Economy and our society!

Well that really was the very last one on this topic. Over the months we have seen politicians imprisoned, further wars, a continuing global economic crisis, high rates of unemployment and that is just for starters. But perhaps  one very important matter I have neglected is our precious NHS which now looks in danger. For example, 

• The Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide a health service will be scrapped. On top of that, a new “hands-off clause” removes the government’s powers to oversee local consortia and give some guarantee of the level of service wherever we live. We can expect increases in postcode lotteries  together with less ways to hold the government to account if the service deteriorates.
• The NHS will almost certainly be subject to UK and EU competition law. Private health companies will be able to take new NHS commissioning groups to court if they don’t win contracts. Scarce public money could be tied up in legal wrangles instead of hospital beds. Meanwhile, the legislation lifts the cap on NHS hospitals filling beds with private patients. We must avoid a US style system.

• And has we now know this bill has now been passed, with only a  handful of Lib Dems voting against. So it is now imperative to  lobby the members of the House of Lords and join in the  demonstrations planned for October.
• Enjoy your weekend and I hope you join me on my new Blog        planned for October.                        Ivor Timson  MSc (Econ)

New danger zone!

World markets have entered a “new danger zone”, according to the president of the World Bank. Robert Zoellick,  investors had lost confidence in the economic leadership of several key countries.

“What’s happened in the past weeks is there is a convergence of some events in Europe and the United States that has led many market participants to lose confidence in economic leadership of some of the key countries,” Mr Zoellick said.

“I think those events combined with some of the other fragilities in the nature of recovery have pushed us into a new danger zone. I don’t say those words lightly.”

The eurozone faced more serious problems, he said, with a lot of member states “moving from drama to trauma”.  There are other major signs of a mounting housing crisis.  Further words of gloom and despondency, which unfortunately have been the common thread throughout this blog.  I have offered both a prognosis and a diagnosis to the current economic crisis and have tried to evaluate the current state of economics.  Urgent action is clearly now required within this societal system; but leadership, the required knowledge, or indeed the desire to radically change is sadly lacking. We continue to worship a unfettered market even thought it has abysmally failed and can only continue to fail.

For these reasons, I am concluding this blog and it’s posts to commence a fresh one offering a new economic zone.  Hope you have enjoyed at least some of the posts.  Thanks for the e-mails.                      Ivor Timson  MSc (Econ)