Thursday 30 June 2011

30th June 2011

Today is pension day.

It is also the day when we top up the Gin stocks and replenish the wine cellar.

We sometimes fill the car with diesel but that costs more than, and doesn't taste as good as, Gin.

Then we return to the bunker, raise the drawbridge and hunker down for another month.

If you don't go out, don't drive anywhere and keep taking the tablets then survival is guaranteed.

But is survival enough?

Today teachers and immigration officers and driving examiners and other civil servants are striking because they want to do more than survive when they are old and they see the current pension proposals as reducing their living standards in retirement and costing them more whilst they are working.

Work longer, pay more and get less, I didn't see that in either the con or the dem manifesto.

There are two types of pensions mainly. One you pay in over the years, build up a 'Pot' that then generates an income which, after expenses and charges is your pension. Usually based on actuarial calculations, usually fairly conservatively forecasted and usually guaranteed. Sometimes the 'Pot' returns to sender when you die and the income is called an annuity.

That type of pension is OK.

But the State Pension and the Non Contributory Occupational Pension is not OK because we're all living longer, and the funding basis of those types of pensions is different.

When I attended a course, aged 17 as a newly qualified Civil Servant I was introduced to the work of William Beveridge who essentially invented the Welfare State.

Returning to my office, full of enthusiasm for the essential qualities of justice, fairness and security introduced by Beveridge and enacted by the Labour Government of 1945, I was met with a cynical response from older colleagues who pointed out that a scheme paid for out of current income was OK as long the current income kept on coming in.

Of course they were right.

Fifty years of de-industrialisation, the loss of so many working class jobs, the increase in unemployment, the people making serious money who seriously look for off shore schemes to avoid paying taxes and we are left where we are in an economy where fewer people are left to pay into the scheme that actually pays my pension.

My contribution over those fifty years paid the pensions of the then current retirees, now I am hoping that today's tax payers will pay mine. And I am going to live longer and that will mean that I will be relying not only on my children's but possibly my grandchildren's taxes too.

Now the College of Physicians say I shouldn't be drinking Gin.

Life, as the T Shirt says, is hard and then you die.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

28th June 2011

Some years ago I went sailing with friends.

We chartered a boat and circumnavigated the Clyde Estuary, twice round Arran and back to base after failing to visit a Distillery in Campbell Town, all the while singing Mull of Kintyre, thinking we were Pirates on the Spanish Main (whatever that is or was!).

On the return leg of our hazardous trip, feeling like sailors returning from the sea, which of course we were, we passed Faslane. Fast approaching our heading, to use a nautical term, was a rather large submarine.

I pointed this fact out to the helmsman who was then instructed by Captain Francis, not, Drake but our somewhat less illustrious commander, that in the conventions of the sea, steam gives way to sail, there was no mention of Nuclear's relationship to sail and we stayed on course and the submarine went into reverse, as we passed his bows, we waved in a friendly 'all sailors together' fashion and he responded.

Presumably his 'V' for victory sign indicated that he was contemplating a successful voyage himself?

It was a precursor after a fashion of the now famous saying, 'you do the fighting and I'll do the talking', although in our case it was more, 'we are sailing, so please don't run into us'.

Now the Con Dems have raised the stakes even higher and made it clear that even when, like the Home Guard in the Second World War, the Ministry of Defence only has, brush handles and wooden rifles to issue, the fighting must continue.

We are it seems, struggling to come to terms with the new world order.

As a young curate in the 1970's I went to an airshow. During the show there was a visit from a fleet of Harriers, these were amazing machines flown by the amazing men of the Disney mythology, the jets would rise off the ground vertically, hover, roar off in a resounding declaration of power, and return amidst cheering from those attending the show.

It was easy to be proud of both of the machine and the country it represented.

At the same airshow there was a visit from Concorde, and even though I knew, and I was right, that I would never fly on the aeroplane, I could not help feeling a tremendous sharing of national pride, slightly tinged by the recognition that it was an Anglo-French collaboration, in this magnificent plane, as it came in for a faux landing.

The airstrip being too short it pretended to land then 'took off ' again, with its nose lowered approaching its 'landing' for all the world like a bird of prey, it was a magnificent spectacle and an illustration of Harold Wilson's, the then Prime Minister's, claim that we were experiencing the 'White heat of a technological revolution', that society was being 'forged' by it.

Now of course China and India are forging ahead.

Concorde has gone, as have the Harriers, the Aircraft Carriers too, although the submarines still ply out of Faslane on their secret missions.

But the influence has gone, even while we pretend that it remains.

Big Society?


Sunday 26 June 2011

26th June 2011

Hen Parties, Birthday Parties and Co-op Parties.

Haltwhistle Station was full of backpackers heading into the hills, water dripping down their Anoraks and leaving damp patches on their shorts, the healthy and fit, happy to be off striding the green wilderness of Hadrian's Wall, and apparently unconcerned by the weather.

The car park was closed for resurfacing so cars were left haphazardly around the Station Entrance whilst the less adventurous amongst us waited for the train to Newcastle or for a day of consumer indulgence in the Metro Centre.

The weather in Newcastle was better, warmer and sunnier and drier which was just as well as the whole station appeared to packed out with Hen Parties, I wondered if it might have something to do with the new film Bridesmaids, surely there cannot be this many weddings happening in June?

Maybe it was a way of saying 'the hell with the fiscal crisis, the hell with cash strappedness and belt tightening and looming unemployment let's have a good time, let's have a girls weekend, we'll just have a hen party, and 'Lustful Lyndsay' ordered the T Shirts and the Sashes and off they went.

In fact one 'Hen' Party had a couple of honorary hens and the young men wore their pink sashes proudly. Drink for England seemed to be the theme that connected all the hen parties. At each Station between Newcastle and Darlington, well OK at both Stations, more hen parties joined the train which was heading for what I still call Ringway but which has grown up and is now called Manchester Airport, so these hen parties could be heading for cheap weekend breaks in Leeds? Manchester? or even further afield Malaga, Majorca or Madrid?

Who knows?

But the Birthday Party was instant.

Eight people joined the train and settled into their reserved seats. Then produced from under their jackets and out of their handbags, an instant party complete with streamers, party poppers, lots of party drinks, snacks, dips, bunting, balloons and great good humour and suddenly we were all caught up in wishing the birthday girl a successful night out in Leeds.

Nobody actually sang Happy Birthday but on reflection we should have done, so Happy Birthday.

At Darlington my party left the train and we headed off to the Co-op Party Council Meeting.

By comparison with the Hen and Birthday Parties it was a relatively dull affair with discussion of motions and amendments and choosing delegates for this and that future meeting, the highlight was the Trades Union Buffet: Ham Sandwiches, Pork Pies, instant coffee and Builders Tea.

The word mutualization was used, it is clearly a word that needs reclaiming from Mr Cameron who, like the Queen in an Alice in Wonderland, appears to imbue words with the meaning he chooses, or maybe it is a word that, like St Francis prayer has now been so discredited that it cannot now be redeemed.

So we planned a weekend school on Mutualization and the Labour Party and I wondered just what the hill walkers and the hen partiers and the birthday celebrants might have made of us, as we sat either side of a long narrow table and earnestly discussed points of order on a Saturday afternoon in June.

We were all people choosing to use our economic strength to meet our social, and cultural aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled effort, it's just that somehow I couldn't help thinking that Cyndi Lauper had it right all along and that the Hen and Birthday Partiers were just having more fun ................

Friday 24 June 2011

24th June 2011

Psst, want some dodgy bank shares?

Nooo, the shares are fine, just the banks a bit, well you know?

For my sins I spent some time working for the Thatcher administration. No it wasn't community service, I worked for a Task Force in a Midlands City.

Basically our job was to spend a £1M a year regenerating the local economy. So we had some great schemes, some we, the task Force members dreamt up in the pub on Friday lunchtime, some were dreamt up by local people usually I'm afraid to admit in focus groups that we paid for, and some, well they came down as official policy.

So I decided to try an idea out, the big boss of the Task Force came up from London.

First Class travel, Smoked Salmon and Scrambled Eggs, the works!

At the meeting I suggested that far easier than dreaming up ever more unworkable projects in an attempt to get local people signing up for whatever the current version of The Apprentice happened to be, Entrepeneur of the Week, Venture Capitalist de jour, Sweat Equity Capitalist of the Month etc, that we simply added up the number of households on the electoral register and divided the Million Squids by that number and post a cheque or postal order through every door.

Of course they would rush out and spend it. A hundred quid is four deposits so lots of stuff would get bought, production would increase, Bingo! The job's a good un.

The discussion lasted an hour or so and for one delicious minute I actually thought my idea would either fly, or as the jargon than had it, grow legs. The boss almost bought it, compared with the sale of council houses it was peanuts really.

And it make sense, after a fashion.

I want this local economy to start to prosper. People have no money. Well give them some.

So now Nick Clegg, he of the Student Fees debacle, having managed to head off the NHS debacle by making it a minor debacle, i.e. it was working so don't fix it, the same Mr Clegg has come up with the brilliant notion that I copyrighted in 1992 or then abouts.

Give 'em the money.

Or ..............

Well why not give every tax payer some shares in the nationalised banks?

Answer of course in unison: 'cos we own 'em already Mr Clegg.

That's what nationalisation means, we the public, self evidently, as Mr Lincoln might have added, own the means of production.

So we have, an inalienable right, as Mr Obama might say, to decide what happens, not you.

I'm not sure what happens if you divide the number of shares by thenumber of tax paying households but I guess we all get 5 or maybe 500? but whatever, as my father would say, verbal promises are not worth the paper they're written on.

But it's interesting and keeps the commentariat busy, I just hope that if it happens I can attend a shareholders meeting and cancel the practice of usury and by the way, my current overdraft, could do without that  too .................


Wednesday 22 June 2011

22nd June 2011

Socrates the Greek philosopher was accused of refusing to recognise the States' Gods' and corrupting young people, he was tried by a crowd of about five hundred and found guilty, sentenced to death he drank hemlock and when he could no longer stand lay down and told one of his disciples not to forget that he owed a debt of one cockerel to Asclepius and asked that the debt be repaid.

Can we afford a big society?

Should we be looking for a slightly smaller, economy version of the big society?

Maybe we could bag ourselves a two for one, bargain, big society which we could share with a neighbouring society.

Recently the Archbishop commented that for many people the big society is just a cover for cuts. The more work we do voluntarily the less there is for the Government to pay for and that is right of course.

But the trouble with big ideas and big policies as Socrates discovered they have to be answered for and evenboth the big debts and the small debts repaid.

But whilst voluntary work is cost effective it nevertheless comes with a cost.

The organisation that I worked for was one of the biggest sources of volunteering in the 1950's but in order that the organisation could be effective in its recruitment and support of its volunteers, the organisation  had to be maintained, at first in London and then, in order to cut costs, outside London.

This organisation was typical and whether the organisation is a cluster of franchised branches or whether it is centrally organised there will be an element of core costs and overheads to be found to recruit, manage, monitor and maintain the organisation and its volunteer workforce.

Despite the positive noises stage left, (or should that  be right?) in fact the current headlines suggest that the economy is still suffering from the hangover of the credit crunch and even if bankers are now calling for less regulation, the evidence is clear, low interest rates, inflation, spending cuts, deeper and fiercer than we have ever seen, tax increases and a fall in public support mean that as people are forced back on their own means and resources the chances of people feeling able to continue to reach out voluntarily will in fact reduce

Greece used to be a very big society with philosophers at the helm sharing big ideas and discovering things like the lever and displacement.

Greece was of course the crucible of democracy and the cities of Greece, the Polis gave meaning to the idea of politics as the governance of the life of the city.

Now Greece is in trouble, in debt and possibly about to be out of the Euro and great are the debates about which is better, to stay in the Euro or go back to the Drachma?

But one thing is certain, Greece, whilst it is a big society, can no longer afford the cost of being a big society so it needs to reorganise its finances to allow it to raise and spend the necessary funds to allow the society to prosper both financially and socially, for governements and people to get back to work, hospitals to be open and the police to ensure the security of the polis.

The debts have arisen because the Greek government spent more than it received in and through taxation and this is of course essentially true of all governments, the only money they can spend is the money they raise so if the big society is to happen either it will have to be paid for through taxes or there will be a need for individuals to contribute some degree of sweat equity.

So here's a thought, in the middle of all the storming and forming that will go into developing the big society how about individuals who volunteer their time and effort receiving some kind of encouragement in the form of tax credits?

I'm sure that Asclepius' sadness at the death of Socrates was eased a little with the return of his cockerel.....


Monday 20 June 2011

20th June 2011

Thatcherism, Blairism, Brownite, Millibandwith, Con-Dem-Nation.

It can be fun to work out the diminutive or the shorthand name to describe a politician or their policies. Between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair there was of course Mr Major who was dubbed the Grey Man and who went from Major to Minor fairly promptly.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if, as some of the commentariat suspect, Mr Balls will run a bid for the leadership of the Labour Party between now and the next election. Plenty of opportunity for sports related links.

But it's not just the names of the party leaders, also the names of some of their policies. take Academies as an instance.

Mr Blair first introduced the name Academy for a new type of school, the name remained current and even managed to make the transition into Con Dem speak so much that Mr Gove now talks about all schools being invited, cajoled or forced to become Academies, although I suspect that Con Dem Academies are not quite the same thing as the Academy introduced by Mr Blair which so shocked educationalists, teachers and above all teaching unions.

The Trustees of the organisation for which I worked at that time agreed to explore the possibilities of the charity sponsoring an Academy. We entered into a shared project with a third party to sponsor an Academy and I became the lead person, on behalf of the Charity. As such I was involved in the early stages of what was called 'storming and forming' in which the ethos, educational philosophy and specialism of the Academy was formulated.

Early starts from my home to the school, bacon sandwiches and tea and some of the most creative and exciting conversations that I have ever been involved with, happened as we began to hammer out an educational philosophy for our academy which had at its heart a debating chamber and as we began to appoint our leadership team the question of how the debating chamber could be used as a tool for both pedagogy and governance was the question to which I particularly tried to seek an answer.

I was constantly reminded in these discussions of how during my first year at primary school I failed to graduate from sheets of loose writing paper to an exercise book of my own. At aged five I was setting the standard for a school career of underachievement. Now I was arguing for every child to have not just an exercise book but a lap top or PDA and with the money available to pay for it.

So despite the objections of the teaching unions and the reservations of some of my old labour friends I persisted with the project. We were assisted by a range of consultants and had inputs from various organisations and agencies in the relevant Government departments, I was even offered tea on the Downing Street sofa.

I remain convinced that the original thinking behind academies was right and at no point did I ever doubt that the ultimate objective of the project was to offer better educational opportunities to young people from poorer backgrounds.

I came to the conclusion that far from some complex Machiavellian scheme to change the Labour Party for ever, the essential thinking behind the Academy Project was a desire to offer young people a better educational opportunity.

For Mr Blair that opportunity was best reflected in his own experience and educational background at Fettes College.

There are some interesting comparisons with Mr Blairs Academy project and the school he attended.

Fettes was wealthy merchant who bequeathed a very large sum of money for the education of poor children and orphans, which links with the business sponsors recruited intially for the Academy Project and which disturbed old Labour sensibilities.

The school has a distinctive uniform a practice which of course academies also adopted.

Fettes was assessed as “excellent” in four out of five Quality Indicators and “very good” in another again which again compares with the aspiration which was built into the Academy Prospectus.

I became convinced that Mr Blair, who obviously valued his education and the opportunity of learning at Fettes, simply wanted to offer this opportunity as widely as possible to as many young people as possible and the Academy Project was a way of achieving this.

As I am no longer involved in Academies or have any way of knowing the mind of Mr Gove I cannot say with confidence but my reading of the newspaper makes me suspect that the same kind of evangelical zeal does not inspire the Con Dem use of the name Academy.

A commentator recently asked where the name Academy came from, after all the notion of 'the academy' can be used quite dismissively as irrelevant dreaming spires stuff.

But again I am reminded that 'Academy' is more commonly used in Scotland to describe a school or place of learning.

My own academic experience was somewhat less impressive than Mr Blair's and I have less of a fondness for my academy, having achieved a GCE 'O' level in Woodwork I was told by the Headmaster in no uncertain terms that it would 'benefit neither me nor the school for me to remain there a day longer than necessary' so I left on a Friday, just after my sixteenth birthday and started work fitting tyres on the Monday, free, free at last from the academy ........

Friday 17 June 2011

17th June 2011

Walking the puppy a few weeks ago I spotted something lying in the grass, it was a fork, a shiny, four tined metal fork, fallen or thrown from where I don't know but it was literally a 'fork in the road'.

I picked it up and brought it home. You never know when you will need a fork and after washing and drying it it nestled down into the cutlery draw where it is right now, in fact yesterday I beat the eggs for the breakfast scrambled eggs with it.

Economics were never my strong suit.

There was all too frequently too much month left after the money ran out and various extreme measures had to be devised to enable us to get by.

It usually involved robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So Ed Balls lecture on the economy largely went over my head apart from the reference to the fork in the road.

My instinct is to see the Labour Party as being on the side of justice, working people and pensioners so I was largely impressed with the headlines which described Ed Balls speech and his last sentence makes sense:
'We are now set on a path of slower growth and higher unemployment than was forecast just a year ago this week'.

But something is growing, it is insidious and it eats away at the value of what a former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson called, the pound in your pocket.

Inflation has been allowed to become part of the economic fabric, every visit to the co-op reveals how prices are now creeping up, partly costs associated with manufacturing, partly the result of VAT, partly the result of other costs being factored in.

But what economists call 'the average shopping basket' is now clearly more expensive now than a month or even a week ago, and it does not apply to luxuries only, basic food stuffs, staples of the average family diet all cost more than they did this time last year.

Fuel prices also. I have always used the cost of a tank of petrol as an indicator as to whether an item is expensive or whether it is affordable. It now costs me £150 to fill my car with diesel. So my affordability indicator has had to be revised because not only is £150 more than my weekly state pension it is more than I can afford to spend on any single item without serious consideration and it is also more than I can spend on filling my car with diesel, so we don't get out as much or travel as far which at  one level is a relief because we are not faced with difficult decisions every time we come to another fork in the road.

The current government has maintained consistently that the deficit is the legacy they inherited from Labour, this narrative has been developed and repeated to the point where, I am sure, the Conservatives actually believe it but Ed Balls speech made it clear that Labour's record was in fact much stronger when taken over the three terms they held office.

So the narrative needs rewriting.

The policies need revising.

The only big thing about society under the coalition is the cost of the shopping basket and the tank of fuel and they are threatening to get bigger unless some action is taken.

There are always choices to make and a society that is suddenly faced with rapidly spiralling costs needs to re-think its priorities and its policies.

It may be that Ed Balls is right and we are at a fork in the road.

And as the small child with a fork in his hand knows there's nothing more effective for de-inflating an over inflated balloon than a god stab with a sharp fork

Wednesday 15 June 2011

I was born three years and two months before the National Health Service was launched, in July 1948.

I have no actual memory of the Lake Hospital in Ashton under Lyne, but I know that my mother was kept in for at least two weeks and we were discharged as both fit and well.

For the rest of my life I have where possible avoided the NHS and only visited the Doctor when self medication had failed (self medication mainly involving Aspirin and Whisky, the Aspirin dulls the pain and the Whisky makes you feel better).

Having said that I have been hospitalised twice.

Once having fallen down the stairs and broken my ribs I was admitted with/for? a Pneumo Thorax, I asked the consultant if it was the condition or the treatment, but he gave me a strange not to say withering look and didn't deign to answer, but that could have been because the day before I had reminded him of the Bob Monkhouse joke about 80% of accidents happening at home, the punchline, where do the homeless have their accidents? equally failed to amuse the consultant or any of my visitors.

The second time I was admitted was after a nose bleed, it involved a dramatic transfer from Berwick to Newcastle, a Blue Light ride and admission to hospital. After I complained and asked to leave I was rapidly re - labelled and went from that poor man who had suffered a major Epistaxis to that awful man, covered in blood, who obviously got what he deserved. Implication, he shouldn't pick fights in pubs!

The rest of my contacts with the NHS have been minor matters, and usually ended with the doctor telling me all his troubles (it's good advice to never mention back pain I find).

But what from this vast experience can I say about the current proposals.

Well when you are lying at the bottom of the stairs hoping that you can find a comfortable spot where the pain will ease up enough to allow you to think, the notion that the actuarial calculation as to the most cost effective treatment be it private or public, doesn't immediately engage you. Stop the pain please, is the best you can manage.

When I took my daughter to hospital in America, she having been bitten by a squirrel, the first question I was asked was whether I had insurance or a Credit Card, only once the money had been sorted was she admitted for treatment, into ER, the next guy who was admitted was handcuffed to a bed and escorted by two armed policemen.

Disappointingly George Clooney was nowhere to be seen, ER it most definitely was not.

I have two questions about what is happening, the first what was wrong with the policy being pursued by the last Labour Government and initiated by Tony Blair, answer nothing but it would have meant that the Con Dems could not have scored any party political points.

The second point is, whilst the country is in the Black, how can the NHS be described as 'facing bankruptcy'? at the end of the piece it is the flagship public service and it has to be paid for if the population at large is to be maintained as healthy and fit.

Although of course, far more important than treatment is prevention, about which largely, we are very poor for which of course obesity and all the attendant problems associated with obesity are testament.

The recent example of money being siphoned out of elder care shows clearly what happens when a public service is privatised, then bankrupt might be the right word, but is it morally right to expose the health of the nation and care of our most vulnerable to the vagaries of the profit motive?

The Lake Hospital got its name from Chadwick Dams nearby, it is now Tameside Hospital and it claims that dignity, respect, trust and partnership are the themes that underpin its mission and values.

I'm not sure how things were in 1945 but I am sure that my mother trusted the hospital and the staff, and that she was afforded a degree of dignity and respect although I doubt if there was much partnership involved.

But in those grey post war years people looked forward with hope as they yearned for a better life and greater opportunity the Con Dems are taking us back, maybe not to the fifties or before, but as living costs spiral and wages fall, as pensions lose their value and the great public services are privatised we can only hope that the baby of the welfare state, that cared for people from the cradle to the grave, is not simply thrown out with the bathwater of the financial crisis by the millionaire policy makers of 2011.

Monday 13 June 2011

13th June 2011

The poor are in the news again.

The Archbishop of course. Mr Cameron and Mr Cable and the subject of Arch-Episcopal dissatisfaction Mr Duncan Smith.

We cannot just leave people on the dole, claiming benefits and not working.

We all have to contribute to the big society, indeed if we didn't it would be a medium sized society or even heaven help us. a small society.

Clearly there are significant numbers of people, living on outer city estates and getting by on benefits, and, it is true, some of those people, play the system to their advantage to improve their income position. Just as some people fiddle their expenses and some people manage, with the aid of their accountants, to ensure that their income position is Tax Efficient.

But lets look at how this has arisen.

Sometime in 1984 before I went to America I wrote an article which was published in a magazine called The New Christian.

In the article I described a long queue snaking across history, it was the queue of the poorest in society.

Joining the queue were those recently unemployed, Miners, Steel Workers, Ship Yard Workers, Dockers all of whom had seen their industries closed or sold to foreign owners.

In the mid eighties a whole class and generation were made unemployed. It is the children and grand children of that class who now subsist on welfare. Labour intensive industries were closed down and the jobs exported and there are not enough call centres to employ the generation that Mr Duncan Smith wants to 'save' from itself by 'getting it back to work'.

The other great legacy of the Thatcher Government was debt. As a friend of mine wrote in a book he published in 2000, debt is the most efficient form of social control, students in debt are unlikely to man the barricades in a Paris '68 style protest. The more home owners, the more mortgages, the more mortgages the less likely people will be to protest, relocate, or risk their life styles debt makes you insecure.

Of course the Labour Governments that followed Mr Major's defeat didn't seriously address these issues and rising property prices (note I don't say values) and inflation proofed welfare payments continued to underpin public policies.

It's getting better all the time was the theme song of that era.

Of course it did for a while and then it stopped getting better and now it has got worse.

The narrative rehearsed by the Tory led coalition is that the financial melt down was in its entirety the responsibility of the Labour party, the bankers have been given their get out of gaol free cards, but the roots of the current crisis are deeper and can be traced back to previous occupants of number 10.

A radical rethink of public policy is called for.

As it says in the New Testament, the poor you will have with you always, and as R H Tawney says the acid test of a society is how it treats the poorest in its midst.

It is a test that, as the Archbishop has reminded us, we still face.

Saturday 11 June 2011

11th June 2011

What car best represents the big society?

Well first of all it has to be big. At least a seven seater to allow for some social interaction between the passengers. Some jokes. Some singing on long journeys and some testing and intense games of i-spy.

So a Landrover Discovery might work plus if needed you don't need to stay on the road and can head off into some uncharted bits of as yet undiscovered landscape.

A two seat MG Roadster would be hopeless, not because Jeremy Clarkson wouldn't approve, but because it would fail completely as far as sociability, singing and games of i spy go.

My own personal favourite car was the Alfa Romeo Guilietta which was so wonderful and sexy and head turning, that, as the driver I kept turning my head to see my reflection in shop windows. It was once parked outside a Little Chef on the A38 and a police car passed and slowed down just to make sure we weren't speeding.

But it wasn't a big society car, in fact it was probably nearer to being the motoring equivalent of Bunga Bunga and certainly i spy would have not been an appropriate game.

Once in America we were being driven around Washington DC when a Guilietta overtook the car we were in, a very staid, four door sedan, and our driver muttered 'drug dealers, that's a drug dealers car', so we kept the fact that we owned one a secret.

What car does Mr Cameron drive I wonder?

He flies by easyjet and Ryan Air so what car does he leave in the Airport Car Park?

I'm sure that his official bullet proof Prime Ministerial car is fine when he is being Prime Minister but does he favour the Ford Galaxy, much beloved of Mr Blair or is he more of a Mondeo Man?

I have had a lot of cars, my favourite was a DKW Saxomat, it was a three cylinder two stroke with a centrifugal clutch which operated electrically, the acceleration was awesome and it had a banshee like wail as it sped away from traffic lights, which scared horses, pensioners and very young children. DKW was the precursor of Audi, it had the four rings on the radiator grill, sadly the factory was landlocked in the former East Germany and renamed Wartburg. Oops.

But it was not very socially responsible and could not be properly described as a big society car.

The bright red Ford Cortina wouldn't start on Sundays, no good for a Vicar who relied on it to get to church on time.

A 1938 Morris Eight was just eccentric really.

The Mini was fun.

The BMW was reliable, I once drove it to Leipzig at a hundred miles and hour whilst listening to Kraftwerk but had to keep pulling over to let Mercedes fly past on the Autobahns. I guess that had a big society feel to it and it was interesting visiting the former Democratic Republic. After all the idea of a big society is more socialist than capitalist which is why it is puzzling to hear it promoted in dulcet tory tones although Tone's dulcet voice had a suspiciously Tory overtone to it too.

No, the latest leak suggests apparently that the car that best reflects the big society is a Volvo, safe and reliable and trustworthy.

Apparently this was a reflection of the image that the public had of Mr Brown before the election he lost.

So now all that  the Labour Party has to do is recover the papers that they lost, review the strategy and begin the process of presenting their new image.

My advice would be to drop the Volvo metaphor, or even better find some photographs of the coalition leadership parking their Volvo's in airport car parks, and get Mr. Milliband a car that reflects speed, authority, dignity, accomplishment and reliability.

A new car for the future of the big society under a revamped, renewed, energy efficient, people friendly, Labour party has to be a Hybrid Stretched Limo ............

Thursday 9 June 2011

9th June 2011

It's important to continue to be wry as you watch the TV coverage of the latest change of direction announced by Mr Cameron it's good to be able to smile at the contradictions and the Alice in Wonderland strategy of making words mean just what you want them to mean.

Apparently we are not going to offer cut price sentencing and 'one for two' offers to people who plead guilty, apparently it doesn't play well in Tory constituencies where hanging and flogging is still the punishment de jour and the stocks are maintained and occasionally witches ducked in the duck pond.

Sad really because the proposals now rejected by Mr Cameron were one of the better ideas the coalition has had.

But public campaigns can be effective, the forests have not been sold and now a Bishop is chairing the review, if you go down to the woods today beware because today is the day the Bishop's are having a picnic!

No doubt all dressed in Sherwood Purple.

Then the changes to the NHS have been changed, although so far it seems, not changed for the better, just changed more slowly, on the grounds that people might not notice until they turn up at the hospital, find that the A&E has ben closed and they are asked for their credit card before they can be seen by a Doctor.

This week we were offered a dental check up in 2012 a year ahead instead of the usual six months, apparently it's at the dentist's discretion?

Call me cynical but it smacked of saving money ..............

But now another Bishop, an Archbishop nevertheless, has stepped into the fray with an article in The New Statesman questioning the political legitimacy of the coalition's political programme.

So the specious claims of the con-dems, who could be said to be in power but not in authority, have been challenged.
Wry looks at the big society are, it seems, a thing of the past.

Of course Archbishop's having opinions is not new and anyone with any sense, including Mr Milliband will welcome this intervention, the opposition has seemed a bit quiet recently it's probably just as well that someone has a go. So the Church of England has gone from being the Tory Party at prayer to Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition! After all when people cannot defend themselves, occasionally it is good for the defence to come from outwith the political and from within, the moral sphere.

Apparently, according to the Archbishop, the 'Big Society' is a 'painfully stale slogan' and not stopping there the Archbishop rounds on Michael Gove and Ian Duncan Smith, hooray I say, for an Archbishop who has suddenly woken up and smelt the coffee.

I find it amazing that as a nation we have sat back and accepted the policies that have so far, reduced standards of living, cut defence budgets, thrown education into turmoil, forced the NHS into another unnecessary review and reintroduced the idea of the 'deserving and undeserving' poor, without a murmer.

Sharp changes in direction in policies to bring radical changes, changes which were not in the manifesto's on which either the Tories or the Liberals fought the election, have begun a process that feels remarkably like a form of 'back to the future' soon living standards and opportunities will feel like the 50's, with university reserved for the rich, meat reserved for Sundays and clothes replaced once a year for the Whitsun Walks.

Even now the charity shops are finding it hard to get new stock and the bargains have all but disappeared.

Soon we will be hoping for a new Buddy Holly to emerge singing 'That'll be the Day'.

And then it will be the Sixties all over again and that WILL be nice and it will be Mr Milliband celebrating the white heat of the technological revolution instead of that nice Mr Wilson ..........

Tuesday 7 June 2011

7th June 2011

This morning I went walking (and talking) round the local reservoir with a group of clergy from the local deanery and Ruby the dog.

June is not the right time of year for mushrooms, they come later. But I remember years ago walking around the same reservoir with a group of young people and finding certain mushrooms which are reputed to contain 'psychotropic' properties, the discovery caused great excitement.

Social and recreational Drug use has a history with its roots deep in religious and mystical usage as readers of Frazer's famous and wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, The Golden Bough, will know.

Throughout history from ancient times until now, people have used drugs. they have also misused and abused them.

In our big society we have a confused and contradictory drugs policy.

One the one hand we accept the use of certain drugs and we control the quality and distribution and we impose a tax on the purchase.

The socially acceptable drugs are of course Alcohol, Nicotine, Tea and Coffee alongside drugs prescribed for medical use.

At the same time we wage a 'war on drugs'.

The 'war' is an international conflict which ranges from the poppy fields of Afghanistan and South America to the blighted inner cities of Europe and America.

But as a recent report,  from the independent Global Commission on Drug Policy, states unequivocally, the war on drugs has failed.

The report signed by, amongst others, Paul Volcker of the U.S. Federal Reserve and Kofi Annan formerly of the United Nations, makes it clear that the war on drugs has failed to reduce the use and consequences of drug use and caused huge 'collateral damage'.

But politicians love their wars and so despite history teaching us that prohibition does not work and succeeds only in driving usage, whether of drugs or alcohol, underground and creating huge subversive and illegal markets they persist.

But the legalization  and decriminalization of drugs makes sense at a number of levels, we can imagine the benefits from changing current policies:

Quality can be controlled and so the fluctuations, from heavily cut to almost pure varieties which appear on the streets and that cause so many unnecessary deaths by overdose, will disappear.

Price can be both controlled and regulated by taxation to produce income for the state to pay for increased medical costs as is now the case with cigarettes.

The arrest and imprisonment of low grade users and dealers will cease thereby reducing the prison population, with the addition of low grade burglary and street crime also being reduced.

Those whose addiction has become medically significant can receive their drugs on prescription with clean needles supplied thereby improving the health and well being of addicts.

The report offers a powerful reminder that in fact alcohol is a drug with much more significant social costs than almost any other drug. The police will often report that policing a town centre on a Saturday is made so much more difficult as a result of drunken behaviours.

In our so called big society we need to take a fresh look at our social policies and programmes and to review them for fairness and effectiveness.

Years ago I read an article in my local paper about a person arrested in night club, he had been selling 'Ecstasy' to youngsters in the club. On closer examination it turned out that the 'Ecstasy' was in fact a dog worming tablet. The supplier thought that he might have got off the dealing charge, which he did, but the Police apparently brought a charge of 'going equipped to defraud' on which the dealer was found guilty......

Sunday 5 June 2011

5th June 2011

Yesterday my wife told me that I was looking old.

Challenged, I responded quickly by pointing to my fashionable clothes, my Converse Sneakers, my Ray Bans, my flat stomach and my record collection. All, I thought, incontrovertible evidence of a 'dedicated follower of fashion' entering his later years fashionably.

'No' she replied, 'it's the unshaven look, you appear to have stopped shaving'.

Clearly the Ryan Giggs five day shadow has slipped out of favour in our house.

Immediately I popped up to the bathroom and applied the Mach 3 to my facial hair, indeed to the whole of my head apart from my upper lip, no hair transplant for me, and returned to be greeted by a welcome, that's an improvement but not a resounding, you're looking younger.

Later, fishing with the grandchildren, I was exhorted to take care, the river bank was slippy after the rain, I suppose they didn't want to have to dive in and rescue me, after all I had to drive them home!

Of course each of these moments was a reminder that I, like everyone else of my age and my generation, am getting older. The baby boom has reached the autumn of its trajectory through time and space. The children of the sixties have reached their sixties.

Anyone working with older people will be continually struck by the richness of memories and experience that go to make up their individual stories.

There is a wisdom available, sieved through the shared memories of and in any work with older people which is the quiet reflective engagement which allows people to work at their memories, their hopes and fears, their pride in children and grandchildren, their relationships with neighbours, attempting, where possible, to reflect on and make sense of their lives and life in their final years, as an integrated whole.

The problem is that older people are now a cause of concern for the public finances. Political rivalry and differences between the parties has resulted in good solutions being proposed and rejected and bad solutions being brought forward and then found to be unworkable and quietly dropped.

As a child of the welfare state I imagined that as a pensioner I would fare well enough in my dotage, but not so.

I have been involved in elder care for most of my time as a vicar in the Church of England. As a curate I was the youngest member of the local Derby and Joan Club. In the church itself congregations tend to be older than the population at large. Then there is communion and visiting to the homes in the parish or the alms houses where the older members of the community lived. When I lived in the States I was hired by a congregation to take communion to the 'Shut-Ins'. In time I became a committee member at national level of two Housing Associations offering elder care and even briefly a Chaplain in a care scheme run by the Methodist Housing Association.

Knowing how the finances of these schemes worked, usually relying on some form of public subsidy, I could never understand how the financial model used in the private sector, could ever produce a profit.

The latest story to hit the headlines of course makes it clear.

One such private company, using a sale and lease back model, which charges around £2000 a month for its accommodation, is now in trouble. It's directors sold their shares recently for a handsome profit and now the companies residents are worrying about their future.

My wife's stepmother lived in sheltered housing, she once told me with a strong sense of wonder that beneath the residential home were a network of tunnels. She turned to her elderly neighbour for confirmation of the truth of her claim. 'Why', responded the neighbour, 'are you planning to escape?'

But of course there is no escape.

Elder care is rapidly becoming a rock on which much of the welfare and health care budget threatens to founder. Everyone is looking for a way to escape the forth coming collision.

There is, despite the sub-title of this Blog nothing wry about getting older and I can't do much better than quote from Martin Amis's most recent book, The Pregnant Widow.

Old age wasn’t for old people. To cope with old age, you really needed to be young – young, strong, and in peak condition, exceptionally supple and with very good reflexes. Your character, too, should be of no common stamp, but should blend the fearlessness of youth with age-old tenacity and grit.

He said, ‘literature, why didn’t you tell me?’ Old age may bring wisdom. But it doesn’t bring bravery. On the other hand, you’ve never had to face anything as terrifying as old age.

So I guess there's nothing for it, shave more often, take care on slippy river banks and keep taking the tablets.

And at least I've got the new Blondie album to look forward to and after that, well I'm sure I will think of something ............


Friday 3 June 2011

3rd June 2011

When I was last in Genova I was sitting outside the Teatro Cafe in Piazza Marsala , drinking a coffee and reading the FT, as one does, when a Harley Davidson pulled up. Like mine it was an 883 Sportster, but unlike mine, it was painted in a menacing Matt Black instead of the more showy chrome.

It was like anti-matter on wheels.

The leather clad biker dismounted and removed their helmet. She then brushed her long blonde hair back off her face and crossed the road into the Carrefour.

Wow!

Casually I sauntered over to take a closer look at the Bike. Well impressive, with the shockers and brake cylinders finished in Red to set the whole thing off.

Bikes are the perfect fusion of form and function. They do what they do perfectly and yet manage to look so cool whilst doing it. As a rider you have to not only play the part, but be the part.

Leathers are crucial to the image.

As are shades, mine of course, have prescription lenses. A colour co-ordinated helmet and gloves complete the image.

Yesterday, following two weeks of rain and two months in the shed whilst we were in Genova, the Harley started with the first turn of the key and then it was off to where? at the filling station a chap asked 'where are you heading?'

'Oh, you know', I said, 'for a ride'.

And with that I set off for Scotland.

Actually Scotland is only seven miles away but it felt faintly heroic to be visiting another country and the Langholme to Annan Road, the B6357 whilst not Route 66 offers 25 Kilometre's of perfect riding.

Especially on a glorious June day with the soundtrack of the V Twin for company.

Almost the whole ride was 'in the moment', the sound of the engine, the feel of the road, the acceleration and the braking, there were just two moments when my mind started to drift. The first was when I passed the sign welcoming me to Scotland in Gaelic - FĂ ilte. The second was when I travelled past the wedding rooms in Gretna and saw the sign welcome to England.

I found myself wondering what might be the implications of an independent Scotland and what might be the implication if Carlisle became Scottish as a part of re-drawing what has been a very movable border historically. Carlisle has been Scottish during at least three periods of history and was returned to English Rule in 1157 only to be returned to Scotland in 1217.

The Border Reivers are a powerful memory in this part of the world and the cursing stone in Carlisle Castle is a reminder of that turbulent period with the Reivers names carved into the pavement.

The economic benefits that might follow from independence, from University Tuition fees, Elder Care and Fishing Licences are considerable, which is why so many English folk choose to retire into Scotland.

It will be interesting to see whether as Scotland votes for independence the citizens of Carlisle vote to Join them or not ...............

Wednesday 1 June 2011

1st June 2011

Churches are failing in their mission and ministry, causing some to ask, 'Can faith have a future in the countryside?'

The church is struggling with survival and has neither the time nor the energy to engage in mission.

Still there are many active church members working alongside others for transformation, witnessing and celebrating with local meats, organic cheese, locally baked bread and locally brewed beer.

This is social ecumenism.

Every denomination is experiencing the strain of maintaining its ministry in the face of aging and declining congregations

What is required and what must happen if faith is to have an organised expression in the countryside is four fold:

  1. Centres of strategic importance must be identified. These will become the Cathedrals or Minsters of the countryside, here the stipendiary ministers with clerical support can be based, worship offered, and congregations gathered.

  1. Centres of spiritual significance should be used. Some of these, like Lanercost Priory with its beautiful soaring building, local to Brampton, are already gathered congregations, visitor and tourist attractions. Others are old celtic sites and crosses, some long abandoned and in needing of restoration, but these too can become places of pilgrimage, for away-days, retreats and the spiritual renewal that needs to be restored at a time when economic opportunities are reduced.

  1. Individual Christians will be invited to meet, for study, prayer and reflection as part of a renewed lay ministry, to enable people to engage with issues of community concern, local and wider, alongside people of all faiths and none, but who are equipped to share their concerns and their faith openly and clearly with those who ask.

  1. The church should, in humility, seek to participate in social  ecumenism, recognizing that a shared commitment to a  common good, a human future, is a corporate task to be developed collaboratively between peoples of all faiths and none.

There are the signs around of  shoots of renewal, many outside the churches, sometimes named and sometimes un-named.

Here are individuals and groups sensing a call to serve, to take risks in and out of faith, here are groups seeking new ways of being community with or without the church, discovering new and innovative ways of being community through sharing the life of  community.

To see this article in full see: Green Christian: http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/gc/g71/gc71-sustaining-brampton.doc

1st June 2011

According to my weather app. he first day of June in Carlisle  is much a muchness with the first day of June in Genova with the exception that in Carlisle it is not raining.

So there's a surprise.

So because it is only a degree colder and in fact drier I ventured into the garden which has been totally neglected whilst we were in Genova.

Everything was caught up in a horrible tangle of Nettles, Bindweed and Ground Elder.

Apparently Ground Elder was brought here by the Romans as a Salad Plant. But it is a vicious plant that develops by sending out roots which dig deeply under the soil and rapidly colonise a garden, especially if you have abandoned it to nature and headed off to Italy for two months.

So we returned, like the ancient Britons we are, to a Roman Occupation.

I hate gardening. I say that so there can be no argument. In fact I promised myself that when I retired I would write a book called The One day a Year Gardener.

Ground Elder put an end to that project and a book called the One day a Week Gardener sounds pretty average and as though you will not learn too much by buying and reading it.

But there it is the real, historical legacy of the first European Union. Weeds that can't be controlled.

Unless you count the roads and the language.

All in all the British have not been too keen on thinking of themselves as European.

I saw a sticker in a car window this morning saying, Love Europe but not the EU.

In fact when I was a vicar in Manchester the richest man in the parish retired, he owned the local Fish and Chip shop, and decided to go on a cruise.

When I visited him I expressed enthusiasm for the trip he was planning, never having been abroad myself, but he was not that enthusiastic explaining that it was 'the wife's' idea. He said that he had once been on a 'foreign' holiday, a week in a Belgium Holiday Camp. He said that on the ferry on the way home the whole family agreed that they hadn't enjoyed the holiday at all.

'I thought', he said, 'If that's abroad, you can keep it'.

I must admit thinking once or twice this morning that I wished that the Romans had kept their Ground Elder to themselves.

We enjoyed our time in Genova, by the end of May we had spent three months in Genova and only two in England.

There is much to enjoy about being 'abroad', the language, the cafe culture, the weather, caffe corretto and long, very civilised lunches amongst them.

Now it seems, that with the exception of France, another thing to enjoy will be alternative energy.

Apparently, because of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, the Germans are about to close down their Nuclear Plants and invest in alternative energy, the French will soon be the major nuclear power in Europe producing most of, if not all, the Nuclear Energy.

The German decision is not entirely about managing risk, it is also about holding onto power as Angela Merkel seeks to form a new stronger co-alition with the Greens.

In a couple of months we are off to spend a few weeks in another hot bed of alternative energy, Scotland, where Hydro-Electricity and the Hebridean Wind Farms produce clean energy.

It will be interesting to see how, as the impact of the German decision is felt, whether clean energy strengthens the campaign for Scottish independence and whether Scotland then joins the EU and the impact that will have on English energy security.

We may even be grateful to those first European settlers, the Romans, when we sit down to a cold plate of Ground Elder Salad.