28th February 2013

Things are coming to a head.

There are angels with trumpets sounding the final warning.

The credit rating agencies are warning that triple A credit ratings are at risk.

Employment figures mask the reality of declining productivity.

The Banks continue to act with impunity and bonuses are demanded and paid.

The latest brilliant idea from a senior banker is a minus interest payment which means that we pay them to keep our money, at last my lifelong overdraft strategy has been justified, at least I pay them for spending their money rather than mine!

But this really cannot go on?

Neither the Prime Minister not the Chancellor are prepared to tackle the serious underlying problem and are still claiming that their policies will ultimately return us to a period of continuing growth if only we digest the uncomfortable strategy they are pursuing until the deficit is paid down.

Across Europe the same strategy more or less is being employed.

In Italy the austerity programme has been rejected at the polls with a vote for a strategy of government out and an end to politics and austerity and free broadband.

In the USA the Democrats and the Republicans confront each other as a tense stand off in the senate reminds those watching of the scenes at the OK Corral.

The world is going to hell in a handcart. Productivity and Manufacturing in decline, except possibly in China and India, and poverty the consequence of inequality, stalks the land.

And we are told again and again, There is no Alternative.

Apparently even the loss of our Triple A rating is a vote for the coalition's strategy.

But there are alternatives. Alternatives, which for our sins, we keep ignoring.

When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister a document was published, Prosperity without Growth.

The report challenged the thesis that Economic Growth is wise, that a forever increasing Gross National Product and sky high shares are necessary to sustain our future prosperity.

The summary, as Jeremy Leggett expressed it in the Guardian, is that Capitalism as we know it is torpedoing our prosperity, killing our economies and threatening our children with an unliveable world.

The best way to ensure that the future is re-imagined is another idealistic and seemingly overly ambitious thesis.

Co-operation.

Nevertheless the Co-operative traces its roots back to an practical attempt in Toad Lane, Rochdale in 1844 to replace a corrupt economic system with a fair one. The principle has therefore been known and practised for nearly two hundred years. Sadly however it has escaped the notice of the con-dems whose economic policies continue to head us down a dead end street at 90 mph on a bad motorcycle, as Bob Dylan wrote about a failed love affair, which is exactly what the West's fixation with Capitalism is.

Currently co-ops across the world have  more than a billion people who are active members, providing a hundred million jobs, which is a fifth more than multi nationals combined, alongside this the conomic activity of the largest three hundred cooperatives worldwide equals that of the world's tenth largest economy.

Which somehow challenges the notion that it is either idealistic or overly ambitious.

If we want to change the world for the better surely cooperation is better than competition?

22nd February 2013

On average I suppose I get twenty or thirty views per blog.

It has added up to nearly 12000 over the time that I have been a blogger.

As a retired Vicar I have preached to large congregations as well as small ones.

But the average was probably 20 or 30.

So to reach 12000 I would have had to preach say, 600 sermons, which at one per Sunday would take 12 years so that definitely makes blogging the better bet.

But I was fascinated to read this morning that a blogger is rising to prominence in the Italian Elections.

Beppe Grillo is a comedian and a widely read blogger, his Five Star Movement is tipped to win at least a hundred seats and it is likely that Mr Grillo will become something of a power broker.

So is this the way to gain votes and influence people?

Blogging as a pathway to power?

It is an interesting and provocative thesis, of course it helps to be widely read and it helps to be a well known comedian with a national reputation but it seems that blogging as a political strategy can work, after all it places you firmly not only in the public domain but in the public's top pocket, inside jacket pocket, hip pocket or side leg pocket on cargo pants, wherever in fact people carry their smart phones.

Then wherever they happen to be, on the bus, in the car, walking along the street, on the train or at home when they get a message advising them that it has arrived they can wake their smart phone and read the latest blog from their favourite blogger.

Opinions will be shaped and formed. Decisions will be made. Judgements will be arrived at and at the critical moment when called to vote, the smart choice will be the latest blogger to have whispered influential thoughts.

Whilst Beppe Grillo is wooing the Italian population, here in the UK politicians are going all out on twitter and facebook and social networking to claim and counter claim the advantages of their platform and their party and their promises to be fairer, offering better health care, lower taxes and better education.

The question is could a blogger emerge here as the leader of a new radical alternative party, of course it would have be popular, strike a cord with the voters, Mr Grillo is advocating a Referendum of staying in the Euro Zone, just like our own Prime Minister, a proposal for free broad band is popular with his supporters as is a ban on High Speed Rail Tunnels (could prove a vote winner in the Chilterns but Mr Grillo is not standing here).

But his most popular strategy is V Day, standing for Vaffanculo! (The English translation of this word requires the use of asterisks) on V Day he is offering the tantalising possibility of an end to politics by sending the politicians packing.

After which presumably we all become bloggers and use the vote button on our remotes to decide each individual issue on merit or text Westminster Central.

Life in the Blogosphere raising politics to a new and exciting level of public participation in politics or reducing Westminster to a kind of permanent Big Brother review?

You can read Beppe Grillo's blog in English  at: http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/

18th February 2013

So a quick change of scene.

We move from the Costa del Sol to the Costa del Solway.

But, Hey! Plus ca Change.

Somethings don't change. Foodbanks for example. Big in Spain and pretty big in Cumbria.

Will the Prime Minister acknowledge this when he seeks re-election in a couple of years.

So what did you do for us? We will ask, but what will he reply?

Well apart from exonerating Bankers and blaming Labour I brought Food Banks back.

Briefly our hearts wills stop, food banks, are they places where you deposit two loaves, some cheese and some ham and when you come to withdraw your food 'investment' you are offered a ham melt baguette with french fries and a little side salad?

I don't suppose Messrs Cameron and Clegg will actually have visited a food bank, so someone will have to remind them,they are places where poor folk who can't afford to buy food in shops go to be given a couple of tins of tomato and some spaghetti to make a healthy vegetarian lasagna with imaginary meat, which some folk might think is better than the real meat they put in lasagna these days, unless of course they are so hungry that they could 'eat a horse' in which case of course they might wish that the food bank had a supply of supermarket spaghetti, lasagna or burgers.

Of course alongside food banks we have seen the welfare system improved.

So improved in fact that for some folk, asylum seekers, some of the very poorest in the world and some whose lives are in real and imminent danger if they return to whence they came, the con-dems have introduced the farewell system.

So there you go!

Unsafe in your own country you escape, perhaps leaving your family, certainly leaving your assets and you seek refuge in a country famous for its generosity and tolerance, maybe even a country which once ruled or possibly even invented your country.

After a week or two of being abused, reading alarmist reports about how you threaten the moral fibre and future of the country you have fled to for safety, you are awakened at four in the morning by armed police, driven to an airport, put on an aeroplane and returned to the nexus of dangers from which you fled.

Fair makes you proud to be British with its tradition of fairplay and blind justice.

We were just visitors on the Costa del Sol.

Temporary ex Pats, as the British abroad are known, and we were loaded onto an easyjet and sold wine and Croque Monsieur, although there was a nasty heart stopping moment when the indoor critics passport was demanded by a barely civil guardia civil who then came back and screened the wheelchair for what we had no idea, but I imagine he did even if judging by the look of disappointment as he handed the passport back, he had not found what he was looking for.

He obviously loved the smell of napalm in the morning.

So we were released into the comparative safety of Duty Free where the Gin was dearer than it had been in our local Spanish supermarket.

And when we landed it became clear that the Government had done nothing about the weather and as we waited for our lift we had a cup of tea at Greggs and reminisced about the pasty tax.

Maybe the Prime Minister will boast about his record with regard to domestic heating?

Vote Blue turn Green? Or was it vote blue turn blue because you won't be able to afford to heat your house?

That of course is a major difference as we adjust to the change in temperature between the Costa del Sol and the Costa del Solway. Our walk round the local beauty spot of Talkin Tarn with the sun reflecting brilliantly on the frozen surface of the Tarn was quite lovely, made me look forward to my evening G&T with the ice sparkling in the glass as the bubble rise, but at least it won't be so warm in the house as to melt the ice before I have finished my aperitif.

It is essential that the full record of this increasingly inept administration is maintained and published so that when they ask for our votes we can say, we'd rather put our money on the first loser in the Grand National becoming a lasagna before the race is over.

9th February 2013

I have always thought that social media was a good thing.

I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts on facebook and reading the thoughts shared by others.

Sometimes they make me smile, sometimes they make me think and sometimes I am genuinely challenged.

Occasionally I am offended.

But that's the thing with a big society which is open access and in which people are free to share their thoughts.

Recently however I have detected an unwelcome and pernicious tendency.

In the past few weeks it seems that there has been an increase in what I consider to be offensive attacks on folk who for whatever reason are relying on state support at a difficult time for the economy and for domestic budgets.

Most of it can be ignored but some of it is being shared and what prompted this blog was a particularly offensive piece which arrived by email and which was immediately marked as spam (someone should invent a piece of software that offers a traffic light warning for offensive emails).

With high unemployment, with low paid and often temporary jobs being all that is available, there has been an increase in comments, often quite objectionable comments, about people who are forced to subsist on state benefits.

It is easy to see how the rhetoric of the Con-Dem coalition leads to this kind of comment.

The language of strivers and shirkers simply doesn't help and creates a totally false distinction between those who rely on benefits to house, clothe and feed their families, those who earn their poverty and those who struggle to keep their heads above the rising waters of the economic tsunami that threatens to overwhelm us all.

The rhetoric of shirkers and strivers is being echoed in different ways, none of them especially pleasant and are, increasingly, accompanied by a certain xenophobia, which again seems connected to the current debate about our future in Europe.

Interestingly two of my recent correspondents in the twilight zone, demanding that the Government abandons its welfare strategy and along with it, the post war settlement, don't actually live in the UK but are ex pats, (interesting that the British abroad are always expats but foreign nationals in the UK are always immigrants!).

The latest nonsense being perpetrated is of course alarmist propaganda aimed at the supposed thousands of Bulgarian's and Rumanian's lining up to troop across the channel and sign on.

Whilst it is clear that the elderly consume far and away the greatest share of the welfare budget and that, with the economy flat lining, the level of tax income is declining, creating a vicious austerity circle of decreasing national income, increasing pressure on national budgets, increasingly hysterical government statements and the pernicious nonsense with which the social media is being swamped.

It is just possible that as the Con Dems become a two nation party that Ed Milliband's call for Labour to offer a vision of how One Nation, which is to say a nation united behind a common purpose, can begin to turn things round.

The hubris of the bankers cannot be allowed to result in the nemesis of a nation.

There is a need for a national rebuilding project in which we seek to build a new settlement for the future which will include not only work and welfare but health and national well-being.

I suppose it is too much to hope for and somewhat naive but I do hope that we can begin to use social networking positively to build a consensus for a new social order in which individuals are respected and the common good promoted through a culture of generosity and good will.

2nd February 2013

The Big Society continues to elude Mr Cameron.

Indeed if his opponents in the Conservative Party have their way he will soon be in charge of a very small society indeed.

According to at least one paper, and today I have read three, the membership of the Conservative Party has plummeted, from 300,000 to 177,000.

So that's half and if that half has gone on to join or vote for Ukip then that's it!

Up with Nigel and down with Dave and his Chancellor.

It's not in my interest really to try to persuade these former members of the Tory Party to return to the fold but it seems that somewhere in their minds they are fixed on the notion that the public really approves of their right wing policies.

More austerity, leaving the European Union, anti gay marriage, benefit bashing, this is the recipe that right wing Tories seem to believe will win them the next election.

Well if this blog shaped even one opinion, if it was a right wing homophobic Tory opinion, I might say go for it, but I wouldn't want to be misunderstand, irony doesn't always translate.

So I will continue to argue that the way forward to a more humane and liberal society in which the wealthiest benefit proportionately and the poorest are accorded a standard of living consistent with human dignity and flourishing. In which we maintain a place amongst our European Neighbours and support the rights of individual, whatever their gender or sexuality to commit themselves in love to their choice of partner.

That will be a big society.

A society of which we can be proud and in which individuals can flourish.

All the terrible caricatures of Tory Members, harrumphing and complaining through their walrus moustaches about immigrants and benefit scroungers, tend to focus on a Colonel usually called Blimp.

A 1930's cartoon character, Blimp has been called a satire on the reactionary opinions of the 1930's and 40's in Britain.

The creator of the Blimp character, cartoonist David Low, first drew Colonel Blimp for the Evening Standard in the 1930's to satirise a kind of pompous, irascible, jingoistic and stereotypically British upper class type, who seemed to have posed for the cartoon whilst sitting in a Turkish Bath.

Or in the case of Ukip appearing on Question Time.

(You never know with the BBC whether its just a very clever left wing strategy to warn us of whats in store or whether they think it just means more viewers for a late night current affairs programme or whether someone, somewhere, deep in the bowels of broadcasting house really believes the nonsense that is broadcast and thinks that the argument, if it is an argument will carry the day?).

It will be interesting to see, as many in Britain despair of the failing policies being imposed by the right wing coalition, whether the new smaller society, aka the Con Party, will shake off its jingoistic irascibility and suddenly adopt the false charm of people hoping against hope to hang on to power, viz George Osborne's comment that coming out in favour of Gay Marriage didn't do President Obama any harm!

Or whether the irascible bunch will go Ukip?

Or whether to paraphrase an early Low cartoon, the Colonel will call out from his Turkish Bath: Gad, Sir! Nigel is Right. This Cameron fellow is marching the party over an abyss, we must all march solidly behind him!

Whatever the outcome, the big society promised by Mr Cameron has become the small party he hopes will march behind him in the next election and deliver five more years of policies that will continue to roll back the successes of the post war settlement and return Britain to the depression style economy of the 1930's.

As they say in the pantomime, Oh yes he does! And as you doubtless respond, Oh no he doesn't!