving garden slug slime on my face. These razors have been getting the job done for me for over twenty years. You may try the next greatest razor, but you'll always come back to the original Good News razor. No pivot, no slime, and skin as smooth as a bowling ball!
This is a good razor for everyday use, but it has no advantages over its twin blade knock-off imitators. You can get exactly the same shave out of any disposable twin blade. One note of disatisfaction with this razor, I used this one my wedding day and got razor burn on my cheek which showed up in all the picturs of course, thanks alot Good News!
These are basically the disposable version of the Gillette Sensor Excel razors but with duller blades. Each razor has two blades and a pivoting head.
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Children seeking refuge in Britain are being deprived vital help of lawyers because of cuts to legal aid funding
Refugee and Migrant Justice, formerly the Refugee Legal Centre, blames the harshness of the legal aid funding regime for forcing it to close its doors on 10,000 asylum seekers. That number includes about 900 children who arrive by themselves in the UK from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somali.
This week is Refugee Weekwhich aims to "to celebrate the contribution refugees and to promote better understanding between communities,". There is work to be done as RMJ goes into administration , Ministers are looking forcibly deport children of 4 million pounds UK Border Agency "reintegration center" in Afghanistan. That would be "major changes in policy" as earlier commitments, which are not children seeking asylum will be returned only if there is sufficient accommodation and service was stopped on the site are sent back.
This is perhaps difficult to imagine a part of society are more vulnerable and more in need of "access to justice," than children separated from their parents, seeking asylum in Britain. But they really need lawyers?
"They made me sit there and, like in a slave market, immigration officers were told to look at me and guess my age. It was like I was going to be sold. One would say 24 years, and other would say 21."
That is the disturbing account of Hasan (not his real name), a 16-year-old Iranian boy talking about his reception by immigration officers at Heathrow. He was exhausted after months travelling from his home to Thailand, then China, before flying to London. His story and those of 26 other children were documented in a powerful 2007 study commissioned by the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (pdf).
The default position of the Home Office for child asylum seekers is to give discretionary leave until they are 17 and half years old. Even if they have a solid reason for claiming asylum, it will not get considered unless they have a lawyer to force the issue. If it does not get considered when they turn 18, the Home Office can remove them. The fact that "you are a child soldier, considered a violation of your human rights, is no longer relevant because you're 18", explains Heaven Crawley, professor of international migration at Swansea University who wrote the ILPA report. The report explored concerns that half of all asylum applicants claiming to be "children" were being challenged on age like Hassan.
"The reality is that kids get deported under 18, under 16 and even from foster care placements at 14," Crawley says. Often that happens in "third country" cases, where the children pass through another European country, and can be about legally removed to those places.
A good lawyer can stop this. But children are not able in the system, which was described by the Independent Asylum Commission as being permeated by "a culture of disbelief". Three-quarters of asylum seekers are turned down by the Home Office and one quarter of cases that go to appeal are overturned by an independent tribunal. That system has little regard for the traumatic circumstances in which children often leave their home countries. Prof Crawley explains: "You need a lawyer to sit there and say that you have the right, for example, not to continue talking about an experience which you're finding very distressing. Such as not wanting to talk about their parents being machete-ed in front of them."
The campaign to save RMJ, a vital lifeline for children such as Hassan, has attracted the support of an impressively diverse list of the great and good, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ken Loach and Juliet Stevenson.
But its plight illustrates a widespread problem about the precarious nature of the legally aided not-for-profit sector. A 2008 survey by the Law Centres Federation
There's nothing wrong with fixed fees in principle. But only, as Steve Hynes and I argued in The Justice Gap (Legal Action Group, 2009), if the levels are realistic and the escape provisions reasonable. Two fairly hefty "ifs" â€" and that is why a committee of MPs led by Alan Beith memorably damned the Carter proposals as "a breathtaking risk".
What have the introduction of fixed fees meant for RMJ? Caroline Slocock, chief exec, reckons that income per client over the last two years has fallen by 46%. Fixed fees result in hard-pressed practitioners and less scrupulous cutting corners (you only get paid as much for an hour as you do for eight). Conversely, they penalise diligent advisers committed to securing access to justice for vulnerable and difficult clients. RMJ points to an LSC response to a freedom of information request revealing almost one third (29%) of asylum providers are "making massive profits" from the new scheme.
It's shocking that an organisation as vital as RMJ can go to the wall as a result of what amounts to a cash flow problem. It is doubly shocking that it happens at a time when the government announces £4m for a reintegration centre in Kabul.
Jon Robins is a freelance journalist and director of the legal research company Jures (www.jures.co.uk), which published Closing the Justice Gap a collection of essays of "radical, exciting and innovative ways to reform access to justice'"
Press that button automatically updated with the latest updates. And why not email barney.ronay @ guardian.co.uk with your thoughts or catch up with Sean Ingle's live blog
16 mins: NIGERIA SCORE!!! A terrible error from the Greek goalkeeper and frankly a bizarre goal, as the scorer Uchecurled in a free-kick from 45 yards, looking to find one of his strikers, and Tzorvas just dived into the other side, when, if he 'd be standing, he kept. It was extraordinary. Terrible in Greece. The real - and I 'm afriad gay - error from the keeper.
14 mins:Nice ball left channel Etuhu, which runs after Yakubu, but he just can 't get there. And now Papadopoulos was booked for a retreat to the lively Odemwingie. Nice pressure from Nigeria.
11 mins:
8 mins: An extremely slow and cagey start here as both teams gird themselves for the inevitable explosion of goals. Gekas is ridiculously isolated in attack when Greece defend. There are simply no white shirts anywhere near him. Constantino objects: "In response to your early comment about preferring an African team to go through... I would like nothing more than to see another African team through to the next round, but 2004 cursed us forever with expectations. So when we fail badly today I will in despair. The only thing worse than a glimmer of hope is the misery of knowing we can do better." Is that a lyric from a Smiths song?
5 mins: First attempt at a genuine attack from both sides: a pair of overhit crosses from Nigeria's left hand side and Greece's right. Both nowhere near the sole man skulking anywhere near in the box. Oh dear. None of that please. We need a a winner today. Mohammed Syed muses: "Whats the point of Greece even turning up. They're going to get hammered. As they're a bit skint they should have sold the slot to Turkey or Russia." Greece will of course be looking to silence these taunts with a feats of joyful attacking football.
3 mins: Nigeria have their first little spell but it peters out as Yakubu puts in a slightly surprising early "reducer" on Karagounis ands it's a free kick. And Ben Davis notes: "Darren Anderton has scored more world cup goals than Greece. Just a thought." Darren Anderton has probably also got more cash in the bank than Greece.
1 min: Greece kick us off and they're straight into a spell of meandering keep-ball in their own half. It already looks more like a back five than a flying wing-backs situation, but early days here.
3.01pm: Nath Jones is pshawing: "Nikos the Greek fan's "3-4-3 with overlapping wing-backs" conjures up thoughts of some brilliant 1-6-3 formation which will set the World Cup alight, similar to the unbeatable 1-4-5 formation on Championship Manager '93. I'm guessing Greece will actually play a 5-4-1 in practice, though, yep?"
2.59pm: Gekas looks to be playing as a lone striker in this formation, at the head of a 4-1-4-1. Nigeria are in a more attacking 4-4-1-1, with Odemwingie lurking in the hole.
2.57pm: And... Obafemi Martins is wearing gloves. In the sunshine. Although to be fair it was quite chilly last night in Blomefontein.
2.55pm: The teams are out. Nigeria in groovy green zip-up V-necks. Some vague mumbling from the Greeks during their anthem. They look - how to put this nicely? - quite a grizzled lot.
2.52pm:Of course, you can email me your thoughts on barney.ronay @ guardian.co.uk , or if you like communicate with me via Twitter if that's your bag. Greece. I feel slightly weary reminding you, have yet to score at the World Cup finals. Any World Cup finals. So let's hope a slice of history.
2.51pm: Of course, Nigeria have hardly set the tournament alight, the wondrous Enyeama apart. But this is a must-win game against a team notably bereft of Messi-level attacking geniuses. Perhaps the only thing the Nigeria defence have to fear today is the implicit fate-tempting warning in the right side of their own defence, which is made up of Odiah and Shittu. Let's hope there will be none of that today. Greece, of course, have to win or they're pretty much certain to be out of here. Two desperate teams who have to win. What could possibly go wrong?
2.47pm:
2.45pm: Hello and welcome to coverage of in intriguing mid-group clash. No offence to Greece, and with apologies to the retro oeuvre of John Travolta. But today the word is, not Greece, but Nigeria. It is almost impossible to be neutral with this one. What the World Cup needs is another African win, and another African team with a chance of making the last 16.
The teams are in:
Greece: 12-Alexandros Tzorvas; 11-Loukas Vyntra, 16-Sotiris Kyrgiakos, 15-Vassilis Torosidis, 6-Alexandros Tziolis, 8-Avraam Papadopoulos, 19-Socratis Papastathopoulos, 10-Giorgos Karagounis, 21-Kostas Katsouranis; 14-Dimitris Salpingidis, 17-Fanis Gekas.
Nigeria: 1-Vincent Enyeama; 17-Chidi Odiah, 6-Danny Shittu, 2-Joseph Yobo, 3-Taye Taiwo, 12-Kalu Uche, 20-Dickson Etuhu, 15-Haruna Lukman, 14-Sani Kaita, 8-Yakubu Aiyegbeni, 11-Peter Odemwingie.
Referee: Oscar Ruiz (Colombia)
Barney will be here from 2:46 pm. However, why would not acquainted with Sachin Nakrani 'match against Nigeria in Greece:
The overriding belief within the Greece squad is that it is now or never. Following a lacklustre 2-0 defeat by South Korea in their opening match of the tournament on Saturday, Otto Rehhagel's men recognise that another failure to deliver against Nigeria in Bloemfontein today will as good as end their World Cup campaign.
Both sides head into the match on zero points but Nigeria can take heart from the spirit and flashes of creativity they showed in their 1-0 defeat by the Group B heavyweights Argentina in their opening game. Greece, however, require a sizeable improvement on the display they put in against Korea, when Lee Jung-soo and Park Ji-sung were able to score against the Euro 2004 winners with relative ease.
"In the first match we didn't do what we could. Why, I don't know," said the midfielder Sotiris Ninis . "Tomorrow is our last chance. There will be no other chance to catch up with losses. Either we will win or that will be the end and we will have to return home disappointed."
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