These Foolish Things: Monopoly money (1995)

The Scavenger column from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monopoly money

Most members of the capitalist class avoid drawing attention to themselves. For example, one of the largest owners of property in London is the son of a German banker, Otto Wisskirchen. This discreet young man, educated at Lancing public school, has so far bought shops and offices in London worth nearly £400 million. But he is only one of a number of German capitalists who have, between them, bought £2.5 billions-worth of central London in the past five years.

Salary slaves

Research by the Institute of Personnel and Development reveals that 42 percent of senior management and a third of middle management said work pressures meant they were failing to take all their annual holidays . . .

After a strong start to the year, recruitment of managers and senior specialist staff has fallen to disturbingly low levels . . . the last time the higher-paid job market showed a similar downward pattern was in 1989, when a severe recession followed. Blaine Cavanagh and Michael Dixon, Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 July 1995.

There's a law against it

Recent Home Office figures show that the use of illegal drugs is escalating out of control in Britain, in spite of strenuous efforts by police and customs officers to prevent it. Registered addicts (only a small fraction of the total) have increased by twenty percent to 34,000 and deaths of addicts by 7.5 percent. Last year the number of those applying for medical treatment shot up to 6,000.

Rich for the Law

The Lord Chancellor is trying to save money on the historic lodgings used to accommodate High Court judges on circuit. These arc often listed buildings, costly to maintain, and staffed by butlers, cooks and housekeepers.

There are 33 lodgings costing £4 million a year. The dearest has been Lincoln, occupied by only one judge for six weeks of the law’s 36-week year. This works out at £24,098 per judge-week.

Lord Mackay has no plan to change this system which bolsters the majesty of capitalist law, but he would like to reduce the average cost to a modest £2,500 per week’s use.

The (un)Free Market

When economists sing the praises of The Market and its ability to regulated capitalism’s running of society, they conveniently forget the universal scope the market provides for dishonesty, and the huge superstructure of law and enforcement needed to deal with it.

In 1986, the Financial Services Act provided for the setting up of the Investors’ Compensation Scheme for those who became casualties of the investments market. But the investment companies involved had to be authorised firms already controlled (avowedly) by one or more of the following: Financial Intermediaries’, Managers’ and Brokers’ Regulatory Association; Investment Management Regulatory Organisation; Life Assurance and Unit Trust Regulatory Organisation; Personal Investment Authority; Securities and Futures Authority.

ICS paid out £25.4 million in 1994 to 2,276 such investors from money provided by the investment industry, but the recent life assurance scandal threatened to disrupt the compensation scheme; and the Treasury had to back ICS with a guaranteed £17 million. 

The Scavenger