A bit less trivial this time and possibly a bit more controversial.
Lets jump right in............why don’t Governments legalise drugs ? I refer of course to those ones not currently controlled, except for being illegal that is, thus Cannabis, Heroin, Cocaine, LSD and all their variants.
Now I am not the first to suggest it but it came to mind recently after sitting in Court where most of the cases are related to drugs, through including in that alcohol, which is of course legal.
The crimes divide into two main camps, acquisitive eg theft, shoplifting, burglary, mugging, pickpocketing and violence eg public disorder, affray, assault, threatening behaviours, affray.......the distinction however brings in the third word in the heading ........ economics...........
Most human endeavors are subject to the rules of demand and supply, so forgive my readers who are well versed in this area for a basic.... and I mean very basic guide.
The price that a commodity attracts is where demand and supply meet. As a consumer I would like things to be as cheap as possible and when its cheaper I am more likely to buy and even buy more of it. As a supplier I want maximum returns for lowest costs, so want to have a price that fits that model, though this might be, sell a few at a very high price, Rolls Royces, or a lot at a small price, newspapers. When equilibrium is attained then the price stabilises and buyers and sellers are happy, at least in theory.
Drugs however include further variables and bring in the idea of elasticity of demand and supply. Drug takers are less price sensitive ie they will pay whatever the price is within reason, because being a drug addict means you stop acting as a rationale economic being which the theory requires. You just need the next fix. The suppliers know this and manipulate supply and price to suit their profit maximisation goals, they are rational economic beings. Hence tactics like free or low cost samples until the user is hooked and then the price hike.
For illegal and addictive drugs this explains why many addicts unless they are rich and don’t depend on a job or business for income, are unemployed and become thieves, they have to keep finding some money to feed their addiction and stealing is the most common. Shops and businesses suffer, so do individuals, often family, friends or neighbours whose property is misappropriated and sold on, creating another set of crimes in handling, fencing etc
Alcohol is different, it is legal, well look at what happened in the USA when they tried to prohibit it, organised crime just moved in and took over the market, it didn’t stop drinking, its just made it profitable.
Despite government trying to use economics by raising the price through taxes, it is still affordable and easily available at every corner shop, pub, club, supermarket, indeed some great deals, and if you really object to paying the Government more tax, how about a quick trip to France and stock up there, although exchange rates have made this less attractive.
So acquisitive crime is less prevalent in alcohol, excepting the chronic, destitute, probably homeless alcoholic, whose situation is the same as the illegal drug takers and it seems many of those do both ! (There is a project for some economist or sociologist to explain that)
Most of the alcohol based crime is violence as referred to above. Not that this isn’t equally reprehensible. Governments are at a loss to deal with this and no one thinks of prohibiting it, so makes policies and decisions at the margins and tries to prevent the worst effects on others but time and time again fails.
What in my humble opinion differs is that with alcohol we do need to keep trying to prevent damage to other, innocent people, leaving aside that many assaults are against friends also equally drunk, ............... with drugs the aim is not the same, most drug takers are not violent perhaps some, in the commission of the theft, but when ‘high’ are mostly harmless to others.
So why not legalise drugs and let Boots and other pharmacies sell them, maybe its too early to let Tesco and Asda stock them, though the idea of premium brand drugs "Tesco Finest" , "Asda Choosen by You" etc, is intriguing....... the price would be ‘fair’, the quality would be assured, so less health issues, and accidental overdoses, the drug dealers would be out of business (new charity to retrain ex drug dealers ?) and the acquisitive crime would surely reduce.
Of course, being cynical, this means knock on effects on police....... courts.........social workers...... health service........ and could result in reduced demand for those functions, hence reduced employment .........so vested interests there then. But Government could put a tax on or at least charge VAT so they would get a new revenue stream and in these financially challenged times that might be attractive.
Mr Cameron, you heard it here and I am available to be a Government Advisor at economical rates !
Sunday 28 November 2010
Friday 12 November 2010
TRAINS and BOATS and PLANES .................BUSES and CARS and TRAMS
This latest musings is about public transport or at least some aspects of it, as usual written from a purely personal viewpoint, errors and inaccuracies are subordinated to opinions and beliefs !
Had I been doing this blog a few years ago, then this is probably not an area I would be prompted to deal with. In fact I can probably account for 20 plus years when I rarely used public transport, with the exception of the train to London.
Of course when I was young....a long long time ago........ buses were a regular feature, I went to school and back on a bus, I went to work on a bus but............ then I bought a car. The story of my car ownership may wait until another day, but the freedom of your own personal transport was not to be underplayed. When I lived in more rural areas like North Yorkshire and Derbyshire, then the frequency and journey times of buses and the local trains meant they were not a reliable method of going anywhere where you had a time to be there.
Now I have discovered buses and trams in particular, both of which Nottingham has. Three main reasons, one whilst once upon a time you could park in Nottingham City, it like many conurbations, is discouraging you from driving in and charges very handsomely if you dare to do so and that applies to Council Carparks as well as private ones. (I shall not repeat my moan about NHS carparks previously made in another posting.) The second reason is that by surviving to the age of 60 I qualified for a free bus pass, so the cost becomes irrelevant (see later for the counter argument) and the third was that my post retirement activities have evolved to some of them requiring attendance in the City Centre.
So does the public transport option prove viable ? Well in part, I have to drive to a car park at a shopping centre about 2 miles away, from where I can catch a direct bus. This is actually fairly convenient, though limits the opportunity to have drink or two because you are still driving albeit a short distance. So I am on the bus and it travels to Nottingham, though in common with most buses via a roundabout route thus taking 45 minutes compared to 25-30 by car, excluding rush hour, more of which later. I have now mastered the stops and know where to alight and mount but for those who don’t know Nottingham has two main bus termini, one at the South end and one at the North end of the City Centre.
One place I visit I get deposited only 300 metres away from my venue, others, using the same bus, are however a 10-15 minutes walk. Given my bad knee I try and reduce the walking so now have to consult various timetables and find ways of starting at the same place but ending up in different places. Gone of course are the days of monopolies there are now multiple operators offered diverse routes and frequencies. If readers have a similar issue then I recommend http://www.traveline.org.uk/ which allows you to find the routes and times from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else, by train, bus, coach, cycle and walking or a combination of them all.
This multiplicity of operators can also cause confusion on using the bus pass. On Trent Barton you show the pass to the driver, tell him or her, where you are going and you get a ticket printed with £0.00. On Nottingham City Transport you need to swipe the pass on a machine, the drivers don’t talk and no ticket is forthcoming, on My Bus you wave the bus pass in the general direction of the driver and then just sit down. Once you learn all the rituals its all right, I still have to test the methods on other routes and operators, it could be the coffee table book of “101 ways to use your bus pass”, watch the best seller list next year.
However back to changing buses mid journey and taking pleasure in small victories I have now cracked getting from home to the North end of Nottingham City Centre (Victoria Centre/Milton St/Trinity Square for those with local knowledge) by Trent Barton and swapping over at Beeston Bus Station to NCT or My Bus, and the same on the way back.
But here we also uncover the flaws with public transport.
1. standing in the cold and rain waiting.......and sometimes waiting and waiting
2. seeing the connecting bus pull away just as you enter the bus station
3. Trying to travel in rush hour and having buses stuck in traffic, despite bus lanes which are often blocked by cars collecting chinese take aways or taxis just waiting and
4. buses filled to the gunwales with people and all their luggage
5. Buses running late or in bunches because of people volume and traffic congestion (why does everyone - lots of them anyway - go to work and come home at the same time ?)
6. Buses with seats designed for small people less than 5’3” I appreciate that they want to get the most people on but coming from cars with adjustable, comfortable leather, powered seats ............. maybe buses should be like airlines have a business or first class.
Clearly one answer is to travel off peak though this is not always possible. I recently did the return from Nottingham on the two bus connection plan as described before and part one was OK, but then the second bus came through packed solid, it went off and there was within minutes an even longer queue. Hating queues at the best of time but when tired, weary and hungry, I stopped queuing and went to the nearby Wetherspoons and had a drink and a steak, when I returned to the Bus Station the next bus was delightfully only a quarter full. Of course including the price of the meal and beer as compared to the free bus travel, changes the cost - benefit equation a bit and in total it took me 3.5 hours to get home, luckily no one cares when I get in and I can still watch Coronation Street on catch up TV !
Enough of the logistics, overall the travel is OK in the spring and summer, my main bus route has air-conditioned buses with leather seats, though non adjustable and still short of leg room, but I have had to buy a new coat and hat for the rain and cold. I had taken for granted that in a car you can take everything with you just in case, hat, gloves, umbrella, waterproof coats, fleece, parka etc on public transport you have to make the decision on clothing before you leave the house.
Lastly a small observation on who are the fellow travelers on public transport. Well out of peak hours, I have noted that a good percentage are all using bus passes of various types and the bus can resemble an OAP outing. Throughout the day you get students, lots of students, many of whom are Chinese, not that this is in any way a problem but I suspect that if the Chinese stopped going to Nottingham University their income might be cut rather drastically. Also traveling are, (by stereotyping on appearances and overheard conversations only), the more disadvantaged of society, who appear to represent a greater percentage than in other gatherings of the general population.
Being a British bus, people generally do not talk to even the person sitting next to you and actually avoid eye contact, I bet its rather different on a Spanish or French bus !
Finally it seems that the bus is the place, to listen to music, sometimes through leaky headphones, and especially to make and receive telephone calls, it is not unusual to hear people talking away for over 30 minutes and continuing to talk as they struggle with bags and or babies to get off at the right stop ! Well at least Orange, O2 etc get a benefit from bus travel.
I guess until I can afford a chauffeur to drop me off and pick me up, or someone invents Star Trek style 'beaming' from place to place, in this crowded Isle then public transport as well as cars will be necessary..................what I really hate is the thought that one day I cannot drive and thus I only have the bus, tram or train. On that depressing thought I shall go and do something else, until the next time happy reading and tell your friends to visit me via the internet of course, not by bus !
Had I been doing this blog a few years ago, then this is probably not an area I would be prompted to deal with. In fact I can probably account for 20 plus years when I rarely used public transport, with the exception of the train to London.
Of course when I was young....a long long time ago........ buses were a regular feature, I went to school and back on a bus, I went to work on a bus but............ then I bought a car. The story of my car ownership may wait until another day, but the freedom of your own personal transport was not to be underplayed. When I lived in more rural areas like North Yorkshire and Derbyshire, then the frequency and journey times of buses and the local trains meant they were not a reliable method of going anywhere where you had a time to be there.
Now I have discovered buses and trams in particular, both of which Nottingham has. Three main reasons, one whilst once upon a time you could park in Nottingham City, it like many conurbations, is discouraging you from driving in and charges very handsomely if you dare to do so and that applies to Council Carparks as well as private ones. (I shall not repeat my moan about NHS carparks previously made in another posting.) The second reason is that by surviving to the age of 60 I qualified for a free bus pass, so the cost becomes irrelevant (see later for the counter argument) and the third was that my post retirement activities have evolved to some of them requiring attendance in the City Centre.
So does the public transport option prove viable ? Well in part, I have to drive to a car park at a shopping centre about 2 miles away, from where I can catch a direct bus. This is actually fairly convenient, though limits the opportunity to have drink or two because you are still driving albeit a short distance. So I am on the bus and it travels to Nottingham, though in common with most buses via a roundabout route thus taking 45 minutes compared to 25-30 by car, excluding rush hour, more of which later. I have now mastered the stops and know where to alight and mount but for those who don’t know Nottingham has two main bus termini, one at the South end and one at the North end of the City Centre.
One place I visit I get deposited only 300 metres away from my venue, others, using the same bus, are however a 10-15 minutes walk. Given my bad knee I try and reduce the walking so now have to consult various timetables and find ways of starting at the same place but ending up in different places. Gone of course are the days of monopolies there are now multiple operators offered diverse routes and frequencies. If readers have a similar issue then I recommend http://www.traveline.org.uk/ which allows you to find the routes and times from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else, by train, bus, coach, cycle and walking or a combination of them all.
This multiplicity of operators can also cause confusion on using the bus pass. On Trent Barton you show the pass to the driver, tell him or her, where you are going and you get a ticket printed with £0.00. On Nottingham City Transport you need to swipe the pass on a machine, the drivers don’t talk and no ticket is forthcoming, on My Bus you wave the bus pass in the general direction of the driver and then just sit down. Once you learn all the rituals its all right, I still have to test the methods on other routes and operators, it could be the coffee table book of “101 ways to use your bus pass”, watch the best seller list next year.
However back to changing buses mid journey and taking pleasure in small victories I have now cracked getting from home to the North end of Nottingham City Centre (Victoria Centre/Milton St/Trinity Square for those with local knowledge) by Trent Barton and swapping over at Beeston Bus Station to NCT or My Bus, and the same on the way back.
But here we also uncover the flaws with public transport.
1. standing in the cold and rain waiting.......and sometimes waiting and waiting
2. seeing the connecting bus pull away just as you enter the bus station
3. Trying to travel in rush hour and having buses stuck in traffic, despite bus lanes which are often blocked by cars collecting chinese take aways or taxis just waiting and
4. buses filled to the gunwales with people and all their luggage
5. Buses running late or in bunches because of people volume and traffic congestion (why does everyone - lots of them anyway - go to work and come home at the same time ?)
6. Buses with seats designed for small people less than 5’3” I appreciate that they want to get the most people on but coming from cars with adjustable, comfortable leather, powered seats ............. maybe buses should be like airlines have a business or first class.
Clearly one answer is to travel off peak though this is not always possible. I recently did the return from Nottingham on the two bus connection plan as described before and part one was OK, but then the second bus came through packed solid, it went off and there was within minutes an even longer queue. Hating queues at the best of time but when tired, weary and hungry, I stopped queuing and went to the nearby Wetherspoons and had a drink and a steak, when I returned to the Bus Station the next bus was delightfully only a quarter full. Of course including the price of the meal and beer as compared to the free bus travel, changes the cost - benefit equation a bit and in total it took me 3.5 hours to get home, luckily no one cares when I get in and I can still watch Coronation Street on catch up TV !
Enough of the logistics, overall the travel is OK in the spring and summer, my main bus route has air-conditioned buses with leather seats, though non adjustable and still short of leg room, but I have had to buy a new coat and hat for the rain and cold. I had taken for granted that in a car you can take everything with you just in case, hat, gloves, umbrella, waterproof coats, fleece, parka etc on public transport you have to make the decision on clothing before you leave the house.
Lastly a small observation on who are the fellow travelers on public transport. Well out of peak hours, I have noted that a good percentage are all using bus passes of various types and the bus can resemble an OAP outing. Throughout the day you get students, lots of students, many of whom are Chinese, not that this is in any way a problem but I suspect that if the Chinese stopped going to Nottingham University their income might be cut rather drastically. Also traveling are, (by stereotyping on appearances and overheard conversations only), the more disadvantaged of society, who appear to represent a greater percentage than in other gatherings of the general population.
Being a British bus, people generally do not talk to even the person sitting next to you and actually avoid eye contact, I bet its rather different on a Spanish or French bus !
Finally it seems that the bus is the place, to listen to music, sometimes through leaky headphones, and especially to make and receive telephone calls, it is not unusual to hear people talking away for over 30 minutes and continuing to talk as they struggle with bags and or babies to get off at the right stop ! Well at least Orange, O2 etc get a benefit from bus travel.
I guess until I can afford a chauffeur to drop me off and pick me up, or someone invents Star Trek style 'beaming' from place to place, in this crowded Isle then public transport as well as cars will be necessary..................what I really hate is the thought that one day I cannot drive and thus I only have the bus, tram or train. On that depressing thought I shall go and do something else, until the next time happy reading and tell your friends to visit me via the internet of course, not by bus !
Monday 1 November 2010
Money and Value
Don’t panic ... this isn’t an economic essay, nor a treatise on the price of gold, rather its a musing as a result of various things I have been involved in, including budget planning for the Nottingham Credit Union (www.nottinghamcu.co.uk) some personal reflections on spending and just possibility a small influence from the current UK and Global predictions on growth, recessions, unemployment etc.
Lets start with a very brief history lesson. Money was invented by people in ancient times, (blame the Chinese, they seem to have done things like this well before the West) as an answer to the ineffectiveness of the barter system. Its all well to trade three chickens for a goat but what if you want a sheep but the sheep owner wants hay ? or if you only want one chicken, how do you divide the goat and what bits are worth a chicken..............the exchange rate of chickens, goats, hay and sheep would trouble the Bank of England or other financial authorities as much as today’s system, so money was invented.
At its basis is a way of trying to measure what very different things are worth or VALUED. This is where we start to see flaws in the relationship between money, which has numbers attached to it................. in the old days we used to say pounds, shillings and pence, but what the coins and notes are called doesn’t matter to my argument............... what is important is how the numbers become measure of value in their own right, when they patently should not.
If you have £1000 and I have £5000, I have five times as much, but your £1000 may in fact be worth more to you than my £5K to me. You have more value or can purchase what is valued more by you for your £1000.
Value is therefore personal, people and business enterprises, for profit or non profit alike, all see value differently.
We can go all philosophical and talk about love, loyalty, integrity, power, praise etc that is things that cannot be readily measured in money terms, though it must be admitted that many have tried. The Insurance industry can tell you what a life, or loss of a limb or an eye is worth but their figures tell us nothing about the person affected or in the case of death, those connected with the deceased, what was that life really worth ?
However lets not get too morbid, the dilemma applies to any situation where people need to be valued, like my budget planning. The Accountants, also called the ‘moneymen’ or by some less respectful people, ‘bean counters’ have little problem, the cost of employing people is easily calculated and is easily reduced by shedding staff. What is lost is the value that these people deliver to their organisation, never mind the value they may make to the future.
On a more personal level, I might value a nice car more than a neighbour who is happy with an old runabout and who would rather spend their money on home improvements. That's fine, he would not pay my definition of a reasonable price for a car and I would not pay so much as he would for a new kitchen.
I might value control over my time, against working for someone who takes those decisions for me and people do become self employed for that sort of reason and maybe sacrifice money and perks for the personal freedom.
If I am starving in the desert and someone has food and water, then I might be very happy to pay rather more than the Asda Price for it. Staying alive is valued more in money terms than the money itself.
If I were rich and famous (maybe one day, we can still dream), I could easily become adjusted to the wealth so I may be happy to spend £50,000 on an expensive Swiss Timepiece, rather than £20 on one from China which is just as accurate. The argument there is of course that if I were rich, then I need to look like I am rich, so conspicuous consumption is necessary. (Apologies to all modest multimillionaires driving 1999 model Ford Escorts and wearing Hong Kong Digital watches.)
On a more mundane level, maybe as we get older our priorities change, for some this may mean choosing between eating or heating, .......... for others more fortunate, enjoyment in the twilight years has a value which means you spend the money on things, on trips and whatever else you fancy, as otherwise you would only leave it to your children. Others may of course have a sense of value in maximising the inheritance to their heirs and that is their right.
Conscious that I am rambling a bit, I will end with saying that a past boss of mine was fond of saying. He applied it to all the situations where the ‘bean counters’ got excited over small expenditures and really excited when the budget was overspent on one line and underspent on another and to the numerous requests to show the value of a project or course of action, a value expressed in money of course.......the phrase was and I quote
“You don’t fatten the pig by keep weighing it”
Money measures things, its people who create and add value.
Lets start with a very brief history lesson. Money was invented by people in ancient times, (blame the Chinese, they seem to have done things like this well before the West) as an answer to the ineffectiveness of the barter system. Its all well to trade three chickens for a goat but what if you want a sheep but the sheep owner wants hay ? or if you only want one chicken, how do you divide the goat and what bits are worth a chicken..............the exchange rate of chickens, goats, hay and sheep would trouble the Bank of England or other financial authorities as much as today’s system, so money was invented.
At its basis is a way of trying to measure what very different things are worth or VALUED. This is where we start to see flaws in the relationship between money, which has numbers attached to it................. in the old days we used to say pounds, shillings and pence, but what the coins and notes are called doesn’t matter to my argument............... what is important is how the numbers become measure of value in their own right, when they patently should not.
If you have £1000 and I have £5000, I have five times as much, but your £1000 may in fact be worth more to you than my £5K to me. You have more value or can purchase what is valued more by you for your £1000.
Value is therefore personal, people and business enterprises, for profit or non profit alike, all see value differently.
We can go all philosophical and talk about love, loyalty, integrity, power, praise etc that is things that cannot be readily measured in money terms, though it must be admitted that many have tried. The Insurance industry can tell you what a life, or loss of a limb or an eye is worth but their figures tell us nothing about the person affected or in the case of death, those connected with the deceased, what was that life really worth ?
However lets not get too morbid, the dilemma applies to any situation where people need to be valued, like my budget planning. The Accountants, also called the ‘moneymen’ or by some less respectful people, ‘bean counters’ have little problem, the cost of employing people is easily calculated and is easily reduced by shedding staff. What is lost is the value that these people deliver to their organisation, never mind the value they may make to the future.
On a more personal level, I might value a nice car more than a neighbour who is happy with an old runabout and who would rather spend their money on home improvements. That's fine, he would not pay my definition of a reasonable price for a car and I would not pay so much as he would for a new kitchen.
I might value control over my time, against working for someone who takes those decisions for me and people do become self employed for that sort of reason and maybe sacrifice money and perks for the personal freedom.
If I am starving in the desert and someone has food and water, then I might be very happy to pay rather more than the Asda Price for it. Staying alive is valued more in money terms than the money itself.
If I were rich and famous (maybe one day, we can still dream), I could easily become adjusted to the wealth so I may be happy to spend £50,000 on an expensive Swiss Timepiece, rather than £20 on one from China which is just as accurate. The argument there is of course that if I were rich, then I need to look like I am rich, so conspicuous consumption is necessary. (Apologies to all modest multimillionaires driving 1999 model Ford Escorts and wearing Hong Kong Digital watches.)
On a more mundane level, maybe as we get older our priorities change, for some this may mean choosing between eating or heating, .......... for others more fortunate, enjoyment in the twilight years has a value which means you spend the money on things, on trips and whatever else you fancy, as otherwise you would only leave it to your children. Others may of course have a sense of value in maximising the inheritance to their heirs and that is their right.
Conscious that I am rambling a bit, I will end with saying that a past boss of mine was fond of saying. He applied it to all the situations where the ‘bean counters’ got excited over small expenditures and really excited when the budget was overspent on one line and underspent on another and to the numerous requests to show the value of a project or course of action, a value expressed in money of course.......the phrase was and I quote
“You don’t fatten the pig by keep weighing it”
Money measures things, its people who create and add value.
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