The Blindness of Wealth

One of the fundamental lessons that children learn is the socially acceptable practice of sharing. The makers of money from money have forgotten this very basic necessity. If they were likened to a child with a large and a small apple and had to give one to someone else, they would try to sell you a share of the smaller apple and then eat it once you paid them for it. The thing is, you remember as a child what happened to those who didn’t learn to share; they ceased to be your friend and you didn’t play with them anymore. If you get to the end of this blog you will see how the world’s powers are about to do just that.

Meanwhile, in the microcosm of the UK, the battle rages between those who have money, and are doing very well thank you very much, and those who struggle to get by and rely almost inevitably on various forms of welfare benefit. The UK is fortunate enough to have one but recent reforms are about to make them less supportive.

This week, Chancellor of the Exchequer, George (real name Gideon) Osborne attempted to defend the welfare cuts being imposed as from April 2013. His reasons were, as they usually are within the political right wing mindset, to ‘encourage’ people away from the welfare state and into work; as if people claiming benefit are some type of underclass who are reluctant to work and earn more money. Yes, there are a few hundred out of the millions unemployed who may not want to work but not enough to make this outrageous claim. Taking one example that fits your argument and then using it as a template for an a policy that fits your ideology appears to be all the justification one needs to sacrifice a whole section of society who does not conform to it. It is a kind of bigotry that should have no place in a developed society.

In this article I want to explore a couple of the decisions that were made to welfare and attempt to reason why they are such bad decisions. My personal politics are instinctively left of centre but I try to remain objective when rationalising changes of this magnitude. It is certainly not the time for political propaganda. Ed Balls (Labour shadow chancellor), for example, used Osborne’s speech today as an excuse to slam the decision to cut the top rate of tax, giving more money to the rich while taking from the poor. It is a reasonable comment but does not answer directly whether the changes made to welfare benefits are reasonable or not. The tit for tat politics wastes the opportunity to examine properly the changes that are now enforced and demonstrates that left wing politicians are equally as bad as the right. So it is down to us to strip back the political rhetoric and seek the truth. What will be the impact of these changes? Will they produce the desired outcome? Who gets to judge?

The ‘why’ for the biggest welfare shake up in a generation is easy to understand. In the 2013 budget, the UK has income of £612bn and expenditure of £720bn, meaning that this year we have to borrow £108bn just to balance our outgoings. The economy is flatlining, so there is no help here to boost the treasury coffers, increase revenue and claw back the deficit. Too many people are unemployed, so the emphasis has to be on creating jobs in the private sector to reduce joblessness and long -term dependency on the welfare state. According to the Conservatives, there has been over one million jobs created since they took power and yet this does not appear to have translated into tax revenue for them. One would have thought that a creation of so many jobs would have naturally reduced reliance on welfare benefit. So far there has been no explanation why this has not happened and the only explanation is that someone has been more than economical with the truth.

Two of the biggest changes to help people to get that all elusive job is to first slash housing benefit for people living in a house where it ‘appears’ that there is a spare bedroom and second to cull qualifying disability benefit claimants by up to 25%. It may take up to two years to see how devastating these particular policies will be. However, both are worthy of comment in the light of the reasons given why they have been implemented - namely that the policies are designed to encourage people to come off of welfare benefit and get into work.

There are thousands of people on the social housing list who live in overcrowded accommodation and need a house with more rooms. There are thousands of people who live in houses where there is a spare bedroom. Logically it would seem to make sense that those who have more room than they need should swap with those who do not. To encourage the notion, George Osborne has charged a 14% reduction in housing benefit for one spare room and 25% for more than one spare room. Even though this is claimed to be a deduction, the people have dubbed it the ‘bedroom tax’.

Now, the UK people get a bit tetchy when they are asked to uproot themselves from a life where they feel secure. OK, they may be on benefits and jobs in their line of expertise might not be around the area they live in but their family, social network and everything that constitutes the true meaning of life resides in that area. So what George wants them to do is traipse hundreds of miles from their social group to a house that ‘meets their needs’ but leaves them isolated from friends and family and still without work. Sorry. Have I got this wrong? OK let’s try again.

A couple live in social housing where one member has a disability that means they must sleep in a separate own room. No, that doesn’t fit the profile either. OK, one more go.

A family live in a town where they both work on minimum wage and their child has recently moved out of the family home, creating a ‘spare room’. If they move to a smaller property, of which there are none in their area, their minimum wage job becomes untenable because of the additional cost of transportation. So they would lose their jobs and have to claim benefit - ah no!, they can’t do that because they would have left their job voluntarily and would therefore be disentitled to benefit. ....This isn’t working either is it?

So Georges ‘logical’ thinking sounds great on paper but is painfully naive when one attempts to apply the practical application of it. In his defence, George cited the family claiming £100,000 a year in housing (hence the housing benefit cap of £26,000 for a couple and 18,500 for a single person). Considering the average working wage is around £26,000, the actual capping of housing benefit is not an unreasonable policy, as people earning this much would struggle to maintain the rent on a property on 50% of their earnings. While I agree with the logic of capping housing benefit like this, it also has to be seen in the light of housing costs in an area. London’s mainly Conservative Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has bedsits starting at £26,000 a year. Is there some gerrymandering or social cleansing attached to this decision or does it merely highlight the fact that some areas of the UK are to become no-go areas for social housing? Although in fairness, those who do earn the national average wage could not afford a bedsit in Kensington and Chelsea either. So perhaps the real problem is the soaring cost of rent.

Apropos the average working wage, it is a dream scenario for many people struggling to live in the UKs ‘flexible workforce’ (a left wing Labour policy, along with the creation of the minimum wage, that created many insecure temporary and part time jobs). In reality there are many minimum wage jobs in George Osborne’s economic market that are only suitable to people without responsibilities / mortgages / debts etc or economic migrants from countries where the cost of living is considerably less than in the UK. The UK national minimum wage in 2013 is £6.19 per hour, or £247.60 a week or £12,875.00 a year. Compare this to the private rental of a one bedroom flat in East London of £1100 per month (two bedroom house £1200 and three bedroom £1500) and it is clear that two people who both earn a minimum wage would struggle to live in private rented accommodation.

Therefore, the people who George is attempting to penalise for having an extra bedroom, who may well be working but cannot afford to rent privately, may well find themselves between a rock and a hard place, and may be the very people he claims are doing the right thing and working hard to get ahead. Perhaps more insidiously, the plan is to force people with spare rooms to take on lodgers to reduce the benefit bill while at the same time reduce the demand for housing.

The benefit known as Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is assessed apart from the welfare benefits and can be claimed by all whether they are working or not. The benefit is discounted when people claim income assessed benefits because it was designed to be a life line for those who want to participate fully in active daily lives. For some this has meant the difference between working and paying taxes or being excluded from the opportunity to work.

The two main components of the benefit provides money for help with mobility and personal care. The new ‘Personal Independence Payment’ (note the disappearance of the word ‘disability’) has been rewritten to ensure that at least 25% of people who qualify for DLA now will not qualify under the new benefit, thus saving shed loads of money. George Osborne says that people who were given DLA for life had been effectively ‘parked’ as a person who was not going to find work and this new benefit was designed to make people with disabilities included back into the work field. But the stupid thing about this statement is that there are many people who rely on DLA to keep them in work because the mobility element provides them with a car to get from A to B. If the mobility element disappears then the person with a disability will lose their job, because the won’t be able to get there, and will be another disabled claimant on the welfare state.

George Osborne is either lying to the UK public in the hope that those who do not understand the system will simply believe him or he has no understanding of DLA himself and is demonstrating his incompetence to be delivering such egregious welfare reforms with any understanding of the hardship and devastation it will cause.

George Osborne claims that, ‘Britain’s welfare state is broken’. Personally I believe he is making that claim from a perspective that is not objectively reasoned and presumes unrealistically that other things upon which the welfare state is founded are not broken themselves. Ask any smoker to prioritize their weekly shopping and cigarettes will be listed as important as bread or milk, while those who do not smoke will not see it as a priority at all. Ask a conservative what is the priority in government and they will place the promotion of business and profit over welfare and social responsibility. All political spectrums will admit to a portion of both views but the divide is clearly on the percentage of bias given.

With this in mind, when one looks at the political incentive to use business as a vehicle to drive the UK out of recession, one of the most glaring statistics in the 2013 UK budget is the yawning gap between money taken from people through income and VAT against the profits taken from business. Profits from business (£39bn) against income tax (£155bn) seems hugely one sided, given the single-minded goal to get more tax revenue. Likewise, if consumer spending is the vehicle that will lead the country out of recession and provide bigger tax revenues, is it not a consideration that if the minimum wages is half the national average wage that people with little money to spend could be the very engine to drive the economy forward if they had more money?

By the same token it could be argued that if National Insurance (£107bn) were in place to entitle one to expect a good National Health Service (£137bn) that National Insurance contributions should reflect the growing needs of the NHS. However, as a significant proportion of the NHS budget has recently been mauled by the cost of the disastrous Private Finance Initiative (PFI) that  allowed private companies to build hospitals, charge an ever increasing rent for the building and maintenance etc at a total cost of £300bn. It will soon cost as much as £10bn a year http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jul/05/pfi-cost-300bn and this is coming partly out of the health budget. This particular bombshell should be laid at the door of the previous Labour Government.

The debt interest (£51bn), if it were all paid up, would not bridge the borrowing gap (£108bn) and what is not reported here is the huge hole that is the public sector pensions. 

http://www.psfbuzz.org.uk/2012/10/public-sector-pensions-what-all-the-fuss-is-about/#.UVsrX3DbwbA   Perhaps when Labour were in government they should have saved some money to pay for new buildings while revenue exceeded expenditure. They did not because short term politics does not reward long term thinking. This is a particularly thorny problem that dogs democratic political systems.

Clearly, we’re in an economic mess, created it must be emphasised by the rich people and exacerbated by short term politics, that must be reconciled. However, the right wing view of cutting support mechanisms that merely injures the poorest in society is nothing short of adhering blindly to an ideology that conforms to the blinkered view of capitalist meritocracy.

That view has been pronounced widely and with the puffed up chest of those who believe themselves to be an example of its success. The budget was designed for ‘people who want to work hard and get on’, implying that people claiming welfare benefit are people who do not want to work and do not want to get on. Mr Osborne would really like the electorate to believe this assertion but the facts do not support his claim. Not everyone was born with the disposition to rise through the ranks to fame and fortune. Not everyone was born with the intellect to ascend the academic ladder to brilliance and notability. In fact not everyone was born with the capability of rising to more than the most menial of low paid jobs. 

So if a portion of the UK society find it difficult to fit their square pegs into the round holes of the labour market, it must be their fault. Apparently the elite point of view is makes no concession for people who for, whatever valid reason there may be, do not have a job, and the lottery of human ability is punishable by almost Darwinian means; you could say it is the survival of the richest.

Unfortunately this attitude is contagious. People who are fortunate enough to be in work and maybe not to have claimed benefit for any length of time, are often susceptible to the right wing ideology that people who do claim benefit are most likely work-shy or lazy. This is why George Osborne’s budget is connected to the notion that cutting welfare helps people who ‘work hard and want to get on’. In my opinion this is simply a paradigm that promotes the illusion that anyone who wants to work hard and get on are only prevented by circumstances they create around them.

Disability, for example, is often created by the way the world is designed rather than by a persons inability to perform tasks just as well as  people without a disability, like designing a building without wheelchair access excludes all wheelchair users from it. Likewise designing a recruitment system that excludes large sections of society from it will foment unfilled jobs and long term unemployment. Ask any graduate who complains that employers want people with experience but they can’t get a job so how can they get experience? 

The worst aspect of this illusion is the attitude that leads one towards justifying changes to a system purely for economic purposes accordance to the perspective that business cannot be at fault - only people claiming benefit. It tends to attract individuals with narrow lens perspectives, like the guy I conversed with recently who suggested that he didn’t owe anyone a free lunch so why should he pay for freeloaders, holding most righteously to the Hayek principles of economics in it’s human guise and thereby agreeing with Ebenezer Scrooges analogy that those in need of welfare should hurry up and die to decrease the world’s economic problems.

Politics to one side, the welfare system does need streamlining and made simpler (as does the tax system and the blocking up of about £120bn of tax avoidance). And there should be caps on benefits that ensure the amount of benefit paid does not exceed what one would be capable of earning. It makes sense to ensure that people are better off in work but cutting benefit, particularly personal benefit, is simply a race to the bottom that is penury for those at the bottom of societies financial ladder.

But reforms that affect so many people in so many different ways are reforms that should be considered carefully and outside of political ideology. The bedroom tax is an ill conceived reform and may well prove to be unworkable. One has to make sure that sufficient housing stock exists to house people in smaller properties before punishing them  for not living in one. 

The DLA reform is perhaps one of the most execrable. The rules for disallowing disability benefit should not put people out of work but it will. It is bad and ill thought out legislation.

When the true results of the change become known it will lead to a repealing of a number of policies and yet another costly reorganisation; it is always the case with ill-considered legal and ideologically motivated changes.

The elephant in the room is the need to reform the capitalist system itself. In its present state there will, as George Osborne mentioned, indeed be the need to compete with emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Afirca (BRICS) who are presently in talks about creating their own rival bank to invest in said developing industries. http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-25/brics-nations-plan-new-bank-to-bypass-world-bank-imf.html . Even at this point these countries are dumping the Euro at a furious rate http://beforeitsnews.com/economy/2013/04/brics-dumping-euro-us-dollar-set-back-a-generation-2506400.html . The danger is the obvious capitalist intention to drive down wages and working rights instead of harmonise the cost of living in order to compete effectively. But the rich would rather abandon a sinking country before losing a penny in profit. George Osborne said that the welfare system was broken. On the contrary I say. Rather it is the capitalist system that is broken and reform must take place if we are to see a future beyond the rise of emerging economies.

But the blindness of wealth refuses to accept what is really broken. And those with so much would rather risk losing everything than sharing.

The Royal Bank of Mum and Dad

Back in the 1970s the world managed to stop the rot of recession by inventing the credit card. So people without money could spend what they did not have and banks, financial institutions and corporations could continue to amass more and more of the finite resource of money.

Fast forward to 2013. The world recession started in 2008 shows no sign of abating and banks once again do not want to lend money. So to alleviate the housing market by achieving mortgages for first time buyers, money experts are 'welcoming' the contrived intervention of the Royal Bank of Mum and Dad.

From January 13, Barclays Bank launch a product called ‘Family Springboard’, which basically allows parents to provide the financial security that the bank will not. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2261448/Experts-welcome-mortgage-lets-parents-help-children-buy-home.html Gone are the days of the 100% mortgage and we should realise fully that the banks are just as uncertain about our job security as we are. Mark Twain was so right when he said that a banker is a person who lends you an umbrella when the sun shines but wants it back as soon as it starts raining.

I am aghast at the sheer blatant cheek of the product. It is being dressed up as a fantastic idea but it is really nothing more than dragging the hard earned savings of parents into the area of risk that the bank will happily snatch away if said mortgage is not paid on time. As the price of everything goes up and savings interest squeezed to the point of pain, mum and dad would do well to remember that their fixed income in retirement may well have to call on the money the bank wants them to lend to their children. The bank wants parents to put their future at risk at a time when they desire to take none. What does that tell you about this so-called wonder product and how the bank sees the short term future?

It is a step too far and must be rejected. Naturally there will be more affluent parents who can quite easily stump up the cash without it having an impact on their financial future but these are in the minority. The pressure on many parents to use what would amount to their life savings or retirement fund is unfair and undeserving. It is the banks responsibility to lend the money and if a young person’s wages does not allow them to find the thousands of pounds required to put down a deposit, then wages will have to rise, or house prices will have to fall, or banks will have to offer 100% mortgages.

The problem is that economy does not like any of those solutions. To raise salaries will rob employers of profit, which will reduce the value of their company. If the bank of mum and dad behave like all the real banks then they will not lend out the money, which will further stagnate the housing market and push home owners into negative equity - thus stopping them from selling. This only leaves the bank to take the risk but they will only do so with extortionate interest rates or not at all. So why should mum and dad do it either?

Moodys stripped the UK of its AAA rating yesterday (22 Feb 2013) because they also know that the road to economic recovery is no certainty. And this all points to the notion that the capitalist system has hit a bottle neck, where the money most needed is hoarded but the wealthy, the powerful and the corporations seeking domination.

Is it any wonder that the banks want to squeeze every last coin from those who need it most in order to satisfy the avarice of those who need it least. This is the world economic dilemma and short of all out revolution against the money machine, we will be joining those who suffer at the bottom in poverty inside three years (2015 - 16) http://shaneward22.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/barbault-and-depression-of-2015.html

To put it bluntly, there has to come a point where the bank of Mum and Dad closes - preferably with some money still left in it.

Living Beyond Our Means

Apparently we have been doing it for years. Successive governments have spent money we didn’t have, while ignoring the debt we accumulated. As a nation we really should be paying more attention to what our elected government is doing.

The UK debt bombshell explains it all without me trying to duplicate what is already a no nonsense presentation. I urge you all to go read it. http://www.debtbombshell.com/forecasting-national-debt.htm

But what I would like to emphasise here is the difference that is often unexplained between deficit and debt. It is simply this:

The UK debt is the amount of money we owe.

The deficit is any money above the amount of money we owe.

In short this means that if the government have got it right and taxes are as high as spending, there will be no deficit at the end of the year BUT the debt remains unpaid, untouched, unloved and unnoticed.

It means that the government has a 1.5 trillion pound overdraft that it isn’t paying off. Worse than that is the money it has spent beyond the overdraft. Both Labour AND Conservative have done this.

To spend more than what you have means you have to ‘invent’ more money. The government does this by creating ‘Bonds’ or ‘Gilts’ that it absolutely must pay back to the bearer at a later date.

So if we put this into household economics, it is like having a maxed out overdraft and credit cards ...and then taking out a massive loan. The overdraft is never addressed, the credit cards are paid on interest only and there is a time limit on when we have to start paying the loan. For households that limit is usually only about a month but the government can create bonds that are paid back in 5 or 10 years.

Consequently the national debt is always someone else’s problem and in my opinion is a symptom of very short term politics. In the meantime, successive governments have allowed accountancy firms to invent ways of letting large corporations wriggle out of billions of pounds worth or tax revenues. What a shame they haven't spent as much time plugging those holes as they have tinkering endlessly with income tax and hiking remorselessly the duty on fuel, tobacco and alcohol.

Clearly we cannot trust any political body to deal with our finances. So in the same way that Mr George Osborne, current chancellor of the exchequer, has announced that the banks are to be split between the high street banks and the investment banks, so it should be perhaps that there is a regulatory body that sets a budget for the government, regardless of their political leaning, with a plan to pay off the national debt.

Otherwise our long term financial stability is always just one crisis away from austerity and hard times.

The Curse of the Quick Win

I once joined a workshop strand, set up by my employer, to examine what could be done within the workforce to tackle issues around work / life balance. Stress among the workforce was a high factor in attendance rates. It was an important issue at the time and many people were enthused by the notion that the company took staff concerns seriously and wanted to evolve the best working practices possible. Many employers today would claim to do just that. But no matter how often they say it, the proof is quite self evident that it is not true.

Anyway, back to my intro. The company was big enough to allow for things like term time working and by all accounts was the exemplar to be followed by other business models. Some attending members confessed that the event was just a day out of the office but for myself I wanted to address certain issues regarding disability and work / life balance that, if implemented, would have broadened the workforce to include happier and more productive staff with less stress. I saw it as an opportunity to make a difference. It turned out to be no opportunity at all.

A senior manager directed the group of around thirty people to list the issues they wanted to address. After examining what everyone had put forward, she ignored the lot and said, ‘Let’s go for a quick win’, which in management speak means,  let’s avoid the real issues in front of me that may be costly and involve lots of work and come up with something that costs nothing and looks good on my end of year appraisal. In this case the quick win was a list of ten things to do with looking after yourself that was nothing more than a common sense check list.

What a disappointment. The list could have been copied off the back of a cereal box. The product was about as useful as a jelly spanner and solved nothing. In that one instance I knew that the workshop was merely window dressing to show the workforce that management were taking their concerns seriously (pure lip service) and were doing something about it (but nothing useful). It was an exercise in placation that achieved nothing more than a scarcely veiled attempt at pacifying the workforce in the short term and built mistrust and disillusionment for years to come. That was over ten years ago and if anything it has gotten worse. My company might be viewed as a typical example of this kind of senior management hubris.

The quick win, I feel sure, was designed originally to fix the easy stuff first so that goodwill was generated among a disgruntled workforce. In it’s truest guise it can be a confidence booster to everyone that things are getting better. But somewhere along the line the focus on who the quick win was designed to benefit got dragged into the detritus of management’s vacuous target oriented, appraisal driven, and ultimately self serving, tool kit.

To higher management in the 21st century, it appears that the quick win is a way for managers seeking to climb the promotion ladder to score a plus box in their next appraisal.  Be under no illusion that this is all it does. There are no real benefits to the company. But what is more devastating about the clamber to get noticed in the short game is that the ‘slow win’ is forgotten, or at least swept deeply under the carpet of very long grass by management in the process. 

The large workforce at the bottom of the heap, the essential nuts and bolts of many a company that often defines the businesses ‘raison d’etre‘, are subject frequently to prescribed working processes with very little control over their autonomy. The ability to expand beyond their remit is only possible with promotion to a higher level of responsibility.   Managers of a certain ilk, those who look at processes instead of people, are quite happy to focus on their personal targets through the lens of personal self interest. For them the most expedient way to secure a good end of year appraisal is to push the staff to achieve their set goals while fobbing off any concerns that might detract from those goals in the short term. In my experience, business encourages this practice.

Not surprisingly surrounding this malady of selective vision there is often a sense of resentment and group lethargy, as morale and good will dissolves like sherbet in a bucket of dirty rainwater. This is particularly so when an enforced change in the process is detrimental to the workforce, like doing so much more but with less staff. While it is human nature to be resistant to change, it is not unreasonable to resist one sided change. For some staff the changes can raise barriers where none previously existed (for instance a change in hours conflicting with child care responsibilities or a change in working practices affecting a person’s disability). But instead of dealing with the problem or harmonising work life balance (because it is usually thorny or costly or detracts from the goals set) the manager sets about trying to get the ‘quick win’.

A typical management quick win solution to low morale is a team building day. The logical thinking is that a fun day will help to bond the team, improve morale and lead to better performance. Sometimes these days can even be enjoyable but this is very unlikely to lead to lasting improvement if a fundamentally important issue remains unsolved or management are being disingenuous about the reality they have imposed. However, there is a benefit to management that when targets are missed and performance is failing, they can point to the fact that they tried to do something about it. The quick win becomes the excuse that saves face, while dodging the career-ending attempt to solve the real problem.

And the higher up the managerial ladder you go, the more acceptable the quick win looks, because to contradict the quick win solution would be like signing their own death warrant. So the myth perpetuates until at least one person in a management structure has the courage, and the position of power to protect themselves, to acknowledge that the quick win does not work if the slow win is ignored as a result. No manager has done this to my knowledge thus far and resistance to some much needed changes by employers to work / life balance is far more entrenched; even denied. So the punishing regime of ever more restrictive work practices excludes those who cannot meet them, striving for profit at the cost of ostracising people from the workforce; the very customers they exist to serve.

When the slow win is ignored by managers, and the problems derived from it remain, the next line of approach after the carrot is normally the stick, which is invariably some sort of disciplinary process.Thousands of people all over the world with disabilities and issues around work / life balance are being dismissed on capability grounds because business is frankly not interested in looking after any staff but those with extremely low maintenance. By all accounts, getting rid of a problem by dismissing it, rather than solving it, is the most sinister perspective of the quick win.

As each business progresses, or not as the case may be, the quick win legacy becomes plain. There are no lasting or meaningful effects that improve either performance or long term benefit and the problem that the quick win was meant to address remains. In fact the only benefit to the quick win appears to be on the appraisal sheet of the manager who can demonstrate an action taken to save money, resource and improve performance - even if it achieved none of those things. In other words it looks good on paper but the effort had no lasting effect if at all.

The most appalling effect of the quick win culture is how millions of people find themselves dumped on the rubbish heap, unemployed because they have a problem with the rigid terms and conditions that employers require. Among the most discarded are those who develop active disabilities that might change the way they can work, while people who have had mental health issues may never even make the interview stage of a job. And this is not because they cannot do the job. The mindset of business is simply geared to bypass what they see as unnecessary problems that do not translate directly to profit. But the bigger the business becomes, the more likely it is that those who are lucky enough to be within the workforce will encounter a change in their circumstances that conflicts with the simple model of ‘turn up for work on time, do your job, go home’. 

The grand masters of the quick win are those engaged in short term politics. In the UK, in a period of austerity where the cost of long term commitments like welfare, health and pensions dominate the expenditure sheet, there are so many people claiming benefit due to ill health that the government policy (their quick win solution) is to raise the qualifying bar higher, so that more of those people become eligible to look for work.

But if the environmental culture dominating the business world is unchanged, excluding the less than perfect from the workforce for reasons of maximising profit by the easiest route possible, it is an exercise in futility. The unsolved problem is that employers will not consider people who may have higher maintenance issues than those with no issues. There is no reason, they see, to engage with people who may need reasonable adjustments to enable them to work if there is someone else who does not.

And why should they when the government of the day plays the same game by pushing a problem from one place to another? By artificially raising the conditional bar it looks like they have reduced the benefit bill on people claiming for health reasons. Good news for the tax payer? Not at all. It is yet another quick win that achieves nothing meaningful because the benefit bill for unemployment goes up proportionately and employers will still reject them. If anything, the additional stress is likely to cause a greater strain on the health budget and end up costing more.

The curse of the quick win is set to continue for as long as government and business turn a blind eye to some very deep routed issues within our society. No amount of quick wins will change it but I hope this article will identify this important observation. What was once a good start in best practice and goodwill, has now been usurped and redefined as a management escape hatch.

Barbault and the Depression of 2015

Since around 2003 I have worked with the method of outer planet cycle calculations suggested by Andre Barbault. Not wishing to repeat myself, I invite you to see my previous articles. If you don't want to just yet, I can summarize the following information:

1. Andre Barbault measured the distance between two planets in their cyclical rotation from Jupiter to Pluto. This seems to resonate with long term global economic trends.

2. The resulting positive or negative mathematical results combined indicated a positive or negative global effect.

3. The mathematical evidence of these negative results include the periods of time in the 20th century to that of World War 1, World War II and the great depression of the 1930s

Given the indication of previous experience, another large negative period of time is on the horizon from 2016 - 2020 and, given the historical coincidences of past mathematical negative results - and also that of the now known current economic debt crisis - would we not be wise to consider the likelihood that we are about to enter a five-year global depression?

It is the beginning of 2013 at the time of writing this article and the UK has not yet officially announced the reality of a triple dip recession. Back in 2009 this was merely a credit crunch. In 2011 the Government of the day announced that we would be back on track by 2015. In 2012 the Government of the day admitted that the recession was deeper than expected and that the UK would not pay its debts until 2018. I have said all through this that 2020 is the earliest we can expect to see light at the end of the tunnel. Governments have to promote optimism because the economy and its value is based largely on the lie of 'confidence' but mundane astrologers have no reason to lie and their predictions are evidence based on what one might argue to be more reliable information than that of the world's clearly inadequate predictive economic models; How many more boom and bust events will it take to work that one out?

The Euro zone is in deep trouble. Many countries, like Greece, Ireland, Italy Portugal and Spain are in economic crisis. The USA has maxed out its credit card and if it borrows any more money there will not be enough GDP to repay the interest. Quantitative Easing (QE) in many countries have done no more than served to bolster the balance sheets of insurance and investment houses, while growth in any economy has failed to materialise. Unemployment is deep rooted and in some countries as high as 25%

The beginning of the end of the matter is looming. There is much astrological evidence to support these claims, however, I have confined myself largely to pointing out some events to consider in order to keep this article simple.

There will most likely be false claims of recovery in 2013 because Barbault's yearly figure of +8 is the last gasp before we plunge into a series of annual minus figures. 2014 will scare a lot of people into taking action but the effect by 2015 will be merely activity in denial of what really must transpire and more delaying of the inevitable. By 2016 we will hit the full blown depression caused by one sided economic thinking - namely you cannot possibly have growth if the consumer has no money. We will know this year if the fate of countries in the Eurozone will opt out of the currency or if the currency collapses altogether.

The Cardinal Grand Cross of 2014 will be the trigger that sets the stage for the depression to play out. It is therefore an important chart to study. It is worth reading the conclusions of Theodore White on http://globalastrologyblog.blogspot.co.uk/ to examine the effect that the cardinal cross will have for us all. It is also important to understand that where the cardinal grand cross symbolises, among other things, the mutual activation of opposing forces, that we will each have our part to play in what we reap at the other end. The Arab Spring of 2011 is perhaps a good example of how much the old and worn out modes of life will be protected by those who must step aside to make way for what must change.

There will be no World War III but just as war is raging in many countries right now, so many more must inevitably rise up and join the clamour for old powers to make way for fair and sustainable reform. Any who hold onto power by wealth or by oppression can and will be challenged strongly in order to create a better way of life. In some cases that opposition may manifest itself in physical conflict.

By 2015 we may not realise how much of a global depression we are in because there will be many in so called positions of authority who, as they did previously, will want to play down the severity of our situation in some desperate attempt to fool us into believing that the green shoots of recovery are just around the corner and they are the political party that will lead you there. Trust me, it will not happen.

By 2016 everyone will realise that the consequences of us, the people, wandering blindly into economic ruin has been fated for some time and we have just been putting off the inevitable. We can no more avoid it than we can avoid paying our bills (Avoiding taxes is amazingly still possible for some very rich companies and individuals). Those with lots of money have already demonstrated their inability to empathise with the struggling middle class, the poorer working class, the destitute and the disenfranchised because they have never been there to experience it. Their resolve to cut swiftly the deficits created by the debt crisis satisfies their desire to put the problem behind us as quickly as possible so that normal money making business can be resumed as it was before all this inconvenience. How much this will hurt people without money is of no consequence to them and yet, amazingly, there is also no comprehension that it is essential that the very people at the sharp end that must be in a position to contribute to growth in the global economy as it is presently structured. Many people are already up to their necks in the soft smelly stuff and live with the knowledge that, despite certain claims, we are not all in this together.

The times of instant gratification are about to be ripped unceremoniously away from a generation that has not experienced hardship. It is going to hurt. The wisest of those will have already started to clear all debts before the storm of high inflation and further employment blows furiously throughout whole societies. Crime rates will rise as the cost of living becomes unaffordable for many.

The Saturn / Pluto cycle will come to a new conjunction in 2020, although the Barbault scale will still be in minus territory for another year. However, this will be the time that workable solutions can be established, for it is only when the old ways are destroyed and laid waste that transformation of new structures can truly take place. But for some the transformation may be slower, particularly larger economies where - like a super tanker - it takes just a bit longer to turn around (for example the US Pluto return 2022).

Be in no doubt that we are all heading for interesting times and those better prepared to weather the storm may come out the other side a little less battered and bruised. But all is not doom and gloom. Invention is the mother of necessity and it has been proved from the last Barbault negative periods that great drives are initiated towards new inventions that advanced technology and changed the world for the better.

We will also have an opportunity to make huge leaps in the way our society runs, especially if we maintain the freedoms of the Internet. It is up to the masses to realise that they run the world, and we can if only we are prepared to an interest and participate (political pressure groups like Avaaz are already making this happen) - and that the people the masses elect to represent them must represent the people who put them there and not be swayed or hijacked by unelected powerful groups of self-interest where money and wealth is prioritized higher than the happiness, needs and well being of the people.

More articles relating to Barbault and the 2015 depression will be placed on this blog, so please bookmark if you are interested.

Further reading: 

Feb 2009. Deep Recession Predicted long ago?

  http://shane-ward.blogspot.co.uk/deep-recession-predicted-long-ago.html

Sept 2008 The Barbault Scale

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=13254&id=42299

Feb 2011 The Barbault Warnings

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=13254&id=47637

Barbault: The Prediction Revealed

http://shaneward22.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/barbault-prediction-revealed.html

Capricorn Ingress 2012 / The End Of The World

The Sun enters Capricorn on December 21^st 2012 at 11:00am. Just 11 minutes later is the end of the Mayan Calendar and the consequent claims of the so-called ‘end of the world’.

May I be perfectly clear up front in saying that I do believe we are in no danger of global destruction; at least not on this date.

The global economic depression is set to continue until at least 2021. Wars for democracy, food and livelihoods still await us. Some of these event exist already and some are yet to come before the decade is over. But for now I want to concentrate on the Capricorn ingress. I have set the chart for Westminster but we will look later at the ingress in tandem with the UK1801 chart, the US Independence chart and the Treaty of Rome.

With the Sun in the 10^th house the light is shining on the leadership and Moon in the second relates to the resource needs of the people. Perhaps it is not surprising that the focus will be on the economy and austerity measures that seem to be the popular solution to the global debt crisis. A triple dip recession is on the way.

The Sun sextiles Neptine and Chiron conjunct the Ascendant. The big issues already in play are large institutions like the NHS. There are also concerns around unemployment, rising fuel costs and pensions. With Chiron so close to Neptune it is reasonable to assume that there will be no solution to any of these problems this year; it doesn’t matter what political party holds power.

With Venus opposite Jupiter (retrograde) across the 3^rd / 9^th house axis the forecast will be for a cutting back on day to day expenses wherever possible. However, both square into Chiron suggesting that the cuts will not be pleasant. There may be a significant number of people, however, who may suffer the illusion that borrowing more on the credit card will solve the problem (Neptune conjunct Chiron). Please consider that borrowing more money will cause you greater grief within a year, if not sooner.

Our politicians will not help us in being sensible. Their remit will be trying to reassure the consumer that the economy is on the mend and will try to foster confidence, without which it is certain that the economy cannot grow. But most people will only be able to consume using borrowed money – and there is simply not enough money to borrow to make any difference to the huge debt mountain that has to be paid back. Naturally the politicians will fear that without a return to economic growth there will be more businesses collapsing, higher unemployment and a greater recession. What the politicians do not want you to know is that the UK is heading for an economic slump. It is unavoidable and the UK citizens can personally avoid some of the future catastrophe by not borrowing any more money.

The North Node in the 9^th house sextiles Mars in the 12^th, suggesting a focus on foreign affairs, particularly hostilities and actions that may have a detrimental impact on our day to day lives. Oil is always subject to price fluctuations where conflict threatens to affect supply, which in turn can affect the UK fuel cost, including not only petrol but gas and electricity. With Mercury so close to the Midheaven, trade is high on the agenda, with the likelihood (Mercury trine Moon) that our cost of living will be squeezed at this end too.

But the power in the chart lies with the ‘finger of God’ aspect between Saturn sextile Pluto – inconjunct Jupiter.

The cycle of Saturn to Pluto is drawing to its close. We have witnessed the power of its structural transformation in connection with the chaotic Uranus (that is still in the process of making square aspect to Pluto) introducing sudden and shocking changes to the structure of our society and our collective unconscious. The Arab Spring continues with civil war in Syria and difficult reforms in many other parts of the world. As the Saturn / Pluto cycle will complete only by the end of the decade, we can be certain that this period of transformation will take longer than one short year and will leave a lasting impact on the world in general.

Jupiter is retrograde in Gemini, making up the Yod with Saturn and Pluto. So both Jupiter and Saturn, the societal planets figure in this aspect along with the demands of evolutionary change from Pluto. What was considered the established part of our structure (Saturn) is already undergoing massive change (Pluto) but our thoughts (Gemini) have yet to get our heads around it (Jupiter retrograde).

People can be resistant to change but the changes we see today are happening whether we like it or not. They are real and we had better get our heads around it or get left behind. By the time the current reformation of countries and political structures have concluded, we will be living in a very different world from today. What we must get our heads around is what we once knew that will be cast out as no longer a viable structure and what must come in if we are to meet the challenges of the future. Amid all of this will be the fear that comes inevitably with changes that threaten to rock our perceived sense of security. Those who wish to hold onto the old ways will try to convince us that they are the true power. We have already seen why this is not so in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and many others. And there is no reason to expect that these will be the only reforms the world must face.

Jupiter in Gemini focuses our minds on how we relate to every day matters but it also gives us an opportunity to reflect, indeed to challenge what we believe to be true. Right now there is a very real concern over our entire monetary system that threatens to engulf many countries in debt and destitution. Venus opposes Jupiter, emphasising the focus of a financial nature to the thinking of Jupiter. Where we cannot continue to expand our debt, either through quantitative easing (which simply defers the debt for a few more years) or greater borrowing. There has to come a point where tinkering with a busted economy has to stop, and it maybe that during this year it is decided that further tinkering is not going to stop the inevitable pain. Certainly with mercury on the Midheaven businesses will protect themselves by cutting the workforce and closing unprofitable outlets. I envisage things starting to fall apart by March when a huge stellium of planets congregate in Pisces, separating themselves from just three planets: Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto.

Aquarius on the Ascendant, conjunct Neptune in Pisces, suggests a number of rather futile strikes but also a focus on common interests. Our fate, however, is hopelessly intertwined with international economic instability and there will be little that the UK can do to stop the slide in isolation.

Now putting the UK1801 (1^st January 0:00am) chart up against the Capricorn ingress chart, we see immediately how the Yod of Saturn and Pluto places the apex of Jupiter into the UK 9^th house. I see no reason to expect the problems within the Eurozone to go away. In fact I expect them to get gradually worse, as there are no remedies for what we will witness over the next few years. By 2016 the Euro currency experiment will be all but over. Everything until then is merely delaying the inevitable.

Not that the UK leadership will have much of a chance to indulge itself in foreign politics. The Moon of the ingress chart conjuncts the UK1801 North Node. The Government will have its hands full dealing with domestic matters to get too enmeshed in Europe’s woes.

Pluto is now applying to the IC of the UK1801 chart, meaning that Pluto’s evolutionary power is applying to all national charts that began on the 1^st of January. What happens now make take many years to complete but we are now at the beginning of tremendous changes. For the UK, with Uranus firmly on its descendant, the reforms that will be demanded by the people and by the dictates of the enforced changes of many countries, will start to become apparent. Over the coming year it will become clearly obvious that we cannot continue within the economic structure that exists today. There must be a complete review of the role played by banks and financial institutions, not only within our day to day lives but also in how they impact on our global economy. Considering that the UK has a hefty interest in financial institutions, this will be very had for the UK to deal with. The necessary reforms will take some big changes of mind to enact and there is always the fear that comes with any change and a resistance by those who stand to lose. The UK must ensure that the required changes occur regardless of the fear.

The Yod configuration is also very tightly connected to the US Independence chart (4^th July 1776 5:10pm) with the ingress Jupiter conjunct natal Uranus. Given a push in the right direction (especially with Mercury on the Ascendant) there may be a possibility to use trade as a vehicle to drive the economic recovery to growth. However, one cannot expect that others will greet certain reforms with the same enthusiasm, so one must be careful not to become pushy or overbearing. For example, the US administration has intimated its concerns over certain trade practices form China. How one handles their trade partners may make the difference between some cooperation or none at all.

There is a particularly concerning aspect of the ingressed Mars conjunct natal Pluto. This is a drive to domestic changes that are most certainly an attempt to create a greater sense of personal value to the States. For example, the drive to become self sufficient with oil may resonate very strongly with US citizens but not necessarily with the Middle East. It is important to remember that the planets of Venus and Mars work in a pair, and as the ingress Venus opposes Jupiter in the Yod, one must consider with a wider consciousness the impact of any major decisions made at this time. However, the ingress Moon opposes the natal Saturn, which offsets any global consideration with the commitments made to the people of the US. But the ingress Moon at 14 of Aries is an impulsive Moon that must be careful not to innovate too quickly without considering the longer term consequences. There may also be a note of caution to avoid protectionism.

Finally we look at the EU Treaty of Rome (March 25 1957 6:30pm CET). Pluto in transit has been wobbling over the IC of the Treaty chart for some time now (7’15” Capricorn). Having made its final pass, Pluto is squarely in the 4^th house, otherwise known as the end of the matter. Saturn in the 2^nd house indicates the restriction of resources and Jupiter forms the Yod by reaching out through the 9^th house and in conjunction with the Treaty’s Mars; although in transit Jupiter will refrain from aspect, going direct at 6 degrees of Gemini. The ingress Venus in the 3^rd house of the Treaty chart shows how the EU will become absorbed with finances in every day life. The ingress Mercury conjuncts the Treaty’s Saturn in the 3^rd suggesting that, like the US, imaginative trade in exports might keep the EU wheels turning a little longer. The Ingress Uranus conjuncts the Treaty’s Sun however, and this might indicate some sudden and very painful reforms in order to keep the Eurozone from collapsing sooner rather than later. When the Uranus Pluto square returns in April 2013, Uranus will be exactly on the Treaty’s unaspected Mercury, suggesting that this will be the deciding point as to whether trade will sink or swim the Euro.

In conclusion I believe that in 2013 we have a small time window to expand our thoughts and ideas beyond that which governments have sought to make happen. Governments have sought to cure the present financial crisis with austerity measures. Some countries may survive the ill treatment but none will escape the consequences and will want to ensure that nothing like it can ever happen again. This will mean a complete rethink about how our financial system works. But some of those in power are still under the illusion that once the current crisis is over we can go back to how it was. It is those people who will now allow us to suffer until even they will not be able to hold back the need for reform. But that is a story for 2014.