The Transport Minister thinks Wales was right to impose 20 mph speed limits in many places. She has told Councils  in England it’s fine by her if they want to harass more drivers off the  roads with closures, narrowing, lane removals, lower speed limits, more bollards and painted regulations.

Yet she belongs to a government which says it wants to boost the economic  growth rate. Hasn’t she realised how dependent businesses and their customers are on cars, vans and trucks? Doesn’t she know every  extra  traffic jam from less roadspace cuts down how much work people can fit in to a day, puts up the costs of doing business and adds to CO 2 as vehicles keep their engines running for longer to cope with delays and go slows in lower gears.

You can’t take the weekly shop home on a bike or get to most places by train. Roads are nationalised. Motorists are made to pay many times the cost of providing them with Vehicle excise Duty, VAT, Fuel Duty, road tolls, congestion charges and parking charges. The road provider regularly closes roads, allows utility providers to dig them up and put pipes and wires under main routes and fails to maintain them to decent standards. The owners of Heathrow do not close the runways to put in pipes and wires or to under take surface maintenance at busy times when people need to fly. Why does the state as road provider treat overcharged drivers so badly?

Lives and attitudes were changed by lockdowns. I will be writing some blogs  over the next few weeks exploring some of the changes .They will cover

1. Attitudes to working from home versus going to an office or other premise to work

2. Attitudes to the working week, work/ life balance , and productivity

3. The approach to deficit financing and monetary management

4. The mismanagement of the NHS and the wider public sector

5. The role of scientists and experts in policy formation and government presentation

6.The role of international bodies and Treaties in the response to the pandemic.

7. The spin and media control stifling different views or approaches, reinforced by most political parties taking the official line.

Your thoughts and interests in this could  be useful.

The pandemic seemed to accelerate home working, hit productivity and public sector disciplines badly, gave more power to certain scientists and officials, relied on the WHO to a considerable extent, and was financed through irresponsible Central Bank policies. There was an agreed view with regulation and effective censorship or criticism of anyone who proposed differen5 approaches.

We are due a reconsideration of the Bank’s policy of running down its bond holdings by £100bn a year. It looks as if they will reconfirm they will carry on with it, and update or change the reasons.

The US Federal reserve Board faced with the same problem of a large portfolio of bonds bought at very high prices when interest rates were low has refused to sell bonds in the market at a loss as the Bank of England does. It has allowed its portfolio to reduce as bonds come due for repayment. It has recently reduced the pace of doing this, reinvesting some of the maturing bonds to avoid a bigger lurch in the size of the portfolio. It does not receive a cent of taxpayer money to cover its losses. It just places the losses onto its balance sheet with a  matching asset for “future profits” as it can do as a Central bank which can create  money it wants as it needs it. The Fed cut the rate of decline in its bond assets as it was worried it was squeezing commercial banks too much who have deposits at the Central Bank to finance the bonds. If their deposits fall too low they will lend less and there will be less money and credit around.

The Bank of England aware that it may well be over squeezing with its aggressive reduction in bonds and commercial bank reserves has launched a new facility for commercial banks. Those that have been squeezed too much by the bond policy can borrow money from the Bank to lend on to customers. The Bank of England is at least honest enough to admit it has no idea what is the correct level of commercial bank reserves and of bond holdings to have, so it lets banks get out of a hole of its making by lending them more if necessary. Why get into the hole in the first place?

The Bank loses money for UK taxpayers in two ways. It needlessly takes big losses on selling long  bonds instead of holding them to repayment at a higher price. It has a running loss on the difference between the money it pays commercial banks on their reserves and the low rate of interest it gets on bonds which it bought at very high prices. The ECB has cut its losses on holding bonds by requiring EU banks to deposit a minimum level of money as reserves with no interest payable.It pays a lower rate of interest on the additional deposits  than its fixed base rate. The Bank of England used to pay no interest on commercial bank reserves at all until 2006.

The Bank always needed  government permission for the bonds and insisted on a full guarantee to pay the obvious losses they would make. As a result the Bank has made a big hole in fiscal policy, not its territory. Why do we allow this to carry on?

The first month of a Labour government saw borrowing rise on the same month the last year, and come in higher than experts were predicting.  The cause was higher spending, as revenues were strong. A substantial part was higher benefit bills agreed by the outgoing government as well as by the new one, but some was first increased  spending by the new Ministers. There will be a lot of extra spending to come as they make inflation busting pay offers above the old plans, as they expand the green subsidies, as they allow in more migrants on low or no incomes , make more state investments in nationalisation and as they expand the public sector without productivity plans.

The figures were flattered by the drop in inflation which cut the so called debt interest figure as it includes the non cash payment of indexation increases in Index linked UK state debt. The Bank of England also celebrated the arrival of a Labour government by sending them a lower monthly bill for their losses. Lets hope they make a habit of that.  This disguised a bit the spending  problem Labour is creating for itself.

The UK cannot afford the £20-30 bn of lost public sector productivity since 2019. The past government was slow to tackle it though it wanted to. The  new one seems to have given up. The UK cannot afford the high Bank of England losses, but neither the last nor the present one seem prepared to tell the Bank to adopt ECB or US policy towards their bond portfolio which would cut the losses substantially or entirely.

If the government is serious about wanting economic growth it has to wean itself off ever higher public sector spending and losses by state owned organisations. It needs productivity enhancing pay deals on the railways and in the NHS. It needs a more moderate and mainstream approach to Bank of England bond adventures. It needs to reappraise its aims with green activities, as it  is trying to do too much and will end up losing large sums of taxpayers money in a muddle over  going for hydrogen, hydro, nuclear, carbon capture, battery, wind and solar all at the same time. These policies can be  in ways which impede successful adoption by the public so incurring large taxpayer losses. They have  not thought through how they replace fuel duty if they succeed in banning new  petrol and diesel cars or how they replace the high taxes on home produced oil and gas as they shut it down.

It is perhaps fitting that energy prices go up again soon after the new government arrives. The last government was wrong to impose and retain price controls for as long as it did, but it was always encouraged to do so by the Labour Opposition. These price controls mean lurches in bills and prices, and mean prices stay higher for longer when they are on the way down. What is the point of them?

The last government was wrong to impose windfall taxes on energy that did not define the windfall properly and stayed on after the windfall high prices went down. The new government likes these taxes and wishes to hike them. That will mean the more rapid close down of our own oil and gas, more import dependence and higher prices. The last government did come round to the conclusion that closing down our own oil and gas faster  was a bad idea. It meant  importing more  LNG which is far more CO 2 intensive as well as meaning we lost the tax revenue and the better paid ,jobs that home production delivers. It is self harm on a huge scale.

This government on its sane days admits we will depend on oil and gas for many years to come. Global forecasts say the world will be burning more oil and gas in 2030 than today and decline thereafter will be slow. The issue is who benefits from the oil and gas extraction, and do we add to the CO 2 by relying on CO2 dense LNG where liquefying, gassifying and transporting all require large amounts of energy.

Some think trying to reduce CO 2 is a bad idea, and disagree with the global warming theory.  There is no need to engage that argument when less contentious and more obvious arguments show that not getting our own oil and gas out of the ground is madness. No wonder we have dear energy. No wonder energy security is a government phrase that they do nothing to implement. The UK is living dangerously by spurning its own domestic energy. It is deindustrialising too quickly, importing too much and wondering why it does not grow faster.  Far from saving the world it just watches as others grow richer  out of selling us oil and gas and fossil fuel based products, producing more CO 2 on the way.

I do not support the idea that political parties should receive state funding paid for by taxpayers. The closest we get to that is the grant paid to the Opposition in Parliament to allow it to hire support staff, and growing budgets for so called Special Advisers to Ministers.

I think it right that political parties raise money from people who support them. I also think it right we disallow foreign companies and non residents from making donations.

It is true that funding parties still poses difficult questions. If a Trade Union gives a large donation to Labour or its MPs because it likes the party’s general support for Unions, that passes the test as an acceptable contribution. If a Union gives money whilst telling a Labour Minister they must accept a high pay demand from that Union or must amend Employment law in a way they want, that is cash for policy.

It is the same for Conservatives who have tended to get more donations from successful entrepreneurs. It is fine if they donate because they agree with a lower tax and less regulation agenda which Conservatives are meant to believe in. It would be wrong if the donor wanted specific tax or policy  changes for their money.

The present government is backed by a majority of MPs who have received financial assistance from Unions. It inherits a public sector which is heavily unionised, has just collapsed productivity and is pressing for large inflationary increases. MP s and Ministers need to tread carefully not to give a bad impression.

I think the main parties are allowed to spend too much on national campaigns, and Ministers have too many special Advisers. The system would work better if less money was wasted on these budgets.

Governments this century in the U.K. have delighted in increasing burdens on business and interfering in what companies can make and sell and how they do it. For much of the time the EU dreamed up most of the interfering for a U.K. establishment that went along with much of it. More recently governments have copied more EU laws or thought up some of their own.

The Thatcher government had a period when it got rid of a tax every budget, seeking to reduce the number of meddling low yielding high cost taxes. Now a combination of seeking more revenue and a fatal fascination with trying to change how companies and people behave has produced a welter of sector or behaviour specific taxes.

Business has to pay environmental levies, windfall taxes, emissions trading charges and the climate change levy on its energy, helping make the U.K. a high cost energy country and leading to the rapid run down of energy intensive business. There are planning fees, stamp duties,the aggregates levy on building. There is a landfill tax, a plastics packaging tax, a soft drinks levy, and a digital services tax.  Travel incurs an Air Passenger duty, insurance a premium tax, ATOL licence fees, new car taxes and VED. Business generally pays an Apprentice levy, pays for the Pension Protection fund,. There is a betting and gaming levy. There is a better point to paying Land Registry fees and Company House fees to ensure title and company information when considering counter parties.

Many of these taxes yield modest revenue, but all imply politicians know better than business  and their customers, and say that without tax and regulation there would be bad outcomes. Each of these has a compliance cost for affected businesses, and for businesses that find out they do not need to comply.

This large top heavy edifice makes it more difficult for new and small businesses, and can tip large business into investing elsewhere. Most businesses know they need to look after their employees, be good neighbours and sell safe and good products. The  minority of bad performers are law breakers, as it is against the general law to treat employees badly, to sell unsafe products or to damage the local environment. It does not need this blanket of targeted taxes to make these basic points.

There are plenty of ways for Ministers to be bad.

A few muddle their private interests with their public duties. They claim costs they should not claim, pursue causes and decisions for people and businesses that have supported them, receive income and gifts they do not properly account for or should not have received. In extreme cases they commit crimes.

Many play politics instead of managing their departments and acting in the public interest. They think the way to deal with a problem in their department is to blame someone else, help a cover up or shunt the issue off to another Minister or department. If someone has a real problem the department could or should sort the Minister should not contribute to a long civil service delay in responding and should not allow out a cop out answer or a refusal to help.

Some bad Ministers are simply out of their depth. They read out civil service responses without understanding what has been written down. I remember sometimes in Opposition asking a Minister to explain a complex or abstruse sentence they had just read out. A bad Minister would wait for a reformulation from officials. If I was cruel enough to ask for that to be explained I was promised a written reply at a later date as they did not understand the civil service reformulation either. Sometimes the point I was making was that the prose was deliberately abstruse, ambiguous or wrong.

I remember serving on a Statutory Instrument Committee where a Labour Minister put before us a short SI setting out the annual housing grant monies by Council which needed Parliamentary approval. The Department was late with the SI owing to incompetence. I noticed immediately that the SI recorded all the full amounts of grant being paid but also had on it the statement that all amounts in the text were in £ millions. The lazy Minister and  all the officials had failed to spot that they were asking for approval for a total sum in excess of annual GDP! I proposed the Committee be abandoned and they came back another time with an accurate SI, as SI s cannot be amended in Committee under House rules. After anguished consultation the Labour Committee chairman and the government majority decided to just pass the wrong text!

A bad Minister either gets thrown out for bad conduct or leaves office with nothing positive to show for their period in office.

Mediocre Ministers go with the flow. Civil servants present them with issues to consider and problems to tackle. The Minister accepts the inherited policies and is guided by the submissions, often consenting to the civil service description of the problem and the preferred solution. The minister will let the civil service organise the diary which will shape the agenda and define the problems to solve in the way the diary master wants.

The advice has usually been through many hands, and a consensus has been reached. If options are offered the preferred solution will often run alongside clearly bad choices. The advice may suffer from being a compromise view. The Minister really needs to know the range of views and examine whether a different option could be better.

Quite often the best response will be to do nothing. The problem may be contrived or beyond government power to resolve. Any further intervention may make things worse. Doing nothing is an undervalued option, leading us to governments that over claim and underperform.

In recent years from Blair onwards there has been abuse of the power to legislate, with various laws  instructing the government itself what to do in the future. This is fatuous. An honest government can announce what it  is going to do and then over the years do it. It does not need to embed it in law. These so called laws never have clauses to impose penalties on Ministers and senior civil servants for breaking them. If the government finds it no longer wants to do what it said or is incapable of doing it it can anyway repeal the requirement.

Ministers are most wanted by officials when the department has made a major mistake. The Minister may have known nothing about it or the mistake may predate the Minister’s arrival  in the department. It will however be the Ministers job to explain the failure and remedial action to Parliament, and to take the blame. Internal review will always show no single official or small group was in sole and continuous charge. No- one is to blame and maybe a lack of resources can be blamed again however much is being spent on failure. .

Jonathan Clark has sent me a copy of his new book on the Enlightenment. It provides a magnificent sweep of intellectual history over the long eighteenth century 1660 to 1832 and into the modern era. It considers the thought of England, Scotland, France, Germany and the USA.

Its central conclusion is that the term The Enlightenment is one invented by twentieth century historians. There was no Enlightenment movement, and there were considerable variations of thought and intellectual interests over the decades studied and in the varied European and US geographies. When I wrote about some of the thinkers described here I tried to follow their views of what they thought and how they wished to describe their world. Jonathan does that brilliantly based on a fount of knowledge and scholarship for a wider group.

Those interpretations of our past which saw a progressive movement from superstition  to science, from belief to secular rationalism,  from feudal agriculture to the industrial and agrarian revolutions,  from   executive monarchy to democracy, sought to downplay other characteristics of the complex literature, natural philosophy and political debate of the period.

”Enlightenment” figures usually  placed themselves on the side of belief in their age’s struggle against atheism. They often sided with those who opposed widening the franchise and looked for sponsorship from landed wealth rather than from the new manufacturers.

It is still possible for historians to write golden thread history where England battles her way to great industrial wealth, scientific and technical advances, a better welfare system  and a democratic constitution with a full adult franchise.  All that is true, and today too often derided or taken for granted. It is important scholars like Jonathan reveal the complexity of the process and remind us most of the intellectuals along this carefully selected journey did not see it like that and did not belong to any modernising or Enlightenment movement. The great natural philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often wrote extensively  about religious matters or dabbled with alchemy as well as producing important breakthroughs we now call scientific.