29th January 2015

Debt is a complicated concept.

An overdraft is debt.

A credit card debt is either a balance or the card can be 'maxed out' but the key word is still credit.

If I do a favour for a neighbour it could be a simple act of kindness or it could put them in my debt.

When the banks spent all the money that was characterised as a financial crisis.

But it appears that bankers to one side, it plunged us all into debt and ushered in a prolonged period of austerity.

In the UK the practise of sanctioning people who are in receipt of welfare benefits (other than the elderly who of course are the largest single group of welfare beneficiaries) is in practise the failure to pay the money that individuals have been guaranteed to maintain themselves and their families and makes the state indebted to those individuals it fails to pay.

No amount of harrumphing from the front benches changes that.

As it has it in the Book Leviticus: 'if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself .... you shall maintain him'.

The Greek people have elected a new Government charged with ending austerity and renegotiating debt.

In Britain austerity continues to hold us to ransom.

There is it seems TINA no alternative. But of course there is an alternative and it will be interesting to watch how Syriza in Greece negotiates with the EU and Angela Merkel to find an alternative.

Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 1% ratchets yet higher leaving the 99% to rely on credit to reach the next payday.

On TV last  night a commentator stated that debts should always be paid but in reality the forgiveness of debt is possible and in some cases necessary.

There is evidence that in the earliest societies debt was seen as a bad thing and its relief by the state a social good.

In The Old Testament in the book of Leviticus debt was forgiven on a fifty year cycle where each fiftieth year was declared to be a year of Jubilee announced by 'the loud trumpet' each fiftieth year was to be 'hallowed' and all the inhabitants of the land will enjoy liberty.

This was a vision in which all returned to their families and their property.

This vision of Jubilee would be welcomed through out the world today in Palestine, in Syria, in Africa were it to be declared.

But just as there seems to be confusion over the true meaning of the word jubilee there is no real evidence that Jubilee was declared.

Just as in the UK the con-dems realise that their five year parliament is about to end so at some point in the past, human nature being what it is those who held the credit notes and mortgage deeds began to plan for the coming jubilee, it would they possibly argued be irresponsible to return a mans' 'patrimony' it might cause 'chaos', it would certainly mean that we might not pass go and indeed might go straight to jail.

Christians tend to start with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples in which the word trespass in the common usage of the prayer, is in the Bible rendered as Debt.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive others theirs.

Stated like this it seems to me that it sounds like a simple and relatively incontrovertible position.

As has been argued by the anthropologist David Graeber in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, debt has changed and been changed by the people and societies who have used it.

In his book Graeber compares and contrasts two forms of Debt, the first he identifies as imprecise, informal, community-building and this he describes the natural indebtedness that arises in human economies where people lend and borrow, repay and fail to repay but retain natural obligations between each other.

The second form of debt is monetised debt the outcomes of which are deeply negative often as Grabber observes resulting in impoverishment and violence.

The accumulation of wealth in the bank accounts of the few in practise puts them in societies debt to have so much money that you cannot spend even the interest on your capital is an obscenity but it is an obscenity that is not only not recognised but is denied.

Capitalism, unlike Marxist and Islamic economics, consistently confuses price with value. This is what is meant by monetising debt.

A recent large purchase made using an 'interest free offer' has resulted in my receiving weekly letters from the lender offering more and more 'credit' in the form of bank loans and 'credit' cards.

Recently as a seventy year old pensioner I was offered a £10,000 loan for 10 years!

There's optimism?

Borrowing money to pay off debts is in the simplest sense of the word usury.

Whilst it is clear that neither of the main political parties in the UK will ever consider the possibility it will be fascinating to see whether Syriza can achieve a Jubilee in relation to its continued membership of the eurozone.

Meanwhile the rest of us must keep up the payments ........

22nd January 2015

In the early 1970's I recall driving out as a family, the indoor critic, myself and our one year old daughter.

I was low on fuel and so I called into the first filling station that we came across.

The price of a gallon of petrol, on which our Citroen Dyane would run for some sixty miles, was around 35 pence.

I remember being shocked at the price.

I filled the tank with petrol, the cost was under £2 00, and when I returned to the car I announced, 'That's it, when petrol gets to 50 pence a gallon I am selling the car and giving up driving'.

Of course I didn't, I couldn't, I needed the car for my work as a Curate in the Church of England, I had a young family our second daughter was born and my life and work style was built around the flexibility of the family car.

It was also in the winter of 1974, January through to March, that we endured three day weeks, with routine power cuts. 

I managed to fix up an old car headlamp from the local scrapyard attached to a car battery which meant that with oil fired heating and temporary lighting we were still warm and we could see to read.

We couldn't however cook on our electric cooker and had to use a camping stove.

With the cost of crude oil and gas rising and with the increased militancy of the Miners Union it must have become clear to someone that action was needed.

And action was taken by the Conservative Government under Margaret Thatcher.

Our energy dependency was exported and the advent of first Gas and then Oil in the North Sea was used to first undermine and then close down our coal industry.

The receipts from the North Sea were then used to underwrite the economy creating a false sense of national well being and ensuring that the balance of payments balanced on a day to day, month to month, year to year, hand to mouth basis.

Meanwhile in Norway .......

Or as the SNP might have it, 'we was robbed'.

Now, as if some great Machiavellian hand is at work in the affairs of the British State Oil prices are falling, the North Sea Oil Fields are not producing because it is not economic to do so, and on the supermarket forecourt prices are being reduced and the rate of reduction is almost 2 pence a week and occasionally 2 pence a day.

The price is still over 50 pence a gallon, even £1 11 99 is close enough to £6 00 a gallon making people feel much better off than when it was nearer £8 00 a gallon but it is still impacting on family budgets.

And of course the Chancellor is smiling, our plan he says, is working, except that of course there is no plan at all, but he senses that people will feel sufficient easing of the financial constraint imposed by austerity to give him and his colleagues another five years and perhaps this time without being hampered by con-demnation.

As Oxfam has reminded us whilst the 1% gather at Davos that the 1% have now garnered into their barns as much of the wealth as the other 99%.

Croesus must be looking down from the Pantheon and worrying that soon he will not be the very definition of Wealth.

The Managing Director of the IMF is worried that Marx might yet be proved to be right and that Capitalism is harbouring the seeds of its own destruction and Picketty and the authors of The Spirit Level stand back and watch ..... and wait for their warnings to be heard, reprinted and republished.

This is no way to run our affairs as a nation in the year of our Lord 2015.

As the Archbishop commented recently, quoting William Temple a former Archbishop of both York and Canterbury, “The art of government in fact, is the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands.”

There is a consistent theme that emerges whenever thoughtful people reflect on inequality which is that more equal societies are happier, more at ease with themselves, more  productive and ultimately richer and more successful than unequal societies.

Tragically it remains a lesson that Conservative Governments consistently fail to learn.

In 1972/73 my Stipend was £900 and my housing was provided and petrol was 35 pence a Gallon, forty three years and a couple of O's later and little has changed, there is still more month than money when pay day comes round and I'm still considering giving up Motoring perhaps when petrol reaches £50 a gallon?

16th January 2015

Last night we went to see The Broonzies.

A great live hoax of a band with members drawn from amongst musicians well known in the NE.

In creating The Broonzy family of which all five performers are 'cousins' the musicians have begun to weave a web of possibilities.

Inventing a faux family is not especially wicked, its not illegal, its not morally wrong its just a group of friends who are musicians creating for themselves a creative persona, after all, most Bands play under a made up name and having made up the name sometimes they begin to embody some of the essential characteristics of their invention.

When The Broonzies returned to the stage for their encore it seemed entirely appropriate to end the evening with This Could Be The Last Time by another band with a made up name, The Rolling Stones, who have certainly lived up to their chosen name by gathering no moss, they kept their hair and plenty of money, but no moss.

Some years ago I flew from Luton on a Monarch flight to Gibraltar.

On board was the TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk.

I was tempted to pop in to the loo and write Kilroy was here on the wall but good manners prevented me.

Mr Kilroy-Silk was briefly a member of UKIP but left after nine months calling the party 'a joke'.

If it is a joke it is neither as funny or gentle or persuasive as the family history concocted for and by The Broonzies, although the Broonzy family, like UKIP and Mr Kilroy-Silk,  apparently split apart after a disagreement which left a rancour that lasted for some years and which has now been put aside and is not referred to.

Now apparently, according to Ofcom, UKIP is a 'major party' and qualifies to feature in televised debates whilst The Green Party isn't and doesn't and now the PM is refusing to take part in the debates if there is no Green Party representation..

It is a strange decision. The Green Party it seems to me has a long and respected history, founded in the 1970's it went through various personas becoming The Green Party in 1990 when it separated into separate parties in England, Scotland and Wales, Caroline Lucas a Green Party MP sits in the commons.

UKIP was founded in 1993, now it has two MP's, both former Conservatives, it has a number of members in the Upper House and is the single largest English party in the Europe Union.

Both the Labour Party and the Lib Dems are challenging David Cameron and he is being accused of using the Greens as a smokescreen because he has no desire to debate with the UKIP Leader Nigel Farage and they might be right.

But they are also wrong because, apart from Russell Brand it seems, no-one can win a debate with Nigel!

But Mr Cameron is also right because the UK is not in the business of electing Presidents, it elects parties whose leader attends HM The Queen and is then invited to form a Government.

Mr Clegg managed to wriggle his way into the debates last time and possibly affected the outcome of the election negatively, resulting in five years of a coalition for which people did not vote.

With Mr Farage, the privately educated ex Banker, posing as a man of the people, articulating the populist rejection of politics and politicians the risk of the debate ever actually addressing the issues that really matter, whether it is the NHS or the economy, is extremely high.

The gentle humour of an invented family forming a band made for an enjoyable evening of music played by talented musicians, but if Mr Kilroy-Silk is right about UKIP being 'a joke' the risk is that if these debates are aired it is the public who may find themselves the 'butt' of a joke that is in very poor taste.

7th January 2015

Christmas 2014 was A' OK.

We had a 'cool yule'.

The grandchildren enjoyed the pantomime.

Lovely gifts were exchanged.

Christmas Lunch was fabulous with Roast Beef the preferred alternative to Turkey.

The Christmas Pudding flambe'ed marvellously and the nontraditional Bailey's Cream was a great alternative to cream or Cumberland Rum Butter.

But what made it sad was that somewhere along the way the indoor critic lost her wedding ring.

The ring was Victorian or more likely Edwardian, 22 Carat Gold and I bought it in Shudehill in Manchester in 1968 for £5 00, a pretty good investment to capture the girl of my dreams.

I rang my lawyer immediately but apparently losing a wedding ring does not mean the automatic end of the marriage, it is apparently only a sign of the marriage, which is still there in both reality and in practise.

Obviously the loss was felt by both parties and a certain sadness descended on the post Christmas festivities.

Eventually we reported the loss to the insurance company.

They asked had we contacted the police?

Well no we hadn't, so we did!

THE PHONE NUMBER IS 101!!!!!!!!!!

101, is of course the number of the room in George Orwell's 1984.

Irony?

Sign of a humour by-pass?

Indication that nobody made the connection not only with George Orwell's dystopian vision or even the TV series of the same name?

To recap: Room 101 is the torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own nightmare, fear or phobia, with the object of breaking down their resistance.

Well, they certainly broke down mine.

Law Enforcement after 5 years of the Con-Dems is simply, breathtakingly, hopeless.

The 'phone rang and a recorded voice gave me options.

One of which was reporting Lost or Stolen Property.

I pressed the relevant button on my telephone key pad.

Only to be told that the Police in Cumbria no longer record lost property.

They do however encourage people finding lost property to return to the owner?

If your insurance company wants either a report or a number then you have to go onto the web-site and download a letter which says that the force is no longer with you!

Then I tried to speak to an operator to be told that the 'phone is answered between the hours of 9 00 and 12 00 and if I need further assistance (sic) then I should dial:

101!

So this is Law Enforcement and Community Policing at the end of five years of a Con-Dem administration.

Try Health? They have their own Room 101!

Try Education, Room 101!

Try DWP, Room 101 is where the sanctions are invented and imposed!

Orwell was wrong of course.

Simply imagining the future by transposing the last two digits of the year he published his book, '48 to '84 wasn't sufficient to capture the enormity of what has happened to  the post war settlement gradually over time and dramatically over the past five years.

In the late fifties I watched a TV series, before Z Cars, which featured an elderly genial policeman called George Dixon who arrested ne'er do wells, helped the elderly to cross the village green safely and always ended with: 'Evenin' all'.

I watched it in Black and White but it was called Dixon of Dock Green, a hint that before too long you would be able to not only imagine it, but actually see it, in colour.

My recent experience suggests to me that we have gone right back to Dixon of Dock Grey.

If this reverse thrust continues back to the smaller state and less Government it won't be too long before we leave Orwell's vision behind and continue back to the future, back to a society that yearns for the good times as described by Dickens in his social commentary.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is coming!

2nd January 2015

It is often commented that we get the Government we deserve.

Certainly my inbox has become very overcrowded with emails from the left of me and emails from the right as it becomes clear that the Party's planning and scheming for this election includes social media and crowd funding.

It seems that both left and right want to take a leaf out of the Obama "How to win elections' primer.

Who do they think 'they' are?

Certainly if 'they' think that they are Obama then the days and weeks and months leading to this election will seem very long indeed.

I suppose the thing is I don't mind receiving emails from the Labour Party, even the one telling me how many Geoff's there were on their data base, although what that had to do with anything I don't know? Perhaps they think that Geoff is a dangerously exciting militant sounding name but ,I think that they'd be better off emailing all the Vladimir's or Karl's

(Unless its like the speed signs on Motorways which are directed at me personally because no-one else takes any notice as I dutifully slow down knowing that the average speed monitors know my registration, my name and where I live).

I suppose in practise I know where they got my name and email from.

I gave it to them!

Probably when I bought my Grayson Perry, vote labour shopping bag, which has a mysterious design which could be a pig (in a poke? Perhaps that's the joke?)

Although it could be Ed Balls impersonating a hedgehog (it certainly looks prickly enough).

Still if all the Geoff's and all the Gordon's and all the Tony's and Cherie's and Peter's vote for them who knows things might start to look promising.

But what I find difficult to accept rationally is the steady stream of emails from David Cameron who assures  me that he is relying on my vote to return him to Downing Street.

Well I do hope that he is relying on it because that could mean that the chances of him getting the key back in May will be pretty remote.

I have little doubt that whatever I vote Penrith and the Borders will remain Tory which affords  me the opportunity of voting for the Co-op Party Candidate or the Green Party Candidate knowing that I cannot unseat the sitting candidate (assuming that he's standing).

I certainly won't unseat him by using my Grayson Perry shopping bag when I pop down to the Co-op for milk and bread.

But if social  media and email are going to be the weapons of choice in the coming election what else will happen?

Thousands of young volunteers manning the telephones to get the vote out?

Crowd funding as we all chip in with our donations to help the various party efforts.

I am expecting that it won't be too long  before I get an email from Danny Alexander explaining that Nick Clegg needs my vote so that he can become Deputy Leader in whatever Coalition can be cobbled together out of the wreckage he has helped to create by supporting a party who weren't elected last time round.

And then it all starts to get silly (or reductio ad absurdum) as the philosophers might say.

My computer, smart phone, iPad pings or beeps or burps or buzzes or chimes to tell me: You've Got Mail.

I check to find an email from Nigel inviting me for a pint at my local, The Haywain.

(Known locally as The Hawaiian which is about as Obama as its possible to get of course).

Well as we are not a coastal town in Kent or Essex its unlikely that I will get that call so I don't have to worry overmuch about offending Nigel by refusing and I'm certainly making no plans.

But up until now the Obama lite, social media, crowd funding approach has been pretty low key but come the  end of March as Parliament is dissolved and as we move towards May 7th it will inevitably increase, in-boxes will start to fill up with emails from all and sundry as they try to seize the electoral initiative and convince you that the only place to put your cross is against their candidates name.

Of course we are not electing a President so whether Milliballs looks sufficiently Presidential compared with Camosborne is really of no consequence.

What is of consequence is that we get the Government we need not the Government we deserve.