31st January 2012

This is a bonus blog.

I might not have written it but thought that people might think that I was letting my standards slip as I had not posted for a couple of days having been away visiting family.

So this is a bonus blog.

On Monday morning I walked my six year old grandson to school, on the way he asked me what I did.

Well I said, I don't do anything really, because I am retired.

That's what I would like to do when I grow up, he replied, be retired.

Then I could stay at home all day and build Lego.

A fine ambition I think.

But now I have to make a confession. Just to be clear I have received a bonus this year.

My bonus was paid by the Government directly to me, tax free.

My bonus this year as last, was £10.

I did nothing to earn it, it was just paid to  me.

Whilst I was working I only ever received one bonus, I worked for a charity at the time and in one particular year the charity had outperformed on its business plan exceeding both financial and work targets and the board declared a thirteen month year, and all the charities employees received an extra months pay.

Of course we all rang in to declare the mistake that had been made and were all delighted when we were told that it was not a mistake.

Somehow an extra month seems fair and proportionate as a CEO it was always my hope to one day reward hardworking colleagues who were committed to their work and did it for the modest salary that the charity could afford in a similar way.

Now bonuses are all the news, exercising both the politicians and the commentariat and resulting in a veritable bonus of words generated by both.

For some reason best known to the remuneration committees, bankers and other CEO's and business people's salaries are paid on the basis of a monthly income and an annual bonus. It incentivises the captains of finance and industry, sometimes characterised as cartoon figures as in: Masters of the Universe, and means that year on year they exceed targets, which benefits all of us via the exchequer and taxes paid, it just benefits the bankers et al, a bit more.

So there are now a cadre of highly paid individuals who receive salaries in the mouthwatering reaches of the financial stratosphere, (think lottery winnings), on top of which they receive their bonus, so they win the lottery twice every year.

The CEO of RBS has been in the news and has effectively been ambushed by Ed Milliband and has decided not to accept his bonus.

Now whilst I question why anyone needs to earn £2M a year, unless its to live the life of Reilly, or should that be wryly? Nevertheless I think that Mr Milliband was wrong, if the contract said that in addition to a generous salary there was also a bonus to be paid, then it was only right to pay it if the job had been done well, which it seems it was, at least to the satisfaction of the board of RBS and the remuneration committee.

The real issue is why has this bonus culture arisen? What does it say about human nature and motivation?

In the present crisis it is essential that either we get back to earning a living in the international market place with a fairer distribution of wealth, the better capitalism argument, or we find better and fairer ways of organising our economic affairs, the mutualism or co-operation argument.

Others have written more effectively on this subject, not least in the report Prosperity Without Growth, but the political argument still revolves around getting capitalism back on track, this needs to be challenged and changed.

Otherwise, like my grandson, we might all have to plan for early retirement by stocking up with Lego.

26th January 2012

To start with I have to make it clear that I CAN spell pheasant.

I also know some good recipes for pheasant and I enjoy eating pheasant prepared in various ways, my most recent recipe was a pheasant, parsnip and snap pea curry which was delicious.

It was a freezer, fridge special insofar as the ingredients presented themselves and I organised them into a supper dish using the slow cooker and finishing the curry with coconut milk.

But for some reason I decided to alert my facebook friends to both the recipe and the fact that earlier in the day I had an altercation with a pheasant on a narrow lane which resulted in damage to both the pheasant and the front bumper of my car, which now bears the scars where the trim around the fog lights has sprung away from the bumper.

In that facebook post I chose to spell pheasant as feasant.

This resulted in a number of responses one of which was quite remarkable.

'The only use of 'feasant' I know is Damage Feasant Torts, This is a corruption of Faisant Dommage and signifies 'doing damage'.

One local estate which we pass regularly has a hand written notice declaring SLOW, Pheasants on Road.

But there was no such notice along the lane where my Kamikaze pheasant chose to fly out of the hedgerow as though it was playing a pheasant version of the game chicken!

Sometimes it’s hard not to blink.

Mr Duncan Smith must have wished that the Bishop’s had blinked or that the Lord’s had blinked again when the next part of his Bill was also defeated.

Welfare reform is having a bad press, with the left wing papers welcomed the robust challenges from both the formal and the informal opposition and the right wing press apparently claiming that on the whole the population at large is in favour of welfare reform.

Both sides claim to be Christian and both sides are claiming the moral high ground, whilst invoking the spirit of Beveridge.

There must come a time when politicians are best advised to put their party ideologies to one side and explore what is meant by ‘the common good’.

It is an important idea that underpins the notion that we are all in this together.

Sadly of course we are patently not all in this together.

The divisions in society are deepening as the storm clouds grow more threatening and the risk of a double dip recession grows more likely.

Labour is the most convenient whipping boy and Ed Milliband carries the argument to the Prime Minister in PM’s Question Time but his scope for a  response is limited by the memory of his predecessors words about booms and busts.

In fact it is probably the case that both parties are complicit in the feasant dommage of the economy.

Banks spent more than they had and awarded themselves huge bonuses for their failure, it was a bravura performance on their part but one that we can see should have been constrained more by legislative interventions.

But if the jobs are not there, if the cuts limit the scope that businesses have for growth, if the Banks are not lending, if public services are shedding jobs and the private sector is not creating them then the welfare budget will take the strain.

I have commented previously that there are other industrial and financial models, mutualism and co-operation is high on my agenda and should be high on the coalitions agenda.

We need a radical and daring new politics to replace the trench warfare between Labour and Conservative that has dominated the post war years.

We cannot as another story on facebook has it, continue to raffle dead donkey’s.

In the present climate of gloom and doom there is only one dessert to follow roasted feasant and that is Eton Mess, because that is what we are currently in …………..

23rd January 2012

Sometime in or around 1972 I filled my car with petrol. At that time petrol was still sold in gallons.

The price was something like 45 pence a gallon.

I was so shocked that I declared that when it got to 50 pence I was selling the car and giving up driving.

Yesterday, thirty years after I made that threat, I put four gallons of fuel into the car, the cost? £30.

Fuel inflation has made petrol and diesel as expensive as gold or diamonds.

I didn't buy my first house until 1987, it cost £30K.

But the first house I lived in in 1969 cost £3150 it was a three bed semi, newly built on a modern estate in a village near Doncaster.

The house I live in now is smaller than both those houses and is valued at over £100K.

House price inflation has made houses almost unaffordable for the first time buyer.

When I was first married my salary was approximately £60 a month and our housekeeping accounted for maybe half.

Wage and food inflation has made those figures look unbelievable today, my grandchildren think of the olden days, I think it was the sixties for goodness sake, they were the modern times.

Apparently the Big Society Committee has not met for a year.

So it looks like that project has not achieved lift off, Gareth Thomas a Labour MP was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that David Cameron's 'interest in bringing communities together to prosper was just a mirage'.

Meanwhile the IDS as he is known continues to press for a welfare cap in the face of hostility and amendments from Bishops and Lib Dem Peers.

I am glad that the Bishops have finally caught on and up because I was campaigning as part of an organisation I helped to found in the early 1980's Church Action on Poverty, that Child Allowance should not be included in the income calculation for Supplementary Benefit because to include it was regressive and affected children in the poorest families adversely, it's only taken thirty years but we have got there finally.

The problems we face as a country are complex and as in the Eighties the Government and the Prime Minister are looking for simple solutions to complex problems.

A previous Archbishop used to be a Vicar in Durham, he re-ordered the Church which was in the Market Place in Durham City, he published a book about his work in Durham and called it, The Church in the Market Place.

There is an apocryphal story about that book coming to the attention of the then PM.

The problem with inflation is that it is a regressive tax on the poorest.

Whether I pay £2 or £30 for my four gallons of fuel I can only drive the same number of miles.

Whether I pay £3K or £300K for my house, I still only have a place to live.

Whether I spend £5 or £500 a week on shopping, I still only get three meals a day.

But the effects of inflation sap energies, corrode the will and render people socially and economically lethargic.

Partly as a result of the shifting of the tectonic plates of global politics and economics, partly as a result of the collapse of belief in politics, largely as a result of the New Labour Project, people are no longer convinced by the rhetoric of either left or right.

It will be interesting to see what empty promises are rehearsed in the next round of Leader's Debates before the next election and whether anyone bothers to watch.

20th January 2012

The bread is being baked and the circus is heading to town.

This year we, or at least Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, celebrates the diamond anniversary of her Coronation.

It is certainly an achievement in a volatile world.

Since 1952 the world has been torn apart by strife, by wars, by emigrations and immigrations, there have been coups and counter coups, we have seen Nelson Mandela emerge from Robbins Island as a senior world statesman, there has been Mugabe in Zimbabwe, US Presidents have been impeached, HO Chi Min and Vietnam, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Prime Ministers have come and gone and throughout all this change from an ancien regime to modernity and beyond, the Queen has graced the Throne.

And of course the con-dem Government can't believe its luck.

So the bread is being baked and the circus is heading to town.

At a time when the country is being divided by policies which favour the rich over the poor, when poverty is on the increase, when living longer rather than being a joy is becoming a nightmare as heating bills soar and pensions are reduced, when Bankers Bonuses are still obscene compared to other peoples wage cuts, the Prime Minister defends capitalism as the only economic system to get us out of the mess it has got us into and one minister supports the crazy notion that £60M is spent on a new royal yacht.

Meanwhile the bread is being baked and the circus is heading to town.

The celebration is being called a jubilee.

Google it and you will find it there described as a Diamond Jubilee or The Queen's Jubilee.

Wrong word!

Inappropriate word!

So there will be street parties (or will there?)

There will be celebrations (or will there?)

Certainly they are being planned, and it may be that for some people an opportunity to celebrate the event might just take their mind off the credit card balances or the fact that their pensions or benefits are being reduced or removed, or that they have lost their job and are struggling to find another, bread and circuses can occasionally help alleviate the misery that life puts your way.

But it is not a Jubilee.

A jubilee is defined in Leviticus 25:10


Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you, and you shall return every man to his own clan, you shall return every man to his family. 

For both Jews and Christians, the Jubilee is a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon.

In Jubilee slaves are to be freed.

In Jubilee debts are to be forgiven.

Rather than commissioning a yacht or throwing street parties maybe the con-dem Government could consider ensuring that there is some genuine contribution to the common good, some attempt to ameliorate the worst effects of the recession which has affected the wider global community but which is being deepened by their policies and the savage cuts in public expenditure.

There is another tradition which the present Queen has made especially her own, The Royal Maundy.

In 1997 the Queen came to Bradford Cathedral for the Royal Maundy, it was an impressive occasion, two people for each year of her reign were awarded a purse containing the specially minted Maundy Money.

I had the privilege of hosting the lunch for the recipients and shared with them the sense that the Queen had been gracious in her pursuit of this ancient tradition.

Originally the Monarch had literally washed the feet of their subjects as Jesus had washed his disciples feet, over time the Maundy Purse replaced the ritual foot washing, but the principle remained that the ceremony marked the fact that the Monarch was both King and servant of the people.

The bread is baking and the circus is on its way .........

18th January 2012

Generally speaking Genoa is a low rise City.

It climbs from the harbour up into the hills behind and most of the houses climbing up the hillsides are painted in various pastel shades, pinks, creams, greens.

However down in the Marina things are different as the huge private yachts line the harbour side, the boats here are mainly white with the occasional blue, grey or black.

Further out in the Cruise Ship Terminal the great ships lie at anchor awaiting a new crew and new passengers before the next voyage.

These liners are huge, for all the world like enormous blocks of flats lying on their sides on the water, with lines of windows sightlessly reflecting the warm Ligurian sun.

Passengers walk around the harbour to a viewing point where they can take a photograph of themselves with their ship in the background.

Cruise ships are suddenly in the news for the worst of all reasons as disaster at sea has caused needless deaths and the press coverage has been full of stories both heroic and tragic, of crew and passengers, often behaving selflessly without thought for their safety or lives.

Across Europe in a tiny overgrown graveyard in a Cumbrian Village there is a Gravestone depicting the name of Joseph Bell, Joseph was the Chief Engineer on the Titanic, recently  my Grandchildren mentioned that they were studying the disaster whose centenary is April 15th this year and I was able to tell them about the local connection with that disaster.

The gravestone carries a biblical sentence, greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends.

In Genoa last year I was invited to join the Coastguard cutter and the clergy from the Church of St Francis in a ceremony which is enacted each year to carry a wreath out to the Harbour Bar where it is laid on the water to commemorate the sinking of a British Merchant Ship, The London Valour which sank off Genoa in a freak storm in April 1970.

The sea is a dangerous and unpredictable environment.

However the last Labour Government decommissioned the Royal Yacht Brittania on the grounds of cost rather than safety.

The present Government appears to be pursuing a strategy to build or purchase a new Royal Yacht to use as a floating University and Research vessel, the expense will be considerable, covered by private donations and justified as an appropriate celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

This at a time when the Government is cutting back on investment, choking off growth, savagely reducing the Welfare Bill,, replacing Disabled Living Allowance and insisting that, we are all in it together.

Well, maybe those who lost their lives on the Titanic were all in it together and the poor passengers in steerage lost their lives alongside others who died with small fortunes in loose change in their pockets.

The recent tragedy off the Italian Coast saw the same situation perhaps with rather more evidence of panic but many were saved.

In Genoa the superb Museum of the Sea offers the visitor a graphic and moving interactive display depicting the many thousands who were driven from their homes by poverty to seek a new life in a new country.

Now there is nowhere for the poorest to flee to start over with hope and aspiration, we are in fact all in it together.

We are charting new economic waters, we are appear to be all at sea, we are drifting, uncertain whether  the Euro will survive, whether the Brics will lead us forward into new prosperity or whether we will become client states with rapidly reducing production and rapidly increasing poverty, holed beneath the waterline and without a lifeboat.

One thing it seems is certain the wealthiest will be on their yachts sailing for the offshore Tax Havens where they will pay less tax and not have to share the uncertain fate awaiting the rest of us who don't have a yacht to our name. 

16th January 2012

Having seen the film War Horse with the family at the weekend I remembered this piece which I wrote for my Grandfather Frank Oswald Wilde who served as a farrier in 1914 - 18 until he was gassed and returned home.

1914

(i)

My name is Frank Oswald Wilde, farrier at Mossley Pit. 

Each day I made my way through early morning streets,

boots echoing the clatter of the girls clogs starting their shift at Medlock Mill. 

Then down the pit-shaft to the stables underground and the ponies. 

They’re tough, full of heart, they rub silky noses against my dirty, calloused hands

gently nuzzling with soft mouths for the treats I bring, an apple

or mints, it varies their diet, hay and chopped maize, hot water

to make a mash, keeps them fettled for their work, hard gruelling

work, they only see daylight once a year, at Wakes week

Rest of the time they drag heavy wagons along the rails

loaded with Coal and Slate that weigh heavier than they do

They could smell the damp, the gas that could kill or explode

sooner than any Canary, they would warn me, I would shout the others

The day of the call-up picture I asked if I could have a pony

Just to stand with him and show how he helped the miners

how we would win the war. The answer came back from above, No!

So I held two horseshoes, people should know the ponies work

(ii)

Now here I am in France. I’d heard the ponies were being drafted

I volunteered so now I’m here, getting the ponies ready to fight

for their country, here in this bloody, never ending, war, a farrier still.

They work twenty four hours a day, quiet as lambs, carrying

food, water and ammunition to the front, starved, sodden and spent. 

Little did I know, here above ground, they would still let me know

they smell the gas the Germans call dampf, the terror of the trenches

Like the Tommies these ponies die in their thousands, it makes

Me ask, which is worse, struggling on in the darkness of the pit

Or struggling here like this, blown apart and stitched together again? 

This terrible world they’ve entered frightens them and the poor bloody soldiers, 

conscripts mostly, like the ponies, the blasting at the coal face is nothing 

compared to the barrage of the constant Guns that drown us in the 

rattling death of the front and the choking of the damps

(iii)

When the gas came I wasn’t ready, the gas mask was a nuisance

It scared the ponies, first I knew they started to go down, front knees

first like they were in church starting to pray, then I knew, ‘the damps’

over they went, I got the mask on too late, so I joined them in prayer

Now I’m back home, my war is over, I’ll never go down the pit again,

the air's too poor underground, I cannot breathe. They say it will kill me

13th January 2012

I ordered a couple of items from a national store using the Internet.

Both items were available for collection from different branches of the store. I ordered and very efficiently emails arrived advising me of a collection date and time.

I then rang the nearest store and asked if it was possible for the second item, which they didn't have in stock to be delivered to them by the other store in order to save me the journey. I imagined that there would be lots of coming and going between the stores as they were only twenty or so miles apart.

No, I was told, it wasn't possible because the second store, in Penrith, was in the North West Region whilst my nearest store Carlisle, was in Scotland.

It makes sense. I suddenly realised, why my new Bathroom was recently delivered ..... from Scotland!

It's because we are in Scotland!

Of course it's a matter of logistics. Presumably the two retailers have distribution depots around the country and it is easier and makes most sense for Carlisle to be served from the Scottish depot.

I understand that.

But I wonder whether what makes sense logistically might also make sense politically?

In the big society of the United Kingdom does it make sense for the 'londoncentric' thinking of politicians to dominate life in these border regions?

The borders were and are debatable lands as the names of the Riever families carved into the footpath at Tullie House in Carlisle and the words on the Cursing Stone suggest there has been a long and at times fierce debate about who owns not just the land but also the cattle and the taxes and the wealth that the land produces.

The roads which snake across the border from Bewcastle to Newcastleton, even today are wild and remote and it is not always clear which country you are in until you finally arrive.

The economics of Scottish Independence will be debated, a lot hinges on who owns the oil and what share of the national debt Scotland inherits, and doubtless the political battle will be fiercely fought, already politicians are taking up their positions and issuing calls to arms.

But as part of that debate the issue of where the border is drawn will be raised, recently on the local news I saw a report from Berwick on Tweed and of course Carlisle itself has been the focus of territorial claims over the years which is why we have a huge castle parked on the 'English' side of the river.

So who knows but it will be interesting. The first skirmish has been the leaking of the First Minister's email to Sir Fred Goodwin. I am sure that we will all become familiar with the concept of due diligence as the debate ensues.

But friends who live in Scotland reassure me that there are distinct advantages to life north of the border so who knows, whether it's the high road or the low road, we might yet find ourselves in Scotland 'afore ye', without having stepped out of our front door ...................