Anger over Osborne’s new role at university
AN open letter to Manchester University I AM astonished and angered by your appointment of George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, as an Honorary Professor of Economics. I know many of my friends will share my disgust and disappointment that you have seen fit to legitimise a man who has caused so much pain and suffering across the country.
It is thoroughly insulting to all those who have suffered as a result of his unnecessary and harmful austerity policies. Policies which have led to swingeing cuts to public services including the NHS. Policies which have slashed the welfare state with dire consequences not only for the unemployed but some of the most vulnerable people in our society; the sick, the disabled and those with serious mental health difficulties. Policies which have led to the growth of food banks and increased homelessness in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Policies which have created a culture of blame and encouraged the demonisation of those who have the misfortune to fall into difficulty.
George Osborne, who has absolutely no background in economics, told us there was no alternative and that the pain was necessary for the economic health of the country. His economic illiteracy has, instead, brought people and the economy to ruin.
In a letter to the Guardian on the 4th of June, 128 economists signed a letter stating that austerity had clearly failed and its continuance would only serve to increase social and economic inequality. This makes the appointment all the more surprising. Is this a reflection of the quality of the economics courses on offer at your university? If so, I pity the students who are going to pay huge sums of money to study.
The pursuit of this now discredited theory has hugely increased levels of poverty and inequality and is continuing to oversee the privatisation of vital public infrastructure and services such as the NHS to the detriment of the well-being of our citizens. And, as Oxfam noted in January this year, out-of-control pay ratios mean that the average pay of FTSE100 chief executives is 129 times that of the average employee – and equivalent to the earnings of 10,000 people working in garment factories in Bangladesh. Wealth, instead of being shared equitably, is finding its way into ever fewer hands.
It is an insult to the vast body of heterodox economists whose important work has been ignored or bypassed for decades as irrelevant. It is also an insult to your own students who set up the Post-Crash Economics Society and petitioned the University of Manchester to rethink the economics syllabus. This movement for change is now gaining traction across the world and therefore your decision to make this appointment is a retrograde step.
I am certain I will not be alone in thinking that such servile behaviour in a seat of supposed learning is distasteful to say the least. It is an odious appointment which I am sure will have repercussions. Prue Plumridge