Thirty Years Later We Are All The Losers

It seems a Long March from Arthur Scargill's Barnsley to President Putin's Moscow over thirty years on paths that are neither mapped nor clear but they exist.  It is a problem with MEN in the meaning of money, energy and nationalism.

Today, 3rd March is marked for some as the day the National Union of Miners ended the Miner's Strike of 1984-5 which still provokes controversy and dispute.  As someone who was there and involved from day one I can reiterate that it was not the Conservative Government and Mrs. Thatcher that won, it was the miner's leaders who lost it.

We forget that only months before the Prime Minister and government had been blooded by the Falklands Campaign.  The needs of this together with some of the men around the Prime Minister with substantial military experience meant that in the Cabinet and among other senior ministers and officials there was a core who knew something about waging wars, including class wars.

So there was an understanding of the essence of strategy, tactics, logistics and above all intelligence and related analysis in the government which was totally absent in the NUM and its leadership.  They went on strike, wholly unprepared, to trigger a class war without the faintest idea of what it would entail in reality.

They truly believed that the arm waving rhetoric, verbal and other aggression, propaganda antics and endless media photo opportunities would lead to the masses rising from their TV watching and football, shedding their credit card debts and overdrafts and marching past the clubs and pubs to glory and the left wing vision of a socialist paradise, once the various factions had agreed what that might be.

One of my stranger experiences was a meeting presided over by the Yorkshireman, Rodney Bickerstaffe; still with us and demonstrating, held to urge public sector union officials and sympathisers to ensure they stood, if not four square, then at least three square behind the miners.  As well as the predictable purple prose we had the usual stunts including the message from the front, a group of canteen workers who had proclaimed their loyalty and devotion to Comrade Arthur.

It is possible to go on and on and on about the crassness and bungling of the NUM.  What I can say was that if the NUM had elected the real man to do the job of President, Mick McGahey, see Wikipedia, it would have been very different.  A while after it was all over, I came across him in a bar and we shared a few brandies and wondered what an uncertain future might bring.

We did not imagine that very soon the Communist empire of Eastern Europe would collapse and a different world emerge.  My own view at the time was that western capitalism was here to stay for some time and the communist nations were in no shape to compete or to overcome it.  Then as now there was the reluctance to understand and accept the rapidity of technological and economic change in so many sectors.

Why are we now all the losers?  The first casualty of war is said to be the truth.  The truth was that in the early 1980's because of the fudging and politics of the previous thirty years there was no feasible energy policy for the future.  The miner's strike simply added to the confusion and pushed people into positions that they were reluctant to move from.

One factor was that among the miners there was the fractures on the union side, leaving Scargill to control what was left of the NUM.  What was needed was a change of leadership there that might allow some real negotiation and this did not happen.  This pushed the Prime Minister in the direction of the oil men, the financiers and other vested interests in related sectors.

It meant it became impossible then to formulate a coherent energy policy for the long term.  After Mrs. Thatcher left, John Major dillied and dallied letting in Blair and Brown.  They patched. prodded and proclaimed this and that but let the EU, the major companies and noisy groups of others force us into systems that not only leave us vulnerable but at huge expense.

This has continued under the Coalition and the coming election, so far as energy and all its implications go, we have the choice between the mad and the bad.  Either way we lose.

And now we are all looking to Moscow and wondering what President Putin might or might not do.  But it is likely he will do something and none of us will like it.

On the memorial above is the name of the father of my father-in-law, orphaned while still in the cradle.

Is Much Of Higher Education Redundant?

In my teens the structure of university and other post school forms of education and training were essentially based on the thinking and the experience of the period 1918 to 1939 between the wars.  WW2 moved things along and 1940's legislation made changes for improvement but it was still conditioned by that period.

When our young ones were going through in the 70's and 80's the changes under way reflected the thinking of the 50's and into the 60's about the idea of education, its purpose and the economic structures that existed then.  But the economy was then undergoing major changes.

By the time the politicians of the late 1990's, under Labour and into the beginning of the 21st Century came to hold power their ideas, beliefs and thinking had been the result of the turmoil of that 70's and 80's period and the disconnections involved.

More was that the various elements in education, which had been strong and influential before then had become major vested interests with their own agenda's and far more aggressive in both promoting them and demanding that government should follow them rather than the other way round.

We are now told, for example, in the debate about tuition fees in universities and the related issues over student debt, that the existing higher education should be protected because of its economic importance.  Other parts of education are subject to endless meddling and reorganisation, notably in the key area of job training in basic occupations.

However, some of higher education is work related, in medicine and engineering, science and such like requiring related provision and teaching.  But a good deal of it does not need what might be called the "hardware" but other sources of information and study.

When looking back through history what is striking is the abilities and work potential of many teenagers and how far they were an integral and needed part of the work forces in many spheres.  Now a high proportion of the 16-21 age groups have been taken out and large numbers are appointed to deal with them.

This certainly impacts on the employment and unemployment figures.  Also money movement adds to the figures without much in the way of visible production.  At the same time as so many are removed from home we have large tracts of housing taken up by students, very many leaving behind empty bedrooms.  Has nobody connected this element of the alleged housing shortage to the mass education of the 18+ group?

A new development is the provision of learning in "Moodles", see Wikipedia taking advantage of recent advances in communication technology.  This has been taken up by many of the existing providers as a field of expansion.  But in many areas of study it is little realised it could replace the old systems.

As for those sectors of education where a great deal need major facilities for practical forms of study or work many of those at present are funded by outside interests.  A good deal of scientific research is bought by commercial companies in terms of grants and contracts.  This could be taken a lot further and these areas of study taken back into working life and to the companies and others who are doing funding.

There will be scope for some existing universities and colleges to offer a limited range of study on the present and old basis but now for large areas of study and gaining qualifications increasingly vast sectors could move on to study and above all real work on a much more intensive basis by other means.

This could almost bring to an end the present morass of financing of both the institutions and the students.  The debate about student loans and debt is not just about the small change, it is about the much larger question of the radical changes in structure and function in post 16 education and training.

At the other end of the age scale, I find it remarkable that the hi-tech gear and information systems out there enable me to do far more in far less time than ever before.

If the government does want to spend money it could do so by opening up all the scientific and academic journals to free use instead of the sometimes steep subscriptions now being charged and digitising library content.

Imagine, the British Library and National Archive free and open for use online.

Customer Disservices Speaking

Is it just us or is life at present a lot more complicated than it was  and becoming ever more intricate and demanding?  When we moved here in the 1990's a factor in our choice was that there was a full range of services locally available.  This meant less chasing about and made the paperwork much easier.

This is inspired by the need to renew our driving licences.  No longer can one just have a license for life, when age becomes greater there are procedures and checks and time limits. When these were introduced we had a DVLA office a short walk away.

This closed and we had to correspond with Swansea and as the paperwork become greater and less clear in the wording this was a nuisance.  Then it went online and that became more complicated again, a struggle to stay afloat in a sea of verbiage.

Our electricity suppliers had an office in the middle of town where it was possible to walk in, talk to someone who knew what they were doing and discharge the paperwork and payments secure in the knowledge that it was correct.  Now online you have to know exactly where to click and it is more likely to be wrong than right.

This is because the web site, like so many others, is now far more flashy with pages filled with items and the key links tricky to find.  This is just for basic routines.  If you are seeking hard information, clear advice and specifics then it is almost impossible.

On the credit card, payments in did not arrive.  There were three elements to this.  The payer, the money transaction company and the credit card.  So, perhaps foolishly, I totter down to the bank from which the card originated to meet a floor walker who denied that the bank now had anything to do with it.

Adding insult to injury he asserted that the money transaction company would be the last one he would choose.  So it meant resorting to the telephone.  The payer was in London and by a stroke of good fortune helpful and willing to check it out.

The money mob were in the USA and said it could not be them.  I needed lists of numbers, but luckily these were provided by the payer, not many I suspect would do this.  So it was back to the credit card company and formal written complaint.

Their call centre was in India, on checking up apparently at a location where the brother in law of an ancestor has a large and famous tomb.  After long conversations, I know how he must feel.  The matter is now dealt with, but how many people could cope with this I do wonder.

There are other examples.  What is unnerving about this is that the web sites in question are all passionate to sell me lots of things I do not want.  What I do want is hard information and too often this is not just lacking but all that is on offer is a jumble of meaningless marketing words.

Essentially, all the offices of the basic service used have gone.  It has to be phone customer services, a term I now dread, or online where the web sites are devoted to flashy imagery, sales, all sorts of incidental matters and too rarely either real information or simple systems to do basic business.

When there are problems or even routine complications it has become so much more difficult to deal with them and far from being efficient for the user, far more time consuming with greater mental wear and tear.

But this is now the norm.  How long is it since I was able to go into an office and talk to someone in ordinary language and with basic understanding.  Even the local council seems to be hidden out there in web bush country.

So, one good big solar burst or other cause of a major long term crash and there will be a collapse.  At least we will not be able to call it the collapse of a civilisation more chaos becomes chaos.

Blinkers And Winkers

This was a subject to avoid, given the full media and blogosphere in full cry.  But other ideas paled beside the sheer idiocy of this one.  Malcolm Rifkind, the Scottish Tory refugee in Kensington and Chelsea seems to have gone missing on parade and not so jolly Jack Straw in Labour perhaps hit by one of the fictional WMD's that he lost when helping Blair to invade Iraq.

What is terrifying is that both of these alpha males who fell for a bog standard media sting about their taking money for services rendered were Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and not just at the heart of government but inside the Right and Left pulmonary veins.

Rifkind is now the resigned Chair of the House of Commons Select Committee on Intelligence, repeat Intelligence, and Straw is out and about advising sundry bodies and governments on both policy and on the quiet his own ideas about intelligence.  But we will not go into that, some of his constituents in Blackburn may not be happy.

There is a lot of mail that comes through the letter box from all sorts of places.  There are things that crop up in emails.  There are other matters that arise.  So what do many people do these days?  They check it out, starting online and then perhaps following through.

Or they contact someone or a body for an opinion; very easy these days with modern communications. There are any number of sources.  Their reliability may vary but for someone of any experience or awareness they ought to be able to find something.

These men were both once at the heights of government yet they could not work out or did not bother to check at the most basic level of information nor it seems ask any of their many advisers or researchers or underlings or informed contacts or even, Zeus save us, people in Whitehall who would have known.

Is that how they ran the Foreign Office?  Is that how they advised the Prime Minister of their day?  Is that the basis of the many times they stood up in the House of Commons to inform the House and argue the basis of critical government policy?  Worse, is that the way they entered into binding and crucial commitments and negotiations about all our futures?

It might seem unlikely given the cohorts of civil servants and others to advise and inform them.  Also, the many interested parties and organised bodies with their views, reports and information.  Yet at the end of it all, when let out to play on their own, they function at a lower level than the average teenager and it seems with less capacity for rational thinking.

Are they the exception?  Looking around the various parties and their leaders a shiver goes down the back.  When you look further at the next tiers of personnel and see who is there and what their capabilities might be the shiver turns into the early stages of panic that this is the way they all are and how out government is run.

This seems to be the way it is for the House of Commons.  As for the House of Lords most of them now seem to be people who failed in the House of Commons.  The real blockheads we sent to Europe.

And the election will not change anything whichever way it goes.

Time Travel

You may well have seen this, but if not then it might be good for a smile at a time when there is little to smile about.

Quote:

* Pasta had not been invented.
* Curry was an unknown entity.
* Olive oil was kept in the medicine cabinet.
* Spices came from the Middle East where we believed that they were used for embalming.
* Herbs were used to make rather dodgy medicine.

* A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
* A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
* Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
* The only vegetables known to us were spuds, peas, carrots and cabbage, anything else was regarded as being a bit suspicious.
* All crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.

* Condiments consisted of salt, pepper, vinegar and brown sauce if we were lucky.
* Soft drinks were called lemonade.
* Coke was something that we mixed with coal to make it last longer.
* Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever part of our main course at dinner.
* A big mac was what we wore when it was raining.

* A microwave was something out of a science fiction movie.
* Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
* Oil was for lubricating your bike – not for cooking; fat was for cooking.
* Bread and jam was a treat.
* Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves, not bags.

* The tea cosy was the forerunner of all the energy-saving devices that we hear so much about today.
* Tea had only one colour, black. Green tea was not British.
* Coffee was only drunk when we had no tea … and then it was Camp, and came in a bottle.
* Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.

* Figs and dates appeared every Christmas, but no one ever ate them.
* Coconuts only appeared when the fair came to town.
* Jellied eels were peculiar to Londoners.
* Salad cream was a dressing for salads; mayonnaise did not exist.
* Hors d’oeuvre was a spelling mistake.

* The starter was our main meal.
* Soup was a main meal.
* The menu consisted of what we were given, and was set in stone.
* Only Heinz made beans: any others were impostors.
* Leftovers went in the dog.

* Special food for dogs and cats was unheard of.
* Sauce was either brown or red.
* Fish was only eaten on Fridays.
* Fish didn’t have fingers in those days.
* Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.

* Ready meals only came from the fish-and-chip shop..
* For the best taste, fish and chips had to be eaten out small grease-proof packets wrapped in old newspapers.
* Frozen food was called ice cream.
* Nothing ever went off in the fridge because we never had one.
* Ice cream only came in one colour and one flavour.

* None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
* Jelly and blancmange were only eaten at parties.
* If we said that we were on a diet, we simply got less food.
* Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
* Healthy food had to have the ability to stick to your ribs.

* Calories were mentioned but they had nothing at all to do with food.
* The only criteria concerning the food that we ate were … did we like it and could we afford it.
* People who didn’t peel potatoes were regarded as lazy so-and-so’s.
* Indian restaurants were only found in India.
* A seven-course meal had to last a week.

* Brunch was not a meal.
* Cheese only came in a hard lump.
* If we had eaten bacon lettuce and tomato in the same sandwich we would have been certified.
* A bun was a small cake back then.
* Eating outside was called a picnic.

* Cooking outside was called camping.
* Seaweed was not a recognised food.
* Offal was only eaten when we could afford it.
* Eggs only came fried or boiled.
* Hot cross buns were only eaten at Easter time.

* Pancakes were only eaten on Pancake Tuesday – in fact in those days it was compulsory.
* “Kebab” was not even a word, never mind a food.
* Hot dogs were a type of sausage that only Americans ate
* The phrase “boil in the bag” would have been beyond our comprehension.
* The idea of “oven chips” would not have made any sense at all to us.

* The world had not yet benefited from weird and wonderful things like Pot Noodles, Instant Mash and Pop Tarts
* We bought milk and cream at the same time in the same bottle
* Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
* Lettuce and tomatoes in winter were just a rumour.
* Most soft fruits were seasonal except perhaps at Christmas.

* Prunes were medicinal.
* Surprisingly muesli was readily available in those days: it was called cattle feed.
* Turkeys were definitely seasonal.
* Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
* We didn’t eat croissants in those days because we couldn’t pronounce them, we couldn’t spell them and we didn’t know what they were.

* We thought that baguettes were a serious problem the French needed to deal with.
* Garlic was used to ward off vampires, but never used to flavour bread.
* Water came out of the tap. If someone had suggested bottling it and charging treble for it they would have become a laughing stock.
* Food hygiene was all about washing your hands before meals.
* Campylobacter, salmonella, E. coli, listeria, and botulism were all called “food poisoning”.

* The one thing that we never ever had on our table in the fifties … elbows.

Unquote.

I might add that then it was usual to eat at tables.

Don't Bank On It

The Midland Bank was where the bank account was opened around sixty years ago in London after the Army decided that on the whole it was safer for the nation for me to be a civilian.  When I cashed my first cheque it was off to the nearest barber at the Savoy Hotel for a haircut.

The barber, looking at my flowing locks asked me if the cut was because I was going into the services.  He was surprised when told it was the reverse.  A human right to hair was one of the disputes I had with my military superiors.  Now a student, short hair was needed for me to express my individuality.

The Midland Bank was with me through studies, work, marriage and mortgages and all the rest into retirement and through the ups and downs and more downs of getting through the years.  Then in the late 1990's it was taken over and then renamed.  HSBC it became and it was not long before I was calling it Shanghai Lil's.

For this naming see "Footlight Parade" in Wikipedia, the 1933 movie with James Cagney, picture above.  This was because when entering the local branch instead of doing the basic job of managing the account or moving money I was accosted by attractive forward young ladies making me offers which they claimed were too good to refuse.

After my Chief Executive running the figures it seemed they would be better off than me at the end of it if they earned their share of the takings.  So it has not come as much of a surprise to learn that my bank has been at the deep, muddy and murky end of world finance.  There has been a great deal in the media about all this.

This letter to David Cameron from Rowan Bosworth-Davies will do for me along with his two previous posts of Tuesday 17th and Saturday 14th of this month.  They are all a little on the long side but easy and plain reading if you have the time. He does have expertise on the subject of criminality.

Shanghai Lil was also the name of a B-29 Bomber of the US 444th Bombardment Wing in the Far East in World War II.  One thing for sure, they did not do half as much damage as the HSBC bank has done in the economic financial warfare of the early 21st Century.

Mopping Up The Mess

When is a government not a government?  This intriguing question which might tax the best minds might arise again in May.  Back in 2010 we may recall that Gordon Brown, mindful of the nation's needs, camped out in Downing Street until the Coalition had set up.

This LSE article says that something should be done. It is right.  The only snags are how, whom and to what purpose never mind getting the rabble now in Westminster and around to agree to anything sensible or effective.  The phrase "accidents waiting to happen" comes to mind.

Avoiding any prediction as to what the election will throw up, to coin a phrase, it is possible that a messy result could lead to a situation where there is not a clear way of resolving who will agree to join who to form an administration.

Those who recall the history of the old French Third Republic will be aware that it was possible for long drawn out debates and plotting before a new government was formed.  Even then, many did not last long and there could be an unending series of political crises.

History tells us that in countries that were persistently afflicted with uncertainty and inability of electoral systems to deliver effective governments could be prone to lurching into dictatorships, military coups or foreign takeovers.

It would be possible to pick the way through the history of British governments and discuss periods when the two party system did not function but this would make a long and complicated post.

But what should be remembered is that over some long periods one or other or both of the major parties were essentially long term coalitions whose membership fluctuated.  A consequence of this was that a good deal of what happened often was determined by the smaller even marginal groups in Parliament.

Any period of confused or uncertain government is bad but sometimes it is worse.  Thinking of 1914 there was apparently a majority Liberal government but in reality there were several elements who were in dispute over many issues which carried over into foreign policy.

Not only did this distract the Cabinet from what was happening in Europe it meant a failure to pursue a vigorous and organised response to the unfolding of events there.  It needed a good deal more than the endless juggling of Sir Edward Grey's efforts to come up with a positive diplomatic and political formula that might have staved off war.

Almost month by month it seems that the world is becoming a more dangerous and disorganised place in which governments are strained to deal with both the problems at home and the wider implications abroad.

Given the UK dependence on trade and international debt and finance to be going into perhaps a sustained period when not only is there uncertainty in the heart of government and inability either to decide or to function properly but chronic party and policy divisions that cannot be overcome or reconciled.

On the one hand the Atlantic Isles could dissolve into a number of mini states in continuing political conflict, perhaps allied to this or that foreign power.  At the other there could be the imposition of a full blown authoritarian government.

Anyone for an absolute monarchy?