“The poor’s money”

On Andrew Marr’s Start The Week this morning (BBC Radio 4) Joseph Stiglitz talked about his new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (I ought to explain - I am allowed to listen to the radio at work). Three Trillion dollars is an unimaginable sum of money. Joseph Stiglitz said that the United Kingdom would have spent a similar sum of money in proportion to our size (via a vis the United States).

Just how much money has Tony Blair’s vanity-war cost us? (as I see it, Britain’s participation in the Iraq conflict was all about Tony Blair’s vanity and his attempt to portray himself as a global statesman).

Unless you are a Keynesian and believe in Keynesian big government expenditure (as Michael Portillo seemed to be endorsing on the Andrew Marr show, saying the Iraq expenditure would “just go through to society”) then the war will have to be paid for either through cuts in social expenditure, or higher taxation (in its widest sense), or greater inflation (and both America and Great Britain seems to have gone for a stealthy inflation option).



At the same time as rising inflation we have a credit “crunch” which in the United Kingdom has led to the nationalisation of a High Street bank (in itself not a disaster - the state used to run the TSB quite competently and denationalised it at a comfortable profit to the Exchequer).

The nationalisation of the Northern Rock Bank has been very controversial and damaged the government’s reputation for economic competence (on Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics show today they reported a poll which said 50% thought the Northern Rock crisis hadn’t been handled well).



You might need to clique on the image to read it properly.

The above plaque (dated 1868) demonstrates the principle of sound economics. Money was collected and invested (in this case in India Stock) and the interest was paid out in a village “dole” to the needy (and when they talk about money they meant solid gold coins not printed banknotes!). Everyone knew “the poor’s money” was ring-fenced because it said so on this plaque carved in marble and alabaster and put up in public (so no thieving State could raid it and spend it on illegal wars, grandiose follies and excessive expenses for themselves).

To her credit Hilary Clinton proposes a similar scheme (on a larger scale) to provide a health service for America’s least well-off.



This may be an ignoble suggestion, but one way Gordon Brown could restore popularity for his government would be if he arrested Tony Blair and put him on trial. There would be huge popular enthusiasm for this, similar to the Hang the Kaiser campaign after the First World War. I accept that it may not be possible to actually hang Tony Blair, but they could rough him up a little.

I saw the above packet of Gloxinia Kaiser Wilhelm and I couldn’t resist buying it. It represents a piece of marketing history. Although the plant is very beautiful, and fairly easy to grow, the name “Kaiser Wilhelm” damned it in the eyes of gardeners throughout the world for several generations, and only now is it coming back into the shops (has the New Labour brand been equally damned through association with another war mongerer?).

More on Start The Week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/starttheweek.shtml