History Depends On Who Writes It

In his blog, Raedwald today mentions the issue of History, what it is and might be taught to the young, which in turn relates to what we might regard as the necessary history of the Atlantic Isles.  In particular, he mentions the matter of Blair and others placing the Sheffield Knife Grinders strike ahead of Agincourt.

With a spouse who numbers Sheffield metal workers in her immediate ancestry, one has to be careful here, not least because it is possible that Sheffield metal might have been in use at Agincourt, in the hands of some of my family as well as a contingent from Yorkshire..

The Grinders in question are part of the story of the development of the Labour movement in the late 19^th Century.  But this in turn is being selective because to pick out them and that movement in itself has a bias.  There was a lot going on around that time and it is all very complicated.

As this blog has mentioned already, possibly several times, one feature of our social history that has disappeared is the extent, power and influence of the Temperance Movement, which in turn had a substantial working class element in its leadership.  Another such change was the gradual Great Agricultural Depression which had a wide range of effects.

Other developments in this period which contributed hugely to what became the Atlantic Isles were in technology, science and medicine.  Some have a passing mention, for example telegraphy, but not others.  One is the invention of the condensing steam engine which meant a leap forward in the use and applications of steam power, notably in shipping and in the railways.

The basic problem is that History so often involves a reduction and simplification, sometimes with an agenda, sometimes told as a tale to suit either the audience or who is telling the tale.  Agincourt was not simply brave little England bashing France, it was an exploratory expedition designed to test French capabilities.

King Henry V was not just trying to create an identity for England, he was attempting to restore the long lost Angevin Empire of King Henry II with its vast territories in what is now France.  Had King Henry V lived a good deal longer he might have achieved this. 

Also, had the English not declined into the civil Wars of The Roses and managed to hold on both to the territories and to an effective alliance with Burgundy we might never have had the powerful and highly ambitious France of the 16^th Century and later. 

The lesson of Agincourt is not just that a well organised small force can achieve a great deal, but that our notions of nationality can be subject to radical change in a short time.  Sometimes we do not see the other lessons of historical events because we either do not understand them or do not see the evidence.

One activity lately has been to make use of the vast archive material newly available online in subscription web sites.  Things that might never have been found, even with long and difficult research can just turn up leaving one astonished.  A feature of this is to connect people in unexpected ways which shed a different light on much of what went on in the past.

Hunting, or for that matter riding horses has never been a part of my life nor following hunts or even going to the races.  An example of what can happen is that I begin to wonder when looked at is how the British elite of the late 19^th and early 20^th Century functioned.  One way might be that you need to see who hunted with which pack, when and where and the culture of horse racing. 

This may seem unlikely but it is no more so than knife grinders in Sheffield sparking off associations of workers.  What reception would anybody get from suggesting that it might be useful if children in schools were taught the history of fox hunting, racing and the careers of the most notable huntsmen of the period?

See “Bay Middleton” in Wikipedia and there were others like him.

Here's To The Next Time In Housing

Travelling back on Saturday there were two ladies in the next seats talking about their jobs.  One in a large educational establishment was wondering about her future in that it was running a large deficit.  Worse the accounts were in something of a mess.  The other had not long lost a job because of similar difficulties.

This was the public sector, not some fly by night outfits or a company in too much of a hurry or anything of that order.  It added to my impression now that it seems to becoming harder and harder to find organisations that are well run never mind delivering the service you hope for.

One of the headline stories is about the developers claiming that the economy could be saved by building more and more houses.  Given their financial support for the leading political parties it is clear that they are looking for pay off time.  There are a number of problems about all this that are known well enough.

There may be an even bigger area of difficulty and increasing risk that seems to be going unnoticed.  “Private Eye” last week in a small item on Page 5 (the lead page) referred to it.  I quote, “UK PLC wasn’t the only entity to lose its AAA rating last week.  The next day Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of nearly all English housing associations, blaming the weakness of the regulatory framework governing them.”

The item briefly goes on to explain the chopping and changing etc. of this over the last few years.  It comes as little surprise to see the name Gordon Brown, the Ghost of Kirkcaldy, in the frame.  This is a major area governing housing and the rest that is of critical importance both to housing provision generally and to very many people, notably in the lower income groups.

It is a pity that neither “Private Eye” nor the other major investigative groups have taken a good hard look at what us going on in the housing sector that serves what might be called the “under class”.  The media as a whole are so entranced by the high end property markets and mortgaged private housing, if only for reason of their advertising potential, that the rest is ignored.

It may be that the public rental sector is gradually slipping into a state where it could become a major financial crisis area in the near future.  The story of the Associations and connected organisations is very complicated and difficult to sort out.  Essentially, however there are a number of Associations that are now big players in the money markets with a tail of many and various associates linked in.

Quite what the scale of their borrowing is and how it is financed is not clear.  But given the pressures put on them by the previous government it may be very large.  This may arise in part from the low interest policies etc. over the last few years.  It is my guess that a number of them could already be badly overstretched and vulnerable to even minor adverse shifts in market conditions and interest rates.

It you add to that top management that are frankly not very good, operate in a turmoil of reorganisations, initiatives, a variety of incoherent schemes and whose accounting systems are not just fallible but are unable to deliver reliable basic figures there are some potential disaster areas.

Who will pick up the bill for all this?  Given that so much social housing is in the hands of some of the biggest with many of the most vulnerable categories of people in it if the local authorities are now out of the picture in very many cases then it can only be the government who can attempt to sort out the gathering mess let alone the potential disasters in individual Associations.

The sums involved may not be the stratospheric figures that the failure of banks faced but they will be large enough and will impact across the whole sector.  They will be enough to throw all the present calculations of government finance into some disorder at least and mean another big hole in the budget.

Another area of worry is that in the other property management sector dealing with leasehold property and allied rentals; some also linked to Housing Associations is a raft of others, companies, amongst whom are some very “iffy” operations.  Currently, Companies House does not enquire about firms that do not submit accounts or simply shut down after a short period of operation.

The overall picture could be one of some very rickety Associations responsible for much of our social housing being in serious financial trouble and unable to explain why along with property management services that also have unsatisfactory features linked with others which are essentially fraudulent.

It seems that the relatively “light touch” regulation with limited powers means that none of this is touched notably how far either the overall financial strategy or the need for proper and careful accounting is required.  In fact to all intents and purposes there is something of a “free for all” in parts of this sector.

Here we go again.

The Budget - There Are No Right Decisions

There is a budget coming up.  Here is the post from Sunday 20 June 2010 shortly after the General Election when the new Coalition Government embarked on its first.  We do not seem to have made much progress, one way or another:

Quote:

One of the vanities of the human species is that because of the complexity of its brain it has come to believe that it knows what it is doing and can therefore arrive at decisions leading to actions that consequently are said to be right. 

The course of human history ought to remind us that this is not something we are very good at as we have lurched from one disaster to another of our own making.

We then often rationalise this away by coming up with notions such as creative destruction or blaming other peoples or other causes.  Sometimes the other causes may be correct such as geophysical events over which we have no control. 

Even then when we insist on building major cities and creating large communities in volatile earthquake zones or next to volcanoes or at or below sea level, in the past we have put it down to whatever passing deity happens to be around at the time.

The present budgetary crisis in the UK is one part of a much wider and deeper human crisis.  The scale and complications inherent in this are well beyond the understanding of almost anyone.  So few people actually know very much and for those who are obliged to make decisions about this or that the chances of coming to any answer that is “right” are not simply limited but highly unlikely.

The best that can be expected is that in looking at the various options somehow many of the decisions will prove to be the least worst.  The difficulty is that we cannot know which they will be and often why they might be the best available.

The outgoing government in terms of its arrogance and dogmatism may well have been the vainest in British history so the budget will literally be a bonfire of the vanities. 

Because its belief in the certainty of its knowledge and in its own spin doctoring it went on to make huge spending commitments on the basis of figures it had thought up in its own fevered imaginations.  Assumptions became doctrines and guesses plans for action with the money found by unlimited credit creation.

So what does the present government “know”?  The chaos arising from the constant reorganising and reconfiguring of policies in the recent past makes almost any of the internal information available wholly fictional. 

The manipulation of basic statistics makes them less reliable than reading the entrails of a sheep and all the target setting and management structures have created a maze where there is no way to the exit once you are in.  The mess is beyond belief and it only belief we have.

Out there the major financial organisations do not know how much toxic debt there is or where it is or what effect it will have.  They do not really know much about their own accounts continually having nasty surprises.  They cannot know what happens next.  They have lost control and just follow events. 

In terms of tax payments the amount of obfuscation and deceit means they now rarely know where their own money is or for that matter how much of it exists.  Yet we have had a government and The City preaching to us that all we have to do to have a wonderful life is to put our trust and incidentally all our money in their sticky hands.

We do not know what the oil producers will do in the coming decade, neither do they.  We cannot know what some of the big boys in world politics might or might not do.  In the EU the Europeans not only do not know what they are doing they cannot agree what it is they ought to know or why they need to know it. 

So they just cobble together some financial arrangements and place their trust in fate.  God is on sabbatical these days in Europe so this could mean anything.

This is my guide to understanding the budget.  There are no right decisions so just cross your fingers and leave sixpence for the tooth fairy.

Unquote.

Mad Frankie (Fraser) was a hood employed by 1960's London gangsters to enforce their will.  He had his own methods of interrogation which often involved tooth extraction with a pair of pliers. With so much of our economy run by crooks of one kind or another it is still appropriate.

Nowadays he would be much in demand, being a man before his time.

Music For The Ears

Within a short period two main musicians of the 1950’s to 1970’s have gone.  Today there has been the news that Kenny Ball in the UK, who with his group was at the top of the traditional jazz charts with many hits for a long while.

Just a short time ago, Harvey Van Cliburn died; a top class pianist who once had the world as his audience.  In 1958 at a point of time when the Cold War was reality he had gone to Moscow and taken the Tchaikovsky Prize for the quality of his music. 

Then little known or appreciated in his country, the USA, who regarded him as a hick Texan less worthy than any of the Europeans or Russians he was playing to small audiences in the lesser venues.  This changed and on his return to America he had a ticker tape reception.

Too early in life the pace of it and all the expectations caused him to withdraw and then almost become a recluse.  So today, it is only the older generations who can recall what he was like and the contribution he made.

There is enough material on the web for me to limit outlining their careers or to say how good they were and the following they had.  To 21^st Century audiences they may seem to be very apart and appealing to different people.

This was not the case over fifty years ago because there were a lot of people around who listened and hugely enjoyed many kinds of music, whatever and whoever.  We had not been segmented into marketing chunks for the benefit of the main media or the record companies in the way that had begun for teenagers. 

So I can recall being at live performances of both Kenny Ball and Van Cliburn within weeks as well as others of both the leading jazz and classical performers of the time.  In fact there were several live shows of Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen seen in different places, all great and a very good night out.

For Van Cliburn, only one was managed, but that was at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 7^th June 1959.  The CD for this is available from Testament as a double disc remastered from the original recording.  It was a stunning event never to be forgotten.

Below are a couple of clips from Youtube as samples.

Kenny Ball

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeCAQmxq_Ew

Van Cliburn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9D2aHiFpdk

In May 1959 the FA Cup Final was won by Nottingham Forest who beat Luton Town 2-1.  Roy Dwight, playing for Nottingham, scored after ten minutes but was then carried off with a broken leg.  His cousin, Reginald Dwight today is better known as Elton John.  In 1959 he was still practising his scales.

Two days after the Van Cliburn concert the USA launched its first Polaris Nuclear Submarine, the “George Washington” and later that month The Queen and President Eisenhower opened the new St. Lawrence Seaway.

A month later Richard Nixon, Vice President, was in Moscow having public arguments about nuclear weapons and washing machines with Nikita Khrushchev.  Whilst it was not clear who had the best of the nuclear debate it was the USA who could field the better kitchen appliances.

On 7^th July High Carleton-Greene took over as Director-General of the BBC and began The Long March to the Left of politics for the state broadcaster.  But first it had to go “popular” because audiences were in free fall with the coming of ITV and commercial television.  This meant cosying up to the record companies.

On 17^th July, Billie Holliday, Blues singer extraordinary died aged only 44.  She left behind many recordings but precious little filmed material and a number of those had been done with poor sound.  The recordings were a rich legacy for the future.

In August the British Motor Corporation unveiled its new Mini cars, Austin and Morris.  Unluckily because of a top management decision to price it at £500 or just under despite its popularity it was a money loser and BMC soon became a liability.  At the time the average annual wage of a manual worker was £600-700 with food prices relatively higher and most people renting.

Early in October Harold Macmillan won the 1959 election against the odds and despite a substantial Labour lead not many months earlier.  He had turned opinion by budgets that increased spending and increased borrowing.  In the USA later JF Kennedy decided to run for President in 1960.

It was a world of secrets in many ways.  At Cheltenham we now know that the Colussus3 and Colussus4 computers from Bletchley, allegedly destroyed after the war were still working.  It was the UK hold on this which was a corner stone of the so called “Special Relationship”.

They were needed because the Soviets who had taken the German advanced Enigma system did not think that it had been cracked and that the West could not access their highest communications.

How much else do we not know and will we ever find out?

Rewriting The Human Script Again

A few days ago BBC1 ran a two part tale on DNA basing it on the cross dressing entertainer, Eddie Izzard; the in depth DNA analysis on the female mitochondrial chromosome specific to his mother’s female line and the male Y chromosome specific to the father’s line.

It was meant to be an outline of the human story made personal for popular and easy viewing.  Why Eddie was chosen might have been because he was born in Yemen, a location critical to the story line, he lost his mother who died when he was very young, he had blue eyes and could relate to those he met on the journey without any difficulty.

There wasn’t much to grumble about in the presentation given that it was just a story stripped down to the basic plot, there was an absence of lecturing and based on what the mainstream theory of genetics seems to be telling us.

It was going up to half way through the second part that it appeared that Eddie’s Y chromosome was the same as mine.  At that point it was still around 25,000 years ago but for some people that might have been too close.  But it became closer.

We both have blue eyes and it seems that the genetic glitch for this goes back only a few thousand years and seems to have occurred in what is now Romania, according to the article on the net dealing with this topic.  It is possible that there are people out there, many in total, some of whom would prefer not to have these connections.

But it became still closer; the next stage was that his male line cropped up around the Elbe in Saxony not so long ago.  As did mine, although it was further down the river.  The question then was when did the move occur?  This is an open question, there are options.

The picture, however, may have changed already.  At the beginning of each of the two programmes, Eddie was taken to the parts of Africa where the origins were thought to begin on the evidence available.  In the second part, the Y, this was a particular group of hunter gatherers.

In the last few days, there has been a report in Science Daily suggesting that on the basis of very recent evidence, the Y chromosome can now be tracked back a lot further, from around 150,000 to 370,000 years which is quite a stretch.  The story is in a short item below and has been quarried already in the press:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130305145821.htm

Quite what else might turn up in the future we can only guess at, but the story is not yet over and can become more complicated.  There has already been the discovery of a different branch of humanity, the Denisovan and as the geneticists can go deeper and deeper with new techniques it could become very interesting.

It seems that already we are not quite what we thought we are and our ideas about who, what, how, where, when we emerged, moved and changed is still an ongoing project in many respects.  But this is in the deeper past.

Nearer to the present there has been the use of DNA to seek to identify the remains at Greyfriars in Leicester as those of King Richard III.  It looks very likely and I would like it to be right because once I parked my Vespa Scooter over the spot.

Along with this is the claim to Irish Ancestry of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, which is something of a giggle.  It goes back to the De Burghs of the Middle Ages.  In the male line these were the usual bunch of Norman land grabbers who in this case took their chances in Ireland and married into the families of local chieftains.

Had the newspapers that proclaimed this done their sums they would realise that the chances of Kate having other Irish ancestry somewhere relatively recent are quite high, the problem being lost traces probably around the 17^th or 18^th Centuries.  It would take some expert work and maybe DNA to run a check.

What also the press missed out on is that the De Burgh ancestry linked in to a descent from Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence and son of King Edward III.  This is the man who provided the ancestral claim to the throne of King Richard III.  That Kate might be descended from Lionel is no surprise.

If you were to check out all the possible descendants of Lionel over the last 600 years you would be hitting very large figures and all sorts of unexpected people.  Many of these would not like to be either related to each other or to have this lurking in the family tree.  It would wreck many people’s ideas about their identity.

You never know, because Eddie was told that the in depth analysis he had showed that 2.8% of his male Y DNA is derived from the Neanderthals.

Which means that so does mine.

More research is clearly needed.

Travelling Heavy Instead Of Light

There was a heavy mist in the English Channel yesterday so Europe was isolated.  The trucks were still coming however on the ferries and through the Tunnel.  In line with previous counts a great many were from destinations a thousand and more miles away bringing in both essential supplies as well as consumer goods of choice.

As the local motorway runs between the lesser used line from Dover and Folkestone and the new Eurostar line it is a source of wonder why so few freight trains are seen on them given that it is possible to route the freight across the UK rail network.  We do some rail travelling but freight trains are relatively rare.

Why has it been so impossible to put together a coherent modern method of freight delivery in this way?  To really examine this it would take a very long post and analysis of what might and what should be done.  My particular interest is that around sixty years ago I worked on the railways sometimes in the parcels department.

Then it was possible in an ordinary town to ship items across the network.  The items would be booked in, the clerk would call the destinations and the porters would put them on the relevant barrow.  Then the barrows would go up to the platform for the items to be put into the right freight wagon for the later freight train.

The trouble was the trains.  The freight wagons did not have automatic air braking.  This meant a strict limit on running speeds and also a limit to the number that could safely make up a train because of the problems when stopping and starting. 

With bulk freight, notably coal, it was even worse.  The five ton four wheeled typically ancient trucks shunted and bumped, clattered and clanked and derailed all too easily.  Between these and the other freight trains it meant a great deal of track space was needed for routine movements.

This in turn impacted on the passenger services.  With so much track space and time taken up for basic freight there were limits to the number of trains that could be run and at what speed.  So even with decent carriages and powerful locomotives not many trains could be scheduled at higher speeds.

Yet the knowledge of the freight problems and the means by which it could be dealt with were known even late in the 19^th Century.  But it took the best part of a century for the government and railway authorities to deal with it. 

By this time the railways were in serious subsidised decline and being cut back heavily.  When nationalised in 1947 it was expected that the railways would cover their costs and yield revenue to the Exchequer.

What we did have were the much trumpeted public relations business of a small number of express trains, at high cost to the passengers, being held up as the beacons of progress when the freight, local and commuter and cross country services were poor, well behind those of some other countries and in dire need of reform and investment.

So we have finished up with the expensive, complicated, highly subsidised railway system of today.  How far this can be sustained is arguable.  With the dominance of London based thinking based on the financial sector feeding the debate we are likely to have new projects that suit limited interests which when the money is tight means bad new for the greater travelling public.  Also, whatever happens to oil prices there is little hope at present of reviving fast freight as a real option.

The history of the UK in the 20^th Century and going into the 21^st is that this pattern of indecision, unwillingness to invest to deal with basic problems as opposed to high profile schemes, whether or not they paid, failures in organisation and top level management that was more about politics than provision is all to often found.

If anything, it has become progressively worse and almost the norm.  If we cannot save ourselves nobody else will and certainly neither Europe nor the USA or any from our former Empire.

Clusters Last Stand

The government has pronounced on the reductions and the nature of it in the Army over the next few years.  At last we will be pulling out of Germany.  Why we remained there after 1990 or even after 1966 is one of those questions to which there is no rational answer, except that the politicians involved could not face some of the issues that needed attention.

These issues are less impelling now because the Army is that much smaller and the equipment to be repatriated is less and will not cause inconvenience on the scale that a larger force would entail.  One way round of keeping the Army away from those who do not want the troops around is to use “clusters” in areas where their presence is already substantial.

There will be a scattering of other locations although the decisions as to which will survive as bases and which will be either run down or abandoned will no doubt change according to what lobbying will be done and by whom.  What is striking is that they seem to be kept well away from the larger urban areas as far as possible.

The interesting question is that one lot who will remain to the last gasp is 20 Armoured Brigade whose HQ is at Sennelager a large training area that I recall all too well.  This is a mixed battle group that is active and therefore engaged in high levels of the relevant training.

These are noisy, troublesome to locals and need a lot of space.  It is possible that the government might in fact be looking to disband this formation and they are being lined up for the other cuts to come.  It might be that the government cannot make up its mind.  It might be that it has become a pawn in some of the sillier debates with the Scottish National Party.

On the BBC News the figure given for the remaining troops to leave was 15,000 which it was said would take months and years to accomplish.  I can recall a time when my particular lot had that number of troops with all the clobber and we reckoned to move the lot within an hour.

That was when Hackett was GOC and before he came to us, by one those things he had been Brigadier of the 20^th Armoured Brigade.  The wheel turns.  What he would make of our present ideas of “strategy” is uncertain.  But he was sometimes of the opinion that in such matters politicians tended to make it up as they went along.

We will soon have an Army with limited capability, unsure as to its function, poorly equipped, badly housed and located as far as possible away from the population it is to defend.  In the meantime we are facing new and dangerous threats that the government cannot recognise and does not understand.

Here we go again.