Monday 29 August 2011

29th August 2011

I used to sit on a committee with a Bishop called Bill Westwood.

He was the Bishop of Peterborough.

He once accused me of striking a posture to reinforce a point I was making.

I think he said something like, ‘It’s all very well trying to appear to be a radical, Geoff, but you’re a Church of England Vicar, just like me.

Some years later I was listening to this down home, black sounding DJ on the radio, urging me to ‘get down’ and ‘get with it’ and ‘make peace with the brothers’ or some such down in the ghetto language, as the programme ended I recognised the name, Westwood.

It turned out that this cool sounding faux ‘black’ dude was in fact the extremely white son of the extremely white Bishop who accused me of striking a posture.

David Starkey got into PC trouble over his comments on News Night on the BBC.

Maybe it was the mention of Enoch Powell.

I thought he was actually disagreeing with that old Tory but then ………… H’mm.

But he said that white folk now sounded black.

Perhaps he had been listening to the Bishop’s son also.

Whilst I hold no particular brief for David Starkey it does seem to me that he was right.

The argon of modern communication is a variation on Jamaican patois, direct from Kingston, that’s on Thames, of course.

When a friend of mine was made Bishop of Kingston, he told me, he received a letter wishing him a successful ministry in Jamaica.

Of course its music and rap, which passes for music (showing my age there a bit I suppose), but when an academic makes an observation which is clearly based on listening to what is happening to our language it does seem fairly churlish to throw the book at him.

As the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego Ali G didn’t actually ask ‘Is it ‘cos I’m white?’.

Friday 26 August 2011

26th August 2011

Apparently the funniest joke told at the Edinburgh Festival was a modern joke about computer passwords.

I have to admit that I didn't laugh when I read it.

Maybe it was the way the comedian in question told it?

Maybe you needed to have heard it?

Maybe it was the timing?

I did laugh at a couple of the jokes on the list however so my vote for the funniest joke would have gone to the one which made me laugh aloud over my Bacon sandwich.

Humour is a fantastic weapon.

Colonel Gaddafi has been using it for years.

Not that many Libyans were laughing at his antics, his fancy dress, or his habit of locking people up or disappearing them.

I once attended a reading by the Libyan writer Hisham Matar of his first novel which was about the disappearance of his father in Libya.

The events are seen through the eyes of a child and are both disturbing and shocking and at the time made me wonder why Gaddafi was Mr Blair's latest 'friend'.

Now it appears in order to have the last laugh Gaddafi has disappeared himself and pops up from time to time on the TV or Radio, like the ghost in the machine.

Supporting the Libyan peoples' struggle to overthrow a dictatorship that killed its own citizens all day long and governed through fear and the long reach of its secret agents seems essentially a good thing and something that the coalition can be rightly proud of.

But it is interesting that, despite this being a good news story, not all the facts have been placed in the public domain and the role of the Special Forces is clouded in a mystery of fog and desert sand.

I must admit that I find Have I Got News for You a generally more watchable and enjoyable review of the news than Question Time the night before.

There is something faintly ridiculous about the panel of Question Time taking themselves so seriously, occasionally attacking each others views, trying to explain the unexplainable, (i.e. con-dem policies on this or that affair of state) or equally, justify the unjustifiable. As the programme descends into the usual shouting of slogans I switch off and head to bed dreaming of tomorrows bacon sandwiches.

I would much rather watch four comedians and a judge bring down 'a plague on all their houses' as Shakespeare described it in Romeo and Juliet.

I was once invited to a breakfast meeting at Downing Street to meet Mr Blair.

When I arrived I was offered various pieces of fruit impaled on cocktail sticks (this turned out to be breakfast, the Bacon sandwiches were off the menu apparently) at this point our host had not arrived and we were ushered into another room where a TV was switched on by a flunkie with a remote control and we were greeted by .... Mr Blair, apologising for not being with us in person.

There was something of the Wizard of Oz about the whole event and I am left still with the sense that Mr Blair might not actually exist in person. It could even be that Rory Bremner or Michael Sheen were the 'real' Blair and that the grainy figure on the TV was an entirely fictional person invented to meet a particular need at a particular time in politics.

When the time comes to comment on Libya Mr Cameron might think of Julius Caesar and his famous report on his short war in Turkey.

Vini, Vidi, Vici.

But reflecting on Mr Blair and his non appearance at breakfast (and the lack of Bacon sandwiches) I can only offer.

Vini, Video, Via

Tuesday 23 August 2011

23rd August 2011

Whisky Galore.

I received a post card the other day from a friend holidaying on Barra in the outer Hebrides.

It set me thinking about looting and rioting (well maybe not rioting) and the hysteria that it has generated amongst politicians and the commentariat and the  indignation at the moral collapse it apparently signified.

Whisky Galore is best known as a book and a film.

The book was published in 1947 and the film released in 1949.

It was a comedy.

But it was also a true story about a ship, the SS Politician (Such a great name for a ship, you couldn't really make it up? However in the film the ship was called SS Cabinet Minister).

The SS Politician was sailing from Liverpool in the winter of 1941 heading for America when it went aground and sank off the Hebrides.

When local people sailed out to rescue the crew they discovered that the cargo consisted of 28, 000 cases of Malt Whisky.

Twelve bottles to a case! Do the maths!

In reality the ship had sunk off of Eriskay not Barra where the Whisky supply had dried up because of war time rationing.

The ships stock of whisky had not cleared through customs and so no duty had been paid. Even now of course ferries and cruise ships are stocked with 'Duty Free' and the on board shops are busy throughout the cruise.

The islanders relieved the ship of 24, 000 of the 28, 000 cases. They saw the retrieval of the cargo as salvage because, as the cargo was 'at sea' when it was lost, this made it theirs to 'rescue'

But the Customs and Excise official Mr McColl saw things differently and pursued the cargo, which he saw as having been looted in an act of outright thievery.

Despite the indignation of the Customs Officer most people saw the events as being amusing and the book (and later the film) were released as comedies.

One story in particular illustrated the humour when the men wore their wives dresses when they went on the 'fishing' trips, in order to prevent oil form the ships hold staining their own clothes.

I'm not sure that there is any linkage between these events over sixty years ago and the August riots in London but it struck me, I suppose, how the stealing of whisky in the middle of the second world war from a ship run aground off a remote Scottish island could be seen, even at the time the book was published, only six years after the incident, as comedy, whilst the events in London generated moral outrage.

Maybe it was because it was Whisky? Maybe it was the men in their wives dresses? Maybe it was that it was a long way away in a remote location?

Or maybe Trainers and G Star clothes and 50" Flat Screen TV's are not as intrinsically funny as Whisky?

Whatever, it will be interesting to see whether the August riots generate novels and films, and whether as time elapses, moral outrage will give way to a more sanguine view of the events of 2011?


Sunday 21 August 2011

21st August 2011

I found myself filling in an application form the other day.

It asked me to list all the jobs I have ever had.

It wasn't that difficult as I haven't really had that many, but as I wrote them down I found myself thinking about different aspects of each job and how I might have responded professionally to current events, wearing the different hats I have worn over the years.

Essentially I have been a curate in the Church of England (three times), a Vicar, a Canon (twice) a Civil Servant (twice) an Academic (pseudo) and a Charity Director, although the most resonsible job I have ever had was as a fifteen year old tyre fitter, when people drove away their safety, indeed their lives, depended on my having done my job properly.

One job in particular made me reflect on the riots and the big society.

The job involved working in both inner city and outer estate areas of Birmingham. The aim of the job was to introduce and promote community based strategies for drug prevention.

Our research concluded that that if your brother was a drug user then you were much more likely to become one.

As the researcher commented, 'It all depends on who your brother is'.

I was reminded of this conclusion by a piece in my saturday newspaper which commented on a study of 42, 000 Norwegian women. The article reported that it appears 'that teenage pregnancy tends to be contagious in families because girls are influenced by their older sisters'.

It all depends on who your sister is!

Fascinating how these pieces of research again and again reveal the importance of the family in determining behaviour.

Tony Blair has written in the Guardian arguing that the Con-Dem analysis that the moral breakdown in society is at the heart of the lawlessness in August, is wrong, instead Mr Blair argues, society is in fact more moral with both politicians and businesses, as well as individuals putting a more socially responsible approach at the heart of their actions.

Instead he argues, research, that his Government commissioned, demonstrates that some families are more likely to produce individuals who are 'outlaws' and that their outlaw behaviour begins, and can be identified even at the nursery.

It all depends on who your brother or sister  is.

The problem with the article is not the analysis, but that Mr Blair offers no prescription for addressing this problem which has taken root at the heart of our society other than to say that the papers are all on the record.

Society has always had outlaws, indeed some outlaws have won huge popular acclaim and a reputation that has outlived them, Bonnie and Clyde, Sid Vicious, Billy the Kid, we all have our favourite outlaws, mine was Ned Kelly, but individuals who live outside the law are one thing, when our communities are rendered unapproachable, dangerous and un-policeable then there should be a co-ordinated and carefully managed response.

In my job in Birmingham we attempted to empower young people, by encouraging diversionary activities and providing challenges that offered young people legitimate 'highs', as an alternative to experimentation with drugs.

The programme worked to some extent but there were never enough people and never enough money to turn our efforts from an interesting social experiment to an effective strategy.

On one occasion I had attended a meeting in an inner city area, as I drove away I was overtaken by four young men wearing expensive leather jackets driving a convertible BMW.

Mmm, I thought, now there go the true role models for the younger brothers in their families.

Not much chance for a middle class, middle aged civil servant to make an impression.

Or indeed for an old Etonian and his cabinet of millionaires I suspect.

Thursday 18 August 2011

18th August 2011

I created a face book page recently.

The open poetry network. It has attracted a couple of folk but at the moment is not looking too popular. I occasionally put a comment on it, or more accurately a poem and a couple of other people posted too.

But basically its a bit of a dead letter box.

But people seem amazingly challenged by the power of social networking.

It's like blogging.

What appeals to me is that I can write what I like and when I am satisfied with it I can publish it.

And folk can read it or not.

There was time when everything I wrote had to be typed (one finger at a time) and then posted to some mysterious, anonymous person, aka the Editor of whatever journal I had posted the piece to, and then some weeks or months or actually never, I received a rejection slip.

Now I write, I read, I review and then I press Publish and if you want to ignore it you can but famously I have become my own Editor.

And so far 2, 239 people have read what I have written and better still I have an international readership, from the United Kingdom, the USA, France, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, South Africa and Spain.

So I am pleased with that and feel that I have a responsibility to continue to offer my readers a wry look at the big society.

I also feel that I need to apologise because the events of the last couple of weeks in the UK have become pretty serious and it has been hard to maintain the wry view that I have promised.

Even the idea of starting a facebook site has recently become more problematic because it has been seen as inciting violence and riots and rebellion and two people have been sent to jail for it.

Surrounded by their fellow prisoners it must have been somewhat astounding when asked what are you in for? To hear them reply, I started a facebook page!

But the good news is that the riots seemed to inspire a big society response with folk out with their brushes almost the next day to mop up and get the place spick and span.

I really must act on my big society instincts and take my brush and disinfectant round to the local bus shelter and give it a good sweeping out and dusting down. It is a mess, not as the result of riots but its just a good place for local youngsters to hang out and despite there being a litter bin right next to it, the shelter is full of empty bottles, crisp packets, graffitti, and lord knows what.

I am of course pleased that Donna and Damian are so deeply committed to each other as it would seem are Kate and Kevin. But what would really make life better (in order that the local police don't need to introduce zero tolerance which could be nasty for everyone)  is if Donna and Damian and Katie and Kevin started a facebook page of their own rather than using the wall of the Bus Shelter.

Then they could send messages, share their affection with each other and drop their bottles and crisp bags in their own bedroom and their Mum could pick them up unless she is an old fashioned disciplinarian Mum and makes them pick up their own litter.

Enough already, just don't get me started on the pot holes outside the Co-op I'm sure my readers in South Africa don't need that ................

Tuesday 16 August 2011

16th August 2011

I keep waiting for a Church Leader to say something sensible about the riots apart from sharing in Mr Cameron's outrage.

But as the debate rolls on and I seem to be waiting in vain.

Which is a shame because I suspect that religion may well have something to say about the summer of 2011.

Or at least the lack of religion.

As far as I know neither the Prime Minister, The Deputy Prime Minister or the Leader of the Labour Party are practising Christians, at least not to the degree to which Tony Blair went out of his way to demonstrate his belief, despite Alastair Campbell declaring that they 'didn't do religion'.

Now there will be an enquiry into the riots.

I hope that a theologian is invited onto the panel to offer some thoughts about how the loss of belief, in the general rather than the denominational or faiths understanding of that word, may have contributed to the general recklessness.

We no longer need to pacify the Gods because they have been silenced.

We can run amok as though there is no law or constraint and no sanctions will be demanded. There will be no demand for sacrifices.

Francis Fukuyama in his latest book shows how religion has been instrumental in enabling human kind to move from its pre-history through a process of social evolution with banding and tribalism as steps on the path to full sociability which underpins what his title calls, The Political Order, which of course collapsed during the riots.

The images, screened and re-screened of the riots of August 2011 show a regression from full sociability, through tribalism (gang culture) to bands aggregated from individuals and groups who wished to make common cause by attacking and looting neighbourhoods.

Last night Panorama showed an excellent film which went some way to explaining what lay behind the eruption of lawlessness in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, but which also revealed the human tragedy and the pain of those caught up in the violence.

Caught between horror at the apparently mindless violence that affected innocent people, destroying homes and businesses and livelihoods and a desire to understand the circumstances which gave rise to the riots, it is essential that in seeking to explain the one you don't trivialise the other.

I just find it very hard to listen to Mr Cameron or Mr Ian Duncan Smith and share either their outrage or find their solutions acceptable. How can you call what occurred a moral collapse without having a shared basis for and understanding of what constitutes a 'moral order? How does making someone homeless help improve their social usefulness?

It may be a bit rich to suggest that the Christian answer of turning the other cheek is appropriate but of course the heroic and hugely affecting image of Tariq Jahan who made it clear that his Muslim faith required that he accept his son's death without calling for retaliation and whose response to his personal tragedy was described by a senior policeman as: 'one of the most powerful, generous and far-sighted interventions I have ever seen, at a moment of absolute grief and devastation' came at a crucial moment in the violence that was threatening to engulf Birmingham.

So no, I haven't heard a church leader offer any insight into the events of August 2011 but I find myself reflecting again and again on Mr Jahan's words and thinking how a quiet word of faith called people to their senses and called time on the escalating violence.

Monday 15 August 2011

15th August 2011

I once stopped a riot.

Me against twenty or twenty five angry young men.

They were residents of a hostel that I set up and ran with volunteer staff, one volunteer was an American who said that America was meant to be a violent society but he had never witnessed violence like he had during his six month placement with us.

One of the lads had a girl friend whose father, a publican in a local pub, didn't approve of him. He decided that this was disrespect and so he came back to arm himself with a knife and recruit some back up and go back to teach the father a lesson.

The hostel was not the most popular house in the street and relationships with the local community were tense at the best of times.

I heard the noise in the hallway and came out of the staff room to see the gang assembling, fired up and ready for a good dust up.

Most of the lads had spent time in young offenders institutes and were wise to the consequences of their actions but actually didn't care because they were able to deal with the regular meals and exercise which made a change from their usual hand to mouth existence being turned out of shopping malls because they were young.

When I approached the main actor in this drama he made it clear that he couldn't stand by and allow people to disrespect him he had to respond, which was when he produced a fearsome looking knife.

Somehow I persuaded him to hand over the knife. Making sure that he didn't lose face in front of his mates. I then talked him out of over reacting to the disrespect and at least to sleep on his hurt feelings and see how things looked in the morning.

This incident occurred in a Northern Town nearly forty years ago but unemployment amongst young people was rife, the concept of neets hadn't been invented and young people were frequently made homeless because they didn't have any income and couldn't pay and their families couldn't subsidise or support them.

In keeping with the time the mission statement for the hostel was a line from a Bob Dylan song The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest:

"What kind of a house is this", (said Frankie Lee)
"Where I have come to roam ?"
"It's not a house", said Judas Priest
"It's not a house, it's a home".
Eventually the costs of running the house with volunteers and charitable funding became too much for the voluntary committee and the project was taken over by the Probation Service, it did not take too long for the residents to burn it down.
Recent events reminded me of this experience.

Amazing how we have gone from 'hugging hoodies' to 'making life hell for gangs'.

The Labour Party is beginning to formulate a National Conversation in order to develop a reasoned narrative to provide a context for the social unrest that shocked the Coalition Government who still deny any linkage between their policies and the events of last week.

Moral collapse and criminality is not sufficient of an explanation because it is not true.

Like my experience forty years ago it was never clear what lay at the roots of the eruption of the anger: Disrespect, Check. Dissatisfaction with their living circumstances, Check.

More recently envy at the lifestyle boasted in the FT's How to Spend it supplement, has been represented by the commentariat as a possible cause. 

But the coalition has to accept that their policies are exacerbating social division, that across the country people are struggling to put fuel in their cars, clothes on their backs, food on their tables.

Mr Clegg warned that these things would happen if the Tories won outright.

They didn't, and yet they are happening anyway.


Friday 12 August 2011

12th August 2011

We popped into Carlisle today.

Turning the corner we were surprised to see that Top Shop was windowless and was being boarded up.

Surely not we thought? Then we gave it a second chance.

Aah, its OK, Top Shop was being re-fitted.

So it's business as usual for Mr Green making even more money to salt away in his Tax Haven.

I guess that the weather was enough to stop rioting in Carlisle, it hasn't stopped raining all summer.

The Cumberland Show was rained out if not off. It rained on just about every parade that has been planned and it is still raining.

So that's a solution, the natural water canonry of the North of England designed to cool the ardour and leave Botchergate to the party goers after the clubs shut and give the shop fitters a chance to get Top Shop open in time for folk to buy their clubbing gear for another night out on the rain soaked Town.

Morality has been called into play.

Parent's, if there are any, simply don't know or care where their children are asserts Mr Cameron.

Society is morally corrupt.

Well that of course is true, with MP's, some of whose expenses claims were eye wateringly generous awarding themselves lap tops and colour TV's to the tune of thousands of pounds (ring any bells?).

Does anyone know whether the holidays that have been cut short so that MP's could return for yesterdays debate, mean that expenses were claimed for the flights and railway journeys and car journeys involved and the overnight accommodation and the return flights to the Algarve or wherever?

I somehow suspect that individual MP's didn't just say, 'Oh well its our choice to go back and undertake an exercise in moral posturing so we'll pay for our own flights'.

But the message was clear, we are living in a safe haven, strange choice of words for the Chancellor, I'll bet folk in Tottenham or Hackney or Croydon didn't think that they were in a safe haven a couple of nights ago?

Overall the debate in parliament was poor.

Mr Cameron's speech was unedifying. No acknowledgement of the responsibility for the social unrest and the general divisiveness of coalition policies which can only rest with the Government.

No plea to bear with us, no suggestion that, honestly, gratification has simply been deferred not abandoned, just the iteration of the same message, that the deficit must be reduced and all must bear a share of the pain unless they can afford to avoid it altogether of course.

The Chancellor's speech simply reiterated the same old cliches.

Mr Milliband raised the the issue of equality, having asked his parties MP's to read 'The Spirit Level' over the summer it might have been expected that there could have been some engagement with the equality argument, but it was left to Jack Straw to sound like a Labour Party member.

If Labour is going to form a credible opposition it really needs to launch a strong and well argued political and moral counter argument to the sheer unfairness of the con dem policies, the rise of a deeply unequal and increasingly divided society and to make it clear that these events could have been foreseen and indeed have been forecast. No one should have been surprised.

But surely nobody could think that we really are all in it together? It must be clear that the tax dodgers and the dodgy claims for MP's expenses mean that some of us are out of it altogether, whilst some of us are stuck with it.

Now the courts are working overtime right throughout the night to ensure that no-one involved in the troubles escapes without punishment.

All night sittings with Magistrates refusing bail and remanding folk into custody to await trial by Crown Court because they can't impose sufficiently severe punishments.

Incarcerating folk unnecessarily in an overcrowded prison system.

What was Mr Cameron's comment about his Press Secretary?

'Everyone deserves a second chance'.

Well I guess an ex editor of the News of the World does in Mr Cameron's view, but not the looters and rioters who will be pursued and punished with the full weight of the law.

Because according to Mr Cameron  “If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment.”

'Everyone deserves a second chance'?

Thursday 11 August 2011

11th August 2011

Back from a holiday in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands with only sporadic and unpredictable internet access.

So it was a blogging holiday too.

The road ends and from here on there is a Train and a footpath to Glencoe.

Only  the newspapers to rely on.

Headlines. London Burning. Riots. Croydon in flames. Anarchy in the UK. Boris the roadsweeper with a brush. Cameron cuts short his holiday in Tuscany.

It takes time to digest what has happened. Clearly no-one approves. Is it a politically  inspired riot to protest the unfairness of the cuts and the damage to communities? Or is it simply robbery and violence for its own sake? The commentariat are full of the stories, the deaths, a woman jumping from a burning building. Young people out of control and then, breathless from his holiday and fresh from Cobra and wearing his socks, the Prime Minister, it's not 'broken' Britain it's 'sick' Britain.

Somehow I want to say let's just calm down a bit here and reflect.

Britain is neither broken nor sick.

But it is angry.

Angry at Politicians, angry at the Police, angry at Bankers, angry at the sheer unfairness of the cuts, angry about poverty, just plain angry, so angry in fact that people are up in arms.

We have created a society that has moved beyond Descartes, I think therefore I am, to a society in which people are defined by what they have, it is a society shaped by designer labels, designer clothes and possessions.

Our shopping habits are determined by the advertising, the product placement and seductive nature of the spending power given to us by our credit cards, life is priceless - for everything else there's a plastic card.

So what has happened, well the undervalued, often underpaid and overworked teachers are on holiday and so young people are not in school, in other words the first line of social control has been removed at least until September.

Traditionally in the UK the police, police by consent, well it seems that for whatever reason, that consent was withdrawn, too much stop and search? the death of a young man? police using stand off tactics in order to lower the risk of confrontation, the loss of key leadership over phone hacking? dissatisfaction at the financial settlement?

Suddenly we are faced with the possibility of another Peterloo as the army, water canon, rubber bullets are described or prescribed.

And whilst people whose businesses and livelihoods are understandably angry it doesn't help to use words like 'Scum' to describe other human beings with whom you need to make community, however angry their actions might make you feel, they are people first and last and made, as we all are, in the image of one who was both fully human and fully Divine.

And why should any of those in these poor communities worry about the impact of their actions on the Olympics? They won't be attending!

In 1985 I lived for six months in Boston, Massachusetts. I was a student at The Episcopal Divinity School. My Tutor at the school once said in passing, that he was always amazed that the USA managed to 'hang together' between breakfast and lunch, such was the complexity of the social mix, the racial mix, the economics and the weather.

I have lived in Birmingham and enjoyed everyone of the six years in a City that offers a rich mix of cultures, opportunities and experiences. I have visited London regularly and enjoyed the rich social, artistic and cultural mix I have found in different communities from Tottenham to Brixton.

The trouble with using the idea of brokenness as a sound bite is that it can become true and return, as it has these past days, to haunt us all.

Britain is not broken. That is a simple fact.

It hangs together generally very well between Breakfast and Lunch and right through into the evening.

Generally the streets are safe. People are friendly, there is common courtesy and often those simple acts of kindness that are exchanged between strangers do much to make this a good place to live, which is why people hold it as an aspiration to move to England for the opportunity it offers to better their chances of a good and fulfilling life.

It took a riot in Liverpool before Mrs Thatcher tasked Lord Hesletine to look at what was needed to transform the City and return hope to the people.

I can only hope that Mr Cameron has the courage to see these tragic events not as 'criminality' but as the cry of rage they represent, an almost inchoate expression of anger about the appalling effects of poverty and the withdrawal of services that support individual families and communities and without which life becomes unbearable.

Britain is locked into a pattern of social division exacerbated by the structural unfairness of our economics and there is a common view that the people who got us into this mess have been allowed to get away with it and have not been held to account.

As the author's of the book 'The Spirit Level' have argued a more equal society is better for everyone.

So when those in the financial industry who, it is perceived, can still buy a house or a Porsche out of the loose change in their annual bonus payment, or the tax they have avoided paying, it is hardly surprising that people weighed down with poverty and indebtedness feel that, as one woman, quoted in the Guardian, commented, as she carried a stolen TV away,  'I'm just claiming my tax back'.

Monday 1 August 2011

1st August 2011

The Ice Cream Van always pulled up outside my school at 3 00 pm.

What could be nicer than an ice cream whilst waiting for the bus home? Think vanilla or strawberry or chocolate, think the ubiquitous '99', mmm delicious after a hard day avoiding doing any work, avoiding the teachers and failing to answer any questions and studiously avoiding the education that was on offer.

Economics were a case in point, who cared about economic theory, Keynes and all that, when the economics practical was enacted each day outside school at the ice cream van.

The problem that confronted both the ice cream vendor and the pupils of the school was: Did we have the resources to purchase the ice creams?

For the ice cream vendor his business, prosperity and the well being of his family depended on his selling enough ice creams to pay for his ice cream van, his diesel, the ingredients etc and still leave him with a profit.

For the school children their Saturday jobs and pocket money formed the basis of their weekly income which had to be husbanded throughout the school week so that they could purchase their ice cream each day.

It was a good relationship, it worked well, so well in fact that during one particularly dry spell, when funds were low, I opened an account with the Luigi, and enjoyed my ice creams, settling my account after I had been paid for delivering the weekly orders to the customers of the co-op where I worked pedalling an old fashioned butchers style bicycle with an enormous basket around Stoke on Trent for five bob a week I seem to remember.

This was a great innovation because essentially Luigi extended interest free credit to me and I kept my resources for a whole week before paying for my ice cream, I should of course have banked the money and earned interest which would have put me ahead of the game.

Practical economics.

If you want to grow a business or a nations economy then you have to stimulate demand in order to encourage people to spend and purchase your ice cream.

In the big society the ambitious vision of millionaire wallpaper magnets and stockbrokers sons has lost sight of the simple truth that Luigi and I understood, if we didn't buy his ice creams he wouldn't be at the school gate but equally he had to find ingenious ways of parting us from our hard earned money.

John Maynard Keynes, who we were taught about in economics was pretty clear about this, although at the time I could have cared less about Keynes as I was focused on ice cream which is why I left school with one GCE in Woodwork, which was mainly down to my ability to fashion a dove tail joint.

But Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne ought to remind themselves of what Keynes said about growth depending on demand.

Reduce demand you reduce growth.

So there we are as I queue up for diesel tomorrow I know that it will cost so much that there will be no money left over for luxuries like ice creams.

As we tighten our belts in this we're all in this together big society we still expect to enjoy a holiday, although I will be enjoying rain and midges in Scotland rather than Prosecco in Tuscany.

I have no idea where the Chancellor is holidaying but suggest that he needs to reflect that the deeper the cuts, the greater the pain, the less money there is, the lower the demand will be and the growth we are promised will simply not happen.

At a conference recently I came across all Tony Bennish by challenging the speaker who quoted Keynes about digging holes and filling them in again, by reminding him of just how much real work there is to be done in personal social services, work with the elderly, wider community work, public construction of schools and nurseries and how many people who were well qualified for that work are losing their jobs because of the cuts  and who, without that secure income are finding it hard to buy essentials never mind luxuries like ice cream.

Luigi will be long retired and probably will have moved back to Tuscany himself to be looked after by his family.

But I remember his ice creams and the practical economics I learned at the ice cream van .................