Geoff Smith thinking aloud

A Liturgy for the last of the ladies

2017-12-30T08:28:00.002-08:00

Janet Elizabeth Smith (née Dean)

The Last of the Ladies

16th March 1948 – 21st December 2017

Wetheral Woodland Burial Ground

29th December 2017

The Gathering
We meet today with sadness for our loss and joy at the knowledge that Janet has been safely gathered into the loving arms of the eternal spirit where there is neither pain nor suffering nor tears.

The Reflection
In a moment of reflection and guided by the spirit let us offer our own reflections on the Janet we knew and loved.

A daughter, a sister, a lover, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a friend, we each share her loss, grateful that she passed surrounded by her loving family; that she was able to offer her farewells with grace and dignity, supported as she was by the caring staff of Hospice at Home.

A moment for you to share

A personal Reflection

I met Janet in Salisbury in the Summer of 1967...

Music: I saw her standing there (The Beatles)

...within a week I had to travel to Germany for a summer job; I wanted to ask her to marry me but had the good sense to ask only that she would she meet me from the train when I returned.

She agreed and did meet me.

We married in November 1968.

She blessed me with love and loyalty and four wonderful children in whom she invested all that was best about her.

Diagnosed with MS forty years ago she bore her pain and limitations and triumphed over them.

The Cancer was less easy and in the end undermined her strong will and forbearance, yet as so many people commented she looked so well because even as it ate away at her esh, her spirit endured and triumphed.

Forbidden from carrying Lilies on our wedding day she carries them now on her heavenly birthday and for her this poem:

Lilies, their waxy green
Whiteness you chose to carry
Those years ago, were refused you

But now, these years later
The lilies remain fine and firm
Their lustre captures the light

This Anniversary gift
Continues to flourish and shine
Even though your life
Is shortened now by illness

Each night we count the moments
Before dawn to be sure
That you are granted another
Day to offer your gracious farewell

To those you love and whose love is returned
Lilies don’t last forever
Like the flowers of the field and humankind
They flower, blossom and perish

But you will stay forever in my heart
In the hearts of those who love you
And rest in the bounteous gift of love

Music: Such a Woman (Neil Young)

The Commendation

Janet go on now on your journey from this life to whatever life awaits you, you return to the source of creation, sustained by the story of Jesus’ redemption and the nurturing of the spirit.

So we believe that you will today find comfort and consolation in the heavenly Jerusalem where you will be welcomed home and find peace.

The Committal

As a father is tender towards his children, so is the spirit of peace, who knows that we are like the grass flourishing as the flowers of the field, when the wind goes over it, it is gone and will be known no more.

We are entrusting Janet to the merciful keeping of the spirit of peace and we now commit her body to the to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust in the hope that one day we will meet again merrily.

Moment of Silence & Personal Reflection

Music: The Last of the Ladies (The Courteeners)

Canon Michael Manley will lead us in the Lord’s Prayer and offer a final Blessing

27th December 2017

2017-12-27T01:30:00.002-08:00

Janet Elizabeth Smith

16^th March 1948 – 21^st December 2017

We have lived with MS for forty years.

Janet was diagnosed in 1978 before our youngest child, who is thirty seven this year, was born, we have addressed the limitations it imposes on both our lives, and we like to think, risen above them.

After my retirement to become a carer, we have travelled widely and there have been some memorable moments:

Back packing with a wheelchair across Spain and across to North Africa, faced with the steep flight of steps in Tangiers our request for assistance was met with the comment, Aah! You have this woman?

Having boarded the wrong train at Malpensa, in Milan we were faced with the most amazing Ascensori, operated anonymously after requesting assistance in faltering Italian via an intercom on the wall.

The wheelchair and its inhabitant having to be carried bodily up the steps and into the Aeroplane, that happened twice, once in Schipool and once in Gibraltar.

So we have travelled by car, by bus, by train and by plane as well as foot.

But our the horizons closed in.

After surgery for breast cancer in 1998 the cancer we thought was in remission was diagnosed during a routine Mammogram about five years ago, surgery followed, this time not a ‘lumpectomy’ but a ‘Mastectomy’.

But new lesions appeared and following further examination confirmed as Cancerous.

You know really, when you are led from the hard back seating area away from the other patients sitting in the Atrium of the Hospital with a plaque proudly describing that it had been ‘opened in 2000 by the Right Honorable Tony Blair PM.

We were shown into a smaller room with more comfortable seating, with green the dominant colour and a large picture of a scenic lake on the wall.

Well it doesn’t take a genius to know that this is the ‘breaking bad news room’.

And it was.

Further examinations followed including MRI and Bone Scans, inevitable logistical problems, moving the patient from wheelchair to scanners were overcome by staff who were kind and caring and sensitive.

And after the test results were confirmed we were introduced to a new word.

Metastasis.

Strangely enough, a word that I had hardly heard and never used, suddenly appeared in novels, articles, commentaries and newspapers, referring to specialist and everyday matters, from bad news, to wars, to general dissatisfactions.

When we were advised as to the results of the various tests not only were shown into the breaking bad news room but the Consultant found it necessary to have a specialist nurse with him, presumably armed with tissues?

Whether they were for him or us was never clear.

One interesting outcome of this experience was the reaction from the Neurologist we saw who commented that the major issue was addressing the Cancer, not in his remit however.

The Radiologist meanwhile had noted the major issue was the uncertainties presented by the MS about which he knew very little.

Of course once you become drawn into this world it becomes clear that the Medical Profession lives in Silo’s and this makes medical intervention’s predictable depending on who is undertaking the examination:

The Surgeon’s hand reaches immediately for a scalpel.

The Radiologist’s hand reaches for the prescription called Radiotherapy.

The Physician’s had reaches for his prescription pad to prescribe drug therapy.

Each of these played a part.

The surgery was carried out with local anaesthetic but the biopsy revealed a further spread of the cancer and so it was proposed that further surgery under a general anaesthetic was required, a suggestion politely but firmly declined.

So we were referred to the Radiologist. This was definitely the worst of our experiences. The kindest thing to say was that the consultant had unfortunately missed, whether through holidays or illness,, the bedside manner module in his basic training.

We left that consultation clear in our minds that a second opinion was necessary.

Our referral was to the Northern Cancer Centre in Newcastle and the bedside manner of our consultant was impeccable and so it was agreed that further Radiotherapy might well, ‘buy us some time’.

Over time further treatments were proposed to address the issues raised by the tumours in the spine but whether the complications from the MS or other factors were involved most of these treatments have had a fairly negative impact on the Janet’s well being.

The pain has broken through again and again and with the support of the Macmilllan Nurse and our GP, Morphine has been prescribed.

Morphine is often described as the ‘Gold Standard’ for the management of pain.

Timescales are difficult for the medical profession to comment upon. We have had both positive prognoses and pessimistic prognoses.

Our aim had been to celebrate our Golden Wedding in 2018.

It still is, but recently the body language of the medical teams, the Pharmacy at the surgery and other folk along the way who are supporting us, has changed suggesting that maybe, just possibly, we are being overly optimistic.

As indeed proved to be the case.

Our 49^th Anniversary was celebrated in a somewhat subdued manner with Janet surrounded by her family including grandchildren and she found the occasion tiring.

Within a few weeks it became necessary for support to be provided by Hospice at Home and as Janet slowly became bed fast the District Nurses introduced a syringe driver to ensure that the pain was controlled more efficiently.

Janet died on the 21^st of December 2017, she was 69 years of age.

R.I.P.

26th October 2017

2017-10-26T04:33:00.003-07:00

I live in the North West of England in the political constituency known as Penrith and the Borders,

The village in which I live straddles the river Eden.

Over the years that I have lived here, since my retirement, the general atmosphere has deteriorated.

Communities brought together by the experience of mutual challenges.Duringthe flooding in 2005 and 2015 the communities pulled together, bearing as it were, one another's burdens.

Penrith and the Borders is a fairly invincible redoubt of Conservatism, the MP, Rory Stewart aka Rory the Tory, appears to be secure in his majority.

But my sense is that something is now more discernible than before. We are no longer a civil society that can be defined as being at ease with itself.

The Government of which our MP is a member, is creating a society that is ill at ease with itself.

Two personal experiences: last week driving through the City a woman in a mobility scooter drove straight off the pavement into the road in front of me.

I braked.

She shot me a look of contempt, whilst the driver of the car behind hooted his horn for stopping, her look of contempt may have been because she thought that it was my horn that she heard and assumed, possibly, that I was hooting at her.

The second experience was also concerned with driving.

I had to take the indoor critics car to have the tires checked. The Tyre Fitting station is set on a fairly busy road so I waited for a gap in the traffic, eventually a space appeared and I accelerated away.

The approaching car, whilst not too close, appeared to speed up towards me and the elderly driver gave my a 'V' sign as he passed in the other direction, even though any inconvenience to his progress was purely in his imagination.

In the bigger picture my daily newspaper, as indeed is yours, is packed with depressing stories which describe a society simply not at ease with itself.

Relationships between young and old, between men and women, between ourselves as members of civil society are under strain.

MP's who wish for us to exit the European Union launching attacks on those they identify as not being on their side.

The Honourable Jacob Rees Mogg's attacks on the Governor of the Bank of England and the BBC exemplify this mindset and as people adjust to the changing nature of social and political debate the the very concept of what it means to be civil is eroded from public life and society ceases to be civil, begging the question what replaces a civil society?

Hi Jacking, Highway men, Impressment, Poverty, Gin Palaces, Food Banks, Homelessness, Footpads, Paupers?

There is no doubt that there are problems with the way the European Union manages its affairs, it does need reforming and renewing, nevertheless its achievements are tremendous, I never fail to be heartened when, in my previous job, I could travel via the Channel Tunnel, through France and on into Belgium without fear or favour or Passport Control or Customs clearance, simply because of Schengen and the open borders.

To make connections with frustrated car drivers going about their business and an MP referring to Mark Carney as an enemy of Brexit may be comparing apples and pears, but as the Chancellor recently observed the European Union is 'the enemy'.

As Michael Bloomberg opined recently, 'Brexit is the stupidest thing any country had done until America Trumped it'.

So my opinion is that the uncertain outcomes are in fact making not just business but individuals anxious and uncertain and uncertainty breeds disaffection.

So men and women are set at odds with each other. Politicians are set at odds with each other. Families are set at odds with each other. Impatience, frustration and intolerance become the defining characteristics of a society ill at ease with itself, anxious about car payments, mortgage payments, wages or simply anxious about the future for self and family, so if anyone challenges, disagrees or gives way for someone on a mobility scooter, or pulling out (safely) as you are approaching the its the horn or the 'V' sign and that's telling them ..........

It is of course a mental health problem, but maybe that is a subject for a future blog?

12th October 2016

2016-10-12T04:53:00.001-07:00

I had a very good friend who was a GP.

I often consulted him on both medical and non medical matters.

I was always impressed by his diagnostic skills and his ability to prescribe remedies that more often than not were wise, drew on his considerable experience and most importantly worked and which occasionally involved letting things be.

Because of my relationship with this particular friend I have long held the view that it is these particular skills, of diagnosis and prescription, that make the medical profession worthy of respect and the views expressed by those in the profession worth hearing and often acting upon.

But all of that has now changed!

Not so much Dr Foster, who having gone to Gloucester, foolishly stepped in a puddle right up to his middle but rather Dr Fox, who, even more foolishly is leading us out of Europe.

The result of the misconceived referendum was almost but not quite too close to call.

What makes it especially saddening is that the privileged members of the leave campaign, with their dubious claims, false diagnoses, and even falser promises, sufficiently captured the hearts and minds of working people in those regions that depend so heavily on inward investment from, for e.g. Japanese car manufacturers.

Investment that is made precisely because the European market is critical to the continued success of these companies.

Yet it was people in those regions whose votes swung the outcome of the referendum toward leaving.

The big issues that seemed to count for most, immigration, jobs, incomes were falsely claimed to be linked.

That immigrants steal jobs and drive down incomes is patently untrue.

The increased use of robots in manufacturing whilst reducing some monotonous and routine jobs in fact increase productivity and wealth, begging the question of how that wealth is shared in post industrial societies.

Globalisation is not the surrendering of the control of a nation's identity it is rather the recognition that nations have to interact constructively to ensure a peaceful co-existence with other nations on the world stage.

To say that if you are a 'citizen of the world' that you are a 'citizen of nowhere' is so far from the truth of it that it needs to be challenged whenever, and wherever and by whomever it is claimed.

The so called dis-benefits of our membership of the European Economic Community are simply wrongheaded in both theory and fact.

My passport allows me to travel freely across Europe and especially in the Schengen Area of which the UK has never been a part.

The Euros in my pocket, allow me to spend freely in those countries in the Euro Zone, of which the UK has never been a part.

My holiday trips to countries in Europe allow me to travel without the need for Visa's a freedom and a privilege which may well be withdrawn.

Our future outside Europe does not look good however 'pro-secco and anti-pasto' we might be we will be seen as bad losers who have simply taken their ball home and are sulking in isolation.

As we head to a hard Brexit the full reality of what we have done becomes clearer.

The complexity of the negotiations becomes ever more complex.

The untangling of the complex relationships we have with our European Partners my need a Damoclesian Sword to untangle with the associated pain that will go with that.

Or we will simply remain in a long and drawn out and ultimately unresolvable relationship with the 27 other members in which we are on the one hand not in but on the other not out either.

It may be resolved but, as we hear from those who profess some independence in the matter, we will as a nation be poorer for it, culturally as well economically and as ever it will be the poorest who will pay the highest price.

Recently I went to the GP, he examined me and listened to my presenting condition, a skin condition resulting from sun damage, eventually having offered the relatively simple diagnosis he offered a prescription, a cream, he then showed my some photographs of the damage that the application of the prescribed remedy could do.

The pictures were X rated, blemishes, open sores, and eczema the pictures suggested that the cure could well do more damage than the condition.

So I left without filling the prescription.

Diagnosis requires a careful, mature, assessment of the facts and an interpretation of any likely future reaction.

Prescription then requires a careful, mature, assessment of the appropriate response, including the risks of acting or not.

Those who have promoted Brexit, those who are responsible for delivering it, those who claim that the future for the UK standing alone on the world's stage will be glorious have both mis-diagnosed the problems facing the UK in the difficult and challenging complexity of a world facing population growth, food shortage, climate change and the shifting of the tectonic plates of the global economy as the balance of power moves to the east.

We are now faced with a prescription which offers us the worst of all possible worlds as we stand isolated from our neighbours our allies, and our friends on the world stage.

2016-09-29T06:36:00.001-07:00

it’s lunchtime at cochran’s boiler works in newbie and as lunchtime begins the boiler makers of newbie open the box with lloyd george’s foxy face on the cover, unfold the heavy paper board, deal out the chance cards, the pawns and the dice and settle down to play brer fox and brer rabbit, the game available from miss clarke of newbie, but what were the boiler makers doing? why brer fox and brer rabbit? why does the fox have the face of lloyd george in the picture on the box?

land tax,, that’s why, land tax and before it was called brer fox and brer rabbit it was called the landlord’s game

the landlord’s game was invented not by miss clarke of newbie but by lizzie magie in the united states of america, lizzie was a comedienne, a poet, a writer of short stories, and so bohemian that when she started to run out of money she advertised herself for sale as a slave then she set up the economic game company in new york city and then it came to newbie and brer fox was lloyd george, chancellor of the exchequer and in 1913 prime minister of the united kingdom curiouser and curiouser, how do we get from new york to newbie, from the economic game company to cochran’s boiler works, from lizzie magie to lloyd george and who was miss clarke ?

suddenly a new name crops up henry george, so who is henry, did lloyd george know his father? were they related? well yes and no, lloyd george the politician was interested in henry george because he wrote a book with the splendidly radical title of progress and poverty

george, henry that is, thought that a person was entitled to the value of what he created by his or her own efforts, but the value of land or location, be it in new york or newbie, should be held in common, so george, henry that is, proposed that land ‘owners’ should pay tax on the land they ‘owned’ and brer fox, lloyd george that is, introduced a similar tax when he was chancellor of the exchequer, this tax levied 20% on the unearned increase in land value to be paid on the death of the ‘owner’ or the sale of the land

popular with some, but not at all popular with landowners, but popular with lizzie magie who agreed with george, henry that is, and so she created a game to promote his ideas and by adapting the game the boiler makers of cochran’s boiler company at the top of three trees road in newbie played the game instead of poker at lunch time imagining themselves on the solway fisheries or lord tomnoddy’s grouse moor or even, should the right chance come their way, sitting down to a £1000 dinner with the duke of westminster

there was profit there was speculation there was risk there was bankruptcy there was jail if you poached the solway fisheries salmon or lord tomnoddy’s grouse

but there at the end of three trees road in newbie the boiler makers imagined themselves living if not the life of riley at least the life of lord tomnoddy or maybe the duke of buccleuch

as the game was played the boiler makers of newbie

bought land …… with their starting capital which meant that when other players landed on their land they charged rents but other risks included being sent to goal or the lunatic asylum

improved their land …… a second tranche of capital in this part of the game is used to improve land increasing wages and generating rents, interest and taxes from other players

increased land values …… payable to the public treasury thereby making life difficult for landlords leading to solway fisheries selling out to the government and lord tomnoddy emigrating to canada

in the final stage of the game wages rise and unemployment and poverty disappear for ever

as lunchtime ends the paper is folded back in the box along with the cards and the dice and the pawns and the boiler makers head back to cochran’s their dreams and risks over for another day

6th July 2106

2016-07-06T07:19:00.001-07:00

I haven't (couldn't) count the number of words written about Brexit!

Would I want to add to them?

Yes and No!

Yes because there is always something to say, something to add, No because too much has been said already.

But I want to add something new (at least I hope that it is new).

If Brexit was a howl of rage, a protest, a rejection of austerity and all that goes with it including benefits sanctions, food banks and the sneering of politicians who have inherited fortunes and who wear suits that cost more than the average person has to live on for a year, then it is the howl of rage that we must hear.

Tragically the current post democracy election for the new leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, elected by some 330 MP's and 150, 000 Conservative Party members, (there's democracy for you), is likely to lead to even more right wing policies being put in place as society moves back to the mid Fifties.

Given the current state of play in the Labour Party with the MP's positioning themselves to the right of the Leadership and passing votes of no confidence in his leadership, despite the enormous respect for his leadership being demonstrated by the rapidly increasing membership and Momentum it is hard to see where the opposition will come from.

Maybe, as some commentators have observed, we will see the emergence of a new party of the left, or possibly we might see a new progressive alliance emerging drawing together Labour, Liberals, SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru to begin to challenge and face down the right wing, Brexit focused Conservative Party.

Whatever happens next I am campaigning for one thing, a fairer distribution of the wealth of society, an end to to Welfare (although not the welfare state) and the introduction of a universal basic income.

I am not alone in this campaign, Pope Francis is on board and so is Martin Luther King!

The facts speak for themselves as wages fall, employment falls, more people are displaced from work by robots, by technology, by artificial intelligence so the welfare response with benefits sanctioned and the disabled victimised and the food bank queues lengthening, so the remuneration of Chief Executives, Non Executive Directors and those at the top of the food chain, increase exponentially.

The current scandal exposed by the collapse of BHS is simply a case in point.

As Nissan increases its technological capacity so the Qashqai (Cash Cow?) will increasingly not be built by skilled hands but by robots programmed not only to work more quickly, more unrelentingly but to do so at lower cost than their human predecessors.

I am pretty sure that in Hartlepool the result of the referendum was a protest against the alienation felt by so many people who have suffered from de-industrialisation and new technology.

The tragedy is that Europe was the fall guy.

In Sunderland maybe it was simply that as someone once commented to me when the Nissan Factory was being built, people in the North East can't live in paper houses.

I entered a Haiku Competition as part of a Japanese Week sponsored by Nissan in Sunderland, their was to be Kite Flying, Origami, Tea Ceremonies and a Haiku Competition.

My Haiku was:

Fuji on Wearside
The sound of one hand clapping
Greets the first Nissan

I heard nothing and contacted the festival office for information, Oh, they said we had one entry and it was so bad we didn't run the competition.

Now post Brexit of course a new Haiku is called for:

Post Referendum
The sound of one hand clapping
Nissan move to Ruhr

So if we are to move to a post welfare society in which all can share in common wealth as it is created, whether in financial services, in technological innovation, through internet shopping, file sharing or in whatever unimagined ways will come in the rapidly accelerating future of things we need to find a new way of embracing change, celebrating our common wealth and sharing it equitably.

So a Universal Basic Income is what we need.

Somehow we need to get it onto societies agenda.

The details have been worked through by others better qualified than me, it is being tried in Finland, it was the subject of a referendum in Switzerland, it is not Rocket Science, so much of the Welfare Budget simply subsidises low paying employers and zero hours contracts.

Too much of the common wealth disappears through tax efficient schemes.

But the essential principle is expressed by Pope Francis, essentially, the best way to help the poor is to give them the cash.

In other words every citizen from the age of 18 should receive a basic income sufficient to allow them to House, Feed and Clothe themselves.

Such an income allows people to live with dignity, it allows people to adjust their working lives accordingly, to raise their families, to seek work that interests them and to share in the common wealth that they and the society of which they are a part has successfully created.

20th June 2016

2016-06-20T04:48:00.001-07:00

So this is the week when the 'neverendum' finally drags itself, scarred and battle weary, to its conclusion.

On Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday, or Monday, depending of course on how many recounts will be required before this closely fought 'neverendum' requires before, by the narrowest of margins, one side or the other calls victory and the other concedes defeat, it won't, unlike our World Cup success of 1966, be over.

The debate will drag on with both sides claiming that their defeat/success was really a moral victory.

Will their be a rematch?

Will David Cameron hunker down in his Downing Street Bunker in Churchill's war room and ruminate about fighting on the beaches?

Or will Boris Johnson march up and down The Mall with placards demanding immediate entry?

That the 'neverendum' has become toxic cannot be in doubt when strangers meeting on opposite sides of the debate can literally fell each other at a demonstration in a City Centre.

This 'neverendum' has quite literally divided families, communities, neighbourhoods, congregations and societies.

Of course it should never have been called.

The Prime Ministers appearance on Question Time last evening demonstrated beyond all doubt that the public hasn't quite 'got it', some of the questioners stated that clearly, we are not sure about the issues, neither side has been clear or convincing, others simply made it clear by their questions.

Does it really all come down to immigration?

This referendum has unleashed a torrent of hatred, tragically focused in Birstall, West Yorkshire.

The 'outers' have a responsibility for promoting this hatred with their mantra of controlling our borders (we do now) and give us our country back (its not gone anywhere) now Nigel Farage says violence is inevitable, (based on false propositions), somehow, neither 'New' Labour or the 'condems' have addressed the issue of how and why ( I'm not mentioning Margaret Thatcher here) a whole class and generation have been made (redundant) surplus to the success of our economy, whilst capitalism's love children have sucked billions out of their businesses and lodged them in tax free locations.

The reality of the social progress that has happened during my life time is three fold:

The world has got smaller. As a twelve year old I was offered the choice between a school trip to France or a New Bicycle, I was married with children before I finally acquired a passport and travelled to the continent, a family holiday in France. Since then I have travelled to Scandinavia, Europe, North Africa and the Americas, North and South. As my personal pilgrimage has extended my horizons so others have begun to see the future in terms of locating or relocating to improve their and their families lives.

Technology has advanced beyond the bounds of possibility. It was impossible to imagine as a child growing up in the North of England in the Fifties and Sixties just what the future would offer. From iPhones, to computers, to Robots, it was then, unimaginable, now as a Seventy year old I take it for granted, even if at times it feels like magic, that I can stream music, watch movies, order goods and download books at the press of a button. Do I want to return to the Fifties as the Leave campaign appears to be recommending?

No I do not!

But I recognise that technological advances mean that all our lives have changed forever, whether it is work, leisure, banking, buying and selling, not only do we have the technology but we are rebuilding the world around us on a daily basis.

Climate change is changing everything. That the world is changing is clear that the climate is changing is still subject to argument and counter argument. But the impetus for the global movement of peoples is due not only to war but also to climate change, in fact some of the explanations about why war is destroying the lives of people in Africa and the Middle east is climate change and its impact on agriculture in rural areas, the shifting of populations into urban areas and the pressure for space and resources resulting in conflict spilling over into violence.

When I listen to the arguments of the leave campaigners I hear the constant Mantra of 'immigration' and 'sovereignty', what I do not hear is the sense that as the world changes so that we in the West will have to change too, not even to progress, actually, simply to stand still and maintain our place in the hierarchy of things, places and people.

It is clear that the European project is struggling to adapt to these Global Pressures but surely the way forward if the West is to continue to enjoy peace and prosperity is to work with our European neighbours and partners.

Leaving Europe will not free us from the consequences of geography, technology and climate change but it will make it harder for an isolated offshore island, subject to the winds of change not only to stand still but to survive in a rapidly changing world.

9th June 2016

2016-06-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

I have enjoyed my recent blogging sabbatical.

It came about for two main reasons, the first was the 'neverendum' called by David Cameron which will actually 'end' on June 23rd but which everyone knows will not end then because the deeply divided Tory Party will never accept the result whether it is to remain within the EU or whether its is for 'Brexit' a combination of hard headedness, ambition and opportunism will see to that.

The second reason was harder to deal with but involved the indoor critic and a constant round of medical interventions resulting in the end that we had to insist that our failing local NHS Trust referred herself to Newcastle, this meant an instant improvement in diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.

There has been alongside all this, despite all the words written, (and I read The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times and The London Review of Books) I have a strong sense that none of the commentators either know or understand what in practice Brexit will mean or indeed what the benefits of remain will be.

Clearly facts are at a premium.

Either Britain will rebuild its Empire, the Global map will be redrawn and repainted Red, White and Blue, Dom Joly's Schrodinger's immigrant will return home or not, the NHS will be £350M a week better off or not and our GDP will soar like a helium balloon into the sunny skies that will shine over Dover's White Cliffs.

Or my pension will disappear, my house will halve in value, my grandchildren will face a long term future of uncertainty, and the NHS will run out of Doctors and Nurses, because like Schrodinger's immigrant they are either here on benefits or here stealing our jobs or indeed, both, and war and mayhem will break out across the channel we insist on Calling English.

One commentator, clearly for remaining, has blogged relatively frequently, perhaps too frequently hence my own self imposed sabbatical, encouraging everyone to realise that they have a Christian duty to vote remain, as though he has, it seems, forgotten that it was only recently in Church terms, some four hundred years or so, that under the leadership of the King of the Day with the connivance of the Archbishop of the Day, that England left Europe the last time and that turned out alright. But that implies, as Giles Fraser noted in The Guardian, that Europe in inextricably bound up with the Big Guy in The Vatican, and our rejection of Europe is really a rejection of papal supremacy?

So what am I voting for, or against, and does it matter?

Harold Wilson in a speech made in 1971 made the following statement:

'We shall watch anxiously how far the irresponsible men now in power in this country fritter away (our) strength by pursuing false economic objectives and by their policy of dividing our nation'

Harold Wilson called the first referendum in 1975 and it was his negotiation of the European Regional Development Fund that has done so much to benefit the British Economy and the Regions of the British Isles.

Since then of course our economic strength has been frittered away and our nation divided by successive administrations led by 'irresponsible' men and women.

Initially as this process started I was clear, indeed I said as much in a previous blog. However as the debate has unfolded and the fog of uncertainty has descended and as I have heard and read so much that is both untrue and false, it has seemed to me that 'brexit' is a classic non seqiter it simply doesn't follow from the arguments.

Not enough houses, house prices unaffordable, too many people are homeless logically the sequiter should be build more houses?

NHS waiting lists are too long, operations cancelled, doctors appointments like gold dust logically the sequiter should be more Doctors? Not as Jeremy Paxman recently suggested stop treating pensioners unless they are tax payers?

Schools are overcrowded, teachers stressed again, surely more teachers are required?

Too many immigrants from the EU picking our cabbages? Surely the answer is not send in some old people to pick them instead in return for their pensions as a Member of Parliament recently suggested?

Clearly calling the referendum was a mistake, David Cameron is no Harold Wilson. But it is becoming an Alice in Wonderland referendum in which too many people are claiming to be believing seven or more impossible things before breakfast.

So the decision to vote remain remains and hopefully after June 23rd no more will be heard from the irresponsible men and women who have created this exercise in democracy gone mad.

Socrates also took a dim view of democracy, in fact his view was probably even dimmer when he was found guilty democratically by a vote of five hundred of his fellow Athenians but it seems that, unless you are a Harold Wilson, allowing, as Socrates expressed it, surrendering the direction of a nations future to people without adequate experience in Government by regarding the opinions of all citizens as being of equal value is simply a folly.

And a folly is what we have.

Clearly 'Brexit' will be a folly even if it is called an 'outstanding success' by the Brexiteers in Chief.

24th March 2016

2016-03-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

The East Birmingham Theology Coop was an initiative of the Centre for Applied Christian Studies based at the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham.

I was Director of the Centre from 1987 until 1991.

As part of my involvement with East Birmingham I was for a while seconded to the East Birmingham Task Force. The Task Force was an initiative of the Thatcher Government. Its main task was to spend £1M a year in East Birmingham in order to revitalise the local economy and encourage local community initiatives and entrepreneurialism.

At the beginning of each financial year the Task Force would be invited to consider what projects should be funded, which community partnerships could be identified and encouraged and where and how the money could be most usefully directed and spent.

Following a discussion in the Theology Coop, made up of local clergy, community workers and lay people from the Churches an idea emerged which I proposed at the meeting.

The suggestion was to take the Electoral Roll and divide the money by the number of households and then to give each household a share of the cash.

It seemed to me that if we adopted this strategy that soon the cash registers would jangle as the money was spent over the counters in the local stores and businesses in East Birmingham. That the enrichment of the local community would be clear and tangible and the administrative costs would be kept low.

People with money to spend would have significantly greater purchasing power, significantly less debt and significantly greater autonomy.

There was a moment when the the paymaster of the Task Force who had joined us from London for the meeting appeared to be taken with the idea and for one brief, heady moment I really thought that it might happen.

Now following the relative failure of Quantitive Easing, given that most of the money ended up uninvested and in the Bank or spent on Bonuses, that enriching, for Bankers, mechanism for distributing wealth amongst the already wealthy, the idea that stemmed from The East Birmingham Theology Coop may have its moment.

Now the idea, floated by commentators in a number of Newspapers including the FT, is proposed under the nom de plume:

Helicopter Money.

Instead of giving the cash to the banks, give it to the people and they will spend it, business will boom, cash registers will jangle and the economy will become healthy and well seasoned.

Sometimes the simple ideas are the most profound.

Maybe now as the welfare debate rumbles on it is time for another simple idea to be tested?

Just as the new Work and Pensions Minister announced that the Personal Independence Payment was to be protected along with pensions, education, and various other sacrosanct budget items, so arguments about intergenerational justice have been raised. Such as for example questions about the triple lock on pensions meaning not only that wealthy pensioners retained both bus passes and free TV licences but at a time of zero inflation pensions rose by 2.5%.

Welfare is expensive to administer, it is costly to the exchequer, it raises all the tedious questions about the value of benefits and the benefits of of paying people not to work, the shirkers and strivers argument so beloved of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It foments the painful and costly comparison between the deserving and the undeserving. So 'us' are set against 'them' and society strains to find the point of balance between need and justice.

The idea of a basic citizens income is surely about to find its moment?

It is being promoted and tested in Scandinavian Countries, it is being proposed in New Zealand and debated in Canada and nearer to home it is being explored just north of the Border in Scotland (another argument for Cumbria to edge out of England and into the arms of a more enlightened democracy?).

So what would it mean and how could it be afforded?

International arguments suggest that if tax remained constant or rather than be defined as progressive or regressive became much more neutral levied on incomes above a certain level at a flat rate, and if the whole welfare budget was consolidated. Then a fund could be created which would allow each individual to receive a basic citizens income.

For those who could live on that money at whatever level it was set, all well and good, for those who wished to increase their income the the citizens income element would remain and tax would be taken at the nationally agreed level on earnings.

The Citizens income could, as is proposed in Scotland, itself be graduated, a lower level for those under a certain age, whether in full time education or, a higher level for adults reflecting perhaps the level at which currently benefits are paid and for pensioners a level reflecting the current pension, which of course reflects the Citizen Wage in the sense that the State Pension is deducted from the personal allowance so that where the pensioners income is higher than the current personal threshold they pay tax on that higher pension income.

Like 'helicopter money' the Citizens Income has the distinct advantage of simplicity, but it is also equitable, it leaves room for those who wish to pursue their dreams to do so, it would encourage a whole new generation of song writers, poets, novelists and artists to emerge without the constraints imposed by the need to generate income to feed and clothe and house themselves. It also removes the difficult balance between welfare and work, where too frequently the actual tax paid in the transitional period approaches 100% as welfare tapers whilst work doesn't pay sufficient to compensate the loss of benefit.

If the Chancellor was a truly reforming politician in a truly reforming administration who wished seriously to address the anomalies, difficulties and challenges within welfare as it has slowly emerged from Beveridge's initial vision of a 'safety net' then a citizens income offers a truly radical answer, it has the potential for slicing open the Gordian Knot of Welfare.

4th February 2016

2016-02-04T07:55:00.001-08:00

How do politicians get themselves into such a mess?

Given the critical issues facing Europe at the moment, any one of which from money to migration, could result in an existential crisis for the European Community, with the Euro, the Schengen agreement, Grexit and Brexit, why decide that this is a good moment for a referendum?

Some commentators reckon, given that Osborne and Cameron had no real expectation of winning the last election, that they larded the manifesto with a variety of offers, none of which needed to be followed through, because failing to deliver on anything from welfare cuts, tax credits or a referendum on Europe could always be blamed on the Liberal Democrats in coalition.

Maybe so.

It is often said that we get the politicians that we deserve which raises the possibility that we must have been pretty bad in a previous life to deserve the politicians we have now.

Margaret Thatcher's legacy was the Poll Tax, accompanied by mass unemployment, de-industrialisation and the ascendency of financial sector together with its bonus culture.

Harold Wilson's legacy was the Open University.

Depending on the outcome of the forthcoming referendum what will David Cameron's legacy be?

An isolated and broken Britain, separated from Scotland and limping along with underinvestment, rising austerity and dependent for its energy supply on Chinese and French Companies with the profits generated recycled to China and France.

With the Brexit Campaign now led by Lord Lawson it is suggested by the media that the Tory Big Beasts will begin to snarl and roar in support of Britain exiting the European Union, big beasts they may be but they are also Little Englanders, resisting the powers of the European Parliament, to which we elect representatives, of deciding what can happen in the UK, legislation developed abroad and imposed is not, we are told repeatedly, acceptable and of all the anathemas the greatest is the dreaded social chapter.

But what is the story so far.

In 1986 I developed together with an Architect and craftsman, Rolf Rosner, himself a refugee from his native Germany who found a home and a welcome in the North East of England, a project that we called Benchmark, Benchmark recruited a group of young unemployed people and provided them, under Rolf's expert tuition, a grounding in Arts and Crafts, this led to an exhibition of work and helped the young people to develop their own practise or to move into employment following their exposure to Rolf's re-imagining of the European craft school environment from which he benefited as a young man.

This project was funded by the European Commission.

Other projects with which I became involved benefited equally from being associated with and part of the wider European Community.

I will be voting yes to remain part of Europe for four significant reasons:

The fact that the nations of Europe have co-existed peacefully since 1945. Prior to that date Europe had torn itself apart in two Great Wars and had all but bankrupted itself, its recovery enabled only by the effects of the Marshall Plan. Clearly there have been moments when nations have held their breath, the Balkan's post Tito and now the shifting tectonic plates of conflict in the Middle East and especially Syria, resulting in the displacement of generations caught in the crossfire and washed up on Europe's shores, but the agreement implied by the idea of a European identity transcending nationalism offers the hope that despite increasing right wing 'noises off', those who arrive will be welcomed and will enrich European society.

In retirement I have travelled in Europe and have benefited from the freedom offered by the Schengen Agreement, I have lived from time to time in both Italy and Spain, there is it seems to me a cultural freedom when travelling, whether by air, by train or by car. My wife is a wheelchair user and we have benefited from the support and assistance available across Europe, whether eating in a restaurant in Milan, wandering the streets of Genoa or Paris or Barcelona or sitting down to Paella in the Restaurante El Mirador in the El Chorro region of Andalusia in all of this there is a sense of becoming inculturated and experiencing the true benefit of being a European Citizen recognising yourself as the inheritor of a broader European sensibility.

One particular expression of the value of Europe and our membership of the European Union is the Diocese of Europe. Once known as the Diocese of Fulham and Gibraltar, the Diocese exists to serve the interests of what are sometimes known as ex pats. But whether it is framing and shaping a humane response to the tragedy of refugees from war, whether it is representing an open and inclusive sense of what at its best it means to be 'church' or whether it is celebrating the rich culture and way of life of different communities within Europe as a continent, the Diocese is at once a place where what it means to be part of a community of fellowship can be celebrated.

Fourthly, the economy. Britain is by definition on the periphery of Europe, we are an island nation. There is no doubt that in economic terms there are both centrifugal and centripetal forces at work. At the commercial and economic centre the Rhine-Ruhr conurbation is a key centre for manufacturing and those companies who wish to 'invest' in 'Europe' will seek to invest in that region, the economic effect of this will be on the one hand for money to flow into the centre and for the centre to become profitable but in order to ensure that markets remain viable it is politically essential that money and other benefits flow out. For Britain, a key peripheral market, it is essential that we remain active in both the political heart of Europe, Brussels and Strasbourg, that we continue to welcome those manufacturers who base themselves in Britain because of our access to European markets. But it is also essential that we become whole hearted in embracing our partners across Europe. America and Britain are sometimes described as two nations divided by a common language. Interestingly enough, despite the language differences across the nations of Europe it is becoming easier to communicate as English becomes the Lingua Franca of Europe.

As a nation we may be 'peripheral' geographically but increasingly if we choose to be we have the potential to be at the cultural centre of the emerging continent of new Europe. The Government has chosen to make our membership of Europe 'problematical' lets hope that the referendum situates us at the heart of the European project as it develops.

18th January 2016

2016-01-18T05:53:00.000-08:00

As the influence of Jeremy Corbyn moves the Labour Party membership towards the left of the political spectrum, often against the instincts of both his cabinet and back benchers, so the political right digs in deeper to secure its alliances with the worlds of finance, media and business.

Last week I settled down to watch back to back episodes of Silent Witness on iPlayer.

At first as my attention was caught by the developing story line I could see how the current recruitment of Jihadi's might have its roots in the deeper history linking back, as the storyline did, to atrocities carried out in Bosnia in the early 1990's.

But, as the story unfolded it became increasingly clear that I was watching pure, shameless propaganda.

The question underpinning the concept of 'Estates' is essentially: Who is fit to Govern society?

In Europe generally, and in France especially, the First Estate was the Church, which is why the Lord's spiritual, even today sit in the House of Lords.

The Second Estate was the nobility, the Lords, who sit with Bishops in the House of Lords.

The Third Estate was everyone else, who at the start of the French revolution numbered 27 Million!

In England, and Scotland, the third estate is represented by the House of Commons made up as it is of those elected by the population at large to Govern in the interests of, and for the welfare of, the people as a whole.

Over the years and into the 20th and 21st Centuries a 'Fourth Estate' emerged compromising the news media and especially print journalism, as a sub-text to this, the emergence of bloggers and outlets such as independentoped.com, can sometimes be seen as a 'Fifth Estate', although some in parliament might see it as a 'Fifth Column".

These 'Estates' have held sway for generations, where I live in Cumbria the name tithe or Tithe Barn, or Glebe or Glebe Field is a constant reminder of the role and power of the Church as 'First Estate', when a tenth of the harvest was collected and held for the benefit of the Church. But this power has waned to the point where the gathering of Lords Spiritual in Westminster looks increasingly anachronistic and the Churches isolation in areas such as Human Sexuality, Gender and especially in what is usually called 'Gay' marriage, leave it exposed to a lack of public sympathy which is fast becoming for the Church of England an existential crisis.

Ironically, it is the second estate, represented by the House of Lords, that is becoming the unofficial, if not only, opposition to the Government of the day. In the matter of Tax Credits recently it was the Lords who called on the Government to rethink and now the issue of funding of opposition parties and the Government's blatant attempt to secure its own position and weaken the Oppositions by challenging Union funding of the Labour Party and the reduction of what is known as 'Short Money' all of which has been traditionally a Cross Party issue, but which was announced by the Chancellor in his most recent statement as a 'done deal'.

But it is not only the Church which is facing an existential crisis, Parliament itself is becoming increasingly divided as Labour engages in a battle of conscience over the renewal of Trident and the Conservatives battle over to Brexit or not.

Add into this mix, the attacks on welfare and benefits, the bizarre and unsustainable attack on those who wish to seek safety and security in Britain but who are being told that they must earn above £35k annually, £10K above the minimum wage, to stay here if they wish to work as nurses, health care workers, teachers or Barrista's.

When in the early 18th Century France's Third Estate rose to overthrow the First and Second Estates its battle cry was Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.

The soundtrack for the revolution was the rattle of the wheels of the Tumbril's on the wet cobbles, the crashing of the guillotine and the clicking of knitting needles. In Manchester during August 1819, the sound of screams, the thunder of horses hooves, the rattle of Sabres was the soundtrack as Cavalry, the Second Estates storm troopers, charged a crowd of 70,000 people at St Peter's Field as they gathered to demand Parliamentary reform.

Today, as the Davros economic forum opens for business, Oxfam reports that a mere 62 people own more than 50% of the world population.

Divisions have become so glaringly wide that they are now a disgrace which must be addressed urgently, if the world is going to continue to do its business on a daily basis without disintegrating into chaos as the Ponzi economies collapse as though we have all been playing a game of surreal Monopoly.

But is the Fourth Estate up to the job? Do we have a free press? The BBC, as a public service corporation is meant to be fair and independent, it has been criticised by both this Government and the previous coalition Government as being biased and there are suggestions that its funding arrangements and its franchise should be challenged, secret meetings between Richard Murdoch and George Osborne have been rumoured.

However as recent programmes have indicated the Corporation demonstrates a clear bias against the Labour Parties leadership in its news and current affairs output, as have other red tops, tabloids and print journalism, but the BBC in its entertainment shows such as Silent Witness, demonstrates clearly that whoever you are, whatever community you may belong to, you may well be depicted unfairly and inaccurately, entertainment as propaganda is as insidious as it is wrong.

30th December 2015

2015-12-30T04:49:00.002-08:00

So this is the last Blog of 2015.

Here's hoping for a better 2016.

Storm Frank came and went, the rain rained, the wind blew and the storm defences alongside our stream, consisting of interlinked perforated metal barriers covered with plastic sheeting held down by chains, sandbags and clips, were blown apart by the wind, the plastic sheeting ripped off and the perforated metal left utterly useless as a flood defence.

The next storm will be 'G' and should be called 'George' in honour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the eighteenth storm could be called 'Rory' in honour of the beleaguered minister for floods.

The weather is unpredictable, unmanageable and has been until recently un-forecastable.

Years ago a friend of mine was hosting his church garden fete, so he rang the weather centre at Newcastle Airport in order to check whether it would be safe to plan to hold the fete outdoors, he was reassured but advised to check back on the day which he did, in the morning he was told that a weather front was coming in and that he might be better remaining indoors, two hours later the front had moved direction instead of heading down the South Tyne valley it appeared to be veering North so outside would be good, two hours before the fete he was given the all clear, at Three pm as the Mayor opened the Fete, it rained.

Forecasting is now more scientific and therefore more accurate but Storm Frank, as Eva and Desmond before it, went its own way and is now as I write well out of the way, somewhere near Iceland, with 100 mph winds and about to drop a weather bomb on the North Pole which will raise temperatures by 50% whilst, ironically, making the weather in the UK 'more seasonal!

The unpredictability of weather has its economic parallel.

There is a consensus that Margaret Thatcher changed the political 'weather' by forcing a review of the post war settlement which had been introduced in the aftermath of the Second World War, during a time when the 'political weather' was clement, Thatcher was able to introduce her vision of a free market as that 'weather' changed.

But alongside this the freeing of the market carried with it a view that, like the weather, it was free to move and shift as it chose, controls were anathema and the essential purpose of Government was to encourage the entrepreneurs to make money, which they did of course, but not by making things, as new financial instruments were imagined, money just made money and the dole queues grew longer.

The argument was made that as the wealthy became wealthier so the benefits would trickle or drip down but the evidence (rejected and denied by Thatcher and her Tory supporters) suggested that all that ever 'dripped down' were the chilly waters of increasing poverty which floated the boats of the wealthiest on a rising tide but which overwhelmed and sank the boats of the less well off.

I am grateful to my friend Andy Smith the playwright who wrote in his piece 'all that is solid melts into air' commissioned and performed in Bergen in 2011, for drawing my attention to the quotation which is from The Communist Manifesto.

As Andy writes in the play:

'..... what happens to us when capitalism takes hold. When our values change. When our relationship with things and each other starts to alter. When our infrastructures break down'.

These are the questions that Marx and Engels posed in their text.

Whether it's weather or capitalism it seems the results are very much the same.

Recent floods have brought out the very best in people whether in Carlisle or York or Hebden Bridge but there have been reports of looting, of opportunists seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of deepening others misery.

Insurance companies step back.

Payments are withheld or delayed.

The Prime Minister says he will do, in his classic of cameronspeak 'The Right Thing".

Rory Stewart appears on television standing in flooded streets saying that the defences worked, until they didn't work.

Spending on flood defences has been reduced because the thing with austerity is that we are all in it together.

And relationships change, I know that its not Syria but during the storms I felt under siege, my hatches were battened, driving home from visiting family I drove through flood water and was not at all sure what I would find when I arrived at my front door (still dry, Phew!).

Phone calls from friends not affected by Desmond were welcome only for their communities to be flooded by Eva.

Street after street of skips filled with the detritus of lives a stark reminder that our relationships, with both things and each other have changed.

The storms have impacted on the infrastructure, whether it is stores closed after flooding Tesco, Sainsbury, whether the services, whose funding has been cut back and back again, overstretched and unable to cope, hospitals struggling to find beds, A&E rooms under siege, local authorities stretched beyond their capacity to provide services, as major centres 'Northern Powerhouses'? left with City Centres under unprecedented depths of contaminated water.

The link between extreme weather and extreme ideological politics is pretty clear as the one impacts to reveal the weakness of the other .......

7th December 2015

2015-12-07T08:19:00.001-08:00

Who on earth had the bright idea of giving storms names, and whoever thought that Desmond would be a good name?

At least Abigail had the dubious merit of being a fairly bad pun, as in Abbey Gale, my fellow student in Durham was called Keith Gale and was always known as Windy to his friends at college.

But Desmond?

Where was the pun in that unless some meteorologist who has been a lifelong Beatles fan had the thought:

ob-la-di, ob-la-dah
The wind goes on, bra
La-la, how the rain goes on

And remembered Desmond?

Maybe, if its left to the same meteorologist the next storm will be called Molly?

Life in Cumbria, in the Eden Valley in particular,this weekend was a life under siege.

I recognise that across the world far worse man made events are tearing communities apart and I find myself making an emotional connection between the start of the bombing campaign in Syria and what was happening around me.

Desmond certainly made it personal. Despite living in a flood zone with a feeder stream for the Eden flowing through our garden and the swirling waters from the Eden cutting our village off and closing the main A69 Trunk Road, our feet remained dry as the water flowed past our house, but the wind, the wind .....

My motorcycle was blown over and then swept by the wind sidelong along the ground and into the back of my car.

In lashing rain and driving wind I had to stand the bike back up and then secure it to the side of the house.

ob-la-di, ob-la-dah
The wind goes on, bra
La-la, how the rain goes on

On and on, to set new a record following the previous record which coincided with the floods of 2005 and this despite the Millions of pounds that have been spent on flood defences. Hundreds of homes destroyed again, hundreds of families made homeless again, hundreds of businesses affected again and the Old Fire Station, flooded in 2005 and then rebuilt and opened as an Arts Centre a year ago, flooded again as the centre of Carlisle was devastated by Desmond and his ob-la-di, ob-la-dah.

Apparently, again, according to David Cameron, money is no object and following his Cobra Meeting he arrives in Cumbria to share the pain.

His 'Vicar in Cumbria', Rory Stewart who is also floods minister, in an interview with the parish magazine stated:

The flood defences built since 2005, had given authorities more time to evacuate people and kept flood levels down.

The defences 'held strong' but the huge levels of rain were too much for them.

Who is going to ask the question why were there 'huge levels of rain'?

Standing in the driving rain on Saturday night, holding onto my hat whilst water dripped off my coat and into my boots, I was talking to a neighbour whose husband was loading sand bags into their car in order to seal their doors and stop the water invading their property, we were asking the basic question, what is causing this? Why is it happening?

In Paris the nations debate climate change whilst here in Cumbria we are experiencing it.

Doubtless in the Cobra Committee David Cameron will continue to dismiss 'green crap' and his Vicar on Earth, the Minister for Flooding will continue to rehearse the party line and just blame, well, the weather, of course.

But surely as these events increase and as the world warms to the point where in some places life is made impossible because of heat and aridity and other places, like Cumbria, it is made impossible by winds and rain and flooding courtesy of a storm called Desmond even the Eton educated Mr Cameron and his equally Eton educated Mr Stewart even if they ignored meteorology in favour of politics also undertook some study in logical thinking, putting two and two together and making sense of what is happening around them?

26th November 2015

2015-11-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

What on earth is going on?

A recent exchange of emails with my MP resulted in his repeating the Low Tax, Low Welfare, High Wage economy mantra.

My response:

Your reply to my recent email is both patronising and wrong in all aspects.

We are now being subjected to the most ill considered social experiment, conducted by Millionaires , as though it were a set test at Eton.

How can you destroy 70 years of social progress in one parliament?

This Government, of which you are a part, is taking us back to the 1930's whilst protecting your friends the bankers and tax dodgers.

This is even more than the Grantham Grocer's daughter dared to imagine in her wildest dreams.

I suggested that we might meet and he responded with an invitation to meet him at one of his surgeries, even suggesting dates before Christmas.

But now it seems that with a further £27 Billion, a hypothetical £27 Billion as various commentators have noticed, being found behind a hypothetical settee or Green Bench, we are it seems being offered a high welfare, high tax (especially if you are a second home owner or buying to let) economy with wages still below the level that they were in 2008.

This Autumn Statement was a breathtaking act of legerdemain, with rabbits in hats, silk scarves being waved to deceive the eye and the political trickery outshining the economic sense and coins materialising out of thin air.

Where was the investment in the future?

Now nurses lose their grants and are offered loans.

Young people are discouraged at all levels.

A social housing programme which is ultimately without meaning.

There is little evidence of research in technology, science, engineering what we have in fact to look forward too in the light of this budget is a low investment, low return, client economy, with the investment such as its is being made by foreign governments.

The shadow chancellor's reference to Mao's little red book may have been a ham fisted but it contained more than a kernel of truth which, unfortunately the China loving chancellor was able to capitalise on. But the long view that is contained in Mao's vision of the struggle to defeat capitalism and introduce socialism continues to inform the Chinese Government in its global strategy.

What could be smarter than taking a leading share holding in Britain's energy supply in the years ahead?

As the Red Book says:

We communists never conceal our political views.

As for imperialist countries, we should unite with their peoples and strive to co-exist peacefully with those countries, do business with them and strive to prevent any possible war, but under no circumstances should we harbour any unrealistic notions about them.

Even, I imagine, whilst drinking beer and eating fish and chips in a Cotswold pub.

The autumn statement was a series of sound bites designed to capture headlines and in this it was a triumph, but what will happen next?

The building industry has shortages not only in raw materials, from steel to bricks, but also a shortage in skilled workers, from bricklayers to site managers. It is doubtful whether, beyond the headlines, the houses will be built but in the anti revolutionary fervour which underpins the small state society and economy toward which the Tories seek to lead us that won't matter because as 2020 comes around, as the music stops in the game of musical chairs played at the Tory Party Conference, he will blame him or him or him or they will all blame her.

The mantra of high wage, low tax, low welfare is a smokescreen to cover the obvious and barely concealed shifting of the social and economic landscape as greater inequality is achieved through enormous and unjustifiable bonuses for bankers and huge and salary hikes for CEO's.

Alongside the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction leading to the invasion of Iraq, Peter Mandelson's comment about being relaxed about the rich contributed hugely to Tony Blair's undoing.

So there should be, in any decent, contemporary society, a relationship between the earnings of those at either end of the wage spectrum, views about what that relationship should be vary but a recent suggestion was a range of 1-20 with 1 being the lowest and 20 being the highest.

Whilst there is no evidence at all that the Tory Party shares this view, of course not! The evidence published by The Equality Trust plus other commentators is that a more equal society is a society that flourishes socially, educationally, and in the physical and mental health and well-being of its citizens.

In today's newspaper's the left suggested that there had been a U Turn and whilst welfare will still be reduced, (the devil in the detail) nevertheless the age of austerity is officially over, whilst the right decried the budget as 'socialist' more or less what Ed Miliband might have done if the public had been foolish enough to return him to power.

My view when I see Chancellor and Prime Minister side by side enjoying the joke of having caused such discomfort to the opposition, that this is simply an exercise lifted almost entirely from the edition of a Tom Brown's Schooldays that I missed.

I wrote some years ago in the Church Action on Poverty newsletter that if you replaced the word 'Victorian' with the word 'Dickensian' then the effect of Tory policies in the 1980's becomes clearer.

Victoria we are told 'was not amused' and neither should we be ........

9th November 2015

2015-11-09T06:05:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Jane Smiley's trilogy in which she follows a family for a hundred years, from 1920 to 2020.

The research that went into this novel was comprehensive and is evident in the narrative as it unfolds.

Each chapter, and there are a hundred spread over three books, is titled with the year that it covers.

The novel unfolds with family members being born and dying, experiencing tragedy and success, loving and being loved, but all the time being shaped and changed and challenged by external events.

The historical chapters faithfully reflect the events as they occurred in each respective year but as 2015 gives way to 2016 and through to 2020 there is a fascinating and subtle change to the events described and their impact on the family.

Smiley did not anticipate the outcome of the elections in Canada and quite sensibly did not reflect on the impact of the anti-austerity movement in Europe probably because it had little consequence in America.

But two geo-political phenomena dominate both the historic developments as the author describes their effect on her families and their possible effects from 2016 onwards.

These phenomena are Global Warming and the political strength of China.

As I read the final chapters I began to develop a deep pessimism about the future as it is emerging under the current British Government, as Global Warming reaches a tipping point beyond which it becomes irreversible and as we sign deals with the Chinese Government whilst apparently severing our links with Europe so the list of discontents, not just with Globalisation a la Stiglitz but with our own elected government and the outcomes of austerity as it impacts on individuals and families, lengthens.

Inequality increases as manufacturing declines, as the service sector enlarges and financial services are freed from control or supervision so wealth flows towards the rich increasing inequality and limiting the life choices of those without resources.

A recently published OECD Report indicates that income inequality has risen (is rising) in Britain faster than in other rich nations.

The reason for this increase in inequality is given as the rise of a 'financial services elite' concentrating wealth into the hands of a tiny minority.

Peter Mandelson may well have been relaxed about individuals becoming extremely wealthy but it is becoming clearer and clearer that the outcome of money flowing into the pockets of the wealthy and somehow mysteriously replicating itself is a deeply unjust and unequal society, a society that is not at ease with itself, a society that could be described as broken.

Changing things is not easy when the manicured hands of those with the money and the power rest on the levers which can make change happen.

In my neighbourhood I notice that the balance of ownership and renting is changing, those who own the asset hold on to it, better to rent than sell, better for whom? But that is the equation. As house prices rise it makes all kind of sense to hold on to the asset and through letting to derive an income from it.

And as social housing is sold off through right to buy so choice becomes more limited for those households seeking to access the market and the private sector adjusts itself accordingly.

And what is happening at the local and community level is reflected at the global.

Public ownership is rejected in favour of private except that the so called private investors are themselves publicly owned so as China signs an agreement to build our nuclear energy future we hand over our energy dependency to the Government of China.

We can march, campaign, write letters to editors, blog, protest, pray and with luck, in five years time, vote for change.

But the damage will have been done.

The low paid will be paid even less, inequality will be deeper.

Affordable houses will remain unbuilt.

We may no longer be part of Europe.

The coastline of the UK may start to look very different as the oceans rise and the storm blowing outside my window will if anything be blowing more fiercely.

I buy my energy and telephony from energy and telephony co-operatives they are successful but if the economic and political climate changes who knows?

Even more scarily, although apparently I read in today's Guardian that someone under eighty should not be referred too as elderly, nevertheless I will be older and possibly more reliant on health care being available free at the point of need.

In her novel Jane Smiley asks through one of her characters 'have we lived through a golden age?'

That is indeed the title of the third book.

I was born before the NHS was founded in 1948, I was a baby boomer, I lived and grew up in a welfare state that I learnt to take for granted whilst appreciating and valuing the real benefits that it provided for me and my family, I can say that in my lifetime I have lived through a golden age.

It is however hard to imagine what future generations will experience.

31st October 2015

2015-10-31T09:09:00.001-07:00

In 1983 Neil Kinnock warned people against embracing Margaret Thatcher as the next Prime Minister with his warning, 'Not to be ordinary. Not to be young,. Not to fall ill. Not to be old.

Thirty two years after the electorate ignored his warning and despite the intervening years of New Labour ascendancy with Blair and Brown, his words ring truer that ever and apply to an ever wider cross section of the electorate.

There is certainly little reward today in being a steelworker, in being low-paid, in being an immigrant or asylum seeker, in being young, in falling ill or becoming elderly.

The current furore over tax credits, a constitutional crisis according to Cameron and Osborne more accurately described by Jeremy Corbyn as a crisis for three million families.

Despite repeating his question six times Cameron avoided answering six times, repeating instead the current mantra of the Tory Party:

A high-pay, low-tax, low-welfare economy.

This meaningless phrase sits alongside the other meaningless phrase repeated again and again by this Tory Government of a country:

Living within its means.

Apart from the sight and sound of two millionaires lecturing people on the need to live within their means, (and George Osborne and David Cameron are not the only millionaires on millionaire row, the net worth of the Tory front bench is estimated at 70 Million with 18 of the 29 members of the Cabinet also qualifying as Millionaires) it is the hollowness of the phrases that emerge in the debates about hard working families when all the evidence points clearly to the fact that most of those three million who rely on tax credits are the very same people who work hard to earn their poverty.

Over the five years of the Tory led coalition wages in fact stagnated or fell back so that it is only now that wages are approaching levels last seen at the end of the New Labour era. So far from actually delivering a high wage economy the pursuit of austerity has resulted in lower investment, lower wages, and lower productivity.

The rhetoric employed by Cameron and Osborne is empty and hollow, we do not have a high-pay economy and are unlikely to see one emerge any time soon. The proposed national living wage is nothing more than a trick with mirrors, legerdemain, sleight of hand and as our manufacturing capacity collapses (first we sell it to Asian Businessmen who finally, because they cannot make a profit and there is no Government support withdraw because it is their only realistic option, why go down with a sinking ship?) so we become increasingly reliant on service industries or as Cameron suggested, self-employment, neither of which sectors offer the possibility of transforming a families budget overnight.

Alongside death, taxation is one of the few things of which we can be certain in this life. For Daniel Defoe, in his 1726 book, The Political History of the Devil, only: things as certain as death and taxes can be more firmly believed unless of course you are someone who is considered to be outside the circle of those subject to a shared responsibility for contributing to the, common good, so the better connected you are, the better your lawyers are, dependent on where you base your head office or where you claim to be trading from and which country, you may or may not pay tax, HMRC will doubtless cut you a deal and the cabinet will look out for its own.

As Leona Helmsley was quoted during her trial, We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.

Low taxes for some then.

But welfare also needs, according to Cameron and Osborne to be lowered, because as a country we need to, live within our means.

How is welfare to be lowered? What is welfare? How are our means determined?

Britain is in fact a rich country, determined by both our domestic product and spending power Britain is the second largest economy in Europe, and fifth and tenth respectively in the world.

Because our manufacturing base has eroded with jobs exported both to Europe and to Asia so our service economy has grown and in particular financial services. Alongside this re balancing of our economy, because money flows into the single largest financial services centre in the UK, London so London has become more prosperous and wealth has gravitated South. Alongside this process so inequality has grown, the rich have become richer (as have the poor) but the imbalance has grown larger and larger as the rich become richer still.

As a nation living within our means would be relatively easy if our means were distributed more fairly and concepts like the Common Good, were owned by those who through good fortune, inheritance, hard work or simple luck had achieved a more financially secure position.

Welfare is often taken to mean benefits, it certainly appears to be the mission of Ian Duncan Smith to define welfare as benefits, and with each new measure he introduces so benefits are reduced whether by singling out those with a spare room, or those who, through disability find work difficult or impossible he focuses our attention on benefits. But welfare is more, far more than benefits.

In 1945 the rhetoric of the Labour Government was rich and challenged the nations conscience. homes for heroes, education for all, treatment free at the point of need. It was a vision for which people of this country had fought two bitter wars, it was the Kingdom of Bevan.

It was the earnest socially rooted vision of a society that was just and fair, and I benefited from it.

The nightmare (it is certainly not a vision) of Cameron and Osborne is of a society increasingly divided between rich and poor, a society at odds with itself, a society where the young bear the weight of student debt into their adult lives, a society where home ownership becomes a remote financial possibility, a society of uncertainty and insecurity, a society of mac job's, serving lattes to machismo bankers.

The key to understanding welfare is to define the word:

Welfare, as defined in the OED means: the health, happiness and fortunes of a person or group.

The question facing Cameron and Osborne is not Jeremy Corbyn's question it is Neil Kinnock's.

In what way will a high pay, low tax, low welfare economy bring health, happiness and fortune to children, to young people entering adult life, to families in work or out, to the sick, to the elderly?

7th October 2015

2015-10-07T05:28:00.001-07:00

I cannot bear to watch the news this week.

The Tory Party parading its narrow minded mendacity in Manchester.

Even the Guardian Newspaper has no choice but to report what is being said from the platform which makes for difficult reading.

If it is possible to draw any comfort from this pantomime of the vanities which is being played out in Manchester it comes from Greece, not the Greece of anti-austerity Syriza and Yanis Varoufakis, but the Greece of Herodotus.

Herodotus, a Greek Historian, born in Turkey in 485 BC.

Herodotus was credited with inventing history as a form of critical study and in his writings drew attention to the two great Tectonic Plates of History.

Hubris and Nemesis.

So I take comfort from my Herodotus as I see the pictures and the read the reports of the drama being played out in Manchester: Ian Duncan Smith advising the disabled to work (whilst showing no understanding of the tragedy that disability can mean for the individual so affected and their families), or Theresa May vilifying the stranger and the refugee in our midst (and being criticised not only by charities but by the IoD!) or George Osborne, declaring that Jeremy Corbyn spoke at a fringe meeting (as he will continue to do for the next five years), or David Cameron announcing how house building will start happening once builders can build for sale and not for rent.

And all this rhetoric set against the realities of what is happening not only Globally with climate change and conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan which is displacing people from the Middle East and Africa, but what is happening locally in the lives of those affected by the reductions in Tax Credits, the increase in food bank dependency, the closure of the steel works in Redcar.

I make no great claims at understanding what fundamental shifts are taking place in the economy either in the UK or in China, but what is clear as I read Piketty and Stiglitz is that as inequality grows so the future becomes more precarious and as automation and technological change advance relentlessly, so precariousness shifts its way up the social strata from blue to white collar workers and obscene wealth aggregates to what we now call the 1%.

Manchester was the scene for the Peterloo Massacre which happened on the 16th August 1819.

Poor economic conditions and a lack of suffrage in Northern England resulted in a demonstration held in St Peter's Fields in Manchester.

Some 60 - 80, 000 people gathered to protest and listen to speeches. The Magistrates deployed the Military to disperse the crowd and a Cavalry Charge with drawn sabres killed 15 people and injured over 500.

The tragedy was christened Peterloo in an ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo fours years earlier.

Clearly the Tory Party have chosen Manchester to emphasise their aim of stealing Labour's ideas and promoting the Northern Powerhouse under the Chairmanship of postman's son. Lord Adonis, who despite his name is not, as far as I know, Greek.

As neither was Herodotus, but his survey of Greek History serves to remind us that if there is one great truth to be drawn from history, and this should perhaps be a warning when the Tory Leadership is unable to treat the Labour Leadership with the courtesy that fellow MP's should offer one another, that Hubris is always followed by Nemesis.

So, and it is a small comfort, but I take comfort from seeing and hearing Tory Hubris at its loudest and most grating in Manchester, because I know that it will end in tears.

10th September 2015

2015-09-16T04:20:00.001-07:00

To start with a bit of biography.

I was born in 1945 in Ashton under Lyne.

My Father was still in the RAF and my Mother brought me home to the house that they had somehow managed to buy in Crossland Road, Droylsden, Manchester.

She was not a single mother but for two years until he was demobilised she saw little of my Father and relied on the support of her Mother who lived just round the corner in High Street.

At the end of Crossland Road was a Mill.

Saxon Mill was built in 1906 for the Saxon Mill Company, it was a large four story building 18 bays long and 14 bays wide and was built of Accrington Brick with some Sandstone detailing.

Amongst my earliest memories was of the noise of the Mill Workers rushing down Crossland Road for the start of their shift, their clogs and heavy shoes drumming on the pavement disturbing my sleep.

Our days were punctuated by the sound of the Mill's hooter declaring the start and end of the shifts each day.

By the time my family moved across Manchester to Gorton, the Mill was still working and employed fifty three people, it no longer wove Cotton as it had switched to Rayon in the 1950's.

My Father died in 2014 in Australia where he was living with his second wife.

After the funeral my sister and I repatriated his ashes and interred them in the family grave in Droylsden.

I took my family to see the house in Crossland Road and was astonished to see that there was no trace of the Mill which had dominated the view from our house and in its place stood a modern housing estate.

For me this is just one example of the changes that have transformed the world, the spinning and weaving of cotton was exported along with manufacturing generally, as part of a long transition in the process of what we now call, globalisation.

Recently I needed a new part for my Motorcycle which is itself a 'grey' import from either Japan where it was manufactured or America, I bought the part on eBay (where I bought the bike) and it is being shipped, free, from China.

For my Father who swapped his RAF uniform for the uniform of a Manchester Corporation bus driver the changes which led him to swapping his home in Manchester for his new home in Perth, WA, were in 1947 when he was demobilised, unimaginable, yet they happened and the process continues and so it would seem to me that the changes that I have experienced in my lifetime will also continue to influence the futures not only of my children but my grandchildren also.

It is clear also that the underlying engine of GDP which drives Capitalism forward will also continue to change and transform peoples lives unless Capitalism can be checked. As average wages decline the rewards claimed by those who Chair Boards and manage companies increase exponentially so inequality increases. As the present British Government continues to privatise the national assets which were introduced in 1945 offering opportunities to their supporters to maximise profits at the expense of the majority of individuals, so the risk of deepening inequality continues with all the attendant socio-economic risks, as we move from a manufacturing economy to an economy predicated on increasing personal indebtedness.

Essentially the swapping of public debt for personal debt is the essential project which underpins austerity it is a 'political' choice.

I am essentially disenfranchised because I choose to live in a constituency where with the best will in the world my vote counts for nothing because the local MP who represents my constituency will always be re-elected if the other parties persist in standing in opposition, not to the Conservative candidate, but to each other.

With the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party I begin to see an opportunity for a new kind of politics, a politics of hope.

We need a progressive, anti-austerity alliance to emerge in order that in 2020 we can look toward the real possibility of a Government governing in the interests of the 99% rather than the 1%, a government that can occupy the public square in the interests of people offering peace, security and equality.

To demonstrate how this might happen in my constituency of Penrith and the Borders I started with the figures:

This safe seat has been held by the Conservatives since the 1920's

In 2015 Rory Stewart polled 26202 votes or 59.7% of votes cast..

Labour came second with 6308 or 14.4% of the vote, so far so bad.

Given the general collapse of the Liberal vote nationally, only a few years ago they came second in this constituency, it is wiser to count the votes of all the main parties including UKIP who whilst not a progressive party may to some extent include an anti austerity impulse and there were 'other' candidates who secured another 5% of the vote or 2303.

The results in total then, were Conservative 26202, others 20202, still not a progressive victory in fact Mr Stewart could well be seen to be both safe and secure in 2012.

But that is not the whole of the story.

In 2011 the Boundary Commission estimated the Electorate Figures for the Constituency as 65234 suggesting that some 21313 of the electorate either chose not to vote, were unable to vote or felt that voting was simply a waste of time.

If those who chose not to vote voted in the same percentage proportion as those who did vote then again Mr Stewart would be home and dry. But it is not unreasonable to imagine that would not be the case, because like me those who chose not to vote might have felt disenfranchised.

If the 21313 could be persuaded to vote or if indeed 7000 could, and if they voted for a progressive anti austerity party then Penrith and the Borders my not be such a safe Conservative seat and Mr Stewart might be looking for new employment in 2020.

27th August 2015

2015-08-27T04:58:00.001-07:00

It was Margaret Thatcher who thought that her greatest legacy was New Labour.

If this is true, and it certainly sounds as though it could be, then it is a sad reflection on what happened during the three terms that Blair won for Labour.

New Labour was never a Tory Administration, not even as some would now say, Tory Lite.

But in its determination to hold the centre ground, despite some progressive policies, it allowed the centre ground to shift to the right politically and economically.

Relaxed about the super rich, happy to allow the wealthy to buy their way into Education Provision or Health Provision, happy to allow public services to be privatised.

In the end, when the banks failed and the wealthy fled taking their money with them, their debt was socialised and now increasingly we are seeing welfare privatised.

And now the Labour Party is riven by ideological divisions with Charles Clarke referring to Jeremy Corbyn as a 'continuity Benn/nutter' candidate.

Well, how true is this?

Continuity Benn?

Benn saw clearly how the Civil Service can frustrate policies and decisions of popularly elected governments.

He identified the centralised nature of the Labour Party which resulted in it becoming the personal fiefdom of its leader.

He drew attention to the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by the use of crude economic pressure on Government.

And warned against a media which was always on the side of those who enjoy economic privilege.

Well it seems to me that if this is an accurate reflection of Benn's political views and it was, he reflected, these four points that made him move to the left of politics, then there is little here with which anyone can disagree.

These four principles are pretty key to understanding British political life, the Civil Service continues to exercise disproportionate influence, with the Treasury standing as the key arbiter of what can and cannot be 'afforded'.

The Labour Party has introduced one member one vote leading to an almighty row, a witch hunt, claims of hard left Trotsky style infiltration resulting in what? Corbyn 'the nutter'?

Economic Pressure? What happened during the Scottish Devolution Campaign? Banks and Businesses threatening to leave, which was 'crude economic pressure' if there ever was.

And, from Blair as Godfather to Murdoch's young daughter to the friendships between David Cameron and Rebecca Brooks and the famous 'fast, unpredictable ride' texts, who can deny the role of the press in raising up and bringing down individuals who can be famous one moment and infamous the next.

If Corbyn is elected, and if there is no coup and if he is able to form an opposition, then Trident, PFI and Women only Railway Carriages will be the least of his problems.

He will face a Civil Service committed to maintaining the Status as close to the Quo as possible.

He will face a Parliamentary Labour Party itching to take control back from the Trotskyites, which is it seems most of those who have voted Corbyn.

The more clearly it becomes, with China facing its economic meltdown, that capitalism is transforming itself into post capitalism, the economic pressure to stay with austerity until wages in the third world rise to meet wages in the west as they fall, as non-workers i.e. those who used to work in Blue Collar jobs, most of which have fallen out of the economy to be replaced with fewer high tech jobs and an increase in low paid service jobs, are blamed for claiming welfare the economic pressure to keep the billionaires in luxury so that they can continue to afford to buy the goods advertised in the FT's How To Spend It Magazine will continue and any attempt to resist will hailed as Class War.

And the Media will continue to exercise an influence.

I did on one occasion have supper at a table in Somerset House, our host on that occasion was Charles Clarke, he seemed to me to be a gracious host and committed to ensuring that the Government of which he was a part supported the working people who had elected it.

So his comments seemed a little to quote the title of his recent lectures 'The too difficult Box'

Clarke is of the view that politicians fail if they can't identify the problem, the solution, identify the implementation strategy needed, where the vested interests are, what the legal constraints are, how to bring in legislation and if they lack political energy.

So continuity Benn/Nutter? Not a good call!

I think Corbyn is strong on both analysis and prescription and is channelling the zeitgeist of those who have had enough of blaming the poor, austerity and socialising the indebtedness of failed banks.

11th August 2015

2015-08-11T03:54:00.000-07:00

Last week I was invited to a meeting by Tom Watson.

The meeting, in Carlisle, was in the Ballroom of a City Centre Hotel.

The meeting was poorly attended. Most seats were empty and those attending appeared to be members of the Carlisle CLP.

The meeting was Chaired by the Candidate for Carlisle who was defeated in the last election by the sitting Conservative Candidate John Stevenson, during the meeting the person next to me played patience on their iPhone.

I live in Penrith and the Borders Constituency and there was no-one I recognised amongst those attending.

Tom's pitch was based around three topics:

Why did we lose the last election?

What are the issues of current concern?

What is the job description for a Deputy Leader?

During his opening presentation Tom Watson rehearsed much that was familiar to those who monitor the election, post-election and party political coverage in The Guardian.

Labour lost because it did badly in Scotland, because it lost the centre ground, because many traditional Labour voters voted for Ukip, and because it failed to answer the question about the deficit.

All of which is true, but is it the whole story?

I suspect that it lost the election long before May and it lost it because the public believed the Cameron/Osborne narrative rather than the Miliband/Balls narrative.

Certainly the discussion in the room reflected a general consensus around welfare cuts, immigration and the NHS.

One comment, that siding with the Tories over Scottish independence was a mistake and that in the debate about Europe it is crucial that Labour has a clear and distinctive story of its own to tell seemed to me to reflect much more accurately the problem that Miliband had and that three of the current candidates for the leadership also reflect.

It is also clear that the centre ground has shifted to the right, so that rehearsing traditional Labour views about welfare, nationalisation and health sound dangerously left wing.

Which is of course why Jeremy Corbyn's success has engendered such panic amongst the former big beasts of the Labour Party.

Watson would not be drawn on who he supported for the leadership but he offered a 'job description' for the job of Deputy Leader that was essentially creating a bridge between strategy and delivery that ensured that the leadership could and would hear the concerns of party members and members would be in the loop as strategy was developed.

He made it clear that he could work with whoever was elected.

So what next?

Well the membership of the Labour Party has increased and it looks increasingly likely that Jeremy Corbyn could win in the first round.

Will this be the disaster that many predict?

My heart, and increasingly my head, tells me that this won't be the case.

As Yvette Cooper has said: 'the Tories lied to the electorate' and it is this fundamental dishonesty that places politics and election victories before policies that mean real and significant improvements in peoples lives, which needs challenging by the next leader of the Labour Party.

What is necessary, it seems to me, is for a programme to be developed that promotes a genuine living wage, rather than a renamed minimum wage, which will mean for businesses, customers who have more to spend and for the economy increased income tax revenue flowing into the Treasury.

Alongside this a home building programme that obviates the need for selling off social housing, that creates jobs and doesn't just mean huge bonuses for the bosses of building companies.

Again, the shift to a reliance on financial services which began under Thatcher needs to be re-balanced back towards manufacturing with emerging businesses supported by a public investment bank.

Add an investment in the public ownership of the railways and the country and the economy begins to appear balanced in favour of both poor and middle income families.

This it seems to me from the recent email I received from the Corbyn team is what we might expect if Corbyn wins.

His leadership of the Labour Party, anti austerity, anti Trident pro public ownership, pro higher education that doesn't result in graduating with debts of £50,000, seems to me to be offering more to the electorate than they have currently or are likely to get from the other candidates.

We will know in September and then the real debate will begin ...... imagine a new social movement transforming politics in Britain and resonating with similar anti austerity movements across Europe.

30th July 2015

2015-07-31T03:14:00.000-07:00

One thing became clear when the financial crisis hit.

And that was exactly who got the pies!

Under Gordon Brown's premiership the losses incurred by the banks during the financial crisis were socialised whilst the bank's profits were privatised thereby allowing bonuses to continue to be paid whilst the necessary borrowing failed to happen.

So the bankers got the pies and businesses, who needed investment, were left with the crusts.

And still no-one has gone to jail, they just passed go and pocketed the money.

I find it amazing that during the life of the last parliament the Tory narrative continued to tell the same story, that Labour overspent, this narrative was so compelling that it featured dramatically in the Question Time debate where it was coupled with another false narrative that a national budget parallels a domestic budget, a false narrative that began with Margaret Thatcher and which continues to this day.

It is as though Keynes never lived.

In 1945 in the face of a financial crisis caused by the war effort, Keynes ensured that Government money was invested in rebuilding the necessary social and commercial infrastructures, from health, to housing, to education to welfare, to investment in business.

Ensuring thereby that employment was created and that wealth was shared equitably.

The second great legacy of the war effort was that the war was won through the means of a planned effort and this led, through Harold Wilson in The Board of Trade that the peace was too important to be left to capitalism alone but that a planned economy would result in equity and justice.

It is seventy years ago since the Kings Speech introduced the first Labour Programme for Government.

It made news then and it is still pertinent seventy years later.

'My Government will take up with energy the tasks of reconverting industry from the purposes of war to those of peace'.

'... by the extension of of public ownership our industries and services shall make their maximum contribution to the national well-being'.

'... effective planning of investment ... (bringing) the bank of England into public ownership'.

' a bill will be brought before you to nationalise the coal-mining industry as part of a concerted plan for the co-ordination of the fuel and power industries'.

' ... the distribution at fair prices of essential supplies and services'.

'... organise the resources of the building and manufacturing industries ..... to meet the housing requirements .... of the nation'.

'... promote the best use of land in the national interest'.

'... a comprehensive scheme of insurance against industrial injuries, extend the existing scheme of social insurance and establish a national health service'.

This Kings Speech was given on August 15th 1945.

Its impact was to transform and improve the lives of working people, I was three months old at the time and took a further three years of debate, argument, resistance from GP's and Tory MP's before the National Health Service was introduced.

As the long slow ebbing of the tide continues so the public good is eroded, great inequality is experienced, capital continues to demonstrate that the pursuit of private profit is incompatible with the national interest, nevertheless the present Government remains committed to the power of the market, whether in financial services, manufacturing or healthcare and the effects of privatisation can be seen in the growth of food banks, the dismantling of the welfare state and increases in both child and elder poverty.

This bias towards the privatisation of profit and socialisation of losses beginning with the Thatcher government and continuing through the new labour years has seen 'an increase in the economic, financial, political power of the financial sector which have created enormous distortions, and that the financial sector has come to control and influence the political decisions in a manner that is alarming'.

Paulo Nogueira Batista, Executive Director of the IMF for Brazil.

Which leaves us with the answer to the question about who got the pies!

23rd July 2015

2015-07-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

So Blair has returned to UK politics.

If your heart tells you to vote left, get a heart transplant. Thanks Tony!

When he invited me to join him for breakfast at No 10 he failed to appear and sent a video instead.

A Hologram of his Right Horrible Cheesiness greeted us as we entered the breakfast room to feast on fruit kebabs.

The first thing I did after the police escorted me from the premises was to stop and buy a bacon sandwich, which I ate more decorously than Red Ed I might say and without getting brown sauce on my tie.

Tie? You ask, who wears a tie nowadays?

Blair didn't wear one on TV last night and neither does JC, well all I can say is we did in those days.

So talking of JC (Jeremy Corbyn) the politician not the prophet, Mr Blair wants us not to vote for Jeremy.

The existential question facing Labour is does it want power or does it want principles.

It held power for thirteen years but the price of power was the loss of principle, tough on the causes of crime? Yes! ending Child Poverty? Yes! introducing Tax Credits? Yes!

But at ease with the filthy rich? Yes! introducing PFI? Yes! extending the reach of external consultants, Serco, G4S? Yes! joining forces with Bush to wage war on Iraq? Oh Yes! Yes!

Now we are offered the choice to vote for principles over power.

I have never been very clubbable.

I was briefly in the Scouts, I audited the local youth club.

But I have never really been a joiner of clubs, groups, meetings, or political parties.

I am a member of the Co-op Party but I haven't attended many meetings and even though the indoor critic is member of the MS Society we don't attend local meetings.

But last week I joined the Labour Party, and it didn't even cost me £3 because I took advantage of the pensioners special deal.

Why did I join? Obviously in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn!

So if I vote with my existing heart and don't follow TB's advice and swap it for a heart of stone does it mean that I will have played my part in ensuring that the Labour Party spends long years in the wilderness?

Honestly I don't believe that will be the inevitable consequence of electing a leader from the left of the Party.

I watched the politics show on TV, admittedly with one eye closed because I have a detached retina, but it seemed to me that the only candidate who came across as possessing gravitas, who debated with courtesy, whose contributions were principled was Jeremy Corbyn.

My mind ran forward to the image of his appearing on PM's Question Time debating with David Cameron and I had the sense that Jeremy Corbyn, in that context, would have the effect of Barium Meal in the body politic exposing the Tories sense of entitlement as falsely based.

Sadly the outcome of the last election was not the fiasco of Ed eating a bacon sandwich or the politics of envy or indeed the Ed Stone.

It was I believe a lack of gravitas, a failure to debate principles and some sense that the electorate believed Cameron and Osborne rather than Milliband and Balls.

The four candidates for the Labour leadership are all good people, I have no doubt about that, but in politics simply winning is not enough it is essential that the principles of the Labour Movement are seen to differentiate it from the Tories, otherwise the electorate will inevitably choose the devil they know.

The political programme for the next five years will constantly seek to expose the Labour Party and its response must be to challenge again and again the transparently threadbare rhetoric employed by Osborne and Cameron.

If the country wants to see a genuine Living Wage rather than a falsely described minimum wage it will not get it from Osborne, if the country wants a low tax economy then it will not get it from a policy of raising tax thresholds which always benefit higher tax payers rather than those who are not paying tax now, and if the country wants a low welfare economy then it will ultimately only come at the cost of education, health and support in old age, which are the essential pillars of the welfare economy as part of the post war settlement under the 1945 Labour Government.

So yes, I will vote for Jeremy Corbyn and will defer the heart transplant for another day!

8th July 2015

2015-07-08T04:06:00.000-07:00

Some things never change.

I'm almost glad about that.

Over the years I have been told that when I grew older I would become more conservative, more right wing, that I might even vote Tory.

Well I'm pleased to report that hasn't happened.

And today as we prepare ourselves for a Tory budget I found myself dreaming of what might have been .....

What might have been if the two Ed's were about to announce the first Labour budget in five years.

What might be, if five years from now, Jeremy Corbyn is introducing the first Labour budget in Ten years.

The broad theme of the Chancellor's budget speech will, I am sure, reinforce the privatisation of public goods to ensure that money continues to run uphill into the pockets of the already wealthy.

Two 'public goods' that are in the firing line in today's budget are the BBC and social housing.

Compare the broadcasters, Sky TV costs around £60 a month, £720 a year, ITV is funded via advertising revenue so it is free to air if not actually free the BBC costs £145 a year, £12 a month and is committed to ensuring that what it broadcasts is independent, fair and entertaining.

It is a 'public good' in the best sense of the concept and it is under threat from both its competitors who complain that the playing field is not even and from the Government which argues that its news coverage is biased.

So it will be trimmed, the licence fee reviewed and for now well if granny wants free telly then the telly can pay for it because treasury won't.

I have been involved in Social Housing since the early seventies. I ran a hostel for young homeless people in Bolton from 1972 to 1974, I was invited to become a staff Member of Salford Family Housing, I joined the Board of Church Army Housing in the early 1980's as it changed its name to English Churches, I was also a regional and national board member of Hanover Housing.

Housing Associations took much of the strain of social housing provision as Local Authority housing was sold under right to buy legislation and not replaced.

Now the Government intends to extend right to buy to housing association tenants even though the ownership of the housing stock resides with the associations and houses sold will be replaced by Local Authorities selling their residual stock so for every house sold two houses will be lost.

The attack on welfare has already been well trailed, a two tier benefit cap, further reductions in housing benefit, the introduction of universal credit, a reduction in Tax Credits and as yet unspecified changes to support for the disabled. The aim is to reduce the welfare bill by £12 Billion by the end of this parliament.

It may be that Tax Credits have become over complex and it may appear that welfare support is simply recycled as people pay tax on low incomes and then have the money repaid as a benefit. So the Tory line is why not just take the low paid out of tax? Which is fine in principle but not fine if you are earning so little as to not pay tax at all in which case raising the tax threshold is of no benefit at all.

Two former advisers to the Prime Minister are arguing publicly for the living wage to become the norm and that employers should be required to pay the higher wage because it is a conservative principle first articulated by that great Conservative Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Mmm ...

An independent broadcaster is an essential asset to ensure that the public conversation is well informed and unbiased otherwise the left/right confrontation will simply continue to drown out the voice of reason.

Building new homes is a more efficient and effective way of encouraging home ownership, whilst creating skilled jobs and reducing waiting lists, than simply selling off social housing in a mis-conceived rummage sale.

The living wage simply makes sense because it effectively enriches the whole of society, businesses benefit because their customers can afford their goods and the treasury benefits as more people become tax payers.

Sadly some things never change and I am sure that on the news tonight and on Question Time tomorrow we will hear that the long term economic plan is the same tired old rehearsal of the need for continued austerity.

18th June 2015

2015-06-18T05:27:00.001-07:00

I became a student at Salisbury Theological College in 1966.

On one occasion I remember Canon Paul Oestreicher being invited to address the students and as part of his talk he mentioned the importance of reading newspapers, both as an aid to prayer but also to preaching and my memory of that occasion is that we were encouraged to read one of the broadsheets, possibly The Times and The Daily Mirror.

It was important we were told to have a sense of not only what was happening in the world but how that news was being reported.

'I read the news today, Oh Boy
40, 000 hole in Blackburn Lancashire'

By the time that I arrived at Salisbury aged twenty two, I had been working for five years and had spent time in Durham at The Bernard Gilpin Society undertaking what today would be described as an access course.

I left school at he invitation of the Headmaster of my secondary school earlier than planned clutching my one certificate for an 'O' Level in Woodwork.

School ended on Friday and on the way home I saw an advert in the window of the Normeir Tyre Company I called in and applied, interviewed and started my first job working as a tyre fitter/trainee salesman on the Monday following.

It has become clear to me that, whilst I didn't realise it at the time, this was possibly the most responsible job I would have.

Fitting tyres safely is crucially important and I always tried to make sure that if the were accidents that it was not due to the tyres that I had fitted.

But whilst the job had its rewards I decided to move on after a year and apply for the open competition for entry into the Civil Service as a Clerical Assistant.

It was at this point that I was advised that if I wished to succeed in the examination that I should read The Times Newspaper, especially the editorials, and seek to replicate the style of the leader writers in my answers to the questions posed in the examination.

So I started to read The Times aged 16 or so and have continued to read it for the past 54 years until the recent election.

I had always thought of The Times as a balanced newspaper but I became so appalled by the views expressed in the leaders and indeed in certain of the opinion pieces that I stopped reading the paper altogether and turned instead to The Guardian.

However I soon realised that having your prejudices reinforced by a left leaning newspaper whilst somewhat less stressful than raging at the prejudices presented as news, opinion or editorial comment in The Times was not entirely helpful in making an informed and considered response to the events that were unfolding not only nationally but internationally.

I needed another view point.

As a curate in Hatfield, South Yorkshire in the late sixties I used to call on an elderly, retired miner I rather think that we enjoyed each others company, I certainly enjoyed his, he was a socialist, he had been a deputy at the Hatfield Main Colliery and had some interesting and robust views on Church, Politics and the industry from which he had retired.

I happened to call on him one morning only to find him, with his morning coffee on the side table, reading The Telegraph.

I was astonished and challenged him, why read the 'torygraph'?' I asked.

Well, he calmly answered, if you want to know what they are thinking, how they are planning to undermine everything that we have fought for, worked towards and value, then it helps to know their thinking and analyse their prejudices.

I found myself thinking about Mr Lawrence recently as I pondered what my Newspaper choice to partner The Guardian, should be.

In Hatfield I used to take The Times and The Morning Star to achieve the kind of considered balance I felt I needed, as Paul Oestreicher had encouraged us, to inform both my prayers and my preaching.

Today, there is less preaching but nevertheless I felt that I should be reading another newspaper alongside The Guardian so I took out a free subscription to The Telegraph.

Fifty years of prejudice are now being challenged by a series of forthright articles most of which, as is only to be expected, applaud the dubious policies being promoted by the current minority conservative government.

But there are other article and features which are challenging the thinking that is being articulated, The Telegraph, I discovered to my amazement, is not a simple, biased, cheerleader for the Tory Party.

In some ways I now realise that is only to be expected.

If you are in the political mix with a Government chasing austerity and shifting wealth to the wealthiest and debt to the poorest, then because you occupy the same political space as The Telegraph does, then you can engage in the kind of warm. generous disagreements that can happen in families and serve to make them stronger.

So I have overturned some 50 years of prejudice, and whilst The Telegraph challenges my prejudices and The Guardian reinforces them, I find that my daily diet of news is both balanced and enriched by the opinions I read, whether agreeing or disagreeing, I am challenged to think more logically using both my heart and my head.

And, as a bonus, I now have two crosswords to complete rather than six (or more) impossible things to believe, before breakfast.

2nd June 2015

2015-06-02T08:55:00.002-07:00

Like Ed and Nick I wasn't elected.

It wasn't the unfairness of the electoral system because the election used the single transferable vote but the boundaries were redrawn to the disadvantage of anyone living in the constituency for which I was standing.

Cumbria doesn't fit neatly into anyone's constituency.

The south of the county looks to Manchester, the North of the county looks to Newcastle.

So in the previous dispensation the Co-op had South Cumbria firmly in the North West and North Cumbria in the North East.

In local government terms this makes sense, just, but in terms of where our TV comes from and where our NHS is located Cumbria splits, unevenly and raggedly, into North West and North East.

The Co-op in its infinite wisdom has decided that Cumbria is in the North West so immediately those standing for election to the new Membership Council were disadvantaged as both unknown and far away and with a total unbalance in terms of population spread.

So like Ed and Nick (and Nigel) I wasn't elected.

So far so sad.

But there are bigger issues lurking in these muddy waters.

I had always thought that Lord Myners was right in his analysis. The democracy of the Co-op was flawed, although I suspect his view that one member one vote was critical to his analysis was somewhat biased.

But the deed is done and the newly elected membership council will have its work cut out even if it was elected by members with one single transferable vote they did not elect the board and it is the board that has the power and the membership council will find itself constantly playing catch up as the board moves not only the goal posts, but the rules of engagement and what it means to be a co-operative.

I was told by one observer that the new chairman was an excellent choice because his father was a co-op store manager.

I pointed out that my father was a Manchester Corporation Bus Driver but that didn't qualify me for the role of chairman of Stagecoach.

The co-op already feels diminished, much of the business has been disposed of, 'pharms' and 'farmacies' have gone and it seems to me that the big American Funeral businesses are watching closely to see whether the funeral business is also offered 'to the market'.

The new Chair made his reputation with Asda, he made it a more valuable business and then sold it Walmart, his chairmanship of the Post Office had the same result with the business privatised.

One can only hope that the Co-op which is in fact owned by its members now has the robustness to resist what I can only see as inevitable drift to market privatisation, if you want to weaken something, to make it malleable, the thing to do is hack away at the flawed democratic structure and then replace it with an unwieldy group a hundred strong trying to make sense of and understand change and control a board that has been hand chosen and may well appear even more self selecting in a few years.

What is happening to the Co-op seems to me to be symptomatic of what is happening to our current social and political settlement.

The tectonic plates of our social polity are drifting right wards just as the great stones in Carlisle's Rickerby Park carry the legend of when Carlisle was on the equator and the sediment was laid down and compressed, limestone, gritstone and granite slowly shifting over time to where they now rest.

So the post war settlement with its homes for heroes, its education reform and welfare reform a product of both liberal and labour aspiration for men like Attlee, Beveridge and Keynes is slowly slipping away from us as the market is invoked as the only true arbiter of value.

The vision of the Co-op's founders known as the pioneers after the title they chose for their co-op society, the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, was the creation of a store in, in response to the poverty created by the industrial revolution, to allow members to buy unadulterated food that they otherwise could no afford.

The store opened in 1844 with a meagre stock of butter, flour, oatmeal and a few candles, within three months they had added tea and tobacco and established a reputation for price and quality.

As the last election demonstrated and as the Electoral Reform Society has reported the rightward drift of our politics is sanctioned by a voting system that is essentially unbalanced, my only hope is that under its new governance, which despite assurances to the contrary is every bit as flawed as the system it replaces, the new Membership council even with its hands tied, will be able to channel the spirit of the Rochdale Pioneers and keep the Co-op, co-operative under the ownership of its members.