26th April 2006
Return of the People’s Bank
An excellent report on financial exclusion by the Welsh Consumer Council from November last year showed that an incredible one in seven people in Wales don’t even have a bank account and more than half don’t save regularly. The problem is much deeper in Wales than the rest of the UK with our historically higher levels of deprivation.
In its policy recommendation the report concentrates on improving financial literacy – and we all could certainly benefit from a little more of that. But it’s often not so much a question of people excluding themselves through ignorance but more a case of the financial instituions failing to target the needs of low-income individuals in their marketing strategies and product design.
The needs of the financially excluded are fairly clear according to earlier research by the “Joseph Rowntree Foundation”:http://tinyurl.com/gq233
“For day-to-day money management they required a simple account which would allow them to retain tight control over their money. It should offer basic money transfer facilities, including a facility for spreading the cost of bills. It would offer no credit facilities but have a ‘buffer zone’ to allow flexibility. Ideally, it should also be designed so that access is not dependent on credit scoring.”
There may just be a solution on hand from the early decades of the last century: the municipal bank. First created in Birmingham in 1916 and popularised by the Independent Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement as a means of promoting financial independence among the working class, there are six municipal banks currently in existence, though none currently in Wales. But we do have the power to create them under the Banking Act 1987. A municipal bank is essentially a savings bank linked to a local authority which allows you to make deposits, pay bills etc – but without credit facilities, though these can be provided by an associated credit union.
Perhaps it’s time to dust down those early socialist banners and build the people’s bank in council estates up and down Wales.
19th April 2006
Cwm Elan a Chyngor Birmingham
Er mwyn balans, ac ar ol eu beirniadu y diwrnod o’r blaen am eu misdimanars, rhaid nodi bod cwmni Severn Trent wedi cytuno i gyfrannu at Amgueddfa Traftadaeth Cwm Elan. Gwaetha’r modd nid yw Cynghorwyr Birmingham – y ddinas a orfodododd y trigolion lleol allan o’u cartefi – yn teimlo yr un mor edifar a’u tebyg yn Lerpwl yn achos ymddiheuriad Tryweryn. Gellwch darllen y stori yma http://tinyurl.com/jnj32 .
Mae yna rhyw fath o foesoldeb yn y ffaith mai Tori ydy’r Cyng. Mike Whitby sydd wedi achosi’r holl stwr, yn aelod o’r un plaid fa phensaer y boddi, yr arch-imperialydd Joe Chamberlain (a ddechreuodd ei ddyddie yn radical Rhyddfrydol, rhyw fath o Guto Bebb Seisnig y ganrif cyn ddiwethaf?).
Mentra i bod pobl Rhaeadr ychydig bach yn flin am yr holl peth. Efe dyma pam mae na gymal ym Mesur Llywodraeth Cymru yn rhoi’r hawl i’r Ysgrifennydd Gwladol ymyrryd i amddifyn y cyflenwad dwr i Loegr. Ofni i’r werin datws cael llond bola o’r hen wrth-Gymreictod haerllug a gwenwyno’r cwbl liw nos? Bydd angen mwy na chwpl o gannoedd cyn i’r briw yma gwella.
18th April 2006
A Question For Secretary Hain
A very intriguing answer here www.tinyurl.com/rkulx from the depths of the Treasury for Alex Salmond. Seems as if Northern Ireland has received some £600 million over the last thirty years from the Treasury in oil revenues over and above the Barnett Formula.
Even the Isle of Man has been raking in millions – which more than pays for the quaintly termed “imperial contribution” they still have to pay for privilege of being British. A question the Secretary of State (for Wales) may want to ask his northern Irish alter ego the next time he is on the plane: if Scotland’s oil wealth is good enough for the Irish and the Manx to tap, where’s our share? £600 million buys a lot of schools and hospitals.
9th April 2006
Benn Supports Water Privatisation
An unlikely headline, and, no, it’s Tony and it’s not Britain. It’s Hilary and Nepal. Shocking it still is nonetheless. It is, after all, a Labour Government pushing water privatisation in a Third world dictatorship.
The Secretary of State for International Development confirmed to me in a PQ on the 30th March that Severn Trent Water International Ltd was the only bidder in a privatisation tender to run the water supply in the Kathmandu Valley from July 2006 – and so is certain to pick up the contract. Privatisation was a condition of the loan by the Asian Development Bank in which DFID is a major shareholder.
Is this the same Severn Trent found guilty by OFWAT last month of deliberately miscalculating accounts in order to overcharge customers and inflate profits, and that’s now the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation. If we find it difficult to prevent this company from ripping off the poor what hope is there in Nepal, with its abolutist monarchy, its terrible record of human rights abuses, repression and corruption. Shouldn’t we ask the ADB to back off this project until the restitution of democracy – as Norway and Sweden have already done. Time for a fatherly word of advice, maybe, Tony?
2nd April 2006
Second Beretta Shipment Revealed
Dominic Kennedy of the Times has revealed a new twist to the Beretta affair.
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2113631,00.html
A second Beretta shipment was sent from the UK in early 2005. This cache of 5,666 semi-automatic pistols was paid for by the MoD. It’s not currently known if any of these have also ended up in the hands of the insurgency.
Meanwhile, Kim Howells, the Foreign Office Minister, has told me in a written parliamentary answer:
“We are not aware of any official reports of UK supplied equipment being diverted to insurgents. We, are, however, of media reports alleging that part of a consignment of used Italian police pistols, delivered to Iraq via a UK company, fell into the hands of insurgents”
The Italian prosecutor has been investigating since United States forces in Iraq uncovered large numbers of Berettas in the hands of the insurgents in February 2005. British Government policy states that “overseas posts have standing instructions to inform the UK of any suspected mis-use, or diversion of UK arms exports”.
We are forced to conclude that the Italians and the Americans – our allies in Iraq – neglected to tell us that our guns had gone missing.
Meanwhile, the British Government has admitted it didn’t tell the Italians – who have a much stricter export control system than us – that we were re-exporting the Berettas to Iraq. International rules – the Wassenaar Arrangement, for example, place a duty on signatory countries, to report re-exports to the country of origin to clamp down on convoluted attempts to circumvent national controls.
Broken rules. Allies who don’t talk to each other. The insurgents armed. Another every day tale of ineptitude in Iraq.
