27th October 2013

Our house.

Because of my job we have always lived in fairly large houses, after all Vicarages have to be of a certain size, with reception rooms (to hold meetings) and dining rooms (to entertain) and studies (to study in).

Now we live in a much smaller house.

It is a modern cottage, twenty years old.

It is insulated (roof space and cavity walls) and it is much cheaper to maintain than a big, old, drafty  vicarage.

But it still has to be heated.

So we still have to buy energy as well as eat, all paid for out of the pension.

We are lucky because so far we have not had to make a choice between eating and heating but an increasing number of people will be making that choice this winter.

Our energy supply system is broken.

But this Government seems to have no plans to fix it, so even though wholesale prices have been pretty stable, retail prices have continued to rise.

Faced with having to fork out increasingly large monthly payments to British Gas I changed my energy supplier to Co-op Energy. I did it in the hope that I might see a saving but also because if I was forced to pay somebody for Gas and Electricity I would rather pay the co-op than a public utility that has been privatised.

Politically energy is very much the theme of the day.

Whether Labour can improve the current dysfunctional system I don't know but I do know that the con-dems shrill rhetoric about competition simply won't wash.

The fact is that when the public utilities were sold by Margaret Thatcher's Government, most of them went on to be owned by foreign investors and Governments.

Quite why it is not OK for the British Government to own its own energy supply but it is OK for France and Germany to own it, I do not understand.

But the longer this debate goes on, and the shriller it becomes as the election gets closer, it will become increasingly clear that we are being faced with a choice between ideologies.

The Tory Party and its Lib-Dem allies simply rehearse again and again the ideological rhetoric of private, private, private, although the irony of their proposed sale of Hinkley Point to a French/Chinese consortium which is in fact public. public, public, but just not British public, seems to have escaped them.

Under the first ideological Tory Government as under this one, Britain has become very good indeed at exporting.

We have exported the ownership of Energy, Water, Car Manufacture, Steel Manufacture, along with a range of other goods and services whilst claiming in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way that we are not doing what we clearly are doing.

Yes, cars made in the UK are being exported in increasing numbers to the rest of Europe, but the owners of those companies are based in Japan and India.

Recently driving through Shap village in Cumbria I passed the entrance to the Shap Quarries, the notice board at the entrance announced Tata, and they weren't saying goodbye!

If we are saying that the management of public utilities are always held in thrall by the Unions and that private ownership guarantees better management and improved outputs (The argument put forward in response to the closure and re-opening of Grangemouth Refinery) then surely the best way to resolve that is to address the critical issues rather than flogging everything off to the lowest bidder.

So as I settle in to battle through another long cold Cumbrian Winter I shall toast my toes at the Gas Fire and wash my dishes in the hot water and dry my smalls on the heated radiator happy in the knowledge that I actually own the company that supplies my energy because it is a consumer co-op and I am a consumer.

24th October 2013

This has been the longest break between blog posts ever.

Why the silence?

The answer to that gives rise to some interesting thoughts about the National Health Service, the way that it is organised, car parking and the existence of God.

The indoor critic had to have surgery and was in hospital for two nights after the operation which was a fairly major intervention.

We were told that it was in order to limit the risk of MRSA!

Right!

At a cost of around £250 a night to stay in hospital compared with the cost of a district nurse I suspect I know the real reason and, to make it a better bargain still, I come free and can bring the patient back when the drain needs taking out or if other attention is required.

Still I didn't mind because I wanted her home and she's happier at home so whatever the reason the outcome was pretty much what we wanted.

Recovery will take time and there will be follow ups to be done but at least we can look forward and she didn't contract MRSA and as she observed, they don't serve G&T's in Ward 10.

Despite feeling deflated by the events of the past few weeks and thinking if I had a faith I would have lost it by now I found myself in an unusual debate with God as I headed into the Hospital to collect the patient.

As well as the surgery which was necessary the patient has to use a wheelchair to get around and had the chariot with her in the ward.

When I approached the hospital I found myself thinking about the parking situation I would encounter.

Routinely we have to arrive an hour early for appointments to be sure of parking and I'm sure that blood pressure increases accordingly.

So as I drove through Carlisle on a cold wet October morning I found myself offering a prayer for parking in a disabled space in the parking area adjacent to the main doors.

The prayer took the form of an Abrahamic negotiation. 

So you’re Almighty, All Seeing, All Knowing, All Encompassing. You created everything and look after the sparrows. 

You are, so they say, Beneficent?

Well the thing is I offered I will believe that all that is true if and when I drive straight into a disabled parking space right by the Main Entrance so the indoor critic doesn't get cold or wet between leaving the hospital and getting to the car.

Of course the story has a happy ending and God and I are still friends.

I wonder, could Richard Dawkins have managed that?

3rd October 2013

So the big society came and went.

Not much mention of it in Manchester.

Seems that stomachs, power cuts and Neets were in vogue.

Not much policy either. Even though the recovery is still some way off achieving growth levels last seen before the bankers ate all the pies and created an international pie shortage.

Indeed we are told that the problem is being solved, just another five years of austerity, five years of further attacks on the poorest in our society, five years of less welfare and lower taxes for the wealthy and gosh!

We'll all be feeling better.

So what has the party conference season taught us?

Not very much it seems.

Other than to recognise a clearer difference now between the offers on the table.

Woolly old liberals in their sandals in Glasgow managed to put on a show, even though, like Methodists, there are fewer of them than ever.

The leadership spoke defiantly about how, with their 9% of support and just a handful of MP's, they should now be judged as a party of Government?

Their big offer was free lunches for schoolchildren. But given that in terms of support they now come fourth after UKIP it was hard to see how their claim could be taken seriously, like a desperate suitor the leaders speech was little more than drawing back the duvet to see who might snuggle in with him.

In Manchester it became clear that there is little new on offer, the Eton Mess will continue to be served up in the hope that we will all somehow eventually feel a bit better and  then elect the Tories outright to continue to do what they always seem to refer to as 'the right thing' unless of course we all wise up and realise that it is a slip of the tongue and what Mr Cameron really means to say is 'right wing'.

Because that is the offer being made, less government, corn for the rich and chaff for the poor.

The minimum wage has slipped behind inflation, there are increasing numbers of people on benefits who are working which means that the government is effectively subsidising employers and forfeiting tax income which when inflation is factored in becomes a triple whammy for the poorest and an unacknowledged benefit for others.

And, as the Tories introduce policies not thought possible by the Thatcher and Major administrations the rhetoric of disdain is used to decry the 'socialism' of the Labour leader.

The Daily Mail has taken the initiative seeking to damn Milliband by association with his Father.

Well, all that anyone can sensibly do, is seek to make their vote count and remember that, as the cost of living has risen, (inflation), so the average income has been reduced in order to reward the shareholders an directors of businesses by increasing dividends.

There are societies where the option for the poor determines the policies pursued by Governments, societies where justice is seen as a greater good than profit, surely that is the kind of society we wish to become?