Not just about chlorine chicken

This isn’t just about chlorine chicken

 by Brian Bamford

GEORGE ORWELL wrote an essay 'In Defence of English Cooking' that:
'It will be seen that we have no cause to be ashamed of our cookery, so far as originality goes or so far as the ingredients go.  And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor's point of view.  This is that you practically don't find good English cooking outside a private house....  It is a fact that restaurants which are distinctively English are hard to find.' [1945]

Over half a century later in the Caterer & Hotelkeeper Millennium Supplement, on the 23 December 1999 claimed:
'Rationing was reintroduced in 1940, a year after the outbreak of the Second World War.  It continued until 1954, casting a shadow over any real culinary progression. Post-war London's leading restaurants were almost entirely run by Continental Europeans.'

And yet it goes on to argue:

'Outside the capital, though, the general state of food being served in most restaurants was abysmal, apart from rare exceptions such as Sharrow Bay in Ullswater (which opened in 1949) and the Bell at Aston Clinton.'


Raymond Postgate who went on to jointly write The Common People with G.D.H.Cole, helped to found The Good Food Guide.  Postgate a socialist, who helped to found the Communist Party of Great Britain, laid down some rules for fighting a war for English food wrote:



'Navigating a British restaurant during the middle of the twentieth century was in its way not so different from scoring a drink in Sweden before the outbreak of hostilities.  Postgate likened it to war.  The “Rules for Eating Out” published in the first Guide , from 1951-52, refer to restaurant staff as “the Enemy” and recommend battle tactics.'  And he advises:

“Take a long time reading the bill of fare, and see that your wife decides what she wants first. If the Enemy hears one of you say: ‘I’ll have whatever you do, dear’, he immediately decides he has no serious foe to encounter. What you want to impress on the establishment is that it has to deal with a pair of people who know exactly what they want, and are implacable.” ( GFG 19)

Adding in his recommendations:  'While diners and waiters were engaged in conflict, rules of war did apply, and the encounter should be civil even if it was not yet civilized. “You wish to give the impression not that you are angry with this particular restaurant, but that you are suspicious, after a lifetime of suffering.” ( GFG 19)'

His basic justification for the founding of The Guide is clear:
 'The Guide had become necessary because the suffering had lasted longer even than the lifetime of many GFG users: “For fifty years now complaints have been made against British cooking, and no improvement has resulted.” ( GFG 7)'


Serious entertaining was more likely to be done in private houses, where most professional chefs were employed, or in gentlemen's clubs - there were 200 at the turn of the century, compared with about 40 today.  Restaurants were frequented mostly by aristocrats and the gentry.  Women, of whatever class, were rarely seen in such establishments.

Derek Pattison & the 'Veblen good'

In response to the recent news that members of the US Congress have written to the US negotiator, calling on him to get rid of the UK’s ban on chlorinated chicken ‘once and for all’ DEREK PATTISON writes:
'I think it is true to say that people are economic maximizers and though we can make choices, our choices are always constrained for a variety of reasons.  This could be economic and also due to our social/class position in society .'

So speaks Pattsion, the economist, on behalf of the most miserable of sciences; forever labouring the price of everything and the value of nothing.  What would Raymond Postgate, founder of the Good Food Guide have to say about that?

When I did my degree in sociology at Manchester Poly. it was structured around economics, because at that time it was considered  that of all of the social sciences it was the closest to a 'natural science' like physics etc.  Do we want to eat cheap chlorine chicken suitably swilled with the chemical from the USA?  Yet when we considered this science of economics our attention was drawn to 'inverted demand curves'  and the effect of what came to be called a Veblen good as a type of luxury good for which demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may make a product desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure.  A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own. *

This is a sociological consequence which determines a price according to a snob value.   Here the effect on demand depends on the range of other goods available, their prices, and whether they serve as substitutes for the goods in question.  The effects are anomalies within demand theory, because the theory normally assumes that preferences are independent of price or the number of units being sold. They are therefore collectively referred to as interaction effects.

We can imagine that after Brexit cheap chlorine chicken will quickly become the food of the poor.

Another writer John Wilkins writes:  'And so we have the climb down.  The ban will be dropped and low animal welfare, chlorinated chicken will be UP on our supermarket shelves.'


The concession in this case has been that low welfare products will pay a higher tariff (the tax charged on imports) than high welfare products.  But even if the US agrees to this, there is no guarantee that the tariffs rate won’t be cut later on.

Mr. Wilkins adds:  'This is fundamentally about the right of our government or any government to set standards and regulations on things that people care about, whether on animal welfare, climate standards, workers rights, public health, environmental standards or anything else.'



Worryingly, the government is trying to present this as a win for the environment minister, because even though the promise that a ban would be maintained has been broken, it turns out that what the trade minister, Liz Truss, actually wanted to do was not only overturn the ban but also reduce all tariffs on chicken to zero! 

The Decline of English Food 

When George Orwell was writing in the post-war years there was rationing, and as he says 'Pubs, as a rule, sell no food at all, other than potato crisps and tasteless sandwiches.'  Meanwhile, at that time, the 'expensive restaurants  and hotels almost all imitate French cookery ... while if you want a good cheap meal you gravitate naturally towards a Greek, Italian or Chinese restaurant.'

Raymond Postgate believed that the decline in English cuisine went back to the Industrial Revolution, when he claimed that the young migrant women from the rural areas who moved into the cities had lost contact with their grandmothers thus distancing them from their traditional recipes and ingredients. 

The concession is that low welfare products will pay a higher tariff (the tax charged on imports) than high welfare products.

But we know agribusiness has been lobbying hard on this, and 47 members of the US Congress have written to the US negotiator, calling on him to get rid of the UK’s ban on chlorinated chicken ‘once and for all’.  Former trade minister, Liam Fox, said last month that “the US would walk” if it had to comply with the UK’s animal welfare standards.[5]

And so now John Wilkins says 'we have the climb down and the ban will be dropped and low animal welfare, chlorinated chicken will be UP on our supermarket shelves.  The concession is that low welfare products will pay a higher tariff (the tax charged on imports) than high welfare products.  But even if the US agrees to this, there is no guarantee that the tariffs rate won’t be cut later on.

'Worryingly, the present government is trying to represent this as a win for the environment minister, because even though the promise that a ban would be maintained has been broken, it turns out that what the trade minister, Liz Truss, actually wanted to do was not only overturn the ban but also reduce all tariffs on chicken to zero!' 


It is hard to believe that the quality of English cuisine will improve as a result of these recent developments in UK-US trade relations and animal welfare.

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*   Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).^[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect is that lowering the price decreases the quantity demanded.^[2]

A Veblen good is a type of luxury good for which demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may make a product desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own.

Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).^[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect is that lowering the price decreases the quantity demanded.

Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).^[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect is that lowering the price decreases the quantity demanded.^[2]

Silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic

Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract

The editorial board of the FT

April 3 2020

Radical reforms are required to forge a society that will work for all

IF there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that it has injected a sense of togetherness into polarised societies.  But the virus, and the economic lockdowns needed to combat it, also shine a glaring light on existing inequalities — and even create new ones.  Beyond defeating the disease, the great test all countries will soon face is whether current feelings of common purpose will shape society after the crisis.  As western leaders learnt in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.  Today’s crisis is laying bare how far many rich societies fall short of this ideal.  Much as the struggle to contain the pandemic has exposed the unpreparedness of health systems, so the brittleness of many countries’ economies has been exposed, as governments scramble to stave off mass bankruptcies and cope with mass unemployment.

Despite inspirational calls for national mobilisation, we are not really all in this together.  The economic lockdowns are imposing the greatest cost on those already worst off.  Overnight millions of jobs and livelihoods have been lost in hospitality, leisure and related sectors, while better paid knowledge workers often face only the nuisance of working from home.  Worse, those in low-wage jobs who can still work are often risking their lives — as carers and healthcare support workers, but also as shelf stackers, delivery drivers and cleaners. Governments’ extraordinary budget support for the economy, while necessary, will in some ways make matters worse.  Countries that have allowed the emergence of an irregular and precarious labour market are finding it particularly hard to channel financial help to workers with such insecure employment.

Meanwhile, vast monetary loosening by central banks will help the asset-rich. Behind it all, underfunded public services are creaking under the burden of applying crisis policies.  The way we wage war on the virus benefits some at the expense of others.  The victims of Covid-19 are overwhelmingly the old.  But the biggest victims of the lockdowns are the young and active, who are asked to suspend their education and forgo precious income.

Sacrifices are inevitable, but every society must demonstrate how it will offer restitution to those who bear the heaviest burden of national efforts.  Radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table.  Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy.  They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure.

Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question.  Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.  The taboo-breaking measures governments are taking to sustain businesses and incomes during the lockdown are rightly compared to the sort of wartime economy western countries have not experienced for seven decades.

The analogy goes still further.  The leaders who won the war did not wait for victory to plan for what would follow.  Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, setting the course for the United Nations, in 1941.  The UK published the Beveridge Report, its commitment to a universal welfare state, in 1942.  In 1944, the Bretton Woods conference forged the postwar financial architecture.  That same kind of foresight is needed today. Beyond the public health war, true leaders will mobilise now to win the peace.

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We Are Following The Science! Oh Really?

by Les May

DURING the Apollo 8 mission to the moon one of the crew, Jim Lovell, pressed the wrong button on the flight computer.  That cleared the memory which held the data about the exact position and orientation of the command module.  As a result the flight computer ‘thought’  it was still on the launch pad so instead of the nose pointing forward along the flight path, it pointed more or less at right angles.  Using the astro-sextant to make sightings on various stars the crew were able to give the computer enough data to allow it to figure out the orientation of the module.

Getting back to Earth safely wasn’t magic or good luck, it followed from the fact that the physics of space flight is an exact science obeying the laws of motion formulated by Sir Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century.   Knowing the mass, velocity and the forces acting on an object we can predict exactly where it will be at any time in the future.

Like ecology, economics, politics and sociology, epidemiology is not an exact science. It uses the tools of science to analyse its data, presents its findings in numerical form and runs computer simulations, but unlike physics, it is not an exact science. Its predictions are ‘educated guesses’ based upon the collective experiences of it’s practitioners.  Those experiences come from investigating past outbreaks of some pestilence.  The educated guesses are in the form of ‘this is what happened last time with a similar disease’.

The UK government could truthfully say it was being ‘led by the science’ so long as we were in the ‘containment phase’ of dealing with the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the name of the virus which causes the disease COVID-19.  Containment worked with the original outbreak of the first human transmissable SARS virus which was eventually brought under control in July 2003, following a policy of isolating people suspected of carrying it and screening all passengers travelling by air from affected countries for signs of the infection.  It has also worked with outbreaks of Ebola, so it is a tried and tested method.  That phase is passed. From now on the decisions are political ones.

As I understand the situation the government is assuming that about 60% to 70% of the UK population will become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and suffer from COVID-19, and that those that recover will resist further infection so the virus will die out, an assumption based upon the concept of ‘herd immunity’.

Now lets put some figures to this. The present population of the UK is about 60 millions. If we take the conservative estimate of a 60% infection rate that means that some 36 million people will be infected.  According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) the crude mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of reported cases) is between 3-4%, (the Chinese experience suggests 3.9%), but the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower.  Assuming that it is in the regions of 1% that suggests 360,000 deaths can be expected in the the UK in the space of a few months.

What I find remarkable is that the UK government seems so complacent about the spread of the virus. Compare this with the situation in China where there have so far been 82,000 cases reported and 3,200 deaths in a population of 1.4 billion people. (Figures correct at 13 March 2020)

Just because the UK government has decided that the spread of the virus can no longer be contained does not mean that we as individuals have to fall in with this view.  Older people in particular can to a large extent avoid placing themselves in a position where they might become infected, by avoiding meeting groups of people in confined spaces. This isn’t ‘panic’ it is rational behaviour.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200313-sitrep-53-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=adb3f72_2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

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Comment on the importance of being a Blundell

 "What's picking a lock compared to buying shares?  

What's breaking into a bank 

compared to founding one?  

What's murdering a man 

compared to employing one?" 

 

From the 'Threepenny Opera' by Bertolt Brecht

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Before red banner Cllr. Blundell is wearing glasses looking
adoringly at his bearded mate

AN Anonymous comment  on this NV Blog questions the arguments of Rochdale Councillor John Blundell with regard to his views on homeless beggars.  'Anonymous' cites the finding of the End Child Poverty Coalition that 'child poverty in Central Rochdale (After Housing Costs) at a staggering 57.04% and for Rochdalr as a whole at 45% (some 14,198 local children)'.

 

Then 'Anonymous' asks what is the opinionated Cllr. Blundell's view on this problem given that statistics are now suggesting that child poverty is so significant?  

 

'Anonymous' must know that Rochdale's Councillor Blundell holds the cabinet position for Regeneration, Business, Skills and Employment under the Labour administration of his leader Cllr. Allen Brett.  Cllr. Blundell has some ideas about how to discourage homeless beggars based on his economic theories, and in an article written in Manchester Confidential in December 2017 he announced some of his simple text book views:

'The fundamental principle of economics is that people, or agents as we like to call them, respond to incentives.'   

Then Cllr. Blundell tells us:

'Often money is the means of incentivising people to do things they wouldn't opt to do otherwise, like work. Conversely it is also used to disincentivise things we like to do but shouldn’t, like smoking, which is heavily taxed.'

Last week, sitting in the Flying Horse pub, I remembered these words by Blundell as I watched him ensconced at a table outside in Rochdale Town Hall square stuffing himself in the company of a woman I believe to be the new Kingsway Labour Cllr. Elsie Wraighte.  What, I wonder, would 'disincentivise' the already pleasingly plump Cllr. Blandell from eating too much?

Or what was it that was incentivising last January when he became a non-executive director of the Manchester Airport Group?  At the time Cllr. Blundell declared : "I am ecstatic that I have been chosen to join the board at Manchester Airport Group as a non-executive director and look forwarding to being part of the major growth the Airport is currently going through.”

Indeed, the local beggars may wonder with the playwright Bertolt Brecht:  'Why be a homeless beggar when you can be a Labour Councillor and non-executive director like Councillor Blundell?'   After all, even when the councillor is an electoral fraud like Councillor Rana from Spotland and Falinge, or an unbelievable witness like Cllr. Richard Farnell, or a philanderer like the former disgraced Rochdale Labour MP, Simon Danczuk; a spirit of tolerance prevails rather than any attempts to 'disincentivise' their waywardness, and this  seems to have become very much part of the culture among the Rochdale councillors of all parties.  Indeed, recently  Cllr. Blundell even sort to defend the dalliances of Simon Danczuk saying what he did was 'Only Human!'.

Given their recent political history the Rochdale councillors, all of them, should really be asking themselves what kind of example they are setting to anyone?

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World Basic Income Conference

Article announcing WBI Conference Feb 2017

 

THIS Saturday, a new global anti-poverty initiative will be launched in Salford, as over 100 people meet to discuss proposals for a worldwide basic income.  

Hosted by the new Manchester-based organisation World Basic Income, the conference will examine global inequality and look into the practicalities of gathering and distributing money at the world level.  

One of the founders of World Basic Income, development economist Paul Harnett, led one of the first international cash transfer programmes in Malawi in 1999. Rather than being given seeds and fertiliser, some farming families were given a $10 voucher to spend on goods of their choice.  

The outcomes were both positive and fascinating, with families able to spend more time working on their own farms and growing more than ever before. It turned out that it was time, not only fertiliser that they needed to boost production. The initiative showed that often it is people themselves who know best what they need.   

From this starting point, and drawing on ideas in the wider global justice and basic income movements, Harnett joined forces with local campaigner Laura Bannister to form World Basic Income.   

Saturday's conference is the first event of its kind in the world.  Although Basic Income is increasingly in the news, surprisingly there has never been much discussion of implementation on a global scale.  The twelve speakers, drawn from five countries, include academics from Oxford and Manchester, including one of the most renowned thinkers on Basic Income, Hillel Steiner, leaders of local and national campaign groups, including the Belgian NGO, Eight, which is distributing a basic income at present in Uganda, representatives from basic income movements and pilot projects, and prominent politicians Cllr John Merry, Deputy Mayor of Salford for Labour, and Jonathan Bartley, Co-Leader of the Green Party. 

John McDonnell & an Alternative Strategy

THE Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, is attending the Closing the Gap Financial Exclusion Conference as part of convening a series of public events to broaden the debate around economics in Britain.

�We have established a series of meetings with trade unions, the TUC, and a range of third sector organisations, think tanks and educational establishments�.We need to listen to new ideas, because the economy needs them�. Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell

CLOSING THE GAP CONFERENCE
DISCUSS AND CREATE AN ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC STRATEGY
Friday 29th APRIL 10.0AM - 4.00 PM
AJ Bell Stadium Irlam Salford M30 7WH

Speakers include: John McDonnell MP Shadow Chancellor

Closing the Gap Financial Exclusion Conference

By: Alec McFadden

SINCE the onset of the financial crisis,  recession and the governments/ austerity policy, the nature of debt and personal finance problems facing households across Britain and Salford has been changing.

A major factor in that change has been that for a long time many price rises have outstripped average income growth. The gap between income relevant inflation and earnings growth for low income households has been significant for a number of years. As a result many households have been driven into arrears on basic household bills, and the traditional model for debt problems in Salford  has moved from being �change of circumstance� focussed, to �deficit budget� focussed model.

Although household incomes for all groups have fallen in real terms since the recession, low to middle income households feel the squeeze particularly acutely because they spend a greater proportion of their income on essentials than higher income households.

 A new model of debt problems has emerged in Salford; a deficit budget model that leaves households even more vulnerable to income shocks.  In the �deficit budget� focussed model of a debt problem a person/household finds that the increased cost of essential-living items outstrips their income and they begin to fall into arrears on some household bills such as rent, energy, water or telephone bills. Whilst different households respond differently to this situation, it has been well documented that many households cut expenditure significantly in an attempt to maintain a functioning budget. Cutting back on essentials included cutting back on food.

Problem debt need no longer have a specific �cause� such as unemployment, illness, or relationship breakdown.  Instead problem debt can be the result of nothing more that the slow erosion of a household budget in the face of ever-increasing bills. This model of problem debt means that relatively small levels of total debt can trigger severe financial difficulties due to a lack of budget flexibility.  For those households at the front line of these economic struggles, it can be difficult to see a way out.

Salford Unemployed & Community Resource Centre (SUCRC)  has witnessed this shift in personal debt problems first hand. Our advisers have reported increasingly over recent years that more callers have deficit budgets � where their income doesn�t match their regular expenditure.  Our advisors have also had to help people with a growing number of different debt types � from the emergence of payday loans, to an increase in telephone arrears. In fact nearly all debt types we record at SUCRC have seen record numbers in the last few years. This is reflective of an increasingly insecure labour market e.g zero hour contracts , a changing benefits system that uses sanctions to stop benefits and a changing society, one which has a very different attitude to and access to traditional credit products.  With a possible  rise in interest rates , we are also concerned that many more may fall into debt as their day-to-day essential living costs reach a tipping point.

Peoples attitude to debt is also changing. For many people falling behind on household bills doesn�t constitute a �debt� problem and as such they may be less likely to get help from advice services like SUCRC.  This is a serious concern; despite the changing nature of debt problems in Salford, advice still works and the earlier people seek advice, the better outcomes they will have.

The role of Salford Credit Union is vital for the whole community to help tackle the problem of debt and poverty in our society.  All the money our Credit Unions have is member�s money and the people that need it most can�t always repay their loans. 

Therefore, the Credit Unions (peoples banks) need support and investment to underwrite loans to members at a low interest rate.  That investment could come from: 

�      Churches

�      Trade Unions

�      Council/government

The higher the level of underwriting, the lower the risk of bad debts and the lower the interest rate.  We would like to see a future strategy by the government to support Credit Unions by appointing a Secretary of State for Credit Unions and councils to appoint a cabinet member for Credit Unions.

These are just some of the areas which this conference will address.

Keynote speakers will include:

Eccles MP Rebecca Long Bailey & Salford Councillor Paul Dennett.

In addition, John McDonnell MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Paula Barker, Unison North West Regional Convenor and Steve Higginson secretary of Liverpool CASA Unite Community Branch  have also confirmed they will  speak.  

We are also delighted that Dr Richard Head and his team will speak at the event.

Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union and Steve Turner, Assistant General Secretary of Unite have also been invited to speak. 

This free event is organised by SUCRC and is supported by Salford Credit Union and Salford City Council. Refreshments and food will be provided.

The Economy in Microcosm

'A Long History of a Short Block'

 by Brian Bamford

IN a recent essay in the FT Weekend Magazine Tim Harford, the undercover economist, wrote that 'the nation state is a political unit, not an economic one', and while 'national authorities can impose a common interest rate, tax rates and regulations' through which political policy influences the economy, it can be argued that the natural unit of macroeconomic analysis is not the nation state, but the city, the region, and the surrounding areas.   

In posts on this NV Blog Les May has argued about the necessity of a National Health Service and national, if not international, standardisation of electrical supply such as equal voltages.  John Desmond has argued that a more local system would be possible in certain circumstances referring to Spanish sources  (see below Review of Anarchist Voices by Les May and other related posts).
New research by three development economists, William Easterly, Laura Freschi and Steven Pennings has produced a paper 'A Long History of a Short Block' in which they examined the economic development of a single 486ft. block of Greene Street between Houston and Prince Street in downtown Manhattan.  Easterly is well known for his scepticism about how much development can ever be planned, and how much credit can political leaders and their so-called expert advisers claim when things go well. 

William Easterly argues:

'Here's a block where there is no leader; there's no president or prime minister of this block', and Greene Street, he says, offers us a perspective on the more spontaneous, decentralised features of economic development.   

The study of the history of Greene Street offers a series swift and surprising changes.  The Dutch colonised Manhattan in 1624, but decided to cede what is now New York to the British in 1667, in exchange for guarantees over the possession of what is now Suriname in Latin America.  At that time this sugar-rich region looked a good thing, but now New York City's economy is a hundred times bigger than Suriname's. 

In 1850, Greene Street was a prosperous residential district with some households that would be millionaires by today's standards.  Two large hotels and a theatre opened, and prostitutes started to  move into the area.  By 1870, the middle-classes had shifted, and the block became the heart of New York City's largest sex-work districts. 

Towards the end of the 19^th century, perhaps because property values in the red-light area were low, entrepreneurs came in to build large cast-iron stores and warehouses for the garment trade.  Then Greene Street's luck ran out when this industry moved uptown after 1910, and property values collapsed.  Urban planners in the 1940s and 1950s suggested bulldozing the area and starting again, but a campaign by the neighbourhood successfully resisted this.  Property values revived as artists began to colonised Greene Street enticed-in by the low priced large and airy spaces.   

As a lesson of this Tim Harford suggests that getting the 'basic infrastructure right –  streets, water, sanitation, policing – is a good idea', but 'aggressive planning, knocking down entire blocks in response to temporary weakness, is probably not.'   In this sense central planning and predicting the process of economic development at a local level is 'a game for suckers'.