26th July 2012

Grey, overcast, a vague threat of rain.

Apparently in the South it is now summer but here in the far North summer still has to arrive.

The North - South divide is with is for some time yet.

Soon we are heading even further North into another country altogether.

We are heading up to Scotland into big tree country, aka Perthshire.

There is, in our experience, a very real difference in the quality of life in Scotland, Samuel Johnson notwithstanding, it is both more human in scale and more cultured.

Politically of course it is pretty much always ahead of the English game with only one Conservative MP.

Universal benefits, prescriptions, free travel for the elderly, no fishing licence and in most place free fishing for seniors make Scotland an easier place to be an old fisherman.

Free University Education for both Scottish and European Union students leave the English University system exposed and aspiring graduates indebted although if English students choose to study in Scotland fees will be charged.

The social, economic and political success of the Scottish National Party offers clues to a political way for wards for politics in Britain as a whole.

As smaller nations have emerged in Europe, think Czech Republic and Slovenia, their is increasing evidence that the desperate holding onto power evidenced by the coalition government is equally a clinging to an imperial past.

Regionalism and a more federal structure did not start with New Labour who simply appropriated and built onto ideas that had been around since before the First World war.

There is a lot more to be gained than lost by regionalising into a federal structure would offer more autonomy and independence to the regions created.

It would be easier for those elected to respond to the aspirations of their electorate than is possible with the current London centric system, inward investment, think Hitachi and Nissan in the North East, would benefit the regions proportionately.

A smaller State, with a smaller legislature, would offer co-ordination of regional activity without legislating in ways that benefit some parts of the UK and especially London to a greater degree.

The greatest benefit would be to see local economies and local communities developing in different ways and sharing their local accents that much more positively.

London, of course, is a separate thing altogether, either it becomes an exception which proves the rule or it has to be challenged politically and economically.

Why build the Olympic Park in London? Why the massive investment in Cross Rail? Why Hi Speed Rail Links with London? Why a new or expanded National Airport?

I always wondered why when I lived in Milton Keynes if I wanted to fly to Edinburgh or into Europe I had to fly from London Luton?

The effect of the London focus is to skew National development, investment and infrastructure.

At a recent meeting in Newcastle a participant in the meeting, who had travelled up from London, commented that s/he needed to 'get back to reality', although what is 'real' about the price of everything from Beer, to Commuting to Restaurant Prices in London I am not sure, especially given that wages and housing costs are generally disproportionate.

I have always been proud to be a Northerner, my accent, my heritage, my culture, the environment I grew up and the City in which I was born.

Now I live even further North and everything apart from the weather is fine and no amount of regionalising, legislating or praying will ever change that ...........

24th July 2012

I was a cyclist.

I rode my bike, read cycling news and rode out with two cycling clubs.

Thought nothing of riding up to forty miles on a summer evening. Usually rode out to see the Tour of Britain, the Milk Race, pass through Derbyshire near to Stoke on Trent where I lived.

I always rode my bike with a fixed gear, 70" and 100" either side of the back wheel so that I could change them round according to the terrain.

Some evenings I would ride down to the local track in Newcastle under Lyme, strip the bike of everything that added weight and time trial round the track.

At school I wasn't desperately interested in rugby, football or field events and when I mentioned cycling the PE Teacher told me that it wasn't a sport.

Now after Bradley Wiggins' success in the Tour de France I guess no-one is in doubt and at the 2012 Olympics our hopes are up for total world domination in Cycling, pity Sir Steve Redgrave wasn't a cyclist!

As well as field and track and pool (as in swimming pool not numbered balls on a green baize cloth) will add a few more I am sure.

So all well and good.

No Beckham but there will be Giggs and a GB Team in the running for a Gold in football is not beyond the bounds of possibility and we should cycle and row and sail and shoot our way to a few medals.

First there is the show, AKA the opening ceremony, whether it will be Danny Boyle in 28 Days mode or Slumdog Millionaire mode is not yet clear, then there is wall to wall television coverage of sports with extra close ups of beach volleyball? (I could possibly be persuaded by my PE Teacher that beach volley ball is many things but possibly not a sport as we might understand it) and then Boris and Dave competing for honours in the closing ceremony doubtless with Tony and Cherie looking for photo opportunities alongside.

Being a grumpy kind of chap, and as my PE teacher observe completely unsporting and with a poor attitude, despite sharing a name with the winner of the Boston Marathon, I shall spend most of the Olympics on a river bank in Scotland with no TV.

If fish come by, lured by my Black Spiders, Black Pennels, Soldier Palmers, Invictas or Kate McLarens, then that will be a bonus and if they don't I will still be having a great time.

I guess I will keep up with the news and from time to time the medal count, but most of the time I will be looking to see if Ed Milliband can win a Gold at Prime Minsters question time and force a vote of no confidence in the coalition austerity strategy which is failing all the 'little' folk who actually pay taxes.

That the other Ed will win a Silver for rebooting the economy and turning a sprint into recession into a marathon for recovery.

I will be hoping also to hear that Mr Osborne has retired and now has time to earn himself a nice Bronze tan whilst cruising the Med in his friends yacht.

18th July 2012

Some years ago following the  riots in Liverpool and other Cities I was asked what my opinion was.

My concern at the time was that it might be possible for the Conservatives to argue that with rioting and the inner cities burning, that it would not be possible for elections to called or carried out safely or 'fairly' and that the then Prime Minister might choose to suspend the democratic process and we would be stuck with an unpopular and partisan government governing in the interests of its own supporters and funders rather than the country as a whole.

Now, with all that is happening in banking, with the attacks on welfare and the proposed changes to the NHS and the proposed reductions in public services generally it is possible to see a similar danger.

The democratic process is vulnerable.

We take it for granted, less of us exercise our vote than ever and yet the franchise was hard won, working people gained the right to vote in the bloody aftermath of WW1, universal suffrage being granted in 1918, less than a hundred years ago, and it took another ten years until women gained the right to vote.

Various campaigns have been started mainly using the strategy of petitions to demonstrate wide popular support for or against what it being proposed but the real strategy, which must be protected, is the right to vote for a political party to form a government in the public interest.

It is interesting that the public is, it seems, wearying of the con-dem coalition.

The closet of thread bare clothes has been revealed for what it is, even in their recent appearance in a carriage factory the Prime Minister and his Deputy both stated as an obvious fact that their marriage of convenience was an arrangement to ensure that they stayed in power.

Simply that.

A minority Government was not an option, this presumably aimed by Mr Cameron at his opponents in his own party, so the coalition was a ruse to ensure that their attacks on public services and welfare and their support for their privileged and wealthy supporters could be pursued without worrying about votes in the Commons.

On decidedly shakier ground Mr Clegg seemed to be simply saying that his party deserved an opportunity to influence policy although how or where this influence was felt and who benefited was not clear.

The Labour Party seems to be doing well in opposition and winning the argument so it is possible to be optimistic that despite their clinging on to power, we may see an election called before the five years are up and even more damage has been done and before the proposed gerrymandering can be brought introduced which will in effect mean that in future it will be harder to elect a Labour Government.

Increasingly public scrutiny is being seen in the work of the select committees.

They have done some important work demanding that public and private figures have given account of their actions and their stewardship.

The Murdoch's have been challenged as has Mr Diamond and now Mr Buckle.

Although it seems Mr Buckle is not for buckling.

There are two strong themes running through all this, that private is good and public bad. So the Army is faced with reductions in the number of full time soldiers a there is a massive reduction in the the numbers of police. Yet, despite paying a substantial amount of money to G4S it is the Army and the Police who have to take up the strain once again.

The second is that part time and temporary jobs are all that is on offer and on the whole people would rather keep looking for permanent work rather than surrender their benefits and then have to go through the wearying process of re-applying once the Olympics are over, which of course they will be.

It is also true that this coalition will also be over and that will afford an opportunity to elect a Government that will seek to serve the public rather than sectional interests and protect the essential services this country needs if it is to protect the poor, the sick and the elderly.

13th July 2012

Apparently, when asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister, Mr. Cameron said, because he thought he would be good at it.

Self confidence is obviously built in at Eton.

The problem comes when you still believe and every one else realises that your self confidence was just a tad misplaced.

What a mess we are in.

I've never banked with any of the big banks, not on principle, but because in practise they've usually banked with me. They called it an overdraft I called it using Peter's money to pay Paul and staying well away from both of  them, until called in to discuss my situation.

This usually involved explaining that it was them who had a situation and explaining that it was just my way of ensuring that there would be genuine mourners at my funeral.

I've also seen this approach as my way of ensuring that the country would continue to enjoy economic development. After all if no-one consumed, then no-one would be selling and, if no-one was selling then no-one would be making the things that were being sold.

So buying luxuries such as food, alcohol and fuel, alongside books, records and nice stuff, i.e. a bit of retail therapy from time to time, using the plastic usury token (interesting how luxury and usury almost rhyme) meant that folk making stuff had a chance to sell it and generate profits to pay their workers wages so that in my view, was me performing a social good, a win win.

Some folk make stuff, some folk make money and society continues to make progress.

And I can take some satisfaction from doing my bit.

Then there is welfare, or farewell as the Tories call it.

It used to be known as a benefit. It meant that if you didn't or couldn't help make stuff, then you were still kept in the social mix by being given enough to get by and enjoy the occasional luxury.

You could, even if you couldn't be a producer for whatever reason, continue to be a consumer.

But that is soon to end as house work is replaced by the work house as the poor we have with us always, will be swept under the carpet or be kept running around the country on some mad, post-Olympic long distance jog-athon designed to help the obese amongst us lose weight and as an allegory for 'keeping the economy moving'.

But even so the bread of the Olympics and the Circus of the Jubilee has not been sufficient to hide from us the truth that the Government is not doing well at, well, governing.

U Turn after U Turn with the occasional foray into populist efforts to divert attention from the fact that the basics are simply not being got right.

The Liberals attempt to change the voting system, junked.

House of Lord's reform, ditched.

Europe, vetoed.

All to sounds of hurrahs from the Tories who now are demanding a General Election.

Bring it on! I suspect it will result not in a big society but a big upset.

This has been a great year for Shakespeare.

The best Shakespeare I have seen this year is Coriolanus as imagined by Ralph Fiennes who dealt with Shakespeare's theme of circuses being cancelled and bread rationed, by setting the play in Bosnia.

Shakespeare really is the man not just for all seasons but for all times.

Apparently most people have a favourite Shakespeare quote, they sometimes think that they thought of rather than remembered, it.

Well my favourite quote is from Macbeth: Vaunting ambition that o'erleaps itself and falls down on 'tother side.

Mr Cameron, I believe rides with his friend Ms Brookes, he might find that quote as useful as I have.

Barclay's need a new CEO, I might apply, I think I would be good at it.

9th July 2012

What a wash out summer it has been.

The jet stream has drifted South leaving the UK stuck with a low pressure system.

Two co-op events that I have attended this year have been washed out.

One in New Lanark was a great event but umbrellas were necessary.

The second, held at the Beamish Open Air Museum remained dryish, but the drizzle, the low cloud and the exhibits, rather demonstrated that nostalgia is no longer what it was.

Beamish is a timely reminder not so much of how life used to be but rather how it is becoming under the con-dems.

In the Dentist's Surgery in Beamish I was told that because in the 18th and 19th Centuries the only hope a woman had of financial security was to marry many women invested in improving their chances of catching a man by beautifying themselves, a common way of achieving this was to have their teeth replaced with false teeth as a cosmetic strategy to make themselves more attractive.

With horse manure in the streets of the town being collected for 'the roses', the trams and buses ferrying folk from the sweet shop to pitman's pantry along cobbled streets it was an eerie reminder that life may have changed but has also for many working people remained the same.

The indoor critic and I are going for our annual dental check up tomorrow, it used to be every six months but that has been extended to a year because we are aged persons, albeit with our own teeth, so we will put on our mackintoshes and galoshes and venture out with our cheque book at the ready.

This combination of weather and politics is both prophetic and telling.

Watching the newscasts as people across the country showed how the water had swept into their homes washing away their goods and their hopes.

A young women showing the damage caused by the latest rain storm commented that they had only recently cleared up from the last storm and the insurers had still not settled their previous claim and now they were having to undertake the clearing up once again.

The wider political storms have also been raging.

And as they roar, the vision of the future comes in and goes out of focus.

Whatever Mr Lansley may claim to the contrary,the NHS is being taken over by commercial actors from Serco and Virgin to the NHS itself privatising non urgent interventions.

A NHS free at the point of delivery is being swept away in the storms generated by privatisation.

Security at the Olympics offers another example, as Group4 comes under criticism for tardiness, late delivery of its offered response and an increased sense that the Army will have to take up the slack created by the Private Sector.

The same private sector which is already preparing tenders to take over policing in urban areas.

Shades of Clockwork Orange!

So a publicly accountable Police Force as imagined by Sir John Peel is at risk of being swept away as policing is privatised.

Sitting at a school desk in the pit school in Beamish, I watched the 'teacher' as he sought to control the 'class' his main weapon was the rather fearsome cane that he caressed and 'switched' as he walked about.

The sight brought back memories of my own school days when were caned or 'slippered' not only by teachers but by prefects as well.

Of course the present cabinet despite being younger than me by some years will have their own memories of Eton.

Present changes to the education system, despite using the same descriptive word, Academy, are bizarre, proposals to bring back a more academic exam system suggest a return to a form of selection, which rather than expanding the range of opportunities available, will ensure that for many opportunities will be as limited as they would have been for those youngsters who sat in the desks at Beamish Pit School whose ambitions would have been limited to following their fathers into the pit.

Or in our current society to the dole queue because work and employment is being swept away by the storms of recession and failed monetary policy.

In this Jubilee Year the Education Secretary should actually open and read the Bible he has presented to every school. If he takes up this challenge I would refer him to Paul's letter to the Romans Chapter 8 vv 18 - 23.

Paul is writing about Jubilee and the future that we anticipate with 'eager expectation' as we see God's promise fulfilled that we 'will be liberated from bondage to decay and brought into the the glorious freedom of the children of god' it is a promise we await 'eagerly'.

From 1945 the social context recalled and re-imagined by Beamish has been slowly and painfully improved for working people, children and the elderly. The co-op, the unions, the Labour Party have each in their own way sought to imagine and bring into being a fairer, more just society.

The con-dems are no storm in a tea cup, Beamish is an insight into the future not the past.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

3rd July 2012

www. refers to what Jools Holland calls the inter-web.

Those of us who take the risk of maintaining a presence on the inter-web get used to typing it, www.

But this summer www has a whole new meaning.

Warm
Wet
Windy

It is, possibly, an acronym for global warming.

There were lots of articles in the press about how wonderful it would be, picking oranges in Cumbria or grapes on Hadrians Wall.

But what we are experiencing this summer is global warming in all its technicolour reality and it is not pleasant.

Warm, wet and windy weather that serves to make life just a tad unpleasant.

My two hobbies are on hold, motorcycling in www is no fun and www means that there is too much water in the river for fishing.

But of course www or global warming has another aspect to it, the arid, dry, unbearable heat of the southern hemisphere which makes life impossible and means that folk with no hope of survival in the hostile climate of what used to be their homelands up sticks and migrate north to a more temperate climate.

So Europe and the temperate countries become destinations.

We live in a migrant world.

Our time in Italy in 2011 and our stay in Spain in 2012 made the migrant world real.

The constant ebb and flow of young, mainly African, men, selling a wide variety of goods, mainly very poor copies of designer wear.

In the Port of Genoa the goods were sold on sheets laid on the pavements which were quickly lifted and thrown across a shoulder as the sales force made themselves scarce when the Guardia di Finanza arrived and then like flocks of migrant birds reappeared when the danger had passed.

It was a cat and mouse game.

But the mice were seeking to gain a foothold in Europe and those we spoke to made it clear that their ambition was to get to London.

The migrants destination of choice.

In Spain the sun beds on the beach, available to rent for nine euros a day, were often used at night by the young african street traders.

Often sitting in a beach front cafe with an early morning cafe solo you would witness the owners of the sun beds arriving and rousing their overnight guests before dusting the beds down for the day customers.

But just as in the fifties, the signs outside the boarding houses are going up again, but this time round, the signs are hanging on the dock gates and airport terminals.

The condems are rehearsing their anti immigration policies aided and abetted by the Labour Party.

When young Libyans arrived in Italy and headed for the French border they were left to camp at the gates on the Italian side in an echo of the camps outside Calais when immigrants tried to cross the Channel.

The social impact of www is increasingly troubling.

It is hard to imagine the future.

But large scale emigration is likely to be one effect of global warming but it will not be the only social disruption.


Certainly raising the drawbridge as recommended by Liam Fox is no solution.

What I find so scary is the new generation of MP's, in the main folk younger than I am, who went from PPS at University to a job as a researcher and then into a safe seat or even a seat in the House of Lords and are charged with developing policies to address the complex problems that the future will bring.

The result of this is both a failure of imagination and a complete loss of the large and spiritual ideas needed if we are to face the challenges of the future.

And as happens too often with the www, googling will not produce the answer.