30th December 2015

So this is the last Blog of 2015.

Here's hoping for a better 2016.

Storm Frank came and went, the rain rained, the wind blew and the storm defences alongside our stream, consisting of interlinked perforated metal barriers covered with plastic sheeting held down by chains, sandbags and clips, were blown apart by the wind, the plastic sheeting ripped off and the perforated metal left utterly useless as a flood defence.

The next storm will be 'G' and should be called 'George' in honour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the eighteenth storm could be called 'Rory' in honour of the beleaguered minister for floods.

The weather is unpredictable, unmanageable and has been until recently un-forecastable.

Years ago a friend of mine was hosting his church garden fete, so he rang the weather centre at Newcastle Airport in order to check whether it would be safe to plan to hold the fete outdoors, he was reassured but advised to check back on the day which he did, in the morning he was told that a weather front was coming in and that he might be better remaining indoors, two hours later the front had moved direction instead of heading down the South Tyne valley it appeared to be veering North so outside would be good, two hours before the fete he was given the all clear, at Three pm as the Mayor opened the Fete, it rained.

Forecasting is now more scientific and therefore more accurate but Storm Frank, as Eva and Desmond before it, went its own way and is now as I write well out of the way, somewhere near Iceland, with 100 mph winds and about to drop a weather bomb on the North Pole which will raise temperatures by 50% whilst, ironically, making the weather in the UK 'more seasonal!

The unpredictability of weather has its economic parallel.

There is a consensus that Margaret Thatcher changed the political 'weather' by forcing a review of the post war settlement which had been introduced in the aftermath of the Second World War, during a time when the 'political weather' was clement, Thatcher was able to introduce her vision of a free market as that 'weather' changed.

But alongside this the freeing of the market carried with it a view that, like the weather, it was free to move and shift as it chose, controls were anathema and the essential purpose of Government was to encourage the entrepreneurs to make money, which they did of course, but not by making things, as new financial instruments were imagined, money just made money and the dole queues grew longer.

The argument was made that as the wealthy became wealthier so the benefits would trickle or drip down but the evidence (rejected and denied by Thatcher and her Tory supporters) suggested that all that ever 'dripped down' were the chilly waters of increasing poverty which floated the boats of the wealthiest on a rising tide but which overwhelmed and sank the boats of the less well off.

I am grateful to my friend Andy Smith the playwright who wrote in his piece 'all that is solid melts into air' commissioned and performed in Bergen in 2011, for drawing my attention to the quotation which is from The Communist Manifesto.

As Andy writes in the play:

'..... what happens to us when capitalism takes hold. When our values change. When our relationship with things and each other starts to alter. When our infrastructures break down'.

These are the questions that Marx and Engels posed in their text.

Whether it's weather or capitalism it seems the results are very much the same.

Recent floods have brought out the very best in people whether in Carlisle or York or Hebden Bridge but there have been reports of looting, of opportunists seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of deepening others misery.

Insurance companies step back.

Payments are withheld or delayed.

The Prime Minister says he will do, in his classic of cameronspeak 'The Right Thing".

Rory Stewart appears on television standing in flooded streets saying that the defences worked, until they didn't work.

Spending on flood defences has been reduced because the thing with austerity is that we are all in it together.

And relationships change, I know that its not Syria but during the storms I felt under siege, my hatches were battened, driving home from visiting family I drove through flood water and was not at all sure what I would find when I arrived at my front door (still dry, Phew!).

Phone calls from friends not affected by Desmond were welcome only for their communities to be flooded by Eva.

Street after street of skips filled with the detritus of lives a stark reminder that our relationships, with both things and each other have changed.

The storms have impacted on the infrastructure, whether it is stores closed after flooding Tesco, Sainsbury, whether the services, whose funding has been cut back and back again, overstretched and unable to cope, hospitals struggling to find beds, A&E rooms under siege, local authorities stretched beyond their capacity to provide services, as major centres 'Northern Powerhouses'? left with City Centres under unprecedented depths of contaminated water.

The link between extreme weather and extreme ideological politics is pretty clear as the one impacts to reveal the weakness of the other .......

7th December 2015

Who on earth had the bright idea of giving storms names, and whoever thought that Desmond would be a good name?

At least Abigail had the dubious merit of being a fairly bad pun, as in Abbey Gale, my fellow student in Durham was called Keith Gale and was always known as Windy to his friends at college.

But Desmond?

Where was the pun in that unless some meteorologist who has been a lifelong Beatles fan had the thought:

ob-la-di, ob-la-dah
The wind goes on, bra
La-la, how the rain goes on

And remembered Desmond?

Maybe, if its left to the same meteorologist the next storm will be called Molly?

Life in Cumbria, in the Eden Valley in particular,this weekend was a life under siege.

I recognise that across the world far worse man made events are tearing communities apart and I find myself making an emotional connection between the start of the bombing campaign in Syria and what was happening around me.

Desmond certainly made it personal. Despite living in a flood zone with a feeder stream for the Eden flowing through our garden and the swirling waters from the Eden cutting our village off and closing the main A69 Trunk Road, our feet remained dry as the water flowed past our house, but the wind, the wind .....

My motorcycle was blown over and then swept by the wind sidelong along the ground and into the back of my car.

In lashing rain and driving wind I had to stand the bike back up and then secure it to the side of the house.

ob-la-di, ob-la-dah
The wind goes on, bra
La-la, how the rain goes on

On and on, to set new a record following the previous record which coincided with the floods of 2005 and this despite the Millions of pounds that have been spent on flood defences. Hundreds of homes destroyed again, hundreds of families made homeless again, hundreds of businesses affected again and the Old Fire Station, flooded in 2005 and then rebuilt and opened as an Arts Centre a year ago, flooded again as the centre of Carlisle was devastated by Desmond and his ob-la-di, ob-la-dah.

Apparently, again, according to David Cameron, money is no object and following his Cobra Meeting he arrives in Cumbria to share the pain.

His 'Vicar in Cumbria', Rory Stewart who is also floods minister, in an interview with the parish magazine stated:

The flood defences built since 2005, had given authorities more time to evacuate people and kept flood levels down.

The defences 'held strong' but the huge levels of rain were too much for them.

Who is going to ask the question why were there 'huge levels of rain'?

Standing in the driving rain on Saturday night, holding onto my hat whilst water dripped off my coat and into my boots, I was talking to a neighbour whose husband was loading sand bags into their car in order to seal their doors and stop the water invading their property, we were asking the basic question, what is causing this? Why is it happening?

In Paris the nations debate climate change whilst here in Cumbria we are experiencing it.

Doubtless in the Cobra Committee David Cameron will continue to dismiss 'green crap' and his Vicar on Earth, the Minister for Flooding will continue to rehearse the party line and just blame, well, the weather, of course.

But surely as these events increase and as the world warms to the point where in some places life is made impossible because of heat and aridity and other places, like Cumbria, it is made impossible by winds and rain and flooding courtesy of a storm called Desmond even the Eton educated Mr Cameron and his equally Eton educated Mr Stewart even if they ignored meteorology in favour of politics also undertook some study in logical thinking, putting two and two together and making sense of what is happening around them?

26th November 2015

What on earth is going on?

A recent exchange of emails with my MP resulted in his repeating the Low Tax, Low Welfare, High Wage economy mantra.

My response:

Your reply to  my recent email is both patronising and wrong in all aspects.

We are now being subjected to the most ill considered social experiment, conducted by Millionaires , as though it were a set test at Eton.

How can you destroy 70 years of social progress in one parliament?

This Government, of which you are a part, is taking us back to the 1930's whilst protecting your friends the bankers and tax dodgers.

This is even more than the Grantham Grocer's daughter dared to imagine in her wildest dreams.

I suggested that we might meet and he responded with an invitation to meet him at one of his surgeries, even suggesting dates before Christmas.

But now it seems that with a further £27 Billion, a hypothetical £27 Billion as various commentators have noticed, being found behind a hypothetical settee or Green Bench, we are it seems being offered a high welfare, high tax (especially if you are a second home owner or buying to let) economy with wages still below the level that they were in 2008.

This Autumn Statement was a breathtaking act of legerdemain, with rabbits in hats, silk scarves being waved to deceive the eye and the political trickery outshining the economic sense and coins materialising out of thin air.

Where was the investment in the future?

Now nurses lose their grants and are offered loans.

Young people are discouraged at all levels.

A social housing programme which is ultimately without meaning.

There is little evidence of research in technology, science, engineering what we have in fact to look forward too in the light of this budget is a low investment, low return, client economy, with the investment such as its is being made by foreign governments.

The shadow chancellor's reference to Mao's little red book may have been a ham fisted but it contained more than a kernel of truth which, unfortunately the China loving chancellor was able to capitalise on.  But the long view that is contained in Mao's vision of the struggle to defeat capitalism and introduce socialism continues to inform the Chinese Government in its global strategy.

What could be smarter than taking a leading share holding in Britain's energy supply in the years ahead?

As the Red Book says:

We communists never conceal our political views.

As for imperialist countries, we should unite with their peoples and strive to co-exist peacefully with those countries, do business with them and strive to prevent any possible war, but under no circumstances should we harbour any unrealistic notions about them.

Even, I imagine, whilst drinking beer and eating fish and chips in a Cotswold pub.

The autumn statement was a series of sound bites designed to capture headlines and in this it was a triumph, but what will happen next?

The building industry has shortages not only in raw materials, from steel to bricks, but also a shortage in skilled workers, from bricklayers to site managers. It is doubtful whether, beyond the headlines, the houses will be built but in the anti revolutionary fervour which underpins the small state society and economy toward which the Tories seek to lead us that won't matter because as 2020 comes around, as the music stops in the game of musical chairs played at the Tory Party Conference, he will blame him or him or him or they will all blame her.

The mantra of high wage, low tax, low welfare is a smokescreen to cover the obvious and barely concealed shifting of the social and economic landscape as greater inequality is achieved through enormous and unjustifiable bonuses for bankers and huge and salary hikes for CEO's.

Alongside the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction leading to the invasion of Iraq, Peter Mandelson's comment about being relaxed about the rich contributed hugely to Tony Blair's undoing.

So there should be, in any decent, contemporary society, a relationship between the earnings of those at either end of the wage spectrum, views about what that relationship should be vary but a recent suggestion was a range of 1-20 with 1 being the lowest and 20 being the highest.

Whilst there is no evidence at all that the Tory Party shares this view, of course not! The evidence published by The Equality Trust plus other commentators is that a more equal society is a society that flourishes socially, educationally, and in the physical and mental health and well-being of its citizens.

In today's newspaper's the left suggested that there had been a U Turn and whilst welfare will still be reduced, (the devil in the detail) nevertheless the age of austerity is officially over, whilst the right decried the budget as 'socialist' more or less what Ed Miliband might have done if the public had been foolish enough to return him to power.

My view when I see Chancellor and Prime Minister side by side enjoying the joke of having caused such discomfort to the opposition, that this is simply an exercise lifted almost entirely from the edition of a Tom Brown's Schooldays that I missed.

I wrote some years ago in the Church Action on Poverty newsletter that if you replaced the word 'Victorian' with the word 'Dickensian' then the effect of Tory policies in the 1980's becomes clearer.

Victoria we are told 'was not amused' and neither should we be ........

9th November 2015

I have just finished reading Jane Smiley's trilogy in which she follows a family for a hundred years, from 1920 to 2020.

The research that went into this novel was comprehensive and is evident in the narrative as it unfolds.

Each chapter, and there are a hundred spread over three books, is titled with the year that it covers.

The novel unfolds with family members being born and dying, experiencing tragedy and success, loving and being loved, but all the time being shaped and changed and challenged by external events.

The historical chapters faithfully reflect the events as they occurred in each respective year but as 2015 gives way to 2016 and through to 2020 there is a fascinating and subtle change to the events described and their impact on the family.

Smiley did not anticipate the outcome of the elections in Canada and quite sensibly did not reflect on the impact of the anti-austerity movement in Europe probably because it had little consequence in America.

But two geo-political phenomena dominate both the historic developments as the author describes their effect on her families and their possible effects from 2016 onwards.

These phenomena are Global Warming and the political strength of China.

As I read the final chapters I began to develop a deep pessimism about the future as it is emerging under the current British Government, as Global Warming reaches a tipping point beyond which it becomes irreversible and as we sign deals with the Chinese Government whilst apparently severing our links with Europe so the list of discontents, not just with Globalisation a la Stiglitz but with our own elected government and the outcomes of austerity as it impacts on individuals and families, lengthens.

Inequality increases as manufacturing declines, as the service sector enlarges and financial services are freed from control or supervision so wealth flows towards the rich increasing inequality and limiting the life choices of those without resources.

A recently published OECD Report indicates that income inequality has risen (is rising) in Britain faster than in other rich nations.

The reason for this increase in inequality is given as the rise of a 'financial services elite' concentrating wealth into the hands of a tiny minority.

Peter Mandelson may well have been relaxed about individuals becoming extremely wealthy but it is becoming clearer and clearer that the outcome of money flowing into the pockets of the wealthy and somehow mysteriously replicating itself is a deeply unjust and unequal society, a society that is not at ease with itself, a society that could be described as broken.

Changing things is not easy when the manicured hands of those with the money and the power rest on the levers which can make change happen.

In my neighbourhood I notice that the balance of ownership and renting is changing, those who own the asset hold on to it, better to rent than sell, better for whom? But that is the equation. As house prices rise it makes all kind of sense to hold on to the asset and through letting to derive an income from it.

And as social housing is sold off through right to buy so choice becomes more limited for those households seeking to access the market and the private sector adjusts itself accordingly.

And what is happening at the local and community level is reflected at the global.

Public ownership is rejected in favour of private except that the so called private investors are themselves publicly owned so as China signs an agreement to build our nuclear energy future we hand over our energy dependency to the Government of China.

We can march, campaign, write letters to editors, blog, protest, pray and with luck, in five years time, vote for change.

But the damage will have been done.

The low paid will be paid even less, inequality will be deeper.

Affordable houses will remain unbuilt.

We may no longer be part of Europe.

The coastline of the UK may start to look very different as the oceans rise and the storm blowing outside my window will if anything be blowing more fiercely.

I buy my energy and telephony from energy and telephony co-operatives they are successful but if the   economic and political climate changes who knows?

Even more scarily, although apparently I read in today's Guardian that someone under eighty should not be referred too as elderly, nevertheless I will be older and possibly more reliant on health care being available free at the point of  need.

In her novel Jane Smiley asks through one of her characters 'have we lived through a golden age?'

That is indeed the title of the third book.

I was born before the NHS was founded in 1948, I was a baby boomer, I lived and grew up in a welfare state that I learnt to take for granted whilst appreciating and valuing the real benefits that it provided for me and my family, I can say that in my lifetime I have lived through a golden age.

It is however hard to imagine what future generations will experience.

31st October 2015

In 1983 Neil Kinnock warned people against embracing Margaret Thatcher as the next Prime Minister with his warning, 'Not to be ordinary. Not to be young,. Not to fall ill. Not to be old.

Thirty two years after the electorate ignored his warning and despite the intervening years of New Labour ascendancy with Blair and Brown, his words ring truer that ever and apply to an ever wider cross section of the electorate.

There is certainly little reward today in being a steelworker, in being low-paid, in being an immigrant or asylum seeker, in being young, in falling ill or becoming elderly.

The current furore over tax credits, a constitutional crisis according to Cameron and Osborne more accurately described by Jeremy Corbyn as a crisis for three million families.

Despite repeating his question six times Cameron avoided answering six times, repeating instead the current mantra of the Tory Party:

A high-pay, low-tax, low-welfare economy.

This meaningless phrase sits alongside the other meaningless phrase repeated again and again by this Tory Government of a country:

Living within its means.

Apart from the sight and sound of two millionaires lecturing people on the need to live within their means, (and George Osborne and David Cameron are not the only millionaires on millionaire row, the net worth of the Tory front bench is estimated at 70 Million with 18 of the 29 members of the Cabinet also qualifying as Millionaires) it is the hollowness of the phrases that emerge in the debates about hard working families when all the evidence points clearly to the fact that most of those three million who rely on tax credits are the very same people who work hard to earn their poverty.

Over the five years of the Tory led coalition wages in fact stagnated or fell back so that it is only now that wages are approaching levels last seen at the end of the New Labour era. So far from actually delivering a high wage economy the pursuit of austerity has resulted in lower investment, lower wages, and lower productivity.

The rhetoric employed by Cameron and Osborne is empty and hollow, we do not have a high-pay economy and are unlikely to see one emerge any time soon. The proposed national living wage is nothing more than a trick with mirrors, legerdemain, sleight of hand and as our manufacturing capacity collapses (first we sell it to Asian Businessmen who finally, because they cannot make a profit and there is no Government support withdraw because it is their only realistic option, why go down with a sinking ship?) so we become increasingly reliant on service industries or as Cameron suggested, self-employment, neither of which sectors offer the possibility of transforming a families budget overnight.

Alongside death, taxation is one of the few things of which we can be certain in this life. For Daniel Defoe, in his 1726 book, The Political History of the Devil, only: things as certain as death and taxes can be more firmly believed unless of course you are someone who is considered to be outside the circle of those subject to a shared responsibility for contributing to the, common good, so the better connected you are, the better your lawyers are, dependent on where you base your head office or where you claim to be trading from and which country, you may or may not pay tax, HMRC will doubtless cut you a deal and the cabinet will look out for its own.

As Leona Helmsley was quoted during her trial, We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.

Low taxes for some then.

But welfare also needs, according to Cameron and Osborne to be lowered, because as a country we need to, live within our means. 

How is welfare to be lowered? What is welfare? How are our means determined?

Britain is in fact a rich country, determined by both our domestic product and spending power Britain is the second largest economy in Europe, and fifth and tenth respectively in the world.

Because our manufacturing base has eroded with jobs exported both to Europe and to Asia so our service economy has grown and in particular financial services. Alongside this re balancing of our economy, because money flows into the single largest financial services centre in the UK, London so London has become more prosperous and wealth has gravitated South. Alongside this process so inequality has grown, the rich have become richer (as have the poor) but the imbalance has grown larger and larger as the rich become richer still.

As a nation living within our means would be relatively easy if our means were distributed more fairly and concepts like the Common Good, were owned by those who through good fortune, inheritance, hard work or  simple luck had achieved a more financially secure position.

Welfare is often taken to mean benefits, it certainly appears to be the mission of Ian Duncan Smith to define welfare as benefits, and with each new measure he introduces so benefits are reduced whether by singling out those with a spare room, or those who, through disability find work difficult or impossible he focuses our attention on benefits. But welfare is more, far more than benefits.

In 1945 the rhetoric of the Labour Government was rich and challenged the nations conscience. homes for heroes, education for all, treatment free at the point of need. It was a vision for which people of this country had fought two bitter wars, it was the Kingdom of Bevan.

It was the earnest socially rooted vision of a society that was just and fair, and I benefited from it.

The nightmare (it is certainly not a vision) of Cameron and Osborne is of a society increasingly divided between rich and poor, a society at odds with itself, a society where the young bear the weight of student debt into their adult lives, a society where home ownership becomes a remote financial possibility, a society of uncertainty and insecurity, a society of mac job's, serving lattes to machismo bankers.

The key to understanding welfare is to define the word:

Welfare, as defined in the OED means: the health, happiness and fortunes of a person or group.

The question facing Cameron and Osborne is not Jeremy Corbyn's question it is Neil Kinnock's.

In what way will a high pay, low tax, low welfare economy bring health, happiness and fortune to children, to young people entering adult life, to families in work or out, to the sick, to the elderly?

7th October 2015

I cannot bear to watch the news this week.

The Tory Party parading its narrow minded mendacity in Manchester.

Even the Guardian Newspaper has no choice but to report what is being said from the platform which makes for difficult reading.

If it is possible to draw any comfort from this pantomime of the vanities which is being played out in Manchester it comes from Greece, not the Greece of anti-austerity Syriza and Yanis Varoufakis, but the Greece of Herodotus.

Herodotus, a Greek Historian, born in Turkey in 485 BC.

Herodotus was credited with inventing history as a form of critical study and in his writings drew attention to the two great Tectonic Plates of History.

Hubris and Nemesis.

So I take comfort from my Herodotus as I see the pictures and the read the reports of the drama being played out in Manchester: Ian Duncan Smith advising the disabled to work (whilst showing no understanding of the tragedy that disability can mean for the individual so affected and their families), or Theresa May vilifying the stranger and the refugee in our midst (and being criticised not only by charities but by the IoD!) or George Osborne, declaring that Jeremy Corbyn spoke at a fringe meeting (as he will continue to do for the next five years), or David Cameron announcing how house building will start happening once builders can build for sale and not for rent.

And all this rhetoric set against the realities of what is happening not only Globally with climate  change and conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan which is displacing people from the Middle East and Africa, but what is happening locally in the lives of those affected by the reductions in Tax Credits, the increase in food bank dependency, the closure of the steel works in Redcar.

I make no great claims at understanding what fundamental shifts are taking place in the economy either in the UK or in China, but what is clear as I read Piketty and Stiglitz is that as inequality grows so the future becomes more precarious and as automation and technological change advance relentlessly, so precariousness shifts its way up the social strata from blue to white collar workers and obscene wealth aggregates to what we now call the 1%.

Manchester was the scene for the Peterloo Massacre which happened on the 16th August 1819.

Poor economic conditions and a lack of suffrage in Northern England resulted in a demonstration held in St Peter's Fields in  Manchester.

Some 60 - 80, 000 people gathered to protest and listen to speeches. The Magistrates deployed the Military to disperse the crowd and a Cavalry Charge with drawn sabres killed 15 people and injured over 500.

The tragedy was christened Peterloo in an ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo fours years earlier.

Clearly the Tory Party have chosen Manchester to emphasise their aim of stealing Labour's ideas and promoting the Northern Powerhouse under the Chairmanship of postman's son. Lord Adonis, who despite his name is not, as far as I know, Greek.

As neither was Herodotus, but his survey of Greek History serves to remind us that if there is one great truth to be drawn from history, and this should perhaps be a warning when the Tory Leadership is unable to treat the Labour Leadership with the courtesy that fellow MP's should offer one another, that Hubris is always followed  by Nemesis.

So, and it is a small comfort, but I take comfort from seeing and hearing Tory Hubris at its loudest and most grating in Manchester, because I know that it will end in tears.

10th September 2015

To start with a bit of biography.

I was born in 1945 in Ashton under Lyne.

My Father was still in the RAF and my Mother brought me home to the house that they had somehow managed to buy in Crossland Road, Droylsden, Manchester.

She was not a single mother but for two years until he was demobilised she saw little of my Father and relied on the support of her Mother who lived just round the corner in High Street.

At the end of Crossland Road was a Mill.

Saxon  Mill was built in 1906 for the Saxon Mill Company, it was a large four story building 18 bays long and 14 bays wide and was built of Accrington Brick with some Sandstone detailing.

Amongst my earliest memories was of the noise of the Mill Workers rushing down Crossland Road for the start of their shift, their clogs and heavy shoes drumming on the pavement disturbing  my sleep.

Our days were punctuated by the sound of the Mill's hooter declaring the start and end of the shifts each day.

By the time my family moved across Manchester to Gorton, the Mill was still working and employed fifty three people, it no longer wove Cotton as it had switched to Rayon in the 1950's.

My Father died in 2014 in Australia where he was living with his second wife.

After the funeral my sister and I repatriated his ashes and interred them in the family grave in Droylsden.

I took my family to see the house in Crossland Road and was astonished to see that there was no trace of the Mill which had dominated the view from our house and in its place stood a modern housing estate.

For me this is just one example of the changes that have transformed the world, the spinning and weaving of cotton was exported along with manufacturing generally, as part of a long transition in the process of what we now call, globalisation.

Recently I needed a new  part for my Motorcycle which is itself a 'grey' import from either Japan where it was manufactured or America, I bought the part on eBay (where I bought the bike) and it is being shipped, free, from China.

For my Father who swapped his RAF uniform for the uniform of a Manchester Corporation bus driver the changes which led him to swapping his home in Manchester for his new home in Perth, WA, were in 1947 when he was demobilised, unimaginable, yet they happened and the process continues and so it would seem to  me that the changes that I have experienced in my lifetime will also continue to influence the futures not only of my children but my grandchildren also.

It is clear also that the underlying engine of GDP which drives Capitalism forward will also continue to change and transform peoples lives unless Capitalism can be checked. As average wages decline the rewards claimed by those who Chair Boards and manage companies increase exponentially so inequality increases. As the present British Government continues to privatise the national assets which were introduced in 1945 offering opportunities to their supporters to maximise profits at the expense of the majority of individuals,  so the risk of deepening inequality continues with all the attendant socio-economic risks, as we move from a manufacturing economy to an economy predicated on increasing personal indebtedness.

Essentially the swapping of public debt for personal debt is the essential project which underpins austerity it is a 'political' choice.

I am essentially disenfranchised because I choose to live in a constituency where with the best will in the world my vote counts for nothing because the local MP who represents my constituency will always be re-elected if the other parties persist in standing in opposition, not to the Conservative candidate, but to each other.

With the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party I begin to see an opportunity for a new kind of politics, a politics of hope.

We need a progressive, anti-austerity alliance to emerge in order that in 2020 we can look toward the real possibility of a Government governing in the interests of the 99% rather than the 1%, a government that can occupy the public square in the interests of people offering peace, security and equality.

To demonstrate how this might happen in my constituency of Penrith and the Borders I started with the figures:

This safe seat has been held by the Conservatives since the 1920's

In 2015 Rory Stewart polled 26202 votes or 59.7% of votes cast..

Labour came second with 6308 or 14.4% of the vote, so far so bad.

Given the general collapse of the Liberal vote nationally, only a few years ago they came second in this constituency, it is wiser to count the votes of all the main parties including UKIP who whilst not a progressive party may to some extent include an anti austerity impulse and there were 'other' candidates who secured another 5% of the vote or 2303.

The results in total then, were Conservative 26202, others 20202, still not a progressive victory in fact Mr Stewart could well be seen to be both safe and secure in 2012.

But that is not the whole of the story.

In 2011 the Boundary Commission estimated the Electorate Figures for the Constituency as 65234 suggesting that some 21313 of the electorate either chose not to vote, were unable to vote or felt that voting was simply a waste of time.

If those who chose not to vote voted in the same percentage proportion as those who did vote then again Mr Stewart would be home and dry. But it is not unreasonable to imagine that would not be the case, because like me those who chose not to vote might have felt disenfranchised.

If the 21313 could be persuaded to vote or if indeed 7000 could, and if they voted for a progressive anti austerity party then Penrith and the Borders my not be such a safe Conservative seat and Mr Stewart might be looking for new employment in 2020.

27th August 2015

It was Margaret Thatcher who thought that her greatest legacy was New Labour.

If this is true, and it certainly sounds as though it could be, then it is a sad reflection on what happened during the three terms that Blair won for Labour.

New Labour was never a Tory Administration, not even as some would now say, Tory Lite.

But in its determination to hold the centre ground, despite some progressive policies, it allowed the centre ground to shift to the right politically and economically.

Relaxed about the super rich, happy to allow the wealthy to buy their way into Education Provision or Health Provision, happy to allow public services to be privatised.

In the end, when the banks failed and the wealthy fled taking their money with them, their debt was socialised and now increasingly we are seeing welfare privatised.

And now the Labour Party is riven by ideological divisions with Charles Clarke referring to Jeremy Corbyn as a 'continuity Benn/nutter' candidate.

Well, how true is this?

Continuity Benn?

Benn saw clearly how the Civil Service can frustrate policies and decisions of popularly elected governments.

He identified the centralised nature of the Labour Party which resulted in it becoming the personal fiefdom of its leader.

He drew attention to the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by the use of crude economic pressure on Government.

And warned against a media which was always on the side of those who enjoy economic privilege.

Well it seems to me that if this is an accurate reflection of Benn's political views and it was, he reflected, these four points that made him move to the left of politics, then there is little here with which anyone can disagree.

These four principles are pretty key to understanding British political life, the Civil Service continues to exercise disproportionate influence, with the Treasury standing as the key arbiter of what can and cannot be 'afforded'.

The Labour Party has introduced one member one vote leading to an almighty row, a witch hunt, claims of hard left Trotsky style infiltration resulting in what? Corbyn 'the nutter'?

Economic Pressure? What happened during the Scottish Devolution Campaign? Banks and Businesses threatening to leave, which was 'crude economic pressure' if there ever was.

And, from Blair as Godfather to Murdoch's young daughter to the friendships between David Cameron and Rebecca Brooks and the famous 'fast, unpredictable ride' texts, who can deny the role of the press in raising up and bringing down individuals who can be famous one moment and infamous the next.

If Corbyn is elected, and if there is no coup and if he is able to form an opposition, then Trident, PFI and Women only Railway Carriages will be the least of his problems.

He will face a Civil Service committed to maintaining the Status as close to the Quo as possible.

He will face a Parliamentary Labour Party itching to take control back from the Trotskyites, which is it seems most of those who have voted Corbyn.

The more clearly it becomes, with China facing its economic meltdown, that capitalism is transforming itself into post capitalism, the economic pressure to stay with austerity until wages in the third world rise to meet wages in the west as they fall, as non-workers i.e. those who used to work in Blue Collar jobs, most of which have fallen out of the economy to be replaced with fewer high tech jobs and an increase in low paid service jobs, are blamed for claiming welfare the economic pressure to keep the billionaires in luxury so that they can continue to afford to buy the goods advertised in the FT's How To Spend It Magazine will continue and any attempt to resist will hailed as Class War.

And the Media will continue to exercise an influence.

I did on one occasion have supper at a table in Somerset House, our host on that occasion was Charles Clarke, he seemed to me to be a gracious host and committed to ensuring that the Government of which he was a part supported the working people who had elected it.

So his comments seemed a little to quote the title of his recent lectures 'The too difficult Box'

Clarke is of the view that politicians fail if they can't identify the problem, the solution, identify the implementation strategy needed, where the vested interests are, what the legal constraints are, how to bring in legislation and if they lack political energy.

So continuity Benn/Nutter? Not a good call!

I think Corbyn is strong on both analysis and prescription and is channelling the zeitgeist of those who have had enough of blaming the poor, austerity and socialising the indebtedness of failed banks.

11th August 2015

Last week I was invited to a meeting by Tom Watson.

The meeting, in Carlisle, was in the Ballroom of a City Centre Hotel.

The meeting was poorly attended. Most seats were empty and those attending appeared to be members of the Carlisle CLP.

The meeting was Chaired by the Candidate for Carlisle who was defeated in the last election by the sitting Conservative Candidate John Stevenson, during the meeting the person next to me played patience on their iPhone.

I live in Penrith and the Borders Constituency and there was no-one I recognised amongst those attending.

Tom's pitch was based around three topics:

Why did we lose the last election?

What are the issues of current concern?

What is the job description for a Deputy Leader?

During his opening presentation Tom Watson rehearsed much that was familiar to those who monitor the election, post-election and party political coverage in The Guardian.

Labour lost because it did badly in Scotland, because it lost the centre ground, because many traditional Labour voters voted for Ukip, and because it failed to answer the question about the deficit.

All of which is true, but is it the whole story?

I suspect that it lost the election long before May and it lost it because the public believed the Cameron/Osborne narrative rather than the Miliband/Balls narrative.

Certainly the discussion in the room reflected a general consensus around welfare cuts, immigration and the NHS.

One comment, that siding with the Tories over Scottish independence was a mistake and that in the debate about Europe it is crucial that Labour has a clear and distinctive story of its own to tell seemed to me to reflect much  more accurately the problem that Miliband had and that three of the current candidates for the leadership also reflect.

It is also clear that the centre ground has shifted to the right, so that rehearsing traditional Labour views about welfare, nationalisation and health sound dangerously left wing.

Which is of course why Jeremy Corbyn's success has engendered such panic amongst the former big beasts of the Labour Party.

Watson would not be drawn on who he supported for the leadership but he offered a 'job description' for the job of Deputy Leader that was essentially creating a bridge between strategy and delivery that ensured that the leadership could and would hear the concerns of party members and members would be in the loop as strategy was developed.

He made it clear that he could work with whoever was elected.

So what next?

Well the membership of the Labour Party has increased and it looks increasingly likely that Jeremy Corbyn could win in the first round.

Will this be the disaster that many predict?

My heart, and increasingly my head, tells me that this won't be the case.

As Yvette Cooper has said: 'the Tories lied to the electorate' and it is this fundamental dishonesty that places politics and election victories before policies that mean real and significant improvements in peoples lives, which needs challenging by the next leader of the Labour Party.

What is necessary, it seems to me, is for a programme to be developed that promotes a genuine living wage, rather than a renamed minimum wage, which will mean for businesses, customers who have more to spend and for the economy increased income tax revenue flowing into the Treasury.

Alongside this a home building programme that obviates the need for selling off social housing, that creates jobs and doesn't just mean huge bonuses for the bosses of building companies.

Again, the shift to a reliance on financial services which began under Thatcher needs to be re-balanced back towards manufacturing with emerging businesses supported by a public investment bank.

Add an investment in the public ownership of the railways and the country and the economy begins to appear balanced in favour of both poor and middle income families.

This it seems to me from the recent email I received from the Corbyn team is what we might expect if Corbyn wins.

His leadership of the Labour Party, anti austerity, anti Trident pro public ownership, pro higher education that doesn't result in graduating with debts of £50,000, seems to me to be offering more to the electorate than they have currently or are likely to get from the other candidates.

We will know in September and then the real debate will begin ...... imagine a new social movement transforming politics in Britain and resonating with similar anti austerity movements across Europe.

30th July 2015

One thing became clear when the financial crisis hit.

And that was exactly who got the pies!

Under Gordon Brown's premiership the losses incurred by the banks during the financial crisis were socialised whilst the bank's profits were privatised thereby allowing bonuses to continue to be paid whilst the necessary borrowing failed to happen.

So the bankers got the pies and businesses, who needed investment, were left with the crusts.

And still no-one has gone to jail, they just passed go and pocketed the money.

I find it amazing that during the life of the last parliament the Tory narrative continued to tell the same story, that Labour overspent, this narrative was so compelling that it featured dramatically in the Question Time debate where it was coupled with another false narrative that a national budget parallels a domestic budget, a false narrative that began with Margaret Thatcher and which continues to this day.

It is as though Keynes never lived.

In 1945 in the face of a financial crisis caused by the war effort, Keynes ensured that Government money was invested in rebuilding the necessary social and commercial infrastructures, from health, to  housing, to education to welfare, to investment in business.

Ensuring thereby that employment was created and that wealth was shared equitably.

The second great legacy of the war effort was that the war was won through the means of a planned effort and this led, through Harold Wilson in The Board of Trade that the peace was too important to be left to capitalism alone but that a planned economy would result in equity and justice.

It is seventy years ago since the Kings Speech introduced the first Labour Programme for Government.

It made news then and it is still pertinent seventy years later.

'My Government will take up with energy the tasks of reconverting industry from the purposes of war to those of peace'.

'... by the extension of of public ownership our industries and services shall make their maximum contribution to the national well-being'.

'... effective planning of investment ... (bringing) the bank of England into public ownership'.

' a bill will be brought before you to nationalise the coal-mining industry as part of a concerted plan for the co-ordination of the fuel and power industries'.

' ... the distribution at fair prices of essential supplies and services'.

'... organise the resources of the building and manufacturing industries ..... to meet the housing requirements .... of the nation'.

'... promote the best use of land in the national interest'.

'... a comprehensive scheme of insurance against industrial injuries, extend the existing scheme of social insurance and establish a national health service'.


This Kings Speech was given on August 15th 1945.

Its impact was to transform and improve the lives of working people, I was three months old at  the time and took a further three years of debate, argument, resistance from GP's and Tory MP's before the National Health Service was introduced.

As the long slow ebbing of the tide continues so the public good is eroded, great inequality is experienced, capital continues to demonstrate that the pursuit of private profit is incompatible with the national interest, nevertheless the present Government remains committed to the power of the market, whether in financial services, manufacturing or healthcare and the effects of privatisation can be seen in the growth of food banks, the dismantling of the welfare state and increases in both child and elder poverty.

This bias towards the privatisation of profit and socialisation of  losses beginning with the Thatcher government and continuing through the new labour years has seen 'an increase in the economic, financial, political power of the financial sector which have created enormous distortions, and that the financial sector has come to control and influence the political decisions in a manner that is alarming'.  

Paulo Nogueira Batista, Executive Director of the IMF for Brazil.

Which leaves us with the answer to the question about who got the pies!

23rd July 2015

So Blair has returned to UK politics.

If your heart tells you to vote left, get a heart transplant. Thanks Tony!

When he invited me to join him for breakfast at No 10 he failed to appear and sent a video instead.

A Hologram of his Right Horrible Cheesiness greeted us as we entered the breakfast room to feast on fruit kebabs.

The first thing I did after the police escorted me from the premises was to stop and buy a bacon sandwich, which I ate more decorously than Red Ed I might say and without getting brown sauce on my tie.

Tie? You ask, who wears a tie nowadays?

Blair didn't wear one on TV last night and neither does JC, well all I can say is we did in those days.

So talking of JC (Jeremy Corbyn) the politician not the prophet, Mr Blair wants us not to vote for Jeremy.

The existential question facing Labour is does it want power or does it want principles.

It held power for thirteen years but the price of power was the loss of principle, tough on the causes of crime? Yes! ending Child Poverty? Yes! introducing Tax Credits? Yes!

But at ease with the filthy rich? Yes!  introducing PFI? Yes! extending the reach of external consultants, Serco, G4S? Yes! joining forces with Bush to wage war on Iraq? Oh Yes! Yes!

Now we are offered the choice to vote for principles over power.

I have never been very clubbable.

I was briefly in the Scouts, I audited the local youth club.

But I have never really been a joiner of clubs, groups, meetings, or political parties.

I am a member of the Co-op Party but I haven't attended many meetings and even though the indoor critic is member of the MS Society we don't attend local meetings.

But last week I joined the Labour Party, and it didn't even cost me £3 because I took advantage of the pensioners special deal.

Why did I join? Obviously in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn!

So if I vote with my existing heart and don't follow TB's advice and swap it for a heart of stone does it mean that I will have played my part in ensuring that the Labour Party spends long years in the wilderness?

Honestly I don't believe that will be the inevitable consequence of electing a leader from the left of the Party.

I watched the politics show on TV, admittedly with one eye closed because I have a detached retina, but it seemed to me that the only candidate who came across as possessing gravitas, who debated with courtesy, whose contributions were principled was Jeremy Corbyn.

My mind ran forward to the image of his appearing on PM's Question Time debating with David Cameron and I had the sense that Jeremy Corbyn, in that context, would have the effect of  Barium Meal in the body politic exposing the Tories sense of entitlement as falsely based.

Sadly the outcome of the last election was not the fiasco of Ed eating a bacon sandwich or the politics of envy or indeed the Ed Stone.

It was I believe a lack of gravitas, a failure to debate principles and some sense that the electorate believed Cameron and Osborne rather than Milliband and Balls.

The four candidates for the Labour leadership are all good people, I have no doubt about that, but in politics simply winning is not enough it is essential that the principles of the Labour Movement are seen to differentiate it from the Tories, otherwise the electorate will inevitably choose the devil they know.

The political programme for the next five years will constantly seek to expose the Labour Party and its response must be to challenge again and again the transparently threadbare rhetoric employed by Osborne and Cameron.

If the country wants to see a genuine Living Wage rather than a falsely described minimum wage it will not get it from Osborne, if the country wants a low tax economy then it will not get it from a policy of raising tax thresholds which always benefit higher tax payers rather than those who are not paying tax now, and if the country wants a low welfare economy then it will ultimately only come at the cost of education, health and support in old age, which are the essential pillars of the welfare economy as part of the post war settlement under the 1945 Labour Government.

So yes, I will vote for Jeremy Corbyn and will defer the heart transplant for another day!

8th July 2015

Some things never change.

I'm almost glad about that.

Over the years I have been told that when I grew older I would become more conservative, more right wing, that I might even vote Tory.

Well I'm pleased to report that hasn't happened.

And today as we prepare ourselves for a Tory budget I found myself dreaming of what might have been .....

What might have been if the two Ed's were about to announce the first Labour budget in five years.

What might be, if five years from now, Jeremy Corbyn is introducing the first Labour budget in Ten years.

The  broad theme of the Chancellor's budget speech will, I am sure, reinforce the privatisation of public goods to ensure that money continues to run uphill into the pockets of the already wealthy.

Two 'public goods' that are in the firing line in today's budget are the BBC and social housing.

Compare the broadcasters, Sky TV costs around £60 a month, £720 a year, ITV is funded via advertising revenue so it is free to air if not actually free the BBC costs £145 a year, £12 a month and is committed to ensuring that what it broadcasts is independent, fair and entertaining.

It is a 'public good' in the best sense of the concept and it is under threat from both its competitors who complain that the playing field is not even and from the Government which argues that its news coverage is biased.

So it will be trimmed, the licence fee reviewed and for now well if granny wants free telly then the telly can pay for it because treasury won't.

I have been involved in Social Housing since the early seventies. I ran a hostel for young homeless people in Bolton from 1972 to 1974, I was invited to become a staff Member of Salford Family Housing, I joined the Board of Church Army Housing in the early 1980's as it changed its name to English Churches, I was also a regional and national board member of Hanover Housing.

Housing Associations took much of the strain of social housing provision as Local Authority housing was sold under right to buy legislation and not replaced.

Now the Government intends to extend right to buy to housing association tenants even though the ownership of the housing stock resides with the associations and houses sold will be replaced by Local Authorities selling their residual stock so for every house sold two houses will be lost.

The attack on welfare has already been well trailed, a two tier benefit cap, further reductions in housing benefit, the introduction of universal credit, a reduction in Tax Credits and as yet unspecified changes to support for the disabled. The aim is to reduce the welfare bill by £12 Billion by the end of this parliament.

It may be that Tax Credits have become over complex and it may appear that welfare support is simply recycled as people pay tax on low incomes and then have the money repaid as a benefit. So the Tory line is why not just take the low paid out of tax? Which is fine in principle but not fine if you are earning so little as to not pay tax at all in which case raising the tax threshold is of no benefit at all.

Two former advisers to the Prime Minister are arguing publicly for the living wage to become the norm and that employers should be required to pay the higher wage because it is a conservative principle first articulated by that great Conservative Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Mmm ...

An independent broadcaster is an essential asset to ensure that the public conversation is well informed and unbiased otherwise the left/right confrontation will simply continue to drown out the voice of reason.

Building new homes is a more efficient and effective way of encouraging home ownership, whilst creating skilled jobs and reducing waiting lists, than simply selling off social housing in a mis-conceived rummage sale.

The living wage simply makes sense because it effectively enriches the whole of society, businesses benefit because their customers can afford their goods and the treasury benefits as more people become tax payers.

Sadly some things never change and I am sure that on the news tonight and on Question Time tomorrow we will hear that the long term economic plan is the same tired old rehearsal of the need for continued austerity.

18th June 2015

I became a student at Salisbury Theological College in 1966.

On one occasion I remember Canon Paul Oestreicher being invited to address the students and as part of his talk he mentioned the importance of reading newspapers, both as an aid to prayer but also to preaching and my memory of that occasion is that we were encouraged to read one of the broadsheets, possibly The Times and The Daily Mirror.

It was important we were told to have a sense of not only what was happening in the world but how that news was being reported.

'I read the news today, Oh Boy
40, 000 hole in Blackburn Lancashire'

By the time that I arrived at Salisbury aged twenty two, I had been working for five years and had spent time in Durham at The Bernard Gilpin Society undertaking what today would be described as an access course.

I left school at he invitation of the Headmaster of my secondary school earlier than planned clutching my one certificate for an 'O' Level in Woodwork.

School ended on Friday and on the way home I saw an advert in the window of the Normeir Tyre Company I called in and applied, interviewed and started my first job working as a tyre fitter/trainee salesman on the Monday following.

It has become clear to me that, whilst I didn't realise it at the time, this was possibly the most responsible job I would have. 

Fitting tyres safely is crucially important and I always tried to make sure that if the were accidents that it was not due to the tyres that I had fitted.

But whilst the job had its rewards I decided to move on after a year and apply for the open competition for entry into the Civil Service as a Clerical Assistant.

It was at this point that I was advised that if I wished to succeed in the examination that I should read The Times Newspaper, especially the editorials, and seek to replicate the style of the leader writers in my answers to the questions posed in the examination.

So I started to read The Times aged 16 or so and have continued to read it for the past 54 years until the recent election.

I had always thought of The Times as a balanced newspaper but I became so appalled by the views expressed in the leaders and indeed in certain of the opinion pieces that I stopped reading the paper altogether and turned instead to The Guardian.

However I soon realised that having your prejudices reinforced by a left leaning newspaper whilst somewhat less stressful than raging at the prejudices presented as news, opinion or editorial comment in The Times was not entirely helpful in making an informed and considered response to the events that were unfolding not only nationally but internationally.

I needed another view point.

As a curate in Hatfield, South Yorkshire in the late sixties I used to call on an elderly, retired miner I rather think that we enjoyed each others company, I certainly enjoyed his, he was a socialist, he had been a deputy at the Hatfield Main Colliery and had some interesting and robust views on Church, Politics and the industry from which he had retired.

I happened to call on him one morning only to find him, with his morning coffee on the side table, reading The Telegraph.

I was astonished and challenged him, why read the 'torygraph'?' I asked.

Well, he calmly answered, if you want to know what they are thinking, how they are planning to undermine everything that we have fought for, worked towards and value, then it helps to know their thinking and analyse their prejudices.

I found myself thinking about Mr Lawrence recently as I pondered what my Newspaper choice to partner The Guardian, should be.

In Hatfield I used to take The Times and The Morning Star to achieve the kind of considered balance I felt I needed, as Paul Oestreicher had encouraged us, to inform both my prayers and my preaching.

Today, there is less preaching but nevertheless I felt that I should be reading another newspaper alongside The Guardian so I took out a free subscription to The Telegraph.

Fifty years of prejudice are now being challenged by a series of forthright articles most of which, as is only to be expected, applaud the dubious policies being promoted by the current minority conservative government.

But there are other article and features which are challenging the thinking that is being articulated, The Telegraph, I discovered to my amazement, is not a simple, biased, cheerleader for the Tory Party.

In some ways I now realise that is only to  be expected.

If you are in the political mix with a Government chasing austerity and shifting wealth to the wealthiest and debt to the poorest, then because you occupy the same political space as The Telegraph does, then you can engage in the kind of warm. generous disagreements that can happen in families and serve to make them stronger.

So I have overturned some 50 years of prejudice, and whilst The Telegraph challenges my prejudices and The Guardian reinforces them, I find that my daily diet of news is both balanced and enriched by the opinions I read, whether agreeing or disagreeing, I am challenged to think more logically using both my heart and my head.

And, as a bonus, I now have two crosswords to complete rather than six (or more) impossible things to believe, before breakfast.

2nd June 2015

Like Ed and Nick I wasn't elected.

It wasn't the unfairness of the electoral system because the election used the single transferable vote but the boundaries were redrawn to the disadvantage of anyone living in the constituency for which I was standing.

Cumbria doesn't fit neatly into anyone's constituency.

The south of the county looks to Manchester, the North of the county looks to Newcastle.

So in the previous dispensation the Co-op had South Cumbria firmly in the North West and North Cumbria in the North East.

In local government terms this makes sense, just, but in terms of where our TV comes from and where our NHS is located Cumbria splits, unevenly and raggedly, into North West and North East.

The Co-op in its infinite wisdom has decided that Cumbria is in the North West so immediately those standing for election to the new Membership Council were disadvantaged as both unknown and far away and with a total unbalance in terms of population spread.

So like Ed and Nick (and Nigel) I wasn't elected.

So far so sad.

But there are bigger issues lurking in these muddy waters.

I had always thought that Lord Myners was right in his analysis. The democracy of the Co-op was flawed, although I suspect his view that one member one vote was critical to his analysis was somewhat biased.

But the deed is done and the newly elected membership council will have its work cut out even if it was elected by members with one single transferable vote they did not elect the board and it is the board that has the power and the membership council will find itself constantly playing catch up as the board moves not only the goal posts, but the rules of engagement and what it means to be a co-operative.

I was told by one observer that the new chairman was an excellent choice because his father was a co-op store manager.

I pointed out that my father was a Manchester Corporation Bus Driver but that didn't qualify me for the role of chairman of Stagecoach.

The co-op already feels diminished, much of the business has been disposed of, 'pharms' and 'farmacies' have gone and it seems to me that the big American Funeral businesses are watching closely to see whether the funeral business is also offered 'to the market'.

The new Chair made his reputation with Asda, he made it a more valuable business and then sold it Walmart, his chairmanship of the Post Office had the same result with the business privatised.

One can only hope that the Co-op which is in fact owned by its members now has the robustness to resist what I can only see as inevitable drift to market privatisation, if you want to weaken something, to make it malleable, the thing to do is hack away at the flawed democratic structure and then replace it with an unwieldy group a hundred strong trying to make sense of and understand change and control a board that has been hand chosen and may well appear even more self selecting in a few years.

What is happening to the Co-op seems to me to be symptomatic of what is happening to our current social and political settlement.

The tectonic plates of our social polity are drifting right wards just as the great stones in Carlisle's Rickerby Park carry the legend of when Carlisle was on the equator and the sediment was laid down and compressed, limestone, gritstone and granite slowly shifting over time to where they now rest.

So the post war settlement with its homes for heroes, its education reform and welfare reform a product of both liberal and labour aspiration for men like Attlee, Beveridge and Keynes is slowly slipping away from us as the market is invoked as the only true arbiter of value.

The vision of the Co-op's founders known as the pioneers after the title they chose for their co-op society, the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, was the creation of a store in, in response to the poverty created by the industrial revolution, to allow members to buy unadulterated food that they otherwise could no afford.

The store opened in 1844 with a meagre stock of butter, flour, oatmeal and a few candles, within three months they had added tea and tobacco and established a reputation for price and quality.

As the last election demonstrated and as the Electoral Reform Society has reported the rightward drift of our politics is sanctioned by a voting system that is essentially unbalanced, my only hope is that under its new governance, which despite assurances to the contrary is every bit as flawed as the system it replaces, the new Membership council even with its hands tied, will be able to channel the spirit of the Rochdale Pioneers and keep the Co-op, co-operative under the ownership of its members.

21st May 2015

The indoor critic and I, with Ruby the Dog for company, have spent the last couple of weeks in Scotland.

I am sure that the lack of a 3G signal will be at the very top of the incoming SNP Government's Agenda!

So my blog silence has been a result of no internet connection by 'phone, lap top or iPad unless, perhaps driving along by the side of a beautiful Loch or rounding the edge of a Munro or the sudden glimpse of the sea between the pines, but only on the Western Side, a beep, a buzz, a flurry of active noises, alerts you to 'a signal' and if you are lucky and are able to park, avoiding the passing places on the single track roads, suddenly you are 'in touch' and can download the Newspaper, catch up on Facebook or email friends and your investment in Apple's profitability will not have been wasted.

But the time has been well spent.

Sitting beneath Schiehallion it has been possible to reflect, without the constant interruption of background noise or hiss, on "What the Hell Happened"?

Well the Con-Dems are no more, the Dem part has been demolished.

We are left with the Con part.

It is remarkable that the Myth has been swallowed whole by the electorate that somehow the economy of a country is like any normal household budget.

I thought I saw the election slip away from Labour during the Question Time Election special when a member of the audience told Ed Milliband that if at the end of the week he had no money then he couldn't go for a pint, the analogy with a reckless Gordon Brown's profligacy as Chancellor and then PM.

Of course with hindsight, somewhere in the darkened room where he has been trying to quell his headache, Ed has been rehearsing all the responses that he might have given instead of trying to appease his questioner with Sure Start Centres built, Schools built and Hospitals built, not the least would be to have said, the economy of UK plc is nothing like your family budget, for a start we can borrow money for less than no interest instead of using credit cards, secondly we can print money if we need it and thirdly we own the bank not the other way round.

He might have pointed out that despite austerity the Con-Dems have increased the Debt rather than reduced it in any case.

So where next?

Well it's definitely back to the future with a vengeance, the children of Thatcher will make sure of that.

What's 12 Billion here and 12 billion there and of one thing you can be sure, as Ed might have pointed out, if things are a bit tight and you can't nip down to pub for a pint now, give it a year and you will not only be unable to nip out for a pint but in all probability having to nip to the food bank for a pint of powdered milk, just so you can get by.

It seems that Tony Blair thinks that the New Labour Message was the way forward, but if Blue Labour was the way forward then the emperor's clothes are now being worn by Blair's real heir David Cameron in his bid to replace the Welfare State with the Big Society.

The next five years will be bad, of that there is no doubt, we will all lose, and if we don't lose personally then somewhere along the extended channels of family and neighbours people we care about will be losing.

So I have relegated my Labour Party T Shirt to the back of the drawer and my Gladys Perry designed bag is hanging behind the bathroom drawer as a Laundry Bag.

Rather than spending its time electing a new leader or even resurrecting an old leader, Labour the party of working people, should be choosing from its midst, using magic chants, chicken bones or like the replacement of Judas, casting lots, although personally I would go for Diane Abbot, and then there needs to be a serious Big Tent Conversation with the Green Party Leadership and the Liberal Party Leadership together with the national parties of Wales and Scotland to form a big anti austerity, lets bring common sense back to politics and put an end to the current commitment to serve only the interests of what Steve Hilton has characterised the 'Chumocracy".

Let's work in the interests of the true wealth creators in our society, let's rethink the necessary alliances on the left and bring forward a consensus that can finally and permanently remove those who seek only to govern in the interests of their chums.

And, if they can organise their 3G signal or upgrade to 4G then Nichola and Alex can join in the conversations as they enjoy the beauties of their Highlands and Islands.

30th April 2015

I haven't posted my Blog for a while now because there is just something about this election that leaves me sad and depressed and alienated and effectively disenfranchised.

The fact I suppose that whatever I do I will be faced on May 7th with the face of the same MP staring at me from the pages of the local press and TV News.

The fact that by no standards of independent assessment or review can the claims of the ConDems be  justified at all.

The economy has not been fixed.

We're clearly not in this together.

The rich have got steadily richer on their watch whilst the poor have become increasingly poorer.

The jobs that have been created are in the main rich only in zero hour contracts and faux self employment.

The Murdoch Empire of News clearly wants to persuade us otherwise ( I have recently cancelled my subscription to The Times).

I have swapped my vote and will vote Green on May 7th.

In my dreams I imagine that Labour, Green and SNP will merge to form an anti austerity alliance that will start to move the Country forward for the benefit of the majority who actually create wealth by their labours.

The idea that wealth trickles down so that all benefit in due course seems to have begun during the Thatcher years but what has become clear over the last five years of coalition is that wealth is actually lighter than air, it rises and forms clouds of wealth that wreath the heads of those who don't actually create it leaving the rest of us to reach desperately upwards only for our hands to pass through the wealth cloud and remain empty.

There have been so many half truths and statistical obfuscations at work during the campaign so far.

Claims and counter claims and broad statements of intention (reducing the welfare bill by £12 Billion) without any evidence of where the cuts will be imposed and who will be picking up the real cost in terms of reduced living standards.

The Labour Party has been suckered into making its own commitment to the austerity con so that it seems there is little to choose between the offers of the two largest parties (hence the success of the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales).

The Liberal Democrats are stranded in Post Coalition Triste, whilst to watch the Bullingdon Club lite behaviour on display in the Conservative election campaign is to see Schadenfreude at work.

Austerity, we are told is necessary because the Nation like any family needs to balance its budget, but this equating of national budgets with family budgets is simply a false comparison, national budgets differ in very many ways from family budgets and as Keynes demonstrated during the depression of the Thirties and again in the rebuilding of the shattered economy in the post war years, economic output is influenced by total spending in the economy which of itself does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy.

So borrowing to invest rather than being a necessarily bad thing might rather have been the better way to re-energise the economy.

We need new ideas. Ideas such as those put forward both by the Labour Party and those on the Left of the Liberal Party but also those proposed by the Green Party.

This election could have offered an opportunity for a national conversation about the kind of society we need to be, open hearted, generous, communitarian, respecting the earth we depend on for survival and which we will bequeath to future generations.

We could and should have been asking

Who are we as a people?

What makes us better?

How can we aspire to achieving 'the common good'?

I have written in a previous blog about a conversation I had one evening over a small beer sitting on the veranda of a Tower Block in the West Midlands.

I was talking with a man who was a Trade Unionist, Community Organiser and a Communist.

He shared his general philosophy as he looked out over the Estate where he lived. His commitment was to work for the good of his community so that he had a comfortable home, a sufficient income, to live peaceably with his neighbours so that he was be able to walk home safely in the evening and sleep soundly each night.

It is what most of us want.

12th April 2015

I am about to waste my vote.

I have no desire to waste it, I would like it to  make a real difference, but the facts of the matter are clear, whatever I vote, whoever I vote for, will make absolutely no difference to the outcome because I live in a constituency which is so safe that when my MP was adopted by his constituency committee he was handed a job for life.

There are of course a number of these seats, approximately half of our MP's (both Labour and Conservative) have this kind of security which is why the real election is being fought in those constituencies which are more volatile.

It is also the reason that the Labour Party is focusing its energies on Carlisle, which is a much more marginal seat.

So far we have received a mailing from UKIP on which I have already blogged and a letter from our MP outlining the many good things that he has done for those of us who live in the constituency.

I used to to receive an email from his office on a fairly regular basis to which I would respond by questioning the claims made, challenging some of the assertions and suggesting that if Scotland voted Yes, then the border should be redrawn to include Carlisle.

The response to my emails was that I stopped receiving the mailings and when his plan to hold hands along Hadrian's Wall ended somewhat ignominiously, he then built a great heap of badly painted stones in Gretna, which as far as I know is still there, not having been removed.

So I can now decide, given that I have the luxury, how to waste my vote.

Do I vote for the Labour Candidate, do I make a protest against Labour's not being sufficiently socialist or progressive or anti-austerity and vote Green?

It is of course, both a luxury and a sadness, because whatever I decide to do will affect neither the outcome nor the development of policies, once a Government has been elected.

I could of course join with the Electoral Reform Society and argue for a change to the first past the post system, or I could argue for a change in the way elections are handled with perhaps larger constituencies electing representative panels rather than individuals, or I could simply choose to waste  my vote by not voting at all.

Most of the people that I discuss these matters with suggest that our MP is an honourable man and a good constituency MP and I have no doubt that the first part of that statement is true.

I also know that he has responded to pressure from for example 38 Degrees Members to meet.

Indeed I once had an opportunity to invite him and the other two candidates five years ago to address a meeting that I convened in Penrith.

The audience was a group of older people, many of whom were instinctively in tune with his party and its policies.

Everything went well until an issue arose about access at a Surgery which I attend and in which the access for the elderly and those in wheelchairs is simply impossible.

His view was that a new surgery was unnecessary because, he observed, if you cannot get upstairs to see the Doctor, they will come down to you ..... Mmm?

So I decided not to waste my vote voting for him and wasted it by voting Labour instead, it was a tribal thing, but it was also clear that the Labour Candidate would also be a good constituency MP, as indeed would the Motorcycling riding Liberal Candidate.

But now things are different.

The  outcome of this election is too important for a vote to be wasted.

Despite the claims in the letter I received from the MP the economy is still in a Mess with an increasing public debt.

The secession of Scotland from the UK is still on the Agenda, at least in Scotland.

The whole business of our having a grown up relationship with the rest of Europe and the chaos that will ensue if there is a referendum.

Taxation, with the poorest still paying the price of economic mismanagement and with an even higher price about to be imposed with the proposed saving of £12 billion.

Housing, with the continued stasis in house building and the rise in generation rent and the collapse in public housing through Right to Buy.

As I observed in one of my email exchanges with the MP, we know who got all the pies!

He may be a pleasant person, I am sure he would be both a gracious host and a well behaved guest but his party is still seen as the nasty party firmly  on the side of the wealthiest.

Then there are the big ticket issues which will have to be addressed in the next Parliament one of which may be the biggest ticket of all, is the future of Trident, which will raise all the issues of employment, security, the deployment of our armed forces and the cost of what in some ways is a vanity project for the UK because it is under the de facto command of the US.

Another big ticket issue is the NHS.

As an Addendum to my last blog I had to fill a prescription on Easter Sunday, the nearest Pharmacy to Carlisle was in Keswick a seventy mile round trip from my house.

At least the Doctor in the out of hours service was sensible enough to Fax the prescription through so that I could go there directly at 2 00 pm before the Pharmacy closed at 4 00 pm.

The West Coast line and the continued Bransonisation of once public services is also a matter for concern and hopefully action in the next Parliament.

So when I waste my vote, as is inevitable, do I waste it by writing the name Nichola Sturgeon onto the Ballot Paper?

Do I encourage the Green Party to  make an electoral pact with the Labour Party and encourage them to continue to put socialist ideals, green values and people at the heart of their policymaking?

Or do I continue to put my tribal  loyalties first?

Whatever I do what I will be hoping for is a progressive anti-austerity Government to emerge from the horse trading that is happening in those parts where the result will be closer and the upsets greater.

2nd April 2015

It has been one of those weeks.

The week started on Friday with a visit to the GP.

The indoor critic was examined and Antibiotics prescribed.

Saturday things had worsened and so a visit to the out of hours service at the hospital was called for.

This resulted in  a further examination by the surgical registrar and stronger Antibiotics being prescribed.

Sunday we held our breath.

Monday, we went to the newly opened Ambulatory Care Unit, in English that translates as walk-in clinic or clinic for the walking wounded.

More examinations followed, not sure how many surgical registrars there are, but I suspect that we saw them all.

Then into the room came the Surgeon, Alpha Male inevitably, who pronounced> We will operate tomorrow.

When we arrived at Surgical Admissions no-one knew who we were or why we were there.

Eventually, yet another surgical registrar arrived and the operation was given the green light.

That evening the indoor critic was discharged into the care of the District Nurses.

So how did the NHS do?

It was a bit curate's eggish, i.e. good in parts!

Some lovely, kind, attentive people, Dr Sohail the third surgical registrar, the operation and the care from the District Nurses and so the indoor critic lives to criticise another day.

But Nova Virus warnings, some failure of communication, questioning why the Wheelchair was needed, and the Alpha Maleness of the Surgeon, who I suspect had never been questioned before by someone who's own Alpha Maleness quickly surfaced as a defensive strategy.

But all is not well in the Kingdom of Bevan. The cracks in the walls. The number of administrators wandering around with pieces of paper in hand presumably measuring time and motion? Every department operating in its own Silo. It was the patient who had to make sure that each intervention was fully briefed about related matters that could affect likely outcome.

Car Parking which ensures that you arrive for your appointment with raised blood pressure.

It is clear that the system is under strain, the institutional heart monitors are beeping uncertainly and whether we will reach a state of institutional flat lining is unclear.

The privatising vultures are circling waiting for the opportunity to descend on the carcass, pick it clean and clear off with the profits.

I was born three years before Nye Bevan introduced the NHS:

In his collection of essays In Place of Fear he wrote: The collective principle asserts that .... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.

In the same book he also wrote: A free health service is pure socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.

On May 7th the country will face a clear choice and depending if it chooses 'capitalist  hedonism' I could well find that I am part of a generation that was born before the NHS was founded and dies after the NHS itself has died.

As the Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime observes, if that happens and the Kingdom of Bevan is exchanged for the Kingdom of Capitalist Mis-Rule:

(And) you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you  may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you  may ask yourself 
Am I right? ... Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself
My God! ... What have I done?

25th March 2015

I guess that it is little more than a commonplace to note in passing that generally the Labour Party is for public ownership and the Tory Party prefers to privatise stuff.

So with Railways as with the NHS, with Water and Gas and other Utilities and Technology and the Post Office all, under this Tory led, co-alition Government shifted from the public to the private sector.

The East Coast Railway, a victim of its own success after the failures of the previous private sector franchisee and having been run successfully as a public company, the company has gone back into private ownership.

Little enough is said about the costs of privatisation, the public funds invested to allow BT to compete with Sky in bidding wars to show premiership football on TV.

And why not allow Mr Branson his  very own life size railway set to play with, I don't imagine that his private Island has one, so hey!

It's OK come and play with ours, why don't you?

But hidden in the pages of the Newspapers last week there was a story about another privatisation.

After five years of austerity, during which the national debt has barely shrunk at all, the Con-Dems appear to have come up with a cracking new plan.

Privatise the debt.

So, instead of each and everyone of us taking the strain of the cost of maintaining a fairer society in which rich and poor share the burden proportionately the latest wheeze is for each of us to carry our own debt as best we can.

This at least it seems to me, thinking aloud as I often do with only the indoor critic to notice my muttering, is the plan for the years after the election to come.

Apparently according to my Newspaper, the average UK household is likely to be £10, 000 in debt by the end of 2016, not including their Mortgage, if indeed they are lucky enough, or not, to have one.

I'm not entirely sure that there is a coherent logic to this thinking and whether I am comparing like with like or whether I am comparing Pears with Oranges?

But if the National Debt costs everyone of us in interest payments and is held by the Chancellor to be a bad thing is it a better thing for private debt to be costing each of those in debt over £2500 a year in interest payments?

I suppose if you happen to be one of the lucky few who are not in debt then, well .......!

But if debt is the method by which we have each managed to survive the last five years of austerity.

And if we have exchanged inflation for deflation during the process.

And if it is at all true that we have halved the deficit as Mr Cameron likes to claim.

Or indeed that the plan is working as Mr Osborne claims.

Why is it that household debt, excluding mortgages, over the period has risen by 10%?

And why also is it that much of that borrowing appears to be, not for luxury high price-tag items, but that people are increasingly depending on credit, both credit cards, personal and pay day loans, to afford essential items.

Or are borrowing simply to make ends meet?

The inevitable bump in the road ahead will be felt, and felt pretty dramatically, when interest rates start to rise.

If loans are affordable with interest rates at 0.5% will they remain affordable when rates increase?

Privatising the public debt is the logical conclusion of privatising everything else but the corollary of this strategy is the growing evidence (published by The Bank of England) that whilst people borrow to spend, thereby providing some support to consumption within the UK and helping GDP.

The increase in private debt has contributed to the depth of the downturn in the economy and a much slower return to growth.

5th March 2015

The election is now only a couple of months away.

After five years of austerity it feels that the 2015 election is critical for the future becoming of our society.

I have always been committed to fairness, peace, justice, multi-culturalism, rock and roll and motorcycling.

Of course the austerity we have been forced to pursue was only ever a sham austerity.

Anyone relying on social support for their survival will in all likelihood have had their benefits reduced whilst bankers will have retained their bonuses.

The disabled have had DLA replaced with PIP.

Whilst the Bar Bills at Westminster have kept up with inflation.

Those in receipt of housing benefit will have lost some of their benefit if they were adjudged to have a spare room.

Whilst houses in London have been extended downwards not for spare rooms but for essential Gyms and Swimming Pools.

People faced with impossible choices will have been sanctioned.

Whilst Hedge Fund Managers will have been promoted.

And throughout the past five years strivers have been contrasted with shirkers although how those struggling to manage to maintain family life on a reducing budget whilst balancing increasing costs for food, energy and transport can be thought of being anything other than strivers is beyond me.

The idea of Universal Credit has been planned, developed and rolled out (sic) on the assumption that all have access to the Internet that monthly payments can be managed in order to last until the month has ended before the money has run out.

Last week we received a letter telling the indoor critic and myself that our household had been chosen at random to take part in a study being managed on behalf of the DWP.

The study was into Family Resources.

For agreeing to take part  in the study we received a book of stamps!

Apparently the results from this survey 'allows the DWP plan for the future and monitor the impact of policy changes in the United Kingdom'.

Oh Yeah?

The leaflet that was enclosed with the letter and the book of stamps included a pie chart.

Apparently the last survey? found that:

74% of UK household income was in the form of Earning and Investments.

14% of UK household income was in the form of pensions.

9% of UK household income was in the form of Benefits and Tax Credits.

3% was described 'as other'!

Bank Robbery?

Maybe! Although whether that was banks robbing us or us robbing banks is not clear.

My first reaction was to not participate in the survey. The conspiracy theorist in me was highly suspicious of the fact that the survey was being conducted on behalf of the DWP, but having spoken to another person who had participated in the survey and found the experience interesting I began to soften my attitude.

So much so that when the knock came, i.e. the researcher just turned up at the door without first 'phoning to check that we were home or that it was a convenient time, my initial hostility had changed from a 'No' to a 'Maybe'.

Keeping him on the doorstep seemed discourteous, so the two of us, the indoor critic and myself aka 'The Household' sat at the dining table with the researcher and his battered lap top.

He didn't know our names, he still doesn't, but he knows where we live.

The information we were asked for and which we gave was so general as to be of no use to anyone, apparently because we are retired, the survey is less interrogative, but how Mr Duncan Smith and his team could make any kind of use of the knowledge that our income is from our pensions and that we don't have a mortgage, other than adding us to the 14%, I don't know.

I am told by another friend that the DWP need to find the 'tipping point' for the moral majority because they need to demonstrate that we are in the middle of an economic recovery and that the cuts need to slow down not increase further.

It was after receiving that message that I opened my paper to read that the Chancellor is planning a giveaway budget.

First they guaranteed the pensioners income, then they raised tax allowances, then they restored tax credits and then they sat back and hoped that they'd done enough to win the election.

So far I have received, apart from emails from the Labour Party, one election leaflet from UKIP.

There is a strong link between UKIP's unfunded promises and the promises made by the Conservatives to win our votes.

Protecting jobs, increasing prosperity, repairing the economy and reducing the debts we leave to our grandchildren.

The headlines are user friendly but the devil as always is in the detail.

Just read the small print and don't get taken in by a free book of stamps even if you need one to cast your postal vote.