Intimations of Mortality
The last week has been a momentous one for my wife and me. I had a birthday at the beginning of the week; my reaction to turning 80 is one of restrained enthusiasm – it is at least better than the alternative.
But, after decades of birthdays which I had successively characterised as meaning that I had, first, reached “late” middle age, and then joined the ranks of the “elderly”, I must now accept that I have become undeniably “old”. It is not an unwelcome conclusion – and everyone congratulates me on reaching a “milestone” – but no one is impolite enough to question the ultimate destination of the journey on which this milestone has been reached.
Inevitably, however, thoughts of my – and our – inescapable mortality must arise. And I am sorry to say ( and, I really mean, truly sorry) that I had another reason to confront the inevitability of life’s conclusion. Our dear little friend, Lachie – our little Westie – “shuffled off this mortal coil” on my birthday.
Thank you to all those of you who enquired as to how he was faring. He put up a good fight but it was one that he could not win. The cancer was too tough for even our brave little chap to overcome. In the end, he seemed puzzled as to why he was down on energy and confidence and was struggling for breath. We were not even sure that he could still see and all of his usual appetites had diminished. In his last days, he became bewildered and disoriented – and the heat did not help.
It was a mercy that he had to say goodbye. We buried him on my birthday and we have mourned him every minute since. He has left us with a sense of loss – an absence, a void, a hole in our lives. We constantly sense that we can hear him or see him in our midst. His was a life that was inextricably entwined with ours.
His passing, the ending of his life, has reinforced for my wife and me our sense of the worth of his life. It confirms to me that the point of living is what you bring to it and what you can bring to others. Our lives are for sharing. There would be no point in a life that was led in lonely isolation – concerned only with is own destination or salvation – with no bonds with or links to family and friends or pets. It is our interaction with others, with other lives – human or otherwise – that gives definition and purpose to our own lives.
Our lives are hugely enriched by that interaction. And we have the opportunity to recognise the pleasure and reward we gain by investing some part of our own lives in those of others.
The only real question is as to how far afield we should look to establish that interaction. Most of us will easily identify those closest to us as deserving of that kind of relationship – and, of course, we do not feel the same kind of involvement and dependence for all others as we feel in respect of our nearest and dearest.
But, if we can at least see that even strangers have the same experience of what it means to be alive as we do, then we take a giant step towards a living experience for everyone in which love and kindness are the supreme virtues – and what a wonderful world that would be!
It may seem to be reaching too far to ascribe to little Lachie the inspiration for such a utopian train of thought. But, among the many gifts he brought us was an understanding of what it means to love and be loved – and how important that is to the human condition.
Bryan Gould
12 February 2019
Inequality Means Less Freedom
When I stepped down as Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University in 2004, I was fortunate enough to spend a few months in Oxford as a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College whose Warden at that time was Professor A.B. (later Sir Tony) Atkinson. He was a renowned economist and the world’s leading authority on inequality, its causes and consequences.
The Nuffield College magazine, in its latest issue, carried a range of articles in his memory and as a tribute to the work he did. The issue is entitled “Inequality Is A Choice”, reflecting one of his principal conclusions – that inequality doesn’t just happen but is the consequence of deliberate choices made by governments, choices either to act or – more often – not to act.
Sir Tony was able to show that levels of inequality vary from country to country and from time to time. Countries whose governments deliberately counteract inequality show a lesser degree of inequality, not surprisingly, than those where the interests of the wealthy and privileged prevail without restriction.
He demonstrated that a market economy will always show a natural tendency for the rich to get richer and for the poor to get (comparatively) poorer. This because the return on capital is almost always faster than the growth of the economy as a whole, so that an increasing proportion of any new wealth created goes to those who already have money and own assets. In New Zealand, we can see this demonstrated by the increasing share taken by profits and the decreasing share of wages in our economy over recent years.
It is only when a government sets out to change this trend that inequality ceases to increase – good examples were the post-war Labour government in Britain and the pre-war government here. But if governments are relaxed about, or perhaps even welcome, the usual trend, (as they have recently in New Zealand) then inequality grows.
Sir Tony was of course talking about economic inequality and accordingly focused on matters of comparative wealth and income. But there has been a growing recognition over recent times that inequality is not only an economic phenomenon, but is equally important in other senses as well. In New Zealand, we have always been blessed by our refusal to allow a “ruling class” to develop, but we are now perilously close to allowing the wealthy to have more respect, influence and therefore power than the rest of us.
And someone growing up in sub-standard housing or with limited educational opportunities or inadequate access to health care or whose working day is organised to suit his employer without regard for his own interests should surely be regarded as less than equal with his more fortunate fellow-citizens.
And that should lead us to recognise that there is a range of policies, not just economic policies – policies such as the rights of workers in the workplace and building state houses for low income families— that will directly influence the level of inequality.
It is often argued that greater equality can be achieved only by limiting the freedom of those who are doing better than others. Today, however, we can see that the link between equality and freedom is not so much that you can only have one at the expense of the other, but that they support each other; someone who is less equal is also less free than he would otherwise be.
Freedom, in other words, is not just an abstract concept but has a real practical significance; it means the power and ability to do things, to realise potential and to make choices.
A society in which only a privileged few have a wide range of choices while everyone else has to “like it or lump it” is not only unequal but also less free. The level of freedom in a society should be determined by the degree of freedom available to those who might be regarded as the least free. We have a long way to go – and may even be heading in the wrong direction – if our goal is a society that is both free and equal.
Bryan Gould
5 February 2019
New Zealand and Davos
New Zealand is a small country located, as some would have it, “at the end of the world”. But we like to think that “we punch above our weight” and actually lead the world in some respects – in some sports, particularly rugby of course, and in social matters where our image is that of a socially advanced country – the first to introduce the vote for women, a pioneer in developing the welfare state, and engaged in a brave project to create a genuinely bicultural, even multicultural, society where two or more races can live in harmony.
That sense of New Zealand as world leaders, in a minor way, has been alive and well over recent days as the Prime Minister’s attendance at the World Economic Forum in Davos has shown. It is not only that a political leader who is also a young mother is, not surprisingly, something of a novelty and she has accordingly been feted wherever she goes.
It is rather that what she says has seemed to capture the spirit of the times and has therefore been listened to with attention. On many of the great issues of the day – climate change, mental health, the alleviation of poverty and inequality, well-being as the proper measure of success – she (and New Zealand) have been at the forefront and she has in some instances taken the lead in shaping the discussion.
New Zealand’s standing in the world has undoubtedly benefited from all of this, and hopefully – and not least – in material terms as well; Jacinda Ardern has succeeded it seems in at least opening the door to free trade talks with both the EU and the UK.
While she has been an undoubted hit overseas, however, her problems at home now demand her urgent attention. Her government has now entered a critical phase. The fascination with novelty has gone; the readiness to excuse newcomers to government for occasional lapses due to inexperience has been exhausted; the ability to blame the government’s predecessors for inherited failures cannot retain credibility forever.
The time has come, in other words, to deliver not only on the promises made but also on the promise shown. The government’s opponents will want to check that promises have been kept; their supporters will hope to see the promise shown – their potential for good – realised. It is on these issues that the government will now be judged.
What we saw of the Prime Minister in the northern hemisphere suggests that she has it in her to meet these challenges and there are many who will expect the same leadership and far-sightedness, the same readiness to grapple with difficult issues, to be displayed at home as well as overseas.
Part of her difficulty in meeting those expectations is that the bar for reforming governments has been set so high. The great Labour governments of the past have been transformative; they have introduced changes which have shaped and benefited our society over generations. They have shown how powerful a government with imagination and courage can be in setting us on a new and fulfilling course.
The current government may not quite recognise that they will be judged according to the expectations of their supporters as well as by the hostility of their opponents. It is their ability to overcome problems that are hardly recognised as such by their opponents – problems such as the element of racism which remains endemic in our society, the growing inequality between different sectors of society in terms of respect and influence and not just financial resources, the narrow base of our economy which limits our economic prospects and leads us to be too tolerant of the damage done to our environment by the demands of primary industry – that will determine how well the government is perceived to have done.
The successful management of the day-to-day (and inevitable) problems of government matters of course; but real success in terms of transforming our society will demand the vision, courage and leadership she showed in Davos. I think she can do it.
Bryan Gould
31January 2019
A Blue-green Party is a Nonsense
There were reports last week of the forthcoming establishment of a new political party on the centre-right. The distinguishing feature of the new party was said to be that it would “green” as well as “blue”, providing an option, it is hoped, for those voters who are concerned about our environment and who would ordinarily vote National, but are deterred from doing so by National’s apparent lack of concern for environmental issues.
The reports come, of course, as no surprise. Following National’s inability, for want of support parties, to form a government after the last election, the search is well and truly on for potential coalition partners. ACT seems to have done its dash, the Maori party is in difficulties, United Future has gone, and earlier attempts to form new parties on the right, such as Colin Craig’s Conservatives, came to nothing.
Simon Bridges would certainly welcome the advent of a new “blue-green” party – and if and when this latest attempt founders, there will no doubt be other bright ideas advanced along similar lines.
Nor does the identity of the new party’s would-be founder come as any surprise. It turns out to be someone who, at various times, has sought the leadership of the Green Party and has tried to become a National MP – a political chameleon who is apparently more concerned with self-advancement than political principle.
The impression given of a political butterfly is borne out by the absence of any real political analysis in the statements he has made about the political space that he sees the new party as occupying. According to his analysis, environmentalists need an option that enables them to support green issues without having to go to “the far left” – the space he says is now occupied by the Green party.
A recent poll, however, shows that the great majority of New Zealanders do not accept the notion that giving priority to environmental issues is the preserve of the “far left”. The poll shows that over 80% of Kiwis want stronger measures to protect the quality of our rivers and waterways, and stronger enforcement of the existing rules. They explicitly said that, in their view, our water quality had suffered because private commercial interests were allowed to prevail over those of the community as a whole.
It is no accident that the Greens became a much more effective political force when they realised that concern for the environment is not just an “add-on”, a set of views that can be tacked on to a wider political agenda formed on a quite different basis. They quickly understood that policies for the environment would be much more effective and acceptable if they flowed from a wider analysis of how our society and economy work.
The dividing line in politics is as to how far you would allow privately owned “business” to operate in an unfettered market, free to do what they want, and justifying that freedom because “the market” is infallible and must never be challenged. The public is beginning to realise that if you are serious about grappling with environmental challenges – (of, for that matter, with child poverty, or mental health, or homelessness) – you must be prepared to intervene in the market and make good its deficiencies and its failures.
A would-be political leader who thinks that restraining market forces in the public interest is the hallmark of the “far left” is not only sadly mistaken in his analysis, but also doomed to failure in seeking public support. You cannot create a meaningful “blue-green” party by simply adding on to a market-based agenda a supposed concern for green issues.
There are of course far-sighted business leaders who understand that protecting our environment is in their own commercial interests, but there is little evidence that our party-hopping tyro understands this. National’s rejection by a majority of voters at the last election will not be cured by tacking on to its current programme a new-found zeal for environmental concerns.
The market is of course immensely valuable and effective in helping to run a modern economy. But it has no conscience or morality. You need political courage to recognise its limitations and to be ready to step in when those limitations begin to damage the public interest. Recognising when that is needed will not be helped by talk of a “blue-green” approach to our problems.
Bryan Gould
28 January 2018
Brexit Explained
For most New Zealanders, Brexit remains an impenetrable mystery – and, as the saga lurches from one crisis to the next, (most recently, with the rejection of Theresa May’s “exit deal” by the House of Commons) – the British are equally at a loss.
As someone who was – as both diplomat and politician in Britain – closely involved with these issues over a period of decades, I have the temerity to attempt an explanation of why they are so confused and difficult to resolve.
What is called “Brexit” in fact covers three separate but obviously linked issues. First, is the decision by a majority in the 2016 referendum that the UK should leave the European Union. Secondly, is the exit deal that has to be negotiated with the EU – that is, the terms on which the UK will be permitted to leave. And thirdly, there is the “political declaration” – an agreed statement by the UK and the EU as to how they see their future post-exit relationship developing.
Much of the difficulty that the ordinary public, in both the UK and New Zealand, has in understanding the issues arises because various parties with conflicting objectives have a common interest in jumbling together these three separate issues.
To take the referendum decision in favour of leaving the UK first. That decision must be regarded, whether one agrees with it or not, as the definitive judgment by the British people on their more than 40 years experience (not a snap judgment therefore) of being part – not of “Europe” but of a particular organisation that has evolved to become the European Union.
That judgment was a negative one, and one that only the people could make. They may be told by “experts”of various sorts that they got it wrong, that they “don’t understand” and that they were misled. But only they had the day-today experience over decades of seeing their jobs disappear, of feeling that the country they lived in was no longer their own because all the decisions that mattered were made in Brussels, of seeing their streets and neighbourhoods, schools and health clinics taken over by immigrants from Eastern Europe.
It is no accident that the pro-Brexit votes were delivered in large numbers in the north of England rather than in the more affluent south where people were less exposed to the daily reality of these downsides.
It is not as though the facts do not support the popular concerns. Over the period of EU membership, Britain’s manufacturing industry was decimated and Britain’s trade languished in perennial deficit – so much for the supposed economic benefits of EU membership – and that is to say nothing of the large taxpayer-funded annual subscription paid into EU coffers.
These consequences had been forecast by commentators such as myself at the point when Britain joined what was then the Common Market in 1973. It was clear to us that Common Market membership would require Britain to give up its access to preferential treatment for its manufactures in Commonwealth countries and to efficiently produced food and raw materials from those same countries, and to face up to direct competition from German manufacturing in their own home market – with consequent damage to British living standards, trade and manufacturing.
Those who oppose Brexit, however, choose not to recognise these consequences of EU membership and have focused instead on trying to overturn the referendum decision. Both the EU itself and Remainers in Britain have sought to discredit the case for Brexit by praying in aid the quite separate issue of the difficulties posed in the way of withdrawal. It has served both their purposes to discredit the whole idea of Brexit – (an issue that had surely been resolved by the referendum) – by emphasising the problems raised by the process of withdrawal.
For the unelected EU bureaucrats, it has been necessary to show to other members that withdrawal is not an easy option. Their concern has been to deter others (of whom there are many) who are unhappy at the way that the European Union has operated and, in particular, has weakened and in some cases destroyed the economies of countries like Greece, Spain and even Italy.
They have been encouraged to make withdrawal as difficult as possible by those elements of domestic opinion which retain the hope of re-opening the whole issue. Neither seems to realise that the difficulties placed in the way of withdrawal will simply confirm to the British people the value of getting out of an entanglement that threatens to throttle them.
Similar forces have been at work in the difficulty Theresa May has had in securing support from the British Parliament for her exit deal. Her problem has been the convergence of very different interests on the part of those who have their own (differing) reasons for resisting the exit deal. There are the members of her own party and of Parliament in general who oppose Brexit and the referendum decision and want to see it overturned. Conversely, there are also many in her party who believe that her exit deal does not go far enough in breaking Britain’s links with the EU. Add to these, the normal Parliamentary opposition from the Labour Party and the concerns of the DUP – the Government’s coalition partners from Norther Ireland – and throw in the ambitions of those in her own Party who want to replace her as leader and you have a toxic mixture of anti-deal votes.
The dilemma now facing the British Parliament is that no next step is likely to resolve the problem. Replacing Theresa May as Prime Minister or the Tories as the government would leave the Brexit situation exactly where it is now – that is, unresolved. A second referendum would be no better, representing, as it would, the additional downside that it would be seen as a denial of the democratic decision taken by British voters and reinforcing the sense they had from the outset that their voices were not being listened to.
The short-sighted decision taken in Westminster means that the most likely outcome is a no-deal exit – one that is undoubtedly risky and potentially damaging. Those who have engineered it have no one to blame but themselves.
Bryan Goud
16 January 2019