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Permalink Reply by Administrator on February 8, 2014 at 11:07

Enfield Southgate MP, David Burrowes and Enfield North MP Nick deBois have published a joint response to the first article in this series in a letter to the Guardian The Members of Parliament question the articles focus on Edmonton alone rather than viewing the whole borough of Enfield.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Sitkin on February 8, 2014 at 13:59

I think it's significant that these two Conservative MPs dispute the focus being placed on deprived areas in dire need of new thinking and prefer highlighting areas where things are relatively better than in Edmonton. Mr. De Bois's willingness to understate the challenges facing his constituents in Enfield North is particularly revealing..

Some would say it smacks of complacency, even willful blindness to the plight of society's more disadvantaged members. But there is also the interpretation that the visceral instinct for members of progressive parties like Labour is to want to right wrongs - and Lord knows, there are enough of them! - whereas laissez-faire Conservatives' main interest is in preventing the state from intervening in what they consider the private sphere. Based on their notion that "the market" will find its own long-term equilibrium, other neo-liberal tenets like that.

Clearly I'm on the other side of the debate, i.e. of the belief that the Council can and should get stuck into problems and try everything possible to help resolve them, even (especially?) if it means rowing back on the paradigms that we perceive as having contributed to the problems arising in the first place. Certainly that is the "new direction" being expressed in the Guardian series. However wonderful Enfield is as a place to live - and I have truly loved living here for the past quarter century - it can always be made better, particularly those parts that continue to struggle. In this view, real loyalty to Enfield means shooting for the stars...

This continuous improvement approach (Japanese call it kaizen) can be criticised by those who believe that the private sector does fine by itself at resolving all the problems society faces, and/or that the state is intrinsically inefficient. I hope that if anyone does adhere to this latter point of view (and disagrees with my contention that a proactive state is a good thing), our discussion will speak to these different conceptions of the good society. No personal attacks please. This (the role and size of the state) is a noble, millennial debate that has been fought over history in many different guises. All sides have points to make and I like to think that there is an optimal compromise in what some people call the "mixed economy" (not entirely communist, then).

That is not where we are at for the moment, however, in the sense that since Reagan/Thatcher the balance has swung, in my opinion, far too far to one extreme, eviscerating the public sector and all the goods things it can bring to the table. I think Basil's thread above expresses this well - we are looking to resuscitate the "civilised society". Given that means overturning some of the forces that have been in play since Thatcher's 1980s, it requires what John's thread calls "bold experiments". But you know, what we are trying would probably been considered - at other times, in other contexts - as normally responsible policy for a municipality. The only reason anyone would call it radical is because the dominant narrative at present (in the Murdoch press) tries to tell us that the do-nothing state is normal. But is that true?

I don't believe that and based on public reaction to our initiative, few people do. Maybe as inequality grows and fosters instability, our approach will be seen as the new norm. So that MPs like Messers De Bois and Burrowes will no longer send out letters extolling how great things are for just some people but instead focus on what can be done to improve the situation for all people.

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Permalink Reply by Basil Clarke on February 24, 2014 at 23:58

I'm not Alan and I don't suppose he will agree with what I'm saying here - though he might...

"Protectionism" - generally seen as a bad thing by principled people,  because it's favouring one group of people over another, indulging in favouritism, whatever...  However, a rather long article that I read recently has forced me to rethink.  I'm not sure that I go along with everything the author writes, I think he's a little too anti-state, but there's definitely much sense in the article.

The article is here.  The section in question, entitled "Attachments" is here.  The key sentences are:  "our obligations and allegiances ripple out from family and friends to stranger fellow-citizens in our neighbourhoods and towns, then to nations and finally to all humanity. This does not have to be a narrow and selfish idea: charity may begin at home, but it does not stop there."

People are at their best when part of a community, and to some extent you have to favour the members of your own communities.  This needs to be kept within reasonable bounds, there is no room for prejudice on grounds of race, sex etc and no room for ridiculous unthinking statements such as "Britain is the greatest country in the world".

Another consideration is that psychologically people need to feel that things are not completely out of the control of themselves or their communities, but that is increasingly the case today, primarily because of globalisation of trade, which leads to another bad thing - reduction to the lowest common denominator, by which I mean the lowest wages and worst working conditions.  And globalisation also has severe environmental impacts because of the amount of stuff being shipped around the world unnecessarily.

So, to get back to the starting point, I don't consider it immoral to take steps to keep economic activities local, and "protectionism" may be justified, providing that it is done sensitively and for valid reasons.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Sitkin on February 25, 2014 at 0:25

Actually I do agree Basil! The path between protectionism and open borders is a delicate one. Yes to everything you write above. I think the one attitude is called "economic patriotism" and/or "home bias", and there is nothing at all wrong with that (as long as it avoids insularity and especially xenophobia). Yet there is no doubt that exchanges with the outside world are healthy and desirable, because they open up our worldview but also because trade can increase well-being.

I suppose like all things there is a balance, or what some economists called "managed trade", i.e. attempting as far as possible to be open to external markets while monitoring the well-being of the whole of the domestic population (in this case, Enfield) and being ready to intervene - even protectionistically, if that is a word? - whenever the negative side effects of trade become too nasty for some.

The question then becomes when to intervene. I suppose there has to be a threshold of disadvantage where the pain outweighs the gain. The complication is that even as some members of your domestic constituency are benefiting, others are losing. So the calculation of the benefits is difficult and lies somewhere between Bentham and Pareto's optimum. Sorry if this appears a bit academic but this topic is in fact my day job - lecturer in international business - and I've spent many years trying (and largely failing) to find the optimum between the two extremes of open and closed borders.

Worse, things are even more complicated than we are saying here! For instance, we haven't even talked about reciprocity, i.e. if I close my borders (partially) because some of my people are getting hurt by open borders, what is to stop my trading partners from doing the same? I think at this level what comes into play is negotiation. or what some might call a more institutionalist approach to economics (and others a "coordinated market economy").

Thanks Basil for your thought provoking post. These are complicated things. If we solved them once and for all, we'd be getting Nobel Prizes! Maybe one day my friend...

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Permalink Reply by Alan Sitkin on February 25, 2014 at 0:40

Tom, re: protectionism, pls see my response to Basil's interesting post. Re: EU procurement regs (OJEU?), well there are the regs but of course there are the politics. See Bombardier, etc.

Lastly re: coffee, I'm booked every night this week but will be at the Bowls Club Friday night 7 March for the Highworth meeting, if you want to pop by.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Franzmann on February 10, 2014 at 15:55

I find the whole tone of this 'discussion' deeply depressing.  Enfield has for many years been a borough cut in two and I have always known this but reading the different life  between the east and west sides of the borough shocked me.  This is not a party political issue but a human one of people who live close by.   Surely we should be supporting wholeheartedly any attempt to correct this imbalance.   I applaud Enfield Council and the Guardian for focusing on this unjust situation and the poverty, lack of opportunity and hopelessness that arise from few employment opportunities.  Of course it won't solve everyone's problems but it shows a different path that might yield some solutions - which gives everyone else time to think of other possibilities.

I fail to see  that the matter of the bowls club even registers as a relevant issue in this discussion when faced by such obvious inequality.  Thank you Richard for highlighting it and I also thank the young journalist for not forgetting his roots.

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Permalink Reply by Liz Wright on February 26, 2014 at 12:52

I have been interested in this debate.  I attended the BHORA meeting last year where Alan spoke in defence of the lack of schools in this area for example.  I seem to remember that when B&B had the meeting about neighbourhood plans last year we were told by the lady from Highgate (who had developed an impressive neighbourhood community) to be 'kind to each other' because the going could get rough.

I have found the going  impenetrable - a veritable 'brick wall' - on the small and insignificant  issue of tree planting.

I have been  contacting Enfield about tree planting in Brownlow Road - or rather replacing trees that the council have removed/ ripped up.  I have got nowhere.   Maybe this isn't important - maybe there are more important issues to explore - like how we can develop a community here where we work together constructively - without too many egos getting in the way...

Alan I copied you into my tree email... any take on this - or is this diverting too far from the thread on economic decline?

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Permalink Reply by Alan Sitkin on February 27, 2014 at 0:24

Liz, Totally in favour of further tree planting in the area. No need for a petition. Let me check out the upcoming programme. It's true that this topic strays from the "Enfield Experiment" which relates to our wider economy. But trees are extremely important

Please go to our ward website http://boweslabour.blogspot.co.uk/ to get my contact details and send me your email. It's easier to keep track of progress if we do it that way. thanks! Alan

PS. I probably didn't speak in defence of the lack of schools but in defence of having more schools!!!

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