John Le Carre Now Tells You A Story

At the Hay Festival this year and screened on Sky Arts there have been a series of interviews.  An unusual double one was with John Le Carre in conversation with Phillipe Sands about his life, times and writings lasting ninety minutes but put out in two parts.  So I repeat in part the title and picture of a couple of days ago.  Given the present fuss about information gathering and gleaning it was of interest but shed light on some of our past in this field.

We share a lifespan and the same hair style and apparently some of the cynicism about our present governments and the way thing are.  But our paths do not seem to have crossed.  He had gone from Lincoln College, Oxford by the time my rugby team arrived for a fixture.  He was gone from Germany before my time and returned only a while after I had left.  He had a very different career.

We were in London at the same time for a spell in the late 1950's, but unless his sports and music

interests were similar there is little chance of being in the same place at the same time.  The only thing that might have been was on a hot summer day the Endell Street open air baths was a good place to be, especially as many of the West End chorus girls would enjoy some fresh air and a splash around.

His conversation needed close listening.  I suspect he does not suffer fools gladly unless it is part of the job.  There was what was said, what was apparently incidental, what was hinted at and critically what was not said.  The links his father had with the Krays were admitted but the name  Lord Boothby was dropped.  At this point the nose twitched.  He was in the Security, his father was in with Boothby, who was privy to Government, the lover of Harold Macmillan's wife, a familiar of the Krays and up to who knows what.

One of those stray memories is when Boothby, a BBC favourite on whom they fawned at the time, proclaimed to the nation that everyone should go and see the Red Army Choir and Dance Ensemble.  Boothby was always extreme but his enthusiasm for this lot was extraordinary.  The BBC did run a performance.  They were good but not that good.  Remember, this was the time of the Philby and other scandals.  Just how close was Boothby and who was he serving?

If Le Carre (real name David Cornwell) did have a personal line to him then the Security must have known.  Just as they must have known about the coming and goings of the Profumo affair.  What else did they know and about whom?  If students in London were aware of which senior Labour figures frequented the Russell Square men's conveniences and why it is inconceivable that the Security did not know, especially as it was almost literally just round the corner from their offices at the time.

Le Carre attempted to explain the nation of our political and how it operates, note the word "operates" rather than works.  Work suggests something productive and with a result.  It is his view which I share that for much of the time what happens are the errors, failures of politics and all the unintended consequences.  The pernicious and all pervading thing is that access to the secret information is central to government and decision making and this places the Security at the very centre and is often the crucial element.

One aspect of this which this might explain is why during a time of centralised economic and financial controls etc. both Labour and Conservative governments actively encouraged the creation of tax havens whose purpose was the opposite of what their monetary and fiscal policies were try to achieve.  It may well be the need to move money and information about transactions in secret overcame any other consideration for decades.

Another involves the whole business of the Security and the Special Relationship with the USA.  Le Carre is very cynical and dismissive of this and again I am inclined to agree with his suggestion of the UK government obeying every whim of that of the USA.  In this context there is the amazing decision of the Heath government to run down and minimise involvement in satellite development but to bet the research money on supersonic airplanes.  Big fancy toys for the elite and a wonder of the age the Concord might have been. But the USA could have built them any time it wanted and what they had was the real advantage of going into space with all that it involved without any real competition for decades from anyone else in the West.

What had this to do with UK Security?  Le Carre made no mention of signals intelligence nor is there much hint of it in his work.  Yet we know now from recent documents about GCHQ going back to the 1950's.  This was the ultimate of secrecy yet what part did it play and how did Security handle it or did it even know how to deal with it?  What seems possible is that for a while the UK gave the USA some knowledge without revealing the actual source.  This was our Special Relationship.

But going into the 1970's by which time big computers allied to more varied sources including signals were churning a lot of information, the UK was mired.  Part of the problem was that the attitude to computers was affected by the "secret garden" attitude.  These were new gods to be attended by (expensive) high priests and guarded from the general public.  You questioned the information they spewed out at your peril.  Unless you had good reason.

This may well have created huge tensions in Security.  Le Carre in his "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy" has something called "Moscow Centre" which is pitted against the UK "Circus".  The Circus has large numbers of people doing traditional hands on intelligence of all sorts.  These include the spy networks, the moles backed by intensive surveillance and the analysis of anything in print or broadcast on radio. 

But beyond that is the "Witchcraft" project, a key mole with very special information restricted to very few both in The Circus and in government.  But "C" does not trust it nor the analysis made from its contents.  It cannot be confirmed by other means and you are dependent on what you are told.  It is not too much to suggest that in reality "Witchcraft" was the product of GCHQ listening and then analysis by a limited number using computers.

There was reason to distrust these methods of intelligence gathering by the mid 1970's.  The US disaster in Vietnam owed a great deal to gross failures of intelligence and analysis in Washington arising from these forms of information gathering and the assumptions made from them by over active and ambitious people.  Moltke's "enthusiastic idiots".

                                                                                   

Le Carre is scathing about the Iraq War and again I agree with him.  He also feels that our recent governments and the related elite, still devoted to secrecy and inner cabals is essentially "internationalist" in form, structure, belief and policy making.  So we are rarely told the truth, even more rarely given reliable information and have become beholden to outsiders.

Much more dangerous is the politicisation of both government and related intelligence services.  They are no longer there to do real intelligence or careful independent analysis or offer insights into the complexity of questions or issue or the reality of affairs.  They are there to help do the spin, provide excuses and find reasons to defame or destroy those who question and oppose.

In the last analysis the UK has been betrayed and made a place to be exploited and used by others for the benefit of a very few.  It may not even survive but revert to a set of governed provinces as it once was.

Going Off The Rails

The phrase "train crash" is now a cliche.  Having used it in the past it must be.  It is still favoured by many and various experts suggesting that things are not as they should be and the prospects look bad.  In our complicated and fast moving world there is no shortage of choices.  Barely a day goes by without another one in the media.

One area is finance and within this a rich and varied selection.  The international bond markets is one with a number of people betting on the train hitting the buffers any time now.  Japan is a leading contender for the trigger mechanism for this one with real concerns about the way it is going.  France is another contender, rivalled by the UK, the USA as well as a clutch of other smaller financial centres.

Inevitably the stock markets are one field.  It is alleged that all the funny money, "easing" sloshed out to keep bad banks in being, broke states functioning and bubbles bubbling to keep the noisy money go round going round in circles has nowhere else to go to get a return other than minimal. 

This has rarely if ever worked in the past despite the academic and mathematical theories and is unlikely to work in the immediate future.  One bubble notable in the UK is the property one in the South East of England especially in the London area and in high value properties together with EU subsided land.

With The City too much involved in the international markets and a lot of their earnings locked up in property together with that of the "hot money" coming in from disrupted states and indeed too much of the UK economy based on moving money and creaming the contents the risks are very high.  In the USA there are similarities but a much more complicated situation.  There the risks also are high but the potential effects less predictable.

Among the other choices is an article in the LSE magazine about the Robbins Report of 1963 about Higher Education recommending a major expansion to allow many more to go to University from the pool of able people available.  What was signal about this report was that it fudged the costs and overall consequences.

Also it entirely ignored the major areas of other education that may not have been university or given degree status but were then available to very many and both demanding and often of high standard.  An effect of this has been to turn university education into a product dependent on foreign money along with state support and the creation of a huge lobby in its own and related narrow interests.

So now we have nurses many of whom do not actually nurse, teachers who are doing less and less teaching to deal with paperwork, chronic shortages of key skills, including doctors and many employers finding it increasingly difficult to find workers who want to work within the UK labour force.  Was the 1960's University model really the only and the best way to educate and train a labour force?

Apart from the "train crashes" there are a great many derailments.  The BBC has blown £100 million on a failed digital caper to add to the vast sums spent on colonising and gentrifying Salford.  It's daftness over digital is minor compared to the vast sums lost by the government.  Almost wherever you go in government you see huge sums lost forever almost all paid for by borrowed money.

And it is corrupt to an extent that beggars even 18th Century standards.  As I write the latest "Private Eye" has arrived with the picture of the Palace of Westminster on the front.  That large tower at one end is called "Big Bent".  It says it all.

Where Does The Money Go Or Has It Gone?

Among the many and various financial disasters of our time beyond the state of our own bank accounts, debt totals, ongoing unfunded commitments and favours owed to all and sundry are the larger questions of state finance.  These may be a personal minor matter at the moment or a larger one.  But all of us may well be a liability for the future.

At present the UK social security system is said to be derived from the period of the Attlee government post 1945 when a population has suffered years of war and before that many had been badly affected by the Great Depression.  The FDR "New Deal" of the USA is cited as the example.  But in 1908 Asquith had brought in a means tested pension for the over 70's and in 1909 this was followed by Lloyd George's "Peoples Budget" with provision for the sick and infirm.

These were followed by the introduction of "Insurance" which was not entirely national and certainly not insurance in that the payments out were not from a fund but derived from payments in as payroll and other taxation.

This was a time when the expectation of life was low, few made to the date to claim it.  And of the sick survival was limited in many cases and severe cases for the most part  did not last long.  The idea that many would see over twenty years of retirement or be able to survive long term severe disability or illness did not occur to the policy makers.

Also, down the decades that have followed political success is determined at the margins in a minority of electoral districts.  Additionally, many groups have been able to lobby politicians and government for extra help or priority or admission to the state pot of benefits.  Even minor amendments or simple readjustments invoke a blizzard of rage and new demands.

So the various schemes and benefits and entitlements and the rest have grown in number, become enlarged in form and have been extended wider and wider.  We may have lost our political and economic empires but the sun does not set now on our world empire of benefits provision.

We thought that all this could be paid for by unchecked and certain growth in the economy. We went on to think that clever financial manipulation by the state could manage it.  This did not work because of the political hindrances.  But the state put its trust in the bankers and money men to do the business.  They certainly did for us and may well have done for any real form of democratic government.

The result is that the social security schemes as they have come to be in many states are now in deep and continuing trouble with no real answer to the problems other than ones that will be deeply unpopular and for many be intolerable.  This seems to be leading to the destabilisation of governments across the world.

The descriptive term used is "Ponzi Schemes" after the American Charles (Carlo) Ponzi  in the 1920's whose ability to persuade people to pay in was not matched by his intentions to pay out with the result of a financial collapse which left him with the money and almost all the people without.

For a graphic, albeit long, item on this subject here is a link from the Mises Institute:

http://mises.org/daily/6441/Social-Security-The-New-Deals-Fiscal-Ponzi

If indeed there is no pot at the end of the rainbow and in addition it is about to evaporate as a bright hot sun of reality disperses the haze of our thinking there is going to be serious and rapid change. 

All our illusions and expectations will go and perhaps much of the structure and purpose of our governments will go with it.

Welcome to the real beginning of the 21st Century.

Tell You A Story

All the hoopla going on about the security "scandal" is at least entertaining.  As it is now the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo Scandal of 1963 at least the timing is right.  One of the supporting persons in that drama was Valerie Hobson, the attractive and famous film star and wife of John Profumo.

Early in her career she may well have been in a stage production somewhere or other of "The Importance Of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde.  In that play in the third act the "gubbins" was the arrival of a Miss Prism to confess her deceits and errors of 28 years before when as a nurse in the household she had mislaid the baby at Victoria Station.

The ending of the play was a happy one.  The current Prism business involving the security services of the USA and UK will not be.  There will not be an end and we do not really know the beginning.  President Obama may remind us that you cannot have 100% security and 100% privacy but even that might be unacceptable to the masses.

For the first fifty or so years of my life for the great majority of us there was not a lot of privacy.  It was not difficult to work out around what other people were worth, what they were up to, where they traded and other things, notably religion or political interest.  As for finance there was simply a good deal of received knowledge and in any case a great many pay scales etc. were in the public domain.

On the other hand there were the criminal classes and those in various forms of business and with great wealth who were able to make other arrangements and keep them very quiet.  One of the interesting features of the 1960's and later is how many former colonies and other territories were allowed and encouraged to be tax havens.

Sadly we now know that the overlap between those groups was and is much greater than we thought or assumed.  We are painfully aware of the passionate desire of most of our Parliamentarians to have lots of expenses along with absolute privacy relating to them, never mind all the little extras and backhanders.

Inevitably as we are supposed to have a democracy with various equalities and rights and privacy we all now want the same as those with lots of money, power and access to expensive lawyers.  Increasingly we have secret courts and tribunals and other secretive bodies dealing with various affairs.  A very convenient arrangement to many both in government or other office.

Yet at the very same time a great many of us carry credit and debit cards, other documents, driving licences and a wide range of things with access to online stores of information.  To those with the technical ability or interest a quite amazing amount of material is out there which they can use.  Just check your inboxes and other folders to see what turns up.

Never mind what is in the social media where many unburden themselves of all or almost all and then shriek when it leaks.  Also raiding this material and your emails can be perfectly legal.  It someone has the money and good reason a lawyer can invoke the Principle of Discovery which means the lot has to be handed over.  If you allege in your items that a famous professional footballer goes round raiding church poor boxes you better have evidence that will stand up in court.

Indeed it is not nice to know that somewhere Over There all your secrets may be looked at, but you put them there.  Also, a lot of them you were supposed to inform people of, notably the tax authorities or your bank or your insurance company or your mortgage provider in the first place.  That GCHQ in Cheltenham may have some details is certainly unwelcome but what does anyone expect?  It is the price of the modern digitised global fiat money and debt based society that we have all rushed to embrace.

It is possible to avoid it.  We could go back to hunter gathering and keep the secrets of food sourcing within the tribe and pray and sacrifice to our own gods to protect us.

Feeding Frenzy

As well as other of life's challenges in the last few days, a great deal of time has been spent in the bathroom as a consequence of rumbling and tumbling down there.  It did not help that one of my family has the poster for the film "Gone With The Wind" on their bathroom door.

Nor was it any solace to read in the latest edition of "Which" that some 17 million of UK citizens a year are alleged to be affected by food poisoning picked up from takeaways and similar food outlets.

Given that so many of us either use or even rely on these facilities for our food and nutrition then the number might not be a high proportion of the figure for people-bought in meals consumed a year it is still 17 million too high for most of us.

What annoys me is that my choices are highly selective, partly because of paranoia and partly because of the preference for reliable content.  So despite very limited use on grounds of cost etc. the demon struck, as ever when least wanted.

Not only has the huge increase in prepared food outlets of one sort or another made a mark on the shift to service activity in the economy it has been part of a culture where food has come to taken for granted.  We assume that it is easy to get and unlimited in choice and supply.

This is not the case for very many of the world's population and was not the case at many times in the past for those in the Atlantic Isles.  Famines have occurred even when there was land to spare and overall population numbered in a handful of millions rather than the tens of millions and rising fast.

There are a number of people who are suggesting that the past may come to haunt us and sooner than we expect.  Our economy is based increasingly on ramping up the money values of either property or paper securities in one form or another and taking a cut on digital transactions.

If this does not last or falters then all this food that pours in on a daily basis may begin to be at least reduced or even fail drastically in some sectors.  Assuming the price mechanism works this means sharp and potentially major price rises which will affect very large numbers of people.

In the 1590's three years of bad harvests had a major effect on population and health and few were spared the consequences.   There has been a series of both minor and major cuts in food supply since both locally and across the Isles some being major disasters.

It is over fifty years since food supply was a costly problem for many of us.  We have been lulled into a world where fake money and the concomitant exploitation of foreign sources have made us believe that it will go on like this forever.

 

The ending of this may be a gradual squeeze, or a more rapid decline.  Given the present incompetence of our governments and short termism of those who have the money it could be very much worse.

The spin doctors at least will be able to claim that food poisoning on a large scale would be a thing of the past.

Coronation The Crowning Reality

Today there are celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the Coronation of HM The Queen. Any memory of the 1937 one is now in the deepest memory archive, possibly on a neuron system long since deleted and therefore effectively lost for good.

For the 1953 exercise in hubris it is possible to fake it from the web.  It would not be the truth in that rather than spend hours peering at a small screen littered with interference there was table tennis to be played and the back hand to be improved.

The picture above is that of a Coronation Scot class locomotive of the LMS built in the late 1930's.  It is streamlined very much the alleged technical advance of the period.  By 1953 all those built like this were stripped of the extra streamlining for reasons of economy.

In one TV item gushing about the wonders of the UK at the time, full employment was held up to be one of them.  Indeed, if you forget all the men in the armed services trying to prop up a collapsing Empire.

 

Also factor in the huge numbers engaged in purely manual work, many because the investment could not be made in so many industries to improve production.  Then there was the massive underemployment of existing workers arising from trade union requirements.

Much was made of how you could leave a job on Friday and find another on Monday.  But this depended where you were and while it might have been possible in many manual and some skilled trades there were swathes of the economy where it simply could not happen.

Rationing was on its very last legs but because of the export drive waiting lists were common for many consumer goods.  Also, in many shops the habits of war time shortages meant there was still a culture of looking down on the customer.

Money was still very tight and credit regarded as a privilege.  The pictures of London and loyal subjects have a fun day out are all very nice in colour.  But much of the country was grim, mucky and in London itself even in The City there were still rat ridden holes with debris as a result of The Blitzs.

For many of my age group it was the American media and film that set the example.  If not then our own ideas about how things might be.  It was not the posh show going down in London that the BBC and others urged us to follow at least out of the loyalty to Crown and Constitution.

The trouble was that they were in the process of being betrayed by the political class and main media of the period.

Sight And Sound

It has been an instructive week.   Two performances and a new machine and new operating system installed which is taking a lot of getting used to.  This is going to take a long time in which much experience will be gained and a lot of temper lost.

It is all a lot more fancy and highly sensitive and therefore demanding.  All this digital progress makes life a lot more on the edge, never mind the spacing and the formatting.

I feel like a locomotive driver who has been plucked from the driving cab of "The Flying Scotsman" and asked to replace Neil Armstrong at the last minute because he felt the moon was a step too far.

At one of the performances it was a new production.  This was a live production but we were treated to some heavy duty digital and video efforts which were all very well but rather got in the way of what the performers were doing, never mind the story.

The digital skills were very clever but in fact took over the show.  Quite literally you lost the plot and all the flashy insistent imagery and sound meant that at times you began wishing it would all end and soon.

In the meantime the excitements of the world continue unabated   One crisis arrives well before the other one finishes.  Important issues need attention but do not have it because of all the fuss that is going on.  Everyone seems to be chasing shadows.

This is how government is at the moment, along with international affairs and almost everything else.  But those alleged to be in charge in this dark new digital world are so far behind the technology, the movement and the stark realities that they resemble those antique philosophers who declared that Earth could not go round the sun because it was not written so by the ancient fathers.

More to the point are the vast sums that have been squandered to little or no purpose.  Jobs may have been created and activity and publicity gained.  But at the end there is only the expense. The notion of "Flagship" projects forget that flagships can sink as easily as any other.

As Cloudesley Shovell discovered in October 1707 when he went down off the Scilly Islands in HMS "Association", one of the more expensive wrecks in history.  It is said that a midshipman tried to tell him his bearings were wrong but was hanged at the yardarm for his trouble.

Our latest row is that lobbyists can buy politicians.  

The surprise is that we did not know.    Or at least our creaking media did not get round to telling us, especially when it was about matters which they happened to agree with.  Or they themselves had been bought in to the project or deals.

For the discerning searcher it does not take too much time in many things to find out more and come to a different view these days.  It is not just that truth might out but that information will far more easily these days.

And these old politicians in their 50's and 60's have not yet really cottoned on to how easily it can be done.