Question Time

One of the questions older people might ask themselves as time wears on and they wear out is if they are living in a larger property than is required; whether they are living in the house or for the house. As being older their property is older so there are all the costs of repair, maintenance, heating etc. which do not reduce.

This is nothing new. Noel Coward had a song about "The Stately Homes Of England" and the upper classes and the lengths they had to go to in order to keep their houses standing in the period between the wars. These days the issues have become obscured by the way the market in property has gone, but are still there, lurking.

Also, in business, it is not unknown for a firm to be identified with an iconic building, or have a prestige head office which in time the firm seems to be working for rather than the office being subject to the firm's real needs.

In this context the SNP member, Mhairi Black, who has expressed her dislike of the Palace of Westminster, may be on to something. At one time, rather in the past, I saw it as a wonderful building and therefore necessary to government.

Now I am not so sure. It is certainly grand but now much decayed, that is the structure as well as The Lords, and will cost a huge amount to put right. But is not the only thing that has decayed and another is what we used to refer to as The British Constitution.

It is possible to argue that the internal complexities of the building and its brooding architecture is now The Constitution in effect, and that government follows from this instead of the other way round.

Certainly, The British Constitution from say, fifty years ago, no longer exists as such and only the rules, habits and procedures of Parliament remain to act as a quasi-constitution. What matters most now are the lobbies rather than the Chambers and the lobbyists rather than the members, almost surplus to real function.

This blog has already suggested that it is high time Parliament moved to the centre of England, say Tamworth, in buildings and offices fit for purpose and flexible in use as changes occur. The first time I was at Westminster, in Churchill's time, I was impressed. The last time in Gordon Brown's we could not get out fast enough.

In my inbox there is sitting an invitation to an evening at the House of Lords which we are unlikely to attend. We fear that we might be faced with an Earl or two rattling a collecting box.

Wait For It

Sooner than anticipated we have the present Government beginning to meet the criteria to lose the next election, as many in the past have done, despite being apparently ahead and the Opposition an unlikely prospect for the future. Perhaps the ghosts of Macmillan and Home are up there in the tree taking bets.

The Budget of Chancellor Hammond is going to adversely affect many of those who voted Conservative last time and in ways they won't like. This problem stems from the cheery promises made by Cameron and Osborne at the last election not to raise taxes, but hardly ever.

By 2020 there will have been around ten per cent of the 2010 electorate gone and a new ten per cent on the electoral lists, those of the millennial generation and recent migrants. No wonder it is claimed that Prime Minister May is more New Labour than Old Tory. No wonder some old Tories may go AWOL next time round.

Then Brexit (thank you Dave again) is causing rifts in the party in power to add to squabbles over tax and spend and other little things. One thing that is not so little is the impending crisis in agriculture either from the EU or following any serious changes. The farmers are land rich and income poor in many cases.

Then there are the disruptions and disasters to come, tricky to predict, very difficult to analyse when the impact occurs and then sometimes impossible to clear up afterwards, if it can be done, without upsetting even more voters. Anyone for a property crash?

There are smaller ones that could cause a lot of trouble with the complaining classes. The hike in business rates is said to be bad for many SME's. One sector that is predominantly in this class is the whole organic and natural sphere of production, increasing in size and support and very sensitive to being messed about by stupid civil servants and politicians.

This is not quite in the killing babies problem area but the ongoing need for the NHS to keep up with modern science and medicine as well as coping with a population mostly devoted to unhealthy living is difficult. Again rapid population increase makes the earlier planning figures for NHS provision look as weak at the knees as many of the elderly patients.

In the finance sector not only is there the question of what is happening to the inflows and outflows of money and why but what could go wrong next. In the EU it may be that soon France will need bailing out and no doubt our offshore financial corporations will soon be feeding on the remains? France being France they are more likely to choke or face a political guillotine.

There is a lot to add to this little list but this will take a long time and many will have good and better ideas for how the Government could lose votes. All around the net the grumpy ones are saying there a financial apocalypse to come and soon, don 't mention the Chinese who own so much in the UK and want more.

And I have not even mentioned or hinted at that man who has a lot to say and do over the Atlantic. If he does cause seismic changes in the US economy and trade, like all seismic events it will impact far and wide, not necessarily for the better.

As for the Opposition, if by some freak of chance they find a new leader who can spin the spin and talk the talk in the media and on the net who knows what could happen?

Rising High

There is a lot of clatter going on in the media and the web relating to what is called "Feminism" in its various forms. On the whole this is a subject I stay clear of, if only because the notion of hapless dominated women does not square with my experience or much of history.

Which explains this comment I made on an article about the BBC and it becoming controlled by some Feminists with particular beliefs on the subject.

Quote:

Recently I have been researching a lady known as Liza, born in 1863 in London and orphaned as an infant. She later is found in one of the worst slums, Houghton Street, now LSE, not far from Covent Garden.

It is quite possible that when GB Shaw was walking through in the late 1870's she bullied him into buying flowers. In a long hard life she rose to be a respected boarding house keeper in Blackpool. I suspect this is not the kind of woman that the BBC are interested in.

Unquote.

This would be at a time when Blackpool was a desirable and classy resort in many ways.

Songs For Supporters

The England Rugby supporters recently have taken to singing the American spiritual "Swing low sweet chariot". Quite why I do not know. Despite alleged to have been written after the end of slavery in the USA, there have been protests that it is wrong to do so and the supporters prosecuted.

Assuming that "Jerusalem" is held to be a non-starter as well, what else might there be? At first I thought of "Over The Hills And Far Away" but gathered that this is Scottish in origin, which will not do at all, despite the proportion of England supporters with a tinge of Scots in their ancestry.

A search of folk songs gave a lot of good tunes but words that perhaps did not quite fit. The one I think might fit the bill is "The Girl I Left Behind Me" which I once marched to, also called "Brighton Camp".

My real favourite which has a good tune is also the Regimental March of The Royal Tank Regiment. But the title "My Boy Willie" is perhaps a disadvantage as well as the words not quite right for a rugby match, and the other versions do not fit.

Last but not least, perhaps "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at", albeit more regional, but daft enough for the South Bank. The picture above is England v New Zealand, January 1954, when I was first there.

Here are the words of both:

The Girl I Left Behind Me

I'm lonesome since I crossed the hill,

And over the moorland sedgy,
Such heavy thoughts my heart do fill,
Since parting from my Sally.

I seek no more the fine and gay,

For each just does remind me
How sweet the hours I passed away,
With the girl I left behind me.

O ne'er shall I forget that night,
The stars were bright above me,
And gently lent their silvery light
When first she vowed to love me.

But now I'm bound to Brighton camp -

Kind heaven then pray guide me,
And send me safely back again,
To the girl I left behind me.

Her golden hair in ringlets fair,

Her eyes like diamonds shining,
Her slender waist, her heavenly face,
That leaves my heart still pining.

Ye gods above oh hear my prayer,

To my beauteous fair to find me,
And send me safely back again,
to the girl I left behind me.

Ilka Moor Baht 'at

Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee, ah saw thee?

On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at

Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee, ah saw thee?

Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee?

On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at

On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at

On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at

Tha's been a cooartin' Mary Jane

Tha's bahn' to catch thy deeath o' cowd

Then us'll ha' to bury thee

Then t'worms'll come an' eyt thee oop

Then t'ducks'll come an' eyt up t'worms

Then us'll go an' eyt up t'ducks

Then us'll all ha' etten thee

That's wheear we get us ooan back

Reliving Schools Past

Being of the generation educated in the post War old Tripartite System the row over money being allocated to bodies that wish to create new ones again by creating Grammar Schools makes me wonder whether our leaders know what they are talking about.

The old grammar schools were not a set of similar places offering a particular education but of different sizes, catchment areas, histories and structure in terms of the subjects offered. This could be an article of thousands of words but you do not have the time for that. They were far from being all the same.

Because I was on the rugger and athletic teams this meant I visited quite a few other schools of various kinds across the Midlands. Not only grammar schools, but public schools, major and minor. I once played at Rugby School against a team terrified at being at risk of disgrace before their whole school if they lost to the likes of us.

My lot found the public schools a bit sad. When we returned we were looking forward to social evenings, perhaps the films, perhaps a jazz club or perhaps an evening in a pub that did not ask questions about age. They would be shackled to their desks or at best allowed to listen to the Home Service.

One key reason for the demise of the old grammar schools, now forgotten, was in that post War period local authorities were dealing with substantial changes in the numbers of school populations as well as major building work being needed. This occurred at the same time that the campaign for comprehensive schools gained political backing.

In the town halls and county halls already having to reshape their local schools the great majority, faced with hard decisions, ended the provision of grammar schools. In some places it was easier, in that where there were small grammar schools, with small sixth forms, a lesser choice of subject and poor facilities it seemed inevitable.

You cannot bring back that past in that you cannot restore the society, the values, the ideas, the hopes, the economy or any of it in which those grammar schools operated and educated. You might create new schools with a certain job to do, you might call them grammar schools, but they will be what they will be and that is something else.

Other things have changed that bear on present decisions. The effect of imprisoning most of the teenage population in schools, colleges and universities into their early twenties means that there is relatively little selection today compared to the past. The university sector is now a service industry dedicated to expansion and financial profit, of sorts.

Again forty to sixty years ago many left grammar school at sixteen equipped with the Schools Certificate or later GCE's to go into various forms of training, apprenticeship and work experience which would lead them on to higher status and often management and at the highest levels.

An effect has been to remove around ten per cent of workers or more from the home labour market. When, wandering about the much longer past and looking at what people did and when the capabilities and work done by teenagers then was astonishing. They do not seem to be any lesser people than those of today. In fact they seem to have achieved a great deal more.

The problems schools face today are manifold and testing. This could be another long essay but the 21st Century teenager is on a different planet to the 1960's one. Political fudge and bodge for media effect and to keep the paying members of the party happy, often an aged bunch with fond memories of the past is taking us nowhere.

I am being re-educated now at the University of Google Scholar.

When Is A Budget Not A Budget?

The answer to the question is when it is a Treasury Budget. There was a time when the nation would be huddled round the wireless sets listening to the great and learned of the land, say Sir Stafford Cripps, telling it what we were in for.

Afterwards misery would enfold the nation for days and weeks until the blows fell and then the complaining would begin. Cripps was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Attlee government from 1947 to 1950 taking over from Hugh Dalton who resigned after unwisely trusting a journalist.

Early in the war he had been Ambassador to the Soviet Union and then sent to India to sort things out, in 1945 he became President of the Board of Trade in the high days of nationalisation. His legal, political and Church family were a leading one and he was related to Beatrice Webb. He was seen as the ultimate travelling expert.

The Tories who in 1945 had been consigned to the dustbin of history clawed their back with promises to change not quite all of this but enough to collect the votes of all those who felt that they had been dunned and asked to pay the costs of war as well as all the Attlee's government's flights of fancy.

Essentially, the Cripps mode of operation has set the pattern since then but the world has moved on. Whether the why's and wherefore's of The Treasury have is another matter. They have some very expensive computers and systems but they seem to take us no further than in the days of Cripps.

Bluntly this antique business of an annual Budget decreed on high and politically for all time that is until the next crisis or calamity, say in six weeks, is just a left over political con job to pretend that the politicians are in charge. The Budget caper now is a bit of knock about politics to keep the media moving.

What should a government do to convey its finance and taxation policies to the public at large and to the world in a real sensible way? The kit that the Treasury has been given ought to be able to keep a running tab on the bulk of things. Beyond that are regular and occasional summaries.

How many per year is arguable and in what form the information sets should presented for policy decisions and changes is another question. The basic political problems are when it becomes clear that previous policies are not working and issues where hard decisions and losers are needed, usually evaded unless they are either easy touches or generally disliked.

Additionally, there are too many key influences on The Treasury via linked financial corporations, lobbyists, party fund contributors and overseas magnates and political leaders all of whom want the less said the better and the less tax burden even better.

How this lot can be reformed is a herculean task or more like something that happens after a major crash or crisis.

Bring back Lord Grenville.

Pennies In The Pot

There are some serious questions arising about pensioners and paying for pensions at present which do make easy reading for those who are in that category now, may soon be there or have to think about their longer futures.

The Bank Of England asks questions about the implications of long term low interest rates etc. for defined pension schemes and does not like what it sees.

In the USA there are issues with funding in the states for their schemes and The Teamsters Union is in trouble and putting down a marker for many other similar schemes.

All these pose potential risks for financial markets. In those schemes which are unfunded, such as many government employee ones, there are other questions. So who pays?

The taxpayers, who have their own pension worries? Borrowing money as a sort of Quantitative Easing to justify it on pretending it is keeping the economy going?

But who will lend, there are those who think the government should lend to itself via those schemes etc. and other similar ideas. It will be all very difficult.

This one minute advert may remind you. Wikipedia has a page on Allied Dunbar, gone but not forgotten.