Chances Of Life?

What might seem a small thing can have greater effects.  When Mrs. Peacock knocked the candle over during Hogmanay in a Heckling Shed in Irvine, Ayrshire, (see above) and burned it down she ended the career of a budding entrepreneur in the flax industry.  Also a farmer he had to find other things to do.

The story of his stay in Irvine is here and it is Robert Burns, who went on to other things, notably an Excise Officer with a gift for words and song for which he is better known.  Had he continued with the flax all sorts of possibilities arise.  One is that he may have made his living in Irvine.

But he might have moved on to other places either in Ulster or elsewhere in Ireland or to a part of England where the flax trade and industry was well established.  It was only handful of years later that an optician and clockmaker in Darlington invented a machine to do the messy business of flax dressing.

Had Burns been in the right place at the right time with either capital in hand or access to it he could have become a leading industrialist having the qualities and contacts etc. to make his way. It was a basic and expanding industry and the chances were there.

Many areas of work were not open to him.  The Incorporations of the burghs limited admissions to a number of key trades and you had to be either family or close to family to enter them.  It was why so many Scots moved on to other places and other work in that period and with such ambition.

Banking was one and in the vigorous, if erratic, expansion of the late 18th Century financial sector in the City of London, Scots bankers, some from Ayrshire, were well to the fore in imaginative schemes and risk taking.  The idea of Burns the banker is a little hard to take but it might have been.

The reason this is intriguing is that one of my forebears was in Irvine at the same time as Burns, close in age and married an Irvine girl.  Some of their children were born in Ayr and the others in Irvine and a grandson moved to Liverpool.

Could Burns have become a Scouser in his time?  Perhaps it is better that Mrs. Peacock knocked over the candle.

Property Boom And Bust

Meanwhile the property boom goes on and on.  One effect is that a street in central London that housed hundreds a century ago now houses tens at best, when they are there, which is less and less often in that the properties are bought for investment and not used.

Around the country in rural and seaside areas there are all the second, and third and in some cases fourth homes.  Again all much less occupied these days.  Add to that the sprawling mid 20th Century estates, private and public, once housing families now with many houses having just single or two occupants.

This tale of housing horror comes from the USA where it is argued that the price boom does not just cause serious issues for the younger generations but is having an adverse impact on the economy as a whole.

Governments are reluctant to do much because of the extent of the vested interests and are by various means stoking it up to the apparent advantage of some and to gain plaudits from the winners.  The rich get richer and to some extent at the direct expense of the poorest and by those I means the lower income employed who have to pay the taxes.

In the UK there is a suggestion that the Labour idea's on "mansion tax" had the effect of pushing enough home owners to vote Tory, enough to make the critical difference.  At the same time it is said that the incoming very rich regard our choice London homes as little better than broom cupboards compared to the space they can buy elsewhere.

So there is extensive work going on in the areas in question to create bigger and better mansions for smaller and smaller numbers of people. On the other hand figures suggest that down the market new properties tend to be smaller than in the past and taking up less ground.  The more you pay the less you get.

There is the question of migration.  Necessarily, the more that come in, the more space that will be wanted.  Traditionally, higher rates of incomers in the past led to reductions in space per head especially in the lower income groups.

This may well be happening in many areas, the appearance of what are essentially shanties in some areas of London is no more that what usually happens.  Also, in some districts there are now increasing numbers of properties intensively occupied and often cheek by jowl with those that are not.

What also seems to be happening is that the urge to build and to increase use of existing property is going ahead without much in the way of additional facilities.  In my own area, the road space needed for increasing traffic flows is not there, nor are the schools, nor other educational facilities, much else and critically health provision.

Also, the radical change in the shape and nature of property, its ownership and management is not matched by any rebalancing or adjustments to tax structure and impact.  The mess that is local and property taxation in the UK has a very long history and has been a political no-go area too often.

In the past it has led to the damage wreaked on what should have been the UK "Mittelstand" and other sectors of the economy.  It may now be that soon the price will have to be paid on top of the existing distortions to the economy generally.

When it might hit is impossible to predict, but hit it will because there are already too many faults in an ancient structure that has poor foundations.

Past Times Revisited

This is a retrospective, one of my first posts at the beginning of 2009.  How little changes.

Digging For Victory

The day the bank bailouts broke out, the missus said to me, “So what are you going to do to save the economy?”  “It isn’t up to me!” I said, “What can I do about it in any case?”  “Well,” she said “you can make a start, and my hair needs cutting.”

After we cut each other’s hair, normally free, gratis, and for nothing, this time we exchanged cheques for £1000 each.  “There,” she said, “that’s a nice boost for the GDP”  “But what do we do next?” I asked, and she had an answer for that, well she always does have an answer.

So we go down to at Thresher and Porbeagle Financial Services, Cookiecutter House and meet a gent’ called Fred Sands.  Nice chap, the sort of Scottish burr in the voice you like to hear on the customer services help lines telling you there is nothing they can do to help, who makes us an offer we could not refuse.

They had only just set up after he had left his old firm to improve his prospects. Grabbing the cheques from our hands, he told us he could immediately lend us up to £100,000 to spend as we wanted, or to take part in a wonderful investment deal that had only turned up on his laptop that very morning, limited offer, closing in half an hour, so we had to make up our minds quick.

He wrote us a cheque on the spot for the £100,000, gave to us, and then snatched it back, saying it was now an asset and collateral for buying £5 million pounds worth of rented garages in Arizona, Beijing, and Moscow, and these would become the assets for investing in a lot of Hedge Funds, who would do a lot of other lending.

Because all the loans were assets, and not what my father told me, income was guaranteed at fifteen per cent, and the whole value would grow at least thirty per cent a year, so we could soon have our villa, yachts and all the rest, and even get invited to a Paris fashion show.

I tried to tell the missus that I was happy with our caravan at Bognor, but she would not listen, all it would cost us she said was trivial money, small change, for all the administrative fees and bonuses, and I should be grateful for everything.

Then she went into the back room with Fred and came out smiling in a way I hadn’t seen since she was a part time barmaid at “The Dragon’s Head”.

So we have now “kick started” the economy and Fred says with luck I could get a knighthood and the missus will then become a lady, at last.  “It will all be worth it,” she said, “and Fred even gave me a tenner, for the service economy he called it.” 

When I told my neighbour, Jim, he gave me a funny look, asked for his lawnmower back, and told me not to bother with Christmas Cards this year as he was a bit short.

Apologies to Rob Wilton and Michael Williams.

Choice Or No Choice?

Sometimes it happens that there are two articles, on subjects that are different, but have an interesting connection.  The first is from the LSE web site that tells us that all that wonderful choice in the supermarkets is not what we seem.

The second raises the question about the role that the supermarket sector may play in the referendum on the EU.

The one on choice is by Terry Hathaway, short and to the point, who says that the branding methods used by large corporations to sell what appear to be a variety of products is hokum (his word) and that marketing is the method.

Personally, I would go further and if you look carefully at the long lists of ingredients of many products essentially they are all conjured up from the same chemical bags of tricks.

He mentions mayonnaise and bleach.  What might be mayonnaise to the supermarkets is often well removed from that in our kitchen.  As for the bleach and related household products they are often closer to industrial poisons than to purpose.

The same corporations according to Richard North's short blog of today on what is going on in the Europhile movement could be trying to influence our choice on "In" or "Out".  Lord Sainsbury is on the job to help organise and fund the "In" campaign.

For the ordinary man this means the global corporations with their grip on the EU will be less interested in providing choice than exerting their will.

The picture above is of Ann Hathaway's cottage in Stratford upon Avon, the lady who was wife to William Shakespeare.

In the play "Hamlet" there is the quote "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could of men distinguish, her election hath seal'd thee for herself."

To choose or not to choose that is the question.

Rights Of Way

When the fictional poor Billy Budd, see Wikipedia, was pressed for the Royal Navy in 1797 the merchant vessel he left was the "Rights Of Man", which caused him to be suspect.  It is not a happy story and nor does it have a happy ending.

A key theme of the original novella and later dramas, stage, film and opera, is what Rights are and what we understand about them and how they might be applied.  What you start with is not what you get.  What you think are Rights is not the same as others think.

The British Library has an exhibition on Magna Carta as it is now 800 years since it was signed in 1215 at Runnymede between King John and the Barons.  Along with this are lectures.  Recently Thomas Asbridge talked about the role of William the Marshal but an earlier one is of interest.

What exactly does it say is the theme of the talk by Professor Sumption who analyses the content and what has been claimed in later years to be found in the document, here in PDF.  The item is longish but quite clear.  Also, it shows that much of what we believe derives from it simply is not the case.

The question of what are "Rights", who might enjoy them, to what purpose and why has been with us since 1215 and is still a major feature of our politics.  The latest Human Rights Act is just another crossroads on a long and complicated journey.

Whether this time, like other times in the past, a wrong turning has been taken is going to be a source of serious dispute and trouble.

Power Mad

We have a new device.  It is not very large, oblong in shape and is called a tablet, although it is impossible to swallow being an electrical item a few inches by another few inches.

There was a time when the picture above represented the peak of complex communication systems.  It required shifts of men and a great deal of maintenance and ongoing work.  It is a railway signal box that I passed many times.

But this new little box it seems has the communications power of the whole UK railway system of the past.  Indeed it has more power and capability that the control systems of the flights to the moon so long ago.  So what am I to do with it?

I know that many people play complicated games, but that does not appeal, conquering distant galaxies and putting their creatures to the laser bolts is common stuff now.  Been there and done that in other ways.

But of many of things I like to do, instead of trailing about going hither and thither and flogging my was through indexes and catalogues and spending a great deal of time in turning pages I can just find, screen and whack through between the cups of tea, meals and football matches.

The device is not some secret that is allowed to a chosen few.  In fact we are late to this one, being well behind the mass.  Now almost all can have this power and knowledge if they care to use it.

Power to the people, but will they realise what power they now have and will they have the nous to make effective use of it not just in ordinary lives but in the economy and politics?

Possibly not, it may have come too late because the limited power of decades past gave people who were greedy and grasping the wealth and authority to dictate our futures.

Must go, need to check out the TV listings on the thing.

Churchill

A debate is under way about Sir Winston Churchill, with strong and differing views being held.  Having known people born around the same time, although of rather differing social class and background, one thing I am certain about is that he was a man of his time.  That time was not the same as ours and his world was different.

Another matter is that from an unusually young age he was a man in the public eye and to some extent alls the world a stage in trying to work out who he was, what, why and the when and where.  He is a rare example of aristocrat, celebrity, media man, sportsman and serving soldier to add to the complexity.

He was also a human being.  Then, as today, far, far too often leading figures were seen as other beings, not the same as other men or women and so could be either wholly good or evil according to the stand point adopted.  Churchill was a very ambitious high status male in a man's world with a firm belief in himself and his future.  If anything he was typical of that elite at that time.

Add to that the turbulence and upheavals of the period there was endless scope either for serious error or for being one of the few to be right about something or both perhaps even at the same time.  Given that he was in politics for 55 years and always prominent there must have been many times when he was wrong or right, if we could agree on which was which.  Because this depends on our thinking in other areas in which Churchill was active.

Because of his extraordinary and wide military experience in a short period before going into politics, beginning as a young officer in the 4th Hussars, expert in polo and a notable player in the rough house of that game unlike the civilities and stricter rules of cricket and the codes of football, or for that matter the etiquette of field sports.

He knew a good deal about Defence, Empire and related matters.  But he had a tenuous grasp of economics and international financing.  He was very much hit and miss at decisions in these areas where they collided with the politics and too dependent on others.  He did not always chose his advisers wisely in this field.

For my money, sic, one of his worst errors was to let Montague Norman, then Governor of the Bank of England get away with so much during Churchill's spell as Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The 1925 Act relating to the Gold Bullion Standard and its effects was one key error he did admit to later.

He was a difficult man to argue with on subjects where he was expert and when he had the bit between his teeth.  On the deficit side he was over fond of stunt politics and flashy initiatives that entailed high risk.  In military terms, the failure of the Gallipoli campaign is one example, but there were others.  Another feature was that he was a bad enemy to make, he never shirked a fight, as Adolf Hitler discovered.

In 1945, Churchill himself dissolved the Coalition to fight an election on party lines probably too early and as so often with him in haste.  Had Churchill lasted longer in office it is an open question whether the American treatment of the UK in the immediate post war period when the British Empire returned to being a major target for US opposition and attrition could have been dealt with more effectively.

In that 1945 Election, given that the Labour ministers had largely done a difficult and reliable job, apart from Herbert Morrison's occasional lurches,  and the respect that Attlee came to have, it was perhaps not so much Churchill that the voters were against it was the sort of Conservative Party in general they distrusted from the 1930's.

My source for this is my own parents, wider family, neighbours and others with their memory and experience of the 1920's and 1930's.  They were not voting against Churchill, they were voting for Labour and the packages they promised to rebuild after the war and the creation of a new and better world.

The centralised command economy of the war years and the planning etc. they believed could deliver on what was wanted and needed and the Conservatives could not.  The end of war was the end of need for an elderly warrior Prime Minister perhaps now past his time at 70.

This was the age before TV. Because Attlee is not camera friendly now we may not think much of him, but then he was a strong and convincing presence in large meetings and rallies, as I saw personally, and the electors in general had a high opinion of him as a principled and decent man.  Churchill, on the other hand, had too much peacetime baggage to carry, notably in the matter of India.

Churchill comes in for a good deal of criticism for his attitudes to other peoples and faiths.  In relation to his comments on Islam they may seem deeply prejudiced but in the 1890's he had seen what the Mahdi and the militants could do in Africa and what they intended to.  If he charged at Omdurman it is not surprising.

Also, his comments on Gandhi seem shocking and distasteful to us now.  But he was far from alone in these views.  The transition of Gandhi from a South African lawyer affected by Apartheid to what amounted to be a preacher cum political activist in India was difficult to swallow for many.

Nevertheless, Churchill made it back to Downing Street in 1951, albeit with the assistance of the quirks of the first past the post electoral system, with fewer votes than Labour. The problems that Labour faced with austerity enforced on the UK, another war being fought, this time Korea, problems in the Middle East and Empire, were enough for Churchill to be back with a slim majority.

It is hard for us to detach ourselves from present political views or of the ideas we have these days in looking back at the past.  But to assess a man then we should try to see them as men in that time with what were the norms of that period.  Another reason for taking a long cool look is that we should see them as fallible humans with ordinary failings.

I have mentioned before that I once played rugby and cricket against the 4th Hussars when Churchill was their Colonel-in-Chief and Prime Minister.  They were not men to argue with and had a high esprit de corps.  They lived hard, played hard and fought hard.

You might take the politician out of the Cavalry but as in Churchill's case you cannot take the Cavalry out of the politician.