A letter to the Sunday Times which was published on 11th July 2010.

The Rolling Stone article that appeared in News Review under the headline “Downfall of the Jedi general” (June 27th) states that the purpose of the now-sacked General McChrystal in going to Paris in April was “to keep up the fiction” that America had allies in the war in Afghanistan that “has become the exclusive property of the United States”.

In fact, Britain has suffered more losses proportionately to deployed forces and population than any other country, including the United States.  Last week saw the 314th death (not to be confused with casualties, as there are more than 1,000 of these).  No other Nato country, except Canada, comes near these proportionate sacrifices.  Is the expensive British embassy in Washington telling the American people about this?  One suspects it is not.

A letter to eurofacts which was published on 20th October 2006.

Your report (eurofacts, 22nd September) on the findings of the cost-benefit analysis for Switzerland of EU membership, commissioned by the Swiss government, prompts one to wonder what if anything will induce any likely British government to do the same for Britain.

One piece of data which would, I believe, resonate well with the British public is that for the last several years the aggregate trade with the EU of the United States, Canada and Australia is broadly the same as Britain’s.  If you add in Japan, the aggregate comfortably exceeds Britain’s, yet these four countries pay precisely nothing to the EU for the privilege.  Their trade relations with the EU are subject only to the rules of the World Trade Organisation to which virtually all countries and organisations involved in trade, including the EU, belong.

The so-called ‘Single Market’ may or may not be an advantage for those countries selling into EU countries but it is not something countries outside the EU feel they should pay for.

When put this way, a very wide range of people would, I believe, actively question our EU membership and its colossal annual fee (£12 billion and rising), particularly when this government cannot, apparently, afford proper provision for the care of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan or pay them properly.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 28th January 1995.

Your City Comment (Jan. 26th) and leading article (Jan. 27th) on the Greenbury Committee set up to head off legislation restraining boardroom salaries will provoke a wry smile from those thousands of your readers who have lost their jobs due to “restructuring”.

One might as well expect a committee of casino owners to propose effective rules for restraining gambling as to expect the Greenbury committee to propose anything serious on salary levels.

In place of the Government’s ineffectual deploring of boardroom excesses, here are a few specific proposals which could easily be carried out:

• Abolish share options.  These encourage the short-term pushing up of the share price (usually accomplished by “restructuring””) instead of the long-term building of business, which should be encouraged.
• Amend the Companies Act so that any bonus or profit-sharing is paid at the same percentage of salary to all employees, including directors. After all, directors are already paid many times the salary of the average employee.  There is no reason why any bonus, which is earned by the whole company, should be divided disproportionately to salary.
• In considering a salaries code of practice, take an example from the world’s most successful industrial economy, Japan, where the chairmen of even the largest corporations rub along on about 10 times average salary rather than the 30 or 40 times which has become the norm here.

 
If certain chairmen of United Kingdom corporations aspire to salaries, applying in the United States, let them resign their jobs here and take their chances in that country.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 12th April 1994.

The dawning realisation of the inescapably federative tendency of the European Union, to which Niall Ferguson refers (article, April 8th), is very welcome.  There is indeed no middle way between Britain’s independence and our extinction as a self-governing nation.

Escape from the European Union nightmare is not only possible but also the only way to secure our future as a happy and prosperous nation.

The fourth quarter of last year saw Britain’s visible exports to the EU fall below 50 per cent of total visibles.  When invisibles are added the EU probably took less than 45 per cent, refuting once again the constant Europhile refrain about the ever-increasing importance of the EU market to Britain.

In any case, free trade in industrial products has long existed between all European countries, whether inside or outside the EU, and will continue when we eventually leave.  Britain’s trade with non-EU Switzerland – per capita the richest country in the world – is as free as it is with Germany.

The North American Free Trade Area is visible proof that free trade arrangements do not need large, EU-type bureaucracies. As important, the failure of the United States to grapple with its huge crime and public education problems, and the EU’s impotence in the face of massive structural unemployment, should discourage anyone from believing that large, multi-ethnic federated states do anything but provide employment for functionaries.

With national self-determination regained, Britain would be free to reallocate the massive resources of taxpayers’ money and civil service effort presently expended on mitigating the worst effects of EU membership.  This effort would be in part transferred to determined support of our trade and culture in the Americas and other parts of the world which have been neglected because of the European fixation.

Accompanying this would be a re-evaluation of the Commonwealth as an asset, not a burden; as a vehicle for practical idealism; and perhaps, by virtue of its containing about a quarter of humanity, as informal guarantee of our UN Security Council seat.

A letter to the City Editor of the Sunday Telegraph which was published on 21st June 1992.

In his perceptive “Working Brief” (June 14th) on the differences between Anglo-Saxon and Japanese-German capitalism, Tom Lloyd points to the puzzle which the success of the latter poses for the supply-side economists.  This puzzle arises because of the persistent failure of most economists to attach anything like their true weight to two ingredients of an economy besides the common ones of capital and labour.  The two missing ingredients are (a) technology and (b) the competence of the boards of companies in directing the other three ingredients.

Robert Solow (Nobel Prize 1987) has analysed in careful detail the respective contributions of capital, labour and technology to real economic growth in the United States over 40 years to 1969.  He found the ratio of contributions to be about 20:20:60.

With notable exceptions major British companies are dominated by men whose mentality and expertise, if it can be called that, are largely those of traders, who are happiest when engaged in acquiring other companies’ products and markets with borrowed cash, rather than applying themselves to the hard task of thinking and analysing how their own products and processes can be improved.  No effort is spared, on the other hand, in devising reward systems whose effect is to confer scandalously high chunks of wealth on themselves.  The chairman of Nippon Telephones, which has twice the turnover of BT, receives about a third of the pay of the BT chairman.

For the most part growth in real wealth comes from the tangible products.  Banking, financial services and the like have grown from the provision of essentially a simple service into being elaborate ways of spreading the wealth around, usually to the vast benefit of those doing the spreading.  Until Solow’s conclusion is properly understood and acted on, British industry will continue to lose ground, not just to Germany and Japan, but to Korea, Taiwan and beyond, no matter how free the capital markets are.

In 30 years, BMW, whose products are so popular with City types, has grown from a company smaller than Jaguar today, without any expensive City expertise, but with instead the dedicated input of retained capital, technology and hard work from the top.  It is technological capital, not cash capital, that is the most important ingredient of capitalism – and always has been.  That is the solution to the economists’ puzzle.