21st November 2011

Just when you thought that it couldn't get any worse, it does.

The New CEO of the Co-op must wonder what he did to deserve this.

I can only admire him for his confidence and positive rhetoric.

But privately .... who knows?

I am at the other end of the scale in the Co-op.

I am a member and an Area Committee Member, this is the first tier in the democratic structure, from the Area Committee members can be elected, by other Area Committee Members, to a Regional Board and from there to the Group Board.

This was the path taken by The Reverend Flowers.

In order to ensure that there is a level of competence committee and board members are required to undertake education and to hold a certificate in Co-operation.

Now in the wake of recent events the Governance of the Co-op is to be reviewed.

In addition to the CWS, I am a customer/member of the Energy Co-op, The Co-op Bank and The Phonecoop.

I believe in co-operation and mutuality I am also by nature and conviction a socialist.

But I see two things happening at the present time that cause me to review what co-operation might achieve and who should be co-operating.

The first is the success of the John Lewis Partnership which is an employee co-operative (partnership).

If the Rochdale Pioneers had so imagined it and if they had had employees, it might have occurred to them all those years ago that the basic partnership was between the employees of the enterprise rather than the customers.

In practise the consumer co-op is a clunky mechanism, first there is the inertia of the wider membership, on both elections when I was 'voted' onto the Area Committee no election was required because there were too few nominees and the number who actually voted was very low. Members meetings are generally poorly attended. And this year of course the Dividend has not been paid because there is no surplus to distribute.

An employee Co-operative by definition has an active  membership, although some will be more active than others, you only have to visit a John Lewis or Waitrose store to see the enthusiasm of the staff.

The second,  is a view that, the key issue facing poor people in Rochdale was food, which was costly to buy, often adulterated and buying it meant going into debt in the company store which was owned by the factory or Mill where you worked and where sometimes you were paid in vouchers only redeemable in the company store.

Food is still an issue of course, people facing a choice between heating and eating, the rise of Food Banks, Food security and food price inflation mean that food is still expensive but the Co-op finds itself in a race to the bottom, led by supermarkets with deep pockets, as they try to discount their way in a market dominated by some major players.

It may be that the hubristic charge to expand the business by taking over other co-ops, mutuals and businesses which has been the hallmark of the past few years should now be reversed.

In my budgeting, energy is a key expenditure and the mutual/co-op model is helping me exercise some control of  my budget. The next major expenditure is communication and again the co-op model appears to work exceptionally well, ensuring that costs for telephony and internet access can be managed.

So my thought is that those charged with responsibility to advise and support the new CEO should reinforce the positive value of a local as opposed to a national presence, the success of smaller co-ops bears this out, that the co-op model should be employed where the 'shoe is pinching for people' (it is tragic that one major casualty of the Bank's problems was the Insurance Business a classic example of where co-operation was of immediate benefit to customers) and that the way to re-energise the movement is change the rules in order to enable the employees of the Co-op to become the owners of the business not the customers.

12th November 2013

Before the 'Big Society' there were 'Active Communities'.

Or at least an expressed desire on the part of New Labour that communities should be encouraged to become active.

That initiative coincided with my taking on the role of Chief Executive of a charity dedicated to encouraging exactly that, active communities.

The charity was founded during the First World War by an Army Chaplain in Belgium and in the immediate post war years armed with the communion role from Talbot House, what today we might call a data base, he contacted all those on the role and encouraged them to become active in building a better society in response to the fact that they had survived and in memory of their fallen comrades.

The charity continues to this day trying to build better communities.

Unfortunately my approaches to the active communities unit fell on deaf ears, stony ground and ignorance of the charity which always aimed to do good by stealth, as the founder declared, do something useful every day, but don't get found out.

Also because it was almost a hundred years old it wasn't new or novel and of course Mr Blair always liked things to be new, as in New Labour.

I used to tell a joke about Tony Blair quizzing St Peter at the pearly gated entrance to heaven, welcome Mr Blair says St Peter, aah, says Mr Blair I was just wondering before I glottal stop by, this is the New Heaven isn't it?

Eventually active communities fell by the wayside of politics to be followed in turn by the Big Society, which has it seemed followed it into oblivion.

Now it seems, from Mr Cameron's recently reported speech, we are looking forward to the efficiency of the Small State.

Small Stateism is now the way forward.

More efficient and needing less tax pounds to run.

It means of course that there will be less folk tied up in running it. But, according to the speech less managers means more Doctors.

The problem with politics and politicians is that too often rhetoric replaces reality. Reality is what we experience as we struggle with the business of managing the indoor critic's MS, on a daily basis.

Sitting in the waiting room yesterday waiting for our appointment with the Neurologist I read an article in Enable Magazine about the effect of Government cuts on the disabled.

It quoted Mr Cameron: 'Fairness means giving money to help the poorest in society. People who are sick, who are vulnerable, who are elderly - I want you to know we will always look after you. That's the sign of a civilised society'.

Was Mr Duncan Smith present for this speech I wonder?

Since making that speech in 2010, the disabled as a group have seen Disabled Living Allowance replaced with Personal Independence Payments, ATOS assessments introduced and the bedroom tax, resulting in a £500M drop in global income for those relying on the extra support needed to cope with their disabilities, whilst Local Authority care budgets have been cut by £2bn.

Fair?

Looked after?

Civilised?

Active Communities were deactivated, the big society has been reduced to the small state.

Promises have been broken.

5th November 2013

There are two names synonymous with radical change in the UK.

Robin Hood, Jim Wallis' favourite historical British character, as he told me when I interviewed him for BBC Radio Newcastle some years ago, who robbed the rich to give to the poor.

In fact on that visit to the UK Jim advised me that he had taken a detour in order to visit Sherwood Forest.

What he would make of the actions of the con-dems its fairly easy to imagine, but the real or imagined actions of Robin Hood hold out the possibility that in time good will prevail and the unjust receive their just deserts, so we can only hope.

The other name is of course Guy Fawkes, sometimes described as the only person to enter the House of Commons with honourable intentions.

Today we remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.

It just so happens that it is also my mothers birthday, who had she lived would now be 97, sadly she died in 1980 of secondary cancer following an earlier diagnosis of and surgery for, Breast Cancer, I still miss her.

Today is also the wedding anniversary of my youngest daughter, so happy anniversary to her and her husband.

It can be useful to mark these personal and family anniversaries with what is happening in the wider or 'bigger' society. A way of taking the temperature of the world we inhabit with its challenges, its gifts and its blessings.

Certainly the present Government represents to a greater degree than any before, the challenges.

Shades of Thatcherism as we privatise more, sell off our social housing, invest in a potentially inflationary policy of housing subsidy and seek to cap benefits so that the poorest in our society bear the greatest burden of addressing the long term structural inequalities built into the fabric of our society.

In effect robbing the poor.

So much has been and is being written to challenge the negative impact of policies that in effect simply reward those at the top. The reason that so much is written and so many campaigns are launched is because we know who ate and are eating the pies, leaving just crumbs to fall from the rich man's table.

But the real tragedy of the these years of austerity (at least for some) is that it was not, and is not necessary.

A recent report demonstrating the richness and economic benefit arising from those who come to make their home here, completely undermining the false claim that immigration is always negative.

If money was fairly and evenly distributed throughout society then we would all be so much better off than some of us are, even if others might feel that the rewards they receive for their work could be higher. But a recognition that there should be a relationship between the highest paid and the poorest in any company, without the need for the Government to subside via the tax system, employers who pay poorly

Comparing the society in which I am growing old compared with the one in which I grew up is almost impossible, there is no comparison, shopping with my mother in 1950's Britain with rationing and ration cards, eking out the house keeping as best she could in order to feed her family, was soul destroying.

But there was community, there were networks of family support and over time we began to prosper as a family as society generally began to benefit from the great vision of social justice, of public ownership, of health care free at the point of delivery introduced by the first Labour Government.

Now, that system is being consciously and actively dismantled giving rise to increased pressures imposed through changes to the benefits system, job losses and the high cost of buying and heating a home.

For the thousands who now have to resort to food banks to feed their families even the 1950's, that previous decade of austerity, would appear to be, halcyon days.

Nye Bevan fought the 1945 general election on a programme which would effectively lead to the 'complete, political extinction of the Tory Party'.

His vision was for a society built on justice in which working people had power and in which the individualistic competitive society based on capitalist hedonism was replaced with socialism.

It was about the test of what makes a good society, it has been well characterised as the 'Kingdom of Bevan'.

On Thursday a new co-op will open in a new development opposite where I live.

It is a measure of the potential to continue to hold onto that vision of a better society promoting the 'common good' that my mother would have recognised the co-op as not only a place to do her family shopping but one in which , as an owner, she had a personal and valuable stake, represented by the 'Divi'.

So as Robin Hood continues to inspire and Guy Fawkes continues to challenge we must continue to hold out for the possibility of changing society for the better, as The Tunes sang, Truth, Justice and the Mancunian Way.

27th October 2013

Our house.

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

Now we live in a much smaller house.

It is a modern cottage, twenty years old.

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

But it still has to be heated.

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

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

Our energy supply system is broken.

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

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

Politically energy is very much the theme of the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24th October 2013

This has been the longest break between blog posts ever.

Why the silence?

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

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

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

Right!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The prayer took the form of an Abrahamic negotiation. 

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

You are, so they say, Beneficent?

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

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

I wonder, could Richard Dawkins have managed that?

3rd October 2013

So the big society came and went.

Not much mention of it in Manchester.

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

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

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

We'll all be feeling better.

So what has the party conference season taught us?

Not very much it seems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26th September 2013

The usual rhetorical question is usually: Is the Pope still Catholic?

Now a new rhetorical question has been posed. Is the Labour Party still Socialist?

The answer is less obvious, the question less rhetorical, but after Brighton it seems that Socialism which we thought His Holiness Pope Tony has abolished along with Clause 5, might just be alive and well.

I met Ed Milliband over a private dinner, hosted by Community Service Volunteers for CE's of Voluntary Organisations.

I have to say I liked what I saw, and still like what I see on the TV.

I changed my energy supplier from British Gas to Co-op Energy, the change has saved me a considerable amount of money each month, the service is efficient and I get extra Dividend when I read my own meter.

The theory behind privatisation was that competition, market forces, drive down prices.

In point of fact prices have continued to rise and the market has been opened to companies based in Europe so not only are we importing our energy but the profits are being exported.

I remember in the late 70's, with three young children in the midst of a three day week, sitting in a cold dark Vicarage with a car spotlight hooked up to an old battery providing light during another blackout.

Then it was the miners who were blamed, now the power suppliers, who have their hands on the switch, who will thrust us into darkness on a whim, because they can and so that as the miners brought down the Heath Government they can try to achieve the same result over the new Labour Government in 2015.

Of course we await the blether of the con part of the con-dems, as the Tories hold their Conference in Manchester.

Of course its pretty clear what will be said and in what language, but securing energy and building homes is clearly the political priority for the next Government, it's just that con-dem Tories are choosing to cross the greasy palms of banks, builder and estate agents with money which it seems even the new Governor of the Bank of England has cautioned against, because of the risk of simply fuelling house price inflation and creating an unsustainable bubble or subsidising the energy companies who say they cannot afford to invest in new power stations.

So either we continue to trust capitalism to deliver social goals or we get a grip and invite all sectors of society to work together for, what in the Churches, we call, 'The Common Good'.

Its all in the detail.

It always is.

Recently my Doctor made an appointment for me at the hospital.

For various reasons I decided not to attend the appointment and rang to cancel, I was asked for my booking reference and password.

Haven't got one I said, have an NHS Number, No I was told, that won't do, I was referred to the first three page letter I received before the second three page letter, and there it was, well, OK a booking reference makes sense, but I had been given a password, which I must apparently always use when I contact the NHS.

Why I asked? another rhetorical question when it dawned on me!

Of course! this is all part of the preparation for V Day, as in V for Virgin not victory, when Branson rules, NOT ok! If you haven't got your password you won't get in, or you'll have to pay up front like in America.

It won't be long before your Virgin Health Credit Card will be in your wallet along with your Virgin Travel Card and your Virgin Mates Card and your allocated password will cover all eventualities, as long as you can remember it.

So we have a bold new vision of a socialist future in which Health will be free at the point of delivery, energy will be affordable and houses will available to buy or rent, with as many rooms as you want, without a surcharge.

Or remain condemned to falling living standards, rising prices, whilst held in thrall to the Capitalist overlords of the Universe.

As my dad once observed, the reason you're six foot whilst your grandfather was five feet two is socialism, free milk and orange juice.

It's the spirit of '45 all over again.