31st December 2012

Some people embrace retirement, some have retirement thrust upon them.

I retired twice.

My first retirement happened in 2007. I actually finished work in 2006 and following a period of re-adjustment and numerous unsuccessful job applications decided to retire and draw down my occupational pension.

This, combined with some self employment, generated sufficient funds for me to pay the mortgage and eat.

But it was a worrying three years.

My second retirement happened three years later in 2010 when I turned sixty five and qualified for my State Pension.

As 2013 dawns on the morning of January 1st I will have been without gainful employment for six years.

They have been mixed years.

My leaving work was not anticipated and the level of anxiety about the future and how I would manage both emotionally and financially was high, but we did manage, somehow!

During this period I found myself wondering not only about the events leading to my finishing work, but to the ugliness of the word used to describe my situation, redundant.

It is a horrible word describing a person as no longer being useful in any way.

I was also aware that I had worked in what was meant to be a caring profession, as a minister in the Church of England, and yet, whilst my pension arrangements were dealt with in a highly professional manner, nobody, from my previous Bishop to the Bishop of the Diocese in which I 'retired' or any of their staff bothered to pick up the 'phone to ask, 'how are you doing?'

Perhaps they were afraid of the answer I would give, afraid that they would somehow become responsible?

During the six years opportunities have opened up and one of these opportunities has meant that as a retired clergyman I am from time to time offered a Locum Duty in the Diocese of Europe.

Basically I get somewhere for the indoor critic and I to live and in exchange I spend some time assisting the local church to fulfill it's calling, to break bread and to look after the church building.

I have worked in both Italy and Spain.

Now it might be the Mediterranean diet of Olives and Tomato's, it might be the Seafood or the Menu del Dias in Spain or the Caffe Corretto in Italy, but it seems to me that old age and retirement offer something different in those countries.

In Italy retirement translates roughly as pensione, so Olive Oil etc notwithstanding,a pensioner in the UK would be a pensione in Italy, with an added 'r'.

Perhaps with a little more respect shown, after all Berlusconi is a pensione, it must be the Olive Oil after all, or the Tomato's?

But in Spain there is another word altogether, Jubilacion!

In our local town, amongst the various shops and bars opening and closing and changing hands, a clothing shop is closing down.

Above the door is a sign saying that they are closing due to 'Jubilacion'.

In other words the owner is retiring.

Soon he will be spending his days on the corner by his house, sitting in the january sun chatting with friends or playing dominos in his local bar.

After a lifetime of work; Jubilacion!

2013 promises to be a good year.

I am hoping that my sixth year of retirement will be a year of and for Jubilacion.

28th December 2012

This is the time of year when we review the past twelve months.

Wettest, windiest, wildest, most wearisome, you know the kind of thing.

The newspapers are full of books and records and films of the year, some of which, having seen or read I am secretly pleased with myself and my good taste and some I think, glad I didn't waste my money.

I guess that I place myself in a pretty easily caricatured place if I admit that my best book was a close race between Will Hutton, Changing Britain, why we need a fairer society and The Big Music, by Kirsty Gunn, my favourite record was a close run thing between Bob Dylan and my friends Jinski, Down Home and my favourite film without a doubt, was Killer Joe.

But Music and Film and Books are not the only things that we must review, of course we must also review the performance of both the Government and the Opposition.

Essentially the summary of all the reviews must be: The most austere year ever!

Like many commentators and bloggers some of what you may have read in this blog was wrong and some was OK and some was right.

But the consensus must be that we have experienced policies which have left the poorest poorer, some the same and the better off, well, even better off.

This coalition Government has proved itself to be friends of the wealthy and no amount of self righteous indignation from the Deputy Prime Minister will ever convince me otherwise.

Commentator after commentator in Newspaper after Newspaper has opined that the drift to the right, the economic policies, the cuts and the attacks on those dependent on benefits, have out Thatcher'ed Mrs T by the power of a considerable blue margin.

The only thing that  has not happened is that we have not waged war against a belligerent enemy or engaged in any argy bargy.

The opposition gets a beta minus for its efforts.

There is an economic plan which works to lift those at the bottom of society, the poorest, the children, the elderly and the disabled to a level where they can enjoy the benefits of a society becoming richer without disproportionately damaging those innovators and entrepreneurs who generate wealth.

It always strikes me that the comments of the Chancellor about folk lying in bed behind closed curtains whilst others get up and go to work were meant to be damaging and insulting to a section of society who are sometimes called welfare scroungers or cheats.

But how much more damaging and insulting is the view expressed by both Mrs Thatcher and her heirs and successors that the wealthy only ever get out of bed and draw the curtains because they want to make more and more money and become the subject of satirical derision by Harry Enfield.

The Opposition must in the year ahead begin to spread two truths about a modern capitalist system.

The first is that wealth does not trickle down.

The second is that if the jobs are not there then wages are the wrong mechanism for distributing wealth effectively.

As 2012 slowly and painfully limps to its conclusion, with only Jools Holland's Hootenanny to save it from total ignominy, we can only hope that 2013 will fare better.

I look forward to a warm spring leading to a heatwave lasting from May to October followed by a mild autumn and a bright cold winter lasting from December the 22nd until December 31st.

The depression of 2012 will be followed by twelve months of sustained growth with all Millionaires voluntarily increasing their tax payments to 90% insisting that the money be used to lift all children out of poverty, ensuring the elderly are warm and well fed and that those needing health care and social support be given priority treatment in the new NHS Hospitals that will be built.

As this programme of social distribution gathers pace the Chancellor will address the double whammy of taxation on the poorest by ensuring that inflation is managed better and only impacts on the upper wage earner and that Lottery Tickets are taken off sale altogether.

Both inflation and the Lottery represent a tax on the poorest in society who see incomes eroding and who have a greater chance of being run over on their way to buy their lottery tickets than they have of ever becoming a millionaire by winning the lottery.

Of course during 2013 I will also be delighted to witness the formal procession, using the traditional open topped bus, from Eastlands, possibly via Maine Road, where the bus will automatically change colour from blue to red, to Old Trafford, as Roberto Mancini and his blue shirted acolytes return the Premier League Cup to its rightful place in the Old Trafford Trophy Room, the other much rumoured return of course is Christiano Ronaldo together with Jose Mourinho assuming the Mantle of Managership from the shoulders of Sir Alex.

So from the Theatre of Dreams to a year of dreams.

I think I will keep my brolly handy just in case.

21st December 2012

Yesterday the indoor critic and I set out for a Carol Service in Benalmadena.

The service was for the English Speaking congregations who meet in the Catholic Church of The Virgen  del Carmen in Bonanza Square, Benalmadena, both Anglican and Roman Catholic.

As we drove down from Alhuarin el Grande the temperature was a steady 24 degrees centigrade, hardly an appropriate temperature for attending a service of Christmas Carols.

We had set out early, quite intentionally, because it was such a beautiful day with hardly a cloud in the sky and we intended to treat ourselves to a little promenade, what in Genoa we came to call passeggiata and which in Spain we have learned is paseo.

We parked the car in Benalmadena near to a Mosque on the sea front, the Palm Trees, and the gentle wash of the sea on the sand below made a perfect combination.

As we set out on our walk we passed a Statue and in the way of those with time on their hands we went across to look at the Sculpture and read the Memorial.

The sculpture was of a man called Ibn al Baitar, he was born in Ben al Madina, as it was then called in 1197.

He was a Pharmacist, although in practice that meant herbalist and a Botanist.

Looking at the statute reminded us not only that this part of Spain was then part of the Caliphate, but that science and knowledge and a concern for human advancement was, in the time of Ibn al Baitar very much part of the heritage of Islam.

Ibn al Baitar died in 1248 in Damascus, at the age of 51 having served as herbalist to the Ayyubid sultan Al Kamil.

Later that day on the News we saw the pictures of the people assassinated by the Taliban for innoculating children against Polio.

There is something essentially tragic in comparing these two expressions of Islam one a careful, lifelong commitment to understanding the healing nature of plants, the other a woeful ignorance, seeking to turn  the clock back to an altogether darker age, whilst claiming to be operating in the tradition of Islam and calling for the return of the Caliphate.

But Ibn al Baitar also pointed to another link.

His birth in Ben al Madina, is duly celebrated by the memorial but, as a Citizen of the Caliphate he was free to travel and his research into the healing properties of plants took him from mainland Spain to North Africa, Asia Minor and the Middle East.

He published two books which were a resource to healers around the world far into the 19th Century.

But his death in Dasmascus draws another connection; with a tragic nation being bombed into the dark ages not by an enemy without, but by its own Government.

Having enjoyed our walk and as the sun began to set, we drove up to Bonanza Square and the huge Church of the Virgen del Carmen.

When we arrived the daily  distribution of food was underway.

This important ministry of the Church, supported by Catholic and Anglicans together, is another aspect, not only of the deepening recession in Europe but also of the manner in which Southern Spain, along with Italy and France have become the gateway for refugees, both economic migrants and refugees from war and hunger, seeking a better life in the West.

As long as Britain and other wealthy nations continue to allow their economies to be shaped by desire for profit and the pursuit of materialism the steady decline in public values will continue and a return to a darker age, where the Barbarians will not be camped at the gates because they have been running things for sometime, will happen.

After the service we called in to view the Bellen in Fuengirola, a Nativity Diorama set up in a private home and showing the story of the Nativity from Bethlehem to the flight into Egypt.

The Bellen and the Carol Service were both part of the annual reminder of the essential message of Christmas, that the peace we seek has arrived in the form of a vulnerable and gentle child, born to a woman whose first response to the threats made against her child was to seek refuge in another country.

14th December 2012

Of course I should have written and posted a blog on the 12th of the 12th 2012 preferably at Noon.

Having failed to catch the moment I have to wait a whole century until 12th of the 12th 2112.

But by then things will be very different.

If the trends continue as they have been reflected between the 2001 and the 2011census then it seems likely that there will be few if any left who will identify themselves as religious, almost an 11% increase by those reporting no religion means that a quarter of the population now identifies itself as having no religious affiliation, projected forward, if the increase of 11% every ten years continues as a straight line, year on year increase then by the 12th of the 12th 2112 God will not only be dead but buried.

However the other reported increase is in those born outside of the UK and again a trend, whilst not as marked, suggests that the UK is becoming a society that can be properly described as multi-cultural, with London and other large cities hosting the largest multi-ethnic populations.

By definition a multi-cultural society can be accurately defined as a big society.

There is something energising and enriching about living in a society where many people from different faiths and nationalities can co-exist with mutual respect for different traditions, practises and habits.

At the very least food becomes an essential characteristic of such a society with different cuisines broadening our appetites and helping us share and experience difference as a positive aspect of our cultural experience.

The biblical image of the nations sitting in peace and sharing a banquet is a very powerful one and whilst religion appears to be declining at an accelerating pace, this image of the peoples of the nations breaking bread together in peace works as both a religious and a secular image.

But what else will change by the 12th of the 12th 2112?

The UK may well have lost and regained and lost its triple A credit rating a few times by then.

The very well named Standard and Poors, the rating agency appears to have identified falling standards in GB Ltd's trading performance and decided that we are set to become poor.

So despite the protestations of the Chancellor and the Treasury it seems that GB Ltd is set for a poor performance over the next few years.

This may be a good time to identify and root out the carpet baggers from our midst.

If we do lose our triple A rating as a country it will be almost certainly possible to see where the money went, identify just who ate the pies, see who got rich quick through scams and schemes, and who having taken the money ran for cover.

The most recent use of the term carpet bagger came when individuals were identified moving into mutual organisations such as building societies in order to de-mutualise them solely for personal gain, although it has to be acknowledged that the success of some of these schemes owed a great deal to the fact that some members of the mutuals saw a short term advantage opening up and a quick profit to be made.

Now of course the shoe is on a different foot, or the carpet on a different floor, now the success of mutuals is beginning to look more attractive.

There are different forms of mutual organisation but what they have in common is that they are member owned, some businesses are employee owned such as the John Lewis Partnership, some are customer owned such as the CWS and some like credit unions are owned by the savers and borrowers jointly.

It is interesting that the Shadow Chancellor is a Co-operative/Labour MP and it will become more evident I suspect as the Labour Parties Manifesto begins to be written that what will be on offer is a more mutual form of arrangement in both financial services and commercial activity generally.

Pursuing my theme of the big society however I find myself making another different and somewhat speculative connection between the recently published results of the 2011 census and the possible loss of the Triple A rating.

Over the last ten years religious faith has quite clearly been on the decline whilst carpet bagging was on the increase?

In a decade when the Labour Party was relaxed about the filthy rich it seemed that Gordon Gecko style greed was good, it was somehow assumed or implied that we all benefitted when the money trickled down until the trickle dried up because the money was in a carpet bag in the overhead locker of a jumbo jet.

Now we have Labour Politicians lecturing major companies on when tax avoidance as what is legal comes to be seen as immoral.

I have an altogether old fashioned sense that somewhere in all this there is a link between the decline of religious belief and the increase in fiscal immorality.

Whilst Christianity continues to be the largest faith group in a declining community of those claiming religious affiliation, down from 71.7% to 59.3%, the smallest faith group by number, Islam increased from 3.0% to 4.8%.

Watch this space.

In Jewish, Islamic and Christian economic teaching there is a fascinating distinction between price and value and an emphasis on social responsibility, it is a distinction and an emphasis that will become increasingly important as the economic debate builds in the lead-in to the next election.

6th December 2012

Now is the winter of our discontent.

From Shakespeare to Steinbeck this is a ringing phrase.

It summons up deep feelings and strong emotions. Richard's envy at his brother; Ethan's deep despair that he has fallen on hard times, working as a store clerk in what was his own business.

Yesterday's Autumn Statement was not in fact a statement made in the Autumn.

By any definition of the seasons December is in the winter and anyone looking for signs of hope or opportunity in the Chancellor's statement came rapidly to the conclusion that all they had to look forward to was discontent.

The longed for possibility of a glorious summer postponed into the distant future after the next election.

So what was promised, the short sharp shock of austerity, leading to recovery and the restoration of both individual and national success, has turned into the long, drawn out, painful route march into an as yet undetermined future.

Like the people of Moses after they left the land of Egypt, there would be a forty year walk through the wilderness before they glimpsed the land of God's promise.

Now the land of Mr Osborne's promise has also been delayed for some time to come, if not indefinitely.

Fuel prices will not increase and the A1 will be improved, however child benefits and working benefits and benefits for those unable to work will increase by a measly 1%.

The good news is that Starbucks has promised to pay its taxes in full, so at least folk can buy their coffee with an easy conscience.

Watching and listening to the Autumn Statement and the various pundits who discussed it on the TV News the word that came into my head again and again was the word, iatrogenic.

Iatro is a prefix meaning healer or in some cases treatment.

A consultation with the doctor used to end with a request to come back in two weeks if its no better, the average doctor working on the hypothesis that the human body is perfectly capable of healing itself and most things clear up after a couple of weeks.

Iatrogenics describes the situation when the treatment (or healer) causes more harm by prescribing than not actually treating whatever is wrong would cause.

Listening to Mr Osborne's prescription for the economy I found myself wondering what would happen if we did nothing?

What is the condition we are treating?

I guess that it is public indebtedness in one form or another.

We are spending more as a nation than we are earning.

So we need to spend less and earn more.

Dickensian economics would have it that earning a pound and spending a pound and ninepence results in unhappiness, whilst earning a pound and spending nineteen shillings and sixpence equals happiness.

The commentary on the Autumn statement suggested that those at the top were paying less than those at the bottom but this was denied by the Chancellor.

One figure emerged that savings in the top rate of tax would make some people seventy five pounds a week better off which is exactly the sum that some folk have to live on each week.

So what if we did nothing at all about the situation we find ourselves in?

Well to start with we'd muddle on, like Ethan in Steinbeck's novel we might have to sell the store and end up working for the new owner, but there is a sense that we're doing that already, most of our power generators, our car manufacturers, steel manufacturers and  public utilities are owned by individuals or companies based outside the UK.

Inflation would continue to erode savings and incomes and costs would rise creating a disproportionately large 'Tax' on the poor.

Unemployment would continue to rise.

Living standards would continue to fall.

We'd start to take in each others washing to survive, start bartering services for goods and vice versa, discontent would  increase and public restlessness would grow and we would almost certainly arrive in the most complete sense of Shakespeare's phrase, in the midst of a real winter of discontent.

Memories of the three day week and sitting in the cold reading by a lamp powered by a car battery.

At the height of that winter of discontent a Marxist reading of Shakespeare's speech might recognise that what was going on yesterday was the expression of the belief of the privileged in our society that their privileges were enjoyed as a right.

Which leaves both the Chancellor and The Shadow Chancellor arguing over what  it will take to turn this winter of discontent into a glorious summer and Nick Clegg shaking his head over the Mansion Tax.

26th November 2012

How Big is a big society?

Big?

Big?

Big?

Big?

or

Big?

In practise Mr Cameron's big society is so small that it is no longer visible, it has disappeared.

Now this is a shame because a) it means that the rationale for this blog has all but disappeared and b) what was, possibly, the one half decent idea to emerge from the think tanks of opposition, now needs to be recovered.

My society suddenly became smaller today because my iphone stopped working.

It wouldn't download the body of the emails that I received, only the headings. This was doubly frustrating because it allowed you to see that x an interesting correspondent from Spain had sent what looked like an interesting email only to not then enable you to read the message.

However there was little point in shooting the messenger, i.e. throwing said iphone against the nearest wall, which in my younger days ............. Oh well, still with the help of an excellent adviser from my phone company I was able to reset my phone and now it is working perfectly well.

If Mr Cameron wants to reset his big society app. he first needs to go to settings and then scroll down until he finds reset and then he needs to enter the scary world of wizardry where he needs expert guidance to help him find his way.

Of course most of the information I needed was already loaded on the 'cloud' but sadly some of what the big society claimed to be about appears to have been downloaded from cloud cuckoo land.

As the indoor critic commented after a recent stay in a hotel, 'whatever he (Mr Cameron) says, people still see the wheelchair and not the person sitting in it' and she should know.

The paralympics, if anything seemed to give some people the idea that disabled people could do any amount of startling and heroic activities almost because of rather than despite their disability, doubtless some of that positive role modelling will find its way into the minds of those responsible for assessing peoples suitability or capability for work?

A truly big society is surely one where there is respect and support for individuals achievements and contributions however big or small they might be.

A truly big society is one where there is some degree of relationship between the earnings of the many and those who to paraphrase John Lennon's words, are the toppermost of the poppermost.

In a truly big society there can be no justification for a CEO claiming a salary that is hundred times greater than that paid to the average worker in the business he runs.

It becomes clear why the big society has been set quietly on the back burner, as an idea it was perhaps a little too radical for the party that rejoices in the name conservative.

The world has changed so dramatically with wage and benefit cuts for the poorest and astronomical pay hikes for the wealthiest that it going to take some radical action to get the genie back in the bottle, but that is undoubtedly what needs to happen.

On Saturday the indoor critic and I went to see Rodriguez aka sugarman.

A seventy year old from Detroit whose album Cold Fact disappeared without trace in the US but became a huge, sleeper hit in South Africa, where it was considered to be one of the powerful influences to bring down Apartheid.

Rodriguez, thought by many to have died, stopped recording and playing and earned his living as a demolition worker in his native Detroit until a documentary film was made chronicling the journey of two South African fans to discover what became of the greatest rock idol who never was.

Sitting in The Sage, Gateshead, I had a sense of a big society when a man so committed to peace and justice could continue to sing his songs and perform with a huge sense of humility and hope, it was interesting to compare our experience with that of the folk who paid hundreds to watch the Rolling Stones at the O2 Arena and as one fan shouted out when Rodriguez performed a brilliant version of Blue Suede Shoes, 'hey Elvis can you do a Rodriguez cover?'

As Rodriguez respond, you need to be a great musician to successfully perform a cover.

Just as you need to be a great politician to successfully introduce a

big

big

big

bigger

biggest (that should of course read fairest)

society.

20th November 2012

I was born and grew up in Manchester.

My mother shopped mainly in two shops.

The first was a little corner shop run by the owner who lived on the premises.

I was often sent down with a note and some loose change to buy essentials, bread, milk, potatoes.

The other was a fairly large Co-op Store on the main Hyde Road which ran through the centre of Gorton.

Here our weekly necessities were purchased along with occasional luxuries.

I was always struck by the amazing overhead vacuum system that sent the money off with a whistle, the change arriving by return whistle, from some mysterious office hidden in the bowels or the attics of the store.

I was also made to commit the share number to memory in order to ensure that my Mother received her 'divi', the annual payout which reflected her share of the profits of the business of which she was an owner/member.

I suppose in the dull, grey, post-war, rationing, austerity days of the 1950's every little helped.

Now that phrase has been adopted by another large supermarket chain and austerity has returned with a vengeance.

My mission in this blog is to offer a wry look at the big society.

However, like much of the Tories pre-election commitment, remember vote blue, go green? the promise has proved to be very elusive now that power has been grasped through the cobbling together of the con-dem coalition.

Now that we are half way through the first term, with even the Bank of England warning of a triple dip recession ahead, it is hard to imagine any of these commitments being honoured.

There is no evidence that we are all in it together, plenty of evidence that some (a few) are doing better than others (the majority) and that it is going to take years to get out of the mess.

The model we are being offered is, we are told, the only possible model?

Well no, not really.

Tonight I am off to a meeting of the co-op Area Committee and interestingly this morning I received my share of the profits.

Admittedly lower than in previous years, doubtless because as the notice said, trading conditions are poor, but welcome nevertheless.

These are not customer rewards like in some businesses, the vouchers represent my share of the profits in a business of which I am an owner.

The democracy that runs the business is like most democracies flawed in so many small ways, but it works in the one big way that means that through public meetings and elections it is possible for a staff member or a customer who shops regularly in their local co-op an opportunity to stand for election first to an Area Committee and then to a Regional Committee and ultimately onto the Group Board.

So there is an alternative to retrenchment, cuts in public services and austerity.

The co-operative model offers a way forward and can be extended and applied to so many other areas of life and, given the highly successful co-op funeral service, death.

The key to all this does come down to one question, who owns the business?

Private ownership makes the answer to that question clear.

Owners directly, or shareholders, own the business and receive their share of the profits.

In a co-op the members own the business and whilst the current membership card might look like a loyalty card issued by a number of other supermarket chains it is in fact much more than that.

The recent Co-ops United event in Manchester made it clear that co-operation as a business model is extendable across a wide range of areas, from energy, to telephony, to holidays, to financial services.

There were seven principles established at the beginning that continue to serve the co-operative business model:

Open membership.
Democratic control.
Distribution of surplus in proportion to trade.
Payment of limited interest on capital.
Political and religious neutrality.
Cash trading.
Promotion of education.

From time to time these principles are reviewed and modernised but at heart they remain as the central core of what differentiates a co-op from any other form of business.

It seems to me that the co-op is a big society, itself, in its own right, without qualification. It is interesting that the winner in the recent Corby by-election was the Labour/Co-op candidate.

More attention has been paid to the 'success' of UKIP in coming third raising a question about whether the Tories will ditch the lib-dems and seek to form a coalition with UKIP in order to remain in office after the next election.

One of the key aspects of the event in Manchester was its international aspect with co-ops across the world, including of course Europe, reminding us that in a global economy national independence is not the way forward

Co-ops United was held in the former railway station from which I used to catch my train home after school, I can only hope that the Co-operation train which left the Station last month can catch both the public and political imagination and point to a better and more co-operative way for Great Britain plc to do its business in the future.

14th November 2012

Tomorrow we are invited to elect a police and crime commissioner.

I want to make the bizzies busier

I'm the police and crime commissioner

My aim in life is to ensure that in time

The punishments fit the crime

I want to make the bizzies busier

I want to keep the police on their toes

Ensure that everyone knows

That I've done my job not just on paper

So everyone feels that bit safer

I want to make the bizzies busier

It's not the crime the general public fear

It's the fear of crime getting nearer

I'm not just here to give the police a job

I'm here to find openings for every yob

I want to make the bizzies busier

After all no one needs to fear

I must show I'm earning my £85k a year

But look at my title more closely

Sure I'll work with the police mostly

But I'm also here to commission crime

So how best to use my time

Keeping the bizzies busy and keen

Like the famous Dixon of Dock Green                  

Not enough to do lads no one to arrest

Well funny you say maybe it's best

I want to make the bizzies busier

I've arranged a little taking and driving away

That should keep you busy today

Then tomorrow I've commissioned

A victimless crime I’m on a mission

I want to make the bizzies busier

For the PM who feels misquoted

I wasn't elected 'cos no one voted

But I won't let that stop me making the bizzies busier

I'm the commissioner for police and crime

So now I've started let me do my time

14th November 2012

This month the indoor critic and I will have been married for 44 years.

Reflecting on this I find myself wondering where the time and the money went.

Certainly raising a family of four, spending six months in the USA with a young family, and just the general business of getting through life, usually meant that in most months there was more of the month left after the money ended.

Usury played its part.

Not that I was a usurer but the introduction of debt cards, AKA Credit Cards, around about the time we got married, seemed to offer the impossible dream of unlimited funds with no pain, wrong of course, but that's usury for you.

Still it's not been a bad 44 years, the usual mix of tears and joy, with a few arguments and a few shared jokes and some very fine moments of which the finest was probably four years ago when we invited our children, their partners and their families to lunch to celebrate our Ruby wedding.

It was a great occasion, one we remember with great satisfaction.

November is also the month when my mother was born and when she died.

Born in 1917 she was 63 years of age when she died in 1980, the year that our youngest child was born.

It was only when we had the photographs taken at his christening developed and enlarged that we realised how ill she had looked, even though at that time she was still working, commuting daily to an office in the centre of Manchester.

Her premature death came as a direct consequence of a wrongly diagnosed breast cancer in her late forties.

So what has any of this to do with the big society?

I guess its because we can only ever view the big society through the lens of how it impacts on our own lives.

If the big society is real and capable of doing what the Prime Minister claims it can do for society then we have to ask what difference will it make to my life, my family, my community?

And the answer usually amounts to a j'accuse against governments and society at large.

It never occurred to me to read Barrack Obama's book, but I stumbled across it by accident on a web-site, read the first 44 pages, was hooked and immediately went out and bought the paper back from Oxfam.

It is a fascinating, intriguing, shocking and compelling story.

As I was reading I noticed that George Osborne had an article in my Newspaper comparing the Tory led coalition with the Democrats under Obama.

No, not really, there is no comparison,, Osborne's specious, self serving comments, bear no comparison with the vision set out in the Obama book.

This Tory Led coalition, with the equally self serving motives of the Liberal's led by Clegg, is in the business of keeping things as they are, not changing anything, keeping the poorest in their place, not giving them a stake in the democratic process, ensuring that the only voices heard in the public square, speak with their accents.

I try to keep things as light as possible in this blog.

It aims to offer a wry look at the big society.

It is as easy to blame the coalition for so much of what is wrong as it is for the coalition to blame the last Labour Government, but that would be equally untrue.

Over our 44 years, over the life of my parents, party politics has failed us equally.

As a youngster in Stoke on Trent in 1964, I campaigned as an Anarchist with the slogan Politics Out, that was the year when the Conservatives lost to Labour led by Harold Wilson.

I can claim no credit for the outcome, because it was also the year, despite the hopes and aspirations of supporters of the Labour Party, when the Millenium was postponed indefinitely and politics were most definitely in.

The current crises facing the coalition with the great estates of the Media, the BBC, Parliament itself being subject to increased scrutiny and public disquiet, with Banking and Financial services equal under critical scrutiny, with MP's choosing to abandon their constituents for a quieter life, still being found with their hands in the till of mysterious expense claims or appearing with other self proclaimed celebrities in a jungle near you, it is hard to discover where common sense has gone.

As a friend of mine would doubtless observe they're all barking.

Just as the USA is seeking to de-politicise its policing and its public services, we are electing political Commissioners for Police and Crime and firing Civil Servants in an attempt to create more biddable departments who will carry out more directly the wishes of ministers.

George Osborne and David Cameron's principal aim is to be re-elected.

I would so much prefer it to be to serve the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

After 44 years the indoor critic and I have reached a stage of companionable silence and so we set our sights lower, simply to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

9th November 2012

So a new Archbishop is announced.

On the face of it a good appointment, clearly a man who has been fast tracked through the system, and why not?

Having spent most of my career elevating the concept of biting the hand that feeds to a fine art, I can't complain that I was cul de sac'ed rather than fast tracked, but at least I wasn't sacked, at least not by the church.

Interesting that for a man with a reputation for getting his way in negotiations his opening gambit: Yes to Women Bishop's; No to gay marriages, seems like a pretty clear statement of the who, when and what ...... that will shape and possibly continue to vex his time in office.

I was a curate in Bolton in 1972 when the campaign to Ordain women to the priesthood began to gather force.

My Vicar at the time was vehemently opposed, but he was also a company man, so he voted for.

I asked why?

Oh, he responded, by the time it happens, I'll be retired.

Well now that I'm retired I guess I share that kind of reflection not so much about the Ordination of Women of which I have generally been in favour or of the Ordination of Women as Bishop's which seems logical or indeed the the offering of a sacramental blessing to people in same sex relationships which seems to be an expression of love and justice, which is surely the churches stock in trade?

After all it is part of the big society that we were promised and have never quite glimpsed.

No, my sense of get me out of here, I'm retired, is about the larger question of quite where the Church is heading?

Congregations continue to age and it comes to something when, as pensioners, the indoor critic and I can actually lower the demographic in a congregation when we attend (at least some, but more than before) churches.

So where is it all heading and where will it head under the leadership of a new Archbishop?

My suspicion is that sadly, despite Alpha Courses and the new West Kensington, Evangelical fervour that is gripping the Metropolitan Church, the decline of the church will continue and the curve will stretch into the future as a form of euclidean space in which there will be discontinuity with the past because the story is no longer compelling, a convergence of opinion that the story is no longer true and a profound sense that the story is no longer of value in understanding the human condition.

So the new Archbishop, like the boy in the poem, will be left to stand on the burning deck, hoping against hope that the wind changes direction.

Or maybe he will find himself reciting Matthew Arnold's Poem: Dover Beach:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
and naked shingles of the world.

Meanwhile I can only hope that the Church Commissioners continue to invest their pension funds wisely.

6th November 2012

In 1985 I spent a semester in Cambridge Massachusetts. 

It was my year of Undoing Theology in Red Sneakers.

The project was a major undertaking, relocating six people from the NE of England to the NE of the United States, finding schools for the children, settling into a new apartment and choosing which courses to pursue.

We arrived in January when it was, quite literally, breathtakingly cold and lived the dream through to the summer when it was beginning to feel extremely warm, then we returned home to Newcastle to pick up our old life where we had left.

Whilst we were in the States one of our children changed her name, to Chelsea Wilde but within hours of our return she had defaulted back to her given name.

I spent the next two years trying to find a job in order to make our stay permanent but gave up after coming second one too many times.

On reflection, with four children to guide through University and the indoor critic's increasing disability it seems that we made the right decision.

Education, Health Care and now in Retirement pensions, all point to the benefits of publicly provided support in the form of a welfare state understood in its broadest terms.

The current election taking place in the US appears to reflect this choice.

The Romney ticket appears to wish to undo much of what Obama has achieved and to return to the policies of the Bush era, which as Laurel and Hardy might observe, got the USA into this mess in the first place.

Tax cuts for the rich, no trickle down benefits for the poorest and expensive and unbudgeted wars.

The suprising thing about Mitt Romney is that whilst Governor of Massachusetts he appeared to be something of a Liberal, but the Republican Party has shifted pretty firmly to the Right following the success of the Tea Party Movement.

To gain the nomination and secure the Republican vote Romney had to adopt a much more right wing, even reactionary stance than he presented whilst in office.

Obama on the other hand, inherited a huge mess.

The economy was in free fall, housing, healthcare, pensions and the defence budget meant that his room for manoeuvre was extremely limited and opposition in the Senate from the Republicans meant that every inch of progress was only achieved at a high cost.

But there has been real achievement in Health Care, in Foreign Policy and in public investment which has secured economic growth, wages and jobs.

The emotional investment in an Obama victory in the UK is extremely high.

The special relationship, reinforced by pictures of Cameron flipping burgers on the White House lawn and Romney's cavalier comments about the Olympics mean that even the Conservatives appear to be hoping for Obama to win.

Even William Hague, whilst obviously not as appealing to Hilary Clinton as David Milliband, has managed to appear statesmanlike.

Of course we have no say in the matter.

We have no vote.

But on the BBC News, Hugh Edwards went in search of his Welsh relatives, all of whom appeared to be voting for Romney, to give us a first hand experience of what being caught  up in a presidential election debate might feel like.

I imagine that I will sleep well enough whilst the votes are being counted, I hope that their will be no repeat of the hanging chads debacle which cost the Democrats dearly three terms ago, but when I wake up to the news I have a sense that the world may be the same or that it might just have become a slightly more dangerous place.

31st October 2012

One of the best cars that I ever owned was a DKW.

Built in Eastern Germany before the war, it boasted the famous Audi interlinked rings on the radiator grille, after the war marooned in East Germany, the factory built the Wartburg.

The car had a three cylinder two stroke engine and it was awesomely fast.

It was aero-dynamic in shape and its construction was described as a pillar-less saloon, the rear windows winding back into the doors to form a completely open sided aspect.

The model I owned was a Saxomat.

This variant had a clutch which was electrically operated by means of a button on the end of the steering column mounted gear shift. The fly wheel had a centrifuge which engaged as the speed of the engine rose and disengaged as the speed slowed and stopped.

So at Traffic Lights you could sit with first gear engaged and the engine burbling beneath the bonnet and then as you floored the accelerator the car would rear up on its back wheels and hurl itself forward with blistering acceleration.

It would have brought a smile to Jeremy Clarkson's face.

It certainly made me smile as I left another travelling salesman edging forward through the blue exhaust in his Ford Cortina wondering where I had gone.


But centrifuges work in politics as well as in engineering.

This may prove to have been an unfortunate time for the con-dems to choose to form not only a Government, but a Coalition Government.

In some future time, maybe a hundred years from now, a historian, echoing Gibbon's magisterial history of the Roman Empire, might entitle his history or her story, The History of  the Decline and fall of Europe.

Each chapter would follow the rise and fall of a particular European country as it traces the collapse of economic and monetary union, the collapse of markets, the demise of the common currency and the end of European history.

The chapter on the United Kingdom will, in all likelihood make galling reading for the grandsons and daughters of the members of the present cabinet.

In my last job I was invited to help as the advert had it, 'to build an organisation to break down barriers' it was a challenge that I responded to enthusiastically and with which I struggled for a number of years, until I realised that there were forces at work within the organisation that were simply beyond my or any one else's capacity to manage and which made it impossible to build the organisation.

Organisations, no less than countries or economic unions, are subject to centrifugal and centripetal forces.

The one forcing the energy to flow from the centre outward, the other forcing energy from the edges inward.

In both my legendary DKW, as in the charity I directed, the centrifugal forces were irresistible.

The car's fly-wheel flung out it's teeth, the gears engaged and the car accelerated. The charity continued to expend itself by taking on initiatives and then launching them as independent activities with their own management.

As a membership  'movement' organised into branches, even the branches saw themselves as independent of the centre.

The European 'Project' was based on the idealistic notion that centripetal influences could pull the disparate regions of Europe together into a single economic and monetary union and might even lead to a federal structure.

Czechoslovakia, former Yugoslavia, Spain and closer to home Scotland and Wales, offer examples of political centrifugal movements leading to new smaller nations embracing or seeking independence and nationhood.

Of course an independent Scotland might seek to be part of a wider federal Europe, it might not, Alex Salmond might not win the vote, Spain might remain as a single political confederation under the rule of its King.

It is clearly too early to tell how things will change and how the future will look but what is clear that across Europe centrifugal forces are at work.

21st October 2012

I am not a luddite.

i padded, i phoned and kindled to the hilt, socially well media'd and conversant with live streaming movies and down loading music.

But I just tried to change a flight on easyjet!

Not easy at all!

Who was the wit that came up with the idea that we could manage without travel agents and do the work ourselves 'online' and then happily pay for the privilege?

You go online, change the flight pay the difference in fare, it won't be cheaper! and then pay £35 for each passenger!!!!

Just for the privilege of being an easytouch!

I just hope that George (travel first class on a second class, fare dodger ticket) Osborne doesn't realise what lengths we are prepared to go to and how easy it is to hoodwink us.

And easy it is!

We have been hoodwinked so often!

Driving Licenses, my first one gained when I was 17 was valid until I was 70, well valid until I changed my address and then I was issued a new photo licence and within twenty minutes had to pay a fortune to renew it.

So how did that happen?

I recently sold my car.

We have acquired a new car which belongs to the critic in residence but as we are pretty  much joined at the hip her newly gained independence simply means that when necessary I can use my bus pass or ride the Harley (raining - bus, sunny- Harley, easy travel!).

So having sold the car to a friend of a friend, I sent the necessary paperwork off to the DVLA.

I then receive a letter asking for the necessary paperwork, I telephone Wales to explain, don't worry says a voice straight out of under milkwood, crossed in the post hasn't it?

Love those rhetorical questions as statement's thingies.

Ignore the threatening letter, it's OK its standard in these situations.

Well, nobody told the enforcement section in geordieland.

Apart from anything else, they know where I live.

£1000 fine, automatic, unless you send £30 by return.

So I ring them up, explain, mention under milk wood, don't worry says this lovely geordie lass, obviously a mistake, send a letter to explain.

I suggest that it might be nice if I was to receive an apology.

At the post office the nice lady agrees, best get it signed for, so that's £2 75, the reply when it comes contains no apology.

It is anonymous on behalf of the Secretary of State, but he's a bit busy, apologising to Richard Branson and there are only so many apologies and Richard's got his hands full trying to stop George Osborne fare dodging .............

15th October 2012

I suppose it had to happen.

After the 'success' of the Jubilee and the Olympics a Prime Minister desperate for another diversion has come up with the brilliant idea of celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the start of the First World War.

I wonder if his advisers suggested hanging on for four years and celebrating the end?

What is there to celebrate about Europe tearing itself apart over a carnage that lasted four long bloody years?

What is there to celebrate about countries being destroyed, populations decimated in a conflict that effectively represented a fin de siecle of an age and which in its turn ushered in the Great Depression?

Am I missing something?

Maybe the Prime Minister sees it as a way of nailing down Europe.

First there will be a referendum and we will pull out of Europe, then we will celebrate the defeat of those European nations that had the temerity to challenge our primacy as a political and economic empire?

Coming within days of the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union, recognition of what is good and significant about an economic and political alliance that has managed to ensure peaceful co-existence between its member states for over sixty years, it seems somewhat contradictory.

What will we celebrate, the Lions or the Donkeys?

The phrase seems to have its origins in the German High Command who described the ordinary soldiers of the British Army as Lions who were led by Generals who were Donkeys.

One German general commenting that if the British Generals had matched their troops courage with a similar degree of strategy they would have been invincible.

Well, history as Orwell commented is always written by the victors and I suppose that the committee chosen to plan the celebrations will write their own version of what happened.

The sub-text, as with the Olympics and the Jubilee will inevitably be to set out a narrative that tells a story about the unity and greatness of the British Isles.

I have no doubt that we live in a Great Country, it is the triumph of the Lions that despite everything, they survive the lack of strategy, the corruption and the wrong-headed-ness of the Donkeys who insist that they are in charge.

Maybe that is something to celebrate?

10th October 2012

Having recently spent time in Spain it was impossible to ignore the news of  protests in Madrid staged by Los Indignados, as they work to achieve solidarity between those in debt, people struggling with Mortgages or rents that are unaffordable.

It is a protest that is political and practical as it seeks to steer the Government away from cuts that harm the lives of the poorest and to investment in the nations future.

I am sure that the indignados would have made their voices felt in Birmingham this week, there is every justification for indignation listening to the conference speakers.

The circus in Birmingham is in full swing.

Apparently Boris came and conquered and now we have a nation of strivers, aspirant strivers at that.

Well it is I suppose better than being described as a nation of skivers!

It's probably the first word the speech writers came up with but in the delivery Mr Cameron thought better of it and in order to keep the alliteration and the rhythm of his speech, changed the k for a t.

Difficult to know but what is clear is that the Government will continue to argue the causes of the financial crisis and focus the blame onto the poor and those dependent on welfare.

Welfare budgets are to be cut again, it will be very difficult for you we are told by the Millionaires in the Cabinet, but it has to be done, otherwise Britain will no longer be competitive in the global market place.

Two themes that I have pursued in my blog over the time that I have been writing, are the themes of fairness and opportunity.

It is essential that the national cake is divided fairly and it crucial that all people have the opportunity to do well.

The danger at the present time is that the rhetoric of the Tories, often using the same words, will mask the real difference between a fair and just society and a divided and broken society.

In so many areas of policy words are used wrongly and incorrectly, so many claims are made falsely and of course the con-dems with their liberal partners can find ways of masking the toryness of their policies with a dash of liberal rhetoric.

At the heart of the speech in Birmingham Mr Cameron declared that:

Cutting state spending was the best way to create sustainable jobs?

Helping people off welfare was a route out of poverty.

Academic rigour gave children the best start in life.

At face value these words can seem OK, but dig a little deeper into the ideas that underlie them.

How does cutting state spending create sustainable jobs in areas where the single largest employer is in fact the public sector and where business has withdrawn, either to cheaper labour markets or more profitable market places.

How does cutting benefits for families and individuals, for young people and the disabled provide a route out of poverty?

When I left school at 15 I was told that I was fit only to be a bricklayer, failed by the academic system I educated myself by reading and eventually five years later enrolled at college, not everyone responds to the notion of academic rigour, not everyone would succeed at Eton.

I lived in Birmingham for six years, for three of those years I helped to spend a Million Pounds a year regenerating the East of the City in Michael Heseletine's Task Force.

I worked near Saltley Gate which in February 1972 was the focus of a fight against austerity pay deals.

30,000 Birmingham engineers took strike action  in solidarity with striking miners.

The victory at Saltley, won through solidarity strikes, was the turning point for the miners.

Within seven weeks the government was defeated.

Today, people face an assault on their living conditions reminiscent of previous Tory attacks.

The Forty year anniversary of the Battle of Saltley Gate carries powerful lessons for working people whose jobs and livelihoods are threatened once again.

Indignation is a proper response to what has happened this week in Birmingham.

7th October 2012

So after one nation red Ed in Manchester, the blue meanies are about to have their conference in Birmingham.

Of course they're hopeless.

Booze ups and breweries come to mind.

The latest fiasco of course is the West Coast Rail Franchise.

Of course Branson is laughing his socks off, Sir Richard of course .........

He of the virgin business, business ......

Wish I had never bought Tubular Bells, but there you are, just didn't believe that buying a record would mean that 40 years later he would be treating my diabetes or selling me a ticket for when I travel to Edinburgh tomorrow ............ Just goes to show, never underestimate someone called Richard, even if his friends call him Dicky, he will still be tricky .........

The news, apparently, is that half of us make no contribution to the national purse.

Well I certainly don't, as a pensioner I am now a net incomer, the bulk of my income coming from the exchequer, I pay tax on it, of course, but between us, the indoor critic and I, take more out than we put in.

But, think tanks, and Tory think tanks at that, to one side, take more out of what than what?

The thing is that the national product in financial terms is huge, billions huge, but take away the profits lodged offshore, the tax dodging billionaires, the bankers and the footballers with rather large back pockets and my, relatively small monthly income, offset I might say, against the saving I represent to the exchequer in my role as a carer and?

Well there you have it, I represent good value for money.

I worked for over forty years, started when I was 15, paid tax from day one, so in terms of the social economy, I paid in and now the pension is worth what it is worth, so thank you Mr (nay Lord) Beveridge!

The latest news that 50% of the population takes out more than it puts in, is OK if you reckon without the overall economic performance of the economy as a whole.

Britain is a rich western nation, with an output from manufacturing, financial services and pension funds, far in excess of the income/expenditure equation of the working versus the not working (i.e. pensioners and beneficiaries) so to argue as Mitt Romney did in the USA, that 47% of the population would vote Democrat because they rely on the state is actually wrong.

The issue here is that wealth is inappropriately and unfairly distributed.

There is no longer work for everyone because work has changed.

Technology, robotics, intelligence means that there is, as the Bible has it, no longer, holes to dig or vines to tend.

So inevitably, there will be folk who have no place in the economic scheme of things, but they still need to spend, they still consume, they still have a role to play and a life to live.

This argument that 50% take out more than they put in is tempered by the 50% who for whatever reason fail to put in what they should, after all surely, the national income should benefit the nation?

The indoor critic hates the FT Weekend supplement, How to Spend It, I quite enjoy it, because it reminds me that there are folk who can spend £2000 on a shirt, or a jacket or a coat, who have more to spend on stuff than I have to live on for a year, there is money out there, being generated by the economy, so red Ed is for one nation, the Cameroons is another nation altogether, so lets see who's right, can we turn this round, boot out the blue meanies and elect a government that actually gives a toss, and share the national economy fairly and justly?

25th September 2012

This is a celebratory blog for me as according to the statistics published by google I have now passed my 10000th viewing.

As a friend of mine, a fund raising expert once commented, to raise a million pounds you either need one person to give you the million pounds or a million people to give you one pound.

Well I know that the indoor critic reads it, but not 10000 times, so I guess whilst some people must have read each of the 220 or so blogs at least once it still means that my thinking aloud is of wider interest than my immediate circle of friends.

My grandfather was foreman of a council tip.

Before the First World War he had been a miner, but having being gassed in the trenches, when he returned home he was not allowed to go back below ground where he had worked as a farrier tending to the pit ponies.

So he found a job as a dustman and was then made foreman of the council refuse tip.

It was amazing what people threw away, obvious things like pots and pans and kettles and old clothes and rubbish but on one occasion he found a dog tied to the handle of the dustbin which when he got back to the tip became the official office dog my grandmother not wanting it at home.

He often told my mother that the surest way to get your dustbins emptied was to leave something like a bit of metal sticking out of the top of the bin so the bin men would see it and know that there was something that they could weigh in for a few coppers to supplement their wages.

One of the great privileges of my life has been the opportunity to travel.

One of my most memorable trips was to Mexico.

Mexico City is huge some sixty miles across and on the edge of the City their are enormous refuse dumps where people, the poorest of the poor, live and scavenge.

Essentially they recycle the City´s waste.

For some that means finding what can be reused, and carrying it into the City and selling it, and you see folk sitting on the pavement with a few things at their feet trying to raise a few pesetas to get by.

The more creative might re-use what they scavenge to make things and I saw all sorts of beautiful ornaments and jewellery for sale which had been fashioned from the paper and tin and glass that other people had thrown away.

More recently in Genoa we saw the same phenomenon, some people selling things they had made from recycled goods they had found but also other people with a few scraps of torn clothes and broken things at their feet sitting or standing on the pavement.

Often the street vendors were immigrants often from North Africa but occasionally from Eastern Europe and sometimes in the evening if we looked out of our apartment window we would see the same people sorting through the rubbish bins in the street outside for anything that they could use or sell.

Now we are in Spain and the same phenomenon can be seen.

However here it seems it is more organised, the rubbish bins are on the street outside the security gates of the apartment block, shortly after we arrived, out for a walk in the evening, I saw two people arrive by car and using a series of tools which I assume they had made themselves for the specific purpose, they were searching through the bins and retrieving anything that they could possibly reuse or sell.

It is it seems a regular way for people to earn a living when I enquired however I was told that at one time it would be migrants who would pursue this kind of work but increasingly Spanish people are resorting to the practise, a sign, so my informant told me, of the economic times in which we find ourselves.

As far as I know my dustbins at home are still being emptied by the refuse collectors employed by the Council and the recycling we are encouraged to practise is officially condoned, which is why the plastic and paper and glass have to be separated and washed before being placed in the correct box or bag or bin.

What we have instead is the agencies, usually claiming to be working for charities raising funds for children or the elderly, who deliver a plastic bag for our unwanted clothes and then return to collect the bags.

Some of these collection agencies have been exposed as simply commercial enterprises making money out of the unwanted and donated goods.

But as the depression deepens and the poor are forced to bear the burden of economic mismanagement by seeing their benefits cut, to encourage them, whilst seeing the rich rewarded with tax cuts to encourage them, doubtless they will find new and imaginative strategies for survival.

Just leave that bit of metal sticking out of the top your dustbin ..............

20th September 2012

Life is, at times, very strange.

It throws up difficulties and challenges as well as opportunities and gifts.

Living with a chronic, life limiting condition, as the indoor critic has to, is not easy. But between us we manage to get about and on the whole find people to be helpful and supportive.

We always give easyjet five stars in feedback, because our experience of flying with them, between Newcastle and Malaga and Edinburgh and Milan, has been unfailingly excellent.

Equally, Virgin trains assistance service has also been excellent providing ramps and assistance on and off trains.

And these difficulties and challenges are almost always compensated for by the opportunities and gifts that come by way of the Locum Chaplaincies that I have been offered in the Diocese of Europe.

Not only a chance to assist on Sundays but also an opportunity to engage with the life of busy ex pat communities and the individuals that make them up.

They are not all tax exiles in Monaco.

Folk move away from the UK for a wide variety of reasons, the weather, the cafe society, the golf, the language or the culture.

Some remain within the relative safety of the English speaking community and some go native.

But all report the same sense that they have found in their new home something of a wider, deeper, more relaxed way of living that reflects something of the big society, in Spanish ´Gran sociedad` which sounds as though it is something for the older generation; but which is held up as the ideal to strive for both in Spain and in the UK.

Of course once established in a new country people fall in love, marry, have children and become so established in their new lives that distinctions of nationality become lost.

I am still very English but I am starting to enjoy the Spanish language.

Recently I had to officiate at the funeral of an elderly lady whose partner was in his nineties, they had met in Spain having both been widowed in their sixties, Gran sociedad!

When I was offered the paperwork to sign I noticed that their relationship was noted as: Companero Sentimentale, I remarked to the Funeral Director that I thought that was a lovely way to describe a relationship that had lasted over twenty five years.

It is, he replied, how we say it in Spain.

There are things said and described in Spanish that the language make to seem altogether more poetic.

However I am still learning.

Indeed if I was a stand up comedian I  would by now have a great new routine. 

The thing is that I had to buy an electric kettle.

My first attempts resulted in no kettle.

So I turned to my translation app on my iphone.

So I tried again in Spanish: hervidor electrico, por favor.

After a conversation with one shopkeeper, each with our iphone translators speaking to each other,  I managed to buy a milk heater, i.e. hervidor leche, not a hervidor agua.

When I got home I realised my mistake, because  a) there was no automatic off switch and b) it only heated to 90 degress.

After a restless night wondering how I was going to deal with my mistake I decided that I had to gather my courage in both hands and take it back.

Pointing to the box I said: este hervidor de leche? hervidor agua, por favor?

So with a smile and a shrug he changed it for a kettle and wrote out a new receipt.

Then I got home to find the kettle in the box, which was good, but with no base or plug, which was of course bad.

So I had to return for the missing base unit: la base es que faltan? I proffered.




Again he smiled and reaching behind him picked the missing base unit off the shelf.

So, After four trips to the shop and flattening my iphone battery, I finally got home and made a much needed cup of tea .

But if you ever need to buy a kettle in Spain you know who to ask ......

18th September 2012

I started work in 1961.

I left school before the term ended on a Friday and started my first job the following Monday.

I was paid Four Pounds and one Shilling a week.

Brilliant.

It felt really good to be a wage earner and whilst I couldn't live the high life, after I`d paid my Mum for my Board and Lodging, I still had One Pound One Shilling to spend on myself, and in those days it went quite  a long way.

My next job represented a step up.

It wasn`t as responsible, after all I had spent a year fitting tyres and repairing punctures and balancing wheels on cars that might then be driven at high speed on the newly opened Motorways.

In fact for the first year in my new job I wrote Giro Cheques, by hand, in an office of The Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.

I was a Clerical Assistant and when I wasn`t writing Giro Cheques I was filing which is how I once found two files, both paying full benefits to the same gentleman, once under his first  name and once under his second.

But because my first job was weekly paid and my second monthly I had a major difficulty during the first month in my new job.

I still had to pay my Board and Lodging, but because my Mum was my landlady we were able to come to an amicable arrangement, so i wasn´t thrown out or made to go hungry.

But because my pay was a month in arrears it meant that for four long weeks I had to stretch my pound and make it last four times as long as it had ever had to it.

I think that even now fifty years later I am still catching up!

Now I am retired and when I rang the pension service to ask if I qualified for a state pension they confirmed that I did and then told me what amount would be paid each month.

But I was ready for them.

The pension is also paid in arrears so the first payment when it arrives has sat in a Government account earning interest for four weeks, whilst I scrabble around buying food and paying my utility bills on credit for which I am charged.

No, as I said I was ready for them, they trained me well in the MPNI, I had read the small print, so as politely as I might I said, very clearly, I would like it paid weekly.

I could hear the clerk wriggling, she tried to persuade me that monthly was the preferred method but I stuck to my guns.

So it was agreed I could and would be paid weekly.

So fifty years after first starting work I am back to being paid weekly and wonderful it is.

Apart from the satisfying clunk of the money bag dropping into my bank account every seven days it means that if I run out of Gin I only have to survive for seven days before I can replace the empty bottle with a full one.

But all this is about to change.

Mr Duncan Smith, who I doubt has ever been paid weekly and therefore has no understanding of the value to the person living on a low income or fixed wage of the reassurance that knowing that the next payment is due sooner than later.

As for people without a bank account who take their pension books to the Post Office even more reassuring is knowing that the cash is negotiable and the conversation with your neighbour can lift your spirits on a cold Monday morning whilst queueing for the Post office to open.

But Mr Duncan Smith´s focus is not on the poor or the elderly, his battle cry is efficiency.

So for now there is a stand off between a wide range of charities seeking to protect the interests of the poorest including the elderly and children in families and Minister who is driving forward changes that will harm those very people, all in the interests of efficiency.

There`s making work pay by making it more attractive, more rewarding, lowering the threshold for the disabled, offering better training for the unskilled and improving the routes by which people can enter work and making sure that the jobs are out there.

Or there is making work pay by reducing benefits, making it harder to live on benefits and harder and more degrading to claim benefits, this is the preferred route for Mr Smith.

Of course popular opinion has swung behind him, there is a strong groundswell of opinion that hate´s `benefit scroungers`, I don´t see it that way at all.

In the end it comes down to fairness in the distribution of the wealth created by the national economy, paid employment is the traditional mechanism and Beveridge saw benefits as a temporary bridge when a worker fell on hard times.

But now the structure of opportunities has collapsed.

We do not need full employment to generate the gross national income so we need to find a better, fairer way to share that income, so that all our citizens can live full, satisfying and creative lives, sometimes contributing through paid employment, sometimes via voluntary activity and sometimes by enjoying a period of leisure, education or training.

And soon my bank account will be restored to balance for another week.

7th September 2012

What makes someone a conservative?

I suppose if you have something to conserve, that might make you want to hang on to whatever it is.

I recently volunteered in a conservation project electro-fishing in a tributary of the Eden to catch, measure and count the salmon fry.

The aim is to conserve the river as a habit for the Salmon.

So in that sense I am a conservative.

But only in that sense.

The current debate in the US Presidential race is a classic. The conservative, republican candidate has run an anti-Obama campaign culminating in the now infamous Clint Eastwood, empty chair debate.

But throughout the Obama Presidency there has been no attempt on the part of Republicans, to work for the common good, so all the Presidents' attempts to address the dreadful inheritance he was handed and the economic disaster that happened with the sub-prime mortagage scandal have been stymied by the forces of conservatism.

There has been no facing up to the fact that the countries problems arose on the Republican watch and were aggravated by tax breaks for the rich and a huge budgetary overspend on pursuing regime change in Iraq.

In this country the woefully inadequate narrative of the ´mess we inherited from Labour' has become less strident.

Neverthless the conservative voice is still heard.

The paralympic spectators might have booed the Chancellor, revealing the habitual sneer for the defence mechanism it is, but that has not stopped him in his strategy of welfare cuts for the poor, including many disabled people, and tax reductions for the wealthy.

The trickle down theory does not work.

It has never worked. Effectively reducing taxes for the rich is an upwards distribution of wealth.

Couple that with the recent reshuffle where individual appointments have, as has been pointed out by more than one posting on facebook and a general flurry of comments across cyberspace, promoted a number of ministers with previous to portfolios where they have clearly stated positions which if carried through will lead to a more divided and ultimately poorer society.

Health, justice and equality are all areas where the new incumbents have stated positions which suggest that the future will, to put it at it´s best, be pretty frightening if as Neil Kinnock famously said, you are young, old, poor or ordinary.

So what makes someone a conservative?

I find that a hard question to answer even though I am posing it to myself.

The net result of conservatism it seems to me is a divided, unjust, uncivil society in which the devil takes the hindmost and the privileged live a defensive life behind high walls, security fences and electronic gates.

I worked as a community worker on an outer estate in Birmingham, on one balmy summers evening I was sitting on the balcony of a flat on the twentieth floor of a high rise block, looking over the estate and sharing a cold beer with a local resident.

We were talking local community politics. I asked him about his political idealism, he was a member of the communist party, its not idealism he replied, its practical.

When I sit up here and see the estate, peaceful and quiet, with folk getting along and pullinig together, then I can enjoy my beer knowing that I have made a contribution that has helped that happen.

My happiness is linked to that wider human happiness that I have helped create.

The current political agenda is in my view truly frightening and I fear for the future.

4th September 2012

Top Tory calls for Shock Therapy for the economy.

Whilst agreeing with him  in principle unfortunately his shock therapy is not mine.

His is really the same old, same old, tired right wing proposals. Its the poor wot pays the price and the wealth creators who need encouragement, so reduce benefits and reduce taxes, the same old stick to beat the poor, the working class and elderly and the same old carrot to encourage the rich.

Shock Therapy is needed but who to shock and how?

Labour introduced a minimum wage, to howls of outraged opposition from the Tory Ukips.

Actually it was a sign of a civilised society that a fair days work is worth a fair days pay and anyway slaves should be sold not paid off.

So my first shock but would be a national maximum wage.

There should be a clear and agreed link between what the lowest paid are paid and what the highest paid are paid.

I and thousands like me have gone about the business of raising their families on the average wage whilst watching footballers, being treated by Doctors, seeing our bosses and being lectured by MP´s and Bank managers whose earnings outstrip ours by factors of not tens but many hundreds.

Linking minumum/maximum earnings would create a  real sense of connectedness that would demonstrate that we are really all in it together.

The coalition is proud that it has taken many lower paid out of taxation all together.

That is good, but it has also taken many high earners out of taxation too and that is not good.

So along with a maximum wage and linked to it would be a flat rate system of taxation meaning that we all paid tax, with maximum wage earners paying the same in percentage terms but more in actual money.

I would insist that we looked closely at the defence budget. What do we need an armed forces for? To fight foreign wars? To maintain peace in trouble spots globally? To police civil society in times of emergency or crisis?

Answer those questions and I am sure that the need for Trident would disappear completely.

So whilst the defence budget needs reviewing the pressure would be relieved if Trident was stood down and not replaced.

Another shock would be all the privateers who have taken over the running and administration of public services.

I am sure that people will remonstrate that the savings have been considerable and the efficiencies greater, to which the response is an Olympic G4s.

Public services should be run by public servants, it makes sense, it creates jobs, it keeps good folk in employment and because it is  obvious that, and there are plenty of well documented cases to demonstrate, the profits generated by the privateers are considerable.

And that cannot be right.

So an end to the capitas of this world.

The final shock is also the most controversial.

Most of us don´t need to work at all. There is enough wealth in the world that we need neither starve or be bored.

Technologies have been employed to make huge profits for individuals. Some seek to plough that back.

Some have simply become personally richer and that needs to be challenged.

But it is time that, with due oversight of the processes involved, a whole new generation of dreamers, artists, poets and musicians are rewarded and encouraged to deepen the artistic wealth of our societies.

So all the back to work schemes and the policing of benefits the whole apparatus of welfare to work could be dismantled as it would no longer be necessary.

People could study longer, dream their dreams, write their poems and find their audiences wherever they can

These days what has been called the malthusian - darwinian notion that everyone should be át work´ lies at the heart not only of conservative policy making but at the centre of their moral framework, and it is nonsense.

Individuals have no more need to justify their existence than the birds of the air or the flowers of the field.

3rd September 2012

There´s less heard about the big society these days.

In fact I cannot recall hearing or reading the phrase for some months.

The notion of a big idea to provide a framework for the coalition´s political narrative seems to have died a death.

The mess we inherited doesn´t wash any more, why? Because they have made it worse.

All the supposed feel good events that were meant to lift the nations spirits have been washed out by the rain.

Where there was meant to be optimism and a newly energised electorate following the Jubilee and the Olympics there were crowds in airport departure lounges trying to escape the worst, wettest summer in a century.

There is largely cynism born of the hard experience of seeing statements from the coalition discredited, denied or retracted.

The deficit which was to be reduced has been increased, instead the GCSE results have been reduced.

And Mr Cameron´s comments at the opening ceremony of the paralympics were met with well rehearsed synchronised cynism (a new Olympic event?) the marvellous efforts of these remarkable athletes will be followed by further statements announcing reductions in benefits.

So a cabinet reshuffle as a discredited tweedledum makes way for a discredited tweedledee.

It all has something of Alice in Wonderland about it as we are expected to believe so many remarkable things before breakfast.

It won´t wash of course. Or will it?

Do people care that much anymore?

This party is indistinguishable from that party, the same grey suits and and the same grey faces announcing solemnly that it is all the fault of the same grey suited predecessors.

The economy is in free fall, human rights are being threatened, disabled people are feeling increasingly anxious as illiberal legislation is brought in, the Green Belt is to be swept away and buried under an estate of new housing developments that people can either not afford or for which they cannot get a mortgage, Virgin has lost the West Coast franchise and Richard Branson is sulking.

So how, in the present economic and political climate do we take a wry look at the big society?

According to the sales pitch we were all supposed to reach out in help and support for each other.

The lonely would be befriended.

The sick would be healed.

The disabled would be offered the appropriate access they needed to ........ well, access the big society.

Instead we received an increase in VAT.

Tax breaks for the rich.

And reduced benefits that led welfare saying farewell to many who were less able to function in what is becoming an increasingly hostile and scary environment.

Food Banks become the face of the Big Society.

Soon the only occupation available to those of us unlucky enough not to be a banker, a hedge fund manager, a politician or a journalist will be selling the Big Issue.

The Big Society will become the Big Swap revealed for the Big Con it always was.

The New Statesman printed a joke about someone ringing up to buy the Lib Dem Manifesto to be told they had sold out, I know he said, I just wanted a copy of  the manifesto ..............

24th August 2012

An imagined Memo from the Chair of the Co-op to his CEO

I met with the above named yesterday to review our recent progress. The meeting was informative and encouraging.

As you will know the three individuals were all original members of the Co-operative which they, with others established in Toad Lane, Rochdale in December 1844.

There was a good deal of interest and excitement with regard to the new premises in Manchester and some reflections regarding the contrast with their original premises which had been fitted out on, as they recalled a wing and a prayer.

Our visit to the Piccadilly Store also evoked memories and discussion when they looked at the range of goods on display, Mr Smithies commented that our simply value range reminded him to a degree of the simple display of essentials such as butter, sugar, flour and oatmeal with which they started in Toad Lane, tea and tobacco coming later as they built up their capital.

During the meeting we reviewed some aspects of our current business and membership offer, concern was expressed by both Mr Greenwood and Mr Smithies that the membership offer was being affected somewhat negatively by two factors.

The first of these, of course, is size, we currently have some six million members and my visitors were clearly impressed by the way we have grown the business, but as they observed it is hard for people to understand themselves as ‘owners’ of such a huge enterprise. Equally however they recognised that a membership on this scale gives is an enormous advantage in both buying power and in our ability to meet the needs of our members across the range of the family of businesses which we operate under the co-op brand.

The point that they emphasised was that the larger the membership the smaller a cog the individual feels in the overall scheme of things.

The other problem they noted, was that our competitors have introduced loyalty cards which are easily confused with our membership card so that members perhaps don’t realise that their ‘share of the profits’ is in fact the equivalent of the payment a share-holder of a business might receive.

There was a suggestion that we might stop calling people members and introduce the idea of being a share-holder in the co-op. This could of course be emphasised by holding share-holder meetings with voting rights to replace the current practice of membership meetings which are largely for sharing information and are generally poorly attended.

Mr Howarth raised a further question about education and whilst recognising and welcoming our investment in our co-operative Trust Schools and Academies he observed that our ‘education’ for members was largely focussed on our elected members.

We had a considerable conversation about we might extend opportunities for education to the wider membership.

To this end we explored some possible partnerships that might be developed with for example the WEA and U3A which would allow us to roll out educational opportunities into local communities, community centres and associations and evening classes in schools and colleges.

I found the meeting to be quite challenging as my visitors referred back to their own business model and the principles which underpinned it.

A particular challenge arose from their reminding me of the fifth principle. At first I was a little uncertain as to what they meant when they referred to adulterated goods as of course we maintain the highest standards in sourcing our raw materials and in the production of our finished products.

However both Mr Smithies and Mr Howarth referred to the modern appetite for foods which can be high in sugars, salt and saturated fats and low in fibre.

These foods are often associated with the increasing epidemic of obesity leading to diabetes and heart disease.

I pointed out that all our foods carry a traffic light warning which will indicate the levels of additives and provide an objective measure by which customers can select healthier foods if they so choose. However all my visitors were of the opinion that we had a similar responsibility with regard to healthy foods as we do with for example fair-trade.

Overall however the meeting was positive in spirit and I want to pass on to you the compliments of my visitors who were delighted to recognise that from the early beginnings their initiative has been developed into a business which more than holds its own in the market place, that the relationship between the varying elements of the business are clearly set out and that our members feel themselves to be part of an organisation which is committed to continuing their original mission of creating a fairer and more just world.

To this end of course the translation of our values and principles into the goods we sell in our stores and into our membership proposition is crucial as we seek to take the business forward in an extremely competitive and in some ways, still hostile environment.

Those of us on the membership side of the business are of course still members and earn our place on regional boards and even on the group board as a result of being elected by the wider membership.

Any democratic organisation is only as effective as its initial membership  proposition and for this reason I invited my visitors to reflect a little with me as to how they saw membership in the early days compared with today and of course as we look into the future.

The original proposition remains crucial. It was both political and philosophical. It challenged both the owners and those with a vested interest in things staying the same.

Their original thoughts as they invited people to become members was to create a fair and open society and for this reason they insisted that membership was open to all and that each individual member had an individual vote.

Whilst that remains true today there is less commitment to active participation in the democratic process either nationally or locally or indeed with regard to membership of the co-op.

However as the meeting went on my visitors emphasised a number of points.

One was the idealism of young people, we see this of course in our Trust Schools and Co-op Academies and it is essential that we continue to emphasise the need for debate and discussion of global values and principles as contributing to both the day to day governance of our schools and to pedagogy. In this way as my visitors commented we will build up an increasingly literate and engaged cohort of young people prepared to play their part as co-operators.

Geography mitigates against attendance at regional meetings and not everyone has access to technology, so maybe we should be giving more thought to ensuring that our meetings are more local. After all we recognise that our core business in each store will be local, people travelling a relatively short distance to shop, so maybe we could consider holding our local meetings in local community centres linked to the location of our stores.

It will be time consuming and demanding on staff but it is essential that being a member of the co-op is an altogether different proposition than being a customer.

We have tried divi, we have issued stamps, now we have a card which to all intents and purposes feels like a loyalty card. Perhaps what is needed is to raise the stakes whilst promoting the excellence of our financial services by issuing a combined bank, cash and shareholder bonus card.

My visitors recalled that it was a basic principle of their initial offer that all purchases were to be made in cash, but they also recognised that today there is a movement toward society in general becoming ‘cashless’, especially with the new generation of intelligent cards.

I believe that we should task our financial services people to make this a priority.

The Chair