28th June 2012

Yesterday someone reached out and hacked into my email account.

I was first alerted by a 'phone call from my Brother in Law.

The rest of the day was spent fielding 'phone calls from friends concerned to hear that I had been mugged in Spain, changing passwords and tracking down someone in BT who could help me retrieve my email account which had not just been hacked but had been hijacked.

The emails the hackers sent included my 'signature' which advises people to read my blog.

What had also happened was that my email account settings had been altered so that all my emails both genuine and responses to the hackers emails, were being diverted to an email account which they had set up somewhere in cyber space.

Apparently the recent flurry of hacking has followed on from an event a few months ago when BT itself was the victim of hacking.

The scam was pretty poor, an email to my friends claiming that I had been mugged in Madrid and needed money sending as a matter of urgency.

Well I had not been mugged in Madrid, or burgled in Barcelona or coshed in Cordoba but, as a number of the 'phone callers commented, you are travelling around a bit at the moment and we did just wonder ......

So first of all the experience reminded me that I have some pretty good friends so that's really good and quite comforting.

But having someone going about pretending to be you, and because of the openness of the www, being able to be pretty convincing, is a bit like having someone break into your house and look around at all your stuff, because, once inside the email account they could look at files and folders and read quite a bit of my recent history and my trading links with amazon and iTunes, so they would know what books I have read and what music I like.

It has also left me a little uneasy knowing that having been compromised once they could do it again.

A friend of mine had his facebook account hacked and the hacker left some quite strong comments of a sexual nature, which were not only embarrassing, but to my friend, deeply offensive.

So my first reaction after checking that my overdraft was still within the limit set by the bank, was to change my blogspot password, I certainly didn't want someone passing themselves off as me and writing this blog in my place.

So for a while I will have to be cautious and watchful but of course over time my guard will drop again.

As far as the big society and all that it seems that petrol heads are the beneficiaries of the latest volte face by the condems.

So the threatened fuel escalator rise has been postponed, which is handy because I am heading up to Scotland soon and three pence on every litre would have made the trip more expensive.

Quite how the reduction in the anticipated tax will be paid for I am not sure but doubtless welfare will bear more than its fare share of the brunt of the largesse shown to motorists.

But it seems that with the success of the Jubilee and the Coca Cola torch and the anticipated success of Olympics, it will not be allowed to fail, the bread and circus diversions planned to take our minds of 'phone hacking, computer hacking, recessions and austerity, a new diversion is now being considered.

Today there is a discussion in my morning newspaper about the possibility of bringing the Formula 1 roadshow to London.

It only goes to show really that we are becoming what was forecast years ago, a giant playground, a tourist attraction, a sideshow, an offshore Cony Island for the rest of Europe and America.

We welcome the rich, the latest roll out of the red carpet is to welcome the French who have no wish to pay Mr Hollande's taxes, to come and play in our cities and countryside.

Looking out of the window at the rain it seems that we are only a step away from the next stage of big societization, a huge geodesic dome stretching from the white cliffs to Cape Wrath,a giant canopy to keep the rain off the canapes, but once a year when Mr Ecclestone's circus rolls into town we will have to have especially good air extraction equipment, otherwise everyone will succumb to the exhaust fumes ........

.......... perhaps the'll resort to sending email messages to their friends saying that they need money sending so that they can get themselves back home immediately?

24th June 2012

My house is semi-detached.

I have a front garden which I have recently improved by planting bushes and surfacing the area with green slate.

The rest of the frontage offers a car parking space.

Like most of the UK it can be seen from a satellite on google maps.

At the rear of our deceptively spacious house is a tiny garden into which we have introduced the conceit of a 'wild flower' meadow.

This is 'our small' society.

As English folks, it also our deceptively spacious castle!

Today I read that the Chancellor, as revealed by Ms Spelman, is to undertake a review of Britain's wild and open spaces.

They are all, from Snowdonia, through the Lake District to the Norfolk Broads to be 'valued'.

A price will be put on everything from landscape, to views, to scenic value.

This is the Big Society as viewed by people who know the 'price' of everything and the 'value' of nothing.

Land is the essential commodity when it comes to the development of housing and industry and the common good.

Apparently the basic formula for assessing the feasibility of a development project is to divide the overall cost by third's.

The land, the building cost, the builders profit are the three critical elements of any development and they are inextricably linked, so with and out-turn price of £900k, made up say of nine houses selling at £100k each, the land and the build cost should amount to £600k leaving a profit of £300k for the developer.

Not exactly rocket science.

So the formula, with suitable guarantees from the Government, means that developments in and around the Olympic Park are racing ahead, with land values assured, building costs controlled and profits thereby guaranteed.

Meanwhile in Bradford the same developer's grand schemes remain a hole in the ground.

The flat land in the centre of the City, under the watchful gaze of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter
was , historically exactly that, a hole in the ground.

It was also full of water because it was a canal basin, the main road into the centre of Bradford from the North is still called Canal Road, because it follows the canal spur off the Leeds - Liverpool Canal, into the centre of the City.

It is still possible to follow the route, some of the canal bridges are still there, from the tow path of the Leeds - Liverpool Canal the original spur can be identified and ironically, the single lock on the spur with it's gates can be seen, surrounded by car dealerships.

Bradford, was ahead of its time, the canal basin was a source of illness and disease affecting the population and so the decision, in the light of emerging new and more flexible transport for bringing raw materials into the mills and taking the finished pieces out, was to empty the canal basin and fill it in.

The result was a few acres of flat land in the centre of town and a healthier population.

The land might be worth a third of some fanciful out-turn value, the building costs might add another third, but the profit in developing the centre of a northern town in the middle of a depression is unlikely to produce the final third, so the development is on hold.

It will be interesting to know what our share of the value of GB Ltd will be worth when Mr Osborne's valuers have undertaken their valuation.

If we then review the development costs times three we might even achieve some sense of what we're all worth, both corporately and individually, but be careful of what you wish for because the next step might be for HMRC to tax the notional profit we have all realised.

But hey! We live on an off shore island so whilst we're at it let's make it a tax haven too ..........

21st June 2012

Comedian has last laugh.

Tax Man not finding it amusing.

Mr Cameron arguing that it is morally repugnant to take advantage of loopholes.

Ken Dodd ought to give him a tickle with his tickling stick and invite him to spend a week in Knotty Ash, it would make a salutary change after Mexico.

In the, 'We're all in it together' world of make believe as invented by Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne some are more in it than others.

I pay tax, don't have any choice really, I pay tax on my pensions including my State Pension.

I also pay tax on everything I buy including fuel which is so popular it is taxed twice.

I also pay an insidious little tax called inflation, which is a tax on both the income that I receive, which is steadily eroded and on what I spend which equally steadily, increases.

It has of course always been thus.

Rock Stars, Football Stars, Movie Stars and quite a few politicians and politicians families have come up with ingenious ways of avoiding paying or simply paying less tax.

As the Rolling Stones sang, it was Exile on Main Street and George Harrison of course made an anti hero of the Tax Man, not only because he taxed high earning musicians but because he would tax the pennies on your eyes when you were dead.

The Tax Man is both the hero and the villain of the piece in the current debate.

On the one hand, if we want to have all the good things that a civilised society wishes for good health, education, peace, welfare as well as the things we need like prisons and parliament, alongside some obvious luxuries such as a Monarchy and the Olympics, then it all has to be paid for and we all have to dip into our pockets.

The tax man properly draws attention to the fact that some don't dip into their pockets as deeply as others are made to.

And ingenious schemers spend their waking hours dreaming up ways of helping their wealthy clients pay less.

Ken Dodd famously kept his in cash in the loft in a suitcase, presumably reflecting that the loss of interest and inflation was less of an issue than the tax mans take, others find offshore to be the place to stash the cash, however it is done the aim is to pay as little as you can.

The head of the International Monetary Fund caused a fuss recently when she accused the Greek people of not paying their taxes.

But that turned out to be a bit stones and glass houses when it was revealed that her not insignificant salary was tax free.

Maybe a clearer connection between what is raised through taxation and what the money is spent on might help folk feel better towards the tax man and realise that the comedian is laughing with them and not at them ........

18th June 2012

The Leveson inquiry is developing as an ongoing saga of life in the political village.

Textual relations appear to connect just about everybody to just about everybody.

It seems more and more that the election that resulted in the emergence of the condem government was as close to a Putsch as we are likely to see in what up until now has appeared to be a democratic country.

I guess the flaw was that it was intended to to result in a con government and the dem bit was an unfortunate necessity if Mr Brown was to be evicted from Downing Street.

So whilst Mr Cameron was the chosen one he rather let the side down by failing to actually win the election even with the support of his friends in the newspapers who it seems were using the phrase 'all in it together' long before it was used to describe the policies brought forward by Mr Osborne.

Now it seems that those who support the con bit of the coalition against the dem bit are beginning to argue that the Government is beginning to look a bit, well ... left wing really.

The cuts are not deep enough apparently, there is still to much namby-pamby, soft-centred, left wing deferring to those who need a bit of social support.

A recent article in The Times demanded shrinking the welfare state further, raising the age of retirement so that pensions only get paid for six months, stripping the NHS of all its activities apart from A&E and Maternity services and leaving Europe to Johnny Foreigner who will still depend on us to buy their BMW's and Audis .....

Barking really, but there you have it, News International no longer reports the News it makes it or as some might say, makes it up.

I spent the weekend at New Lanark at a Co-op Day School.

The bad news was that I had no signal, no wi-fi and therefore no access to facebook, twitter, email etc for 24 hours.

There were definite withdrawal signals, evident by the end of the first day.

And the joy I experienced as I drove up out of the Clyde Valley to the siren sounds of my 'phone beeping to announce that I had messages, was quite wonderful.

I invoked the spirit of Steve Jobs and gave thanks for connectivity.

But the good news was a different kind of connectivity altogether.

As you wander around New Lanark the site is decorated with quotations from Robert Owen.

A man who believed that treating people with respect and dignity, offering education and fair trade in his village shop, establishing the first workplace nursery in the world, offering warm. comfortable houses for his workers to live in, each with the small garden where they could grow wholesome food, was a way not only of improving the conditions for working people but of making the world a better fairer place.

As Owen expressed it an a speech he made when he opened the Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark on New Year's day 1816:

'I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any  misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundred fold: and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal'

Owen was an idealist and he put his ideals into practice at New Lanark, now a world heritage site, around the site placards carry quotations from Owen on subjects as varied as the importance of education, health, fair rewards for work, the upbringing and education of children and care of the elderly.

In the work place, in the school, in the Adult Education Centre and in the care of the community as a whole, Owen rehearsed the axiom that:

'it is in the interest of all, that everyone, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, that everyone should be placed in the midst at those external circumstances, that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life'


It seems that from 1816 inspired by Owen and other social reformers up to and including Beveridge we made progress to a better and more enlightened world.

But now we are moving backwards to a darker and more dangerous place in which happiness is afforded only to those who inhabit the exclusive world of privilege, a world in which they and only they, are in together .

10th June 2012

The bunting is beginning to look bedraggled.

But it is still there, tied to gates and trees.

Strung across roads.

A somewhat dismal, bedraggled reminder of last weeks party.

Maybe it will stay up until the England Team are on the coach heading home from the European Championships?

Maybe it will remain until after the Olympics to celebrate team GB's medal count?

Perhaps eventually, tattered and torn it will blow away in an unseasonable gale and re-appear in the food chain as it is mistaken for edible food by animals and birds?

Normal service it seems is hardly being restored.

With financial markets in disarray. Spain poised to join Greece in the bailout bonanza and Germany holding the strings of the Euro purse more tightly, the UK is about to be asked:

Do you want to stay in or stay out?

A bit like the Hokey Cokey.

I remember dancing this dance at family parties around the time of the Coronation.

It's what passed for entertainment in austere times.

Young children were easily confused, and helpful, laughing Aunties would offer encouragement.

Put your left leg in, shake it all about, put your right leg in, in out in out, shake it all about, do the hokey cokey.

Invented in 1857 by two sisters on a visit to America, the song and its accompanying dance would usually end with the whole family in fits of laughter, aunties and children rolling on the floor and the men smoking calmly and remaining aloof and manly, resisting all calls to join in.

In the 1950's austerity was really quite a lot of fun.

Now of course we all sit silently often in different rooms and iball each other or text people in other rooms or play word games with friends in other countries without exchanging any words at all with folk in the same room.

This is of course the condem project.

Bring a little fun into folks lives by reintroducing the austerity gene.

Soon desperate people, unable to recharge their ithings because they are having to choose between heating or eating will start doing the hokey cokey again just to keep warm whilst they munch their takeaways in order to keep up their strength, whilst putting in and taking out legs and arms and eventually heads, before rolling on the floor and laughing uproariously.

Not had this much fun in years they will say, lets thank the condems by voting them back in.

Austerity rules OK.

In the East Lancashire town where my grandparents lived, on a Sunday afternoon the hokey pokey man came down the street.

He wasn't dancing or singing he was the Italian Ice Cream vendor who sold ice cream in waxed paper, a hokey pokey.

Google suggests that this might be a mispronunciation of the Italian ecce un poco, here is a little.

Whatever, that was about as much fun as there was what with rationing, low wages uncertainty insecurity and no NHS.

So let the bedraggled bunting be a reminder of what joy there was in austerity and what we have to look forward to when the cuts really start to bite and a visit to the doctor has to be afforded out of a reducing income. It will soon become heat, eat or treat.

6th June 2012

The longer it went on the more I became a republican.

I have met a number of the Royal Family over the years in various roles and have always found them to be gracious and elegant, whether in St James' Palace, in the Cathedral in Bradford or in a friends front room for a Toc H Tea Party in Jarrow.

And Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee was worth celebrating if only for the uniquely British way the monarchy has maintained its place in a democratic society.

But the longer it went on the more I became a republican.

There was something not quite right about these celebrations.

A four day bank holiday which managed to hi jack the Christian celebration of the feast of the Holy Spirit, translate it to Trinity Sunday and then use the opportunity to create a total news black out.

The wealthy elite of the pop world fawning in front of Buckingham Palace, it is interesting to reflect what choice comment John Lennon would have ventured if he had accepted an invitation. One performer made it clear that his performance merited a Knighthood.

The longer it went on the more I became a republican.

The newspapers and the news media coverage was designed to make us all feel better about ourselves and ignore the uncomfortable fact that our society is more divided than it was in 1952.

It may be richer, there may be more money in the average Bankers pocket, we, or they, certainly drink more Bollinger, live in bigger houses, drive more expensive cars and collect art or whatever.

But that does not equate to society becoming more democratic.

At least the Archbishop used the opportunity to raise again some essential questions about the kind of society we want to be and the Guardian broke the story of the young unemployed folk brought to London as stewards by the company who have won the contract for the Olympics.

Well now it is over and in the tradition of bread and circuses the next big national focus will be on Football and the European Championships, like Eurovision I suspect that Sweden will triumph unless of course Spain can put their economic difficulties and the Mourinho inspired, rivalry between the their top clubs behind them.

It's fairly clear that England go into the championships as underdogs but that wont stop Mr Cameron promoting their chances.

As the young unemployed stewards voluntarily pick up the litter before their coach ride home the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces.

Only Baroness Warsi failed to keep her bad news story out of the press, she even featured in the cartoon in The Times.

Maybe by the end of this week real news will return to page and TV screen rather than another feature on the Princess of Cambridges' hat.

Of course real news is not as much fun, it's more painful to read.

How much better to ignore what is happening to our communities, our schools, our young people, our elderly and focus on elderly rock stars singing to an elderly Queen.

The longer it went on the more I became a republican.

This weekend our family Christened our youngest grandchild, she was baptised into the commonwealth of the people of faith which is a community of justice under God, redeemed by the Son and nurtured by the Spirit.

However wryly or cynically we view it, whatever thinking went on to transfer media interest from budgets and pasties and granny taxes to the achievements of the Queen and the Royal family, it is surely time now for the fifth estate to get back to doing its job and holding the government to account in order to ensure that our society as it seeks a new role in a rapidly changing world, tries to act as a community of justice among the nations.

1st June 2012

I always used to throw the unsolicited mail that arrives on a daily basis, unopened into the recycling bin until the Post Man pointed out that it could rebound on him if a piece of my unopened mail found its way into the wrong hands and he was accused of dumping it rather than delivering it.

It was in some ways a paranoid reaction but then I guess he saw the Post Office as the kind of employer who might be out to get him.

But this is not really about industrial relations in the Post Office it is about a particularly upsetting piece of junk mail which arrived this morning.

Because of the post mans concerns I now open the junk mail.

Then I tear it up without reading it and put it out for recycling.

However today an unsolicited piece of mail arrived which was addressed to me correctly by my title rather than the occupier, so before tearing and recycling, I read.

The good news part of the letter was the invitation to spend two days at the seaside no strings attached, the bad news part of the letter was that the invitation was to stay as a guest of the Church of England's Pensions Board in one of their sheltered housing schemes.

Aagh!

My first thought was well, not bad, a couple of days in Scarborough, where as a child I used to spend family holidays staying in my 'Aunt's' Boarding House, could be quite nice really.

Then I thought I'm not that old surely,  they're not wanting to see me off already are they?

An old people's home, and worse than that, a home peopled by retired clergy playing a never ending game of bridge or spending their days trying to work out the clues in the Times Crossword or shouting terrible jokes to each other across a room perfumed with air freshener.

So I decided to play the Kings of Leon loudly as the rebellious older man I like to think I am.

Then I thought maybe I could book a couple of days and ride across on the Harley, I rather liked the idea of striding up to the front door in my leathers and producing my letter and claiming my two free nights.

On Sunday I could come down to breakfast wearing my T Shirt which shows a biker cornering at speed, with the phrase printed on it, 'It's Sunday ...... get down on one knee and pray'.

Or maybe my other T Shirt which has written on the back, 'if you can read this my girlfriends fallen off'.

Eventually I showed the invitation to the indoor critic who commented that the Scarborough house looked very nice and that we should phone up and book a weekend.

Of course with a combined age of 131 we probably do qualify and should plan ahead after all elder care is a scandal in this country, and it is an expensive scandal. 

Pretending to be Marlon Brando is all very well, but hardly a practical way of preparing for old age, given the state that care of the elderly is in.

The Dilnott Report wanted to put an upper limit on the cost to the individual but according to one newspaper the con-dems have no wish to appear to be introducing legislation to enable the middle classes to hold on to their homes so would rather keep the present system which means houses being sold to pay for care.

The same newspaper carried a report saying that charities, care providers and campaigners have made a final plea to the Prime Minister to seize the opportunity to transform the provision of care for the elderly or leave families picking up the pieces of the current, inadequate system.

Which is charity speak for putting more money into elder care.

Well we can't take up the generous offer of a free weekend in Scarborough, no strings attached, because this weekend we are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of one elderly lady at huge cost to tax payers, whilst all the other elderly ladies, who need a bit more spending on them but are too polite to ask, will doubtless be sitting in their care homes waving bunting and singing God Save the Queen.

Then next weekend we've got visitors and the weekend after that we've got a weekend learning about the history of the Co-op.

So maybe we'll rip up this particular piece of unsolicited junk mail and recycle it or better still shred it and use it as bedding for the grand children's hamster!