Revive the Enterprise Allowance Scheme

jon

Britain started pumping oil in 1979. The currency of any oil producing country always rises and becomes overvalued making exports uncompetitive. Economists call it Dutch disease after the gas boom in 1950's Holland. I don't think you can blame Thatcher for the too strong exchange rate that led to the restructuring of British industry.

paracelsus

Just remember, under your beloved left wing government you would not have had the same opportunity.

I find it odd that you still choose to use such strong words as 'despise' to offer a simple comment on Margaret Thatcher. I guess a leopard never really changes its spots.

Ray

"I still despise Margaret Thatcher for the brutality of her economic model, which saw unemployment as a necessary evil."

Wrong. Margaret Thatcher saw unemployment as the price to be paid when you bloat and over-man your major industries to the point where they are so unproductive that they actually suck money out of the Treasury's coffers instead of putting it in. Hence a Conservative government has to come along and redress the balance so that REAL productive employment can be created instead.

Alexander Pelling

To say that you "despise" Mrs Thatcher - or her economic model - while at the same time admitting that you owe your career to it is just absurd. It is also absurd of you to say that the production of sucessful self-employed artists, designers etc. was an "unintended" consequence of the EAS. Of course such people are mini-capitalists - whether they like it or not - and they are exactly the sort of business people that the EAS was intended to produce. Why is that when lefties like you find that their dogma conflicts with reality they always choose to reject the reality rather than abandon the dogma?

Daniel

Another Pinko shows himself to be a moron.

Wily Trout

Many of the economic policies executed in Mrs Thatcher's era resulted from strictures laid down by IMF intervention. Wonder what caused that?

Alexander Pelling

It isn't moronism. These people aren't stupid, in the sense that they often have perfectly normal IQs. But for some reason they can't, or won't, adjust their political beliefs even when those beliefs are plainly unsustainable in the face of the facts.

I think this might be because Leftism is essentially about wanting to change the world. Once you decide that you can change the world, reality ceases to have very much traction. It just becomes another of the things that needs to be swept away.

But also, did anyone see that recent viral video in which lots of Labour activists (and maybe one or two actresses) each said why (despite the total failure of New Labour measured by any meaningful yardstick you care to mention) they "still believe"?

The real reason why they "still believe" is that it is impossible to be a Leftie on any rational ground. Instead, politics for them is a matter of faith. When you look at the results of the Left's seventy-year sovereignty in the Soviet Union - namely total economic and political failure - you do wonder why anyone still is a Leftie and how they justify it to themselves.

But they still go on trying to ram their misconceived ideas down our throats. There is no failure, no injustice and no amount of waste that will ever make them accept that they are wrong, because faith is not amenable to reason, and so cannot be undermined by evidence.

Their minds are closed, and that is that.

Crystal Bullet

I could not agree more. The challenge to bring it back is worth thinking about. There are two key policy areas that require re-thinking for the incentive of this allowance to flourish as before.

1. In the 1980s many receiving the Enterprise Allowance could apply for a DTI marketing grant. The modern day equivalent would be a website or web 2.0 development grants. Then, the spending of the DTI marketing grant was restricted to a certified list of firms qualified to do justice to the marketing revolution. Since the trend nowadays is towards Web 2.0 business models, it would be incumbent on the DTI to ensure fresh-faced entrepreneurs were not buying lemons with tax-payers money. It is very easy for a web design company to offer to build anything asked for (hiring a temporary coder) but then to disappoint. The critical area of success to any Web 2.0 business model is interaction design (user friendliness) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Web 2.0 has the mystique “marketing” had (remember DTP? Desk Top Publishing?). It would serve well the same type of grant. But the DTI must be capable of using up-to-date experts on the plethora of technologies to certify ways to build an online presence. The DTI would need to certify web design companies strictly according to competence to deliver specific classes of service before allowing them to meet the needs of EAS’ers waving DTI Web 2.0 grants at them. Who knows, maybe the next Google, YouTube, EBay or Twitter might be British?

2. The re-introduction of the Enterprise Allowance would require scrapping or curtailment of the Social Enterprise Structures (SES) favoured by the Labour government. Such models and the new legal structures are too complex and of dubious good. They sought to blur the line between profit-maximisation and the “democratic incentive”: being involved in a local, decision-making democracy and serving a good cause in return for a vote on the committee. In the good times SES enabled rapid distribution of government grants and disbanded many committees by ideologically fudging the border between stakeholders and ownership. Consequently many SEO’ers (Social Enterprise Owners) give less community value because volunteers dry up fast without the democratic incentive. There are many ways (including an electronic AGM to decide annual elections online) to streamline and return the power of the democratic incentive to voluntary groups. In order for Enterprise Allowances to be re-introduced, the alternative SES models need deconstructing by IT investment in GDSS (Group Decision Support Systems). Nominet (the UK domain name registrar run by a “set of rules” or constitution already using electronic voting) could spearhead research into that program. Most importantly with high youth unemployment anticipated, the main barrier to GDSS (IT illiteracy) is much less significant than when the Labour government came to power.

Jon

Yes, too right. The Enterprise Allowance scheme was great. In a period of mass unemployment (back then, created by government policy; right now, unable to be shifted by government policy) giving those on the dole a reason to get up in the morning, some self-respect and a little more money cannot be a bad thing. As you say, you made a career out of it. I spent a year faffing around and pretending to write, and then picked up a career in the civil service; but win or lose it was a good deal all the same.

Jon Danzig

In the early 1990s, I scripted and directed video films about the Enterprise Allowance scheme, featuring many regional success stories of those who had started businesses under the scheme. The films were shown at Job Centres throughout the UK. I believe the scheme was a great way to encourage and help the unemployed to consider and embark on self-employment as an alternative to unemployment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCRxzKXypEc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ee9mz_P4zo