Maybe I don't read the right journals, but I have never seen a guide to getting rid of unwanted cold callers on the phone. As I am frugal and seldom exposed to hard selling techniques, I therefore have to rely on strategies derived from a previous age.
In the 1980s, when unemployment was even higher than it is now, young people sometimes came to the door to ask if I would 'sponsor' them by buying a fire extinguisher or other durable commodity. My reaction was to invite them to sit down while I explained Adam Smith's distinction between the functioning of a market economy and that of the social order.
On Adam's account, markets can benefit all who take part in their processes of exchange of money for goods and services, without any one having any sense of responsibility or obligation towards each other. Societies, on the other hand, need moral standards, communicated through cultures and practices, to achieve fairness between their members.
The idea of 'sponsoring', if it belongs anywhere, is appropriate for the moral or social sphere. If markets and capitalism functioned to the benefit of all, as Adam claimed, then I should want to buy the fire extinguisher for its utility, not to save the salesperson from destitution.
I found that this always caused the rapid retreat of the commercial apprentice, and that none of his or her colleagues called in the immediate aftermath of the encounter. Whether this was because the unfortunate explained Smith's theory to the others, and convinced them of its validity, I do not know.
None of this seems to apply to the case of telephone cold calls. Perhaps I am paranoid, and too much of a technophobe to know how to check this out, but I have always imagined that many of these would allow the caller, in possession of some sophisticated device, to gain access to various bank accounts and pensions of mine if I spoke for more than a few moments. I would hardly get beyond the preliminaries of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments before these were completely stripped out.
So I am reduced to the very crude resort of saying, 'I am a police officer, and I only speak to criminals when I am on duty'. It seems to work.
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Fixing Interest Rates? Of course
Shock horror! The Barclays scandal reveals that the banks fiddle and lie to fix interest rates. Some government ministers and the Bank of England may even have been in on the scam. And we are supposed to be surprised by all this.
Banks, including the Bank of England, create money out of thin air, and make their profits from doing so.
This has been most obvious during the Quantitative Easing programme. The government and the Bank were worried that people were paying down their debts, and the banks weren't lending to businesses, so there was less money circulating. Solution: print some more. Commercial banks do the same thing when they make a loan, or give a customer credit.
The whole credit bubble that brought the banks down happened because they were rash about lending, and we were rash about borrowing. QE means that, to pay for the bail-out of the banks and their customers, people who have savings have to see them inflated away. Money is not a commodity; bank staff don't make it like factory workers make laptops or lingerie. It is a means of exchange, and its 'price' (the rate of interest on a loan or credit card debt) is whatever the banks can get away with charging for something that they have costlessly created. But because the financial sector is so significant a part of our economy, the Bank of England and the government want us to believe that the quantity of money and the interest rate are sacred numbers that emerge from international competition between London, New York and Tokyo, Frankfurt and Paris, through global money markets. We are supposed to swallow the idea that our bankers and politicians never tip each other the wink, or meet to set rates, but always accept the will of these markets as Holy Writ.
So this agonising about the Barclays scandal is mostly obfuscation and hypocrisy. We are supposed to believe that bankers deserve to have been bailed out, because they earned their salaries and bonuses by the brilliance of their dealings against the brute facts of international competition, in a risky and unstable environment. In this way, we will not notice that we are being ripped off - though not as badly as the Irish, Greeks, Portuguese and Spanish are, still paying for bail-outs that didn't even save their brilliant banks. Bob Diamond and his mates have let the side down by allowing the public to glimpse that all this is a fiction. Interest rates will always be set by bankers and others in concert, because the rest of us can't influence them in the way we can other prices, by voting with our feet. More's the pity.
This has been most obvious during the Quantitative Easing programme. The government and the Bank were worried that people were paying down their debts, and the banks weren't lending to businesses, so there was less money circulating. Solution: print some more. Commercial banks do the same thing when they make a loan, or give a customer credit.
The whole credit bubble that brought the banks down happened because they were rash about lending, and we were rash about borrowing. QE means that, to pay for the bail-out of the banks and their customers, people who have savings have to see them inflated away. Money is not a commodity; bank staff don't make it like factory workers make laptops or lingerie. It is a means of exchange, and its 'price' (the rate of interest on a loan or credit card debt) is whatever the banks can get away with charging for something that they have costlessly created. But because the financial sector is so significant a part of our economy, the Bank of England and the government want us to believe that the quantity of money and the interest rate are sacred numbers that emerge from international competition between London, New York and Tokyo, Frankfurt and Paris, through global money markets. We are supposed to swallow the idea that our bankers and politicians never tip each other the wink, or meet to set rates, but always accept the will of these markets as Holy Writ.
So this agonising about the Barclays scandal is mostly obfuscation and hypocrisy. We are supposed to believe that bankers deserve to have been bailed out, because they earned their salaries and bonuses by the brilliance of their dealings against the brute facts of international competition, in a risky and unstable environment. In this way, we will not notice that we are being ripped off - though not as badly as the Irish, Greeks, Portuguese and Spanish are, still paying for bail-outs that didn't even save their brilliant banks. Bob Diamond and his mates have let the side down by allowing the public to glimpse that all this is a fiction. Interest rates will always be set by bankers and others in concert, because the rest of us can't influence them in the way we can other prices, by voting with our feet. More's the pity.
Monday, 2 July 2012
Social Justice according to Dude and Big Boy
We are witnessing the final collapse of the fantasy on which New Labour built its social policies. With the revelations about Barclays staff lying to fix the LIBOR rate, and that they and other banks mis-sold insurance against interest rate rises to small and medium-sized businesses, the idea that equality and justice could be built on the greed of City financiers has been decisively blown away.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, an avid student of the latest economic orthodoxy, praised the City for its outstanding contribution to prosperity, jobs and tax revenues. He believed that the declining employment levels and earnings of ordinary workers could be bolstered in a fragmented labour market on the back of this success. As the majority of working families with children had their wages subsidised by tax credits, and those claimung benefits were herded into low-paid part-time work under threat of losing eligibility to claim, Tony Blair was arguing for this new marriage of efficiency and equity. Growing inequality was not an issue, he maintained, as long as the least advantaged citizens could be nudged above the poverty line. Our international comparative advantage lay in financial services, and we should consolidate this, for the sake of our whole population.
Even before the scandal broke, the crash had exposed this as a daydream. In the boom years, our banks owned 10 per cent of global financial assets, and made 10 per cent of global profits. Today they own the same proportion, and earn 5 per cent of profits worldwide. Contrast this with Chinese banks, which now earn 30 per cent of global profits. So much for the UK as the world's financial hub, and China as a mere assembly line for its manufactured products.
The Tories never fully swallowed this fantasy or idealised the City, perhaps partly because it was some of their school friends who were inventing these fiddles. But they too favoured light regulation. Now they have to find ways to clean up the cesspit. And they are no closer to finding an alternative direction for the economy. More even than New Labour, they rely on compelling benefits claimants to accept work which makes them no better off. And they are compromised by their close relationship with A4e as the chief instrument of the Work Programme. It placed only 30 per cent of its clientele in jobs lasting more than 3 months last year, and is being investigated for systematic fraud and malpractice. At least Ed Miliband is indicating a renunciation of New Labour's City links, and has given Jon Cruddas a leading role in policy development. That is much-needed good news.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, an avid student of the latest economic orthodoxy, praised the City for its outstanding contribution to prosperity, jobs and tax revenues. He believed that the declining employment levels and earnings of ordinary workers could be bolstered in a fragmented labour market on the back of this success. As the majority of working families with children had their wages subsidised by tax credits, and those claimung benefits were herded into low-paid part-time work under threat of losing eligibility to claim, Tony Blair was arguing for this new marriage of efficiency and equity. Growing inequality was not an issue, he maintained, as long as the least advantaged citizens could be nudged above the poverty line. Our international comparative advantage lay in financial services, and we should consolidate this, for the sake of our whole population.
Even before the scandal broke, the crash had exposed this as a daydream. In the boom years, our banks owned 10 per cent of global financial assets, and made 10 per cent of global profits. Today they own the same proportion, and earn 5 per cent of profits worldwide. Contrast this with Chinese banks, which now earn 30 per cent of global profits. So much for the UK as the world's financial hub, and China as a mere assembly line for its manufactured products.
The Tories never fully swallowed this fantasy or idealised the City, perhaps partly because it was some of their school friends who were inventing these fiddles. But they too favoured light regulation. Now they have to find ways to clean up the cesspit. And they are no closer to finding an alternative direction for the economy. More even than New Labour, they rely on compelling benefits claimants to accept work which makes them no better off. And they are compromised by their close relationship with A4e as the chief instrument of the Work Programme. It placed only 30 per cent of its clientele in jobs lasting more than 3 months last year, and is being investigated for systematic fraud and malpractice. At least Ed Miliband is indicating a renunciation of New Labour's City links, and has given Jon Cruddas a leading role in policy development. That is much-needed good news.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
The Charity Trap
It's a long time since I posted a blog - because of a combination of being busy writing a book and papers for conferences, and serious illness in the family.
Meanwhile, the crisis in capitalism has spawned many ironies and paradoxes. The latest is this week's row over the coalition government's cap on tax relief for philanthropists' donations to charities. This limit - of £50,000 or a quarter of total income - was explained as a means of clamping down on tax avoidance by some of the super-rich, who used the allowance to reduce their tax contribution to percentages well below those of lower-income citizens, or in some cases to zero.
Now charities and the rich themselves are up in arms, and putting pressure on the Treasury to change its mind. They argue that the measure will undermine the basis for the Big Society to which the government claims to be committed. Very large donations are the lifeblood of many good causes, in culture and the arts as well as the social services, they claim.
So just as we need the plutocracy of the City of London and huge rewards for Directors and executives in the financial sector, our rentier economy needs massive tax incentives for charitable giving, it appears. The austerity programme demands that the super-rich help to pay down the fiscal deficit (that their greed caused through the banking crash), but if the government sends them larger tax bills they will either move their wealth abroad, or stop donating to Big Society volutary services, or both. Oh dear!
This trap has always existed in the USA. In Europe and the UK, welfare states broke out of it by creating public services for which all paid, and from which all could benefit. By reducing reliance on charitable giving by the wealthiest, governments freed themselves to make incomes more equal through progressive taxation, as well as providing for the needs of the whole population, without the stigma of do-gooding services for the poor.
But globalisation has allowed big money and big corporations to break free of welfare states. Now the rich and their companies hold the threat that they will decamp to tax havens or low-tax regimes. When governments - even right-wing ones like the coalition - threaten to block their tax-avoidance schemes, and expose the bogus nature of some of their philanthropy, they cry foul.
The only way to spring the charity trap is to stand firm behind the principle of state responsibility for building a morally justifiable collective infrastructure. Charity, however well-intentioned, can never be a substitute for social justice.
Meanwhile, the crisis in capitalism has spawned many ironies and paradoxes. The latest is this week's row over the coalition government's cap on tax relief for philanthropists' donations to charities. This limit - of £50,000 or a quarter of total income - was explained as a means of clamping down on tax avoidance by some of the super-rich, who used the allowance to reduce their tax contribution to percentages well below those of lower-income citizens, or in some cases to zero.
Now charities and the rich themselves are up in arms, and putting pressure on the Treasury to change its mind. They argue that the measure will undermine the basis for the Big Society to which the government claims to be committed. Very large donations are the lifeblood of many good causes, in culture and the arts as well as the social services, they claim.
So just as we need the plutocracy of the City of London and huge rewards for Directors and executives in the financial sector, our rentier economy needs massive tax incentives for charitable giving, it appears. The austerity programme demands that the super-rich help to pay down the fiscal deficit (that their greed caused through the banking crash), but if the government sends them larger tax bills they will either move their wealth abroad, or stop donating to Big Society volutary services, or both. Oh dear!
This trap has always existed in the USA. In Europe and the UK, welfare states broke out of it by creating public services for which all paid, and from which all could benefit. By reducing reliance on charitable giving by the wealthiest, governments freed themselves to make incomes more equal through progressive taxation, as well as providing for the needs of the whole population, without the stigma of do-gooding services for the poor.
But globalisation has allowed big money and big corporations to break free of welfare states. Now the rich and their companies hold the threat that they will decamp to tax havens or low-tax regimes. When governments - even right-wing ones like the coalition - threaten to block their tax-avoidance schemes, and expose the bogus nature of some of their philanthropy, they cry foul.
The only way to spring the charity trap is to stand firm behind the principle of state responsibility for building a morally justifiable collective infrastructure. Charity, however well-intentioned, can never be a substitute for social justice.
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Give the People Some Credit
So we are now to have 'credit easing'. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has persuaded the Governor of the Bank of England to participate in lending to small and medium-sized enterprises which would have been too risky for banks to undertake. It is another step on the road which started with the bail-outs of financial institutions in 2008. The government is increasingly (if reluctantly) involved in the supply of credit.
Nothing wrong with that in our present circumstances; bond markets are still more willing to lend to our government than European banks are to each other. But there is a stark and widening contrast between the terms on which the Treasury and BoE lend to business, and those on which other ministries provide income to citizens.
Essentially it comes down to the same thing; government loans to firms (which may or may not be able to pay back) for their production needs, and pays benefits or allowances to citizens (who may or may not be able eventually to 'repay' these in tax contributions). But businesses face no sanctions if they become insolvent, whereas ordinary people are subject to increasingly punitive measures if they fail to live up to their 'responsibilities'.
In opposition, Iain Duncan Smith sponsored a report on how the tax-benefit system for the poorest working-age citizens should be integrated, in order to improve incentives to take part-time work. The bases of this new scheme were to be 'universal credits' (note the term), and the report made no mention of enforcing the obligation to work, instead emphasing how New Labour's complex administration had created barriers to participation.
But in office as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, now he stresses the penalties and disqualifications that people who claim benefits of all kinds will suffer if they do not adopt the posture of seeking employment (or training, or experience) of any kind, at any wage.
And - since the city riots - he and the Prime Minister have mooted plans to cut off the benefits and evict from social housing anyone involved in criminality of any kind. In other words, you will lose your livelihood and your home for actions which have nothing to do with claiming, if you have not already been penalised for not looking hard enough for non-existent jobs.
The irony is that the terminology - 'universal credits' - remains, despite this fundamental shift in the politics of the proposed reform. People who rely on the government for their incomes are losing their basic civil liberties at an alarming speed, at the very time when reliance on such payments is rising.
Can anyone imagine that business people would be subject to this stigma and coercion if they failed to repay the loans made to them as part of 'credit easing', or if they were discovered to have cooked the books or underpaid their taxes? Hardly.
The fact is that workfare, welfare-to-work and all the other paraphernalia of state enforement has had absolutely no effect on reducing long-term unemployment, here or anywhere else. Even in the boom years after 2000, the average duration of workless spells increased substantially, in the USA, in Europe, and in all the other OECD countries except Canada and Australia.
Isn't it about time that governments started giving some real credit to citizens as well as businesses?
Nothing wrong with that in our present circumstances; bond markets are still more willing to lend to our government than European banks are to each other. But there is a stark and widening contrast between the terms on which the Treasury and BoE lend to business, and those on which other ministries provide income to citizens.
Essentially it comes down to the same thing; government loans to firms (which may or may not be able to pay back) for their production needs, and pays benefits or allowances to citizens (who may or may not be able eventually to 'repay' these in tax contributions). But businesses face no sanctions if they become insolvent, whereas ordinary people are subject to increasingly punitive measures if they fail to live up to their 'responsibilities'.
In opposition, Iain Duncan Smith sponsored a report on how the tax-benefit system for the poorest working-age citizens should be integrated, in order to improve incentives to take part-time work. The bases of this new scheme were to be 'universal credits' (note the term), and the report made no mention of enforcing the obligation to work, instead emphasing how New Labour's complex administration had created barriers to participation.
But in office as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, now he stresses the penalties and disqualifications that people who claim benefits of all kinds will suffer if they do not adopt the posture of seeking employment (or training, or experience) of any kind, at any wage.
And - since the city riots - he and the Prime Minister have mooted plans to cut off the benefits and evict from social housing anyone involved in criminality of any kind. In other words, you will lose your livelihood and your home for actions which have nothing to do with claiming, if you have not already been penalised for not looking hard enough for non-existent jobs.
The irony is that the terminology - 'universal credits' - remains, despite this fundamental shift in the politics of the proposed reform. People who rely on the government for their incomes are losing their basic civil liberties at an alarming speed, at the very time when reliance on such payments is rising.
Can anyone imagine that business people would be subject to this stigma and coercion if they failed to repay the loans made to them as part of 'credit easing', or if they were discovered to have cooked the books or underpaid their taxes? Hardly.
The fact is that workfare, welfare-to-work and all the other paraphernalia of state enforement has had absolutely no effect on reducing long-term unemployment, here or anywhere else. Even in the boom years after 2000, the average duration of workless spells increased substantially, in the USA, in Europe, and in all the other OECD countries except Canada and Australia.
Isn't it about time that governments started giving some real credit to citizens as well as businesses?
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
A Double Crisis of Government
A global stock market crash and riots in our cities; business leaders and media commentators call for strong political leadership. The government should step in to stabilise the economy, restore order and protect property.
But many making such demands - such as Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, on BBC Radio 4's 'The World at One' yesterday - have been campaigning for years to reduce the power of the state and allow a self-regulating market order. And they have largely succeeded. The public sector is ruled by a business ethos, citizens are cast as consumers, and such authority as officials still have is directed towards making sure that poor people take any low-paid work available.
Yet every time there is a crisis, it is the government that is expected to sort it out, as in the bail-out of the banks in 2008-9. As soon as taxpayers' money had been poured into rescuing them from their gambling debts, all the same old arguments were used to resist radical restructuring and controls. And now it is states that are left in the red, and unable to repond to the latest catastrophe.
The truth is that capitalism has always needed a strong neutral referee to save it from itself, but capitalists have always tried to subvert that power in one way or another (bypasssing regulations, corrupting politicians and officials, ripping off the public purse) for the sake of short-term gains. Now we see global markets demanding austerity programmes so that government borrowing can be repaid, but panicking because these measures are causing a second recession. It is just such contradictions in the system that political authority is required to resolve.
During the Cold War, states were able to keep an independent role in economy and society because business feared communism more than it resented regulation and taxes. Since 1989 governments have gradually lost their ability to protect their citizens from market forces, so that the new generation faces far bleaker prospects, in relation to employment security, wages, career development, pensions, property ownership, etc., than the previous two have enjoyed.
Young people's resentment of their position, and the blame they attach to the ruling elites in their societies, finds different expression in each country. We applauded the courage of the protesters in the 'Arab Spring' and in the Syrian uprising, because it was easy to identify with their fury at corrupt dictators and their plutocratic cronies. We even sympathised with the mass gatherings in Athens and Madrid, even if we regarded their governments as wasteful and incompetent.
But it comes as a shock to find that so many of our own young people refuse to accept their position as the victims of a failed political economy, and demonstrate this by smashing and looting shops and burning cars. Indeed, our political leaders and our media quickly adopt the language used by the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria to describe them. But in the end we all get the riots, protests or revolutions we deserve.
But many making such demands - such as Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, on BBC Radio 4's 'The World at One' yesterday - have been campaigning for years to reduce the power of the state and allow a self-regulating market order. And they have largely succeeded. The public sector is ruled by a business ethos, citizens are cast as consumers, and such authority as officials still have is directed towards making sure that poor people take any low-paid work available.
Yet every time there is a crisis, it is the government that is expected to sort it out, as in the bail-out of the banks in 2008-9. As soon as taxpayers' money had been poured into rescuing them from their gambling debts, all the same old arguments were used to resist radical restructuring and controls. And now it is states that are left in the red, and unable to repond to the latest catastrophe.
The truth is that capitalism has always needed a strong neutral referee to save it from itself, but capitalists have always tried to subvert that power in one way or another (bypasssing regulations, corrupting politicians and officials, ripping off the public purse) for the sake of short-term gains. Now we see global markets demanding austerity programmes so that government borrowing can be repaid, but panicking because these measures are causing a second recession. It is just such contradictions in the system that political authority is required to resolve.
During the Cold War, states were able to keep an independent role in economy and society because business feared communism more than it resented regulation and taxes. Since 1989 governments have gradually lost their ability to protect their citizens from market forces, so that the new generation faces far bleaker prospects, in relation to employment security, wages, career development, pensions, property ownership, etc., than the previous two have enjoyed.
Young people's resentment of their position, and the blame they attach to the ruling elites in their societies, finds different expression in each country. We applauded the courage of the protesters in the 'Arab Spring' and in the Syrian uprising, because it was easy to identify with their fury at corrupt dictators and their plutocratic cronies. We even sympathised with the mass gatherings in Athens and Madrid, even if we regarded their governments as wasteful and incompetent.
But it comes as a shock to find that so many of our own young people refuse to accept their position as the victims of a failed political economy, and demonstrate this by smashing and looting shops and burning cars. Indeed, our political leaders and our media quickly adopt the language used by the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria to describe them. But in the end we all get the riots, protests or revolutions we deserve.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Unhealthy Relationships
Was David Cameron's appointment of Andy Coulson as his Director of Communications just as bad as Scotland Yard's contract with his former deputy at the News of the World, Neil Wallis, as a media consultant? No, it was much worse.
The police are responsible for upholding the rule of law (not just 'fighting crime', as that paper preferred to put it). The resigning Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, acknowledged that his force had been compromised in that task by the contract with Wallis; but he could not resist hinting that the Prime Minister had made the same mistake. In fact, Cameron was far more at fault, for the following reasons:
First, governments have far broader responsibilities. Law and order and defence are fundamental, but governments are ultimately the guardians of all the 'public goods' from which the whole of society benefits. The most important of these are intangible, qualitative features of social relationships, such as decency, honesty, fairness and solidarity.
Of course, governments cannot 'deliver' these, but they can set the tone and protect an environment in which they flourish. They can also look for ways to clamp down on organisations which systematically promote their opposites - corruption, exploitation, cynicism, division and the depletion of society's cultural resources - or at very least offer them no encouragement.
Even before the police gained (and chose for many years to ignore) the evidence of endemic criminality at the News of the World, it was common knowledge that its executives and editors were running such an organisation. Yet successive prime ministers paid court to them, and Cameron's appointment of Coulson went a step further in bringing one of them into government itself.
Second, the state is not a company or a brand, however many useless logos and hubristic mission statements it agencies may choose to adopt. In a democracy, it is suppose to express the public interest, based on the will of the people. Its communications with citizens should seek to clarify this interest and this will; they should not ape businesses in cultivating 'public relations' (even if this was the professional background of the prime minister).
Third, those who hold political power should be accountable to their citizens for their actions. Yet for several decades they have used newspapers like the News of the World as proxies for the people, adding a layer of insulation between themselves and those they are supposed to represent. In this way, they have compromised democracy itself, and allowed the integrity of the political process to be subverted.
Fourth, they have facilitated the view - popularised by global businesses like News Corporation - that governments are given powers of compulsory taxation solely to supply those services which cannot be organised more 'efficiently' by a private firm. This narrow view ignored all the reasons for protecting a flourishing public sphere other than those of costs to taxpayers, and it legitimated a rolling programme of privatisation, and a relentless critique of public benefits and services, along with the demonisation of many who used them. As the largest media empire, News Corporation was empowered by this unchallenged ideology, and governments surrendered to it. Coulson's appointment signalled a further step in this process, and revealed the limitations of Cameron's 'Big Society' - not big enough to stand up to big business.
Too late, this government has found out what was missing from this ideology was a recognition of the potentially corrosive power of such businesses on institutions, cultures and the qualities on which successful societies rely. The trustworthiness of a whole elite has been undermined, along with that of the police, and we now face years of enquiries and court hearings before they will be restored.
The police are responsible for upholding the rule of law (not just 'fighting crime', as that paper preferred to put it). The resigning Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, acknowledged that his force had been compromised in that task by the contract with Wallis; but he could not resist hinting that the Prime Minister had made the same mistake. In fact, Cameron was far more at fault, for the following reasons:
First, governments have far broader responsibilities. Law and order and defence are fundamental, but governments are ultimately the guardians of all the 'public goods' from which the whole of society benefits. The most important of these are intangible, qualitative features of social relationships, such as decency, honesty, fairness and solidarity.
Of course, governments cannot 'deliver' these, but they can set the tone and protect an environment in which they flourish. They can also look for ways to clamp down on organisations which systematically promote their opposites - corruption, exploitation, cynicism, division and the depletion of society's cultural resources - or at very least offer them no encouragement.
Even before the police gained (and chose for many years to ignore) the evidence of endemic criminality at the News of the World, it was common knowledge that its executives and editors were running such an organisation. Yet successive prime ministers paid court to them, and Cameron's appointment of Coulson went a step further in bringing one of them into government itself.
Second, the state is not a company or a brand, however many useless logos and hubristic mission statements it agencies may choose to adopt. In a democracy, it is suppose to express the public interest, based on the will of the people. Its communications with citizens should seek to clarify this interest and this will; they should not ape businesses in cultivating 'public relations' (even if this was the professional background of the prime minister).
Third, those who hold political power should be accountable to their citizens for their actions. Yet for several decades they have used newspapers like the News of the World as proxies for the people, adding a layer of insulation between themselves and those they are supposed to represent. In this way, they have compromised democracy itself, and allowed the integrity of the political process to be subverted.
Fourth, they have facilitated the view - popularised by global businesses like News Corporation - that governments are given powers of compulsory taxation solely to supply those services which cannot be organised more 'efficiently' by a private firm. This narrow view ignored all the reasons for protecting a flourishing public sphere other than those of costs to taxpayers, and it legitimated a rolling programme of privatisation, and a relentless critique of public benefits and services, along with the demonisation of many who used them. As the largest media empire, News Corporation was empowered by this unchallenged ideology, and governments surrendered to it. Coulson's appointment signalled a further step in this process, and revealed the limitations of Cameron's 'Big Society' - not big enough to stand up to big business.
Too late, this government has found out what was missing from this ideology was a recognition of the potentially corrosive power of such businesses on institutions, cultures and the qualities on which successful societies rely. The trustworthiness of a whole elite has been undermined, along with that of the police, and we now face years of enquiries and court hearings before they will be restored.
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