Hung Parliament - More Pressure?

Many people would like to have rolled out the tumbrils for the UK Parliament in the past year, but a 'hung' Parliament is of course something quite different. And 38 Degrees is rightly running a poll to see if people want to hear more about the pro's instead of being heckled by The Sun and other mainstream media about the con's. I've said that I do.

Esentially, a hung parliament exists where no political party has a majority of seats. So either several parties agree a coalition and form a majority government, or a single party must form a minority government and horse-trade with the others on key issues. If neither works on critical issues, like budget approval, there would need to be another election.

The BBC has tried to explain it, but gets mired in speculation about numbers. A short Wikipedia entry has just been created. It links to the BBC explanation and a Q&A by the Institute for Government, an apparently politically neutral think-tank, which is also concerned about the unduly negative portrayal of hung parliaments in the media:

This has been reported quite negatively and has generated predictions that unstable and ineffective government would be the result.

However, as argued in 'Making Minority Government Work' by the Institute for Government and Constitution Unit, this need not be the case. Indeed, minority or coalition government can even have advantages, though ministers, the opposition, the civil service and the media would all have to adapt their behaviour to make it work.

This sounds promising. Basically, all politicians would have to behave much more reasonably and responsibly to try and forge consensus, and the media would have to refrain from senselessly branding the process as unstable and chaotic. After all, the democratic process should be messy rather than engineered from the top down in a nice orderly fashion. A dynamic, open system which encourages broad engagement by all stakeholders cannot realistically appear neat and linear.

I suspect that the biggest driver of the negative airplay - particularly at The Sun - is that Gordon Brown would remain PM, and would be the first to be invited to try and form a government. Given his record for clinging desperately to power to date, one does wonder whether we'd ever be rid of him.

However, while the fear and loathing of Swinegate has exposed Parliament to more public scrutiny and produced a little more accountability, it seems we have a long way to go in educating the politicians that citizens come first. And a hung Parliament seems a great way of keeping the pressure on.

The Elephant In The Room Makes It A Grim But Simple Choice

The electoral "elephant in the room" is exactly how the next UK government will eliminate the country's £90bn structural deficit - the core part of the £167bn in overall public borrowing we can't pay off in the usual ebb and flow of the public finances.

Everyone is rightly speculating about the likely mix of higher taxes, spending cuts and the role economic growth will play if each political party were elected. But the detail will change and is ultimately a distraction for election purposes. The short answer lies in the basic party philosophies.

In essence, Labour believes the public sector is the economy, and the private sector - including individual taxpayers - is there to support the public sector economy for the common good. That's why they keep saying that tax cuts (i.e. lower public income) and reduced public spending would 'take money out of the economy'. Therefore, Labour's primary goal is to suck an extra £90bn out of the private sector into the public sector in the coming years, over and above 'normal' levels of taxation. Job done. Curing public sector waste and inefficiency are secondary, and not even necessarily 'nice to have', particularly for the unions who've contributed substantial sums to the Labour party.

By contrast, the Tories/LibDems believe the economy comprises both the public and private sectors. Which is why they keep saying that avoiding a rise in National Insurance will boost economic growth by leaving money with individual people who'll spend it to greater effect - more quickly and on local goods and services - than wasteful government departments who spend vast sums on overhead but ultimately produce nothing. So, while the Tories/LibDems would also need to hike taxes to some extent, they would primarily focus on reducing public sector waste and inefficiency to minimise the amount of money that has to be diverted from productive private sector activity into the public sector. Where those two parties differ is that the Lib Dems want the public sector to do much more than the Tories do, which is why the Lib Dems are always coming up with random additional taxes to pay for it all.

However, life is what happens while you're making plans. Labour's immediate problem is that the private sector is already stretched thin, conserving cash to repay private debt and rebuild savings in light of concern for the future. That's why they talk about delaying plans for the National Insurance hike (and no doubt other increases) until the economy's had a chance to recover, while the Tories/LibDems talk about reducing public sector waste and inefficiency now, to avoid the need for Labour's planned NI increase and minimise future tax rises.

So it's a straight choice, but a grim one. Higher taxes in the coming years and little change in the public sector under Labour. Public sector reform with a bit more cash in your pocket under the Tories, and somewhere in between under the Lib Dems.

SME's Shun Bank Finance Offerings

Interesting report today that "less than half SMEs have taken action [to address cashflow pressures] with 11pc hiring an in-house credit controller, 9pc using invoice discounting and 8pc factoring". There are over 4.7 million SMEs in the UK (see demographics below).

According to the Telegraph:

"Peter Ibbetson, chairman of NatWest and RBS small business operations, is concerned that so few SMEs are using banking services to alleviate the problem but small business organisations believe companies are reluctant to incur extra charges after their bank borrowing experiences."

In other words, it appears SMEs would rather leave debt on their books, taking any loss and resulting income tax deduction, than become hog-tied by a bank at rates of about 36%APR in consumer finance terms - at least that's the rate we estimated Zopa lenders would have to beat to offer attractive trade finance. That's because you should factor in (excuse the pun) the charges on any additional accounts you're required to hold as part of the finance deal, the holding cost of any deposit held as a guarantee, as well as fees and the interest rate on any overdraft, loans, letters of credit and/or factoring. SME owners are also increasingly required to take a commercial credit card, which doesn't benefit from protection from all the old dirty tricks that are gradually being weeded out under consumer banking and finance regulation.

Yet more evidence the time is ripe for an alternative source of SME trade finance?

The most recent UK government statistics (published Oct '09) show that, at the start of 2008, there were 4.8 million UK private sector enterprises of which 99.3 per cent had 0 to 49 employees. Only 27,000 (0.6 per cent) had 50 to 249 employees and 6,000 (0.1 per cent) employed 250 people or more.

Apple To Kill The Book? Define "Book"

What is a "book"?

The question was inspired by Technollama's indignant response to some gadget freakery about the iPad killing the humble book and how George Orwell would have written 'apps' if he were alive today.

"Book" is an increasingly elastic concept. We have hardbacks, paperbacks, e-books, talking books, and so on. So a dictionary definition such as "A set of written, printed, or blank pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers" is way too narrow.

A book is of course more than a physical item. No definition should ignore the content and the diverse forms in which that content may be consumed. In this sense, the definition of "book" should be no different than that of a 'television'.

Top of head, it might be more apt to define "book" as, say, "a coherent collection of thoughts recorded in text and graphical form by the creator(s), and edited, packaged and published by an independent person." That would allow you to distinguish, say, an academic paper, which I don't believe is (or should be!) edited by a person independent of the creator. Maybe that's wrong - I'm no academic.

Interestingly, 'film' and 'television show' are increasingly harder to differentiate from 'book' in these terms.

I agree with Technollama that it's lazy, ridiculous and futile to speculate whether Orwell would have forsaken books for 'apps' the second he clapped eyes on an iPad. He's dead. At any rate, the lack of reference to a living author in this vein is telling.

Of course there must be successful living authors who've previously only found expression in "pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers" who are discovering a new dimension to their musings via the latest technology. Cory Doctorow is one example, although he seems to use technology for publishing, marketing and distributing his books in 'traditional' form rather than the act of creation itself. But I have trouble believing Mr Doctorow will cease producing "books" because of the iPad. I'd ask him, but the proof will be whether he does or not - as an old English teacher used to say, "never trust the author, trust the tale" ;-)

When it comes to new technology, it's more interesting - indeed fascinating - to consider how the expression of the same thoughts varies according to the medium. In other words, how each new medium alters expression.

Copywriters, screenwriters and playwrights experience this for a living, of course. Dean Johns could explain that dynamic far better than me. But anyone with broadband and a bit of self-confidence can use, say, Xtranormal to turn a blog post into an animated clip and experience the edits required to convert perfectly idiomatic written words into idiomatic speech. It's perhaps tougher to distil a written paper into a compelling visual presentation (i.e. one that doesn't involve reading the paper and clicking slides). Saul Klein seems good at this, and the presentations at GikII (exploring the legal interaction between popular culture, speculative fiction, and new technology) are a sight to behold. Neither process is equal to the challenge of turning a novel into a feature film. Some scenes or concepts in the text are simply not practicable, convincing or satisfying in a visual medium - even with all the resources of Hollywood theoretically at one's disposal. But each process reveals that an original work provides only rough guidance as to how its meaning should be conveyed in a new medium. For that reason, the expression of a thought in one medium is no substitute for the expression of that thought in another. And it should follow that no medium is a substitute for another, or will "kill" it.

The replacement of vinyl records and casette tapes with CDs is really the evolution of one type of medium, rather than a whole new medium replacing others.

So what difference, if any, will the iPad make (even if one could glorify it as a medium in itself)?

That remains to be scene (I couldn't resist). However, the potential for added distribution alone, if not new modes of expression altogether, makes it worthwhile for 'traditional' authors to follow such steps in the evolution of technology and how people - their customers - react.

Living authors, that is. George Orwell can rest in peace.

Inverting The Institutional Narrative

Fascinating to see big charities accuse big business leaders of putting their own interests first in objecting to Labour's planned increase in National Insurance. The charities insist that their own constituents - older people, lone parents and environmental groups - are all capable of great influence on the electoral outcome and we should be focusing the debate on them.

Either way, it's ironic that NIC changes - which will affect all taxpaying individuals - are being subverted by institutions seeking to draw the electoral battle lines around their own 'vested interests', rather than the needs of individual voters.

Another example centres on the rise of Google as a force in the consumer advertising market. Newscorp claims that Google is getting a 'free ride' on Newscorp's content. Local newspapers also claim to be victims. And Europe's big Telcos recently leapt onto the bandwagon, claiming that Google is getting a 'free ride' on their networks. I guess TV and other device manufacturers and electricity companies will be the next to climb aboard.

The problem with such narratives is they ignore the 'elephant in the room' - that individuals are ultimately responsible for each wave of service provider overtaking the last. You decide what to pay and to whom, and whether to pay at all. The real complaint for Newscorp, big telecos and the like, is an internal one. They've lost sight of their role in solving consumers' problems in favour of solving their own. They have ceased to be - and ceased to be rewarded as - facilitators. Unless they can regain their role as facilitators of people's actual and desired activities, they will die the lingering death of the spurned institution.

The institutional narrative dominates in our society, yet research shows faith in our institutions has plunged over the past few decades, and we have turned to direct action and single issue campaigns as an alternative to formal politics. A Eurobarometer poll also found that only "50% of EU citizens trust their local and regional authorities, a level slightly higher than for the European Union (47%). This level of trust in the local and regional authorities is considerably higher than the level of trust in national governments or parliaments (34%)."

So, while it is dominant, the institutional narrative is also misleading. To properly understand our motives at the ballot box or in favouring the rise of email over posted letters, or internet shopping over some high street retailers, or Google over Newscorp, and where that may lead, the narratives of history and current affairs - and of the future - need to be told from the bottom up, not the top down.