Gifts to Greece

My first thought this morning was to write about the so-called UK drought again. Maybe I’ll post something on that later.

Then I had a strong urge to comment on the absurdly excessive punishment of Lewis Hamilton (a 5 place penalty or inadmission of his final run – moreorless equivalent punishments – would have been appropriate) after an error by his team in qualifying for today’s Spanish GP. I’d hardly call myself an expert on the sport, but a previous foray into F1 commentary attracted a good deal of attention.

Instead I’m going to channel my annoyance at the spoiling of what might have vaguely resembled a sporting event in Barcelona towards the Greeks.

All I want to convey is one simple point, that the Greek people have benefited hugely from the international loans on which they have already partially defaulted and look increasingly like failing to repay in their entirety.

We haven’t invented this thing we call money just for fun. Money allows resources to be allocated. If you borrow it, spend it and fail to repay the loan, you have acquired or consumed resources that could have been used by someone else. Take the Athens metro railway and all the other billions worth of infrastructure to support the 2004 Olympic Games. How was that funded? I’ll hazard a guess. Borrowed money, at least in part. And what will happen to all that capital investment when Greece defaults? It’ll still be there. These assets will remain in existence indefinitely for the benefit of the Greek people. To the extent they haven’t been paid for, they’ve effectively been stolen from the rest of the world.

Some loans may be riskier than others, because that’s how the world is, but, unlike equity investments, loans are designed to be repaid. Financial disruption – on a global scale over the last 5 years – arises when debts are not repaid. So, because of the knock-on effects, Greece’s default is worse than theft! The entire EU has been plunged into recession in large part because of the need for the financial system to prepare for possible Greek default. Instead of using capital to support new lending, banks have been writing down Greek (and other) debt and taking actual losses.

Obviously we’re just reaping what was sown when Greece and other European sovereigns borrowed unsustainably. The question is how to prevent repeats of this cycle of behaviour?

Let’s mull over that question for a minute. What is the popular conception of what’s going on?

I think it was Arthur Smith I heard on the radio yesterday saying the Greeks should be let off their debts because “it’s not the fault” of those protesting. In what sense is that, Arthur? Are you perhaps saying the average Greek took no executive decisions regarding the nation’s finances? Clearly true. But isn’t a large part of the problem that they haven’t paid and continue not to pay their taxes? What do you think is fairer, that every Greek homeowner should pay a special tax (they’re refusing) or that you and I should find the money?

And isn’t a large part of the problem the Greek public-sector? What do you think is fairer, that Greek workers should take whatever pay cuts it takes to balance the books (as has happened elsewhere in Europe, such as in Estonia – now growing again – Latvia and Lithuania) or that you and I should find the money?

Many non-wealthy Greeks must also be culpable of wilfully participating in a cash economy, benefiting from lower prices for services whilst complicit in tax avoidance. What do you think is fairer, that the Greeks start paying taxes commensurate with their public spending like people in most other countries, or that you and I should find the money?

But the really interesting point is that Greece is a democracy. They’ve chosen their own government since the ousting of the colonels in the 1970s. Collectively, then, they’ve repeatedly elected politicians, at least some of which have overspent, undertaxed and cooked the books, or appointed officials to do so on their behalf. Clearly, collectively, the Greeks have benefited from this behaviour. I’m intrigued, Arthur, whether you’re suggesting that, collectively, the Greek people are also not responsible for the situation they find themselves in.

That’s probably enough. After all, Arthur is a national treasure, practically the new Queen Mother, and perhaps a little fragile. Maybe he just didn’t think. Maybe, like the QM, he inhabits a world where decisions are made by waving a magic wand. Maybe, like the QM, he lives in a world where one need take no responsibility for one’s finances.

I also caught a snippet this morning of someone on the Andrew Marr Show invoking the precedent of Argentina. That great and honourable country, that upstanding, exemplary member of the international community most recently defaulted on their debts about a decade ago. And it’s been great for their economy! Who’d have thought it? It’d be great for my personal finances if I went out and bought a house, a car, new furnishings and white goods, new shoes, clothes and so on and then didn’t bother paying for them. I’m sure I’d feel pretty well off for a few years too.

Let’s pick on someone else. Arianna Huffington writes in the NYT:

“Yes, the Greeks acted irresponsibly before the economic collapse — the same way my father had acted irresponsibly in his private and professional life. But that is not reason to punish the children, to destroy their future as part of a remedy for a past for which they bear no responsibility.”

What Arianna is saying – for some reason “bleeding heart liberal” is the outmoded phrase that comes to mind – is a little more sophisticated than Arthur Smith’s indignant genialism. We have to draw a line, she says, to protect the innocent. Though, I can’t help pointing out yet again, these “innocent” are nevertheless beneficiaries of the misappropriated funds spent in Greece over the last decade or so. Perhaps they’ll remember that every time they hop on Athens’ shiny new metro trains.

The fear gripping financial markets – and contributing to the unnecessary economic hardship and suffering of innocent little children currently taking place in, say, the UK – is that other countries will follow Arianna’s line of reasoning too. Why shouldn’t Ireland, Spain, Portugal and even Italy say “don’t punish the children”? Having elected profligate, irresponsible governments that have given them what they wanted – low taxes, high spending – why won’t they now elect governments to satisfy their new desire for debt writeoff with some kind of moral justification (right wing nationalist or left wing anti-capitalist – take your pick, or, hey, what the hell, you can even pick both!).

If we want financial stability – quite possibly a good thing, I suggest, in light of the 1930s, just as a for example – then debts have to be repaid. And sovereign debts would be a good start.

So how can the international community protect itself against freeloaders? Against those countries who run up debts, fail to collect enough tax and then, in the words of the song about the girl next door and the bathroom floor, plead “It Wasn’t Me”?

Here’s my suggestion. Many of the countries that default are serial offenders. There’s something deeply ingrained, in their DNA if you like, that leads them to spend too much and collect too little tax. So cut them off from international finance for long enough for them to lose thir habits. This would be simple to implement. The financial services industry is highly regulated (all that effort’s been really effective, hasn’t it?). Regulators in responsible countries (say the UK, the US, the EU apart from Greece) could simply demand that no financial institution or its subsidiaries (maybe even no company) lends at all to a government that has defaulted on sovereign debt over the last 50 years – or maybe even more. Or, crucially, to any institution in that country dependent on its government, such as a bank or a company.

Since holding the currency of the defaulted country would constitute lending, all investment in defaulted countries would have to be funded locally in their own currency. Imports would require foreign currency that would have to be acquired beforehand by local institutions or individuals, i.e. by selling goods and services as exports (or small amounts of currency to tourists and other visitors). No publicly funded export credit guarantees would be available to UK companies, for example. In effect, such countries would be forbidden from running a trade deficit.

Such a measure would do two things. It would financially quarantine serial defaulters for a time longer than short-term market memory currently manages (defaulters tend to return to the international markets within a decade). And it would give non-defaulters pause for thought.

Don’t Backslide on Greece!

You know there’s serious trouble when the Economist runs a two-page editorial, in this case proposing “how to save the euro”.

The Economist agrees with most observers that the problem boils down to how to deal with Greece.

Let’s recap.  Greece, a serial defaulter, essentially fiddled the books to understate its debt in order to be admitted to the euro club, hoping for more economic stability.  Then the financial crisis came, and, as the saying goes, the tide went out and the Greeks were seen to be wearing no trunks.  Not only that, there was an Aegean tsunami on the horizon. Luckily, the Germans had grabbed the deck-chairs so the Greeks aren’t on their own.

What are the Greeks, the Germans and the eurocrats (not to mention the IMF) to do?

What baffles me is the current hysteria from all quarters. Decisive action is not required, as for example, George Osborne insists. The Greek debt is a long-term problem which requires a long-term solution. “Decisive action” implies some kind of quick fix. “Decisive action” is the last thing we need.

In fact, I can see things that can be done to mitigate the situation – economic stimulus measures in the less-indebted eurozone, other European (that includes the UK, Mr Osborne) and other global economies – but I simply can’t see how the central problem could be handled any better than it already is. If that’s not what the markets want to hear then the markets will just have to get over themselves. Some problems just have to be lived with.

Let’s consider the alternatives (I’ve previously written about this on Martin Wolf’s blog at the FT, but I can’t even access that right now, as I terminated my FT subscription in protest at them trying to jack up the price).

1. Greece exits the euro and devalues
This would be catastrophic, at least in the short-term. The Economist discusses the possibility and quotes an estimate that such a step would cost Greece 40-50% of its GDP in the first year (though this seems to assume they leave the EU as well). The trouble is, the “mother of all financial crises” that would result would not be confined to Greece. French and other eurozone banks would take a massive hit, with all kinds of knock-on effects. Even if the initial shock could be contained without seriously recessionary consequences for the remaining eurozone countries, it would simply be a case of “who’s next?” – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France…

2. Greece devalues within the euro
This is the straw that many are now clinging to, including the Economist, but in fact it’s almost as bad as option 1.

First, there’s the moral argument. Why should the beneficiaries of excessive Greek borrowing be forgiven their debts? Greek taxpayers (or non-payers, by all accounts) would escape paying taxes equivalent to the nation’s long-term spending; all Greeks would have benefited from public services that they haven’t fully paid for; Greek public sector workers would have been paid more than the nation could actually afford – the list is endless. The point is, although different Greek constituencies would no doubt blame each other, the entire nation is complicit, though pre-school children can legitimately claim not to have been in a position to influence matters overmuch.

Second, if Greece is let off a large chunk of its debt, why wouldn’t other countries demand the same? Why should the Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, Irish, French and Belgians suffer tax rises and cuts to their public services if Greek debt is simply written down?

Third, and critically, there’s the problem that a Greek default within the euro doesn’t actually solve the underlying problem. It does something about the debt, but not the deficit. If Greek debt is (say) halved from around 140% of GDP to around 70%, they will still not be credit-worthy, because they’d still be running a deficit. There would still be a need for the IMF, EU and ECB troika to help the Greek government somehow bring revenue and expenditure into line. There’d still be a need for wealthy Greeks to pay more taxes, the Greek public sector to spend less and its economy somehow to grow. In the meantime there’d still be a need for someone to lend euros to Greece.

A Greek default within the euro would simply not have the usual effect of sovereign defaults because it would not be accompanied by devaluation.

In fact, the main effect of Greek default within the euro would be for the Greeks to say “thank you very much”. There’d still be a big hit on eurozone banks (including the Greek ones which would need to be recapitalised from somewhere, and not to mention the ECB), although not the automatic loss from lending to the Greek private sector that would occur in the case of option 1 (when devaluation would make it more difficult, to say the least, for Greek companies to service euro-denominated debt).

Now, it seems to me the troika must recognise this. If I was them I’d demand the budget reforms before allowing any kind of Greek default. In particular, the possibility of Greece having to leave the euro needs to be still on the table. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if there hasn’t been a nod and a wink to the off-message officials and politicians (usually German) who regularly float this possibility.

It seems the next payment to Greece is being put off to the last possible moment, even though stumping up is much better for everyone than the alternatives. What puzzles me is that the markets don’t recognise that this brinkmanship is a necessary part of the strategy of forcing Greece to balance its budget in the long-term.

What the Greeks should really be worrying about is the possibility that they haven’t resolved their fiscal problems by the time the rest of the eurozone has recovered (and in particular the banking sector has rebuilt its capital) sufficiently to withstand a Greek default, euro exit and devaluation. Then the eurocrats might just decide to throw them to the wolves.

Still, I wouldn’t rule out a collective loss of nerve and a Greek default within the euro. We’d have to muddle through somehow. If there’s a double-dip, there’s a double-dip – maybe that’s now the least we can expect; if there are further sovereign defaults, the sun will still come up the next morning; if we do end up calling it the Second Great Depression or a Lost Decade, life will still go on. As I said, some problems just have to be lived with.

Off the Buses in Ealing

I reported yesterday that TfL is planning to increase fares on average by RPI+2 each year until 2018, and Travelcard prices by RPI+3 over the same period, the supposed justification being that rail fares are to rise by RPI+3. I briefly discussed the implications of this discrepancy, but had a subsequent conversation which led me to consider a different case.

I don’t know about you, but I always feel short-changed if I buy a season pass for a transport network and then find I’d have been better off paying for each journey individually. How likely is this to happen for someone living in Ealing, but working in central London a) now and b) in 2018?

Case 1: A morning and evening peak commuter
This individual uses the tube during the morning and evening peak and sometimes catches a bus back from the station.

In the following table I’ve ignored inflation and just increased costs by 2 or 3% p.a. So in today’s prices a zone 1-3 Travelcard will cost £41.55 in 2018, compared to £34.80 in 2012.

Year   Travelcard cost       Less 10 peak tube fares      Bus fare cost         No. bus fares to break even
2012         34.80                     34.80 – 10*3.10 = 3.80         1.40                             3.80/1.40 = 2.71
2018         41.55                     41.55 – 10*3.49 = 6.64         1.58                             6.64/1.58 = 4.21

So whereas in 2012 our peak commuter would only have to catch the bus 3 times in 2012 to avoid feeling cheated on a weekly Travelcard, he’ll have to catch it 5 times in 2018. If, like me, he walks to and from the station most of the time, he’ll be in a bit of a dilemma by 2018 as to whether or not to buy a weekly Travelcard.

Case 2: A morning peak and evening peak/off-peak commuter
It gets even worse in the case I actually discussed yesterday. The evening peak is from 16:00 to 19:00, so many people working in London may not actually travel home until off-peak fares apply. If this happens 3 times in a week, then the calculation changes somewhat:

Year  Travelcard cost     Less 7 peak, 3 off-peak tube fares     Bus fare cost   No. bus fares to break even
2012        34.80               34.80 – (7*3.10 + 3*2.60) = 5.30              1.40                     5.30/1.40 = 3.79
2018        41.55               41.55 – (7*3.49 + 3*2.93) = 8.33              1.58                     8.33/1.58 = 5.28

By 2018 this commuter will need to use the Travelcard on more than one bus each work-day (or for leisure journeys) to justify the expenditure.

Personally I feel the Travelcard should be a better deal. In London, it seems, regular tube users are likely to pay as much per journey as occasional travellers. And it seems unfair for commuters to have a dilemma as to whether to by a season ticket or not – I haven’t even discussed the effect of Bank Holidays, leave, sick-days and occasional home-working. This is the opposite of the case for main-line rail commuters who get a tremendous deal compared to the occasional traveller.

From TfL’s point of view inflating the cost of Travelcards relative to pay as you go (PAYG) fares may also not make sense in the long-run. The result may be that more of us in suburban London stop buying Travelcards and instead cut out as many bus and tube journeys as possible. As I said yesterday, “maybe it hasn’t occurred to TfL that people might consume less of their product when they put the prices up”.

Off the Buses

Boris has announced the 2012 London Transport fare increases already. Do we always get an announcement at this time of year? Or is our leader trying to get the bad news out of the way as long as possible before the mayoral election in May 2012? I note that the last time I visited this topic was in January this year when the last fare rises actually came into effect. With a bit of luck there’ll be a double whammy with negative stories now and in January 2012.

Let’s get the ball rolling with a negative story, then.

The BBC provides a link to the documents issued by the mayor. I only looked at the first one (pdf), which seems to tell me everything I need to know.

It turns out that TfL has a Business Plan based on fare rises of RPI+2%. News to me, most likely totally unjustifiable, but certainly worthy of discussion.

First, are we to believe that TfL’s costs rise faster than general inflation? This seems unlikely, though we do know that many of their employees are extraordinarily privileged to the extent that they apparently deserve a bonus just for doing their job during the Olympics. A lot of people will be working then, and the vast majority will be paid their normal salary, and would expect nothing more. I don’t support the present government, but I was rather hoping they might look at strike law with a view to stopping Londoners being continually held to ransom.

Second, on the customer side, how is it possible to bear continual above inflation rises in transport costs? I’m thinking of low-paid workers travelling into central London. The cost of a weekly Travelcard (tube and bus) season in 2012 will be £34.80 to zone 3, £42.60 to zone 4, after rises of 8.1% in each case. That’s about £1 per hour of work! Surely the minimum wage for central London needs to be higher than elsewhere to compensate? Assuming your pay rises roughly in line with inflation (which is doing well these days), then, if you have to spend more on transport, you have to spend less on something else. That is unsustainable. TfL is not like national rail, which, as the Transport Secretary pointed out this week, is now a service for the wealthy. It is simply not realistic for TfL to increase its prices by more than RPI for a long period of time, unless the lowest wages are increasing by at least the same rate.

So why has TfL adopted the RPI+2% formula? Maybe the document I downloaded doesn’t tell me everything I need to know after all. There seem to be a lot of TfL Business Plans, but the 2009 one for 2009/10 to 2017/18 tells us what we need to know:

“…fares in January 2011 and in subsequent years are now assumed to rise at RPI plus two per cent.”

So it is indefinite. And the purpose is clearly to increase the proportion of operating costs covered by fares and therefore reduce what TfL term “Net operating expenditure”:

Excerpt from TfL Business Plan 2009/10 - 2017/18

Let’s just note in passing that the congestion charge is going to raise less in 2017/18 than 2009/10!

Bizarrely, TfL don’t state what the figures in the table refer to. Presumably they’re 2009 £s (i.e. adjusted for inflation). Assuming that is the case, TfL assumes a steady growth (several % p.a. varying erratically) in passenger numbers as well as a 2% annual increase in the fares. They say:

“As the economy recovers from recession, it is projected that demand will return to current levels by 2012 and then continue to grow strongly as London’s employment and population increase, with demand reaching record levels by the end of the Plan.”

This is a fairly heroic assumption, as it seems to assume a very low elasticity of demand – maybe it hasn’t occurred to TfL that people might consume less of their product when they put the prices up. I’ll return to this point in due course.

TfL’s Business Plan suggests they expect costs to also rise by several % p.a. more than inflation, and also erratically, with a bigger increase in 2012/13 presumably to reflect the need to bribe the staff not to disrupt the Olympics, and in 2017/18, perhaps because Crossrail comes onstream (though there is no concomitant increase in fare revenue).

So in answer to my earlier questions, it seems that unlike every other field of economic activity, running London Transport becomes less and less efficient with time. And low-paid London commuters are expected to pay an ever-increasing proportion of their income on transport.

It seems to make sense that the fare-payer should cover the cost of the service, but let’s make a few observations:

1. Unlike many others, the London transport market is not segmented, so that those who can pay more do (compare walk-on national rail or air fares with advance tickets). I’m not saying I’m a fan of dramatic market segmentation. It creates its own problems, such as making urgent travel punitively expensive for everyone. But in an unequal society, it does allow some access to services for the less well off. Obviously it’d be better to have greater income equality in London, but until that happy day, subsidising fares helps alleviate the problem.

2. The fare-payer is not the only beneficiary of the London transport network. Just as, in the ’80s and ’90s, out of town superstores and malls benefited from the motorway network, such as London’s M25, (and generally improved roads), so the new millennium has seen similar developments – notably London’s twin east and west Westfields (or perhaps the new one should be an Eastfield?) – piggybacking on the city’s public transport network. Maybe these businesses should chip in and subsidise fares from the taxes they and their customers pay.

3. Just as for customers, businesses benefit from the availability of employees. They don’t pay a higher minimum wage even for staff having to travel into the centre of London. Maybe they should, but in the meantime it doesn’t seem entirely unfair for businesses and higher paid employees to subsidise the fares of the low-paid through the tax system. £1 travel cost for each hour of work is a lot for those earning little more than the minimum wage of £6/hour.

4. Today’s fares shouldn’t subsidise investment. That should be paid for by future fares, i.e. the beneficiaries of the investment. And in fact, the goal in TfL’s Business Plan is not apparently to increase fares to pay for more investment. So when Boris mentions investment in the same bluster as higher fares he’s actually being misleading and trying to deflect criticism.

And on top of this, there’s an anomaly in the pricing scheme – this is what really got my goat and prompted me to delve into the mire of transport fares once again:

“Travelcard season prices increase by 8% overall because of the link with National Rail fares which, as approved by the Secretary of State for Transport, are to rise by 8% (RPI+3%).”

What tosh.

Fares other than Travelcards are going to increase by RPI+2% (7% this year), but Travelcards are going to increase by RPI+3%, because you might get the train.

Do they think we’re stupid?

The price for a mainline train within London is the same as the price for the same journey by tube. I can go to Ealing Broadway and get a train to Paddington or I could get the tube there. I’d touch in and touch out with my Oyster card the same either way.

The daily limit applies just the same whether I use tubes and buses or tubes, trains and buses.

No, increasing the weekly limit faster than other fares (and remember this won’t happen just this year, but indefinitely until the policy changes) affects certain people disproportionately. The sort of people most affected are those who use the system most, that is, those dependent on it most likely to get to work, that is, those with least choice.

I’m in zone 3. If you need to get a bus and tube to and from work – and tube stations are thin on the ground out here, so often a long walk – then you’re going to need a weekly Travelcard (£32.20 in 2011; £34.80 in 2012), given that 10 peak pay as you go (PAYG) zone 1-3 tube journeys alone cost £29 in 2011 and £31 in 2012.

Of course, the tragic thing about all this is that many Londoners get the bus all the way into the centre to save a few pounds at the expense of perhaps an hour a day. But even they’re being screwed. The cost of a 7 day bus and tram pass is rising by 7.3% from £17.80 in 2011 to £19.10 in 2012. I can understand why the individual bus fare is increasing by 7.7% – that’s to keep a round number (£1.40 in 2012 after £1.30 in 2011). But £19.00 for the weekly pass would have been a 6.7% increase. Why not stop there? Gratuitous.

As far as I can see, the main beneficiaries of the fare changes for 2012 are off-peak occasional tube travellers for whom the zone 1-2 fare rises by only 5.3% (£1.90 to £2 – OK a nice round figure) and the zone 1-4 fares by a mere 4% (£2.50 to £2.60). For the last, £2.70 would only have represented an 8% increase. It seems fairer somehow to impact what is most likely discretionary travel a little more and that for people trying to make ends meet a little less.

What else could be done to help the low-paid? Besides fair pay, that is.

Well, here’s another curious anomaly. “Peak” in regard to the daily limit means 4:30-9:30am. That is, if you travel between those hours the daily cap will be the peak rate (£10.80 in 2012, rather than the off-peak £7.80). But if you don’t reach the daily limit and just pay as you go, the peak is 6:30-9:30am and 4-7pm (16:00-19:00). Odd. Why not give people more of an incentive to travel before 6:30am, when presumably there is spare capacity? Why not make the peak daily limit apply only if you travel between 6:30 and 9:30am? Wouldn’t this be sensible demand-management? It would help at least some of those who currently spend more than the off-peak daily limit because they take a bus and tube to work (e.g. in zone 3 in 2012 a pre 6:30am tube fare, a peak return fare and two bus fares would come to £2.60 + £3.10 + 2x£1.40 = £8.50, above the off-peak cap of £7.80 but below the £10.80 peak cap).

The case I’m most interested in is my own, of course. It’s the borderline case, where I may as well walk to and from the tube station rather than catch the 297 (or infrequent E10). If the service were more frequent I might take the 297 to Ealing Broadway. As it is, I never do, because I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait, at least until I get to the stop, when there may be a few clues. When I come out of the station, though, I can sometimes see the bus waiting, or at least a queue of people. I’d take it more often if they actually bothered to display a departure time. But sometimes it comes down to a cost consideration. Basically, I’ll rarely pay the full fare. I might take the bus, though, if I reckon I’ll hit the daily limit.

I note that for 2012 the daily limits for zones 1-3 are increasing by more than the relevant tube fares. The peak daily limit is going up from £10.00 to £10.80 (8%) whereas the peak tube fare is increasing only from £2.90 to £3.10 (6.9%). And off-peak, the daily limit is going up from £7.30 to £7.80 (6.8%) whereas the tube fare is increasing only from £2.50 to £2.60 (4%).

So, in 2011, an off-peak return tube journey to the centre, and a journey within zone 1 (£1.90) came to £6.90, leaving 40p of the daily limit to be taken up by a bus fare, but the same itinerary in 2012 would come to £7.20 before the bus, which effectively costs me 60p. OK, it’s a 50% price increase but I expect I’ll still hop on a 297 at Ealing Broadway station if passengers are boarding!

Nevertheless, if TfL persists in increasing weekly Travelcard prices by more than other fares, there will be people who switch to pay as you go, and walk to tube stations rather than take the bus. Maybe this is all very healthy, but it seems a strange policy. It would make more sense to me to raise all TfL prices by exactly the same percentage and charge – now that it’s all electronic with Oyster – to the nearest penny if necessary.

Nuclear Future Unclear

Whilst pondering this piece, I saw George Monbiot has added his ha’p'orth. I don’t know if he writes his own headlines, but I can’t help noting that “Japan nuclear crisis should not carry weight in atomic energy debate” is a prescriptive statement and the real world is normative (a distinction I probably owe to Nassim Taleb, as I’m currently reading Fooled by Randomness). Lovelock has also apparently used that ill-advised word, “should”. Maybe it should not carry weight, but it will. In fact it already has, since countries from China and India to Germany and France are reviewing their nuclear plans.  At the very least, increased safety compliance costs will be imposed on nuclear energy suppliers.

As I write things look grim. The Japanese Emperor has prepared the nation, the head of the IAEA is flying in, global stock-markets are in freefall and even the UK is politely advising nationals to “consider” leaving the Tokyo area. Russian and EU energy officials have described the current status as “worst-case scenario” and “out of control” respectively.

Maybe the Fukushima plant will by some miracle be pulled back from the brink. But the problem – as discussed in a comment on The Climate Philosopher‘s blog – is that there are now multiple interacting problems. Radiation levels are preventing access to the site and there is contention for the available resources of water, equipment and personnel.  And last-ditch measures – dropping water from helicopters and using water cannon – are being adopted to try to cool parts of the complex. Sometimes a solution presents itself in a crisis, but because there are so many problems at Fukushima, it’ll take more than a calm, clear-headed, courageous individual to save the day, as Thomas Tuohy did at Windscale. The only real hope is that electrical power to the plant is restored allowing the electric pumps that failed in the earthquake and tsunami to be restarted. Assuming they’re still operational.

The Climate Philosopher’s initial post only considered the problem for the case of a single reactor. But as we saw yesterday (Wednesday), one event can force the evacuation of the site, stalling measures to control all 6 reactors and (at least) 2 pools of spent fuel rods, at least temporarily. It seems only a matter of time before the site has to be evacuated for an extended period. If – though I’m starting to suspect when – this happens, the other reactors will release further radiation and the spent rod cooling pools will boil away.

The cooling pools are at least as much a worry as the reactors. Apparently they could even go critical if they dry out, but more likely they’ll simply burn. They now have minimal containment, so the result is likely to be a radioactive plume, presumably not on the scale of Chelyabinsk, though in a much more densely populated region. Hopefully the wind will still be blowing out to sea if such a release does happen. It occurs to me that in some ways a single explosive event, rather than a gradual release, might be preferable, since, if the leak occurs over time, and the wind direction varies, radioactive material will be spread over a wider area. And besides the direct effects, access to the site would be further restricted.

It is now almost irrelevant how serious the situation becomes, since the risks of nuclear power have now been highlighted.  The technology may well be safe if reactors and waste storage facilities are properly designed and managed.  Location is always going to be a problem, though.  We don’t have to worry just about earthquakes and tsunamis.  Monbiot supposes we can blithely:

“…add a fifth [condition for nuclear power], which should have been there all along: no plants should be built in fault zones, on tsunami-prone coasts, on eroding seashores or those likely to be inundated before the plant has been decommissioned or any other places which are geologically unsafe. This should have been so obvious that it didn’t need spelling out.”

Trouble is, George, that rules out practically all of them, since nuclear power needs a constant supply of large quantities of water.  And not only will global warming increase flood risks, it will also lead to sea-level rises which may be significant within the lifetime of reactors being planned today.

Much has been made of the folly of the General Electric (GE) Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) design and so-called Generation III passive-cooled reactors are undoubtedly less risky.

But the public will still be worried.  Let’s assume the wisdom of crowds is at play and the population are not just ignorant proles.  What might the concerns be?

1. Just because we avoid what can now be seen to be obvious problems doesn’t mean we’ll avoid subtle ones in the future.  We don’t know what we don’t know.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

An account of the fire at Windscale suggests causal factors were not just design misjudgements that must have made sense at the time – air-cooling and a change of usage mode which meant the thermocouples became suboptimally located – but also unexpected effects, in particular the deterioration of the crystalline structure of graphite under neutron bombardment.  Who would have thought of that?  And even then the precise cause of the initiation of the fire remains obscure.

Even in the best designs there is bound to be scope for human error and unexpected physical processes.

2. We are systematically underestimating risks.

There was inevitably going to be a severe earthquake followed by a tsunami in Japan.  It was only a matter of time.

Not only that, the GE Mark 1 BWR was known to be unsafe.

Why then was this accident allowed to happen?  Even without hindsight, it would have been cheaper to scrap the Fukushima BWRs decades ago and replace them with reactors of a modern design.  The storage pools could have been made safer and separation from the reactors increased.

Here’s a clue.  I read in more than one place that the criterion for design of French reactors is based on protection against a 1000 year flood.  Sont-ils des noix?!  Are they nuts?  Here’s another thought prompted by Taleb.  If there are 1000 reactors in the world vulnerable to a variety of 1000 year risks – and let’s be charitable and assume each reactor is only vulnerable to one risk – then we can expect a nuclear crisis once a year on average!

It seems that the Fukushima complex considered only the risk of a magnitude 7 quake.  Not the worst possible.  And the tsunami was not a second disaster as many media commentators have implied.  The one caused the other.  I was struck after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami that isolated Pacific islanders, who survived by heading for the hills, explained that their ancestors had warned them that: “after the ground shakes, the sea will invade the land”.

The problem, of course is the process of risk assessment.

When I get on a plane the chance of not making it to my destination is less than one in a million.  And the public expects certainty.  Any aircraft accident near-miss results in lengthy enquiries and safety improvements of various kinds.

The possibility of an accident at a given nuclear facility needs to be reduced to at most billions to one.  Multiple levels of containment are needed to allow for the unknown unknowns.

The issue is a thorny one.  Corporate interests are involved.  There is political reluctance to write off significant investments.  Hubris and other admirable human traits play a part.

Nuclear risks are not the only ones we need to be concerned about.  Climate risks are similarly misjudged.  It’s not enough to only have to worry about 1000 year floods or droughts or heatwaves or winters.  Given (say) 100s of possible 1000 year disasters, some will occur every few years!

And then there are risks of various kinds to human health, such as epidemics, and to the economy, such as banking crises.

Dealing with the risk management deficit is a huge task, but here are a couple of recommendations:

1. A formal quantitative approach is needed.  We currently have more rather less tolerance of risks that affect many people, are  disruptive, expensive to address and that require public rather than private expenditure.   Risk levels need to reflect and be seen to reflect what the public would choose.  Otherwise political support will not be forthcoming when it is needed, such as during the nuclear plant planning process.  And, as shown by their attitude to flying, the public has very low risk tolerance.  Standards are lower (mere 1000 year floods indeed!) in domains where the connection between procurement decision and disaster is tenuous. Public involvement in the design of nuclear reactors (or flood defences or epidemic and other disaster planning) is minimal.  The effects of mistakes appear only decades later.  The market cannot be relied on to impose discipline.  Government must step in.

2. Independent agencies may regulate particular industries, but a strong central government function is needed – an Office of Risk Assessment and Mitigation, perhaps, or maybe simply Disaster Avoidance.  At present, it seems the UK Chief Scientist takes on this role.  Maybe responsibility for risks could be made more explicit, but science is not be the only discipline required, so perhaps a new department should be established.  I would not envisage a large staff.  The role would be more akin to audit of government departments, functions and divisions of responsibilities.  And brainstorming scenarios.  A similar office may be needed at other levels – large cities on the one hand and the supranational (so the EU and UN) on the other.  Regardless of the details, teeth are needed.

I was shocked that Japanese towns were so vulnerable to the recent tsunami.  After all, this sort of thing has happened many times before – tsunami is a Japanese word.  I was even more shocked the nuclear plants were so exposed to risk.  It may be somehow rational at an individual level to ignore 1000 year risks – after all a given disaster is unlikely to occur in one’s lifetime, or before an executive has enjoyed his healthy pension – but we are now in an era where we are not only more interconnected than ever before, magnifying and proliferating risks, but also have come to expect a lifetime free from war, plague, pestilence and the other ills brought to previous generations by the ancient Horsemen.

Quick, FIT Farmers!

I once asked a careers adviser about the possibilities of becoming a journalist. I was told it was a difficult profession to get into. Clearly the reasons for that have nothing to do with competence to actually do the job.

Following my post back in October pointing out that the feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy for large installations is so generous that there’s no longer an incentive to use sunlight to grow food, or, as the Guardian put it on Monday 7th Feb, “[a]fter a Guardian report on Sunday” – that would be 6th Feb – DECC have decided to bring forward their review of the scheme.

So anyone planning to take advantage of the current tariffs better move fast. But make sure you understand because the papers seem to labour under one or two misconceptions.

For example, yesterday the Independent wrote that:

“…including projects of more than 50 megawatts (MW) in the review will catch out community solar schemes from schools, hospitals and housing associations, as well as truly large-scale farm installations.”

That should have read 50kW, and soon did after the error was pointed out. The point is that the schemes being subsidised by FITs will generate relatively piffling amounts of energy.

As the predictable farce continues, it’s becoming less and less clear to me what the rationale for the FIT scheme actually is, at least for solar PV. The fundamental problem is that government made the a priori assumption that microgeneration is economically efficient. Wrong, wrong, wrong. FIT farms are much more efficient than sticking solar panels on people’s roofs. As ever, scale economies are critical.

So we keep hearing statements accusing farmers of taking up a subsidy which was “intended for” even smaller-scale producers (I say “even smaller-scale” because what’s really needed is industrial-scale production of solar electricity in the Sahara). It’s a no-brainer what DECC will actually do: they’ll reduce the FIT rates for larger installations and/or reduce the size limit for which FITs apply and/or allocate different pots of subsidy for different size schemes – fortunately Osborne has capped the amount that can be committed (from our future electricity bills). Basically they’ll defend the micro micro-generators. But why?

If the future isn’t microgeneration, why would we want to subsidise it? Why not do the reverse of what the government is about to do and allow relatively large-scale solar PV installations to use the subsidy? Surely that would achieve the objective of building up scale economies (that term again – what mental contortions to recognise one form of scale economy and not another in the same initiative!) for the supply of solar panels in the UK?

There’s misconception about another aspect of the scheme, too, extending even to a picture caption serving as the subtitle to a Guardian article supposedly answering all your solar PV FIT questions. They write that:

“Homeowners can make money from their solar panels by selling the energy produced to electricity companies”

More wrongness, journos!

You make most of the money – 41.3p/kWh – by generating the electricity. That’s what you’ll get a meter for on day one.

In fact, the last thing you want to do is sell it to your electricity company! For that you only get an additional 3p/kWh. Last time I looked I was paying around 12p/kWh for electricity and 5p/kWh for gas. So what you want to do is use the solar PV generated electricity yourself rather than buying electricity or even gas. Arrange to use the electricity during the day (perhaps by using storage heaters) or even store it in a bank of batteries to cook in the evening.

There’s a wrinkle that favours the home microgenerator even more. Until smart meters roll out it will be assumed that you export half the electricity you produce and use the rest. So anything over half you use is totally free!

As I expected was inevitable all along, we are now well into the realm of perverse incentives. If you’re a home microgenerator the opportunity cost of your own electricity is only at most 3p/kWh. So you might be able to afford to use it up when you wouldn’t have previously spent the money buying electricity. Air-conditioning springs to mind.

It seems the 3p/kWh export tariff has been set at the price electricity distributors normally pay suppliers. But that seems a bit daft, since they (or we) are subsidising generation of the same electricity. Clearly, the export tariff should be approximately the same as the consumer price for electricity and the generation tariff somewhat lower than it is now to compensate.

It might be worth pointing out that with the scheme as it is, electricity consumers should favour larger-scale solar PV installations – FIT farms – since they have no choice but to export their electricity at 3p/kWh (on top of a lower generation tariff of as low as 29.3p/kWh compared to the domestic tariff of 41.3p/kWh).

It’s obvious why home microgenerators would support FITs. It’s not so obvious why electricity consumers would be so enthusiastic. From the detached point of view of decarbonising the UK’s electricity supply, it seems to me there’s a problem looming a decade or two down the line. Current policies should deliver the 15% renewables by 2020 the UK is commited to, though not much will be solar PV, by the way – offshore wind will dominate. But sometime after 2020 we’ll need to start getting domestic consumers to switch from gas central heating and cooking to electricity. At present, the gas price is a fraction of that for electricity. The gap can only widen, especially as we add expensive renewables to the supply. Better start thinking now, I suggest, how we’re going to manage – politically – to tax domestic gas at around the level we do petrol.

And best to think too about how to keep the domestic electricity price down. Generous FITs are probably not the way. And a much larger proportion of onshore wind at about half the cost of offshore might be a good idea as well.

Subsidising Cambridge Commuters?

Labour is choosing to attack today’s VAT rise as “the wrong tax at the wrong time”. I’m not so sure. It seems to me that stealth tax rises, such as on public transport, are far less fair.

Pre-empting arguments over the figure, Labour are cunningly pointing out that the Lib Dems claimed during the General Election that the VAT rise would cost “the average household” £7.50 a week.

Curious. £7.50 extra VAT a week at 2.5% implies £300 of spending that qualifies for the tax – that is, £300 of spending that doesn’t include mortgage or rent, food, children’s clothes, books or newspapers, lottery tickets, gas, water, electricity, public transport or Council Tax. Difficult to manage on an income of ~£30K, that is, a weekly spend of ~£600, I’d have thought.

On the other hand, multiplying £7.50 by 52 weeks and the ~20m households in the UK gives around £7.5bn, which does seem about right. I suspect VAT is in fact a progressive tax.  The wealthy spend proportionately more on the sort of things that qualify – restaurant meals, expensive booze, nibbles and confectionery, new cars, designer gear and other big-ticket items.  The poorest – getting by on Tesco bogoffs, saving up for the odd bus ticket, buying all their clothes from charity shops and so on – must have eff all VAT-qualifying expenditure.

I strongly suspect that this is a case where Mr & Mrs Average do not in fact actually exist.

Maybe Labour would gain more votes by instead pointing out what appears to have been another case of dissembling during the election campaign by those (allegedly) lying liar Liberals.

Or perhaps they could have focussed instead on the increases in public transport costs which are in many cases seriously regressive.

Take the Zone 1-4 Travelcard (and daily Oyster limit) which will affect those working in the centre of London.  It’s rising from £6.30 to £7.30, off-peak, that is, by nearly 16%, not the 11% the BBC calculates, bless. What’s more, if you happen to live near muggins here in zone 3, the peak Travelcard/Oyster limit has increased from £8.60 to £10 – that’s over 16% even if you’re the BBC – to match the unchanged rate for zone 4.

Curiously, bargain of the year for 2011 is the 7-day zone 1-3 Travelcard which remains less than that for zones 1-4 at £32.20 against £30.20 last year, a mere 6.6% increase.  This could now pay for itself in 32.20/10.00 = 3.22 days, against 30.20/8.60  = 3.51 days last time out.  Even off-peak it’s worth considering at 32.20/7.30 = 4.41 against 30.20/6.30 = 4.79 days.  More realistically a mix of peak and off-peak travel into London over 4 days (2*£10.00 + 2*£7.30 = £34.60) would justify buying the Travelcard for £32.20 whereas last year you were much more likely to need to travel on 5 days (2*£8.60 + 2*£6.30 = only £29.80, still less than a £30.20 Travelcard).  Where’s the logic in that?

Having to decide in advance whether to invest in a weekly Travelcard is an unnecessary irritation, since the system could cap weekly expenditure in the same way as daily.  I understand TfL’s IT experts will get round to doing this by around 2013.

Hours of amusement, perhaps, though maybe deadly serious if, like me, you fall into the category of zone 3 residents who travel into London on an irregular basis.  A category that is being seriously screwed by the latest fare rises.

Who will this arbitrary unfairness affect the most?  The poorest of course.  Consider those who live in zone 3 and can’t afford the higher price of property near a tube station.  In 2010 two off-peak tube fares to the centre at £2.40 each, for example, brought you within striking distance – £1.50 – of the daily limit of £6.30.  You didn’t end up spending full whack on the bus each way to the tube station – the cost was capped at another £1.50.  In 2011, though, those two tube fares will set you back £2.50 each, but the daily limit has been disproportionately raised to £7.30, so the buses will cost you £2.30.  The tube fare – which is all Mr Rich who lives near the station has to worry about – might have gone up by only 4%, but the bus fare will have risen by 80/1.50 = 53%!  The percentage is even greater if one of the tube fares happens to be at the afternoon peak rate (£2.70 in 2010, £2.90 in 2011, charged from 16:00 to 19:00) when the off-peak daily cap still applies. [In 2010, £2.40+£2.70 left £1.20 of the £6.30 daily limit for the bus; in 2011, £2.50+£2.90 leaves £1.90, so the cost of choosing the bus rather than walking has risen by more than 58%!].

I happen to fall into the category of those who live near enough to a tube station to be able to walk if I’m not feeling lazy.  I now have much more of an incentive to do so.  What TfL has done is make it much more expensive for zone 3 travellers to use a bus as well as the tube.  So more people will walk instead and TfL may not even realise the extra revenue they may expect from the daily cap increases.  Leaving everyone worse off.

Boris may want to take note that with another 8.3% increase (from £1.20 to £1.30) in the flat-rate bus fare, following the 20% increase at the start of 2010 (from £1) he’s making short hops in general more and more expensive.  The flat-rate fare makes a lot less sense in a purely fare-based system than in a subsidised one where the fares don’t recover the full cost.

Commuters who make one tube journey each day haven’t been hard hit, but it’s difficult to find categories of bus user who aren’t much worse off after these latest changes.  The daily bus limit has only increased by 2.6% – from £3.90 to £4 – this time (though it was £3.30 in 2009).  This is good news only for occasional bus commuters to the centre, who most likely have to change – and it’s a disgrace that some people are paid so little that they can’t afford to use the tube (and note that you face no penalty for changing tube routes) – since the 7 day bus pass has increased by 7.2% from £16.60 to £17.80.  [And now represents 4.45 rather than 4.26 daily maximum fares.  Where's the logic in that?].

All this has been rather a digression as what I really wanted to do was provide an update on the cost of mainline rail travel.  ‘Cos if you want to get about the UK within a finite time you need serious money.

A couple of years ago I introduced the Cambridge Day Travelcard (with Network card discount) fare index, which is admittedly not yet perhaps quite as famous as the Economist’s Big Mac Index.  Here’s the full series, brought up to date:

2003     £11.55

2004     £12.60     9.1% increase on previous year

2005     £13.85     9.9%

2006     £14.85     7.2%

2007     £15.20     2.4% (presumably lower because of the new afternoon restrictions – the return can no longer be used on trains departing King’s Cross between 16:30 and 19:00, which is inconvenient, to say the least)

2008     £15.85     4.3% (lulling us into a false sense of security)

2009     £17.50     10.4% (out of the blue – it’s a record!!)

2010     £17.50     0% (but still a real-terms increase! – according to the RPI, prices in July 2009 were 1.4% lower than a year earlier)

2011     £18.50     5.7% (close to the July RPI of 4.8% plus 1% which I understand was allowed for the average of each operating company’s fare increases)

So the cost of a day Travelcard from Cambridge to London – for a degraded service, remember – has risen a whopping 60.2% in the mere 8 years since 2003.

What about inflation?  Really we should compare the RPI for a month from December 2010 to December 2011 (reflecting general prices when we’re actually travelling) with the same month in 2002-3, but the latest data available is for November 2010 when the RPI index was 226.8.   It was 178.2 in November 2002, so prices in general over the same 8 years have risen only roughly 27.3%.

That is, in 8 years, the day Travelcard from Cambridge to London (with Newtork card discount), for a degraded service, has risen about 25.8% in real terms.

And the formula for the next few years is RPI+3%.

But what really got my goat, and prompted this post, was reading the comments of an RAC spokesman in Saturday’s Guardian:

“The RAC Foundation, a motoring thinktank, claims that the annual £5bn subsidy of the rail network disproportionately benefits Londoners and the well-off, with 40% of households earning more than £50,000 a year using the railways at least three times a week – double the figure for those on less than £25,000 per year.

Stephen Glaister, its director, said: ‘The rail subsidy comes from the Treasury and, in that sense, it is paid for by everybody. But the benefits are weighted towards the south-east and the relatively well-off. If government policy is intended to help redistribute wealth and help the less well-off, rail subsidies are a poor way of doing it. Spending the money on helping road users would be a better way of doing it.’ “

Well, of course only the wealthy can now afford to use the railways!  There’s not much point taking a £15K a year job in London if it’s going to cost you £5K of that just to get to work, is there?

But I rather dispute that the benefits are “weighted towards the south-east”, or at least towards commuters on busy routes, such as Cambridge to London.  What I suspect happens is that commuters subsidise those travelling off-peak; busy routes subsidise those at the periphery of the network; and busier regions, especially in the south-east subsidise less-busy regions.

The Guardian could, for example, have taken a peak at the latest (2009-10) National Rail Trends (NRT) Handbook from the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR).  On p.62 you’ll find table 6.2c which gives the 2008-9 passenger subsidies for each Train Operating Company (ToC).  I crudely show it here:

As can be seen at a glance, First Capital Connect (FCC), which operates the Cambridge-London route, is not directly subsidised, but in fact pays 3.4p per passenger kilometer for the privilege of running the trains.  Now, this is for the whole franchise, which must include peripheral routes that are less heavily used, as well as the most overcrowded trains in the country from Cambridge.  But those peripheral routes at least help to bring some passengers onto the network, so let’s take the figure of 3.4p to be realistic.  A round trip to London must be in excess of 100km, so travellers from Cambridge are on average paying in at least £3.40 every time they buy a return ticket.

But the franchise payments are not the main subsidy to the railways.  The taxpayer provides around £4bn a year in direct support to Network Rail (see Table 6.2a of the ORR’s HRT handbook – self-serving obfuscation in Network Rail’s financial statements reveals no more detail).  Table 6.2c shows a total of around 50bn passenger kilometers per year (note that some operators are outside the franchise system so the distance total in table 6.2c is not complete).  Making the heroic assumptions that Network Rail’s subsidy is evenly spread and not used to support vanity investment projects, rail passengers do indeed appear to be subsidised to the tune of around 8p per passenger km.

Combining the two subsidies suggests FCC passengers are on average subsidised by around 4.6p per km (8p – 3.4p) whereas those on, for example, Northern Rail receive around 12p/km (8p + 4p from Table 6.2c).

The Guardian notes that an annual season ticket from Cambridge to London costs around £4000.  If this is used 250 times, that works out at around £16 per day return, not bad at all compared to the £13.85 price for an off-peak day return with a Network card. It seems commuters in fact get a relatively good deal since their season ticket entitles them to unlimited travel to London at times when the day return fare would otherwise cost an absurd £34.

This isn’t quite what I expected – as always, it pays to delve into the numbers.  It seems a bit daft for an annual season ticket to represent no more than 120 daily trips (£4000/£34).  I don’t really see why anyone making fewer than that should be so severely penalised.  This discourages all kinds of business and other activity, part-time working, working from home and tourism, for example.

It remains conceivable that even commuters on the Cambridge to London route are still being subsidised, though the trains are so busy I’m confident that the Cambridge to London route in fact subsidises the rest of the FCC franchise.

The people really being fleeced are:

- those adults without a Student, Senior or other railcard – since anyone can buy a Network card for around £25, this means occasional users are penalised, which hardly helps to bring new passengers onto the railways;

- all non season-ticket holders forced to travel at peak times (which, since 2007, includes 16:30 to 19:00 from King’s Cross);

- purchasers of single or open return tickets. An Anytime (i.e. including peak-time trains) open return from Cambridge to London now costs the same as two peak singles, at £40, a ridiculous two and a half times the effective rate (£16) for a season ticket-holder occupying the same seat – or more likely standing on the same train.

The numbers suggest these categories of passenger from Cambridge to London are definitely not being subsidised.

If the strategy is for costs of rail travel to be attributed to those using the service, then it makes no sense for some categories of passenger to pay substantially more than the cost.  The open return ticket price should be reduced to that of the day return and single tickets should be half the return price.   For Cambridge to London, the non season-ticket peak fare is way out of line and should simply be reduced to say 1/150th of the season ticket price, that is, around £27 (from £34).

The TOCs effectively have monopoly pricing power.  Prices therefore reflect expediency rather than the cost of providing the service.  If there were a decent level of competition they’d soon find another operator could afford to undercut them on those fares that are out of line.

What’s more, allowing peak fares of effectively twice the off-peak rate gives no incentive to rail companies to increase passenger numbers, for example, by running more late-night and pre morning-peak trains.  Allowing an afternoon peak is insane – the rail company has a disincentive to ease over-crowding.

The whole rail franchise system is dysfunctional.  What’s effectively being sold is the right to charge monopoly prices.  This is absurd.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for peak and off-peak fares – sufficient trains would be run to meet demand at all times.  In the meantime, though, the need for demand management skews incentives for the TOCs.  It’s therefore necessary to divorce ticket-pricing from financial rewards to the TOCs.  The TOCs should be paid just for the service they provide – that is, the same rate per passenger regardless of when they travel and how much they’ve paid for their ticket.  And less per passenger on trains that are more than 70% full. The TOCs should have an incentive to increase use of the railways, not screw more money out of fewer passengers.

The Benefits of Being Ugly

I’ve just watched today’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on iPlayer (warning: programme will probably not remain permanently available), because it’s simply not clear what aspects of the Coalition government’s benefits cuts programme Labour opposes.  It was ugly: the problem is Ed Miliband didn’t stick to the point.  There is a chink in Cameron’s armour, but Miliband missed it.  If he’d thought through his position rather better you feel he could have skewered the bastard.

The point is, if you watch the Guardian’s PMQ clip, Miliband appears to be latching onto the vindictive proposal to reduce Housing Benefit (HB) by 10% after someone has been on Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for a year.

I’d thought Chris Bryant had been off-message when he took on Clegg over the £400/week limit on HB, which could force people out of central London.  Clegg did that old trick of ignoring what was asked and taking offence at the manner, suggesting Bryant had dissed those “ethnically cleansed” around the world.  Bryant said “sociologically cleansed” so Clegg was just being a prick.  I don’t like to use bad language on this blog, but I’m making an exception for the Deputy PM.  Anyway, back to the story.  Unfortunately, in PMQs, Miliband let Cameron talk about the £400/pw limit rather than the 10% reduction.

Labour is defending the indefensible in opposing the £400 limit and should be supporting it.  The 10% cut is a different matter altogether.

It’s depressing to see Labour in complete disarray in the face of the Tory onslaught.  All we’re seeing is uncoordinated rearguard action.  Ed won’t last long if they carry on like this.

The point is there are different motivations for different aspects of the welfare reforms.  Some measures are to restore fairness and others to reduce the overall cost.  There is an element of financial sleight of hand.  But there is also an attempt to punish the unemployed, and that is simply out of order.  Ugly, Cameron, ugly.  With around 1.5m on JSA already and with 500,000 civil service job losses to come, as well as transfers from disability and incapacity benefit, there are bound to be some people who don’t find work within a year.  Sure, some of these will be people who tried less hard than those who found work, but the point is not everyone will find work, even if all applied the highest standard of diligence in looking for a job.

So what are the main changes and their rationale?  Which should Labour oppose?

1. Reassessing disability and incapacity benefit claims

Labour was doing this anyway.  The Tories are not outflanking Labour though are giving the impression of doing so.  To be honest, both parties are cynically preserving votes, since there’s actually no reason why you need more money if you’re disabled.  The benefit should be the same as JSA, unless extra funds are needed to overcome specific disabilities. I caught a Radio 5 phone-in this morning and none of the callers fell into such a category.  RSI (“carpal tunnel syndrome”), chronic migraines and depression are unpleasant conditions, but do not in themselves result in expense.  The point is that paying more money gives people an incentive to label themselves as ill, which is in neither the public nor, arguably, their own interest.

2. Limits on the maximum HB that can be claimed

This depends on the number of bedrooms you’re assessed as needing.  The maximum (for 4 bedrooms) is £400/pw (the other limits are “£340 for a three-bedroom property, £290 for two bedrooms and £250 for a one-bedroom property”).  This is more than many working people can afford, so there is overwhelming public support for the limit for the unemployed.  And the Tories are milking it.

But employed people can also claim HB.  The answer to the case of the caretaker cited by Polly Toynbee is to demand a higher minimum wage in London (see my previous post), not to oppose the HB limits.  As I said, Labour is in disarray.

There are serious questions to be asked, too. And Labour isn’t asking them.  People on high rents are going to run out of money very quickly.  Is the government saying, for example, that if someone is made unemployed and they happen to be renting somewhere for more than the limit they’re entitled to – not difficult in London – or have two bedrooms when they’re only entitled to one, that they have to move immediately, or at least before any savings or redundancy payment run out?  The additional disruption is hardly conducive to rapidly finding new employment, is it?

3. An increase in rents for new social housing tenancies to 80% of the market rate.

Judging by Toynbee’s comments, Labour seems to have missed the point of this.  The idea is to raise money for new-build social housing.  The idea is that providers will be able to borrow against the increased revenue stream.  (Most of the rent at present goes on repairs).  HB will have to be higher to fund the higher rents, so all that’s really happening is the cost of new social housing is being amortised – rather like the much-derided Public Finance Initiative (PFI) Labour used to get hospitals built.

4. Paying HB only for rents up to the 30th percentile for the area rather than the median.

It’s crazy that it was the median in the first place.  Over time, this must simply push up rents in general, since with HB-funded demand, any properties offered up to the median price will be let quickly (so no incentive to mark them down), whereas those marketed at an above-median price might find a tenant before they have to be marked down.  The median will steadily increase even if supply and demand are balanced.  It’s possible even the 30th percentile might not be enough to prevent this effect (since properties private tenants would pay less than the 30th percentile rate for will let to HB tenants at the 30th percentile rate).

5. And then there’s the 10% HB punishment if you don’t find a job in a year.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.  HB is supposed to be a payment in kind.  It’s to pay the rent.  If it’s reduced, then something’s got to give.  And apparently there’s more: I start to appreciate Polly Toynbee’s indignation:

“But that’s not all. The sum paid towards the rent will fall every year, in perpetuity: it will no longer rise as average local rents rise but will be pegged to the consumer price index. If that had happened in the last decade most people would have been priced out: rents rose by 70%, but the CPI only rose 20%.

Now add in something more sinister. Council tax benefit, worth an average £16 a week, is to be cut by 10% and then handed over to each local authority to decide how much benefit to offer: if some councils want to push poor people out, they can pay virtually nothing to their residents.”

This makes no sense.  I can understand the idea that you’ve got no job, the state covers your main outgoings (rent, Council Tax) and gives you £65/wk to manage the rest on.  But £65 seems pretty much a bare minimum for food, heating, clothing and so on.  Playing games beyond this point is simply vindictive.  To see someone of Cameron’s privileged background doing so is, frankly, a rather disgusting sight.

So, Ed, you need to inject some clarity into Labour’s position.   You’re going to have to give up some ground.  Most of what the Coalition is doing makes sense.  But punishing the unemployed doesn’t.

And come up with some alternatives.  A higher minimum wage to increase the incentive to work.  And a higher minimum wage in expensive areas, such as central London than elsewhere.

Most of all, please, please read the blogs and stop defending Housing Benefit of more than £400/wk!

Housing Horror

Over the last few decades, here in the UK, we’ve become very good at pointing to apparent failure.  Often despite considerable objective evidence to the contrary.  Apparently we’re no longer any good at making things (compared to Germany and China, maybe, but not to most other countries), our armed forces are puny (compared to the US, maybe…), our energy supply is insecure, our public services are falling apart, the English Premier League is in a mess…  Such angst is spreading elsewhere in the West, but somehow you rarely hear fundamental criticism of our political and economic system.  You’d think the political process was merely flawed, a little unfair in places, perhaps, a little too tolerant of peccadilloes by the powerful, but basically sound, and very difficult to improve.  Despite considerable objective evidence to the contrary.

We’re just now quite rightly much vexed over the issue of housing (warning, link is to page of all 865 comments, and counting).

The issue, in a nutshell, is the extent to which the state should pay to provide some people with a standard of housing higher than they can afford on the open market.  The 1997-2010 Labour government (supported by at least the non-Tory controlled local councils, who have executive powers in area of housing), was quite enthusiastic about doing so, though in the main merely continued existing policies.  As time has gone on, though, the provision of housing to some by the state has been a factor in driving those not eligible for, or simply not claiming, state support, into less desirable – smaller, and often, crucially, less conveniently located – accommodation.  It should be noted that Labour’s attempts to increase the supply of housing over recent years has been effectively stymied by nimby campaigns, if not supported, then at least not effectively challenged by foot-dragging Liberal and Conservative local councils.  Despite guilt all round, the new Coalition government has decided to address the problem, in part, I suggest, as part of their strategy of blaming everything on Labour.   And in that regard, housing is pretty much an open goal.

As the debate continues, we see not one but two failings of our political system in stark relief.

The first failing is a confusion: are we making policy on the basis of reason or emotion?  Let’s take people who aren’t working for whatever reason (unemployed, incapacitated or retired).  Now, I’m not even going to argue this on the basis of rights.  It simply makes no sense, as hundreds of bloggers have pointed out (to massive approval, judging by “Recommendation” statistics), for workers to commute in every day from the outskirts of conurbations such as London, whilst people who don’t actually need to live there are paid to do so by the state.  Why, oh, why does Labour defend the indefensible? (Link to where Polly Toynbee explains the Coalition’s inhuman proposals – remember we’re essentially taking about a zero-sum game, here: what we give to one household, we deny to another).

But – there’s always a “but” – there are “priority cases” as a Councillor Timothy Coleridge (Tory, Kensington and Chelsea) explained on Radio 4 this morning trying to “soften” the policy.  There’ll be a “transition fund”, we were told.  He seemed to be particularly sympathetic to the elderly.  So it seems we’re going to make value judgements.

It might be worth digressing at this point to note that gerrymandering is a factor, because of first-past-the-post local elections.  Politicians want to keep their voters in their constituency and move the opposition’s out!  I suspect the Tories see the elderly vote as key to their next few terms in office, so I was immediately suspicious of Councillor Coleridge.  Any “prioritisation” must surely be done according to an objective, nationally applicable set of criteria.  Trouble is, value judgements are why we’re here in the first place.

If the policy is to minimise the fiscal cost of housing benefit, and optimise the use of housing, then that’s what we must do.

Here’s a case of the same sort of thinking, from a letter to the Guardian, by an Ann Tobin:

“The house was lovely, built to Labour’s postwar housing standards (later abandoned by the Tories). Us kids grew up and moved on and my parents stayed there until my mother died in 1998, 50 years after they had moved in. My father died three years before her. Yes, the house was too big for her, but she liked to invite her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to stay.” [my stress]

This partly explains how we’ve reached the present situation.  This identifiable individual (Ann Tobin’s mum) “liked” her big house, provided by the state.  Meanwhile, there is a waiting list of millions of families for such houses.  Maybe, because Ann Tobin’s mum was allowed to keep a house she liked, a family with a couple of school-age kids spent years moving about between emergency B&B accommodation to temporary lodgings.  Maybe that family would have “liked” a house of their own.  Because Ann Tobin’s mother has been allowed to stay in a family house, another family that can’t be precisely identified is living in poor or insecure accommodation.  This is crazy.  Housing supply is limited (though could be improved).  Why is it so difficult for people to understand that because of that limitation one decision impacts on others?  In areas with a limited supply of housing, its allocation is a zero-sum game.  You can’t give some people a place they’d “like” without denying others the same thing.

To my mind what we’re witnessing is the complete failure of post-war housing policy in the UK.  Council housing, for example, makes no sense.  It locks in housing allocation at one moment in time, making no allowance for the changing world we live in. Or the changing size of individual families for that matter.

This brings me on to the second failing of the political system.  Politicians see direct action by the state as the only way to achieve anything.  So we’re told we have to build more social housing.  Wrong.  We simply have to build more housing, period.  100,000 private homes will house 100,000 households just as well as 100,000 social homes will.  100,000 fewer households will be waiting for housing in either case.

And in actual fact, over the last decade or so, demands for social housing have actually reduced the total provision of housing.  Why?  Because the main way social housing has been provided has been through Section 106 agreements with housing developers.  In this daft system, housing developers have been given planning permission in return for including schools, hospitals or social housing in their schemes.  And you thought schools, hospitals and social housing all came out of the health, education and housing budgets?  This tax on developers, or first-time buyers, however you want to look at it, has the effect of reducing housing provision.  At a given house-price level, building houses is less profitable than otherwise would be the case, so fewer invest in that activity than in other opportunities.  Fewer houses get built, house prices rise, and more prospective purchasers find themselves on social-housing waiting lists.  Section 106 agreements to provide more social housing because it’ll be needed are, in aggregate, self-fulfilling!

I can’t even bring myself to discuss how shared equity schemes and other devices to subsidise house purchases simply push up the general price in the market.

The solution seems to me blindingly obvious, so I’m going to cut to the chase (a phrase, incidentally, that grated when used by Bob Hoskins in Made in Dagenham, since it wasn’t in general usage in 1968 when the film was set – I remember first hearing it in 1994).

We’ve simply got to manage the relationship between wages, at the low end, and house prices so that working people can afford to house themselves and their families.  The implication is that there needs to be a higher minimum wage in areas where housing is expensive.  It is simple exploitation to be paying the national minimum wage in central London, because there are only a limited number of possible outcomes.  Either workers commute in which case they spend more time and money than if they were working near their home; or living-standards drop and people end up sleeping in shifts; or benefits are necessary to top-up earnings, subsidising employers and consumers in expensive areas.  Ideally, employers would have to pay more in expensive areas, but the labour market is, has been for some time, and will be for some time, a buyers’ market.  Indeed it is government policy to force people to take any job they can get.

What a mess! State provision of housing has led to a situation where the minimum wage is nowhere near a “living” wage.  Perhaps that’s a bit strong: rather, state provision of housing and other benefits has provided a safety-valve so that pay has been allowed to become gradually lower and lower relative to socially accepted minimum living standards.

Maybe some blame should be apportioned, in order to unravel some of the mystery how we arrived in this absurd situation.

First, there are those, almost all in the Labour Party, but not all of the Labour Party, who believe it is right that the state provides housing and benefits on the basis of need.  “Capitalism” is so “unfair” that the state must step in.  As I’ve mentioned this policy has failed.

Second, there are those in all three parties who take a position I would characterise as “hand-wringing liberals” who make no attempt to analyse the problem and produce a complete policy.  They just want to address the problems of those with whom they empathise.  The trouble is, as I’ve also already said, with limited supply, allocating a house to Mr Jones simply moves Mr Smith onto the waiting list.  As a rationalist this is the position I detest most of all.  Government has a duty to find as solution for everyone, not self-righteously apply sticking-plaster where they most easily can.

Third, there are those in all three parties – since many of the individuals concerned have a vested interest in the form of their own properties – who explicitly or tacitly believe the natural order of things is for people like themselves to own their own homes, ever-rising in value, and that there must necessarily be “the poor” who don’t deserve or are incapable of having the same thing.  Explicitly in the case of some Conservatives… heeeere’s Boris!:

“Better a stagnant housing market, [those arguing for an end to housing speculation] will say, than another great boom and another great bust. Which is all very well, in theory.

In practice, it looks as if flattening off the housing market is both risky in the short term, and unachievable in the long term. The sad truth is that it is still psychologically essential to the British middle classes to have a sense that our principal asset is gently appreciating in value, or at least that it will over the long term.”

Stark-staring bonkers, of course.

Houses simply can’t appreciate in value indefinitely compared to other goods and services.  The world doesn’t work like that.  Eventually house price rises will become self-defeating: even if they don’t stimulate more new-build supply (because of self-interested nimbyism); or inflation, causing interest-rate and hence mortgage increases; they’ll eventually act as such a drag on the economy that activity moves elsewhere – abroad, most likely – and housing demand and prices fall.

Those who buy into the view that the increasing value of their home represents a permanent increase in wealth support the ongoing British class division implicitly.  What they refuse to countenance is entirely feasible: it is possible for everyone in work to own their own home, or rent at a market rate, if they prefer the flexibility they gain that way.

So the three stooges are “Old Labour” socialists, who don’t believe markets can ever be fair; bleeding heart, sawdust-headed “Liberals”; and divided nation, blue-blood-is-just-better “Conservatives”.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Instead of accepting capitalism as it is (“Conservative”), or rejecting it (“Old Labour”), or ooh, poor little kitten! (“Liberal”), we can make capitalism fairer.  A much higher minimum wage, relative to local house prices, would solve many of the problems that are causing such angst.

 

Boris the Builder

When our civilisation finally collapses, and becomes of interest only to historians, explanations will be sought.  How did we throw it all away?  Many will argue that one of the main causes was a collective failure to regulate individual greed in one way in particular.  In the housing market.

This is what the Mayor of London has to say in this morning’s Telegraph:

“Recent pronouncements from the Coalition Government have suggested a new doctrine: that house prices should be flat, or flattish, while earnings rise to meet them.”

Makes sense.

“In other words, the British middle classes are being asked to wean themselves off house price inflation, and become more continental, with a higher proportion of rentals.”

An increase in renting compared to owner occupation is rather a non sequitur, but I’m still with you so far, Boris.

“And a lot of people will say amen to that. Why do we pump all this money into unresponsive bricks and mortar, when we could be investing our capital in stocks and shares and thereby in the flesh-and-blood businesses that add to the GNP of Britain? They will point out – entirely correctly, that this national addiction to house price inflation has bred a kind of financial illiteracy, an apathy about any other investment except the roof over our heads.

And they will point out that it was the house price bubble – the demented practice of giving vast mortgages to people with no incomes and no assets – that led to the crash. Better a stagnant housing market, they will say, than another great boom and another great bust.”

Still with you.  Though not sure about this use of the word “stagnant”.  The reason house sales are sluggish at the moment is that prices are too high.  Mortgages are more difficult to get and higher deposits are demanded, so obviously the same amount of activity will require a lower price level.

“Which is all very well, in theory.”

Uh, oh!  Where’s Boris going with this?

“In practice, it looks as if flattening off the housing market is both risky in the short term, and unachievable in the long term. The sad truth is that it is still psychologically essential to the British middle classes to have a sense that our principal asset is gently appreciating in value, or at least that it will over the long term.”

Unbelievable!

Even the most elementary reasoning shows house prices can’t rise faster than everything else indefinitely.  If they did, other things – food, energy, manufactures and so on – would eventually cost virtually nothing in comparison to house prices.

And more to the point, house prices can’t rise faster than labour indefinitely, otherwise everyone who doesn’t own a house would have to emigrate.

Unless…

Ah, Boris has a solution: build more “affordable houses”: Here’s his argument:

“…the best way to help those millions in search of an affordable home is not to try vainly to ensure that the present stock of housing becomes more affordable – ie falls in value – but to increase the supply of affordable homes.”

All very Alice in Wonderland.  Readers unfamiliar with the UK housing market may need some translation assistance.  “Affordable homes”, as used at the end, is a euphemism, spin for “social housing”.  The first use of “affordable home” is in standard English.  From now on, I’ll write “affordable home”, “affordable housing” in quotes when it means social housing and affordable, home and housing without quotes when the words mean what they say.

Let’s dispose of the argument against all this based on principle.  Boris clearly believes in a two-tier society.  A class of which I guess he is a member, who own their own property – appreciating in value forever – and another class who are housed at the whim of the state.  Hint: make sure you’re a “key-worker” or have lots of kids.  Kind of a socialised Upstairs, Downstairs, with a bit of hand-wringing charity thrown in.  I simply don’t agree with this worldview.

But let’s move on to the sheer incoherence of Boris’s proposition, though perhaps I should note at this point that Boris is guilty only of voicing the consensus view shared by virtually all UK politicians, even if a few pay lip-service to the rational and correct argument that the relation between house prices and wages needs to be restored.  Some even realise that it’s best to do this with a bit of general inflation rather than by house-price falls.

First, just because homes are rented for less than the market rate doesn’t mean they’re worth less than others.  They could be rented out for more privately.*  More to the point, the money to have them built must come somewhere.  The land has to be bought.  OK, the state can give planning permission on land it owns, but this is just chucking money away, since they could simply have sold the land off to a private developer.

Second, providing social housing will reduce demand for private housing.  The increased provision of houses would lower prices anyway.  So Boris’s plan won’t even succeed in holding up house prices.  So as far as the Upstairs are concerned, building “affordable homes” is just as bad as building private housing! Of course, social housing is less efficient for several reasons, not least because people won’t move for work, because they’ll lose their home and may not get another or at least have a long wait.  The state should just get out of the way and make it cheaper to build private housing by stopping demanding all kinds of goodies (including “affordable homes”) in return for planning permission (usually under Section 106 agreements).

Third, where do ever-rising house-prices lead us?  Well, unless the salary structure of the economy changes, there will eventually be no buyers.  Possible the wealthy will buy to let as they did up to the crunch in 2007, but that makes no sense, since the tenants won’t be able to afford the rent plus a profit for the landlord and letting agent, since if they could they’d be able to get a mortgage!   So eventually we’ll simply run out of buyers.  Prices will simply have to drop to an affordable level, since otherwise properties will simply sit in estate agents windows.

No, Boris.  You’re not a dumb blond even if you do mumble and bumble in a ditzy manner.  Thatcher was right on housing.  The answer is to make just about everyone part of the property owning class (or at least renting by choice rather than necessity).  And for that to happen house prices must be kept down to a reasonable multiple of the lowest salaries.  Say three times.

————

* Notwithstanding the revelations in a DWP report, also featured in today’s Torygraph.  As there is insufficient “affordable housing” the state often simply has to pay private-sector rents.  Except that apparently the system is so inefficient that landlords can get more rent for social tenants that for private ones!  Though working people on low incomes end up in poorer accommodation than the state would provide:

” ‘[Low income working] Households with children aged under 16 do appear to be worse off in terms of the property size that they occupy and the rates they would be entitled to if they were eligible for housing benefit,’ the study said.”

You couldn’t make it up.

Politicians of all stripes have created this mess.  Sorting it out requires a step back.  The basic principles need to be laid down.  Starting with fairness.