I’ve heard numerous people talk about how executives are paid 300times the lowest paid but aren’t 300 times more productive than the lowest paid. Part of the problem is this is as far as they go.

They only look at strategies to increase low pay and potentially decrease high pay. They don’t look at ways that we could recalibrate the “market(s)” in wages & the ideas behind wages at all levels in order to reduce inequality.

They’ve done what some Doctors tend to do, they see the symptoms & they treat them without looking closer as to what is causing the symptoms.

I put the market(s) in quotations marks above simply because I don’t believe in markets, I do believe in human irrationality.

David Cameron, has said that excessive high pay is a result of a market failure. Its not. Its a fault of our own irrationality.

Behavioural economics has shown that we are incapable of comparing two things that aren’t similar. In the wage “market”, this mean we find it difficult to compare the value of a low-skilled worker, to a medium-skilled worker and a high-skilled worker.

For example, your company is hiring a computer programmer and a marketing person. What should their salaries be?

In order to work out that question, we look at what other computer programmers earn and what other marketing people earn!

We’ve separated out each job and compared it to other similar jobs rather than trying to assess how much value, they will bring to the company. We’ve created two separate “markets”. Its the same for every other industry.

Its worse for CEOs, because they especially know what other CEOs are earning.

If a CEO sees a CEO of a rival company earning more than them but performing the same, they get jealous and start demanding pay rises.

At the bottom, everyone knows people are getting approximately minimum wage, so there is no real demand to raise the minimum wage like there is at the top end of the pay scale.

The other illogic when it comes to wages is the presumption that in order to get the best people for the top jobs, you need to pay them a big salary, whilst at the bottom, reducing people’s salary is not going to hinder performance.

Regardless of where you are in the wage scale, we all act the same with regard to pay and performance. If you pay us too little we won’t perform well, pay us too much or beyond what we need in order to be able to live to a decent standard, we won’t perform well.

The question is, how do we iron out the irrationalities in our behaviour so everyone can have a decent standard of living? How do we get rid of the illogic behind our wages?

It was a welcome change from his previous forays into the independence debate. He was positive about Scotland and Scotland’s contribution to the UK. He talked about how solidarity that the UK had, that we would lose if Scotland left. Yes, that’s right Dave Cameron went all Labour on us.

It was an impassioned speech and no doubt the Prime Minister believed in every word but it left me with questions and doubts.

Cameron spoke passionately about us being stronger together as a United Kingdom. He talked passionately about the solidarity it brings and the benefits it brings to all when you have 60 million people standing by you. Yet as Mark Pack points out, Dave can’t see that the same reasons he talks up the UK with are the same reasons why the European Union is so valuable.

I’ve talked to many Tories and UKIPers about this, and the only answer they can come up with is that the Uk is older and is therefore somehow better. Thats not true. The UK needs reform as does the EU but the UK isn’t better because its older. The older generation isn’t better than the younger because they are older. They have more experience but experience doesn’t equate to being better.

I would love to know what Cameron’s answer to this would be.

In his speech, he talked about Scotland and England’s shared values, shared identity, shared history. Yet his government amongst the huge education reforms that they are making, aren’t making provisions for our shared history to be taught in England. Cameron is happy for the vast majority of the English to remain ignorant of how the UK was formed.

In other nations, it is pretty much unthinkable to have a large swathe of its citizens not knowing how their country came to be. Yet in the UK, we are happy to let it slide that the English, 80% of the population aren’t taught about the Union of the Crowns and the Union of the Parliaments. In Scotland, we need to change our history curriculum so its less biased and focuses on how the whole UK was formed not just how Scotland formed a Union with England.

Cameron talked of his love of devolution and decentralisation and talks of wanting a settlement that works for everyone, yet his government is devolving power to Scotland, devolved powers to Wales and is setting up the West Lothian Commission without thinking about the possible negative impacts on the rest of the Uk.

I believe devolution in Scotland has some negative impacts on the rest of the UK as well as in Scotland (although a lot is positive for Scotland). The negative impact is biased towards England because they have no assemblies or their own parliament. This government has set up the West Lothian commission to solve it. What if that has negative consequences on rest of UK? Solve those issues on a case by case base, that has negative impact on the other nations etc. etc. Isn’t it better to have some joined up thinking on this?

If Cameron wants to find a solution to how to best govern this United Kingdom, why doesn’t he set up a commission to find out the answer to that question.

Finally, Cameron talks about continuing the debate on devolution after the independence referendum. Well, Mr Cameron, I don’t believe you on that score.

There was a devolution referendum in 1979, which only failed due to a threshold and stalled the debate for a generation thanks to your idol Lady Thatcher. The 97 referendum whilst successful, there hasn’t been much debate on where we go from here other than independence from the SNP. No side has really pushed for further devolution faster or a different vision. Even the LibDems have been fairly silent.

In May of last year, you took the side of No to AV, a large section of that campaign had a Yes to PR, No To AV. I believe Cameron himself said that people who want PR should vote No so they can start fighting for something they believe in. Yet when the No vote was announced, Cameron, himself said that it was a Yes vote for FPTP and had killed the debate for electoral reform for a generation.

So unless you can give me and Scotland a cast-iron guarantee, I simply won’t believe that the debate will carry on. In fact the only guarantee, I’d except is a question on the ballot paper asking Scots if we want change to the current constitutional settlement but not independence.

Even after Cameron’s speech, I’m left wondering what is Cameron’s vision for the UK! Does he have one? I’ve got empty rhetoric, nothing else.

It is time, that the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems set out their vision for what a future UK would look like. If they can find one.

One of my main gripes with Liberal Left, is that they seem to be positioning the party as the Labour-lite party. This is a position we’ve struggled with for a long time. After all, we are not some off-shoot of the Labour party. We are not a party for disillusioned Labour supporters.

We have our own philosophy, our own traditions, our own beliefs. Beliefs and a philosophy that Labour do not share.

As part of the coalition, the danger is we come to be seen as Tory-lite especially when our coalition partners will want to hug us as close they can so they can take the credit for our policies and soften the Conservative brand.

The problem is, is that we aren’t Labour-lite or Tory-lite but they are both LibDem-lite.

After all, they are both trying to crowd our territory. We need to be pushing this as social proof for our policies and our party and Nick Clegg.

This is what Ed M is trying to do with Murdoch, banker’s bonuses etc. He is trying to claim that we and the Tories are following the agenda he set out in his conference speech to prove that he is a good leader & showing that Labour are on the ball before us.

We’ve got to use the power of the media, to expose these hypocrisies and to show that as Labour and the Conservatives crowd our ground, that their parties aren’t behind them.

After all where Liberal Democrats lead, Labour and Conservatives follow.

My take on groups or wings of the party is best summed up by what Nick Clegg said in a conference speech in Sheffield.

Liberal Left seem to be picking for a fight. They oppose the coalition and their stated ideology is social liberal/social democratic. They seem to want to pick a fight with what they call the Orange Book right-wing liberals leading the party.

I haven’t read the Orange Book so I don’t know if I’m an Orange Booker or not. What I do know though is that the Orange Book had contributions from many on the left of the party including Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey. The Orange Book was intended to spark debate amongst the party, but all it did seemingly is spark factions.

Factions destroy parties, look at Labour, with their Blairites and their Brownites or even in the 80s when the gang of four broke away from Labour. Or look to our right, the Conservative’s are being torn apart over Europe.

Factions are bad because when people put themselves into a box of “I’m an Orange Booker” or “I’m a social liberal” or “I’m a Liberal Left” etc. it creates a sense of belonging and an idea that the rest of the party, the other factions aren’t good and need to be destroyed for the sake of the party. That destroys the pluralism which the Liberal Democrats stand for.

Liberal Reform, from what I’ve read, rather than creating a faction, is generally a place for Liberal Democrats of all persuasions to generate ideas for debate and to make sure the Liberal Democrats remain the party of radical ideas. They seem genuinely open to working with others within the Liberal Democrats, to change the ideas and policies within the party.

Liberal reform, seem to be the more pluralistic of the two new groups.

We have to remember what Nick Clegg said in Sheffield.

We are not on the left, we are not on the right, we have our own label Liberal!

If we remember that, in the face of adversity, we’ll keep our heads, and survive to fight another election.

Sorry Dan, but face up to reality the Hp films just weren’t that good especially HP7b.

My review in detail is here.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 was nowhere near Oscar standard. I don’t blame Dan for that but the filmmakers.

The script was terrible. First, Hermione didn’t get her moment in Shell Cottage which would have set the stage and the scale of the battle brilliantly.

Harry and Voldemort all of a sudden being able to feel the destruction of the horcruxes and Harry being able to feel they were near didn’t work.

Voldemort talking in their heads didn’t work.

The dialogue Harry gives Snape in the great hall was truly atrocious.

Helena Ravenclaw was WTF.

Some of the special effects at the end were what on God’s Earth was that and Why, Why, Why?

Near the end, I was going “just kill the snake, already” because I was bored by all the special effects. I was so bored, they could’ve completely changed the ending so the person who died in the final battle survived and killed the one who did survive and I wouldn’t have cared.

They removed the speech at the end where Harry finally got magic.

It was a bad movie. Those who worked on it should get over themselves and realise how bad it actually is.

The really annoying thing is that if the filmmakers knew what they were doing, it could have been fantastic and Oscar worthy but the filmmakers took everything that was dramatic in the book out to replace with special effects.

Rant over.

I’ve watched you grow up on screen. I grew up alongside you and Harry Potter.

I’ve seen numerous articles and quotes from you that hint at your deeply liberal philosophy.

When I read the article in the Guardian taking extracts from your interview with Attitude magazine out tomorrow, I was surprised as you seem incredibly liberal, that you were dropping your support for the Liberal Democrats. Even in the interview extracts you seem very liberal.

I was perplexed at why you were dropping your support from the LibDems. You say:

I was initially supportive. For me it was good that the Lib Dems would be fighting our corner. But he has become a whipping boy and it seems to me that he has been totally used by the Tories – anything they don’t want badly reflected on them they reflect on to him.

The reason why you are dropping your support, is not because you don’t like the LibDems fighting our corner in government. In the interview I gather you cite a number of good things the LibDems have done in government. But you think the PR is wrong.

The reason that your dropping your support, is not because you no longer believe in liberalism or that the LibDems aren’t doing good things in government but because the Tories are using Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats as human shields for policies that the Tories don’t want to be blamed for. And the media are lapping it up.

That is entirely the wrong reason. Someone with your influence, is capable of blowing the whole thing open and showing people that actually the LibDems aren’t to blame for x, y or z policies but the Tories.

As for thinking Ed Miliband is genuine. Ha. He’s got you wrapped round his little finger hasn’t he. Ed Miliband hops on to every bandwagon going and hops back off when it suits.

He came into the hacking scandal only when it became an issue that people cared about, hoping for a few extra opinion polling points, he hopped on the energy bills are too high when it became an issue in the papers, even though 18 months ago, he was in charge of that department. He hopped on to “responsible capitalism” and started attacking big bonuses when it became popular. Labour let bonuses get out of control whilst they were in government.

If Ed Miliband has a genuine belief in anything other than power and how to rip off the poor, whilst making them believe you’ll stand up for them, I’ll eat my hat.

If you believe in liberalism, if you want to make a positive difference. Then support the party that believes that. That party will always and forever be the Liberal Democrats.

Yours Sincerely

Nic Prigg

The benefit cap, caps all benefits, a person can receive at £500 pound a week or £26,000 a year. That is an incredibly large sum of money. I don’t feel comfortable with someone receiving that amount on benefits. So in principle, you would think I support the benefit cap. Well yes and no.

There are several reasons why I don’t support it.

One of the reasons is that it could punish those who’ve just lost their jobs and claiming benefits perfectly legitimately for a short period of time whilst they get back on their feet. As Tim Leunig points out in the guardian here and as the Independent points out here.

The other reason is that it simply does nothing to combat the reasons why people can claim so much. Not that the state is overgenerous but because rents are too high, a lack of affordable housing and not enough new jobs are being created.

There are some ramshackle flats in London, that are barely habitable that have extortionate rents. Due to lack of council housing, the government is then forced to pay the ridiculous high rents of these private buildings. If the government can fix the rents and stop private landlords have extortionate rent prices not just in London but up and down the country, that doesn’t just help the government bring the benefits bill down, but helps people up and down the country by putting more money in their pocket which they can then spend in their local economy.

The third reason that I am against it, is it does absolutely nothing to deal with those people who are longterm jobless, in workless families who don’t even want to work. It does nothing to these people. I don’t know about you or anyone else up and down the country, I’d happily and so would many others have £26,000 in benefit. It doesn’t say work pays in fact, it says the opposite that living on benefits can give you a nice life if your single. If we want to help these workless families, lets find ways of going after them rather than this gesture policy which sounds like we’re going after them without actually going after them.

The only reason I am for it, is the principle of you shouldn’t be entitled to more money in benefits than the average family in work earns. Other than that statement, it achieves little. I wish we could achieve more than gesture politics. I wish we could use our influence to actually implement policies that have a hope of achieving something.

This simply isn’t the case. If you want to watch Ed Miliband’s conference speech its here or if you don’t want to watch all 55minutes, you can read the transcript here.

A week before that speech, Vince Cable gave a speech to Lib Dem conference on the economy. You can watch here and here or read the transcript here.

Ed Miliband in his conference speech mentioned responsible capitalism a total of zero times. His catchphrase in that speech was a “new bargain” not about any so called responsible capitalism. There was also a lot of waffle about predatory and producer business which got very confusing.

Vince Cable, in a speech that lasted a third of the time mentioned responsible capitalism a total of 3 times. He also mentions the responsibility of the government and the Bank of England to help the economy.

As Nick Clegg pointed out in his speech at the beginning of the year on capitalism, the Liberal Democrats have been fighting for a responsible capitalism well before Cable’s speech. It was Vince Cable that warned in 2006 that bank lending had become “recklessly irresponsible” and Labour just laughed. That is their commitment to “responsible capitalism” to preach in opposition about it but laugh at it when in government.

Once again Ed Miliband has shown that he is incapable of leading but very capable of hopping on a bandwagon.

It was Liberal Democrats who coined the phrase “responsible capitalism” and the Liberal Democrats who’ve been fighting for it long before Labour woke up hungover from the irresponsible capitalism that they helped to create.

“The current crop of 18-25 year olds is the most politically apathetic in American history. In 1972 half of that age group voted. Last election, it was 32%. Your generation is less likely than any previously one to write or call public officials, attend rallies or work on political campaigns. A man once said this: “Decisions are made by those who show up.” Are we failing you or are you failing us? It’s a little of both. A guy on my staff showed me a report from the centre of policy alternatives that said 61% of your generation agree with the statement “Politicians and political officials have failed my generation.”

President Josiah Bartlet, West Wing series 1 episode 22.

That was first shown in America on 17^th May 2000, yet over a decade later, much of it still holds true on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the 1992 UK General Election, 63% of 18-25 year olds voted, in 97, turnout was 51%, in 01 it was 39%, in 05 it was 37%, at the last election it was 44%. Now was that a blip or is the trend starting to reverse?

If decisions are made by those who show up who is failing whom? Are we failing the politicians by not being active enough? Not communicating our vision of society or what we believe the future is and how to implement it? Or are they failing us by not encouraging us enough to show up? Or are they failing us by not communicating with us by asking us how we see the future? Or not implementing policies that would help us so we see the benefits of speaking up and fighting our corner?

Is it any surprise that we see politicians falling over themselves to give benefits to the elderly? The elderly are twice as likely to vote and the politicians are continually seeking to be re-elected. It is therefore in the interest of the politicians to pander to the older generation and screw the younger generation.

We won’t get angry enough to vote in the next election or seek to change the system that led to this political corruption.

We might riot but that will just be used to turn the elderly ever more against the young. Politicians will use it as a way to pander to the elderly (What these youngsters need is a nice long jail term. We’ll lock ‘em up and throw away the key.) Instead of providing role models, restorative justice that gives us hope instead of hate and rage and challenging the status quo to make the lives of youngsters better.

If we, this nation’s future want to make this country better for the future, we shall have to shouter louder for longer, be more passionate in our causes, just to be heard.

We as the countries young generation have a challenge on our hands. Decisions are made by those who show up. We have to challenge our generation to show up, so that the political class do not fail our or future generations again.

On Monday, Nick Clegg gave a speech on capitalism. This was his first real foray into the debate since it has erupted as a major talking point. Even though we as a party have been arguing the need to reform capitalism before it was cool.

Before criticising capitalism, he praised it by saying this:

“Capitalism may be today’s political punchbag, but let’s take a long view: it’s one of history’s great success stories. No other human innovation has driven progress – and raised living standards – so consistently. Markets catalyse ideas, invention and experimentation. When they work well, they are meritocratic and liberating.
And they generate the wealth to support the most vulnerable and needy in society.”

Capitalism, a great success story! Really Nick? Are we talking about the same capitalism? The capitalism that so often exploited the poor to fill the elites pockets. The capitalism that exploited the poor so much that Labour had to introduce a minimum wage in order to help the most vulnerable and needy in society that capitalism had failed. The capitalism that created America’s healthcare system which leaves so many Americans without health insurance because they can’t afford it.

Nick argues that the problem isn’t too much capitalism but “that too few people have capital”. Whilst in some cases that might be a problem, some of the biggest successes in “capitalism” have come from positions where getting capital was incredibly hard.

Mainstream opinion says you need three things in order to be successful in a capitalist system: large sums of money, the greatest minds in a particular field and a market to sell into.

Let me give you an example.

Back in the early 20^th century everybody was trying to create the first controlled powered flight, one of them was Samuel Pierpont Langley. He was given $50,000 to figure out how to achieve a controlled flying machine, money was no object. He was well connected and hired the best minds of the day. The market conditions were perfect, the New York Times followed him around. Everyone was rooting for him to succeed.

Yet, we’ve not heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley. Why? Because the Wright brothers got there first. What did the Wright brothers have? Nothing, they had no capital, they used the proceeds from their shop to fund their dream. The proceeds from the shop was peanuts compared to the capital that Pierpont Langley had access to. No one on the team had a college education, not even the Wright brothers and nobody followed them around.

How did they do it? They believed in what they were doing. They believed if they could work out how to do this flying thing, they could change the world. Everyone who worked for them, believed in this too so they gave their blood, sweat and tears.

Samuel Pierpont Langley was doing it for the fame and the fortune. He quit when he found out the Wright brothers had achieved what he was trying to achieve.

Look around the world today, what is everyone looking for today? Is it to change society, to make society better or are they in pursuit of the fame and fortune?

I think when people talk about the good qualities of capitalism like innovation and experimentation; they aren’t talking about capitalism but are talking about a political system that allows human creativity to flourish. A political system that oppresses, a society that oppresses and sometimes people’s own fears stop creativity, stops experimentation, stops innovation.

We have approximately 3 million people unemployed in this country. That is 3 million minds going to waste, 3 million minds that could be innovating, sitting at home twiddling their thumbs and learning how not to be innovative. 3 million minds looking for jobs instead of innovating, creating businesses and creating jobs.

Capital and markets will never be as important as human capital. Yet we never ever hear people talking about releasing human capital.