Pile em high sell em cheap.

To understand the decline we of a certain age have seen in the 'institution that is Britain' one has to go back to the changes which emerged from the "great social contract" enacted by the Attlee government of 1946 with its commitment to a welfare state and the support of all shades of the electorate not just one privileged.  Keynesian economics which radically admitted the inherent responsibility of 'government' to play a hand in the social construct of the state, was sidelined and eventually dismembered by the Thatcherite, Milton Friedman, laissez faire market solution which, along the American lines, abhorred the role government played in the minutia of the social contract. There was to be no "social contract" and with the direct attack on organised labour, the removal of municipal services  from the remit of elected councils, to be run in future by Quangos plus the selling off of a large part of the housing stock at well below replacement value, the scene was set for a vast increase in the culture of benefit dependency.
It is no accident that the rise in divorce and unmarried motherhood went in tandem with the virtual wiping out of surety in the job market as market conditions drove down wages and, except for a few companies, returned work to its pre war position of insecurity and impoverishment for whole swathes of society.
To this day the hard won rights of a fair wage for a fair days pay are emasculated in the zero hour contracts and the below adequate living standard pay, requiring a welfare top up from taxation which nicely relieves the employer of his duty to pay adequately and responsibly.
One often asks, how did we come to this when after the war when we were financially broke, we were able to launch the NHS and the various welfare capture points to help families who through no fault of their own were in need of assistance.
When and how did it change. When old people's homes were adequately staffed not by people from overseas willing to work all hours godsend for a pittance. The local workforce staffed the caring roles in our society and the homes were free to the elderly using them. Young people today have no concept of free university education which was available in my day.
From the Prisons to our Schools the assumption was that it was the States business, paid for out of general taxation but with the understanding that a minister in parliament was responsible and your MP could ask questions.
All this has been sidelined, eradicated by Margaret Thatcher in her ideological zeal to emulate the Americans and in particular Ronald Reagan who she was in awe of. We have firewalls all over the place insulating our democratically elected representatives, the only people we can call to account, from the services which make us civilised.
Quangos and privatisation, self interested bodies who have a financial interest, and operate on the basis of Tesco's founder, "pile em high and sell em cheap". Our flirtation with social justice is no more and we are all the poorer for it.

A walk in the park

Why did we start the need to believe in God.


As human beings when we felt the terror of the unknown, the fear of anything which lay outside our immediate experience, which in primitive man must have covered just about everything. The need to assign a guiding hand to explain the workings of something we couldn't comprehend was natural. From the many gods, each specific to the unexplained phenomenon, people gradually found the need to coalesce into one God. To simplify and create a hierarchy is a function of the human mind as it seeks to simplify and codify what's around. 
Today was an attempt to define God. Unless like the Muslim faith for instance with its strict rules and a fire and brimstone retribution,  people talk of 'gods love' as if it were in-line to that which we experience to other humans, a rich and complex experience which we find it hard to pin-point and understand in any rational way. The religious person would describe it as being an emotional gift bequeathed by the Commandment "Love Thy Neighbour". The Secularist would try to induce chemistry and pheromones but both would miss the essence of what loving meant still less  its complex and beguiling effect.
The myths and storytelling bound up in the Bible or the Koran are apocryphal having been handed down, often many years after the date when they were attributed and, as with any retelling became embellished.
Theocracies tend to control their flock with a measure of fear. The power base inhabited by the Priest has always relied on a mixture of the mystical and the Divine, in equal portions to concoct a story in which following a laid down path has rewards and deviation punishments. Seen from the Churches Establishment point of view, it's all about control, seen from the practising believer its "revelation".
The face of the Christian or Jewish preacher is often one of benign hope as they try to impart their love of God to the ungodly.  In contrast the face of the Academic is sharpened with ridicule, possibly contempt as they seek to unravel the myth with time lines and carbon capture.
The face of Science, as it slowly digs away is that of "I told you so", but the one thing they can't describe is the 'fervour of faith', be it in the beautification of the human spirit which is seen in the joy of revelation (what ever form it takes) or the dark side, a willingness to become a martyr and blow oneself up in the twisted sense of a religious course. These expressions of the human mind are beyond analysis, they depict a mind that has flown the nest and is roosting on a branch far away from the rational speculative scientific mind.
It's like trying to pigeon hole the difference between men and women. They are so alike and yet so different. We could spend years diluting the chemistry in the lab and would come up with some findings but it would not bring us any closer to the truth. We are so much more than a collection of cells in fact the interaction and interconnection between the cells has so many combinations, "it makes the Lottery seem like a walk in the park".

Sharing tea with the Mad Hatter.

As I get further into the book "the Banquet of Consequences"an exposé of the dire condition we are in financially, one is led to wonder where was the leadership which allowed us to get here.
We generally look up to and admire the people who rise to the top, attributing them with special powers. We do it towards our parents when we are growing up and only as we to arrive into adulthood and parenthood do we realise that they, like ourselves often muddle through as best we can.
This symbolism of elevating certain people with powers and foresight we don't have is risky. Power and authority are not always won fairly. Sometimes corruption plays a part and ruthless  hedonism, the driving force  not clarity of forethought.
With the unacceptable debt that all the leading nations now have around their necks, debt which  is increasing exponentially without seemingly any political view to future consequences one again asks where is the leadership.
Isolating oneself in a self contained financial bubble is one route favoured by the plutocrat. Even if everything crashes and burns they will be protected in so far as their risks are spread across a whole range of firewalls and cross investments. The very act of crashing is future proofed.
The leadership of Government in its national form is hand tied by the market, since the measures that need enacting are toxic to the mechanism to which they owe their stability and their electability. Place a regulation on your own financial system and the money flows to a competitor.
That is why one of the only means to trim the income/expenditure account and reduce national debt is to tinker with 'welfare' and so called 'entitlements'. The other method (other than more borrowing, trying to reinvigorate exports) which seems politically inexpedient is to raise "income tax" and ensure the income raised is used to bring down the debt.
Of course one of the arguments against that is that it reduces the disposable income on which the consumer relies, since the nation now depends on consumerism for part of its taxable income.
One is reminded of Alice once again, where reality is just too difficult and it's easier to share tea with the Mad Hatter.

Unelected profiteers

The absurdity of the current Global economy is truly frightening.

Laissez - faire, market driven globally inflicted policies which ignore the local economic conditions. They project a 'market' derived from the capacity and the proclivity of the producer, not the needs of the consumer, culturally or economic. It is a disaster waiting to happen. 

Global capitalism is as unrealisable as Global communism.

The use of new technology makes the aim towards 'full employment' unattainable, and with it economic security for the majority is being reduced by the world economy. 

This will lead and is already leading to a rise in counter movements within society which whilst currently only proving an irritant give rise to 'far right' parties which mirror the 30s. Who would have predicted Herr Hiller would become popular amongst his own people without the economic strains imposed on that society by the Versailles Treaty.

It must be understood that laissez-faire markets are not the same as the normal market place which you see in any modern society. 

Laissez-faire markets by definition must be unencumbered with democratic oversight.

Nothing must allow the market to be inhibited. Regulation other than by the market is prohibited.

It could be argued that the raison-d'être of government is their ability to protect their citizens according to their manifesto. A global regime of global laissez-faire prevents governments from discharging this role and is creating great political and economic instability across the world.

Couple this with the financial deceit practised by institutions and governments, financial engineering, practised by dodgy Banks, is now practised by beleaguered governments. 

 Complex financial techniques, originally used for repackaging residential mortgages, are used by governments to finance bailouts and ambitious infrastructure investment programs to overcome the lack of available funds. Governments use creative accounting to understate their debt levels and "off-balance sheet structures, delayed and extended time line payments, to massage the level of borrowings. They consistently understate the liabilities on their books such as un-financed commitments such as 'retirement benefits'.

The Spanish used billions of tax losses to bolster regulatory capital and artificially improve the solvency of their banks. Merkel in her promise not to burden her people with the Greek bailout agreed to the bailout debt being restructured so as to have minimal interest rates and repayments deferred well into the future to maintain the fiction that the debt would be repaid.

The result of all these shenanigans is a corrupted financial landscape which will burden us all well into the foreseeable future. 

Political governance has been emasculated by Wall Street. We are now governed by the needs of a boardroom of unelected profiteers !!

Were you a nightmare

It's a funny thing coming to the end of your holiday. All the memories that you packed into your journey, all the friends you made, all the things you might have done but never quite got around to are behind you as you pull up to the front door.
Life is a bit like that and as your train nears the end of the line, as the buildings begin to build up and the train begins to slow and creak a bit, as it sways over the junctions, now entering a tunnel briefly out into the sunshine before plunging back into darkness.
The other passengers get up out of their seats and lift down their luggage, for them this station is but a pause in their journey. You stay anchored to your seat the ticket in your hand says cancelled, the clips around the edge show its carried you on many journeys but now this is the last one and there, down the end of the platform is the attendant waiting patiently.
It only seems like yesterday when you set off on your first trip down the garden path to the delight of your parents. Then the trip to your first school and a new world, soon followed by your first job and the first holiday away on your own. All these firsts. Living away, moving overseas, walking down the aisle and then the magic moment of your first child and the second with their first of many firsts.
Suddenly these firsts begin to dry up, suddenly there are no more events no more firsts and slowly even the days seem to slow into a meaningless montage with time itself becoming  a continuum without signposts without any sense of order other than the comfort of sleep.
As the obituaries fill the airways each morning praising the life of so and so after their death you notice the dates recording their life span are all around you like dandruff on your shoulder they reflect your own span and when Mr Blank died in his sleep after a short illness at age 75 you realise how precarious this business of living has become.
Waking and looking around the bedroom on this, a new day one is struck by the sameness of the previous day and the uniqueness that each new day has. Does one grasp each minute as precious and go out early to respond to the fact that you are alive, or do you simply acknowledge the uncomfortable truth by putting it into the back of your mind, filling the day as you did the previous day with trivia.

Faced with ones mortality perhaps the worst thing to do is to become hyperactive about it and rather shorten the periods you find yourself out of bed. The cowboy dies in the saddle with his boots on, the ordinary man hopes to pass away with his dreams, yet another conundrum if like me you never remember them. Perhaps life is like that, best not remembered, not reflected upon for fear of becoming uncomfortable with the thought of lost opportunities.
It's for others to remember you and in this busy life you can hardly expect much more but a passing memory, maybe evoked by an incident but in the general sense you are more like a dream than reality, unless of course you have been a nightmare.

Charley Rose

The art of the interviewer.

Watching Charley Rose, the American CBS talk show host at work is to watch someone perform at the very top of their profession. Almost as an aside he makes the person being interviewed centre stage. He gently prompts them with questions and allusions to things that had happened in their past or is about to happen in the near future.  The communication is as it would be having a chat, the camera and the paraphernalia  associated with the set are clearly in the background as his warm confidential personality sets up a conversation that in some ways excludes the audiences participation and focuses one to one. His ability to make the other person relax and feel they are in trustworthy company has to come from his aura or perhaps lack of it in that there never seems to be any tension.
One often sees the "late night jock show host" vying for the camera wishing to be the centre of attention the master of the joke. These shows can be interesting as a spectacle but one is never fascinated as you are on a Charley Rose show by the person there to questioned, not interrogated, the information teased out willingly as if the occasion was that of speaking and sharing to a friend.
I suppose it's that he seems so genuinely interested and it's as if the questions were as an aside to the overall conversation. The painstaking research and unearthing of what is interesting comes across as if the question had just popped into his mind. His consummate affability his courtesy and warmth are the traits you enjoy and appreciate in anyone no matter who but in his show they are magnified by the raw material sitting opposite. Someone who is famous for being someone different, someone special, a star in their own galaxy far away from our own grey environment who Rose makes human by his own humanity.

Jutland

We have just celebrated (sic) the 100 anniversary of the Battle of Jutland where the British Fleet engaged the German Fleet in the North Sea.
Traditionally the British navy had been the linch pin of Britain's defence against a foreign attack. It was before the advent of an air force other than spotter planes and the bulk of our wartime expenditure was spent on the fleet.
A bit like the Trident missile, the fleet was there to deter, to bottle up, in this case the German fleet in its base and nullify its potential. Huge sums of money had been spent by Britain in matching any warships being built by Germany, the tonnage well exceeded what the Germans could put to sea and this was deemed enough.

As a young lad I grew up on the stories of our invincibility on the high seas. The famous story of Jack Cornwall the young midshipman just a boy himself who stood by the turret of his navel gun in the hight of the battle, his gun crew, dead and dying around him he continued to engage the enemy for which he received a posthumous VC.  

We were proud of our navy, the famous Admirals, Jellicoe and Beatty the famous ships the Iron Duke,the Indefatigable, the Invincible names to conjure with as we read the official line  that we had driven the German back into his lair never to venture out again.
The names of the German Admirals Scheer and Hipper were caught again for us in the Second World War this time as the names of ships as with the Graf Spree, Scheer  and Hipper represented that much feared and highly respected class of ship the Pocket Battleship, high speed raiders sinking all before them in every ocean of the globe.
What we were not told in 1914 was the disaster of the British Command, specifically Beatty in wildly plunging into battle with his under gunned light cruisers and far worse not informing Jellicoe of the initial sighting and engagement. Like some boys own character, "tally ho", he was out for glory and it was to be "his" glory.
On a equal footing and with far less glory was the responsibility for poor design of these ships on which our future as an independent nation relied. Inadequate armour plating, poor design of the location of the magazine in relation to the gun turrets, and guns which lacked the accuracy and the shell penetration of the German ships.
One foot in Trafalgar and one struggling to come to terms with modern warfare.
Churchill the minister in charge of the admiralty and Fisher the irascible moderniser were continually fighting the navel establishment over the future direction of the navy.  Tradition and history played a disabling hand and as these huge ships, Indefatigable sunk, Queen Elizabeth sunk all within half an hour of the start of the engagement, in each case an explosion within the turret and the ship blew up as the magazine caught fire.
6000 men died in the battle of Jutland on the British side whilst 2500 died on the German ships.
History was to repeat itself in the Second World War when the massive battleship, HMS Hood was blown out of the water by the Bismarck, due to deficiencies in protective amour plating, the adversary again our old foe and again, by them employing better design and more powerful gunnery.
The old school tie and its absorption in its self image. The inability of young minds to shoehorn out the old duffer. The lack of our industry to develop new lightweight materials which were stronger than the traditional methods of protection meant, in the contest to limit the weight and increase speed and manoeuvrability, less protection was used and 1415 men died. The radar used to aim the guns was inadequate and the more modern radar which the ship carried, the Captain refused to use. The Bismarck was soon pumping shells into the Hood whilst the inadequate gunnery equipment meant that the salvo's from the Hood were landing in the water.
This is not a celebration of poor design and underfunding, still less an appraisal of the talents of modern warfare over old misguided belief but it does once again signal the soft underbelly of our nation in relying, then as now on the same people to guide and lead us.
We would do better to keep them in the officers mess whilst getting on and enlarging the gene pool from which any future leadership, in war or in politics, is drawn.