Suffer Little Children - Edinburgh City Council

This item below is from Alex Massie's blog in "The Spectator" who is rightly very angry about the gross conduct of Edinburgh City Council. As well as serving with the tanks later I was involved for many years in placing children in schools for the disabled and blind and once chaired a committee on the whole issue of special schools provision for these childen. Quite what Edinburgh City Council thinks it is doing I do not know. If the links do not work, blame me and look up Alex Massie.

Quote

Warrant Officer Mac McGearey, who serves in the Royal Tank Regiment and is due to ship out to Afghanistan in June, has a blind daughter who contracted meningitis when she was just three days old. This left her blind and suffering from, one gathers, a range of other disabilities.


At first Ciara, who is now 13, was educated at the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh. Then McGearey was posted to Suffolk. Now he and his family have been posted back to Edinburgh, the City Council is refusing to pay for his daughter to return to the Royal Blind School, insisting instead that she be enrolled at a different school that, whatever its merits, does not specialise in educating blind children.


The Council has refused to change its mind even though an independent tribunal has ruled that a place at the RBS is in the best interests of the child. Now the Council is appealing that ruling.



Warrant Officer McGearey, who has already done a tour in Iraq and has served in the army for 23 years, has been granted leave and began a 500-mile sponsored walk around Scotland yesterday. He hopes to raise £20,000 for his daughter's education, money that will at least see her back at the royal Blind School until he ships out to Afghanistan this summer.



Should you be so minded and have a few pounds to spare, I'd urge you to contribute online here. Further details from The Herald here and The Scotsman here.

Unquote.

Haiti - The Future And Energy Supply

Returning to Haiti and its future again. In the web site theoildrum dot com on 30 January, Gail The Actuary posted a 2300 word analysis titled “Haiti’s Energy Problems”. Given the critical nature of energy supply and use to any economy that is “modern” and has a degree of prosperity the information makes it clear that not only is Haiti already poor and deprived, the future looks perilous.

At present the estimate is that total per capita energy consumption is around 1/22 of the world average, perhaps 1/100 of that of the USA, 1/22 as much of China, and 1/17 that of India. The chances of finding local sources are limited and the capital requirements of creating an infrastructure look beyond even an optimistic view of the Haitian economy of the future.

The implications are serious, but Haiti is not alone in that has major issues relating to energy, and the article lists some other states possibly with similar situations. In the meantime as an article further down on 28 January on the Nord Stream pipe line suggests, in Europe we are becoming more dependent on Russia.

And as in Haiti any considerations about the environment will have to be subordinate to short term economic needs.

Election 2010 - Cutting Out Waste

One issue figuring little in the hurly burly of the election is that of just how major economies can be made in the burden of government. Critical to this are the issues of waste, dispersion of responsibility, confusion, and the fact that many of the “non-government” bodies and agencies granted powers since 1997 are non-elected. They have become largely mechanisms for laundering taxpayer money into wealth opportunities and job havens for the Labour Party and its affiliates. For the ordinary citizen who has been forced to foot the bill is has become very difficult to work out who is in charge, why, and to what purpose.

There have been noises off from a number of quarters, largely on the Right, but now a set of proposals has been tabled to begin the real debate. Paul Carter, the Conservative Leader of Kent County Council has produced a document “Bold Steps For Radical Reform” available on the KCC web site in pdf sets out his ideas for England. What they amount to is taking the existing English Shire Counties and single authority Cities etc. and putting much of the relevant powers in their hands. This will mean the 46 councils absorbing the work and functions of the Regions and a large number of Quango’s.

A great deal of our lives and the services immediate to us are in the hands of these organisations and local government but we take little interest in them or have any awareness of what they do. The coverage of local affairs in the media has become minimal, so few of us know anything unless something immediate matters that directly bears on our day to day work or leisure. For this reason the issue of reform of all this is not a vote winner, if anything it could be a vote loser later if mishandled.

This is one explanation of the proposals to depend on the existing 46 authorities as they stand. That is to minimise disruption and the costs involved. Those of us who have waking nightmares of the Edward Heath upheavals of 1973-74 will know how bad it can be. The botch made in several parts of the country together with ducking the critical problems of the old rating system made it a mess for years. Perhaps as a first stage reform it would make sense to do it this way and then to mop up on some of the detail in particular areas later piece by piece. The current situation is such an expensive shambles that at least it would begin to establish some coherence.

The existing Regional Boundaries at present are a relic of the mid 20th Century wartime needs that became a tool for the Civil Service requirements for consultation and the occasional means of joint efforts in specific areas where some sort of established co-ordination was useful. For a few years I chaired one of these committees as an extra to my work commitments and all who attended did the same. Often sharing things could save us time and trouble in our own job

We did useful work without budgets or legal powers making sure that we knew what our neighbours were doing and making joint submissions to Whitehall with the agreement of our own councils to the central government departments. For these semi-informal committees to be elevated into actual major spending entities, making key strategic decisions and directions, moreover without any direct elections or democratic control over their membership, was stupid and asking for trouble and runaway costs. Also their boundaries mostly have little or no relation to realities on the ground by the end of the 20th Century.

Clearly Cr. Carter and KCC have an interest in reform of this type. Personally, I would prefer to see some additional mergers amongst a few neighbouring small authorities with a more careful structuring of responsibilities and reforming the mess that Council taxes are becoming. But if any new government could do something soon and something effective it might end so much of the confusion, corruption, and chaos of the present.

USA & UK - Special Relationship Farewells

It is likely that the “Special Relationship” (SR) is defunct, over, etc. and not even Global Warming, or Cooling, or extra-terrestrials are going to revive it. There is a temptation to review the history since August 1941 Atlantic Charter negotiated in St. Johns Harbour, Newfoundland, with Winston Churchill on board the HMS “Prince of Wales”, a major battleship and pride of The Fleet.

I will have to skip the first fifty or so years, it might and perhaps should have ended earlier, but the Soviet Union and various other problems kept it more or less alive, down the decades. Why now? The problem is a familiar one after a party that went on too long and in which too many people enjoyed free drinks and hospitality which has been the case since the late 1990’s. Who is going to pay the bills?

The UK is bust, the USA is all but bust. They are both in hock to many and various creditors. They are both dependent on imported oil and lot of other imported products. They have both spent the wealth that came to them from an era of cheap oil and cheap commodities. They have both embarked on a debt fuelled property and funny money enterprise that duly went down taking their essential assets with it. The UK has sold off most of its economic enterprises to either foreigners or global money machines, and the USA is doing much the same.

For much of its life the SR had a fairly clear military basis. In the last decade the UK has made a botch of its intervention in Iraq and is an unreliable dependent in the campaign in Afghanistan, both of which have compromised USA intentions. This is due to failures in the UK both of strategy and any perception of the logistics, support and cost implications of these campaigns.

The UK might provide useful business for some US procurement companies, but as an ally they are an unpredictable liability. The UK defence cuts in expenditure will finish it as a player anywhere in the world and even in its home waters. If the UK is no longer a viable military ally then what is it useful for?

The world has faced one of the major financial crises in history. So what does the UK government do? It blames the USA whilst itself being directly responsible for much of damage and the foolishness that caused the crisis. It is becoming clear that part of the financial complexity that is at the heart of the fiscal crisis in the USA and the UK rests with the huge increase in the activity of tax avoidance and evasion through tax havens and that the UK government and the City of London is at the centre of many of these entities.

Along with this is the creation of mega-companies and banks that are engaged in asset stripping and rapacious financial behaviour on a large scale. This has led to major job losses in the USA and in the UK. The attempt to defuse this has led in both countries to large increases in public sector expenditure and necessarily debt that are making greater and directly competing demands on the international credit markets. The question is becoming one of who blinks first loses.

A contingent problem internationally is that many under developed countries have had their own efforts to improve badly damaged or even ruined by the activities of the global financial companies and associated development and aid agencies. The UK government is proudly building shopping malls erected by its politicians’ favourite property companies in urban areas for elites sending the wealth lent to the nation offshore in personal accounts whilst out there in the country districts people are starving and fighting over food and diminishing water supplies. This creates more problems for the USA to solve.

In the meantime both the USA and the UK have electoral considerations. In the late 1950’s Eisenhower, having secured his second term and who disliked flying and media posturing, preferred the occasional round of golf at home. He was content to allow Harold Macmillan to flit about the world doing the Supermac routine to win votes. These days American Presidents like to see and be seen and to fly in on Air Force One with due state and authority.

When Gordon Brown turns up pretending to be important with his staff in economy class on a spare charter plane hired from a soon to be bankrupt holiday company it does not make the same impression. This kind of attempted upstaging of the President too readily turns into farce as at Copenhagen and does any SR no good at all, especially when votes are vital to political survival.

At one time it was suggested that it was the needs and the lobbying of the industrial military complex that exerted critical influence over the governments of both the USA and the UK that helped to keep the SR alive despite occasional spats when major contracts were under competition. By the second decade of the 21st Century this has changed. This complex still exists but since the 1990’s has been supplanted by another breed of lobbyists and key financial input into the political process.

Bluntly, the Labour government and the UK media are owned by the international oligarchs and financial mega-companies. The same is true of most of the US Congress; one of the running jokes is which Senator is owned by which company. For these organisations any government anywhere is simply a subsidiary that has to be managed to guarantee the rate of return on the capital employed by the owners.

In the UK the National Health Service is run mostly by Big Pharma and the financiers behind the Private Financial Initiative schemes. In the USA most of health care is at the mercy of the insurers and the lenders. None of these owners of governments have any interest in SR as moral commitment. If they wish to pit one government against another then that is what will happen.

Legal systems, constitutions, rights, social services, utilities, anything you care to mention are now all distorted and corrupted. The SR is a time expired product; politicians need to win elections and the money to win the media wars goes to those who the hirers think can deliver. In addition demographic changes in the USA and the UK have led to new populations in each antagonistic to the other partner. Londonistan is recognised as one of the world centres for terrorism operations and planning due to the bungling of the UK government.

The 21st Century is going to be one of grim economic struggle and competition for scarce resources between most of the present developed countries some of which may become under developed quite soon.

HMS “Prince of Wales” was sunk off Northern Malaysia on 10 December 1941 by Japanese air forces immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbour. The Special Relationship was sunk by Goldman Sachs.

Haiti - A Wider Aftermath

People in Haiti will be on the move again. The media coverage has been mostly around Port au Prince, understandably given the problems of communication and contact. Even had Haiti a well established efficient government, wealth, and good public services then the collapse in the internal structures would have been severe and the challenges perhaps too great to meet even then. That they did not has made matters worse, but the effects would have been catastrophic.

Although there had been a few minor earthquakes around Puerto Rico there was no indication that a major earthquake was imminent. After it occurred within the next two days there were 35 significant aftershocks, with almost unceasing minor tremors. There has been another major shock and there are fears that more aftershocks may occur.

That the situation is being taken very seriously by the USA is clear. On one news bulletin I saw the divisional flashes, the double AA of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg. They had been destined for Afghanistan, now they were in Haiti. It was very sobering that on Tuesday 22nd December I had posted on the subject of this formation. The tasks faced by all the incoming support agencies are immense across the whole of the country, let alone the Herculean problems of the capital.

The purpose of this post is to deal with a specific issue, the implications across the region of the Haiti Disaster. On Friday 1st May last I posted “More Taxing Problems” when I wondered if a situation in somewhere like The Bahamas might lead to US Marines landing on a beach there. This connected to a post on Wednesday 25th March last “A Taxing Problem” which again deals with The Bahamas with a specific mention of the impact of Haitian refugees, many arriving as “boat people”.

Already it appears that in the few flights out of Haiti the first are on the move. As in so many migrations in the past often the first out are those with cash and the ability to do so. They are usually people with education or skills who may have business or other contacts to help them wherever they go.

The population of Haiti is around ten million and over the last decade or two already there have been outflows of people because of political difficulties and upheavals. The potential number of refugees in the immediate future can only be guessed, but past experience suggests a possible outflow well into six figures.

Whatever the role played by the USA and for that matter France in respect of current conditions in Haiti, what is clear are their concerns if there is large scale refugee movement in the next few months. For the USA, Florida, the State most likely to be affected, already has economic and fiscal problems enough and there are important elections pending for the House of Representatives in Congress. There will be concern also for Puerto Rico, although that is less accessible from Haiti.

The USA and the UK share interests in The Bahamas. For the USA they can be a springboard to Miami and Florida and for the UK there are inherited links as well as a good deal of finance tied up in that tax haven, much if it connected to the UK legal and political establishment. The population of The Bahamas is currently around 330,000, about half on New Providence Island where Nassau is located. The figure has gone up sharply in the last decade largely because of Haitian immigration, almost all amongst the lowest paid of the workforce. The Government of The Bahamas is currently experiencing considerable political and fiscal problems.

Also adjacent to Haiti are the Turks and Caicos Islands, another tax haven with a great deal of UK money lodged there. Its government ran into a chaotic mess last year and the UK now is exercising direct rule. Its population was around 36,000 and it is no condition to deal with any major refugee influx. If it happens there are direct implications for the UK.

Much the same applies to the Cayman Islands, which is said to have around one or two trillions of wealth in its trusts and tax efficient companies, but with a government that is broke. The Caymans are rather further from Haiti and less vulnerable, but any number of Haitians landing there to join its 52,000 people will present a serious problem for the UK.

Jamaica would seem to be better placed, with a population of close to three million and a more robust economic situation. However, the incursion of any significant number of Haitians into its poorest communities will have an impact. As we know any problems that occur in Jamaica can be exported to South London.

Cuba should be able to cope with modest numbers, but again has its own difficulties. Haiti’s neighbour the Dominican Republic is in little condition to take on any major responsibilities for large scale refugee movement. Whose task it would be to deal with issues if there was destabilisation in that country is difficult to estimate.

Then there is France and whether any number of Haitians would make it there. They are likely to be the better off but it could still be the place of choice for many. What might happen if many do make it to Paris is a real question.

It is several years now since I stood amongst a few Haitians cheering for their team who were playing against one made up of expatriates, mostly bankers and lawyers. They wondered why but when I explained that the expat’s were mostly Arsenal and Manchester United supporters they understood completely. I left them with a few football chants from The Kop of old, suitably translated.

Our government are saying little about the aftermath of the Haiti earthquakes and implying it is largely a matter for the USA, I assume to avoid annoying the French. But it could be a UK problem and one that will test the government to its limit.

The Great Game - The End Of The Raj

One of the more disregarded items of news in the torrent of tragedy and politics we have had in the last few days is that the UK Foreign Office, headed by Miliband, apparently is seeking to create a regional joint stabilisation council made up of the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Possibly other small states in the region might be invited along as observers or contributors.

It is déjà vu all over again. One of my uncles found himself up on the North West Frontier in the early 1940’s and did not enjoy the experience. He returned with the conviction that the sooner we were out of the sub continent the better and that we should stay out at all costs. Because so much of our history is seen through the murky glass of hindsight and modern ideas we have forgotten, or found it more convenient to forget because of our current ideologies that we may have been here before.

The picture above is of the Viceroy’s Body Guard in the 1890’s, after 1947 it became the President’s and before the 1870’s it had been the Governor General’s. For those who have watched the series “Jewel In The Crown” it appears in the introductions. The engagement with the sub continent changed and developed down the years and the image we have from The Raj of Kipling’s time and later is false in terms of the situation before the Mutiny of 1857 and the creation of the Imperial India of 1876. The imposition of a more Anglo-Centric character on the administration of the territories then under control or compliant began in the late 1830’s.

Before the Governors’ General Macaulay etc. in the time of Charles Theophilus Metcalfe and before there was a more Asiatic approach to governance. Metcalfe encouraged the study of the History and Culture of the East. His Aide, Major Turner Macan was instrumental in rescuing and enabling the survival of the “Shah Nameh” of Firdausi, the great classic of ancient Persian literature, a relative Caswall wrote the first grammar of Hindi, and William McNaghton in the Royal Asiatic Society created a body of study that recognised the wealth and value of the Eastern languages, literature, and culture.

The aims of the Honourable East India Company was not so much direct control and deep involvement, that was clearly beyond the resources of either the Company or of the UK, but across the sub continent the “stabilisation” of the wide mix of contending local rulers to enable trade and the reliable flow of bullion critical to the City of London and UK public finances. They wanted peace, treaties to enable admission, and a willingness for local rulers to accept trade and guidance on Company terms.

The trading and bullion issues in India were intermingled with the China trade and the Company was reaching out to that Empire because it was in the familiar grip of the expand or fail situation so familiar to much of commerce. We now may like to separate all these ventures in distinct modules for study, but for the Company and the traders of the time all things were connected. Eventually, the British lodged themselves in Hong Kong, Canton, and Shanghai in competition with other powers for as big as slice of the action in Chinese riches as they could get. This included trading in substances that were illegal in China, notably opium.

Now, at the end of it all, in the last dying gasp of Empire (aka Commonwealth) having gone from stabilisation to influence and trade, then rule, turning into Empire, we are back where we started and in a lot more financial trouble than we were at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

We are a relatively small state with ideas above its station in the world, relying on threats and influence, needing to repair our public finances and to exert some sort of control over the international drugs trade. The men I have mentioned were giants of intellect and understanding. We are left with Miliband and Brown, neither of whom speak coherent English let alone any Eastern tongues.

And the HSBC Bank are off to Shanghai in the morning.

Drink And The Devil - Buckfast And Loose

Sprawled out on my couch necking a bottle of Chateau Latour 1961 somehow or another I started BBC 1 Scotland about the scourge of Buckfast Tonic Wine (15%) north of the Border. There is a note of resentment in this, because it is clear that they are drinking my share as well as their own, not satisfied with drinking nearly as much vodka as the Russians, or as much Stella as the Belgians.

It is possible that the declamations against the drink owe as much to the views of John Knox about the religious orders as the scientific evidence. There was clear proof offered that if you smash a bottle, the remaining top can inflict nasty injuries. I recall much the same was found of filed down bicycle chains long ago.

The “proof” came from the University College of Polmont. OK, at present it is a young offenders penal establishment, but doubtless will be rebadged soon to help the government meet its 50% university admission target. It seems that many of the chaps given to violence had been swigging Buckfast. Again I recall that when rugger chaps went on the razzle and did stupid things long ago they had often been on the Bucks Fizz, and nobody then blamed the champagne and stout companies.

However, there are other things. I believe that Buckie is sweet and does have a high caffeine content. As well as the alcohol there is sugar. Nobody mentioned sugar. Also it is made from a secret recipe. This means flavourings of one sort or another. Nobody mentioned the other stuff that could be in the mix. There are other things. The chaps on view were not I suspect gourmet eaters or eco-freaks. Possibly they were on a very solid diet of junk food. Need I say more? Some of the artificial flavourings, flavour enhancers (including MSG) and colourings do have brain impact. Not quite as much as a Glasgow Kiss perhaps, but they can give it a whack.

Besides alcoholic beverages the boys will have been drinking other wet things as well, fizzy drinks and energy drinks. There is some decidedly funny stuff in these and although sugar free, the sweetening agents can have nasty and unpredictable chemical effects. Moreover these days for the young there is almost a seamless transition from heavily promoted fizzy drinks to well advertised alcopops to the spirits and heavy duty stuff. Buckie is almost a statement of individual protest against the drinks establishment.

A heavy dose of Buckie may not be the only cause, just the final trigger element in a constitution already dosed up for irrational action. It is also cheap, which may explain why so many of those on benefits drink it. You will appreciate that here we have moved on from a simple basic explanation to a more complicated one which points not one finger but several at many of the most powerful commercial entities that supply and feed us, as well as making contributions to the personal welfare of so many politicians.

The monks are easy targets and fall guys. So blame them and look good with the spin but don’t mention the other matters. After all this and half an hour of football I started on the Chateau d’Yquem 1996 and took in Delia, the BBC food goddess. She can do things with pork chops that you would never believe. After her the second half of the Newcastle v West Brom game seemed small beer and a bottle of the Graham Port of 1955 was needed to carry me through.

At least I know how to control my intake. Does Waitrose stock Buckie, I wonder?