31st October 2012

One of the best cars that I ever owned was a DKW.

Built in Eastern Germany before the war, it boasted the famous Audi interlinked rings on the radiator grille, after the war marooned in East Germany, the factory built the Wartburg.

The car had a three cylinder two stroke engine and it was awesomely fast.

It was aero-dynamic in shape and its construction was described as a pillar-less saloon, the rear windows winding back into the doors to form a completely open sided aspect.

The model I owned was a Saxomat.

This variant had a clutch which was electrically operated by means of a button on the end of the steering column mounted gear shift. The fly wheel had a centrifuge which engaged as the speed of the engine rose and disengaged as the speed slowed and stopped.

So at Traffic Lights you could sit with first gear engaged and the engine burbling beneath the bonnet and then as you floored the accelerator the car would rear up on its back wheels and hurl itself forward with blistering acceleration.

It would have brought a smile to Jeremy Clarkson's face.

It certainly made me smile as I left another travelling salesman edging forward through the blue exhaust in his Ford Cortina wondering where I had gone.


But centrifuges work in politics as well as in engineering.

This may prove to have been an unfortunate time for the con-dems to choose to form not only a Government, but a Coalition Government.

In some future time, maybe a hundred years from now, a historian, echoing Gibbon's magisterial history of the Roman Empire, might entitle his history or her story, The History of  the Decline and fall of Europe.

Each chapter would follow the rise and fall of a particular European country as it traces the collapse of economic and monetary union, the collapse of markets, the demise of the common currency and the end of European history.

The chapter on the United Kingdom will, in all likelihood make galling reading for the grandsons and daughters of the members of the present cabinet.

In my last job I was invited to help as the advert had it, 'to build an organisation to break down barriers' it was a challenge that I responded to enthusiastically and with which I struggled for a number of years, until I realised that there were forces at work within the organisation that were simply beyond my or any one else's capacity to manage and which made it impossible to build the organisation.

Organisations, no less than countries or economic unions, are subject to centrifugal and centripetal forces.

The one forcing the energy to flow from the centre outward, the other forcing energy from the edges inward.

In both my legendary DKW, as in the charity I directed, the centrifugal forces were irresistible.

The car's fly-wheel flung out it's teeth, the gears engaged and the car accelerated. The charity continued to expend itself by taking on initiatives and then launching them as independent activities with their own management.

As a membership  'movement' organised into branches, even the branches saw themselves as independent of the centre.

The European 'Project' was based on the idealistic notion that centripetal influences could pull the disparate regions of Europe together into a single economic and monetary union and might even lead to a federal structure.

Czechoslovakia, former Yugoslavia, Spain and closer to home Scotland and Wales, offer examples of political centrifugal movements leading to new smaller nations embracing or seeking independence and nationhood.

Of course an independent Scotland might seek to be part of a wider federal Europe, it might not, Alex Salmond might not win the vote, Spain might remain as a single political confederation under the rule of its King.

It is clearly too early to tell how things will change and how the future will look but what is clear that across Europe centrifugal forces are at work.

21st October 2012

I am not a luddite.

i padded, i phoned and kindled to the hilt, socially well media'd and conversant with live streaming movies and down loading music.

But I just tried to change a flight on easyjet!

Not easy at all!

Who was the wit that came up with the idea that we could manage without travel agents and do the work ourselves 'online' and then happily pay for the privilege?

You go online, change the flight pay the difference in fare, it won't be cheaper! and then pay £35 for each passenger!!!!

Just for the privilege of being an easytouch!

I just hope that George (travel first class on a second class, fare dodger ticket) Osborne doesn't realise what lengths we are prepared to go to and how easy it is to hoodwink us.

And easy it is!

We have been hoodwinked so often!

Driving Licenses, my first one gained when I was 17 was valid until I was 70, well valid until I changed my address and then I was issued a new photo licence and within twenty minutes had to pay a fortune to renew it.

So how did that happen?

I recently sold my car.

We have acquired a new car which belongs to the critic in residence but as we are pretty  much joined at the hip her newly gained independence simply means that when necessary I can use my bus pass or ride the Harley (raining - bus, sunny- Harley, easy travel!).

So having sold the car to a friend of a friend, I sent the necessary paperwork off to the DVLA.

I then receive a letter asking for the necessary paperwork, I telephone Wales to explain, don't worry says a voice straight out of under milkwood, crossed in the post hasn't it?

Love those rhetorical questions as statement's thingies.

Ignore the threatening letter, it's OK its standard in these situations.

Well, nobody told the enforcement section in geordieland.

Apart from anything else, they know where I live.

£1000 fine, automatic, unless you send £30 by return.

So I ring them up, explain, mention under milk wood, don't worry says this lovely geordie lass, obviously a mistake, send a letter to explain.

I suggest that it might be nice if I was to receive an apology.

At the post office the nice lady agrees, best get it signed for, so that's £2 75, the reply when it comes contains no apology.

It is anonymous on behalf of the Secretary of State, but he's a bit busy, apologising to Richard Branson and there are only so many apologies and Richard's got his hands full trying to stop George Osborne fare dodging .............

15th October 2012

I suppose it had to happen.

After the 'success' of the Jubilee and the Olympics a Prime Minister desperate for another diversion has come up with the brilliant idea of celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the start of the First World War.

I wonder if his advisers suggested hanging on for four years and celebrating the end?

What is there to celebrate about Europe tearing itself apart over a carnage that lasted four long bloody years?

What is there to celebrate about countries being destroyed, populations decimated in a conflict that effectively represented a fin de siecle of an age and which in its turn ushered in the Great Depression?

Am I missing something?

Maybe the Prime Minister sees it as a way of nailing down Europe.

First there will be a referendum and we will pull out of Europe, then we will celebrate the defeat of those European nations that had the temerity to challenge our primacy as a political and economic empire?

Coming within days of the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union, recognition of what is good and significant about an economic and political alliance that has managed to ensure peaceful co-existence between its member states for over sixty years, it seems somewhat contradictory.

What will we celebrate, the Lions or the Donkeys?

The phrase seems to have its origins in the German High Command who described the ordinary soldiers of the British Army as Lions who were led by Generals who were Donkeys.

One German general commenting that if the British Generals had matched their troops courage with a similar degree of strategy they would have been invincible.

Well, history as Orwell commented is always written by the victors and I suppose that the committee chosen to plan the celebrations will write their own version of what happened.

The sub-text, as with the Olympics and the Jubilee will inevitably be to set out a narrative that tells a story about the unity and greatness of the British Isles.

I have no doubt that we live in a Great Country, it is the triumph of the Lions that despite everything, they survive the lack of strategy, the corruption and the wrong-headed-ness of the Donkeys who insist that they are in charge.

Maybe that is something to celebrate?

10th October 2012

Having recently spent time in Spain it was impossible to ignore the news of  protests in Madrid staged by Los Indignados, as they work to achieve solidarity between those in debt, people struggling with Mortgages or rents that are unaffordable.

It is a protest that is political and practical as it seeks to steer the Government away from cuts that harm the lives of the poorest and to investment in the nations future.

I am sure that the indignados would have made their voices felt in Birmingham this week, there is every justification for indignation listening to the conference speakers.

The circus in Birmingham is in full swing.

Apparently Boris came and conquered and now we have a nation of strivers, aspirant strivers at that.

Well it is I suppose better than being described as a nation of skivers!

It's probably the first word the speech writers came up with but in the delivery Mr Cameron thought better of it and in order to keep the alliteration and the rhythm of his speech, changed the k for a t.

Difficult to know but what is clear is that the Government will continue to argue the causes of the financial crisis and focus the blame onto the poor and those dependent on welfare.

Welfare budgets are to be cut again, it will be very difficult for you we are told by the Millionaires in the Cabinet, but it has to be done, otherwise Britain will no longer be competitive in the global market place.

Two themes that I have pursued in my blog over the time that I have been writing, are the themes of fairness and opportunity.

It is essential that the national cake is divided fairly and it crucial that all people have the opportunity to do well.

The danger at the present time is that the rhetoric of the Tories, often using the same words, will mask the real difference between a fair and just society and a divided and broken society.

In so many areas of policy words are used wrongly and incorrectly, so many claims are made falsely and of course the con-dems with their liberal partners can find ways of masking the toryness of their policies with a dash of liberal rhetoric.

At the heart of the speech in Birmingham Mr Cameron declared that:

Cutting state spending was the best way to create sustainable jobs?

Helping people off welfare was a route out of poverty.

Academic rigour gave children the best start in life.

At face value these words can seem OK, but dig a little deeper into the ideas that underlie them.

How does cutting state spending create sustainable jobs in areas where the single largest employer is in fact the public sector and where business has withdrawn, either to cheaper labour markets or more profitable market places.

How does cutting benefits for families and individuals, for young people and the disabled provide a route out of poverty?

When I left school at 15 I was told that I was fit only to be a bricklayer, failed by the academic system I educated myself by reading and eventually five years later enrolled at college, not everyone responds to the notion of academic rigour, not everyone would succeed at Eton.

I lived in Birmingham for six years, for three of those years I helped to spend a Million Pounds a year regenerating the East of the City in Michael Heseletine's Task Force.

I worked near Saltley Gate which in February 1972 was the focus of a fight against austerity pay deals.

30,000 Birmingham engineers took strike action  in solidarity with striking miners.

The victory at Saltley, won through solidarity strikes, was the turning point for the miners.

Within seven weeks the government was defeated.

Today, people face an assault on their living conditions reminiscent of previous Tory attacks.

The Forty year anniversary of the Battle of Saltley Gate carries powerful lessons for working people whose jobs and livelihoods are threatened once again.

Indignation is a proper response to what has happened this week in Birmingham.

7th October 2012

So after one nation red Ed in Manchester, the blue meanies are about to have their conference in Birmingham.

Of course they're hopeless.

Booze ups and breweries come to mind.

The latest fiasco of course is the West Coast Rail Franchise.

Of course Branson is laughing his socks off, Sir Richard of course .........

He of the virgin business, business ......

Wish I had never bought Tubular Bells, but there you are, just didn't believe that buying a record would mean that 40 years later he would be treating my diabetes or selling me a ticket for when I travel to Edinburgh tomorrow ............ Just goes to show, never underestimate someone called Richard, even if his friends call him Dicky, he will still be tricky .........

The news, apparently, is that half of us make no contribution to the national purse.

Well I certainly don't, as a pensioner I am now a net incomer, the bulk of my income coming from the exchequer, I pay tax on it, of course, but between us, the indoor critic and I, take more out than we put in.

But, think tanks, and Tory think tanks at that, to one side, take more out of what than what?

The thing is that the national product in financial terms is huge, billions huge, but take away the profits lodged offshore, the tax dodging billionaires, the bankers and the footballers with rather large back pockets and my, relatively small monthly income, offset I might say, against the saving I represent to the exchequer in my role as a carer and?

Well there you have it, I represent good value for money.

I worked for over forty years, started when I was 15, paid tax from day one, so in terms of the social economy, I paid in and now the pension is worth what it is worth, so thank you Mr (nay Lord) Beveridge!

The latest news that 50% of the population takes out more than it puts in, is OK if you reckon without the overall economic performance of the economy as a whole.

Britain is a rich western nation, with an output from manufacturing, financial services and pension funds, far in excess of the income/expenditure equation of the working versus the not working (i.e. pensioners and beneficiaries) so to argue as Mitt Romney did in the USA, that 47% of the population would vote Democrat because they rely on the state is actually wrong.

The issue here is that wealth is inappropriately and unfairly distributed.

There is no longer work for everyone because work has changed.

Technology, robotics, intelligence means that there is, as the Bible has it, no longer, holes to dig or vines to tend.

So inevitably, there will be folk who have no place in the economic scheme of things, but they still need to spend, they still consume, they still have a role to play and a life to live.

This argument that 50% take out more than they put in is tempered by the 50% who for whatever reason fail to put in what they should, after all surely, the national income should benefit the nation?

The indoor critic hates the FT Weekend supplement, How to Spend It, I quite enjoy it, because it reminds me that there are folk who can spend £2000 on a shirt, or a jacket or a coat, who have more to spend on stuff than I have to live on for a year, there is money out there, being generated by the economy, so red Ed is for one nation, the Cameroons is another nation altogether, so lets see who's right, can we turn this round, boot out the blue meanies and elect a government that actually gives a toss, and share the national economy fairly and justly?

25th September 2012

This is a celebratory blog for me as according to the statistics published by google I have now passed my 10000th viewing.

As a friend of mine, a fund raising expert once commented, to raise a million pounds you either need one person to give you the million pounds or a million people to give you one pound.

Well I know that the indoor critic reads it, but not 10000 times, so I guess whilst some people must have read each of the 220 or so blogs at least once it still means that my thinking aloud is of wider interest than my immediate circle of friends.

My grandfather was foreman of a council tip.

Before the First World War he had been a miner, but having being gassed in the trenches, when he returned home he was not allowed to go back below ground where he had worked as a farrier tending to the pit ponies.

So he found a job as a dustman and was then made foreman of the council refuse tip.

It was amazing what people threw away, obvious things like pots and pans and kettles and old clothes and rubbish but on one occasion he found a dog tied to the handle of the dustbin which when he got back to the tip became the official office dog my grandmother not wanting it at home.

He often told my mother that the surest way to get your dustbins emptied was to leave something like a bit of metal sticking out of the top of the bin so the bin men would see it and know that there was something that they could weigh in for a few coppers to supplement their wages.

One of the great privileges of my life has been the opportunity to travel.

One of my most memorable trips was to Mexico.

Mexico City is huge some sixty miles across and on the edge of the City their are enormous refuse dumps where people, the poorest of the poor, live and scavenge.

Essentially they recycle the City´s waste.

For some that means finding what can be reused, and carrying it into the City and selling it, and you see folk sitting on the pavement with a few things at their feet trying to raise a few pesetas to get by.

The more creative might re-use what they scavenge to make things and I saw all sorts of beautiful ornaments and jewellery for sale which had been fashioned from the paper and tin and glass that other people had thrown away.

More recently in Genoa we saw the same phenomenon, some people selling things they had made from recycled goods they had found but also other people with a few scraps of torn clothes and broken things at their feet sitting or standing on the pavement.

Often the street vendors were immigrants often from North Africa but occasionally from Eastern Europe and sometimes in the evening if we looked out of our apartment window we would see the same people sorting through the rubbish bins in the street outside for anything that they could use or sell.

Now we are in Spain and the same phenomenon can be seen.

However here it seems it is more organised, the rubbish bins are on the street outside the security gates of the apartment block, shortly after we arrived, out for a walk in the evening, I saw two people arrive by car and using a series of tools which I assume they had made themselves for the specific purpose, they were searching through the bins and retrieving anything that they could possibly reuse or sell.

It is it seems a regular way for people to earn a living when I enquired however I was told that at one time it would be migrants who would pursue this kind of work but increasingly Spanish people are resorting to the practise, a sign, so my informant told me, of the economic times in which we find ourselves.

As far as I know my dustbins at home are still being emptied by the refuse collectors employed by the Council and the recycling we are encouraged to practise is officially condoned, which is why the plastic and paper and glass have to be separated and washed before being placed in the correct box or bag or bin.

What we have instead is the agencies, usually claiming to be working for charities raising funds for children or the elderly, who deliver a plastic bag for our unwanted clothes and then return to collect the bags.

Some of these collection agencies have been exposed as simply commercial enterprises making money out of the unwanted and donated goods.

But as the depression deepens and the poor are forced to bear the burden of economic mismanagement by seeing their benefits cut, to encourage them, whilst seeing the rich rewarded with tax cuts to encourage them, doubtless they will find new and imaginative strategies for survival.

Just leave that bit of metal sticking out of the top your dustbin ..............

20th September 2012

Life is, at times, very strange.

It throws up difficulties and challenges as well as opportunities and gifts.

Living with a chronic, life limiting condition, as the indoor critic has to, is not easy. But between us we manage to get about and on the whole find people to be helpful and supportive.

We always give easyjet five stars in feedback, because our experience of flying with them, between Newcastle and Malaga and Edinburgh and Milan, has been unfailingly excellent.

Equally, Virgin trains assistance service has also been excellent providing ramps and assistance on and off trains.

And these difficulties and challenges are almost always compensated for by the opportunities and gifts that come by way of the Locum Chaplaincies that I have been offered in the Diocese of Europe.

Not only a chance to assist on Sundays but also an opportunity to engage with the life of busy ex pat communities and the individuals that make them up.

They are not all tax exiles in Monaco.

Folk move away from the UK for a wide variety of reasons, the weather, the cafe society, the golf, the language or the culture.

Some remain within the relative safety of the English speaking community and some go native.

But all report the same sense that they have found in their new home something of a wider, deeper, more relaxed way of living that reflects something of the big society, in Spanish ´Gran sociedad` which sounds as though it is something for the older generation; but which is held up as the ideal to strive for both in Spain and in the UK.

Of course once established in a new country people fall in love, marry, have children and become so established in their new lives that distinctions of nationality become lost.

I am still very English but I am starting to enjoy the Spanish language.

Recently I had to officiate at the funeral of an elderly lady whose partner was in his nineties, they had met in Spain having both been widowed in their sixties, Gran sociedad!

When I was offered the paperwork to sign I noticed that their relationship was noted as: Companero Sentimentale, I remarked to the Funeral Director that I thought that was a lovely way to describe a relationship that had lasted over twenty five years.

It is, he replied, how we say it in Spain.

There are things said and described in Spanish that the language make to seem altogether more poetic.

However I am still learning.

Indeed if I was a stand up comedian I  would by now have a great new routine. 

The thing is that I had to buy an electric kettle.

My first attempts resulted in no kettle.

So I turned to my translation app on my iphone.

So I tried again in Spanish: hervidor electrico, por favor.

After a conversation with one shopkeeper, each with our iphone translators speaking to each other,  I managed to buy a milk heater, i.e. hervidor leche, not a hervidor agua.

When I got home I realised my mistake, because  a) there was no automatic off switch and b) it only heated to 90 degress.

After a restless night wondering how I was going to deal with my mistake I decided that I had to gather my courage in both hands and take it back.

Pointing to the box I said: este hervidor de leche? hervidor agua, por favor?

So with a smile and a shrug he changed it for a kettle and wrote out a new receipt.

Then I got home to find the kettle in the box, which was good, but with no base or plug, which was of course bad.

So I had to return for the missing base unit: la base es que faltan? I proffered.




Again he smiled and reaching behind him picked the missing base unit off the shelf.

So, After four trips to the shop and flattening my iphone battery, I finally got home and made a much needed cup of tea .

But if you ever need to buy a kettle in Spain you know who to ask ......