Isn't This Where We Came In?

What can be said at the beginning of this year? Many people make predictions. I can confidently say that as there are so many varying, contradictory, confused, vague, expert and inexpert that some could be right.

Which of them will be I do not know. What I can say is many people will say and do things they will later regret, things will happen that are unexpected, some of the expected or hoped for things will not happen and the human race will be no more wiser or reliable at the end of the year than at the beginning.

On the subject of wisdom Grant Shapps, Minister for Housing, who has been in and out of the property market along with others seems to be saying that he is alright the rest of us can forget it in terms of Brown’s Boom, the end that was never to be it seems is imminent.

Quite how he can square this with reports of funny money flooding into London to keep the pot boiling, encouraged by the government, is uncertain.

When I walk along the High Street in my town most of the shops that used to sell things are now either employment agencies or estate agencies.

There is a discrepancy between them, because the salary levels, many for jobs with responsibility requiring experience and qualifications, would not allow the takers to get into the job market on the basis either of salary or possible savings.

A reason for this is that lenders have recently rediscovered the knowledge that if you lend pots of money to people that cannot afford to repay it on the basis of them telling you what you want to know about their incomes and personal status, you may find yourself stuck with either bad debts or unsaleable overpriced property or both.

So what would Grant Shapps like to have? It is more lending to people on a relaxed basis and with lots of “innovative” mortgage products subject to little or no regulation. This is just what was involved in the recent crash.

One worry for the government is the needs of families. These are said to be in decline because of social changes. But according to an item in the Hals Report there could be other reasons.

http://www.thehalsreport.com/2011/01/is-something-wrong-with-the-sexual-development-of-human-males/

We are told to be a high consumption society. Much of what we consume and eat is now dependent on petro chemical products. It is the derivatives of these shoved into almost everything we eat and use that is doing the damage. It is not just us, it is also the other creatures of the earth.

“Not with a bang but a whimper” as the poet T.S. Eliot said in his poem “The Hollow Men”

But there could be a good big bang on the way that will end the debate on the Euro because it will end much of Europe.

Apparently there is a huge Caldera in Italy compared with which Pompeii is but a pimple. British scientists are arguing with others about the right to drill holes in it.

Is this is good idea , I ask?

http://www.armageddononline.org/Campi-Flegrei-super-volcano-caldera.html

I can predict that in 2011 there will be some volcanic activity somewhere. How big and where and with what effect I do not know. We were told about the risk of a larger secondary Icelandic one that has yet to happen and other possibilities. Your guess is as good as mine and maybe better.

This year, next year, sometime when?

Chinese Crackers

With the BBC and other media attempting to herd us into the retailers to save the economy there were some interesting things going on. Oxford Street in London was thronged with shoppers but to our eyes few of them seemed to be local.

A later report said that many were Chinese tourists. As so much of the merchandise on offer was made in China and transported here this made me wonder. Did many of the tourists have to pay excess on their baggage on the return journey?

It appears that in China the government led property boom has created some large towns in which there are few takers for the properties, largely because there are no jobs available.

Where there are jobs available some people become very rich and look for high returns. One place that attracts them is central London where despite all the economic troubles property prices remain high and with prospects of capital appreciation.

This has helped to drive up prices. The investment advantage comes from the housing benefits available to those who rent and have little or no income. Even at a cap of £20,000 a year a wise purchase of a rental block can yield rich results for a careful buyer.

This will be if the flats can be rented out to incoming migrants who will be entitled to benefits. Moreover by creating a shortage, prices inevitably rise maximising the benefit payments that finish up with the investor. Many migrants are Chinese.

Meanwhile in the USA the domestic property market has gone bust. This has hurt a lot of big financial operators. The US Government has borrowed huge sums from abroad to bail them out. A lot of the money has been loaned by China.

One effect of this has been to almost eliminate the old American middle class and its traditional industries are in free fall due to manufacturing being exported abroad, notably to China. Everything could depend on the high tech’s industries and innovation.

These depend on some key resources notably rare earths and their derivatives. A major producer is China that is now restricting its exports to protect its own industries, if only to promote more development to fill up some of the empty cities.

The growth of China has helped to put pressure on both oil and food prices. In the USA the government, lobbied hard by the relevant companies, has given over large areas of land to growing biomass to create ethanol to ease the problems.

This has reduced the supply of food so driving up prices that impacts seriously on the world commodity markets. This affects Africa in particular and some states in that continent are selling a lot of their land to China to help the Chinese source their food.

The money for this land does not go to the peasants in any way. It is transmitted to tax havens in the care of a number of financial organisations closely connected with Wall Street. Some of these have been bailed out by the USA government and are still in deep trouble.

They are hoping that investment in China will get them out of it. However, foreign investment in China is a high risk business in that their government will always take care of its own above foreigners, unlike British or American.

A great deal of the risk in producing consumer goods is that consumers might be less able to buy them and be unable to pay the added heavy financial premiums arising from debt driven consumerism that underpins many financial organisations.

My head is beginning to hurt, I could go on but enough is enough. This year I may just skip Hogmanay and haggis and wait for 2 February to have some rabbit stew. After all the Chinese New Year does take us into the Year Of The Rabbit.

Perhaps the markets could be due for a dose of myxomatosis?

Jamie With The Laughing Face

This one appeared on the web today. For a variety of reasons I found it hilarious.

Quote:

Jamie Oliver's cookbook comes under fire

Jamie Oliver signs copies of his new book, 'Jamie's Ministry of Food' at Waterstones, Piccadilly, London, UK.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has come under fire as readers claim his 30-minute meals bestseller take more than an hour to make.

The 35-year-old's latest cookbook Jamie's 30-Minute Meals has become Britain's fastest selling non-fiction book of all time, but it has left a fair few fans feeling angry.

Some people who spent £26 on the book hoping to cut down on time spent in the kitchen claim it is nearly impossible to make any of the dishes in under an hour.

And even experienced cooks have complained online that the meals took up to an hour and a half to make.

Some of the complainers included a group of cooks with the username 'unsatisfied', who wrote on Jamie's official forum: "Jamie, your 30 minute meals are more like 90 minute meals!”

Even with three people cooking them they still CANNOT be done in thirty minutes."

Unquote.

I mean, come on, lets be serious, £26 for a celebrity basic cooking book? Am I mad or are they?

What puzzles me is what is worth while eating that takes only 30 minutes or less to cook? Have none of them eaten a good thick mutton chop?

More to the point, how long does a worth while stock pot take to brew?

Anyone for Scouse?

Air Miles Zero Airports Below Zero

An airline is a highly complex business, especially if it is a larger one operating in a number of countries. Airports with any amount of traffic and especially hubs are highly complex entities. Between them they generate another class of highly complex activity in the related transport systems of passengers, staff and others.

Last and equal are the highly complex systems of delivery, removal and transportation of a large array of freight and necessary goods and services.

In short the pre-conditions exist for a number of glitches and difficulties at any time. There are other factors, including the financial operations, the way the staff are worked and strategic decisions over levels of spare capacity, backup and margins of error and all the rest.

If the pre-conditions are a permanent feature of flight provision then beyond that is the liability for critical situations to arise at any time in any part of the world. If any of these systems experiences major complications then the effects will transmit easily and quickly to others.

All you need then is a trigger event of one kind or another, internal to external to those systems for systemic failure to occur.

This degree of interacting complexity also means that the whole business of flying etc. is highly vulnerable to other events, either foreseeable or not.

It was not possible to foresee the volcanic eruption earlier this year. It was possible to have some contingency planning and ideas about how to deal with something big that literally came out of the blue.

The weather problems did not come out of the blue, they can happen and if they can happen they will at some time. Also, there was enough information to suggest that the problems could have been serious.

There were some lunatic elements in all this, like South Eastern Railways having its de-icing trains scheduled for maintenance in mid December and Heathrow being short of de-icing fluid.

No doubt around all the other activities one could find matters where lack of staff, lack of awareness and critically lack of both communication or the ability to use initiative or common sense were in evidence.

What does not help is the self destructive and stupid round of blame game amongst those involved and the politicians. Fining airports may look good in the media but the traveller or taxpayer will bear the actual cost.

Because while the major players are blaming each other they are losing sight of other things that materially contributed to the difficulties faced by many passengers.

One that has not received much, if any attention; is the role of the travel insurance companies and brokers. In truth, too many people either do not have insurance, hoping that their “rights” will cover the cost and also many do not look hard enough at the insurance they have bought.

Far too much of this is cheap unreliable stuff bought from shyster companies who will rat with or without excuse and who draft impenetrable micro print terms and conditions that roughly mean that in order to extract money from them is almost impossible and if it is you will have to fight very hard to get it.

Even the better ones are all too prone to play the same sort of game with their clients. Admittedly there is a problem with many people submitting dodgy claims but all too often the insurance companies make matters a lot worse.

It seemed to be a feature of the recent crisis that far too many people were told to travel by the insurance companies when they should never have set foot out of the house in order to justify conditions which might make some sort of sense in ordinary conditions.

To do this in high risk situations making them positively dangerous represented a gross failure of responsibility and management.

If there is some kind of investigation into what went wrong and why this should include a thorough look at the present activities of insurers.

There is a great deal of room for concern here on wider grounds and I suspect the basic trouble is that many of them are operating without anything like the level of reinsurance they should have.

Beyond all that, of course are people. It is common for the public today to be told that almost unlimited foreign travel is some sort of “right” or “necessity”. Also, the media tell them that it is all so easy and everything should work like clock work all the time. The trouble is that it doesn’t and never will.

We now have a population gulled into believing that they can go almost anywhere in the world at will and without worry and without any need to make special provisions or backup arrangements.

There are just too many interacting complexities for that to exist without some sort of disruption somewhere at any time or place. The other question, given the scale of use of scarce resources is whether the world or societies can stand this amount of movement for these purposes indefinitely or for much longer.

So what happens next? Earth may surprise us with something else, or the Sun. Some human event or breakdown could occur or things may just become almost permanently chaotic. Oil prices may lurch up a lot ending cheap travel forever.

If people in Moscow can demonstrate against the consequences of freezing rain then it is clear human understanding is not up to much in the way of reality.

As for Iceland, my theory is that Thor has just dozed off for a bit.

Books, Buildings and Backbone

There are two tales in the press today one apparently small, one large about money that more or less tell the same story. That is that over the last couple of decades, and especially after 1997 the public purse became a honey pot for anyone who wanted money and had connections to raid it at their pleasure.

There was the £13 million, now a small figure, but once you could have had a couple of aircraft carriers for that, that was handed over to a group of noisy writers of children’s books to keep them happy.

This was done by giving books away to children to encourage them to read. In the meantime their parents were buying them computer games and designer clothing.

Then there was the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), where all sorts of people were loaded up with vast amounts of cash for setting up the money and advising on the routine business of building public facilities, notably schools.

The cost of this, on borrowed money, has risen it seems from an estimate £51+ billion to £245 billion over the next forty years or so.

You could almost have a new Royal Navy for that, if it were bought on almost any basis except the PFI. Yet this is not news, amongst others “Private Eye” has been nagging away at this one for years without much notice being taken.

Forty years ago when the “Eye” was nagging at John Poulson’s activities in the public building sector the figures involved now seem laughably trivial and Poulson ended up in gaol along with a few others.

What astonishes me about the comparison between these periods are not only the cost figures in terms of the actual structures, which tell you that there has been rampant inflation in the last decade or so in spite of the figures, but the level of take in the added costs and the numbers of people involved.

Yet forty years ago schools, other local government buildings of all sorts, hospitals and medical facilities and the rest all were built and financed on a hugely simpler basis. It would take too long here to go into the detail, but relatively small numbers of people who operated on a limited range of guidelines, managed the inception, process of work and completion of the full range of projects.

Then, it was done locally, with guidelines and parameters set nationally, by staff in regular jobs with modest salaries determined by national scales publicly available in any library. The money side was handled by the local Treasurer as part of the overall local government or service budget.

The level of debt was controlled and the interest rates were set at ordinary levels. Nor were there high cost fancy servicing schemes carrying premium charges for administration and servicing. Clearly, all those involved would liked to have built more new facilities and with more space and the rest but we all understood that there was a limit.

For those of us who were involved in this and putting the buildings up what has been happening is astonishing for the waste, cost and much worse the poorer standards of overall performance and the radical reductions in real provision, notably in the NHS.

There is going to be a terrible price to pay for this disaster and the scale of it and that will not be measured in money alone. What can be done?

One is for the government effectively to default on these schemes and limit any payment to the actual cost of construction. Another is to nationalise all the financial bodies and agencies involved and without compensation and then to reconstitute them in a new form for flotation.

Whatever is done it will have to be soon. With the Prime Minister increasingly looking like Dave The Dodger with his U turns on bad news and reliance on the spin ploy to avoid trouble it looks ominous.

If he backs down when faced by a few shrieking authors of children’s books, I don’t give much for his chances against the heavy hitters in other fields.

Ding Dong Merrily On High

This is a true story. The names are the same. Only the facts have been changed.

“You’re a miserable old Father Christmas, William Pacey, why don’t you get off your backside and go round cheering people up, like you’re supposed to!” Jane was shaking her rag at him but he looked, disconsolate, into the muddy liquid in his pot.

The publican at the “Golden Eagle”, old John Woods, a former paper-miller, still could not get the wort in his brew right, and it was widely suspected that he tipped in the leftovers and spillage at the end of a night.

He felt like telling Jane Allen, the barmaid, just what it reminded him of, but he had to be careful. For all her shouting and rudeness, the next alehouse was a full mile away, a long road with near half a gallon in the belly, and the beer there was too fresh to the taste. There had been talk of the number of early deaths amongst the daily drinkers, it being muttered that there was arsenic in the malting the brewer used.

“Listen Miss Allen,” a touch of respect might get him full measure for a change, “When I were young we had Father Christmas, and only him, as it always had been, and it came down in my family for the village, generation on generation. Now, what have we got? There’s a Santa Claus, a Saint Nicholas, incomers with nasty foreign notions, and the curate says we have to have a Yule Man, like in the real ancient times.

Then the Philo’ thingamajig Society, what ever they are, say its all a silly superstitious nonsense, and they and the chapel goers have joined together to try to put a stop to the whole thing. You can’t cheer up them who don’t want to be cheered. So if I’m spreading a little misery around, it’s what they wants, and so be it.”

Jane ignored him, finished wiping the tables of the dirt, ashes, and the slops, and wrung the dishcloth tight to get rid of the accumulation of wet dirt. William noticed it was over the ale jug, and looked again into his pot. He was about to say a word or two in protest when Jane resumed with the fullness of spirit she needed to keep her customers cowed.

“Go on, its all the modern thing, a bit of competition won’t do you any harm, might make you work harder, and it’s a change from all the old fashioned bump and waddle. You’ll be going to Church I hope?”

William now let his anger overcome his peasant prudence. “Church, oh yes, I’ll be there, I’ll not be welcome in my old green and brown, and I shan’t be able to give voice either now. We’ve all got to sit and listen.” “It’ll be nice, much more seemly and according to

the way it should be, that’s what the curate says. Your rough old shouting carols sounded like the drunken lot you were; not right for a service. And the scraping and wailing of old fiddles in the gallery put an edge on the teeth, for them that have them.

Now we have a real organ played by the new Schoolmaster and a choir we are a decent church, all polite and proper. The Rector put your nose out of joint, but it’s all for the best.” William was about to spit, but times had changed; an accurate sluice of saliva aimed at his special stone in the wall now drew her full reprimand and not admiration.

The thought of having a red-garbed clerk from a drapers shop or any of the other persons who had sought to supplant him as the image of the festive season, aping foreign imports, made him shake. But it may have been the beer; it was getting worse by the month. Soon the publican, who was losing trade, would have to buy from the brewery in the town to persuade the customers to return.

It was the young again, forsaking the rich full porter for the thin acrid new bitter beers spewed out of vats as big as a house, delivered by train, and served by pump machines from behind a counter. It was a strange world he had lived into, they had been stopped from putting dead dogs into the brew, which took away some of the essences vital to a real country taste.

He had tried some of a new beer in the town. It was a wonder, having a fine white head that stayed as long as there was drink in the glass, and not a pot. Someone he knew that worked in the brewery had told him they had a new ingredient to do it. A dose of cobalt made the head and kept the beer looking clean, it was good for you he was told,

The German chemist they had hired had declared it to be so, and it was the latest thing in America. William was not so sure, as the head went a long way down the glass, the serving was well short of the pint he had paid for, and a bright clean beer did not look right. The headache from five pints was as bad as the one from ten of the old beer. It had taken him several sessions to be sure, but he could be as certain as anyone.

It was time for William to go to The Parish Union Workhouse, where there was still a welcome to be had, but only in the Old Men’s Room. Last year, William Pacey had been forbidden the Old Women’s Room after telling his regular tale about the Countess and the Footman. For thirty years he had told it without a protest, causing the bent old women to cackle and wave their charity mittens with joy.

But now, at the beginning of a new century it was not just wrong, it was said to be lacking in taste by the Board of Guardians, men who never told a joke in their lives. Moreover, he had been warned about some of the traditional jests he told to the Old Men. It was very difficult, they did not like the new ones, with all the words and hints and nods. They wanted them direct and the worse the pun the better.

Someone had been creeping to the curate for a few pence from the poor box, and had told him the one about the chambermaid, the vicar, and the upstairs bucket. Despite the instruction, he would try to slip it in again, if only for Old Benjamin’s sake, he had been laughing at that one for all his eighty years, and he deserved it for the seventy years he worked in the fields before his legs went.

The door opened, and a man entered, someone neither William nor any of the others ever expected to see in a public alehouse. It was Sidney Webb from the big house by Passfield Common. “Ah, William, I have been looking for you all over, I need to have a word, if you don’t mind.” William could not mind, as a seller of fish, amongst other things, he could not afford to upset those who paid in cash.

“There has been a meeting amongst the educated persons of the parish about the festive season, and we have come to an agreement, at last.” William did not like the sound of this at all, the educated persons usually behaved like rats in a sack at any meeting that was called. “There is a lot of unnecessary expense, and things which should be put to one side,”

“That means me,” thought William, “and confusion. We have decided to apply the essential principles of economy, social behaviour, and rationalisation to the communal purpose and true principles of Christmas.” “Yes,” said William for the want of anything better. “It is felt by the majority, although there is a minority whose views I entirely respect,”

“Pigging liar,” thought William, “that we should bring together the high European tradition of the season with our own ruder and less adequate habits, with deference to the ancient folk traditions of the Continent which came with our noble Saxon forebears, but were reduced during the long ages of Norman oppression.”

“Oh, bloody get on with it,” muttered William, who had learned a great deal about practical oppression from the Rector, the Webb’s, and the local chapel. Beatrice Webb had a talent for telling people what she thought they ought to be doing. Sidney Webb droned on, he was writing a learned article on the subject, which he was rehearsing in his mind as he spoke to William.

“So we are bringing together your Father Christmas, Mr. Woodger’s Santa Claus, our Rector, the Reverend Sneyd’s St. Nicholas, and the curates, the Reverend Wetenhall, his ancient Yule Swain into one. I am glad to say that this will be the Schoolmaster who has volunteered to give up his family Christmas to help us after the School Managing Body put it the matter to him. He will lend a little dignity and learning, which is as it should be in our local social commonwealth, and it will put an end to the confusion, and the several and various unsuitable persons who have claimed to be in the tradition of the past.”

“When does this start?” asked William who was feeling fuddled in the head. It was not the beer; there had not been enough of that to turn it yet. “Deeply sorry to spring it on you, but actually yesterday, and the Schoolmaster is now at the Workhouse. He will be reciting great poetry, and demonstrating some of the curates newly discovered ancient peoples dances, as well as leading songs, written by my dear wife, based on the improving texts published by Mr. Winskill of Toxteth Park, in his songs for the Temperance Lifeboat Societies; after all it is drink that have taken so many to the Workhouse.

Tomorrow he will be at the local Asylum helping the poor afflicted.” “Yes, Mr. Webb, thank you for troubling to tell me I be not wanted.” said William. Webb caught the suppressed note of hatred in the voice, grimaced a little, wondered about shaking William’s hand but thought better of it, and then hurried out.

No sooner had Webb gone out, than two other men came in, clearly of the gentle classes, and asked at the bar for best porter. To William’s surprise they were given it, but then Jane had asked them for four pence more than the usual price. “Bar maid’s bonus,” she called it, paid by any traveller who she thought worth taking money from.

They had a short conversation with Jane who pointed to William in his Christmas finery. One of them gave her a bright new half crown, and William wondered what was up, Jane would do most things for a shilling, especially if it was good coin, never mind more than a florin. A table was brought, and William was asked if he was hungry.

He said that he was, it had been five hours now since his last meal, and pushing a fish barrow about the parish sharpened the appetite. Bread, good cheese and onions were brought, and he was given a quart pot, it tasted excellent.

The men sat down with William and produced notebooks, and sheets on which to copy music. “I’m Ralph”, said one, “And I’m Percy”, said the other and they began to ask him questions, gently and with a respect in their voices that William appreciated.

William told them the tales he felt able to tell, and those family stories that were more respectable than the truth, and then they asked him to sing. They wanted old songs and tunes, and he had a great fund of them, but William was not saying how he came to know them beyond that he learned them as a boy, they might not give him so much money, and the supply of best porter might dry up.

Some of the tunes came from the new ditties his father had heard in the back rooms of taverns in the local towns many years before direct from the London theatres, some from the songs on sheets and those of the soldiers his great grandfather brought back from London when he came back from the Wars against Napoleon.

Others were older, from a long way back in time. A forebear long past had been a maid-servant at a great house in London and had told of a child piano player from Austria who could write his own pieces, and strewed sheets of music about the floor with a wanton disregard for expense.

She had wrapped all her little keepsakes and treasures in the some of sheets of music to keep them clean, and when she had come back to the village, had married his great great grandfather who had been able to use the tunes.

Some were even older, and one or two said to be from the time when a Mr. Handel, a travelling man from Hanover, was kept at the local inn for days during a snowstorm and amused the locals to pass the time. All that William sang kept both Ralph and Percy occupied whilst they took increasingly smaller sips from their pot. But, they were happy; they kept the porter flowing for William, and food for the table.

The night ended badly for William. He was put on his fish barrow to be taken home, but the man paid to push him was almost as drunk as William, and pitched them both into a fence, William finishing with a bloodied head, covered in filth, and smelling more strongly of old fish than ever. It was unlucky that the house the fence protected had just had a new tenant, one who did not know William, or the village.

But he was a good man and having his own pony and trap, took William into Liphook immediately to see a doctor. Looking at William’s strange form of dress, smelling him, and after listening to his ramblings, the sound and respected doctor, a most responsible and concerned man, had William committed immediately to the County Asylum for his safety and urgent treatment.

Four weeks later, Ralph and Percy were looking at their notes and deciding what to make of it all. Their ideas were different, but they worked well together in the cause of English Folk Music. “What will you want, and what do you think Ralph?” asked Percy. “Well, the best will make an interesting selection of songs, perhaps a Choral Fantasia, even a symphony might be made of some of this, and you?”

“Indeed, a number of songs, perhaps a cantata, certainly varied concert pieces.” They paused for a moment, and Percy turned to Ralph, “And all true English Folk Music from the times long past?”

Ralph thought for a moment. “Indeed, although some are sadly corrupted by modern coarseness. Look at this one, a wonderful tune, but the lyric is quite dreadfully treated. He is a carter, she is a village tart who offers him her red cherry, they couple on the back of a cart, he on top of her, he farts, she laughs, the horse starts, they fall off, and he breaks a leg.

Obviously, the original would have been along the lines that he drove a cart, is offered a cherry tart by a sweet village maiden, he falls in love with a start, but sadly she breaks his heart. This would be much closer to the original.”

The Boxing Day of the following year saw William, with two attendants close behind him, sat in front of the Superintendent of the Asylum, Dr. William Palmer, and Dr. William Rivers, his deputy. “And you were doing so well,” said the Superintendent, “the smell had gone, you were sober and industrious again, and then this happened. Why did you throw the chair at the Schoolmaster; when he was only trying to amuse you for Christmas Day?”

William tried to explain, the man was wearing red which was silly, his dances came from the curate’s holiday in Wales from some local clerks and shopkeepers who dressed up and pretended they were Druids, his jokes from old editions of “Punch”, and the songs, they were all terribly wrong.

The Superintendent asked him to explain, but as he did so William became angry again, and made the mistake of giving his own versions. Also, in the Asylum he had become unused to the ordinary daily courtesies of verbal communication, and was verbose, confused and too forthright in trying to explain himself.

After a while the doctors looked at each other, it was a bad business; it was a large chair that William had thrown. “I think he needs a few months under restraint, again”, said Dr. Rivers, who liked to give the impression of being firm. The attendants dragged William away, and as he was taken through the door he began to sing his song about the carter, and the doctors winced.

“Appearances can be very deceptive, we have to be so careful” said the Superintendent. “Oh by the way, are you going to the concert at the Town Hall tonight? There is a new piece being tried by the Choral Society, a collection of Old English Folk Songs collected by Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams. “Songs of a Hampshire Wayfarer”. It will be good to hear something that is true and good for the nobility of mind.”

Rivers nodded his agreement, “Oh indeed I will! Very promising, I’m told, and the essence of the best of English tradition.” As he pushed William’s file into the back of the cupboard he added an afterthought, “It is a pity that the Schoolmaster won’t be there, but it’s an ill wind that blows no good, he almost the worst tenor I’ve ever heard, but a shame that Pacey can’t take his place, he has a good ear for a tune and a natural voice.”

Seasons Greetings, Trains and Planes.

Trains and Planes

Dave and Doris, The Blonde Blunderbuss, were doing their Christmas Special at the new West Ham United stadium yesterday. Unluckily we were not treated to the WHU and Millwall football fans traditional comedy routine involving the Met’ Police.

What we did have was the spectacle of a group of small children being dragged out on a bitter night to work on a photo opportunity for politicians in a spot of bother. They were herded together to take the hand of Dave to let there be light. “Suffer little children” comes to mind.

The excuse was that as for a brief period in 2012 there will be the Olympic Games there, there had to be a huge shindig to celebrate that the lights were working. Unluckily, not all could be there, because the Stratford International High Speed station was closed because of the weather conditions.

In my view this was certainly flagrant child abuse and made worse by the fact that some of the children were wearing clothing that clearly was not produced by any of the games sponsors.

According to the new laws of England required by the International Olympics Committee, an unelected and unloved body of unknowables, this was a crime, if not against humanity, then the more deserved cause of commerce. Why were no arrests made on the spot?

As Dave was doing this to help people forget the football World Cup fiasco in Zurich, despite Doris insisting on having a good whinge he could not be at the House of Commons to announce that the new HS2 High Speed service was to go ahead.

As there are other travel issues at the moment he left the Transport Minister, Philip Hammond, to carry the can and face the music, as it is Christmas and someone has to. He is in the tricky situation of telling us about the wonder of 2025 when almost a million railway travellers and others seem to be stranded now somewhere or other.

Not only is the HS2 going to lose the Conservatives their majorities in a number of safe seats where it is built but the costs and the priority of it will wreck much in the way of improvements to existing services.

There have been plenty of critics pointing out the errors of the project but as it will entail a lot of money being lent by financial firms to be paid off by the government (taxpayer) over the next century then it is deemed essential to growth..

The government insists that it will cost only £17 billion and be delivered on time it has to be done. As an old hand I can promise that it will exceed £100 billion, be very late and useful to only an elite user base.

In the meantime at St. Pancras the HS1 service and the Eurostar trains were in serious difficulties and their services had descended into chaos. Thousands of people were milling about going nowhere and knowing nothing. Across the road at Kings Cross the situation was no better.

There the line was shut between Stevenage and Peterborough stranding thousands of passengers. In the days of steam or diesel it would have been possible to re-route the trains and for the journeys to be completed although with some delays. Elsewhere there were other horror stories, with South Eastern Rail featuring yet again.

The problem at the moment is that links and compatibility between existing East Coast and East Anglian lines are not there so the electric trains cannot go along the other tracks available. This and many other possible improvements are now off the agenda because of HS2.

There is also chaos at Heathrow. Sam, wife of Dave, was cross when he cancelled the holiday in Thailand or somewhere but must now be a lot happier. Downing Street is a drab sort of place, but a lot better than the floors of the various Terminals at Heathrow inhabited by an increasing proportion of the UK population.

The airport is owned by BAA which is owned by Ferrovial of Spain. Some critics have pointed out that this companies airports seem to be much worse affected than others by the present weather problems. They suggest that the financial requirements which are the core of its operations might have something to do with this.

The air services in and out of these airports are run on very tight turn round, landing and departure timings. There is little flexibility, backup or spare capacity either in their operations, management or communications. So when things do go wrong then it does not take a lot for it to go bad bigtime.

The reasons for all this lie in the quasi religious dogmas dictating modern finance and management. These insist on a dependence on highly leveraged finance in which the rate of return is critical and assets must be worked to their limits in the short term.

It explains the increasingly frantic nature of the public relations exercises to persuade us all that this is the way it has to be. In the coming months Dave and Doris are going to have to do some serious work on their act if they are going to make it to the next show.

In politics it is not good enough to simply travel hopefully, you really do have to make the trains, and planes, run on time.