So how do we test if a proposal is bollocks?

The letter says that the Govt is doing a rubbish job and the likes of Kapt.Kartoffel should run everything.

There are actually 80 signatories – a big bunch of crypto-(or perhaps not) fascist lefty also-rans who see this as an opportunity. I imagine that the main purpose is to allow the BBC to run with “80 academics call for more government intervention”.

The overwhelming majority are either in lowly posts, lowly institutions, or engaged in nonsense studies. There is a Jackie Jones who describes herself as ‘Former Professor of Feminist Legal Studies Former MEP’ who one supposes is now a full-time nonentity. Ania Plomien who is ‘Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, LSE’ has also put her name to this, as has Janet Veitch who is ‘Chair of the UK Women’s Budget Group’.

Folk from the Universities of Rhode Island, Solento and Manitoba, the Berlin School of Economics and Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Sorbonne and an economist from Washington DC all feel entitled to tell us what to do.

Tim – please write a replique to the Times adding as signatories all your commenters. Please remember to include all the Dennises for extra local colour.

Thanks.

Ania Plomien who is ‘Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, LSE’ has also put her name to this

Ania Plomien, tosser of word salad:

My research is concerned with gender inequality in relation to production, social reproduction and labour mobility from a feminist political economy perspective. I am interested in the ways in which inequalities in access to and command over resources and power get produced, reproduced, and challenged through everyday socioeconomic relations in paid and unpaid work and care and the role of policy interventions in these domains. Examining these problems in contemporary Europe, I variously incorporate the trans-, supra-, and national as well as local levels of analysis. In particular, my research concerns (a) socioeconomic policies in national and supra-national governance, including at the EU level; (b) social transformations in the Central and East European region, especially Poland; and (c) micro-level, often transnational, experiences and practices in negotiating gender, class and migration in paid and unpaid work.

Pol Pot was right, wasn’t he?

Now being apposite for everyone with a bee in their bonnet to assert that ‘now is the time’ I hereby declare it is time for the Dissolution of the Universities.

The letter is actually about the lack of government support for the self-employed (true, but understandable given the complexities of working out what past/current earnings were/are). But I thought the Spud viewed all self-employed individuals as tax-dodging vermin?

@Pcar – you asked for it 🙂

Sir, As economists, academics and directors of research organisations, we are writing to insist that the government goes significantly further in its economic response to the Covid-19 crisis. We welcome the support for the employed, but the self-employed have been left out in the cold. They must be supported immediately: existing institutions such as HMRC should be used to deploy funds to this group.

Further, the chancellor’s job retention scheme must mandate against any layoffs with immediate effect. There is a risk that many firms will let staff go in the days ahead. In order to receive wage subsidies firms must keep all staff on payroll.

Finally, the universal credit system will be unable to cope with all of the newly unemployed or underemployed. All means-testing must be removed to speed up the claims process.

Economic collapses become increasingly difficult to arrest if they are allowed to continue unabated. There is a real risk that this recession could turn into a depression. The government must move decisively to get cash into the hands of households and firms before the economic dominoes start to fall.

Jo Michell
Associate Professor in Economics, UWE Bristol

Rob Calvert Jump
Research Fellow in Political Economy, Greenwich University

Diane Elson
Emeritus Professor , University of Essex

Danielle Guizzo
Senior Lecturer in Economics, UWE Bristol

Miatta Fahnbulleh
Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation

Mary-Ann Stephenson
Director, Women’s Budget Group

Prem Sikka
Emeritus Professor of Accounting, University of Essex

Sunil Mitra Kumar
Lecturer in Economics, King’s College London

Jonathan Portes
Professor of Economics and Public Policy, King College London

Daniela Gabor
Professor of Economics and Macrofinance, UWE Bristol

Fran Boait
Executive Director, Positive Money

Jane Lethbridge
Principal Lecturer, Department of International Business and Economics, Faculty of Business, University of Greenwich

Nick Srnicek
Lecturer in Digital Economy, King’s College London

Mat Lawrence
Director of the Common Wealth think tank

Rob Palmer
Director of Tax Justice UK

Neil Lawson
Director of Compass

Joe Guinan
Vice President, The Democracy Collaborative

Laurie Macfarlane
Fellow, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Jackie Jones
Former Professor of Feminist Legal Studies Former MEP

Sarah Jayne-Clifton
Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign

Michael Jacobs
Professor of Political Economy, University of Sheffield

Ania Plomien
Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, LSE

David Adler
Fellow, European University Institute

Neil McInroy
Chief Executive, Centre for Local Economic Strategies

Will Stronge
Director of Autonomy

James Meadway
Associate fellow at IPPR

Rebecca Tunstall
Professor Emerita of Housing Policy, Centre for Housing Policy, University of York

Juvaria Jafri
Lecturer in International Political Economy, City, University of London

Bruno Bonizzi
Senior Lecturer in Finance, University of Hertfordshire Business School

Andy Denis
Fellow Emeritus in Economics, City, University of London

Anna Laycock
CEO, Finance Innovation Lab

Guglielmo Forges Davanzati
University of Salento

Steve Keen
Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security, University College London

Constantinos Alexiou
Professor of Macroeconomics and Policy, Cranfield University

Simon Wren-Lewis
Professor of Economic Policy, University of Oxford

Jonathan Perraton
Senior Lecturer in Economics

Sophia Kühnlenz
Lecturer in Economics, Manchester Metropolitan University

Frank van Lerven
New Economics Foundation

Jan Toporowski
SOAS University of London

Cem Oyvat
University of Greenwich

Neville R Norman
Universities of Melbourne and Cambrdge

Pedro Mendes Loureiro
University of Cambridge

Mark Setterfield
JNew School for Social Research

Ewa Karwowski
University of Hertfordshire

Mary V. Wrenn
U. of the West of England

Carolina Alves
University of Cambridge

Ozlem Onaran
Prof of Economics, University of Greenwich

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
University of York

Engelbert Stockhammer
Professor of International Political Economy, King’s College London

Deborah Dean
Associate Professor in Industrial Relations, Warwick Business School

Emanuele Lobina
Principal Lecturer, PSIRU, University of Greenwich Business Faculty

Ulrich Volz
Reader in Economics, SOAS University of London

Andrew Fischer
Associate Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Dany Lang
Associate Professor, University Sorbonne Paris Nord

Ania Plomien
Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, LSE

Janet Veitch
Chair, UK Women’s Budget Group

Karl Petrick
Associate Professor of Economics, Western New England University

Nina Eichacker
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Rhode Island

Yannis Dafermos
Lecturer in Economics, SOAS University of London

Duncan Lindo
Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Leslie Huckfield
Lecturer, Glasgow Caledonian University

France Coppola
Economist and author

Radhika Desai
Professor, University of Manitoba

Imko Meyenburg
Senior Lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University

Tony Yates
Resolution Foundation and Fathom Consulting

Richard Murphy
Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City, University of London

Thomas Palley
Economist, Washington, DC

Andrew Cumbers
Professor of Regional Political Economy University of Glasgow

Howard Reed
Landman Economics

Trevor Evans
Professor of Economics, Berlin School of Economics and Law

Prof Pritam Singh
Visiting Scholar, Wolfson College, Oxford

Dr Jerome De Henau
Senior Lecturer in Economics, Open University

Dan O’Neill
Associate Professor in Ecological Economics, University of Leeds

Giorgos Gouzoulis
Research Fellow, University College London

Maria Nikolaidi
Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Greenwich

Emanuele Citera
PhD Student, Economics Department, The New School for Social Research

Sara Gorgoni
Associate Professor in Economics, University of Greenwich

Natalya Naqvi
Assistant Professor in International Political Economy, London School of Economics

Jamie Morgan
Professor, Leeds Beckett University

Adotey Bing-Pappoe
Senior Lecturer, Economics, University of Greenwich

Alfredo Saad Filho
Professor of Political Economy and International Development, King’s College London

@Chris

Thanks

Notable that not a single one them is self-employed or works in private sector.

They should all be ordered to deliver food, meds etc to the 1.5 million Gov’t has ordered not to leave their homes for 12 weeks – or lose their salaries