AN OUTSIDE VIEW

An article in the Observer discusses what should be done about what it describes as “Asian child grooming gangs”. It says that, “It is imperative, though, to be clear that exploring this question to inform the prevention of abuse in no way implies whole ethnic or faith communities are more likely to sexually abuse children than others.” But then again, the question needs to be answered. Skirting round it helps to feed the rumour mill and the real racism, not the genuine concern that there is one faith group (which one could it be?) which seems to be disproportionately represented in these cases. If this is really the case, then the reasons need to be explored. The Observer does not help by trying to promote diversionary arguments like “Asian men are more likely to work in the night-time economy, which gives them greater opportunity to exploit vulnerable children.” And it is disingenuous to blame the authorities, as the authors of the article attempt to do. “The disgusting prej...

With increasing automation, it has been suggested that it will be necessary to subsidise jobs. Is there anything in this idea? There are unlimited amounts of work waiting to be done. It can be done by people with little in the way of formal qualifications and which cannot easily be automated. However, the suggestion of subsidy raises a key point. Real wages are the net purchasing power of take-home pay ie take-home pay minus sales taxes, in particular VAT. Gross labour costs to employers are take-home pay, plus wage-related employer taxes, primarily NIC, plus taxes nominally payable by employees, ie employee’s NIC plus employee’s PAYE Income Tax. The difference between the two used to be called the Tax Wedge, but the term has gone out of fashion. Another way of expressing it is to say that the incidence of all labour related taxes, including those nominally done by employees, is on the employer. Depending on pay levels, it is between 60% and 90% of net purchasing p...

Rosa and Blå Express bus routes have now been re-routed to run direct from Järntorget to Nordstan and Centralstationen, via the Opera House. That solves the problem of the long journey time between the station and the west side of Gothenburg city centre, which is the main benefit of Västlänken. If these buses are not sufficient, a new route could be introduced to run from the station to Järntorget via the inner ring road (past Heden). So now Västlänken can be dropped and a few tens of billions of kronor saved.

The UK government is not proposing to restrict the flow of goods INTO the UK, nor is the EU proposing to restrict the flow of goods OUT of the the EU. That poses a set of questions, but not the ones that are being asked; there have been warnings about Britain running short of food after Brexit, due to customs delays. But there has been no threat of sanctions against the UK, so what is this all about? More relevant was an article last week in the Guardian described the problem of reinstatement of customs at Rotterdam. EU rules will require customs checks on goods from Britain at every port. However, there does not seem to be any corresponding need to do the same thing at Harwich and Felixstowe, nor does the UK government appear to have the inclination to commit the considerable resources. Likewise, passengers arriving at E27 destinations from the UK will theoretically have to declare goods purchased in the UK. I can envisage being made to queue for customs checks on returning home...

In the dream, the Jewish Israelis all pack up and go, leaving only the Christians, Muslims and Druze. The Palestinian refugees, now in their third generation and numbering five million descendants of the estimated 700,000, can now return. To redress all the other injustices, compensation is be paid to the estates of 1948 landowners on the basis of 1948 use value, plus 70 years rent. Tenants displaced in 1948 are compensated on the basis of 70 years disturbance. That raises a practical question. How would the restored ownership and tenancy rights be allocated seventy years later? Would there be a court to settle disputes between claimants, eg second cousins? How long would it take to settle these disputes, which would inevitably arise? What would happen in the meantime?

Conflicting predictions are being made by Brexit opponents. Brexit will lead to the collapse of British agriculture and industry. There will not be sufficient workers for seasonal agricultural work. Both predictions cannot be true. Assuming a near, but not total collapse, there will be millions of unemployed workers willing to pick strawberries at a pittance wage. Fantasy aside, there are not a fixed number of workers in a country, any more than there is a fixed amount of work to be done. Unemployment in the UK is allegedly at a very low level, though this conceals big regional and sectoral differences. Unemployment figures are also politically loaded. There has, for decades, been a drive to remove the unemployed, in one way or another, from the numbers of those seeking work or potentially economically active. The amount of harassment needed to claim benefit and remain as an unemployed statistic is an incentive to drop off the list, thereby becoming classified as not economicall...

The rumour mill in Sweden is increasingly talking about election fraud. There is certainly a big discrepancy between the pre-election predictions and the result, particularly in the case of the Sverigedemokraterna (SD), which is about one-third down. There were reports that there were no voting slips for the SD at many polling stations (there is a different slip for each party), and that counts and registration of votes may have been irregular. The government website crashed for over an hour after the election. The Swedish voting system is complicated and the votes are not counted as they are in Britain. It does not happen under the eye of the public, as in Britain, where the ballot papers are sorted and counted in a large hall, closely watched by scrutineers from all the parties. Nor is there the exciting moment when the Returning Officer stands up to announce the result. There is much wrong with the British first past the post system, where people vote for the major party or ca...