The Young Apprentice is one of the very few programmes I make a point of watching. What’s odd is that I enjoy it even though it spreads three messages that I have a real problem with -

• Firslty, it gives the impression that there is opportunity out there if ‘you only work hard enough’, when in reality the current crisis means it’s actually very tough to start up a small business or find employment, especially for young people.
• Secondly, the show spreads the myth of meritocracy – We are typically presented with a range of candidates from all manner of social classes, gender and ethnic backgrounds suggesting equal opps, but in real life class privilege etc. still conspire to subvert genuine talent’s rise to the top.
• Thirdly the show suggests that making a profit is more important than doing something socially useful, an idea I find odious,

To explore these message one  at a time…

Problematic Message One – Even though we’re in ‘tough economic times’ there’s still opportunity if you work hard enough.

OK Maybe this will come across as a little sad that I’ve done this, but if you calculate the profit per head per task and then divide by 2, you get the ‘day rate’ per candidate. The figures look something like this…

Approximate earnings per day for five tasks in the young apprentice

*This of course assumes that all books are sold and that candidates receive £1 per book, which I think is a realistic estimate as to royalties on the type of books they produced.

* and ** These two ‘big profit tasks’ of course don’t actually take into account the costs of hiring the following

• Half a day with the chefs to make the recipes/ half a day with the publishers
• Half a day with the experts to help with the ideas generation of the kids club, or the costs of the materials for the demonstrations

Also neither of these projects are actually realistic in terms of your average teenager being able to start up such business because of the quality of the ‘laid on contacts’ with industry insiders, and the social desirability of purchasing a young apprentice product of course.

Given the above it might actually make more sense to look at the three ‘realistic’ business a teenager might set up – and for these the results are much worse.

If this is what the eleven brightest young people in the country can do (plus one hot-housed posh kid with inflated GCSEs) then Socialism help the rest of them is all I can say

Max – Defo the right candidate to go in week 1

Misleading Message Two - In the world of business it doesn’t matter what your class or ethnic background or your gender identity there’s a level playing field. OK I accept that in the apprentice the working classes seem to come good – In fact if anything Lord Sugar seems to have a deep suspicion of the posh – very probably because he’s ended up working with a lot of talent-less individuals who have risen up the ranks because of contacts rather than well, err talent.

In the real world of business what happens is that you need a leg up to be able to get yourself established – this will either mean money from your parents or an internship – often networked into, and in which you work for nothing for some months or even years. For evidence see below…

• A nice article by Will Hutton on why class still matters
• Research on ‘unfair access to the professions‘
• The Guardian – The Social Class bias in internships

In addition to this if you’re a female looking to break into business, OK things are changing – but check out these stats from a previous blog of mine

All of this doesn’t stop me finding the apprentice hugely entertaining, I just hope a few people read this and think again about some of the potentially misleading messages it puts out….

Problem Message Three – Profit is more important than social utility

The contestants really have been asked to produce crap this year haven’t they?

Basically just crap – The Wetsuit Kimono

In episode 1, the task was to resell old clothes, which otherwise would have probably gone towards making money for  charity but instead ends up with either the BBC or Alan Sugar or the candidates (Actually I’ve no idea where the money ends up TBH!).  You could in fact argue that taking from charity results in negative social utility.

Episode two saw the candidates producing cook books – With one team producing a student cook book and the other a book which, in a total throwback to the 1980s, ended up with the title ‘the professional woman’. Whatever spin you put on a new cook book – the fact that there are are over 60 000 cookery books currently available on Amazon does suggest we don’t really need any more.

Episode three was all about sourcing a list of ten items for the very inclusive (NOT) Royal Opera House – Sugar putting the youth to work for the benefit of elite (kind of like apprenticeships and workfare).

Episode four revolved around the teams putting on a themed afternoon tea experience and sell them at a Stately Home – resulting in a ’1940s’ theme and a ‘Mad Hatter’s’ theme – both of which I think we can agree are frankly pretty naff.

In episode five the candidates were required to develop a new kids club in order to attract investors who would potentially buy licenses. I will at this point concede that this venture does, finally, have some kind of genuine social utility – for parents at least.

The product of the most creative young business minds in the UK

Episode six saw the teams developing a new brand of hair spray and hair gel – Possibly the very epitome of products that lack any genuine social use value

In the penultimate episode candidates disturbed the ‘peace and love’ of the Womad festival to sell a combination of a cardboard box toilet and an umbrella seat on the one hand and onesies and camping washing machines on the other. Actually maybe these are even more useless than the hair products?

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The Young Apprentice – Find out More

The BBC – The Young Apprentice 2012

Digital Spy has quite a nice overview of what’s been going on

Sabotage Times – Is Lord Sugar really looking for a new carer?

Unreality TV – Has several posts on the Young Apprentice

Check out this job posting from Reed Employment Services

By the look on his face, he's run out of 'toilet time'

There are nearly a million people working in call centres, and the number is going up every year.

‘Call centres are a very regimented environment,’ says John McInally, a trade unionist leading efforts to unionize call centre workers. ‘Its rows of desks with people sitting with headphones. There’s loads of people in the room, but they’re seperate units. They’re encouraged not to talk, share experiences, and so on…. The minute you get in the door, your moveemnts are regulated by the computer…. We’ve likened the conditions to those you’d have seen in mills or factories at the end of nineteenth century.’ Think that’s an exaggeration? Then consider the fact that, in some call centres, workers have to put their hands up to go to the toilet and computers dictate the time and duration of breaks, with no flexibility whatosever. Employees are under constant monitoring and surveillance, driving up stress levels.

It's actually almost impossible to find 'real' pictures of call centres

That’s one reason why the sickness rate in class centres is nearly twice the national average, The other is deep alienation from the work….. annual staff turnover is around a quarter of the workforce. And, like so much of the new working class, the salaries of call centre workers are poor. A trainee can expect £12 500, while the higher-grade operates are on an average of just £16 000.

Twenty-eight year olf Carl Leishman has been a call centre worker in Durham for eight year. He works bruising twelve-hour shits, three days on a three days off. At his pervious job, stiff targets had to be met. Four per cent of his working hours were set aside for needs like going to the toilet or getting a drink. ‘You’d get ratings at the end of each month, and if you’d gone above those percentages then your rating would drop, affecting what bonuses and pay rises you were getting.’ Carl didn’t need to go the to toilet too often – ‘whereas some other people, like pregnant women, could really struggle to stick to that.’

His employers have a no-hang-up policy, even if the customer is swearing or being aggressive. ‘You’ll see quite often on the floor people in tears at the way people have spoken to them,’ he says. It is a job that can have consequences for your health, too. ‘Your throat gets incredibly dry. There are people I’ve known for years whose throats have gone from doing it. A lady I used to work with had to actually leave because her voice was just completely shot.’

At the core of his experience at work is the lack of control over what he does.  ‘We’re set in rows, which I hate, to be honest. It can sometimes feel very much like a chicken factory as though you don’t have too much control over what you’re doing: ‘This is the way your doing things, and that’s it, deal with it, because that’s the way it is, don’t think too much outside the box… you don’t need to think much for yourself.

Carl’s salary is just £14 400 a year.

Related Posts and Issues

The rise of the call centre worker is indicative of the rise of the ‘New Working Class’ - people employed in the service sector, often on low pay, and increasingly in temporary and part-time conditions (often suffering underemployment) -

The PCS campaigns for better conditions for Call Centre Workers and has put together this Call Centre’s Charter

If anyone’s got time to read it – this looks like a great PhD from 2010 - LIFE IN A NORTHERN TOWN: CALL CENTRES, LABOUR MARKETS & IDENTITY IN POST-INDUSTRIAL MIDDLESBROUGH ANTHONY LLOYD

You probably noticed that the Chinese have been in town for the Christmas sales  - indicative of the fact that Chinese ‘retail tourism’ to the UK – has increased massively in the last half a decade. Further evidence of this is found in the following stats (mainly taken from this article)  -

• Both UK visitor numbers and spend are up 50 per cent in the past three years
• China accounted for a 109 000 visits to the UK in 2010 – and Visit Britain, a firm dealing with Chinese tourism to the UK is targetting 300 000 Chinese visit by 2020.
• Chinese holiday shopping now accounts for 15% of all foreign uk sales
• Retail spending by the Chinese has risen from £30m in 2007 to over £300m just three years later, according to Nigel Dasler at Global Blue, a financial services firm.

Behind these figures lies China’s phenomenal economic growth – which slowed to 9.1% in 2011 and is predicted to overtake the U.S as the world’s largest economy by 2027

However, when you look @ China’s GDP per capita figures – things get grimmer – the average is currently $2500 per capita compared to $36 100 for the UK (NON PPP stats!) – So it’s not as if the majority of the Chinese population are enjoying the increase in China’s wealth.

The increase in Chinese Tourism is coming from the growth of the middle classes in China, but more importantly where headline grabbing expenditures of ‘£1000 a head per visit in Harrods’ are concerend is the increase in number of dollar millionaires in mainland China – which is nearly 10 per cent higher in a year, to 960,000 (a small overall percentage in a population of 1.3 billion)

The headlines about Chinese shoppers saving the day for Western retailers don’t remind you of the increasing inequality in China – the income of the top 10 percent of the richest Chinese was 23 times that of the bottom 10 percent in the country in 2007, as compared with 1998, when the gap was only 7.3 times. China has a gini coefficient of 4.7.

It’s also interesting to note how this compares with increasing inequality in the UK – we now have a gini coefficient of 4.0 – greater than at any point in the last 30 years.

So if you look behind these headline stats, you get a much fuller picture of the nature of globalisation – yes China is growing, yes Britain is stagnating – but it’s only some Chinese that are getting rich enough to take part in globalised consumption – while their peers get relatively poorer – and the same is true of Britain – the rich are doing very nicely for themselves – while most of the rest of us -  get relatively poorer – increasingly lacking the capacity to take part in truley globalised consumption.

Always worthe keeping an eye on – and publicising – the latest report on poverty and social exlusion just recently published by the Jospeph Rowntree Foundation  

There’s a year’s lag in the data of course – so this report examines the situation left to the current government by the last Labour government, and includes the initial effects of the recession following the 2008 financial collapse caused by the feckless irresponsibility of the Transnational Capitalist Class and the weak (some would say bought) democratic institutions that failed to regulate them.

You can read the full summary and report for free at the above link, but one thing I took from the study is the huge number of people who are ‘in work’ and suffering from relative poverty – As noted in the summary

‘By mid-2011, six million people were unemployed, lacking but wanting work or working part-time because no full time job was available. This was 2 million higher than in 2004.’

The end result of this is that 57% of children in poverty live in working households – so under late Capitalism even working is not enough to ensure a decent standard of living….

I see this as a hugely important hidden dimension of the ’legitimation crisis’ of late Capitalism – the system is systematically failing to sufficient work for people - which results in the gradually increasing immiseration of ordinaray working people.

Yet another indicator of how Capitalism simply isn’t working for millions of people in the UK…

Wandered up to LSX yesterday – I was mostly encouraged by what I saw to be honest – although the camp looked pretty dishevelled in the rain.

The Occupy movement is about drawing attention to the injustices in the economic and political system and sends out a message that we should seek to reform it so that the 1% cannot profit from the poverty of the 99%.

<:header>The full initial statement of the movement is here - which is a very accessible list of demands given that it was agreed through consensus – The immediate essence of the movement seems to be that we will not pay for the bankers’ crisis through cuts to public services….

At the moment, however, despite the obvious intention being systemic reform at the moment this remains an alternative ’lifeworld movement’ in that it displays the following typical left-green-anarchist forms of organisation -

• Participatory decision making (and a lot of moaning about there being too much discussion about operational issues, now handily on live stream for all to witness)
• Voluntary Poverty – although I’m sure if you dug down you’d find plenty of middle class students hanging out on daddy’s credit card.
• A commitment to avoiding dealing with large corporations – effort is made to source things second hand, and the issue of whether to set up a bank account for funding had the agenda of ‘do we need one or credit union or co-op?)
• Vegetarianism – it clearly states ‘no meat’ on the food wish list in the kitchen
• Lots of creativity – valuing art, music, colour…
• Acceptance of lots of diversity and creativity – I think this will move more to ‘tolerance’ as things evolve.

Maintaining an alternative life-world is relatively straightforward – especially when the general public are on side and stocking your free kitchen with a range of nibbles and dips and large tubs full of fruit.

the problem the movement now faces is how, exactly, is it going to challenge the system it opposes – what exactly is systemic reform going to look like in pratice – and how far do they compromise with the mainstream left?Capitalism can easily survive – even if tens of thousands camp out on London’s streets chomping on charity munchies, playing Djembe Drums and discussing radical politics…

So its day 39 of occupy wall street and day something or other of occupy LSX – these are definitely the the most significant movements to have emerged since the anti-globalisation movement of the late 90s/ early 2000s, and possibly the most important movements for change ever – they have a global reach, unlike the anti-globalisation movement, they are now rooted, rather than transitory, and in the wake of the extreme nature of the legitimation crisis facing the (I won’t say ‘our’) corporate-states these movements have popular and growing support, even in spite of the best efforts of the mainstream press. The links above will take you to the livestreams of the Wall Street and St Pauls sites (although the later is not working as of 11.00 a.m. Tue 25^th Oct) and the later to the global stream hub… they all seem to have chat rooms where you can engage in conversation with whoever else is online.

So what’s the movement about?

Well of course it’s going to be difficult to give an easy answer to this because the occupy movement is a grass roots movement, based in several hundred cities around the world. This is also a movement that’s evolving all the time – due to its radically democratic in nature, this means that it is subject to the ‘will of the assembly’ – all of which means that it’s hard to ascertain exactly where this is going!

So I’m going to give you my interpretation of what I understand the movement to be about – people will of course disagree with this – some present at LSX no doubt think, for example, that poetry, face painting and drum circles have a much more significant role to play in ‘realising utopia’ than I do. (For the record I quite like resistance poetry, I can tolerate face painting, but I think all Djembe drums should drums on site should be rounded up and used as cooking fuel.)

It’s also clear from looking at recent events that there are some differences between movements in different countries – most notably for me (because this is what I’m interested in) the passion, turnout, and organisation of the #occupywallstreet movement appears to be much greater than the LSX movement – this is probably due to the fact that the American government really has been bought out by the Corporate sector, while in Britain, all we really have to complain about is the trillion dollar bail out of the city and the ensuing cuts to public services, rather than the wholesale Corporate takeover of our system – there are some politicians remain relatively untainted.

I’m going to treat occupy Wall Street and occupy LSX separately – and look at grievances and proposals/ demands separately – there will be overlap so I’m not gonna repeat myself.

Occupy Wall Street…

As I said above, different people have different reasons for being at either event, but a sensible starting point for anyone wishing to understand more would be to check out the adbusters site – this is where I first saw the original Occupy idea being promoted back in July. I’d also recommend going here and looking at Naomi Klein’s take on the movement – which she roots back to the anti-globalisation movements of a decade ago – the one line that stands out… The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy.

I’d also recommend watching some of these videos -

Video 1 – A stupid person’s guide to Occupy Wall Street – A young woman, clearly affecting a ‘ditsy persona’ does a nice job of giving an introductory summary of the movement

My summary – Occupy Wall Street – It’s basically about the 99% – which is ordinary American citizens – using their democratic right to assemble in order to raise awareness of economic injustice – particularly the fact that the 1% – or Corporate America is profiting off of the misery of the 99% – and a bit more too!

Charts like this also do quite a lot to explain one of the basic gripes of the movement – increasing inequality

Video 2  – A Business Man occupies wall street – this is more a conservative take on why even conservatives should support the 99%

My Summary – In this video – ‘David Instrator points out that Transnational Corporations are by definition un-American – they do not owe their allegiance to any one country. The wall street protest is by ordinary American people against Corporatism – in other words it is against the takeover of the American government by Transnational Corporate interests .

He also argues that occupy Wall Street is a conservative movement – it is about the interests of the country over the interests of the market, and it is about us acting as citizens rather than as consumers. He also argues that this movement might actually be pro-Capitalism – in that capitalism would not have allowed the bailing out of the banks (insert too big to fail) and the socialising of losses while gains are privatised (insert income chart or wealth charts).

He finishes by imploring people – if you are a conservative, come join us, this is your movement.  

Video 3 – A very impassioned account of why politics as usual is not working! As #anonymous tweeted – this is a core value of the movement – money in politics is the root cause of all political evil

My Summary – Transnational Corporations have been extracting wealth from the US for 20 years, the political system has facilitated this and is incapable of stopping it – the speaker calls on Obama to stand up to congress and enact economic policy for the people rather than for the Corporations – but given that he’s not doing it – I see this speech as justification for why a movement such as the occupy movement outside of mainstream American Politics is necessary

Video 4 – Why Noam Chomsky supports Occupy Wall Street –

Wall Street is just short hand for the financial institutions – the banks are richer and bigger than ever before, and corporate profits are soaring while real unemployment is similar to that of the great depression. At the same time as enormous wealth being generated, fiscal policies (tax cuts and spending reductions) have lead to massive poverty and the collapse of social infrastructure. Cycle

In the next election year, Campaign spending will exceed one billion dollars – where does it come from? – if we look at 2008, Obama mainly got his money from financial intuitions. Also in terms of the day to day running of the parliament – committees are bought – increasing the influence of concentrated capital. 2/3rds of the public think most of congress should be thrown out.

All of these things are signs that the system is not working – the system is not functioning. NB – this isn’t new – but there are degrees and this is now extreme, it’s time for protest….

Video 5 – Wall streeters mocking protestors

My summary – The claims that the #occupywallstreet movement have no clear message is totally blow away by this video – As protestors march past a load of wealthy individuals quaffing Champaign on a balcony chanting ‘we are the 99% – at about 33 seconds in someone walks past the camera sporting a ‘commodity inflation causes starvation’ placard. I think the message here is at its most obvious – The money that bought you that Champaign – it comes at the expense of the many.

Personally, I want to see the people on the balcony getting even closer to the produces their immorality has bought them – maybe by shoving those Champaign glasses in their faces?  But that’s just me, as I understand it the movement is peaceful – it’s the system that’s violent.

So there are some of the key ideas of occupy wall street – in a future post, hopefully tomorrow, I’ll look at Occupy LSX and some of the proposals that are being put forwards to make our world a more just place in which to live…

Here’s a good couple of video resource for teaching basic economics -

The Keyne’s Hayek rap (there’s a part two too)

I also like this ‘water ballon’ analogy for teaching neoliberalism

Neoliberalism As Water Balloon from Tim McCaskell on Vimeo.

A brief summary of some of the key themes in a talk by Ha-Joon Chang based on his book ’23 things they don’t tell you about Capitalism’ – relevant to the A2 Module on Global Development - He is basically critiquing neo-liberalism.

He claims that 95% of economics is common sense deliberately made complicated and that ordinary people can understand most of economics fairly easily. He wants to help ordinary people engage in ‘active economic citizenship’ and demand the right decisions from their leaders…. I imagine he would say a big fat ‘NO’ to the Tory cuts!

This is very much along the same lines as Joseph Stiglitz and David Harvey btw…!

His basic point seams to be that Capitalism is the best economic system in world history, yet our present form of Western Capitalism (there are many types) – ie neo-liberalism – has served us very badly. We have been told that things have been going very well – what with post-industrialism and the new knowledge economy – but things have not been going well since the 1970s. Neo-Liberal policies have been very bad at generating economic growth – the world economy has slowed down massively over the last three decades. What has also happened is that the rich have got richer and many economies have become less stable.

He also points out that in those countries where neo-liberal policies have been applied the most rigourously have often seen the lowest levels of growth – such as in much of sub-sharahan Africa. Those countries that have grown the quickest – China and India did not apply neo-liberal policies to the extent that countries in Africa did.  

Anyway – just some of the points he makes – some of the things neo-liberal idealogues do not tell us about Capitalism are as follows (he is destroying the myths of free market, neo-liberal ideology)….

1. There is no such thing as a ‘free market’ – ‘freedom of the market is in the eyes of the beholder. The very definition of the ‘free market’ – who can participate, what can be bought and sold for example - is political.

2. Under neo-liberalism… Companies are not run in the interests of the owners – these days companies are owned by free floating shareholders who are primarily interested in short term profit (high dividends) which can harm the long term interests of the company - which requires investment in infrastructure and training of the workers. The shareholders can always move onto another company.

3. The market is not just – he gives two examples of two bus drivers – one in India who gets paid less than one in Germany – the chances are that the driver in India is more skilled as he drives on more dangerous roads….

4. We are still living in planned economies, despite the collapse of communism

5. Making rich people richer does not make the rest of us rich

7. People in poor countries are more entrepeneurial than people in wealthier companies…

NB – DEFINITION – Neo- liberalism is an economic and political ideology that believes state control over the economy is undesirable and seeks to transfer control of the economy from the state to the private sector. It gained popularity amongst politicians and influential economists following the economic crisis of the late 1970s. It involves three main policies -

• Deregulation – Nation States placing less restraint on private industry. In practise this means fewer laws that restrict companies making a profit – making it easier for companies to fire workers, pay them less, and allowing them to pollute.
• Privatisation – where possible public services such as transport and education should be handed over to private interests for them to run for a profit.
• Cut backs in public spending – taxes should be low and so investment in public services would be cut back.

The institutions of Economic Globalisation

Economic globalization refers to increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology and capital^’

Most social scientists would point to four ‘institutions’ that oversee international trade and investment, and that attempt to steer the global economy on a path of continued economic growth. It is important for students to understand something about these institutions because all supporters and critics of economic globalisation refer to these institutions (Hyper globalists are the supporters, Marxists and the broader anti-capitalist movement the critics).

You should read this through once when directed and refer back to it when we look at material that either supports or criticises the spread of global capitalism

The four institutions that make up economic globalisation are The World Trade Organisation, The International Monetary Fund and World Bank, The G8 and Transnational Corporations.

1. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) – was founded in 1949, has 149 member states and 149 states are WTO members, constituting over 90% of all world trade with a further 31 in the process of joining.

 The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.” [1]

The WTO functions through a number of meetings involving high- up officials from Nation States often referred to as a trade ‘round’ where they agree on the future terms of trade (for example how much to tax import and exports of goods and services)

2. The International Monetary Fund and The World Bank

 The IMF has 187 members. It monitors the world’s economies, lends to members in economic difficulty, and provides technical assistance ([2]). The IMFs mission is to facilitate international trade, promote high employment, achieve sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. If a country gets into too much debt and can’t pay it off, it is the IMF that lends the country, setting conditions the country must abide by in order to receive that loan.

The World Bank was established in 1944, is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has more than 10,000 employees in more than 100 offices worldwide. Like the IMF it has 187 member states  

The World Bank works closely with IMF. It provides low-interest loans to developing countries for a wide array of purposes that include investments in education, health, infrastructure, and natural resource management. ’It says that is mission is to ‘fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors.’ The World Bank is thus the largest single organisation responsible for bringing undeveloped countries whose populations make up at least 2/3rds of the world’s population into the global economy.

The World Bank believes that economic growth through industrialization and free trade are essential for countries to develop. They argue that there are sees the five key factors necessary for economic growth: 

3. The Group of Eight (G-8) is a forum for the leaders of eight of the world’s most industrialized nations, aimed at finding common ground on key topics and solutions to global issues. The G-8 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the leaders of these countries are in regular contact, they meet in summit format as the G-8 once a year.[3] ALSO [4]

4.    Transnational Corporations

 Transnational Corporations are some of the largest include Shell, ICI and Microsoft. Since world war two these have expanded massively.

 Held and Mcgrew point out that Transnational Corporations account for more than 25 percent of world production, 80% of world industrial output, approximately 40% of world merchandise trade and 10 percent of world GDP. They also suggest that they have become powerful in determining where in the world production takes place and have played a major role in reordering the productive relationships between nation states[5]

Transnational Corporations have benefited hugely from the trade rules established by the WTO. Ellwood (2000) argues that these are now the driving force behind economic globalisation, wielding more power than many nation states. Today, 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are run by TNCs rather than Nation States.

[1] http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm

[2] http://www.imf.org/external/about.htm

[3] http://g8.gc.ca/about/

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/g8

[5] Held D and Mcgew, A (2007) – Globalisation/ Anti Globalisation: beyond the great divide – Polity.

OK this is old news – from March, but I’ve been meaning to write on this for ages… only just got round to it!

This item shows you the following

• For A2 Global Development – this demonstrates the role of the Capitalist class in keeping developing countries poor – this is due to to the inability of the government to regulate a few unscrupulous hedge fund managers.
• For A2 Crime and Deviance – The power of the elite minority to prevent just laws that the majority believe in coming into force

I first came across Vulture Funds thanks to this article – which is quoted at some length below…

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-must-stop-the-vulture-funds-that-feed-on-the-worlds-poor-1789257.html

“Would you ever march up to a destitute African who is shivering with Aids and demand he “pay back” tens of thousands of pounds he didn’t borrow – with interest? I only ask because this is in effect happening, here, in British and American courts, time after time. Some of the richest people in the world are making profit margins of 500 per cent by shaking money out of the poorest people in the world – for debt they did not incur.

Here’s how it works. In the mid-1990s, a Republican businessman called Paul Singer invented a new type of hedge fund, quickly dubbed a “vulture fund.” They buy debts racked up years ago by the poorest countries on earth, almost always when they were run by kleptocratic dictators, before most of the current population was born. They buy it for small sums – as little as 10 per cent of its paper value – from the original holder and then take the poor country to court in Britain or the US to demand 100 per cent of the debt is repaid immediately, plus interest built up over years, and court costs.

Let’s look at two examples in two of the countries most aggressively targeted by the vulture funds – Peru, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I spent a week in a gargantuan rubbish dump in Peru 35 miles north of Lima. It is home to more than 5,000 children. Among them I found Adelina, a little eight-year old smudge, living there in a nest she had built from trash. She spends all day searching for something – anything – she can sell. The vulture funds managed to get $58m out of Peru, on a debt they paid $11m for.

Action Aid launched a campaign to prevent vulture funds from suing indepbted developing countries for their money in British Courts – part of whch involved raising public awareness as most people simply don’t know about them! – see here for more details -http://www.actionaidusa.org/what/intl_policy/vulture_funds/

In March 2010, Labour MP Sally Keeble actually tabled a private members bill to prevent vulture funds from operating in Britain. Having just reviewed some old WDM and Action Aid magazines from that month, they had news reports that assumed these vulture funds would be bloked.

However, because this bill was brought before the commons just before the general election, if one member objected, it would not get passed – This member was a Torie MP Christopher Chope – It is rare that you find a living example of scum – but here is one – Christopher Chope MP - Doing the dirty work of hedge fund managers in the house of commons while the poorest people suffer.  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-mp-blocks-bill-targeting-vulture-funds-1920708.html

What is really aweful about this affair is that at the time of the vote on the bill, three MPs actually covered their mouths when the question ‘are there any objections’ to this bill was raised, so other people in the house could not be sure who actually objected, it was only afterwards that Chope came out as being scum.

Chope’s contact details, should you wish to send him a message…

http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/christopher-chope/25799

Westminster

House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
Tel: 020 7219 5808
Fax: 020 7219 6938
chopec@parliament.uk

Constituency

18a Bargates, Christchurch, BH23 1QL
Tel: 01202 474949
Fax: 01202 475548
office@christchurchconservatives.com
www.christchurchconservatives.com

Had this bill gone through it would have been a good example of the state regulating the finance sector – but once again here it fails to do so – and this example shows you the appalling lack of morality amongst some conservative MPs.