Philobiblon

There were many fascinating session at the one day of the Green Economics Institute conference that I was able to attend last week – and quite a few I couldn’t get to (organic growing of dates in Saudi Arabia, which the conference paper suggests is an entirely new idea, at least in modern times, would have been interesting!)

I was taken by Charles Secrett’s “masterclass” on green campaigning, particularly his stress on the need to be terribly careful about accessible language (“don’t talk about biodiversity, but about nature”, and his passionate argument that “we have less than a decade to turn around the political economy of the planet”.

But I was also taken by the session I attended given by Enrico Tezza, a senior ILO official originally from Italy, who argued that changes to the concept of working time management can be key to delivering on economic, social and environmental objectives. (He also reminded us that Keynes had thought that by the 1990s standard working time would be 15 hours a week, and noted that there had been some progress – in 1913 the average working hours were 2,600/person/year, but the most sophisticated Finnish flexitime was now on 1,400 hours.)

At the core of this theory is that “working time” should consider not just time spent in paid work, but also time needed for unpaid responsibilities, such as caring, also for education and skill development, and for leisure and retirement – and that at the heart of the policy should be “self-regulation”.

To quote his paper: “Educational systems, labour market institutions, social protection systems should support the re-organisation of working and non-working time over the life course and take the entire life as the basic framework for their policy.”

He acknowledged the potential trap of individualism in threatening workers’ rights (I thought of a seven-day a week sports editor on a small Australian newspaper I once knew who was proud of the fact he’d negotiated a pay-rise for signing away his life), and also highlighted the productivity trap of the long-hours culture.

To make this work, employers needed to decouple working time from their operating hours he said, focus on upskilling their workers, and be prepared to focus on effective productivity, not presenteeism.

The aim overall is decent working time.

I only managed to catch the afternoon session, after a morning on housing, but it certainly threw up some interesting ideas:

* One line of attack is on companies that are taking on privatised services, particularly those for which it is not the core part of their businesses. Highlighted was a planned protest against Sainsbury’s takeover of the St Guy’s and St Thomas’s pharmacy – a plan that has already led to a parliamentary question. The next one is planned for next week – I heard on Wednesday 12-2 on Borough High Street. Virgin was also identified as another possible target – and Richard Branson masks and protest balloons certainly seemed to be selling well.

* In Sheffield the local Keep Our NHS Public is organising a protest on Monday to coincide with the Olympic torch passing a major hospital. The aim is not to disrupt the passage of the torch but use the occasion to celebrate the NHS.

* It was suggested that patients ask their GPs to put on their notes for referrals ‘NPP’ – no private practice. (Unless there’s no alternative – we were told all blood tests now done by private providers.)

* But of course the TUC demo on October 20 is going to be big, and one speaker suggested concentrating efforts on that.

I think it was David Babbs from 38 Degrees who pointed out that it was hard to stop a government with a parliamentary majority from passing a law it wanted to pass, but that doesn’t mean they can implement it.

Today’s Camden housing strategy conference heard from LSE Professor of Economics Christine Whitehead, in a high-level and challenging, but very informative talk, which aimed, in her words, “to give an overview of the major tensions in the housing system and in housing policy” and “clarify why current policies are being put in place”. (She suggested it would be unpopular, but it was clear that what she was saying were observations of events, not views.)

She started by pointing out that everything in the end depended on macroeconomic conditions “but macroeconomists do not know what is going to happen and they do not even know how to analyse it”. But “the chances are that on the whole the future is like the past”.

It’s estimated there are now 1.5 million households across England who pre-crisis would by now have become owner-occupiers, but who are now renting, or living at home with parents. The government was “trying things”, in response to this she said. “If it doesn’t work, they’ll come out of it – it’s a variation of the traditional way of doing things, which was knowing what you want to do”.

The government’s main aims were to reduce welfare costs, target more, use existing assets more effectively, and using housing policy to support growth. It was seeking to move from “supply subsidies”, capital grants and lower rents, which help a narrow range of people and leave out many of those who are worse off, to providing income-related subsidies, more targeted and adjustable as household circumstances change – and which in some scenarios can be cheaper. The affordable rents model is a direct transfer from The Netherlands, but there there is better and more comprehensive social security, a better distribution of income and a stronger capital base.(There, rents of over 652 euros a month are market rents.)
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