From the RSPB's twitter account (I know )
When bird watchers / protectors get angry you know somethings amiss
What you all wearing to the riots?
To me their concerns seem valid:
Back in August, Policy Exchange hosted a talk by the American economist Paul Romer:
"Paul spoke about his pioneering idea that city-sized areas can be created in developing countries so that their citizens can experiment with better rules. An example would be the experience of Hong Kong in China. He stated that by setting examples in these areas, better rules and new ideas can spread more quickly. Paul argued that large-scale migration is no longer possible. Hundreds of millions of people cannot move to places with better rules and laws. Instead they can move to Charter Cities."
Romer's proposal focuses on helping the populations of developing countries through the establishment of brand new self-governing mega-cities located on the coast for easy access to the outside world and a ready supply of water. Like old-time Hong Kong and Singapore, these Charter Cities would be dedicated to hard work and enterprise;
tax and economic regulation would be minimal, with for example, no minimum wage and no social benefits. But crucially, the rule of law - both criminal and civil - would be paramount, and guaranteed by some strong third party from the developed world outside.
In truth, most of the audience seemed sceptical that this proposal could ever fly (for example, what's in it for the guarantors?). But what if instead of establishing new Charter Cities on the coasts of developing countries, we simply reconstituted some of our own dying coastal cities? Liverpool, Hull, and Tyneside would be good places to start.
Take Hull. Given its prime location facing Europe, we've long believed it has huge potential, and yet it has failed dismally to exploit it. Suppose it became our own version of a Charter City -
minimum wage and working hours regulations abolished, social benefits for working age citizens abolished (maybe a 5 year phased withdrawal), central government economic and planning and regulations abolished, no more central government development assistance but a 10% flat rate income tax, 10% Corporation Tax rate, and no capital gains tax.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP would obviously fall sharply, and those that depend on public spending would certainly feel the squeeze (although welfare recipients could be given the option of staying on benefit if they relocated outside the City). But against that, Hull would attract entrepreneurs and private investment on an unprecedented scale - and with its easy European access, much of the inflow would come from overseas. There would soon be jobs for all."
What this kind of thinking amounts to looks to me like another variant on the zombie economics of the untrammelled free-market. Full-employment is also a chimera these days, as global market competition typically interacts with technological innovation to give us an essentially unstable, anarchic world economy. Charter cities or special zones of investment would be no more insulated from future convulsions and mutations of global free trade than anywhere else, and the lack of welfare benefits, which would surely be minimal, would probably make these places just as bad to live in as they are now.
It is also worth noting that off-the-leash capitalism of this kind is always corrosive of social cohesion, so that crime and incarceration rates increase, with the USA being the prime example. I only have figures dating back to 1997 but back then, by the start of that year, around one in fifty adult American males was behind bars and one in twenty was on parole or probation.
This is something that Tory voters don't seem to grasp. The higher crime rates that follow-on from the imposition of neoliberal policies (which inevitably include cuts to public services and welfare) are usually met with an exasperated 'this country is going to the dogs' response and demands that the government should resort to still more punitive measures and get 'tough on crime'.
Presumably, that is why 'the rule of law would be paramount'.
Sounds like a prescription for turning Hull and other places into something like Mega-City One, with Judge Dredd marauding around.
The dystopian shithole that is Shenzhen in mainland China but close to Hong Kong would be a better point of comparison.
