Lose Yourself

After a bit of a drought, I'm raining blog posts at the moment. There's not much else to do, frankly. I can only sit in the sun and walk the dog for so long. But one of the things I am doing is getting some exercise early each morning; it's what I do even in normal times, and it feels even more important in these abnormal times.

When the weather's good, most runs or rides can be classified with the unimaginative adjectives 'nice' or 'good'. Occasionally they might achieve a notch up on the superlative scale - 'energising' or 'excellent' perhaps. Even less often they're elevated further - and a single adjective is inadequate for those, though if forced to choose one with a gun to my head, I might go for 'fantastic', or even - pass the sickbag - 'life-affirming'.

Today was one of those times. I was out for 74 minutes, and probably only 6 of those minutes made it into that top category (though the rest were definitely 'excellent'). But those 6 minutes - goodness me - what a difference they make to everything. I want to try to describe the feeling. In my case - and if you needed a sick bag for the last paragraph you may need a sick bucket for this one - it's a combination of a sense that at that moment there is literally nothing else you would rather be doing and nowhere else you'd rather be, a surge of elation, and a feeling that you're totally at the top of your game.

I get that feeling in two circumstances. Or one, depending on your point of view. They are descending big mountains very quickly on a bicycle, and descending hills or mountains on foot (running) on difficult terrain. And with the latter, I'm normally listening to music. (No chance of that on the bike; there are too many things trying to kill you [other road users, cattle, sheep, gravel, blow outs, your own misjudgment] to justify cutting off a vital sense).

Take this morning for example. The 6 minutes of delight came after I'd climbed up to the telecomms tower on Croker Hill / Sutton Common. From there you can look west across the whole of Cheshire and into North Wales, and east across the hills of the Peak District. It's fabulous, even if the spot itself has got a slight Cold War feel to it:

From there, I started the descent home. I had 'Nothing Else Matters' by Metallica on Spotify, I'd just seen a herd of 40 deer leaping hedges, the sun was rising over Shutlingsloe (the Matterhorn of East Cheshire don't you know), and I was dancing over the deep ruts of the dried out pasture with a lightness of foot that had appeared miraculously from somewhere. For those 6 minutes, I was in another zone; deep concentration so that I didn't turn an ankle, but still with an intense appreciation of my surroundings. It was fabulous and zen-like.

As I say, swooping descents off Pyrenean - for the most part - mountains are the other occasions when that same feeling creeps up on me. The only other times I can recall it are from when I used to row - when a rowing eight finally manages to achieve perfect timing, with blades all entering and exiting the water simultaneously and the boat perfectly balanced, that's pretty amazing too.

What I'm left with a few hours after this morning's run is the wish, or hope, that everyone could feel something similar to what I've been describing, even if only occasionally (it doesn't happen more than 2 or 3 times a year in my case). It feels transformative; de-aging, restorative, strengthening. Although my examples are all athletically-related, that's just my preference. I imagine the same feeling could be achieved through singing in a choir, playing in a band, dancing, or building or making something. I think it probably has to be active rather than passive - listening to a piece of music that you love may be transporting, but it hasn't got that element of personal input that feels so vital.

I think that's the point of this piece; if you haven't got something in your life that hasn't got the potential to create what I've tried to relate, try to find it. You'll forget your worries, you'll realise the inconsequentiality of much of what surrounds us, and you'll enhance your insight into what really matters. Go for it - that's my deep and meaningful Easter message.

Post-Covid Free Market Changes

I'm an unashamed believer in free markets, free trade and the power of capitalism to lift people the world over out of capitalism.  I think the case for all those things is beyond doubt empirically. 

But that doesn't mean that I think there's not a role for the state generally, and when appropriate, to regulate markets.  And when we get through Covid-19 and its hideous economic impacts, I think there's going to be a case for some fairly radical government interventions as part of the settlement with the UK population. A reset. Some measures to make things feel a bit fairer.

I've got three in mind. Here's a quick trot through them....

1. Curb executive pay by placing a limit on the multiple of what they can earn compared to the average full time pay in their organisation. I'm not talking about entrepreneurs or risk takers; I'm talking about the executives of public limited companies and larger private companies. These aren't people who've had brilliant ideas, or risked everything to create lots of new wealth.  They're much likely to have climbed greasy corporate poles through a combination of genuine ability and the skill to play the corporate game.  I'm happy for them to earn lots of money, but not the vast sums they currently do. There's plenty of literature on the subject of how the multiple of the pay of CEOs has risen from (roughly) 20 times the median pay of an employee in the 1950s, to well over (roughly) 200 times today.  I'm not sure what I'd set it at, but I'm sure that given the right data I could come up with a figure. 
   
   Aside from creating a slightly more equitable feel in the job market, this would also create an incentive to raise the average pay of employees.  We might find that the key workers currently risking their health for £10 an hour move towards earning £15 an hour. Not life-changing, but certainly more comfortable, especially when coupled with:
   
2. Moving towards a Land Value Tax as the primary source of tax receipts.  Making the move to this would be difficult and complicated, but then our existing system of taxation is difficult and complicated.  (If you don't know what Land Value Tax is the best thing to do rather than me try to explain it is go to this link: http://www.landvaluetax.org/what-is-lvt/). But post-Covid, there are going to be historically-enormous levels of debt that will need to start to be repaid. Increasing existing taxes on income on profits are going to discourage economic activity just at the point when it's going to be needed more than ever before, so let's move to a system which at worst will keep those taxes level, and in time would I believe have the potential to reduce them, while keeping the revenues we'll need to not slash public expenditure.  Aside from the economic benefits, I think a Land Value Tax, if done properly, would again help to create some genuine sense of "we're all in this together".
   
3. Shunning Chinese-made products.  Say what you like about Donald Trump (and most people do), but he's seen China as the major global threat for many years now, and I agree with him. A combination of their brutal domestic politics and policies, hideous human rights violations, and shameless stealing of intellectual property just make them a nation we shouldn't be doing business with (and that was before their cultural practices unleashed Covid on us). So we shouldn't.  I'm personally going to do my damndest to avoid anything manufactured in China, and I'd be supportive of, if not an outright ban on Chinese imports, high tariffs at the very least. And if that makes us worse off economically, so be it. The government can start by reversing its Huawei/5G decision. 

There's much more the government will need to do in its post-Covid (essentially a post-war) settlement with the UK population, and I'll cover that next time.