Why investigations into MPs shouldn't be in secret

It is being proposed that when an MP is accused of something like fiddling their expenses, the investigation should be in secret. My email to the committee ...

The MPs expenses scandal in 2009 contributed to a significant erosion of trust in MPs. It does seem to me that holding investigations in secret does nothing to help address the issues of public confidence. Quite the reverse; it reinforces a sense of a closed shop and a refusal of accountability. As such it seems to lack an awareness that MPs expenses are ultimately tax-payers' money for what are meant to be public servants accountable to the electorate.

While I am sympathetic to issues of reputation should an accusation of impropriety prove to be ill founded or even malicious, it seems to me that such accusations are unlikely to have been made privately and having a degree of openness about them is likely to build public confidence and help to clear the name of the innocent. A secret process, on the other hand is likely to give rise to suspicions of a cover up and leave a question mark in the public mind about any acquittal.

71% of MPs don't know how money is created

You'll pick up the details from this email I just sent to my MP. You might want to do the same (feel free to use this email a starting point).

I have been aware for a little while now of the findings of a poll by Dods Monitoring showing, shockingly, that only a minority of MPs could correctly explain who creates money in the UK and how.

I am concerned that nearly three quarters of MPs believe that only the government is allowed to create money, when in fact that only applied to notes and coins and, given that the huge preponderance of money is now electronic, it is banks that create the majority of money in the UK since the government in fact plays no real role in that part of the money supply (the rot set in with the retiring of the Bretton Woods agreement in the 1970's). This has fairly direct implications for the house price bubble and the risk of another debt-fuelled crisis.

Just in case you weren't aware: the government creates coins and notes, but these make up just 3% of money in the economy. The other 97% of money exists as bank depositswhich are electronic numbers in bank accounts. The aforementioned poll showed that just over 71% of MPs believed that only the government could create this electronic money.

In actual fact, banks create money through some simple accounting, when they make loans. This means that when people repay loans,  money disappears from the economy. It is worrying to me, as someone with some economics training,  that only 12% of MPs in the poll correctly gave this answer. I had assumed that MPs would pick up these kind of basics in the course of their political careers.

Just so you can get a sense that this is not just me passing on some fringe economic viewpoint, consider the Bank of England explanation from their March 2014 Quarterly Bulletin:

"[The] majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans. ... When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created. … Just as taking out a new loan creates money, the repayment of bank loans destroys money." ( http://bit.ly/1rrwbnL )

Please could you confirm that you are aware that:
1. Around 97% of money in the UK consists of electronic bank deposits in people’s bank accounts
2. That banks create these deposits when they make loans
3. That when people repay loans, the money is destroyed and disappears from the economy.

If it turns out that you are one of those who didn't know this about the money supply, can I recommend that you read Ann Pettifor's book 'Just Money' which I suspect will resonate well also with your own political concerns.

Yours etc ...


Full poll results available

A hereby-open letter to the ombudsman re TTIP

In a recent email from SumofUs we learn:

The European Ombudsman -- the place where European citizens can lodge complaints about EU politics -- has opened a formal investigation into TTIP and its lack of transparency following pressure from civil society. We have only 7 days left to write to the Ombudsman and let her know how we feel about our rights being negotiated away in a secret trade deal.

 

Here's my hastily constructed email -do use it as a template yourself.

 

Dear Ombudsman,

I have to say that I remain very concerned about the TTIP negotiations despite cautious reassurances from my MP drawing on government documents. The reassurances, on closer examination have often turned out to be misleading or illusory: it is no answer, for example, to cite the paucity of successful legal actions by corporations on governments when what is at issue is the legitimacy of doing so and when there are in fact some not only successful actions using similar treaty clauses but ones which have clearly been to the detriment of civil society in those places.

While I understand the need a sensitive handling of negotiations in trade related deals, this should not extend to the actual bringing of the fruits of the negotiations into the force of law and practice. That part of the process needs to be fully open and subject to rigorous democratic scrutiny since it has implications for the powers of government and the balance of power between democratic institutions and corporate interests. The very real fear is that the latter may be about to gain considerable traction at the expense of civil society and to the detriment of the less powerful and relatively poor.

What we need is some kind of guide to what is potentially agreed and something to give confidence that it will not further erode democratic accountability and have the effect of sweeping away hard-won protections for labour, environment, safety and animal welfare. Many of us are very concerned that these valued rights and protections are endangered by the content and process of the TTIP negotiations. If there is nothing to fear then at the very least there needs to be a clear and robust confidence-building explanation to all the peoples of the EU which allows us to make an informed decisions about whether we do, in fact, wish to accept the TTIP treaty.

Let's not let guys off the hook about porn

While I deplore that women have had photos of themselves in compromising situations or vast undress distributed freely without their consent, I am really, on reflection, a bit concerned about this:

I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.Jennifer Lawrence on nude photo hacking: 'It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting' - People - News - The Independent:

What I find  disturbing is the apparent acceptance that her boyfriend would consume porn when away from her, and that somehow this is to be expected and not censured to some degree.

First of all I'm disturbed because it buys into a view of male sexuality which is both demeaning and also potentially dangerous. Demeaning because it implies that men are not able to say no to porn. Newsflash: men are able to say no and to avoid it, on the whole. Honestly, it's true. Part of the problem may be that men have been given a free pass on this.

There is research indicating that a number of men are ruining their  ability to respond well sexually because they are rewiring their responses via porn in ways that are not conducive to good relations with potential partners. If that is so (and it makes sense as well as being indicated in research), then women who are partners should be discouraging their boyfriends, lovers, partners, husbands from porn not accepting it. Personally, I can't really see how it isn't a kind of mental-affective adultery, and all the worse because it's not even in a relational and affectionate context. And it seems to me that Ms Lawrence's response is recognising that: she'd rather he looked at her image than some other woman's).

I think that this is an important point: it looks to me (and I have to admit that I have no real insider insight on this) like it is contributing to the objectifying women by making such objectification virtually inevitable.

And that is why it is dangerous: it seems to me that the use of porn is helping to construct a set of attitudes that make it more likely that women are going to be viewed as mainly bodies to be penetrated than as friends or colleagues.

Men can and do learn continence of gaze and thought.  When we are motivated by beliefs and affections that emphasise respect, faithfulness and mutuality between people of all genders, men are able to grow into gentlemen in the best sense. I have deliberately chosen a slightly old fashioned term there because I think that we have been underrating the virtues at the heart of being a gentleman: consideration of others, a spirit of service and of self-restraint for the greater and common good. These are virtues that sit ill with the consumption of porn when it is understood in its wider context.

So I appeal to Ms Lawrence and others; don't let the men get away with it, don't collude in the myth of unavoidable lust. It demeans men to pretend that we cannot control our urges -though God knows, so many men collude in their own demeaning. It doesn't have to be so..

Theological Worlds: obsessio and epiphania

I hadn't come across the book Theological Worlds (Paul Jones) and have added it to my list to look at some time. Thanks to Richard Beck for highlighting it on his rather useful blog. In this case it was this that got my attention:

...obsessio is the Question of your existence, theologically speaking. What's the location of brokenness in the world or in your life?

The epiphania, by contrast, is the experience (or hope) of an Answer to the obsessio: Experimental Theology: Search Term Friday: Theological Worlds

I think the interest for me lies in its resonance with my own experience and as a result a sense that this is theology for spiritual directors and accompaniers.

In my own experience and observation of what I see in others, it seems to me that the obsessio that we have is different one to another. Some people are all about guilt and dealing with it. They often gravitate to theologies where guilt is explicitly  in focus. Arguably western Catholicism and classical Evangelicalism are likely destinations for the 'guilt obsessio'. It's not my obsessio, and although I am some variety of Evangelical, it has tended to leave me cold. For me the obsessio has been meaning of life; facing down the despair of a god-absent universe. To be sure sin finds a place within that, but it's not my starting place.

In the case of the guilt-haunted, the epiphania is about amazing grace and the great Transaction. For the meaning-hungry, the epiphania is about the God who is there and calls us in Christ.

Obviously, I'll have to read the book to see whether I'm correctly guessing the kind of thing that is meant. But even if I've misconstrued the basic idea, it seems to me that what I've just described has resonance. I'm starting to wonder what the other obsessios might be. Search for Truth? Knowing what is Good? Finding harmony? Some of this begins to seem like it might fit with the enneagram which identifies or at least tries to help a person to identify a core prone-ness to sin and its flip-side a core value set.

If any readers have any further insight or knowledge about these things, do comment or be in touch in other ways.