Why Is Fishy Rishi Flogging The Crypto Dream?

"We're looking at politician who has a lot more direct exposure to the Crypto industry than most world leaders".  Yahoo! finance

While he was Chancellor, Rishi Sunak - the wealthy hedge-fund guy who sold us Boris Johnson - met crypto-asset manager Bitwise and Solana Labs, and leading tech/crypto venture firms Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz, among others. Then he committed the UK to be a "global hub for cryptoasset technology" and commissioned the Royal Mint to "issue a non-fungible token (NFT) by the end of the year “as an emblem of the forward-looking approach the UK is determined to take.” [my emphasis on the weasel words]." Of course, that NFT thing never happened. But Sunak did drive plans to regulate 'stablecoins' as a means of payment - in a way that gave him (as Chancellor) the ability to change the qualifying definition. 

To give you some insight into Sunak's Crypto meetings: before the collapse of his FTX house of cards, Sam Bankman-Fried was a "big supporter of Solana" which is itself no stranger to controversy; Sequoia was the leading venture firm backing FTX, with $150m, while Sequoia's own investment funds received $200m via FTX's trading arm, Alameda Research; and Andreessen Horowitz led a $314m 'private token sale' by Solana. Meanwhile, Bitwise also has a stake in Solana and, among many boosterish claims, Bitwise CIO says the reason why the price of Ether is drifting sideways is that it's being suppressed by general Crypto industry bad news rather than, say, the fact that Ethereum mining is no longer profitable.

Like the Tory Party (and Sunak's government), the Crypto currency world (as opposed to many plausible but mundane scenarios for deploying distributed ledger tech generally) lacks substance and is rancid with infuriating boosterism. So it may simply be that Rishi feels at home in both camps. 

But based on his career progression and political record, my sense is that whatever Rishi's selling you'd be a damn fool to buy... 

The End Of 'CovidBrexidiot' Johnson

Well, finally Johnson has gone, albeit with veiled threats of a comeback ("for now" and "hasta la vista, baby," alluding to Terminator). He was easily the worst Prime Minister in British history, for perpetrating a seemingly endless array of havoc and unlawful conduct that came way too depressingly thick and fast for these pages. So let's hope there's no sequel. 

Yet Johnson's parting reference to the Terminator is quite apt. Like the unstoppable android, Johnson himself morphed from one 'side' to the other and is a character of pure fiction.

Well, almost.

The facts we know do not favour this man, and it is to be hoped that one day he atones for at least some of his misdeeds, as do his ministerial minions. One wonders why Britain bothers having the offence of Misconduct in Public Office if Johnson and his cabinet cronies aren't going to be prosecuted for it.

Maybe one day the full story of Johnson and his Tories' vice will come oozing out, like pus drained from an infected wound. But I won't be joining any hospital queue for that. The events of the past six years has taught us that the British state is both weak in constitution and morbidly corrupt, and there's no institutional longing for a cure.

Even now we're witnessing the unedifying display of the wealthy, old, Tory faithful tossing up between Richy 'the Dork' Sunak and a store mannequin for their new 'leader' as if it even matters whose snout goes into the public trough next, given the parlous state of the kingdom.

With any luck, the next incumbent will also succumb to revelations about their role in the rorts wrought by the Johnson regime, accelerating the next General Election...  

That's not to say that the state of the Disunited Kingdom would necessarily be improved if the so-called 'Opposition' were voted in. But there's at least a natural hygiene effect in changing the party in government at every election, like changing your underwear daily to get rid of any foul accumulations. 

It's probably inappropriate to switch this metaphor to the idea of a 'hung' Parliament, but it's worth doing so to ram home the lesson that nothing good seems to come of allowing either of the major parties to linger for a second term.

At any rate, let's hope for a quick end to Tory government No. 94...

 

A Dogmatic Approach To Social Housing

For today's post, I'm again drawn to the Red Book and the 'problem' of social housing.

Remember, the game here is not to solve anyone's housing problem. It's to get the Labour Party elected to run the country. So it becomes necessary to explain the social housing problem in that light, rather than in a way that might elucidate its root causes and allow us to figure out a solution.  The facts should not be allowed to get in the way of a good story.

Why social housing? Because, as Dr Eoin Clarke explains, Labour's figures show it was deserted by a disproportionately large number of private renters, compared to property owners, in 2010 compared to 1997.  I can't vouch for any causal connection, but let's roll with it.

The primary challenge for the Labour Party is that this slide in support appears to have beeen a problem of its own making. Dr Clarke explains that in his view, "The Right to Buy scheme launched by Margaret Thatcher in 1981 was initially a good thing." And by the time she left office in 1990, the government was building social housing at about the same rate as it was being sold. That continued during the Major government, although both social housing sales and builds decreased steeply. 

Dr Clarke then asserts that the reason for the decline in sales and new builds of social housing was that Thatcher wouldn't let councils keep the sales proceeds - although that doesn't explain why the programme seemed to go okay for its first 9 years so I suspect something else was going on...

But never mind all that. Here's what happened next, according to Dr Clarke: from 1997 to 2010 there was virtually no social housing built at all, social housing sales boomed and the population grew by 4.41 million. House prices "rocketed". Young families had no option but to rent and "their rent payable was often extortionate... That," confirms Dr Clarke "is the legacy of New Labour's handling of housing."

Enough said, one would have thought. Yet against this background, Dr Clarke then asserts:

"Thus, it is fair to conclude that Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme was, on balance, a disaster for British housing."

"... we don't trust the Tories to build adequate stocks of social homes, because in their last 18 years of power they only built one for every four they sold."

Huh? Where does that come from?

Ironically, a little later, in her later essay on "Understanding the Psychology of the Working Class Right Wing", Rhiannon Lockley has this to say:

"...the key achievement of propaganda is to make the belief being transmitted internalised to the point where its origin is lost and it is accepted as natural and self-discovered by the individual...  The volume and diversity of negative messages about scapegoated groups in the right-wing media today does much to achieve this, and it is also supported by the factual style of reporting whch presents arguments as definite rather than exploratory."

All of which leaves the following questions: Is there a social housing problem? If so, what is it? How big is it? What are its root causes? What improvements could we make to address those causes? What controls could we put in place to show that it doesn't happen again?

But whatever you do, don't ask a dogmatist.