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The crisis in the NHS is overwhelming this week. It has reminded me of conversations I had with my late father on how to manage within the state sector. I think they're worth sharing.

 My father worked for the nationalised electricity industry from the late 1940s to late 1980s. He spent much of that time as a fairly senior engineer. He was committed to what he did. He believed electricity supply was a human right. And he sought to delver it.
He left the industry and retired when he realised that privatisation challenged what the believed in. The priority was no longer supply. It was, instead, profit. He had a clear example of the difference this made. It was about emergency management.
In his day the state electricity boards ensured that they had all the capacity they needed to manage emergencies to keep supply going as well as possible, come what may. It meant there was excess capacity. But it wasn't wasted - maintenance and training was done instead.
Privatisation saw that excess as waste, and it went. It was assumed contracts could buy in support when needed. My father believed that was dangerous - because when demand was strongest the most inexperienced people would be put to work on the job.
We can see the same logic now in the NHS. Instead of having capacity to deal with an emergency a decade of cuts have delivered a survive reduced to the most basic level possible. And what we've seen is that outsourcing cannot make up the slack. And that is dangerous.
The NHS is now being overwhelmed. Coronavirus was predictable - and predicted. What was also predictable was that an NHS with reduced beds, staff, equipment and even training because of a lack of slack to let it happen would not be able to cope. And that's happening.
People are going to die now, because of a failed management ideology - that lower cost is always best when what is at stake is the supply of essential public services. So, some questions are appropriate.
Were the tax cuts to big business and the well off worth the deaths we are now seeing from coronavirus?
Was the goal of a balanced budget worth having people die for?
Could we have done better by committing to a universally high standard of basic public services - supplied by an integrated NHS?
Will we learn the lesson now and provide a properly resourced, staffed and trained NHS in the future?
Are people still going to have to die in pursuit of an economic dogma that puts profit before people, and cutting government spending above people's lives?
This is not the time to delay asking these questions. This is the time to ask them. Now is when we have to decide. We need commitment to care, not commitment to cutting deficits, and we need it now. It's time for politicians to deliver that, now.

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Tax cuts are in the news as Tory party leadership candidates are talking about them as if tax was going out of fashion. It is very apparent that none of them know much about tax, so a thread to discuss some of the issues.

First, because all government spending is, as a matter of fact, funded by government money creation via the Bank of England, which was proved in the quantitative easing eras, the proper role of tax in the economy needs to be understood by these politicians.

That proper role of tax in the macroeconomy - which is what they’re going to be responsible for - is to reduce inflation. Tax cancels government money creation. It takes government-created money resulting from government spending out of circulation.

There is no direct relationship between money creation and inflation. But it’s clear that a government cannot spend without limit with newly created money and not create inflation as a result. So governments tax to reclaim the money that they spend.

This means that there are questions for ministers who want to cut taxes now.
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There is a growing and numbing realisation of just how bad Sunak's budget really was. Worse, he’s even now saying that there is nothing he can do about poverty. This is a long thread to explain why he’s failing and what we can do about it if we want to change our politics.

For those who don’t want to read a long Twitter thread there is a blog version here. https://t.co/AuTdAr1f1n if you want a summary of the whole thread it’s this: the neoliberal thinking that all our main political parties subscribe to is now bankrupt. We need something new now.

Sunak faced a challenge this week. A winning Chancellor has to decide how to secure the support their party needs to win elections. In that case there will always be winners and losers in a budget. So Sunak had to make decisions.

However, it’s fair to say that decisions are always constrained. No budget has, I suspect, ever delivered precisely the policies any Chancellor has really wanted. That’s because all politicians are fantasists and reality has to be addressed as well in any budget.

The overwhelming realities that Sunak needed to address yesterday were really not hard to spot. First, there was the real economic chaos created by shortages in the economy. These are the result of Covid, Brexit and now war, but which heavily pre-dated the last.
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Richard Murphy
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@RichardJMurphy
As some will have noted, there were a lot of reports yesterday on the fact that £50 billion of banks notes are missing in the UK economy. This got me thinking. And as a result I have to suggest that finding that £50 billion of cash would not be hard. Here’s how to do it.

As the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons has noted, around £50 billion of banknotes in issue have no explained use. In other words, they do not appear to be used for regular cash transactions. What their alternative use might be is not known.

Some could be in the possession of tourists, who have not bothered to exchange them on leaving the country. But the amounts involved would be small.

A bigger sum might be cash savings under the proverbial mattress. This is entirely plausible. It is possible that some of this will be related to benefit fraud: the amount of savings a person has can have a significant impact on their ability to claim a number of benefits.

There is no doubt that a significant part of this money Is used within the shadow economy. That can cover activity where tax is evaded, of course. But it also includes drug dealing and many forms of human trafficking and abuse.
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Richard Murphy
Richard Murphy
@RichardJMurphy
I keep hearing people complain that the ‘mainstream media’ does not understand economics and that we’re talked down to as if everything must be explained as if the economy is a household. In this thread I explain all you (and they) need to know. Economics in one thread then....

Very few people seem to understand how money is created. Mainly that’s because when they’re told it seems so simple that they can’t believe something that’s so important that we’re willing to pay a lot to get it is created so easily. This thread explains how money is created.

What this thread also explains is that if we understand money we can completely reimagine how the economy really works, which is the pathway to rebuilding from the mess we are in. Which makes this a pretty big deal. I make no apology for its length as a result.

Let’s start at the very beginning. A person goes into a bank and asks for a £1,000 loan. The bank checks them out, and agrees. And that is all that it takes to create new money. Money is just a promise to pay. That simple exchange of promises is all it takes to create it.

Most people think there must be something that backs up the value of money. Gold, most likely. But there isn’t. Money is just a promise to pay, and has been for almost 50 years now. Mutual promises to pay creates all the money we have.
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Richard Murphy
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@RichardJMurphy
I keep reading that we are going to suffer stagflation in the UK. That’s possible, I agree. I also think it’s unlikely. It’s just as likely that we might face deflation. But what we definitely need is a change of economic policy. A thread….

Stagflation assumes a continuing situation where wage growth exceeds growth in available goods and services on which income can be spent, pulling prices up.

There are some in the UK for whom this wage growth is happening. Let’s call them the wealthy. They can pay all the prices now being demanded for goods that are in short supply and subject to big price increases, from second-hand cars to heating for the swimming pool.

Others are managing price rises by dipping into their savings, which is going to happen a lot over the coming months, and even years. But for many, these savings will run out. This means of maintaining a lifestyle in the face of inflation is only available to some, and is finite.

For a majority of households, with average incomes (or less) and few savings, the current inflation means reduced standards of living. The amount consumed will fall, as is already becoming apparent in GDP figures, and this crisis has hardly begun as yet.
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Here is the full document. I am going to go through it now.

Yep. This is also a point strongly made in @andrewdoyle_com's new book on Free Speech which I am halfway through and am pretty sure I will be recommending as a primer for the alarming number of people who seem confused about what free speech is & why it is good.


Well, good! Conservatives have not been great at this historically so I must give credit where it is due. I really wish this were a left-wing government taking this progressive stance.

(Areo has a piece forthcoming on why supporting FoS is inherently progressive, btw)


Yes, sadly this is true. I currently have half a dozen cases where people are being penalised for trying to express unorthodox views in the academy.


However, I should also say that one case in which I helped a student prepare for an ethical review when she had already been made aware her views were problematic (she wanted to treat people as individuals) was a resounding success & she passed it. So there is still hope.
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Today, several religious denominations in the USA commemorate the day as "Four Chaplains Day"

Indeed, the US Senate proclaimed February 3, 1998 as Four Chaplains Day, and it is celebrated in the liturgy of the US Episcopal Church as a feast day. But what's the deal?

Well, the four chaplains have names, which I will come to. On 23 January 1943, an American passenger ship, the SS Dorchester, left New York, in Convoy SG19, escorted by three US Coast Guard cutters. Bound for Greenland.


There were about 900 passengers and crew, including approx 750 US Army soldiers.

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