More on the UK's Low Wage Economy

There are some interesting figures on the UK's low wage economy here.  The constant pressure on wages and incomes is not only immiserating, but also unsustainable.  It helps to destroy domestic markets and depress the economy further.  All government ministers' rhetoric on deregulation and so on will not alter that.

End of the Co-Op Bank

The end of the Co-op bank is prophesied here.  If so it is a dark day for mutualism. Financial services have traditionally been a good area for mutual solutions, with the Nationwide the strongest example, but if the Co-op Bank goes down, it will have a chilling effect on mutualism as a whole.

Bracken Moor at the Tricycle Theatre

Last week I went to see Bracken Moor at the Tricycle, which is well worth seeing.  It is essentially a ghost story, and comparably good to The Woman in Black.  The Artistic Director, Indhu Rubasingham, told me that she likes the audience to be surprised by her programming, and it certainly does that.

Bridge Park Sports Centre Redevelopment

Tomorrow's Executive has a long awaited report on redeveloping the Bridge Park Sports Centre in Stonebridge.  The existing sports centre was I believe originally a bus garage, and is really in need of very significant investment to bring it up to modern standards.

The basic idea of the new proposal is very similar to the redevelopment of Willesden Library Centre. There is a partial land sale to a developer to provide capital to rebuild the centre.  In this case, the sale would be to the landowner of the long derelict office buildings next door.  Redeveloping those into something productive would itself be an improvement worth having.

At present, the proposal is at an exploratory stage.  The things I would like more detail on as the project moves forward are:

1) What would the facilities of the new sports centre?
2) Would it have the same pricing structure and concessions as other Brent Sports Centres (as we secured by agreement in the Moberly sports centre)?
3) Is it possible to vary the archaic management arrangements?  The existing centre is one of the very few in London to be run directly by a Council.  This was a condition of the grant that built it back in the early 1980s.  It is likely that rolling it in with a wider leisure services contract would give the taxpayer a much better deal.

Creative Industries Debate

I am glad to see that Harriet Harman has managed to secure a debate on the creative industries.  Hopefully, this will raise the profile of a sector whose economic importance is often overlooked.

More Detail on the Defection of Cllr Carol Shaw?

Cllr Carol Shaw has gone into more detail of the reasons for her defection on the Hampstead and Kilburn Conservative web site.  It makes for curious reading.

Blaming the Liberal Democrats for their hypocrisy in promising no tuition fees before the election and then voting for them afterward is a widely shared view, but after all the Tories voted for the same policy.  Her opposition to improving Willesden Green Library Centre does no favours to her constituents. She may well have not been supported by her colleagues on various issues, although I suspect they probably feel unsupported by her.

I still haven't seen any response by either Sarah Teather or Brent Liberal Democrats as a whole to this further desertion from their party.

Feel the Lack of Quality with Capita

The FT carries an interview with Paul Pindar, the chief executive of Capita. I am surprised that his approach to outsourcing appears to be based entirely on bargain basement pricing.  Most procurement exercises I have taken part in (for example the current waste and street cleaning contract procurement in Brent) have paid a great deal of attention to quality.

I doubt whether his apparent model of lowest cost no matter how poor the quality is going to work over the long term. The veneer may be coming off his desk, but at some point he really will need a new desk. More seriously, he doesn't mention redesigning services to be more efficient, which should be perfectly possible in some cases.  More seriously still for his model, if your only offer is charging less than someone else, there will always be someone else willing to charge even less.  At some point that pressure will start cutting into your profit margins.

In the meantime, the cheap as chips services you provide are likely to become notorious for their poor quality.  Once that reputation reaches a certain point; it becomes very hard to turn it around.

I am glad I don't live in Barnet, where Mr Pindar's company is taking over most of the Council's services.

Some Sort of Answer on Help to Buy

As reported in the Guardian, I am glad to see David Cameron rolling back from Help to Buy in response to a question from Seema Malhotra MP.

I have criticised this policy before as likely to increase housing costs, enmire the government in the sub-prime market and do nothing to help the unaffordable cost of housing. Although David Cameron's answer helps limit some of the damage, it still shows no awareness that overpriced housing is a result of not supplying houses, and that market mechanisms have been totally inadequate.  Cameron's answer is also characteristically vague as to what mechanism is going to deliver his desired outcomes.  I particularly wonder about how he is going to stop people from abroad  taking advantage of the scheme for speculative purposes.