ALWAYS GOOD TO BE SO FAR AHEAD OF THE GAME
Before May 2018 I had no particular feelings about Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Welby – he was nothing to do with me, really. He seemed a bit of a jumped-up, cocky sort, but easy to ignore. Then he officiated at the wedding of Harry and Meghan and made some nasty, snide anti-Brexit comments during the service. I thought it totally inappropriate and, suddenly, my indifference turned to suspicion and loathing to the point when, at the King’s Coronation in May 2023, I sat watching the telly holding a small banner that read “Not my Archbishop”. In my book, he had rewritten his entire persona with his behaviour in 2018 and nothing he had done or said since had come close to redeeming him. I am therefore unsurprised and happy that he has resigned in shame (shame in the eyes of the world, if not his own).
WILL MATCH OF THE DAY BECOME WATCHABLE AGAIN?
Before I met him, just after the turn of the millennium, I had no strong feelings about Gary Lineker. I was impressed, like most other people, that he had learned Spanish when moving to play football in Spain and that he had an impeccable disciplinary record as a player. I was less impressed with his tetchy divorce, his seeming ubiquity, and the BBC’s absurdly reverent attitude towards him. I met him in the TV studios where the recoding of a sports quiz was to take place. I spent most of the afternoon with Lineker: I had expected the interview to be fun, with banter – he is from Leicester, me from Northampton, neighbouring towns with great connections and some rivalries. But Lineker was solely focused on himself: I might as well have been a tape recorder. I didn’t take this as a reflection on me or my interview techniques – I had had great fun with the likes of the lovely Karren Brady of West Ham, the fascinating Jon Anderson of Yes and the recently deceased businessman Mike Lynch, who became a valued contact and sounding board when I was editing the FT’s technology section.
So I was left with a very poor first impression of Lineker, which turned to dislike, a feeling amplified over subsequent years by his many egregious gaffes and blatant abuses of his position. It felt counter-intuitive extolling the virtues of Karren Brady while putting the boot in on Lineker – and that was certainly how others saw it. Until fairly recently – when I bumped into someone with a little knowledge who confirmed everything I had been saying.
Lineker is one of many many “celebrities” whose public reputation seems at odds with their private reality – but he had given plenty of clues over the years, for example with his repeated and insulting, patronising hyper-liberal political exhortations. If he’d stuck to football, my delight at his sacking – or “letting go – from Match of the Day might have been less. There have been comments from his supporters in the media that he was so good at the job he has become irreplaceable. But by surrounding himself with dullards and monosyllabic former footballers, he made it easy to shine; Mark Chapman and Jason Mohammad are far superior and more intelligent broadcasters, putting Lineker’s banter and gimmicks to shame. I am glad he will soon be gone. But I fear Match of the Day will be no more watchable – first because the chances of the BBC making a sensible appointment are remote, and because football and its pundit hangers-on have become so absurd and annoying as to be virtually unwatchable.
FIVE REASONS TO SAY NO TO M&S IN ANY VILLAGE OR SMALL TOWN
The debate rumbles on, in spite of the knocking back of the original appalling idea of sticking a large supermarket on a car park near the middle of our village, Claygate. The local LibDems thought they had it all signed and sealed (stitched up) until a public backlash forced a re-think. This re-think has sprouted a thousand brilliant new ideas, with committees working on a host of priceless improvements. But just in case anyone still believes in the M&S supermarket proposal, it’s worth going over the five killer reasons that mean it should be removed from the agenda for ever:
First: Back gardens. This monstrous retail space would sit just across the back fences of several houses. I would not put up with it without a fight and don’t know anyone who would. And I would not inflict upon anyone else something I would not tolerate myself. It’s called empathy and something proud Nimbys should be aware of – it’s all very well saying “not here” but sometimes you have to say “not there, either – look at what you’re doing to those people”. And it would certainly ruin many lives – the noise, commotion, reduced security from new access points, the hideous outlook.
Second: Parking. Forty parking spaces were proposed – which is next to nothing. Since parking charges were introduced a couple of decades ago, use of the car park in question has plummeted from nearly full to minimal. But there are still about 20 cars in it most of the time. Which leaves a net 20 or so for all the supermarket traffic piling into the village to use. The Waitrose car park in nearby Esher has about 100 spaces, plus loads more in the public car park next door – and they are nearly always close to capacity. Our roads are already choked with inconsiderately and illegally parked vehicles. Given that M&S will be seeking to attract vehicles from far and wide, the result can only be chaos, anger and damage.
Third: The effect on shops. Claygate and Hinchley Wood enjoy a fantastic selection of artisanal shops – butchers, fishmonger, bakeries, grocers, small off-licences, independent pharmacies and the like – between them. So what do they have in common? Neither has a large supermarket within easy striking distance. And what about those towns, villages and suburbs that do have a supermarket as part of their local retail mix? Just look at Surbiton, Towcester, Cobham as sad examples – they all prove that artisanal shops cannot survive when subject to direct competition from the all-powerful supermarket giants. The argument that M&S would attract more shoppers to our fishmonger et al is utterly disproved by the evidence from elsewhere. And arguing that more young people appear to support the supermarket proposal than older people and that they should therefore be given way to because they are “the future” is as sensible as handing over decision-making in a primary school to the reception class: there has to be a place for experience and wisdom overriding blinkered self-interest, later to be regretted.
Fourth: Councils should not speculate. Property speculation is one of the surest ways to drive a local authority into bankruptcy. There are so many examples of councils, with no competence for financial wheeler-dealing, that are broke because their dodgy property punts unexpectedly imploded that this alone should scupper the scheme.
Fifth: Demand to build. We have known for at least two years that an incoming Labour government would force councils to build dwellings, no matter how inappropriate or destructive. Intelligent councils will have built up a stock of sites that can be handed over to the developers when the dreadful day comes, in an effort to minimise the damage. In Claygate, those sites could and should include the car parks and garage blocks, which might reduce the need to destroy the green belt that virtually surrounds and defines the village. Stick a largely unwanted and unnecessary supermarket in one of those prime sites in some precarious financial deal and where will those dwellings go? If we fail, it’s goodbye Claygate village and hello Claygate suburb.
HOW HAVE WE LET DEBATE BECOME SO POISONOUS?
It is now almost impossible for two opposing people to see the common ground when engaged in debate. There is ALWAYS common ground, but arguments and opinions have become so polarised, narrow and fierce that to make even a fairly innocuous and potentially helpful point risks dismissal and a breakdown in relations. I have learned to steer clear, in a depressing and appalling state of self-censorship, of many subjects where the middle ground for debate has been land-mined. Which is tragic and dangerous – ideas that go unchallenged mutate and distort into oppression by wandering off to the extremes. The point of calm and reasoned debate, on the other hand, is to challenge and thereby improve ideas, making them more inclusive and aware of all issues and points of view. Each side in any argument should ask whether the other side has a point – a view or fact of which they need to be aware and take on board – if only partially. If one person is thinking something, then others will be, too. And anyone who wants to make a mark has to handle criticism and accommodate the broadest spectrum of positions. They need to remember that not everyone who disagrees with them is wrong: if anyone is prepared to engage in debate with you, learn from them.
NOT TRUMP AGAIN, SURELY
Surprised that so many Americans voted for Donald Trump to return to the White House? Well, you shouldn’t be. If you’ve read “The Rise of Antisocialism”, you will be familiar with the concept of political parties abandoning their core constituencies, losing their culture and ending up insulting and chastising those who would normally be relied upon for support. The Labour Party wandered along precisely this path after losing power in 2010. Ah, you might say, but Labour is in power again now – bucking the trend for “right-wing”, “populist” regimes everywhere else. But let’s not forget that Labour attracted only 20 per cent of the electorate to come out and vote for it – a pitiful result, especially when you consider that a fair proportion of those votes will have been cast on the negative basis that Labour is not Tory. Labour and the hyper-liberal tendency generally have been suffering from a superiority complex for at least a decade – sees themselves as “correct” and that anyone who holds varying beliefs or opinions is wrong, stupid and nasty. We saw this during the Brexit debate – and witnessed also the furious reaction of an insulted population. Now we see the Democrats in the US repeating all the same basic mistakes – they thought they just had to point out how nasty and thick Trump supporters are and they’d toe the liberal elite line.
Yes, of course Trump is objectionable and stupid – a roundly horrible character. But he struck a chord with the voters that the shambolic Democrats couldn’t: he almost appears to have been US president for the past six months as the Democrats’ vacuous campaign left a gigantic hole. Their general political ineptitude – notably, continuing to back a senile, doddering old president long after it was obvious he couldn’t cope – gave Kamala Harris little chance to turn heads around. Even so, she was still hopeless, focusing on trashing her opponent and appealing to women voters by promising abortion law reform – ignoring the fact that as many women oppose abortion as men. Insulting videos, misguided celebrity endorsements (who is more likely to inspire confidence in the handling of the economy – Elon Musk or Beyonce?), and a lack of policies appealing to working class voters spelled certain doom. Democrats, Labour and “liberals” everywhere need to decide whether they are prepared to listen to the real concerns of their prospective supporters, or wish to continue lecturing, bullying, haranguing and insulting them into thinking “correctly”.
NOVEMBER 12 2024
NEUROLOGICAL EVIDENCE THAT THE SELFISH HALVES OF OUR BRAINS ARE MAKING US MISERABLE
I rarely pay much attention to BBC Radio Four’s “Thought For The Day” at about 7.45 each morning: it’s always a speaker from one of the countless global religions trying to sell their brand with a mini-morality tale. But my ears pricked up the other morning at the mention of British psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist and his study of how our brains have become distorted by our culture of greed and selfishness. This, I immediately thought, ties in precisely with my thesis outlined in “The Rise of Antisocialism” – that the era of worshipping business and materialism has created an atomised society of competing, self-obsessed individuals that is happily risking the entire future of the planet in return for gadgets and nice holidays. Now there might be actual neurological evidence to add further weight to the argument.
I had not heard of McGilchrist and so researched him online. Born in 1953, the Oxford fellow has written books on “the divided brain”. In his 2009 book, The Master and His Emissary, which sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide, he took issue with the conventional view of the brain, which concludes there are no significant differences between the right and left hemispheres because they are both involved in everything we do. McGilchrist accepts that they are alike – but says the manner in which they operate is substantially different. One reviewer summarised it perfectly: “It is not that the hemispheres perform different functions, but that they perform these functions in a different way. Drawing on extensive neuroscientific research from the last hundred years, McGilchrist argues that each hemisphere offers a unique kind of attention to the world, an attention which brings a certain version of the world into being. According to McGilchrist, we have become entranced by the version of the world brought into being by the left hemisphere and forgotten the insights produced by the right.”
This is serious – because the left is the nasty half. Stumbling across this article, below, I decided it was such an important contribution to the cementing of my stance on Antisocialism that I should reproduce some of it here. The essay was originally a lecture delivered at the 2022 World Summit AI in Amsterdam. Over to Mr McGilchrist:
“No two ways about it: we are making ourselves wretched. We are more affluent than ever, but riches – and power, the only point in having riches – do not make
people happy. Ask a psychiatrist. Or take look at the face of Vladimir Putin, who has, alas, the power of life and death over millions of people and is the owner of the most expensive toilet-paper dispenser in the world. No, affluent as we are, we are also more anxious, depressed, lonely, isolated, and lacking in purpose than ever. Why is this? I suggest it is because we no longer have the foggiest idea what human life is about. Indeed, there is a sense in which we no longer live in a world at all, but exist in a simulacrum of our own making.
“Leaving nuance aside, and condensing three decades of research and a vast body of supporting evidence into a phrase: we are now mesmerised by the least intelligent part of the human brain. For reasons of survival, one hemisphere of the brain, the left, has evolved over millions of years to favour manipulation – grabbing, getting, and controlling – while the other, the right, has been tasked with understanding the whole picture. So conflicting are these goals that in humans the hemispheres are largely sequestered, one from the other.
“Our seeming ability these days to hear only what comes from the left hemisphere does not arise from the brain's having changed radically in the last couple of centuries, though it is indeed always evolving. It's more like this: you buy a radio set, and you soon find a couple of channels worth listening to. After a while, you find yourself listening to only one. It's not the radio set that has changed; its you. In the case of the brain, it would not matter so much if we had settled on the intelligent channel – but we didn't. We settled on the one whose value has nothing to do with truth, or with courage, magnanimity, or generosity, but only with greed, grabbing, and getting. Manipulation.
“And no, the difference between the hemispheres is not a myth that has been debunked, as l have explained at length elsewhere. What does need to be debunked is the old pop-psychology myth wherein the left hemisphere “does” reason and language, and is dull but at least reliable, like a slightly boring accountant, whereas the right hemisphere “does” emotions and pictures and is apt to be flighty and frivolous. All of this is wrong. We now know that each hemisphere is involved in everything and that, for the record, the left hemisphere is less emotionally stable, as well as less intelligent – I mean cognitively, as well as emotionally and socially – than the right. The right hemisphere is a far superior guide to reality; delusions and hallucinations are much more frequent, grosser, and more persistent after damage to the right hemisphere than after damage to the left. Without the right hemisphere to rely on, the left hemisphere is at sea. It denies the most obvious facts, lies, and makes stuff up when it doesn’t know what it's talking about. And it is relentlessly, vacuously cheerful in the face of disaster.
“You may say: ‘But so what? I don't care where things go on in my brain.’ It matters because each hemisphere takes a different view of the world, and their views are not strictly compatible. And so, when we reflect, philosophise, or discourse publicly, we are forced, without knowing it, to favour one ‘take’ or the other.
“What are these two hemispheric visions of the world like? You may recognise them from experience. The left hemisphere, using narrow-beam attention to one detail after another, sees what is familiar, certain, static, explicit, abstract, decontextualised, disembodied, categorised, general in nature, and reduced to its parts. All is predictable and controlled. This is an inanimate universe – and a bureaucrat’s dream. It is like a map in relation to the mapped world: useful to the degree that it leaves almost everything out. And its only value resides in its utility.
“The left hemisphere perceives everything as a re-presentation. ‘To represent’ literally means to present a thing again, when it is no longer present, but dead and gone. By contrast, the right hemisphere sees not the representation but the living presence. Bringing broad, open, sustained, vigilant attention to bear on the world, it sees what is fresh, unique, never fully known, never finally certain, but full of potential. It understands all that is, and must remain, implicit: humour, poetry, art, narrative, music, the sacred, indeed everything we love; it understands that nothing is ever static and unchanging, that everything is flowing and interconnected. This is free world, an animate universe – and a bureaucrat's nightmare. It has all the richness and complexity of that world the left hemisphere simply mapped.
“Each of these two ways of seeing the world is vital to our survival. We must simplify and stand apart in order to manipulate things, deal with the necessities of life, and build a civilisation. But to live in that civilisation, we must also belong to the living world. This division of attention works to our advantage when we use both hemispheres. But it is a handicap – in fact a catastrophe – when we use only one.
“As l explained in ‘The Master and His Emissary’, twice in the history of the West – in ancient Greece and then in Rome – a civilisation started out with a fruitful harmony of left and right, but as it overreached itself, it moved toward the left hemisphere’s take on the world and then collapsed. The same trajectory is now being pursued for a third time. After the miraculous outpouring of creativity in the arts, science, society, and philosophy that we call the Renaissance, our civilisation has, since the Enlightenment, moved further and further to the left, drunk on the belief that it knows everything and can fix everything. We are like sleepwalkers ambling toward the abyss.
“There is a phenomenon in psychology called the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby the less you know, the more you think you know, and vice versa. The left hemisphere doesn’t know what it is it doesn’t know, and so it thinks it knows everything. The right hemisphere, which understands far more, is aware of those vast unknowns.
“When we are functioning well, the right hemisphere tests against experience the left hemisphere’s theory about reality. But the left hemisphere's vision of a lifeless, mechanical, two-dimensional, geometric construct has been externalised around us to such a degree that when the right hemisphere checks back with experience, it finds that the left hemisphere has already colonised reality – at least for those of us who lead a modern Western urban life. It finds a perfect simulacrum of the world according to the left hemisphere.
“The things that used to alert us to the inadequacy of our reductionist theories are fading away. They were: the natural world; the sense of a coherent shared culture; the sense of the body as something we live, not merely possess; the power of great art; and the sense of something sacred that is real but transcends everyday language.”
The lecture then goes on to discuss the dangers of poorly utilised AI (it is the theme of the conference, after all!). McGilchrist then continues:
“It's worth pointing out that people with schizophrenia exhibit thinking and behaviour consistent with left-hemisphere overdrive and right-hemisphere hypofunction. They see a world of bits and pieces, and they often imagine that people have become inanimate, machine-like, or zombies. To them nothing seems real, and the world seems a simulacrum, a pretence, a play put on to deceive them: a person may look like a person, but uncannily isn't. To me, the belief that machines could become sentient is the obverse of the view that we, sentient beings, are really just machines. The psychiatrist RD Laing described a schizoid patient who saw his wife as a machine:
“She was an ‘it’ because everything she did was a predictable, determined response. He would, for instance, tell her (it) an ordinary funny joke and when she (it) laughed this indicated her (its) entirely ‘conditioned’ robot-like nature.
“The assumption of mechanistic ‘conditioning’ reflects what is hardly even a parody of a not uncommon scientific position. It also represents a chilling psychopathology. But this mentality is not unlike the way we may begin to see each other, should the mechanical processes of AI become the standard for human behaviour. As machines – or so it is claimed – become more like humans, humans are certainly becoming more like machines, by reason of their being obliged to interact with them.
I completely agree: wealth, comfort, material goods – they do not provide us with happiness and satisfaction. Think of the things you love doing most – when you’re most happy. It will more often than not involve simply talking with other people, perhaps over food. Or maybe playing a game of some sort. Simple pleasures win every time, yet it seems our left brains are determined to make us miserable by measuring everything like an accountant and knowing the value of nothing.
OCTOBER 25 2024
JONI IS BACK – BUT ARE THE NEW DECISION-MAKERS LISTENING?
The musical genius that is Joni Mitchell has just begun playing again after several years of illness and fears that she would never sing another note. She inspired a generation with lyrics such as “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot”. The ideas and ideals encapsulated in her lyrics seeped into the Zeitgeist, their Utopian visions, shaped by reality, shaving the sharp edges from an increasingly greed-fuelled society.
But the irony is that just as she returns, the new decision-makers in the UK do indeed plan to pave Paradise and slather it with housing estates. Worryingly, those now in power are not of her generation or her way of thinking. Authority is gradually and inexorably slipping from the grasp of the hippy-tinged communitarian Boomers to the commercially driven individualists of Generation X, brought up in the era of Thatcher, market dominance, greed, selfishness, consumption, rights, materialism and a complete antipathy towards prioritising family, community or society. This leads to so many ills – the scattering of families and the mutual support they provide, creating a growing need for professional care services; more travelling, more shopping, less creativity and so on. A small example: a village near where I grew up has held a spring fair on its sloping green for many years. The villagers loved it – it was hugely popular but the space big enough to accommodate all: people would come and go and the event was free. Now, the village is surrounded by anonymous, dreary slums of the future – thousands of them. And word spread among them that the spring fair in the captive village was worth a visit – and free. Numbers grew to the point at which the organisers had to control them – with tickets and charging. No more coming and going, no more spontaneous attendance – it was all replaced with formality, advance booking, payments. The fun was driven out as pressure grew to provide “value-for-money” from a newly demanding crowd. It’s nothing like it was. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
We certainly need thinkers of Joni Mitchell’s quality as much, if not more, than we did when she was in her prime. She was singing to a like-minded audience then, often preaching to the converted; that is the case no longer. They might quite like her songs – but to the new generation of decision-makers, she’s just an old lady with an oddly tuned acoustic guitar with an out of date message that won’t help the economy grow. Ah, the fools. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
OCTOBER 24 2024
LIVING IN BACKWARDS-LAND
If there are two choices, the current policy seems to be to choose the least effective or intelligent. Instead of improvement, we are getting change – and not always for the better. I do, of course, have examples. First up is Claygate Parade and its pavements, which seemed perfectly functional, apart from a ridiculous raised area at the station end with no wheelchair ramp, forcing wheeled users to negotiate a tricky section of road unnecessarily for several yards. For several weeks, the Parade pavements have been meticulously dug up by contractors and replaced almost exactly as they were. The only differences I can discern are larger, and very ugly, dropped kerbs, as well as some horrible cementing around utility covers. But the one problem that actually needed addressing has been completely ignored and remains untouched – the raised wheelchair-unfriendly ramp. This amounts to a criminal waste of taxpayers’ money and is our first case of backwards thinking.
The second concerns a proposed pedestrian crossing in Church Road, Claygate. More money is to be spent on building a crossing where hardly anyone ever crosses, and when they do there is little danger as sight lines are clear on this straight stretch of road. Nearby, is the local Nisa mini-supermarket, which lies at the junction of four busy roads. Crossing here is dangerous and frightening; sight lines are poor; traffic is either constant at busy times or recklessly fast at others; and countless people cross here, including many elderly villagers. No crossing is proposed here.
We should perhaps expect such appallingly backwards decision-making from the arcane world of committees and officials setting up projects at arm’s length. But they are not alone. Claygate Tennis Club has recently spent a deal of money on refurbishing its club house. Trendy blue-grey paint on doors has created stylish highlighting (although it is already flaking off); a new expensive looking kitchen has been installed; new tables, chairs and other furniture purchased. All splendid. But the club house was crying out for full-glass doors to replace the hideous and heavy wooden-framed windows and doors that have been a big irritation since the building went up. It was crying out for a re-arranged entertaining space that incorporated a “breakfast bar” extending into the main room to open up the gloomily isolated kitchen. The constantly lifting wood floor needed fixing. These all remain untouched by the cosmetic makeover that all looks very nice, but fails to address the real issues. Backwards. Being backwards seems to be an expensive and superficial luxury business.
And beyond the local, there is the most obvious example of backwards thinking coming from our new government. Stopping people so desperate to leave France that they will risk their lives in small boats has to involve a carrot and stick approach. So what have Starmer, Cooper and the other dimwits done? Removed all of the sticks and offered a spectacular range of carrots. Backwards. More will die.
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON HOUSING
The first despairing murmurings are beginning to be heard among the Surrey hills and meadows as the extent of the building and destruction demanded by the new government becomes more apparent. (And don’t think voting LibDem would have helped – their housing targets are even more ludicrous.) But rather than point out how absurd it is to proclaim your environmental credentials while concreting over field after field, let us look at the alternatives.
Given that any “housing crisis” there might be is fuelled almost entirely by immigration, it is potentially controllable. This is the first contributory remedy. Next is the acknowledgment that there are nearly a million empty homes in the UK. There might be good reasons for some, but surely a high proportion could be put to use as homes. Third, if the crisis is so severe, then the issue of second (and third) homes needs to be addressed. In a crisis we should be looking at all possible responses. A significant financial disincentive, beginning with third homes and beyond, could release more homes for people actually to live in. (Any failure to take measures in this area is surely a huge admission that there really is no crisis.)
Social trends also offer help. High streets and shopping centres everywhere are gradually dying – and where they are not, they are hardly necessary – serving only to provide a haven at weekends for those unable to think of anything better to do. We would be better off without many of them. A similar revolution is making office space redundant: working from home is leaving vast acreages of floor space under-used, much of which could be converted to residential use. After all this, if construction/destruction is still required, then only council houses built with solar-tiled roofs and heat conversion pumps, making them virtually self-sustaining, should be built.
OCTOBER 15 2024
Our clueless Labour (in name only) government continues to bumble from one shambles to the next, taking credit for anything good that might accidentally happen, and blaming previous administrations for everything bad. But its worst betrayals by far are giving up any attempt to deter migrants crossing the Channel and adopting a developers’ charter – red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism in a race for economic growth. A wonderful book by John S Goodall called The Story of an English Village contains no words but speaks volumes with its illustrations. Here is one from the start and one from the end, perfectly representing Keir Starmer’s vision for a hideous business-first Britain. We'll be going from this......
to this.....
OCTOBER 5 2024
Ooh, quite a bit of catching up to do after a busy summer of travel, including all of August in Malawi and Zambia and a week of September in Cornwall.
MALAWI – FOURTH POOREST COUNTRY, BUT ONLY BY THE SHALLOWEST OF MEASURES
It might be economically poor but the people seem happier. Look at the dead eyes in the shoppers of Northampton or trudging aimlessly around any airless, characterless shopping centre – and compare them to the life and vibrancy in the faces of the Malawians. How can this be? Well, it could be down to “agency”. Yes, they are poor and have little – but enough to survive and live. But the one things they enjoy, that few in the west can claim, is agency – a form of freedom that allows them to make their own decisions, giving them autonomy. No one tells them what to do; they don’t have “jobs” – they just work, doing what needs to be done for themselves and each other. It’s hard but satisfying in a simple way. In the west, labouring for someone else has beaten the life out of us.
ASHAMED TO BE A ‘WINNER’ IN CORNWALL
Five of us sat around a large table in The Fountain Inn in Mevagissey during our week there in September and we played a card game called Monopoly Deal, based on the creaking old board game. In the first round, I did badly: I had little useful property, little money and little hope of seizing anyone else’s. And I was happy, relaxed and content, quite uncomplaining when I had to pay taxes or give up possessions to opponents. In the next round, I found myself winning – and accumulating. And I became hideously possessive, aggressive, desperate to cling on to what I had – and acquire more to provide “a bit of leeway”. I felt horrible. A “winner”. Embarrassed. Shameful.
SUE GRAY IS A DESPICABLE CHARLATAN
Is it remotely possible that Sue Gray can have been a completely impartial civil servant one day and a Labour party politician a few days later? It seems unlikely that such a Damascene conversion could have taken place unnoticed by the nation’s media. We can only therefore conclude that she was a Labour sympathiser all along – and that she should never have been allowed anywhere near any inquiry into Boris Johnson’s involvement in the so-called party-gate affair. Yet she was allowed to damn Johnson, and inflict untold damage on what is now the Opposition, on highly controversial evidence (the truth probably lies somewhere between her findings and Johnson’s own accounts in his recent memoirs) before skipping across to Labour immediately afterwards. She must always have been partisan and should never have been allowed near that inquiry. A charlatan.
‘SMASH THE GANGS – STOP THE BOATS!’ HOW’S THAT GOING, CLUELESS KEIR?
Years and years of experience and experimentation over what works and what doesn’t when it comes to preventing illegal migrants from invading the Kent coastline have all been tossed aside, dragging us back to day one of nursery school on the learning curve. Keir Starmer has shown himself to be barely out of nappies when it comes to learning about how to deal with this serious and deadly thorn. If you have no fresh ideas of your own – which he doesn’t – then surely you could at least have the common sense to learn from the enormous piles of research conducted by your predecessors. But no. “I know best,” he says. And the number of illegal boats crossing the Channel is flying off the scale. Bigger boats, too – which you might have thought would make it easier for the French Clouseaus to spot. But no, they set off unhindered, lethally overloaded, to sit and wait half way across the Channel to be picked up by our own “rescue boats”. You couldn’t make it up.
So having thrown out the only things that work and gone back to the things that have been proved to be abject failures, the dim-witted Keir has provided a huge incentive to the smuggling industry and taken us back to square one. And don’t say “oh, it’s only early days” – the Rwanda scheme hadn’t even started before Keir wrote it off as a failure.
Anyone who encourages this deadly trade in human lives has to take responsibility for the deaths that will inevitably follow. And that includes prime minister Keir. I saw a duh-brain placard being carried along the Strand on Saturday as part of a pro-hamas/hezbollah/Iran march, accusing him of having blood on his hands over Israel. That might be nonsense, but it’s very close to the truth when it comes to facilitating the people smugglers. Perhaps he’ll learn about the real world eventually. But he doesn’t seem to be very bright – so perhaps not.
AN ENVIRONMENT POLICY SET TO DESTROY
Steve Reed, Labour environment secretary (sic), is screaming “build, build, build – and we won’t let anyone, or anything stop you – not reason, common sense, nor debate. So just build!” On the other hand, he has a sworn duty to protect the environment and the countryside. Bizarrely, he seems to think there is no conflict between the two. And he says this with a straight face – at least in public. He might eventually realise that every home built in the countryside is a little piece of environmental destruction – another nail in the coffin of the planet. And if it’s built using traditional, non-sustainable methods (without heat pumps, solar power tiles, etc), it’s double destruction. Perhaps he will learn. But the omens are not good – and he can build enormous amounts of destruction in the meantime.
CRAP PARENTING EXPLAINED
For some years, when anyone has told me about their antisocial neighbours, or some antisocial “I know my rights” bullying, or such-like, I have asked how old the perpetrators were. And the answer has nearly always been: “In their 40s,” (now edging up to early 50s).
Look a generation further on, and we can see the terrifying spectacle of secondary school pupils, and now university students, being completely unable to cope with the tiniest and most normal of disruptions in life. And putting two and two together we can deduce that it is not their fault: they are the victims of the selfishness, arrogance and resulting neglect of parents brought up during the hideous Thatcher years of individualism and materialism and “me me me”. Those ghastly social changes imposed during the 1980s have a lot to answer for.
JULY 26 2024
HOW CAN WE NOW DENY THERE IS SUCH A THING AS KARMA?
We have not even reached the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and France is gridlocked, there are complaints about the food, Chinese swimmers are accused of cheating, Wada, the doping agency, is accused of incompetence, Charlotte Dujardin is stitched up over cruelty allegations, and a Dutch rapist has had to be kept from the Olympic village. Add in the corruption that infests the International Olympic Committee and the disgraceful suggestion from the British Olympic Association that competitors should use the Games and their “celebrity” to campaign for political causes and you have a complete shambles. And that’s before mentioning that the BBC has already issued an apology for its hopeless coverage – days before a ball has been kicked or a bar jumped over. How can this have happened? There are many reasons, of course, but one has to be karma – these disasters could not be happening to a more deserving bunch of people.
A concerted attack on the French rail network has caused travel chaos across France. It’s difficult to make a railway completely secure, just as it is a beach, but they have failed. And these are the people with whom Keir Starmer is working to “smash the gangs” of people smugglers. We knew this idea was doomed before – but now we have proof that policing on the continent is not fit for purpose and will prove useless against the far smarter criminals. And how is it that a country famed for its food has had to admit to a failure to provide even the basic nutrition required by its guest athletes? The UK has resorted to providing its own. And how is it that the Dutch contingent was allowed to include a convicted rapist in its team – a man who served only 12 months for grooming and raping a 12-year-old girl he travelled to England to assault? The Dutch team boss says he can’t see what the fuss is all about; the idiotic Paula Radcliffe, enhancing her reputation no end, said the poor chap shouldn’t be punished twice for his crime and wished him good luck. But how is his victim supposed to feel? She is punished every time his name appears in the media – but no one seems concerned about her. The offender has been removed from the Olympic Village, where competitors are as young as 15, and Radcliffe has had to issue a grovelling apology. Far better that she had kept her mouth shut instead of giving her absurd verdict on something she clearly knows little about.
Which brings us to the shocking suggestion that participating in the Olympics should be used as a platform to air political views. The British Olympic Association believes this is an opportunity and a good thing – but presumably only as long as the athletes say the right things. I’m certain that anyone not toeing the hyper-liberal “progressive” agenda would be silenced swiftly and severely. But it does fit nicely into the new era of “celebrity politics” – rule by comedians and actors and sportspeople. Radcliffe’s stupidity and impact were minor but the interventions of others can be major. For example, the group of “sort-of celebrities” who are demanding to meet the Attorney General to seek lesser sentences for the wreckers who stopped traffic on the M25 have no more right to demand this than I do to demand a meeting to press for longer incarceration. (They also should be reminded that the Attorney General has only power to increase jail terms, not reduce them.) In the US, George Clooney and plenty of other brainless hams have reduced the Democratic Party to a laughing stock by backing Joe Biden’s nomination to run for president with their millions and setting him up as perfectly capable, before turning on their heels and backing Kamala Harris, writing off old Joe as non compos mentis. He has barely been able to walk for ages and would not be deemed fit to drive a car in the UK – but these great minds have only just noticed.
Meanwhile, back in the swimming pool, Australian and American swimmers have complained that 23 Chinese rivals, all found to have been drugged, have been cleared by the World Anti-Doping Agency – on the grounds that it cannot prove they were not all affected by one hotel’s contaminated food. Yet there are suggestions that several of the Chinese swimmers did not even stay at the affected hotel. We all know that doping goes on and has been used by several countries to enhance their reputations via sporting prowess. If Wada is so hopeless that it cannot police it, then it should stand down and make way for someone who can. There have also been claims against Russians – but this begs the question as to what Russians are doing the Games in the first place. Athletes from a nation waging war should surely be banned automatically.
In this context, Charlotte Dujardin’s ejection from the equestrian events looks outrageously unjust and out of proportion. Drug cheats, rapists and warmongers are welcome – but not someone who allegedly stung her horse during training. I haven’t seen the video and so am not qualified to comment, but my suspicions were confirmed by a letter in The Times from someone who does appear to have seen the “evidence” of mistreatment and dismissed it as minor. She says a lunge line can cause no harm – only sting a horse; that the horse did not look pained – only annoyed; that no one can pass judgment until they have seen the entire video for context; that were the incident serious, the person taking the video could have intervened at the time; and that release of the footage has been timed to cause maximum misery to a world-class horsewoman. At the same time, we have flaky “celebrities” complaining of “meanness” by their dance trainers in the Strictly studios. A long feature in today’s Times supplement carries the quote: “There isn’t any excuse for aggressive behaviour in a dance studio.” To which I would answer: “Maybe – but it depends on how good you want to be.” Cuban boxers are the best in the world: the country’s training methods would be outlawed as downright cruel in other places. Niceness does not produce winners. So how good to you want to be? Do you want to win – or have a nice time? You cannot have both. So be clear with your trainer which it is and THEN you can complain if they come on too strong.
So how will this Olympics be remembered? For a disastrous opening followed by a triumphant and tremendous Games? Or the Games that, in time, will prove to be the beginning of the end? Football is leading the way in going over the top having reached its peak – the sport is now so dull to watch, with cheating players and inept TV coverage, that its period of decline is about to begin. So how much blame will France face for triggering the Olympic downturn? It is noticeable that France’s prime minister, rather than its horrible little president, was wheeled out to explain how the railway attacks had been allowed to happen. Either way, they should just accept that it is karma. Since Brexit, France – and other EU countries – have been intimidating and obstructing British people and businesses with petty and malicious “rules” and “procedures”. France’s – and Macron’s – vindictiveness might now be coming home to haunt them.
BBC PAY DISGRACE
It won’t be long before the BBC goes cap in hand to the government asking for an increase in the amount everyone has to pay to watch television in the UK. But how can it justify a larger licence fee when it squanders money like confetti on third rate performers – and, incredibly, on presenters who are not even at work? Gary Lineker is gifted about £1.35m, for example. Apart from causing frequent embarrassment for his “employer”, with his ridiculous political posturing and his tax affairs, he is relatively talentless. He could be replaced tomorrow by hundreds of better presenters – perhaps even a professional broadcaster! Eric Morecambe had a talent worth paying for; Lineker does not. Neither does Lauren Laverne – there are thousands of proper journalists who could do a better job than her. Why pay the earth to keep these people? Huw Edwards, another serious BBC embarrassment, not only earned a small fortune last year – but had it topped up with a pay rise as big as most people’s salary, without working a single day! And as for the hapless Alex Scott – I like her, and as a football pundit she is just about acceptable. But as a front-line presenter she is useless: there are millions who could do it better. Until the BBC clears out all this over-priced dead wood and brings in professionals on sensible wages, it should be denied a single extra penny.
JULY 20 2024
SLAVE PLAY – ENJOYABLE, THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND DEPRESSING ALL AT THE SAME TIME
Such a lot of fuss – surely there must be something big going on here? Jeremy O Harris, the author of Slave Play”, had called for “Black Out” nights – inviting a predominantly black audience to attend his play in order to avoid the ever-present oppression of “white gaze”. While we should welcome every idea and initiative to encourage the widest possible enjoyment of theatre, this, to me, rubbed against the grain of an already open, tolerant and inclusive society. But then isn’t this the very nub of the play? Three mixed-race relationships are floundering because of some unidentified deep-seated malaise that white people, with their supremacist history, can never comprehend? White people can never appreciate how their very existence affects black people? This seems to be the message from what is, overall, a depressing and negative play. Thought-provoking, yes, and a bombardment of ideas and concerns, absolutely, but it seems to say that black and white can never truly be as one.
This is not to say I didn’t “enjoy” it – I most certainly did and believe it is an extremely worthwhile addition to the debate over racial harmony and interweaving. But the conceit that it focuses on three dysfunctional relationships slants it towards failure, almost hinting at the impossibility of successful mixed-race partnerships – which is patently untrue. The flip-side is that those relations were dysfunctional BECAUSE they were mixed race. This probably makes more sense in America, parts of which are simplistic and unreconstructed to the point of outright racism. I think this is its main weakness – many of the issues raised are subjective; they are “feelings”: one couple consider how being seen together, as a black woman with a white man, is exciting in itself. To sympathise fully with the play, you need to see issues and problems where, in reality, there need be none. The UK, while not perfect, is not like the US, which means many of the fiery exchanges during the long, but amusing, therapy session don’t really resonate. Or did they not resonate with me because I will never be able to see the black perspective? But this, too, raises the question of whether all black people suffer the same trauma, hypersensitivity and paranoia as the characters in the play. Some might well do, but I suspect many in the UK do not. It would have been fascinating to have seen the play with a black friend to discuss that perspective. But would that have been frowned upon on “Black Out” nights? It seems a shame to think it would have been.
HALLETT’S WASTE OF PAPER
Baroness Hallett, chair of the public inquiry into the handling of the Covid pandemic, has produced a sort-of interim report – or, more accurately, assault – on the country’s preparedness. Every single thing that government did, from about 2011 onwards, was 100 per cent wrong, apparently. An example: we had no PPE stockpiled (aka sitting around) ready to roll out. But this ignores the fact that PPE is vastly expensive and has only a fairly short shelf life – France had just destroyed enormous amounts of the stuff shortly before the outbreak. Another example: what emergency preparations we had made were for the wrong disease – but flu was a far more likely killer in the west than Sars-related viruses, with the deadliest forms largely contained within Asia. And again: Asian counties had invested in testing for Covid viruses – understandably, as it was an Asian-focused problem that had had little impact beyond. The policy of lockdown is attacked for failing to consider the broader cultural, social and economic impacts; one professor called it “ad hoc” – ignoring the fact that there was no alternative (other than millions dying) and that every other country behaved in exactly the same way. And that these issues WERE debated ad nauseam at the time.
I could go on – but the pattern is the same: narrow, poorly thought-out and entirely negative attacks taking no heed of the reality as it unfolded and the undeniable truth that exactly the same path was being taken in every comparable country. There is not one single word on what should have been done differently to produce a better outcome and the 10 proposals in the report (actually, more like three dressed up as 10) all concern extra bureaucracy and monitoring at vast expense – to guard against an unknown threat that might never materialise. Hallett’s waste time of time and money is the equivalent of a teacher marking a pupil’s work, telling them that every single thing was wrong but giving zero guidance on what was right – and then when challenged, saying that’s not my job (it is claimed that this “module” was not intended to look at what alternative decisions might have been made – and if we ever get to hear those, which I doubt, they will surely be either laughably impossible or the same arguments we heard over and over again during the events itself).
THERE HAS TO BE AN INQUIRY
An IT failure stopped flights in Britain yesterday. Banks were affected, and the medical systems. It has long been known that technology is highly fallible. So just how prepared was the Labour government? And how should we assess its reaction? Had it taken the right precautions? Had it prepared an IT disaster plan? Was its response swift and correct? Did it consider the economic and social impacts of all its action? Did it actually do anything at all? We demand an inquiry. Perhaps chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg or Nigel Farage. And let us hear from all those missing appointments or flights or unable to access their money – everyone with a grievance must be heard as a priority.
‘WORKING FROM HOME’ LIARS
Plenty of office employees are able to work more productively and save commuting time and emissions working from their homes. Why travel two hours a day to sit at a laptop you could have in your kitchen? Well, cohesion is a good reason, as is the social element of work, and serendipitous spreading of ideas and news. So a balance has to be struck. But to hear that Helen Pitcher, the part-time head of the miscarriage of justice watchdog was “working remotely” while posting pictures of herself by the sea in Montenegro, saying “having an amazing time at Milos Mussels bar”, while Andrew Malkinson was still wondering why he had been wrongly jailed for a decade or more, is utterly unforgivable. This is a person who believes herself capable of chairing two vitally important justice committees and serving as a non-executive director on a string of boards – and “work remotely”. The truth is, she can’t. And those who thought she could should be equally ashamed of themselves.
JULY 16 2024
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ‘SISTERS DOIN’ IT FOR THEMSELVES’?
The idea of “complicity in abuse” is a fascinating one. It was discussed in The Times yesterday by a woman who accused a man of abuse at work – but she had let him get away with it until the issue exploded out of all proportion. She asks how much responsibility she should take for not dealing with the situation better. We see the same phenomenon in the “Strictly Come Dancing” controversy over two male professional dancers pushing their charges too hard – possibly to the point of bullying and even physical abuse. But how much responsibility should the celebrities in those pairings assume? Surely Amanda Abbington should have had the sense and presence to put her dance teacher in his place, or deal with the situation in a way that didn’t require lawyers and inciting a barrage of hate towards herself. Stand up; call him out; talk; be grown up about it; treat him like a lad in need of guidance and correction; if necessary, talk to Claudia; get it sorted. But she did none of those things: instead she stomped off and called her lawyers, making her own life hell – and his.
Again – “Douglas is Cancelled”, the excellent ITV drama, covered the same ground: an up-and-coming TV presenter seeking her big break is propositioned by a sleazy producer. From this familiar scenario, Madeline goes on to destroy fellow presenter Douglas’s life – his job, his family, his reputation – all because he failed to save her from the clutches of the obnoxious Toby. But she could have left his hotel room at almost any time – he was in the bath, for heaven’s sake. She could have left when Douglas called. But she chose to stay. Douglas admitted she looked terrified – but does that make it his duty alone to save her when she could so easily have saved herself? Has she no agency in the matter? No gumption? She, surely was complicit in the potential abuse – which never occurred because she turned the situation to her advantage by blackmailing Toby. Madeline ruined Douglas because he repeatedly joked that she had slept her way into the job – which she hadn’t. Although blackmail isn’t too far behind. There are, of course, power imbalances in which the victim is truly abused and intimidated. But when strong women stop accepting responsibility for dealing with awkward situation they make themselves look weak and as though they are launching a claim for victimhood. And of course, women shouldn’t have to put up with any sort of intimidation or pressure or abuse – but it happens and has to be dealt with. Failure to do anything at all could well amount to complicity. Whatever happened to “Sisters are doing it for themselves – standing on their own two feet and ringin’ on their own bells?”
A COUPLE OF UPDATES ON YESTERDAY’S POSTS
Further to the illegal immigration discussion, our response has to be a mixture of removing incentives from people risking their lives to enjoy the UK’s hospitality, and deterrence. Keir Starmer’s hopeless policies have simultaneously enhanced the incentives, by feeding illegal migrants into the asylum system, and removed the only deterrent we had – a flight to Rwanda. Well done.
And the England footballers, having conducted themselves so well in Germany for the Euros, let themselves down at the last minute by hiding their runners-up medals. This is becoming all too common and looks petty and childish. If this petulance continues, no medals for coming second should be awarded. Why should they if the players don’t want them?
JULY 15 2024
GREAT START, STARMER – ONLY A FEW DEAD...
And so the new welcome promised to illegal migrants has claimed its first lives, as a small boat sank off the French coast a few days ago. Removal of the Rwanda deportation option has emboldened the gangs and their customers, including those from Africa who told Sunday Times reporters that they would now keep trying to reach the UK – whereas before they saw little point in fleeing Africa, only to be sent back there. With the new Labour government’s plans amounting to little more than pie in the sky and a culture of kindness, rather than fairness, then the border floodgates are wide open. What a great start.
LET US BE PROUD AT BEING FIRST CLASS IN SO MANY AREAS
England’s footballers reached their second successive Euro final last night – and their second successive final defeat. But it was a good display. The referee was excellent – refusing to be conned by blatant cheating which meant players had to leap up and continue playing, allowing the game to flow. England’s players are hailed as a decent bunch: responsible, caring, considerate – playing for the team. And Gareth Southgate has enormous qualities. Sadly, tactical nous and team selection are not among them. He is a leader, an inspiration; he has deeply affected the way the team thinks and responds and how individuals can flourish in a supportive, thoughtful, intelligent environment. I believe this ethos has, in some measure, spread to the supporters, too, making Southgate a genuine national asset and hero.
On the negative side, he made the blunder so many England managers make of picking out-of-form players because of their record or reputation. Roy Hodgson (I think it was) stuck by Wayne Rooney out of self-defeating loyalty when he was well past his use-by date and it cost as progress in a World Cup. And Southgate bafflingly kept picking Harry Kane when the poor bloke could hardly run. Watching him slowly lumbering around the edge of the Spanish penalty box last night when he should have been “pressing” and seeing him wander into impossible-to-reach positions was both sad and frustrating. He looked unfit and worn out. The whole world could see it – but not the manager. Kobbie Mainoo, too, was not quite ready for the big games and yet he was preferred each time to the in-form Cole Palmer.
At one point, Southgate almost seemed to admit that his starting 11 was not his best team and that the fresh-legged substitutes could do more damage later on. Well, call me old-fashioned, but that is always going to leave you playing catch-up – so start with the best 11. Playing Kane from the start made England a10-man team for two-thirds of the game. Ollie Watkins had already shown himself to be a live-wire replacement, capable of incisive runs that disrupted the opponents’ defence. Then, during the final, Southgate failed to spot that England’s best player of the tournament, Bukayo Saka, was being double-marked and stifled on the right-hand side of the pitch. He needed to take action – but didn’t. Switch Saka to the left – he is left-footed, after all – and give Cole Palmer free rein on the right. Keep them switching if you like. But do something to free Saka and make him dangerous again. This is how someone can be a great leader but not a great tactician or implementer. We have seen plenty of examples of this in politics recently.
Having said all that, we should be proud of our team. The players did well – and could have done even better. And we should be proud of our country. As Matthew Syed wrote in the Sunday Times, the UK is in the elite when it comes to inclusion, minority rights, tolerance and openness. We could all do better. But we do very well – and should be proud of it.
JULY 12 2004
THE GAFFES THAT STILL MAKE ME SQUIRM
For several years, I was master of ceremonies, or compere, at the amazing Ram Club music events. I shared the duties for most of that time with Maggie Wood, a funny, endearing and incredibly slick presenter, steeped in the history of acoustic, folk and roots music; I was, by comparison, a newcomer to the genre, an ingenue, but someone who could withstand the glare of the spotlight and, with enough preparation, give a decent account of myself. Even so, there were gaffes: I once called several times for “Hamish” to take to the stage to play a couple of songs – until I took notice of the audience reminding me that the musician's name was Hector. And Hector was a friend! Another time, I completely forgot to introduce Bob Wood to play a “floor spot” and went straight into the evening's headliner – to the consternation and confusion of both of them. There were wonderfully funny moments, too – deliberately funny. But it is the excruciating, mortifying gaffes that stay with me: the embarrassment and humiliation. It makes it hard for me to understand, then, how President Joe Biden can seriously continue as a candidate for re-election. My gaffes were to 120 people or so – his are to the world. And does he not care that he called President Zelensky “Putin”? Does he not lose sleep over it and begin to think he isn't really cut out for this job any more? I still cringe when I think of the “Hamish” incident – partly through professional pride at not doing the job properly: it has stayed with me for a decade or more. Surely Biden has just a small level of professional pride remaining...
JULY 10 2024
THE FOLLY OF DIVISIVENESS
Demands, demands, demands. That is the message being given off loud and clear by the LGBTQ+ campaigners, and especially the radical wing – the Ultras – shouting for more more more. The irony is, that as we have seen before, there comes a point where rainbow flags, provocative flaunting and exclusionary zones become divisive and counter-productive, aggravating and insulting the majority population and turning it against what is otherwise a perfectly reasonable cause. As I have noted before, the London Gay Symphony Orchestra is an example of how to get this right. Because what it does is draw larger circles, instead of ever smaller ones. It does not adopt an unnecessary siege mentality, an us-and-them stance that sets it up for war – it is open and welcoming and any issues or concerns or imagined differences simply melt away. So draw a larger circle, because the more you push people to become separate and the more you point out differences among them, the more divisive and less trusting they will grow. This is a basic principle of social psychology. On the other hand, the more you empathise common goals or interests, shared fate, and common humanity, the more people will see one another as fellow human beings, treat one another well and come to appreciate one another’s contributions to the community. So draw those circles wide – make them inclusive, not divisive.
WISE WORDS ON PROGRESS?
As people age and have a golden past upon which they can look back with rose-tinted spectacles and nostalgia, they tend to become more pessimistic for the future, seeing the blunders that were made long ago being repeated, seeing social attitudes become barely comprehensible. This makes them assume things are getting worse. But this might be the progress paradox. As we make progress, we raise our expectations. The progress we have made is real but as we adapt to our improved conditions we often fail to notice it and expect even more. As Thomas Babington Macaulay, the 19th century historian and politician, said: “On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” As a person of a certain age, however, I would just like to ask whether progress has a limit? It seems to me that the wisdom above assumes infinite resources and infinite intelligence. Without wishing to fall foul of the progress paradox, I do fear we are heading towards a hard stop.
JULY 9 2024
JUST HOW DOES HOUSE-BUILDING KICK START ECONOMIC GROWTH?
A government spokesman was asked on the BBC lunchtime news yesterday how building a million and a half homes in five years would spur economic growth. He was asked several times. Because he didn't have an answer until finally pressed to explain the mechanics of it. And his response was hilarious! He said it means people can live closer to where they work, so there will be fewer traffic jams and they'll get there earlier! Unbelievable! A couple of slightly less idiotic suggestions have been mentioned since by others – it means people spending more money to boost the economy. I'm not sure how having a mortgage makes you able to spend more – but I suppose you have to have furniture and crockery etc. But fundamentally, if the only way you can get economic growth is by trashing the country, then thank you – but no thank you.
STARMER'S 'MANDATE'
I think I heard him correctly: Keir Starmer said he has a “clear mandate” for change. I think he needs to look more closely at the election results. First, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour was more popular than Starmer's, winning more votes at the 2019 election. Second, only one in five of the electorate voted for Labour – and a fair number of those will have been voting anti-Tory, rather than FOR Labour. Third, that means four in every five people did NOT support Labour and their views must be listened to. Fourth, the Labour manifesto used the word “change” quite a lot, apparently, but precisely what would change and how was rather shrouded – deliberately – in mystery, for fear of frightening the horses. And so for Starmer to claim that the partially reluctant and hesitant 20 per cent of the electorate that voted for his vague notion of change gives him a “clear mandate” to bully Nimbys (ie: sensible people – the opposite of a Nimby, remember, is a Fool), change the constitution, and undermine the Brexit referendum choice made by the British people is pretty rich. I'd suggest a little humility should be shown and a reaching out to other grossly under-represented parties and their priorities (but perhaps not to the grossly over-represented LibDems, who gained seats by virtue of having more experience of manipulating the electoral system). I have no issue with much of what Labour is planning, bar the five nightmares set out previously: I couldn't care less about VAT on private school fees, or the bizarre world of the non-dom parasite, or tax-free luxury shopping. Fiddling with those might improve justice and fairness – which is good, obviously – but will do nothing for the Exchequer. The amounts raised will be piffling, in the scale of things. So Labour can be steady and tinker – but to claim a mandate for radical destruction of the fabric of the nation on the back of such a derisory number of votes is out of order.
ONCE A LIAR, ALWAYS A LIAR...
If the tiny proportion of the electorate that managed to stir itself to vote Labour had realised that they would actually get more Blair, perhaps they might have thought twice before putting the friends of the spivs and people smugglers into power. Because there he was, on the radio this morning, boasting about how he saw the opportunity in turning the UK's universities into businesses and that now they were the best in the world, bar America. All down to his vision! Yes, Tony, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE – all pretty rubbish till you came along. And never mind the funding disaster – still unresolved – that you triggered. Yet there he was moments later boasting about how migration has quadrupled since he left office. Yes, Tony, but only if you ignore the fact that free movement was responsible for bringing millions of East Europeans into the country to undermine and degrade existing trades. Once a liar, always a liar... Even Nick Robinson spotted this nonsense and, when challenged, Blair stuttered and blustered, almost as if he felt some shame. Which, of course, he never will.
BUT I DO AGREE WITH HIM ON ID CARDS AND THE NEED FOR BORDERS (NOW HE'S CHANGED HIS MIND)
I have long advocated ID cards for the UK, both as means of tidying up the haphazard, scrubby identity system we currently have of driving licences, National Insurance numbers, utility bills, bus passes, and all manner of other detritus, and to make strict enforcement of workplace laws and entitlement to services easier. We should just have a digital ID card – surely the technology works by now – enforce it rigorously, and have done with it. This is one subject upon which I agree with Blair. The other is over controlled borders. His enormous volte face on this means we are now aligned in thinking that unlimited migration, especially illegal migration, damages trust, and incites “prejudices” – which he interprets as a bad thing that leads to the rise of “populism” (“right-wing” movements), but which can just as easily be seen as working class people desperately trying to protect their livelihoods and communities. We must always remember that mass migration doesn't adversely affect the affluent – quite the contrary – but it certainly does hit the working class. As we saw when the “Red Wall” turned blue in 2019. By the time the very naive Yvette Cooper's pathetic efforts at controlling illegal migration – simply doing what's already been tried and failed for a couple of decades – are finally admitted to be completely useless, it may be too late to stop violence on the streets of Britain again. Within three years, I would guess.
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JULY 6 2024
MY FIVE STARMER POLICY NIGHTMARES
Much of what Labour has said it will do is inoffensive enough. Its general attitude of being pro-business is primitive, backward-looking, anti-socialist and anti-people – not my cup of tea at all but pretty much what you have to expect from all the main parties. But I have five major policy nightmares:
PLANNING: There will inevitably be a catalogue of destruction. The Green Belt is now up for grabs – the bulldozers, speculators and spivs are hovering, waiting to strike. And Labour – incredibly – is on their side. In a decade, the removal of planning protections for communities will be seen as the greatest folly of the past half century.
IMMIGRATION: Abandonment of the promising Rwanda scheme is idiotic; Labour's plans amount to nothing. The cries of jubilation will echo along the coasts around Calais. Our only hope is that a populist government stops the unending supply of asylum cheats entering its country in the first place. Otherwise – more deaths, more criminal gangs, more inundation of our immigration processes.
EXTENDING THE FRANCHISE: The cynical, self-serving and insane idea of extending the franchise to 16-year-olds should not be allowed. This should be a constitutional matter, not a subject that one party can gerrymander for its own ends.
GENDER: Labour – and especially Starmer – has already tied itself up in knots over gender recognition and the protection of women's rights. Its proposals sound as mind-blowingly stupid as Nicola Sturgeon's. This is madness, when a team under Kemi Badenoch has studied the subject, balanced the diametrically opposed rights of trans people and women, and come up with an excellent compromise and solution. To ignore this would show that the party's ideological clock has gone haywire yet is still held to be paramount.
RELATIONS WITH THE EU: I do not trust Starmer one inch on this. If political U-turns count as lying, then Starmer is the biggest liar ever to lead a UK political party, making Boris Johnson look like a choirboy. He says he accepts the Brexit result and that there is no going back to a single market and free movement. But I do not believe him for one second. He was the one calling for a “corrective” second referendum because the people got it “wrong” first time around; he was the one throwing every obstacle he could find – many of them involving lawyers – in the way of the departure negotiations; so he was the one to blame if we ended up with a poorer deal than we could have secured. Now he has the brass neck to criticise the government of the time for a “shoddy” deal. He really does take the biscuit on this one. I fear that once he settles down and chats to the EU leadership, his thoughts could well turn to that second referendum and rejoining, making his recent statements on the subject yet more lies. Or he will be unable to resist the temptation to try a “little bit of free movement” and “a tiny bit of free market”. Those red wall voters who gave their votes to Boris in the hope of ending their “free movement misery”, and who have now reluctantly gone back to Labour, or just as likely to Reform, will be fuming and suffering – and Starmer won't need to hear them.
JULY 5 2024
AND SO IT CAME TO PASS...
I hear bulldozers revving in the meadows; I hear joyous cheers along the coasts of northern France. This has to be the most terrifying election outcome since May 1979, with the smallest number of electors in history not voting FOR anyone. Landslide Labour takes just over a third of the overall vote on the smallest general election turnout for well over a century. But what was there to vote for?
JULY 4 2024
NAME THE TORIES' THREE BIGGEST DISASTERS (EXCLUDING LIZ TRUSS)
It's election day and time to consider just how bad the latest Tories have been, compared to previous regimes? Thatcher changed the country, in most ways for the worse (see The Rise of Antisocialism”; Blair and Brown destroyed the world's best pension system, created the housing finance crisis; introduced the gambling disease; wrecked student financing; opened the UK borders; and, among many other disasters, crashed the economy. Cameron and Osborne sought to repair the damage with austerity – unpleasant but necessary – in the face of all these Labour calamities, most of which we still live with today. So, in relative terms, how bad have the past 14 years of government been and what have been the costliest mistakes? Some would cite the Brexit referendum decision. But while this might have been catastrophic for Cameron, it surely can never be wrong to allow people a voice, even if they don't offer up the answer you demanded of them. “Partygate” is mentioned a lot but in the grand scheme of things was trivial, grossly exaggerated and pretty much what the vast majority of the population was doing anyway. Otherwise, the government hardly put a foot wrong during the pandemic: our lockdowns and death rates were in line with all comparable countries; our focus on vaccination was world-beating; and Sunak's financial engineering exemplary. PPE procurement? The focus is on where it went wrong, but again, looking broadly and objectively, it worked well, and certainly far better than in other comparable countries. Did it get immigration wrong? This charge cannot stick because our borders were opened by Blair in 2004. Brexit provided the opportunity to close them: this has not yet been taken, with an alarming number of work visas approved last year. This has since improved – and it must be remembered that the majority of recent authorised arrivals have been from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong. On illegal migration, the Rwanda scheme was already beginning to have an effect, even before implementation, and was viewed by several European neighbours as a model to follow. Removing incentives to enter the UK illegally is obviously the right policy and its opponents will have the blood of every future drowned migrant on their hands. High taxation? The result of a crashed economy under Labour. Cost of Living? Russia's attempted invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy price hike. The roads are in a shocking state and local council financing is a mess, but unless taxation remains high, this cannot be resolved.
On the other hand, the economy, since Truss and in the hands of Jeremy Hunt, has done surprisingly well. And Michael Gove, who I always found to be an irritating Times columnist, can be credited with making British primary school children the best readers in the world and with protecting communities from developers by removing arbitrary building targets – which the two opposition parties would reintroduce, with obvious and inevitable destruction of countless communities. The opposition parties' mantra seems to be: “Everyone wants to live where you live – so we're going to build build build until no one wants to live there any more.” The two policies I fear most are open borders, which undermine and degrade the lives and livelihoods of working people, and a developers' charter, which destroys communities and green spaces. The Tories have shown they are willing to address these issues; Labour and the LibDems favour opening the borders and setting bulldozers to work concreting over our fields. There being no socialist option on the ballot paper and a stark and horrifying choice between three barely distinguishable parties, I am forced to vote for the party that is likely to do the least damage in the next five years. In our constituency, the Conservatives are the only ones who can beat Monica Harding (LibDem, I think – although what her actual policies are, I have no idea, despite the mountain of paper she has shoved through our door). So it is obvious which way I am being forced to vote.
In any event, I detect no enthusiasm at all for any party and when Labour wins it will merely be because it is “not Tory”. It is the same in France, where the “not Macron” forces are popular and in the US, which will elect a “not Biden” president (if he manages to stagger on till polling day). It is quite extraordinary that a plainly incapable old man is being paraded by his party as a suitable candidate. What are their motives? A puppet president? A death wish? What have they been thinking? Or plotting? Or are they simply extraordinarily stupid? The US could end up wioth Trump back. The UK will end up with Labour – a decision it will live to regret. Big time.
JULY 2 2024
MY MANIFESTO
Time is running out. I promised a few days ago, when pointing out that socialists have no party to vote for and are in effect disenfranchised, that I would reveal my manifesto before the general election – which is on Thursday. I believe policies should be part of a vision, not a random shopping list aimed at upsetting the fewest number of people; I believe the job of politicians is to lead, not to follow or micromanage; to set parameters and select a team to implement the plan. This is probably why I have more respect for Boris Johnson than Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer, neither of whom have any vision at all. So, in no particular order, here is my de-growth communitarian manifesto:
HOUSEBUILDING: We will immediately stop building traditionally constructed houses – not one more will be permitted. Every new home must have its own power supply – heat pumps and roof tiles that are solar panels. And all new homes will be community housing – social homes at low rents. Developers and builders will cry foul. Good. And would-be home-owners will say they want homes to buy, not rent. The answer is that we already have a glut of those and the reason you can't buy is because housing finance was wrecked in the early part of this century, not because there aren't enough. (See this blog and “The Rise of Antisocialism” for the facts and truth about housing.)
PLANNING: Planning rules will be adjusted to implement the vision regarding homes. Furthermore, the placing of the new eco-homes will be carefully considered and not be allowed to have an adverse effect on existing successful communities – unless they choose it. Communities will have a veto, allowing them to live free of the fear of imminent development and destruction and ruination of their homes and lives. For infrastructure projects, on the other hand, rules will be loosened and made less complex. Approvals for small nuclear reactors, wind farms, pylons and the like will all be made considerably faster and easier.
ENERGY: The UK will become self-sufficient. A realistic timetable for a switch from fossil fuels to green energy will be set. Small nuclear reactors, wind farms, tidal projects, pylons, etc will be brought on stream as quickly as possible; dirty technologies will only be allowed where there is a threat to the UK's self-sufficiency and be approved on a temporary basis while green power is developed. The aim is to achieve green self-sufficiency within 20 years.
TRANSPORT: Integrated public transport systems will be created, making it the easiest and fastest form of transport, negating the need for more roads. A key element will be the provision of facilities, such as free car parks at stations and bus hubs of all kinds, enabling travellers to reach public transport provision and switch from their own vehicle to public transport. As the network is increased and reaches more areas, using smaller and more frequent electric vehicles, these initial car journeys will shorten and decrease, enabling many to be made by clean transport, such as cycling and walking. The switch to battery cars will be paused and investment directed to better, cheaper, cleaner, more practical and more long-term and sustainable options, such as hydrogen powered vehicles. Most 20mph zones will be scrapped and replaced with strict enforcement of the 30mph limit. A few 20 zones may be retained near schools and hospitals and at dangerous points on the road. This will ensure cars are driven more efficiently and cleanly and end the practice of imposing a random patchwork of variable speed limits aimed at catching drivers out in order to fine them.
OVERSEEING AND ENACTING THE VISION: A Development Commission responsible for overseeing all building will be created to ensure housing, infrastructure and transport changes go ahead only where it is responsible, effective and does least damage. An Environment Commission will also be set up to be responsible for ensuring no development causes harm to communities, nature or the environment. These two will work closely together.
ENVIRONMENT: The Environment Commission will have, as part of its brief, the cleansing of all waterways and investment in sewage infrastructure. Whatever it takes to deal with this extensive pollution problem will be permitted, up to and including full nationalisation of any failing water companies, without compensation. Huge investment is needed and this severe problem will take years, if not decades, to resolve. Bur we must start now. All other policies will be passed through the Environment Commission for its approval: it will take a strongly protective stance.
COMMUNITY SERVICE: A Community Service system will be introduced for all. School leavers will begin with a gap year – one year of either military service or civilian service. All adults will begin a gradually escalating scheme, beginning with a few days a year in the first year, rising to two or three week-long service sessions, leading to several months a year within 15 years. Service will involve nominal payment (expenses at first, similar to jury service, rising as it becomes longer) and be steered towards areas of need – social care, health care, council services, transport, street maintenance, refuse collection, education, training, defence. The ultimate vision is: that no one will be employed in harmful and meaningless functions, such as manufacturing plastic gadgets or encouraging betting; that everyone will enjoy a comfortable universal basic income; and that everyone will develop fulfilling and creative pursuits and be willing to share their skills and time in further voluntary activities. This is a change that might take two generations, as it involves a complete change of mind-set from self-centred consumption to outward looking community service and personal fulfilment. I wrote about this vision in “The Rise of Antisocialism” but at that time could see no route from our current business-dominated society that relies on permanent dissatisfaction to one based on sharing essential tasks and enjoyment: the idea of everyone spending time serving their community shows the way.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING: The UK will become self-sufficient in all its employment needs. Teachers in schools will be freed to teach the pupil, rather than the curriculum. League tables will be scrapped and local community-based commissions set up to assist schools to do better, replacing Ofsted. External campaign groups will be banned from entering schools. Religious schools will be banned – only community schools, taking in children from every faith and background, will be permitted. Religion will play no part in education. Teachers' pay and conditions will be hugely improved to ensure successful recruitment and retention. Beyond school, young people will spend their gap year of community service learning new skills, including social skills, and beyond that, there will be extensive provision of training and apprenticeships, both in the classroom and the workplace, to pass on vital knowledge and experience in essential occupations. In technology and other areas, the focus will be on green solutions and repairable goods and devices, with training on maintenance, putting an end to our disposable, throw-away culture.
CITIZENSHIP: Communitarian and society-based policies have been abandoned by the main parties because they have diluted the notion of citizenship: they have allowed it to be applied to anyone, anywhere. A nation can only provide for the needs of its citizens if it has a definition of what a citizen is – and, importantly, what it is not. The provision of services, the sharing of essential work, the level of social cohesion and crime all depend on citizenship. For this, borders are necessary, too. Our borders will be strictly policed – ports, airports and coastlines. Any migrant arriving illegally or without proper permits will immediately forfeit their right to claim to stay in the UK in any capacity and be on the next flight back to the country from which they have just arrived. Airlines and shipping companies will be forced to arrange this, making them more cautious as to who they carry in the first place. All migrants arriving illegally from France will immediately forfeit their right to claim asylum here and be detained, pending removal to either the country from which they departed (France – which will not take them); their country of original (if it will take them); or a neutral third country, such as Rwanda. The Rwanda scheme will be revived and extended. This will destroy the people smugglers' businesses and end most Channel crossings, as it had already begun to do even before implementation. If this scheme continues to be blocked or hampered in any way by lawyers or the European Court of Human Rights, or any other multi-national body, we will remove ourselves from these jurisdictions. The UK record on human rights is among the world's best and it does not need policing by a remote quango. Genuine refugees will continue to be made welcome, as in the case of Ukrainians, Afghans, Hong Kong citizens, and many others. But the system will be closed to abuses: overstaying students or seasonal workers, for example, will be subject to removal. Work visas will be strictly limited to those positions that cannot possibly be filled by domestic workers, who will be receiving education and training. This will further increase pay and conditions, costs which may be passed to consumers. Those businesses not able to pay domestic workers will not be considered going concerns and allowed to close. Identity cards will be issued to all qualifying citizens and will be necessary to secure employment and access to services. These cards will simplify the requirement to prove identity, currently a hotch-potch of driving licence, passport, utility bills and so on
CRIME AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR: As a more communitarian ethos takes hold, crime and antisocial behaviour will carry an increasing stigma. Shaming and ostracism, allied to a more inclusive and sharing and equal society will remove any of the perceived benefits of being a criminal. Of course there will still be crime, disagreement, violence, theft and antisocial behaviour and these will need to be dealt with. A tailored approach of making the deterrent fit the crime and the criminal will be employed.
HEALTH: We will continue to provide a free-at-the-point-of-need health service to those holding a UK identity card and to visitors with appropriate insurance. Everyone else will be expected to pay. This is common practice around the world: but we will be better with our taxation-funded system for citizens. A Health Commission will examine the generational changes that have been caused by social media, smartphone technology, overly protective parenting and the prevailing culture of “safetyism”. The effects of this are marked behavioural changes in many young people – poor social skills, an us-and-them attitude, a reliance on “feelings” rather than facts, increased “mental health” issues, increased medicalisation of non-medical problems, fear of the workplace – and more. The teaching of resilience and understanding in both youngsters and parents will greatly reduce the demand on the health service regarding non-medical conditions. This also applies to gender ideology. We will implement Kemi Badenoch's carefully considered and balanced measures so ensure that children are not taught to see gender transition as the answer to their natural apprehensions as they develop. True and proven cases of gender dysphoria will be handled sensitively and sympathetically.
SEXUALITY: This will return to being a private matter but with complete tolerance of all aspects. The increasingly provocative and domineering use of LGBT+ symbols will be reviewed, with a possible future ban from public infrastructure, such as roads and buildings. A dignified and respectful approach will be encouraged, similar to that presented by the London Gay Symphony Orchestra – no rainbow flags but an honest and open inclusivity that rises above the simple “us-and-them” dismissive and exclusive regime.
TAXATION: The contribution everyone makes to the success of their society will increase, both in terms of their time and effort and financially. We will not pretend that taxes can be lower, or that this is even desirable – they will increase significantly, according to an individual's ability to contribute. This will enable society to clean its waterways, and provide world-leading health and social care, education and other services.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND TRADE: The UK will continue to provide shelter for genuine refugees, while showing no tolerance for those seeking to take advantage of the country's generosity and hospitality via illegal or unauthorised means. The UK will be on good terms with its neighbours in the EU, happy to be seen as a good and positive example of how successful and harmonious life can be outside the EU. There will be no question of rejoining the EU, nor any arrangements, deals or negotiations that in any way reintroduce aspects of the single market. Free movement of any kind will not be countenanced, in order to protect working people from its undermining effects on employment and ways of life. Trade deals for essential goods may be struck around the world but not if they in any way damage or disadvantage the efforts and livelihoods of UK citizens. The aim is to become as self-sufficient as is reasonably possible in all goods (of which we will need far less in a creative, post-consumerism culture), foodstuffs (which those performing community service will assist in producing and harvesting), and services (which will be greatly simpler once the gambling element in financial services is eradicated).
OVERSEAS AID: This must be greatly increased and a concerted international effort made to tackle the effects of climate change already causing parts of the planet to become inhospitable and causing mass migrations that destabilise settled societies. There is great self-interest in addressing issues with a view to enabling the poor and dispossessed around the globe to enjoy better lives in their home countries. There is far less the UK can do where those countries are dysfunctional theocracies or vicious regimes mistreating their own citizens. Help can be given to assist change from within but the UK is not the world's policeman or refuge.
DEFENCE: In a volatile world, the UK must be able to defend itself and its way of life. A large, Swiss-style volunteer reservist army will make invasion difficult for any enemy; a well-prepared anti-invasion plan will deter potential invaders. Our nuclear deterrent is largely worthless: were it ever to be used, the country would be completely destroyed. The arguments in favour of “mutually assured destruction” assumed rational global leadership which, with the dictatorship now in place in Russia and disturbing electoral and military trends elsewhere, can no longer be guaranteed. Putin might be less likely to launch a nuclear strike on the UK if it was capable of retaliating in kind, but this is no certainty any more. The UK should not shelter under the umbrella of the US regarding defence but our membership of, and contribution to, Nato should continue, and ways should be sought to enable the UK to keep its nuclear weapons. The aim must be global nuclear disarmament.
JULY 1 2024
'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH' – YOU ARE SO RIGHT...
Please stop! The wretched Monica Harding has shoved more paper through our door, this time saying “Enough is enough”. If only. This hyper-annoying LibDem parliamentary candidate has sent several personally addressed letters and other campaigning sheets disguised inside envelopes to us, but as my wife said on finding today's offering: “This really takes the biscuit.” It says nothing, as usual, other than “I'm not Tory.” Meanwhile, The Times has published a leader article on the party's policies, such as they are, and finds them to be, variously, “risible” (EU policy), “fantasy” and “breathtakingly naive” (tax policy), “based on a preposterous idea” (pensions policy), “confused” (foreign policy), calling the party “a force for insularity and unreality”. And it doesn't even mention the worst of it – the insane plan to build 3.6 Birminghams in the UK in the next five years, leaving behind a trail of destruction and the proponents of a developers' charter scratching their heads asking: “Why haven't house prices gone down?” Brainless. And dangerous.
HERE WE GO AGAIN – THE WORKING CLASS IS RACIST...
And so it is happening in France, just as it happened – and is still happening – here. The ruling and upper middle classes, with the hyper-liberal globalising luvvies, tell the poor and working class in their country: “We've found you lots of new neighbours. And we're building them houses in the fields and countryside next door to where you live. Oh, and by the way, they'll do the jobs you're doing for way less – so that's all good! We get stuff cheaper! Isn't that just so great! What! I'm sorry – you don't think it works for you? Then you must all be THICK RACISTS...” It produced Brexit in Britain; it's now doing the same in France. And elsewhere. Every EU country should hold a referendum – except so many wouldn't dare.
A LIGHT TOUCH FOR ALL BUT THE TORIES
Mishal Husain, on the BBC's Today programme, asked an SNP spokesperson whether a policy was new. He began to waffle and she gently interjected: “But is that new?” and then fell to silence for what seemed like an age. Get a Tory in the studio and the interjection would have been: “Oh, come off it, that's not new!” On the other hand, allowing the SNP chap to chat away did highlight the parallel universe thinking of his party. If the SNP wins a majority of seats in Scotland, that amounts to a mandate for independence; and if it doesn't, it already has a mandate from previous elections. He referred to “the will of the Scottish people”, as if there had been no national rejection of independence in 2014. Heads I win, tails you lose.
OH NO. WIMBLEDON IS ONLY ON THE BBC...
Get ready with the remote control: it's Wimbledon time on the BBC. Prepare for endless and pointless channel hopping and plenty of “video previews” and endless court-side wittering. And I noticed today that it's failed to put right the horrible blunder that no other broadcaster seems to make: it does not show the scores of previous sets in its on-screen graphic; it just says how many sets each player has won. This might not sound like much a difference but to anyone interested in tennis the scores in previous sets are crucial and of enormous interest. But the arrogant BBC has decided we don't need to have this information so we have to try and catch a passing glimpse of the on-court scoreboard to assess the flow of the match. It's not as if it can't be done: the graphic is already larger than it needs to be, contains a good deal of blank space and so could easily accommodate these vital statistics. Other sports and channels have far more on-screen information. But not the BBC, of course.
SUCH UNIMAGINABLE VIOLENCE – HOW WILL I EVER GET OVER IT?
Thank goodness for Hogan Lovells' “microaggression hotline”. The law firm has opened it so that “victims” of terrible slights can seek restitution and revenge. An example given in the newspaper coverage of just what a microaggression is included using the word “guys” in a mixed-gender group. This is most timely, as during her Glastonbury performance on Friday night “pop princess” Dua Lipa used the “g” word repeatedly when addressing the mixed-gender crowd. They will surely all need therapy. And a good lawyer.
JUNE 29 2024
WHY DOES THE PENDULUM NEVER STOP IN THE MIDDLE?
Tom Bradby, ITV's main news anchor, is on the brink of being cancelled. He has committed the unforgiveable crime of pointing out an obvious fact. He didn't attach any judgment to it; he just said there weren't many white male news anchors left. Which is correct. Yet this, apparently, breaches all the rules of “Correctspeak”: no one is allowed to tell a truth that conflicts with the prevailing orthodoxy – which is that there are too many white men running everything. While this might be true, it is certainly not true in the case of top news presenters. A quick check revealed that of its 12 main news presenters on BBC News and Newsnight, only one (Ben Brown) is a white male. Add BBC London News and it's one out of 18, as London has none. ITV is more difficult, with a more diffuse list, but of the 10 who seem to present the news, there are three white males – two of whom are so low profile I've never heard of them. So it's really just Bradby. Channel 4 News has Matt Frei and that's about it.
This is such a familiar trajectory: an imbalance is observed – in this case the domination of the newsroom by white men – and there is a general resolve to correct it. Before you know it, the correction has become an over-correction and those once discriminated against are in the majority and the former majority an endangered species.
The same is true in so many spheres, but especially noticeable at the moment is LGBT+ overreach. I do not believe that those well-meaning gay rights campaigners of the 1970s and 80s ever envisaged an LGBT+ takeover, to the point where even their staunchest allies feel excluded and insulted. The sea of rainbow flags at Glastonbury, along with the “Lesbian tent”, are not a symbol of inclusivity but of triumphalism. Just as the grotesque Eurovision Song Contest was an in-your-face celebration of gay and trans dominance in the cultural space; as David Tennant's appalling assault on Kemi Badenoch was an unthinking knee-jerk nod to the zeitgeist; and as the London Marathon's “rainbow section” felt less like a broadening of acceptance than harassment and a narrowing perspective, so the whole movement seems to wish to assert itself, rather than find a place within a tolerant and permissive society – which is what those original marchers were seeking. They, I believe, wanted a world where everyone could be themselves and express their sexuality alongside, rather than above, others. A first-class example of how dignified and inclusive such an “alongside” approach can be is the London Gay Symphony Orchestra. Attending its concerts are joy – not just for the excellence of the musical performance, but for the fact that sexuality is not an issue: everyone is accepted and welcome; private lives are not flaunted and paraded in the deliberately provocative manner we saw at Eurovision and are now seeing at Glastonbury.
And so we see the pendulum is still swinging away from the repressive era of gay rights – which is wonderful – but way too far towards an aggressive and domineering stance. I actually have no issue with some pendulums going a little far: there being a majority of non-white males presenting the news is not concerning – as long as the best talent is not being discriminated against. Which could be the case. We won't know because no white man would dare claim it. How ironic would this be? An anti-discriminatory movement favouring discrimination. Though I suppose we have always had this “positive discrimination” debate: the challenge is to make sure it doesn't go too far across the pendulum's swing. To go too far will provoke a backlash and I certainly fear that the goading behaviour of the LGBT+ community and its supporters risks exactly that.
LIBDEMS' DESPICABLE CAMPAIGNING
Another day and another LibDem faux newspaper shoved through the letterbox. It presents an alleged “surge in support” for parliamentary candidate Monica Harding as news and repeatedly says that she is Not Conservative. (Yes. I think we've got that by now.) Apart from that – nothing. No policies, no vision. Just “I'm not Tory and I can win” and a hint at one or two vague fortune cookie wishes. This is a clear attempt to mislead the gullible and vulnerable into thinking they are reading “news”. Our pendulum has also swung too far, Monica. You are coming across as arrogant, ruthless, desperate, and obnoxious. The fact that you have to write to me to tell me you're a “nice person, really” speaks volumes and I am deeply concerned about the party's motives. It's only a few months since we were forced to mobilise our entire village to repel its wrecking-ball plan to foist a large supermarket on us. I'm ready to campaign on an “Anyone but Monica” ticket.
UNENFORCED RULES ARE NOT RULES AT ALL
We have wonderful double yellow lines in our road, which has transformed it: we no longer miss out on bin collections, we feel safer because fire engines and other emergency vehicles can reach us; we can be confident that builders' trucks can deliver; we can access our driveways; and the road looks less cluttered, with better visibility and therefore safety. The only downsides are that it enables traffic to drive more quickly, with fewer obstacles – which is bearable – and that the restrictions are unenforced and therefore ignored by the arrogant “I'll park where I like” brigade. There were at least two illegally parked cars when I walked the length of the road a moment ago – not an unusual tally. But they face no sanction – there is zero enforcement and therefore the laws are of no value. And worse, the smug and lordly offenders are encouraged to believe they are above the law and can break it at their own discretion. Which, incredibly and sadly, they can if there is no enforcement.
JUNE 28 2024
IN THE END, IT DIDN'T MATTER
Oh well, England were soundly beaten in the T20 World Cup semi-final and so concerns over the ICC's favouritism towards India and its lucrative audiences were undermined. Well done, India – that's a great team you've got.
BIDEN: DIDN'T HE DO WELL!
As the late great entertainer Bruce Forsyth used to say on the Generation Game after some horribly mediocre performance rom a contestant: “Didn't he do well!” And I would have to say the same about Joe Biden in the first presidential TV debate with Donald Trump. Biden performed considerably better than I had expected for a man of his age and infirmity put under that sort of pressure. I doubt whether anyone in the US was surprised, either – apart from those few in the Democratic Party who thought he would be their best candidate. You show 'em, Joe. Ramble on!
MACRON: ISN'T HE DOING WELL!
I wrote in 2019 that the political right would rise if the conservative-liberal politicians refused to listen to the concerns of citizens. It's all there, in “The Rise of Antisocialism”. Mass migrations, I say, are dangerous: “Settled communities become destabilised; there are winners and losers...Tensions within a community or region grow easily and quickly and the outlets for it become ugly right-wing movements, violence, unrest and general disquiet.” And later: “The real symptoms have barely begun to show – but they are incubating in the seething towns and cities across Europe.” The liberal-right in politics do not understand this simple point. French president Emmanuel Macron certainly doesn't. A lurch to the right in France would be bring me little pleasure – beyond saying “I told you so five years ago” and seeing the silly little twerp get his comeuppance.
JUNE 27 2024
SOCIALISTS HAVE NO ONE TO VOTE FOR
What an election choice. How can it be that socialists have no one – NO ONE – to vote for? The three main parties are all well to the right of centre, favouring business and money over workers and people and the rest are either bat-shit crazy or bat-shit crazy. So, with no party or candidate to support, where do socialist voters look? I suggest all they can do is find the party they think will do the least damage to the country, its ecology, its communities and people. If there is no one to vote FOR, in any positive sense, then I should at least try to find a way of not spoiling my ballot paper by seeking the least appalling.
And so, as a de-growth communitarian, a progressive form of socialism, it is extraordinary that I should be forced into supporting the status quo as our least destructive option. But that is the way it seems. The devil you know. But let us examine our priorities in a few key policy areas and test whether there are any other possibilities.
So what might our priorities be? If the top priority is simply to “get rid of the Tories”, regardless of the implications, then any party will do, but preferably one that stands a chance of winning a Tory-held seat. In which case, I should vote tactically for whoever could achieve that. However, I would never waste a vote on such a shallow, cynical and unprincipled basis.
If the priority is controlling immigration, including entrants via illegal and unsafe Channel crossings, then only the Tories or Reform have any workable policies. The Rwanda scheme was already having an impact before its implementation, with migrants shifting to Ireland and some smugglers fearing for their “businesses”; it deserves to be given a chance to work, whereas Labour would scrap it. Yet Labour has no new policies. And all the LibDems do is continue to shove mountains of paper through my letterbox saying “We're not Tory”, while the Greens would also open our borders. Given that the Labour and LibDem stances are terrifying, and that I am disinclined to support Farage's rabble Reform army, even though they understand the issues better than any other party, my socialist vote has to go Tory.
So what about tax? The parties seem to be hammering home how little they would take from us, while spending lavishly. Clearly, this is impossible. And is based on the dubious assumption that favouring low taxes is always a good thing. We are, allegedly, and according to historical comparisons, taxed very highly at the moment, seemingly giving the lie to the Tory claim that it is the party of low taxation (assumed to be a good thing), and so it faces criticism. But even a cursory examination of why overall taxation is high finds good reasons for it: the pandemic, the financial impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the endless repercussions of the economic stupidity of the last Labour government at the start of this century, with its foolish lending, gambling and debt policies. And Labour has the nerve to call Liz Truss reckless! But these reasons for high(ish) taxation are real and anyone promising to reduce tax (all main parties) while increasing spending is either stupid or lying (all main parties). Bizarrely, while advocating low-tax and high-spend policies, many of our leading politicians extol the virtues of the Scandinavian nations, where the thinking is precisely the opposite. So there are no distinguishing features on taxation.
We should be able to dismiss “integrity”, “decency” and other such considerations quite quickly: the main parties each have a fair proportion of crooks, chancers and weirdos. This cannot, despite all the hysteria, be a defining factor. Constitutional change, on the other hand, is a huge black mark against Labour: its proposals to enable 16-year-olds to vote is unbelievably dim and outrageous. And completely self-serving. No change such as this should be made by any single party. It should require all-party agreement or, preferably, a referendum.
Growth of the economy is another leading mantra. Should this be the priority? All parties claim to be capable of spurring growth by pulling various economic levers – all of which have been tried in rhe past and failed, of course. Growth, even were it to be desirable – which it plainly isn't to a de-growth communitarian – is not necessarily in the gift of the government anyway. Productivity levels CAN be influenced, however, and the UK's productivity has stagnated since 2004 because of mass inward migration stalling investment in technology and undermining pay and conditions, which can be corrected. But no party can dictate growth. Having said that, the Tories' record in providing stability since the pandemic has been far better than in most comparable countries. Labour and the LibDems, who have rafts of vague aspirations relying on significant economic growth, offer no plausible explanations as to how it will be achieved: they are fantasists enjoying the luxury of opposition – for now. It is hard to see how any other party could hold the ship steady. As someone who sees the folly in endless growth, greed, materialism, selfishness and pollution and advocates for a planned shrinking of the economy and more fulfilling lives, I have no one to support. But, were I to be a supporter of a stable economy and growth, then the least bad option would definitely be Tory.
The other huge priority ought to be the environment, nature and communities. This is related to growth, as Labour has said it will fund all its spending pledges through economic growth. How this will be achieved is unknown, except for one area: dismantling the planning system and letting the builders rip. Labour and the Tories are both committed to building 300,000 homes a year for the next five years – that's 1.5m. There are about half a million dwellings in Birmingham, inhabited by about 1.2m people. These two parties are proposing to build three Birminghams in five years, adding accommodation for 6m people (at Birmingham, densities). The LibDems are even worse, promising even more homes in the next five years. I discuss elsewhere the idiocy of confusing a “housing crisis” with a “housing finance crisis”, but this is where we see the very real implications of such ignorance – in Labour threatening to build over the precious and irreplaceable green belts, create new towns in the countryside, impose random and devastating building quotas on towns and villages, and not allowing residents to protect themselves and their communities. I have often stated that the opposite of a Nimby is a fool – and that has been confirmed by Keir Starmer calling himself a Yimby – “Yes, in my back yard”. First, he doesn't mean it – he is pretending; and second, he ought to be in a self-destructive minority of one, as any rational being would always say “please do not destroy my life”. I am picking on Labour because they have told us what damage and suffering they will inflict: the LibDems merely say “We're not Tory”. The Tories have also pledged to build, of course. But at least in their case, we can see what they have actually done – which is to withdraw the much-hated and despicable building quotas. Clearly, all this building will be environmentally catastrophic, making the Tories' known policy of pragmatism and realism just about acceptable, compared to the terrifying prospect of wild and unchecked development – run and guided by the developers themselves. Who would have thought a Labour government could ever be such a friend of the greediest businesses of all – the “developers”?
I will draw up my own (brief) manifesto, outlining my priorities, when I get the chance in a day or so. But for now, I am a socialist with no one to vote for. But if voting were to be made compulsory, I would have to choose the least destructive party which, sadly, has to be the devil we know. Or a spoilt ballot paper. The other options are simply too terrifying to contemplate.
IS IT NOT TIME TO CALL OUT THIS QUACKERY?
Someone claimed it was a good idea to leap into ice-cold water: enormous health benefits would flow. People died. Obviously. It's not the first magical cure that's persuaded the gullible to try it, with disastrous results. Other lunacies abound throughout history: the murder of women accused of witchcraft; female genital mutilation. Today's variation (apart from the cold water) is the cure-all solution of gender reassignment. It's possible that I have used, or will use, the “wrong” terminology, but this whole subject has been so politicised and become so complex that precise language has become an impossibility. But let us just be clear: placing a troubled youngster, whether they be autistic, gay, depressed, confused, or whatever, on the pathway to gender transitioning is quackery. The quacks involved in providing gender “services” to young people have captured the debate, just as the witch-finders, the FGM mutilators, the ice advocates and others have done.
At the forefront of this madness today is the unlikely figure of Dr Who: David Tennant was excellent as the Doctor and has acted brilliantly in other productions I have seen. But he has seriously let himself, and his entire reputation, down by calling for Kemi Badenoch, a senior and serious politician who has studied the issues around gender and produced a balanced and intelligent set of principles and guidelines, to disappear – presumably behind a burkha? Would that do, Doctor? I have no idea how much Tennant knows or really cares about the trans campaign, but it is clearly insufficient to stop him from making a complete fool of himself at an LGBT+ event. He was collecting an award for being an LGBT+ ally – so ironic, given that trans “medicine” is threatening, damaging and potentially lethal to confused youngsters who could well grow up to be happy and gay – but are now condemned to surgery and years of anguish. Tennant should be ashamed of himself, as should all those applauding him at that “awards” event.
The implications of self-identifying, especially males as females, and especially in the realm of sport, protected spaces and prisons, are obvious. The legal system is adept at entangling itself in nonsense (I do have a Law degree!) but when studying, I never encountered anything as illogical or in defiance of common sense as a court case written about in today's Times. A man raped a woman but before the trial, he decided to identify as female – and, extraordinarily, was tried as a woman. The victim, meanwhile, was referred to in the newspaper report as “they”. And so we reach the bizarre and thoroughly objectionable situation where the rapist is “she” and the victim “they”. This is unconscionable. Outrageous and offensive. The law should be clear: a suspect will be tried according to their identity at the time of the offence. This is the only just solution and it already applies to juvenile defendants, who cannot be tried as adults even if they “transition” by becoming older between crime and trial, and they continue to enjoy the protections offered by the courts. Why is the law any different for men who “feel like a woman”? Because the trans bullies hold sway and too few intelligent people have the backbone to stand up to them.
MONEY TALKS WHEN IT COMES TO WINNING THE T20 CRICKET WORLD CUP
On the wet and windy West Indies islands, England almost failed to qualify from the fírst group stage in the ICC T20 World Cup because of the weather. Now, scheduled to play India in the semi-final, they are in danger of being thrown out of the competition if rain prevents play in mainland Guyana because India have a better record, by virtue of the fact that England's early matches were so disrupted. How can this be called sport? It is nothing more than money-grubbing greed: India produces vast sums of cash for the ICC and so it proffers it every advantage, including choice of venues (in this case because they topped their group) which, in effect, meant there could be no reserve date for the match should it be called off.
As if this was not shameful enough, the ICC allows the filthy, women-hating Afghanistan to be represented at its world cup. Other sports have banned Russian teams from tournaments and in tennis, Russian and Belorussian players are deemed stateless, their nations eradicated from the listings. Cricket does not have Russians to worry about – but Afghanistan is a rogue state, a disgusting fascist theocracy that has no place at any civilised event. That the team representing this apology for a state is being lauded and hailed by the media and others for reaching the semi-finals is quite extraordinary. Shame on the ICC and all who have in any way celebrated this team's progress in the competition. Thankfully, the Taliban's representatives were soundly thrashed by South Africa – a country that can attest to the impact of sporting boycotts – and are on their way back to their religion-ravaged hell-hole. And good riddance.
JUNE 24 2024
HOW EVEN HEATED DEBATE CAN BE A BONDING EXPERIENCE
We don't seem to spend as many Saturday evenings sharing supper with friends as we used to – which at one time was almost every Saturday. But on a good proportion of those occasions there would be a heated exchange on some topic or other – schools and religion were so often the source of bitter conflict they had to be outlawed. But that left plenty of others, from abortion, or the lasting damage done by the last Labour government, or whether former Nazis should still be prosecuted, to who should be allowed to join a club, or the level of pain inflicted when grit gets behind a hard contact lens.
So it was wonderful to be back in the ring this Saturday with an extremely tricky opponent: someone whose intellect – and company – I have enjoyed and admired since I first met her decades ago and who is still an incredibly powerful advocate for the things she believes in and an incredibly powerful interrogator of the opinions of others. The table all broadly agreed on the topic-du-jour – transgender ideology and its appalling effects, especially the undermining of hard-won women's rights. Although the implied suggestion that a man can never transition to become a woman, and will always remain a man and should be addressed as such, no matter how much surgery they have been through, did push me further than I feel the need to go. But we were all in pretty much the same corner, a million miles away from the trans extremists demanding full access for men to every female space simply on a man's say-so. JK Rowling had written brilliantly in The Times that morning about how Labour could not be trusted on this issue – followed by Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times saying that if Labour cannot be trusted to show backbone in the face of trans absurdities then how can we trust Starmer's team to face up to other challenges. Rowling's piece included this quote from a woman who had been smeared as a bigot and transphobe for wanting female-only care for her learning-disabled daughter. In response to this disgusting bullying, the mother said: “The material reality of a man is not changed by how he perceives himself, and telling vulnerable women and girls to ignore their own discomfort to accommodate a man's perception of himself is gaslighting.” Gaslighting, which is psychological abuse or manipulation aimed at controlling another person's thoughts, it most plainly is. And this morning, there is a case of four women nurses taking action over a man claiming to be female using their changing room. In an Orwellian response from the HR department they have been told they need “re-educating”. Their fears and feelings are wrong, while the man's feelings are paramount.
You would think all this is uncontroversial, and around the table so it proved. For the fireworks we had to move on to Rwanda. Our holiday/fact-finding mission to the country last summer was a revelation: we found a vibrant and successful country, run according to first class anti-corruption and environmental principles, with community involvement, unity and engagement paramount. This was all accepted. But the mention of president Paul Kagame lit the blue touch-paper. I am a huge admirer of Kagame's brilliance and genius. He is possibly the only person in the world who could have changed a ravaged nation in such a short time: the challenges and opposition have been immense – far greater than the comfortable West can imagine – and his response resolute, ensuring stability and slowly increasing prosperity and social justice for his nation. But Kagame does not do PR: he lets his deeds and his record speak for itself. The problem is that this leaves the field wide open to his enemies – and I say “enemies” because they are armed, violent and far more dangerous than the “critics” or “political opponents” we know in the rich world – to write the history. If history is usually written by the victors, the reverse is true in the case of Rwanda.
On trying to explain this – probably not very well at the height of a highly convivial evening – I was challenged by the powerful questioner to explain why she had such a different impression of the country, and especially its leader. I deemed this an impossible question: how could I tell someone that they had been misled or weren't aware of the full picture without insulting them. And so I didn't answer, expecting the debate to move on. Which it didn't. After my protestations, the question shifted slightly to ask why the media places Kagame in the category of dictators and global pariahs. I thought I part-answered this one several times, because again, I cannot know the motivations of all media. What I could say, though, was that the media doesn't always get it right – it likes heroes and villains: just compare how Gary Lineker is portrayed (hero) with Karren Brady (villain). And yet when I have met them, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Meanwhile, back at the table, I said there were plenty of sources, largely ignored, that give a different perspective of Kagame.
Eventually, my wife pointed out that the “Hotel Rwanda” boss, about whom the film was made, was not necessarily the romantic hero portrayed in the movie but one who had made himself a dangerous advocate of insurgency. And he was the one being listened to, garnering the coverage and spreading anti-Rwanda and anti-Kagame views. Political opponents in Africa are not like political opponents in rich countries – there are soldiers, in many case armed to to the teeth by the French, sitting across the border waiting to re-invade. My wife pointed out that Kagame did what he had to do to nullify this threat – not to himself – but to his country, by arresting Paul Rusesabagina and detaining him, before releasing him. Not nice, especially to cosseted rich-country intellectuals demanding fair play and controlling the western media, but essential, and certainly far milder than the treatment the US meted out to those it deemed terrorists and sent, indefinitely, to Guantanamo Bay. And it pales into insignificance against the current behaviour of Hamas and Israel. Even if the worst of the credible allegations are true, they are roughly in line with how any country facing such enormous threats would react.
This seemed to do the trick and the conversation moved – even though it was merely an example of the points I had been making in broad terms all along. But the debate, while unnecessarily heated, was valuable in helping me to examine my stance and establish more solid reasons for the besmirching of Kagame's record and reputation. And I come back to the point that history is not always written by the victors: sometimes the still-resentful, angry and heavily armed are writing the on-going history and making all the noise while the victor maintains a dignified silence and continues to do what is necessary.
At one point, our host tried to calm the debate – asking where we were going on holiday this year, perhaps forgetting that this was the question that raised the subject Rwanda in the first place! But neither of us two main protagonists wanted the argument to stop. My response was: “It might not look like it, but we're enjoying this.” I can't speak for others, but I genuinely was. It seems like an age since we had a heated, passionate row over a politically charge topic. Afterwards, the conversation moved around the table pleasantly, with plenty of laughter and smiles. But the debate was not forgotten and on leaving, I whispered jokingly to my fellow protagonist that “I'll be ready for you next time,” which was greeted with more friendly banter and a genuinely fond and respectful (I hope!) farewell. And this is how an argument should be: passionate, noisy, and full of misunderstandings and accusations (within limits). It was face-to-face, instant: it had to be resolved. It was not online, remote, calculated, or hurtful, with no resolution necessary. Our argument was not divisive: it might have been of a better quality had we been completely sober, but it was still an exploration of views and evidence; a joint exercise. Social media removes the humanity, the need for mutual respect and understanding. It's far easier to cancel someone than face up to challenging them in debate. That's why I would go so far as to say that our in-person clash was a bonding experience and that I look forward immensely to seeing my friend again. I hope she feels the same.
JUNE 19 2024
AT LAST – A BIG-MOUTHED SOCIAL MEDIA PRAT IS SUED
It should be obvious that sending a social media post to thousands of people amounts to publishing and should be governed by the same rules that apply to journalists working in the real media. Of course, it isn't and idiots, bigots, morons, Nish Kumar and others get away with playing at being publishers or broadcasters without any of the integrity or standards that make real media largely trustworthy and deserving of respect. Even The Sun, Daily Mail and Guardian are in a different league to the opinionated amateurs pretending to present “news”. And so it comes as a real treat to see at least one idiot being sued and forced to apologise for publishing unlawful rubbish that could never see the light of day in any real news media. Joey Barton is the offender, the ex-footballer and now, apparently, know-all social commentator. It's cost him dear. I hope it costs him – and many many others – very dearly indeed.
AND SPEAKING OF THE ARROGANCE OF FORMER FOOTBALLERS...
I interviewed Gary Lineker more than 20 years ago. I spent the afternoon chatting to him and the evening at a recording of the BBC sports quiz show he was on at the time. I found him to be arrogant and self-obsessed. When I've told people this over the years, they have been surprised and perhaps unbelieving. I usually mention it when warning against rushing to judgment over people, as I found Lineker to be as unpleasant as I found West Ham boss Karren Brady to be pleasant: she was thoughtful, caring, considerate, interesting and in a different league to the tacky Lineker. But gradually, over the years, Lineker is being found out: controversial tax affairs; toxic Tweets that threw the BBC into a flat spin; and now a row over him blatantly plugging a range of clothing he is paid to endorse while presenting the BBC's terminally tedious Euro football coverage. He has such a high opinion of himself that he seems to believe the BBC daren't touch him. It is surely time for the BBC to put him right on that.
THERE'S AN ELECTION COMING
As the vacuous election debates continue, it becomes ever clearer that the main parties have no clue, no strategy, no vision, and very few policies that make sense or will improve anything. They have no answers because they have no idea what the questions are that are troubling the nation's people. No one, surely, really wants a Labour government, especially led by the plank of wood that is Keir Starmer. The LibDems under the theme-park buffoon Ed Davey? You have to be joking. But they will do well in this election, not because many people like them, but because everyone now hates the Tories, having had this message drummed into them daily for the past few years. I am certainly not seeing any party that I could actively support, or even grudgingly reward with my vote: I am left looking for the least terrifying. The choice is a Conservative party that has let day-to-day admin slide to levels that mean it barely functions; Labour and LibDems would rip up the planning rules and let developers rip through the Green Belt, as well as opening up the possibility of EU free movement – the one thing that swung the Brexit vote. The Greens have been captured by psychopaths who would not be welcome in any other party, and there won't be much else on our ballot paper. Apart from Reform. As a would-be disruptor of our stale, visionless and destructive mainstream politics, I am sorely tempted to give Farage's party my vote. For a de-growth communitarian, this is difficult. There is little to commend Farage, and his policies are idiotic and unrealistic. Except for one thing: he might not have any answers to the nation's troubles – but he at least has an idea as to what the questions are.
DOES EU POLICY MAKE LABOUR THE MOST TERRIFYING OF ALL?
It was reported yesterday – and we can only hope that it was nonsensical speculation by “sources” – that the EU will demand free movement to the UK for some categories of citizens in return for tidying up some of the deliberately complicated paperwork the organisation managed to conjure up after the Brexit vote. This asymmetrical proposal – Britons would only be allowed to choose one country in which they move freely – is billed as part of a new EU “offensive”. And offensive it certainly is. The main driver of the Brexit referendum vote was free movement, which undermines and degrades careers, professions, trades and livelihoods with a flood of cheap labour. This hurts real people – not comedians or media luvvies, who scowl at such people and call them “thick”, deeming them to be unworthy of consideration in a debate they have already smugly decided in their own favour. The terrifying aspect of the article was that it suggested the Labour Party might be amenable to considering such a travesty. And that sounds horribly possible. Starmer was one of the leading wreckers who tried to deny the will of the people during the Brexit negotiations; he still has no idea why the “Red Wall” crumbled or “his people” chose to vote for Brexit and Boris. And so he might well be tempted to talk to the EU about free movement. Because he doesn't have a clue. And we don't know whether he will, because he won't talk about it. Just like he won't talk about anything of substance. Can he be so clearly out of touch? Very much so.
ALL OF THE BLAME, NONE OF THE CREDIT
Inflation is back to a measly 2 per cent. The government said it would achieve this – and it has, ahead of any other G7 nation. Are we ready to say well done, and welcome news that should alleviate many of the problems people face, especially if interest rates fall, too? Apparently, we are not. The government is, of course, to blame for the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, potholes and Sir Ian McKellen falling off the stage this week. And it cannot be given any credit for achieving its clearly stated aim of delivering low inflation. OK, so there are other parties involved in lowering inflation, such as the Bank of England, but it's still impressive to have beaten our rivals in containing it. It is simply unjust to blame anyone or anything for everything bad that happens but give them no credit when something good happens.
This was highlighted on the lunchtime BBC radio news, when a supposedly informed commentator said people would still feel poor because the government failed, among other things, to provide enough support for household energy bills. Well, in fact, it did provide a lot of support for energy bills: whether it was “enough” or not is open for debate. But what cannot be disputed is that it is not government that provides this support, it is taxpayers. Only if taxpayers are willing to pay more could support have been higher. With accusations from the opposition parties that the UK is taxed more heavily than any time since tax was invented and that the Tories are the party of high taxation, the government was obviously scared to death to redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor via taxation for energy support. It's up to us, the taxpayers, to say we want to contribute more and provide help for the less well off. Sadly, all the main parties are openly against increasing taxes – or so they say. But either way, it ill behoves anyone to blame the government for not dishing out the dosh while whining on about how much tax they pay. We saw those chalk rainbows on the pavements outside the mansions of Claygate and Esher in ostentatious support of essential workers during lockdown: are they now ready to put their hands in their pockets to provide material help? I doubt it. The new mantra is that low taxes spur growth (although no one manages to provide a convincing explanation of how this works) and growth is all that matters: it will cure all our ills. If only...
JUNE 15 2024
A VOTE FOR LABOUR OR LIBDEM IS A VOTE TO KILL CLAYGATE
There is only one thing defending our settlement from rampant development and its destruction as a village: the planning regime. This regime is currently teetering in a precarious equilibrium, carefully and correctly balancing the interests of residents and their communities and whatever need there is for building. But both Labour and the LibDems promise to sweep away the protections needed to sustain identifiable communities – and worse, to impose random building targets upon them. This builders' charter will do untold damage to our environment and to the quality of life of those small towns and villages the Labour and LibDem parties must so despise. Even worse, given that the domestic birthrate is pretty much static and all population increase is driven by immigration – and given that both Labour and the LibDems are largely pro-immigrant, whether illegal or otherwise, this situation can only worsen. I fear that Claygate, my home, will be unrecognisable within a decade if either of these parties has its way.
DON'T BE DISAPPOINTED IF YOUR FRIENDS STOP LIKING YOU WHEN YOU WAGE WAR ON THEM...
Trans lobbyists have no right whatsoever to wage war on their friends and allies and then claim to be surprised or disappointed when they then find those friends go off them. And I would include JK Rowling, Janice Turner and me among those proven to have had strong sympathy with and support for trans people but who are now attacked as transphobes, homophobes, racists and bigots because they can see the wider issues for others that lie beyond a simple one-track campaign. Trans activists need to decide whether they wish to win the broadest possible acceptance and support for trans people, or whether they wish to continue alienating and insulting their supporters and creating an us-and-them stand-off that is the precisely the opposite of inclusive.
IT'S US-AND-THEM IN COMEDY, TOO
BBC Radio Four comedy is infested with people who assume that the entire listening audience and all intelligent, correctly thinking people in the world think exactly the same as they do. And this allows casual displays of ignorance, crudeness and nastiness to proliferate. One terrible example is the odious Joe Lycett's jibe about “welcoming foreigners”, when he had been entrusted with commentating on the opening of the Commonwealth Games, showing his complete lack of integrity and professionalism. It was straight from the primary school playground – a silly dare – “I bet you that I can say this on national telly”. Pathetic – and, as it happened, completely wrong; simply untrue. I just turned the radio on a moment ago and turned it straight off. A participant in some panel “comedy” was talking about something vile – let's say a blob of slime – and then said it turned into Nigel Farage. Whatever you think of Farage, this is crass. It's arrogant bubble-speak; it smacks of “I can get away with this nastiness because if you don't think it's funny then you're not one of us”. Again, it's exclusionary, divisive, harmful to the general polity. Crudely insulting people you don't like is no way to make a point. Especially when you're wrong. It's arrogant, ignorant, self-indulgent and childish.
JUNE 10 2024
THE DOPING SCANDAL OF THE FUTURE
Reading David Walsh's excellent sport column in this week's Sunday Times made me furious. He was writing about what will surely become the doping scandal of the future – allowing men and “females” with biologically male attributes, to compete against women in women's sports events. There are plenty of examples – and they usually do rather well. This is maddening enough, but the role of the International Olympic Committee in nurturing such cheating is infuriating. And it doesn't even end there. The IOC also has the temerity to instruct journalists covering its events to avoid using terms such as “born male” or “biologically male”. I say it can go to hell with that idea. The IOC ordering journalists to use its chosen idiotic terminology is outrageous and surely will be ignored. The IOC might not care how foolish it looks, but that gives it no right to demand that others look equally stupid. It should shut up and get back to what it does best – corruption.
POSSIBLE PARANORMAL ENCOUNTERS?
Er, no. This is not acceptable. Why is the BBC peddling such ridiculous trash as its Uncanny USA series, or whatever it's called? “It was at that moment that I knew I was food,” says one gullible half-wit. Plainly, he wasn't, or he wouldn't be able to tell his ludicrously tall tale. How can the BBC be taking – and insisting we take – such utter drivel seriously by broadcasting this “supernatural” rubbish on Radio Four? It must stop insulting the intelligence of listeners – or go and join the brainless hordes at the IOC.
A NORTHAMPTON SAINTS VICTORY!
Younger daughter and I visited Twickenham on Saturday to watch rugby union's Premiership final. In spite of Twickers being basically just a pub with a bit of grass in the middle, it was a nerve-jangling and noisy affair. BBC News on Saturday night led its sport section on the rugby league final, of course – one of the few sports it retains the rights to show, hence its bias. But The Times got its priorities right and gave the front page to the Saints. Unfortunately, today's paper carries a picture caption of the victorious team displaying the trophy in Northampton “city” centre. But the town is not a city. Yes, it's now an awful place, ravaged by developers for decades and left in tatters by taking on a sacrificial role as London's pressure valve. So it remains an overspill town, so spoilt by its ungainly growth spurt that those awarding new city status around the country could not bear to recommend it. Yet if any town in the land deserves to be made a city, it is Northampton. It has taken a massive hit for the team, with no recognition. At least the wonderful rugby team can bring it some joy.
EUROPE SWINGS TO THE RIGHT
Just as I predicted in my 2019 book, The Rise of Antisocialism, right-wing politics are in the ascendency. The weekend's EU elections show just that. There are many reasons for this, but the over-arching theme is that people know what they do NOT want – and they do not want the rotten status quo offered by the mainstream, moderate, mediocre parties. And there is nothing else on offer, except “change”. Matthew Syed superbly echoed this yesterday in his Sunday Times column, pointing out that one of the primary contributors to this malaise is immigration – and the lies told about it by the big parties. “PMs from Blair onwards have ushered in cheap labour while vowing to stop it. That's why trust has gone,” said the sub-heading on his piece. And: “The failure to control borders empowers Le Pen, Wilders and Trump.”
Quite so. And here are some samples of what I wrote in my book five years ago: “We are also seeing a mass movement towards very nasty right-wing political parties, for example in France and
Greece – an obvious refuge for the discarded and disregarded. Poor people will always drift to political extremes – they want change. Any change. It is the status quo that is hurting them.” “The rise of right-wing politics is a natural reaction to unfettered greed by businesses, fuelled by the incentives placed in front of its executives.” “Bizarrely, the appeal of right-wing political groups in working class areas is labelled 'populism'. The dictionary definition of 'populism' is 'a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups'.” Does that not sum up today's scenario perfectly?
I also wrote: “Surely, socialist thinkers would be better employed seeking to understand the underlying causes that prepared the ground for opportunistic right-wing forces and made a country 'Trump-ready' or 'Brexit-ready' and finding ways to address them. Hitler, Stalin, Trump, Putin, Le Pen, Farage – they do not operate in a vacuum; they feed off popular anger caused by the real experiences of individuals.” And these are “the dangerous and disastrous consequence of fuelling a huge rise in nasty right-wing parties across the continent. They are a direct product of ill-thought-through EU behaviours. A change of direction is desperately overdue and with the EU hierarchy not even prepared to accept minor reforms, the Brexit vote in the UK – and similar votes elsewhere – became inevitable. As has a lurch to the right, unless something is done.” “The parties – and gangs – of the far right are increasingly prominent across EU countries as ordinary unheeded communities respond, perfectly rationally, to what is happening to them.” It gives me no great pleasure to say to Macron and Scholz and von der Leyen that they are getting what they deserve. Will they learn, listen, understand the issues and deal with them? Not a chance. Von der Leyen made that very clear today, in the face of this mass protest, when she said “the centre is holding”.
So no one should claim to be surprised by what is happening. Although there is one oddity. The UK, of course. It seems to be shifting very slightly the other way, with an inevitable Labour landslide in the forthcoming election. Labour has a few good ideas but is fundamentally identical to the Tory party, save in two very important and terrifying respects: Labour does not care about immigration, not even illegal immigration; and its plans for a builders' charter will destroy swathes of beautiful and much-needed countryside – needed as an environmental outlet, and as space to grow food, in which we will one day need to become self-sufficient. In addition to industrial scale migration and endless bricks and Tarmac, Labour also has a terrible record on crashing the economy: it did it repeatedly in the 1970s and then in 2007. What a term we have to look forward to.
LET'S BULLY THESE DREADFUL LITERARY AND ARTS FESTIVALS...
The Arab world is built on oil. And oil is everywhere. It is virtually impossible to live a life anywhere on the planet without coming into contact with oil-infected products or investments. So where on earth is the sense in harassing businesses with only the tiniest connection to fossil fuels, yet who try, within the bounds of common sense, to support the shift away from them? Especially when the aim is to get them to withdraw their sponsorship of arts and literary festivals. Do the fanatics hounding these allies of the arts not wear clothes? Do they never enter a shop? Do they avoid all financial services and public transport? The only losers in this idiotic, self-defeating campaign are the literary festivals. But they don't have bullying activists on their side, so who cares about them?
DEFINITELY ASYNCHRONOUS
I have been through enough airports recently to have established that the treatment of passengers arriving in the EU from the UK is made as horrible and as slow as possible, whereas EU citizens arriving at UK airports enjoy the privileges they have long held, by being allowed access to the rapid domestic digital passport gates. The long queues at EU airports, stretching ahead to two or three officers in passport control booths, smack of vindictiveness. There is no reason for this, other than punishment for leaving: if French or Spanish travellers see there is no sanction for daring to leave the EU, then they might just be tempted themselves. So we have a completely asynchronous state of affairs, with a magnanimous UK making life easier for visitors, and Britons going the other way facing nasty, petty, awkwardness.
Sadly, the same applies to zoo animals, it seems. I have no particular objection to clogging up an EU airport for a while, tutting and shaking my head and trying to send negative messages to those running the place: I can write it off as a minor inconvenience and a small price to pay for being free of the EU's domineering ideologies. But zoo animals can't. And they need to travel to survive – the mixing of their genes is vital and so transporting them between zoos is crucial. It absolutely cannot have been beyond the wit of someone to have cut back red tape that now takes over a year to clear instead of a couple of months. This is simple stuff. But because the supposedly monolithic EU is actually nothing of the sort – Germany alone has 16 separate regions, each with their own rules – and because the EU refuses to act in the best interest of the animals, the system is grinding to a halt, denying continental zoos access to some of the best zoo collections in the world. It's just dumb.
MAY 27 2024
I recently watched snippets of the London Marathon on TV. It was impressive, both the athleticism and the organisation. But then, suddenly, the runners jogged through a section of road bedecked with rainbow flags and heralded as the LGBT+ zone. I didn't know why at the time, but this stung and felt all wrong.
I have also been a life-long fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, with clear memories of Sandie Shaw wining in 1967, watching on my Grandma's great box of a black and white television. But this year I felt alienated, excluded, shut out. I didn't know why at the time, but this wasn't a song contest for me: it had been captured by the LGBT+ campaign, with gay and non-binary participants predominating. I have nothing against LGBT+ people: indeed, I was the first journalist in London to see the value in a newspaper supplement focused on ranking gay and lesbian business executives as a way of eradicating their “otherness”. But Eurovision felt threatening and left me uncomfortable.
Gradually, I began to work out why the sight of a special zone on the marathon route and the extravagant behaviour at Eurovision were so discomfiting, even to a friend and supporter of the rainbow flag. And that was the first step towards understanding: the flags. These were not inclusive flags and symbols – they were meant to be confrontational. That is, indeed, the purpose of a badge, flag, banner, uniform, scarf or emblem – to define, isolate and exclude, to create an “us and them”. And these events, especially the nasty Eurovision Song Contest, were telling me I was part of the “them”.
Within a few more days, I had come to understand fully the message, thanks to reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. As soon as I began reading their chapter on “inclusivity circles”, I could see clearly what was happening. The authors explained that members of a group can draw their “circle of inclusivity” to encompass as many, or as few, people as they wish. It depends on their intention. This is because inclusivity circles have two diametrically opposed purposes: to achieve consensus and understanding, or to reinforce the cohesion of the group. Throwing the circle wide to embrace those who disagree with you, or who might not understand your life choices, is the route to consensus, towards making you and your group part of an inclusive “greater normal”. Draw the circle tightly around you and your cause and it becomes isolating, creating the “us-and-them” feelings I detected so strongly when watching the marathon and Eurovision. Thanks to their tightly draw inclusivity circle, the wavers of the rainbow flags no longer appeared part of a greater “us”. They had chosen to be a smaller, more cohesive and more confrontational “us” that sees the rest of the world as “them” – a threatening “them” that can be labelled bigoted and full of all sorts of “phobes”. It doesn't matter that this alienates so many supportive people, creates conflict and leads away from consensus: the primary concern is to reinforce the group, to enforce its rights and wield its power. This all made perfect sense.
The book is primarily concerned with how over-protective parenting that has sought to make life as comfortable and safe for children as possible has actually caused untold damage. The book's subtitle expresses this nicely: “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”. A telling phrase quoted in the book warns that children need to be prepared for the road, not the road for the child. Everyone should read it. It explains so much. So this would be my fourth manifesto initiative: to enforce a more robust parenting regime that enables children to become hardened and prepared for allergies, arguments and attitudes. Empowering youngsters to cope has to be a vital campaigning pledge.
I ALSO NOW UNDERSTAND WHY THE BBC IS SEEN AS BIASED IN BOTH DIRECTIONS
At 6.30pm on Friday evenings, I would allow the BBC Radio 4 “Now Show” to begin, with the proviso that it would be turned off at the first “joke” that offended, insulted or belittled anyone who voted for Brexit or that called them thick northern working class losers. I usually had to hit the off button two or three minutes into the show. Mock The Week on BBC TV was as bad. I used to love it and watch avidly but then during the Brexit debate, it changed and became nasty and offensive to anyone with whom the group-think panellist comedians disagreed. It quickly became clear that virtually the entire entertainment sector, and most of the media, were of one mind, living in a bubble, and furious at having lost the Brexit referendum. The casual insults were amplified; the seething anger was palpable in Mishal Husein's voice; the viciously snide remarks could appear anywhere without warning – even in the introduction to the Commonwealth Games. Anyone supporting Brexit, from either side of the political spectrum, could therefore clearly see that the BBC was dominated by people seeing themselves as “liberal progressive left”. We might even add “elite”. This overwhelming and scarcely disguised bias was plain for all to see.
It therefore baffled me as to how anyone could accuse the BBC of being biased in favour of the Tories or other right-wing causes. How could an institution so obviously populated by hyper-liberals be accused of having “authoritarian right-wing” leanings. At Lord's cricket ground on Friday I was finally handed the answer: by allowing the entertainment and media industry's group-think to become so dominant, the BBC riled one side, prompting reasonable complaints of bias. It then responded by trying to neuter or remove the worst offenders, thereby provoking a raft of complaints from the “progressives hyper-liberals”, accusing it of censorship. The perfect way to ensure nobody is happy.
SELF-DRIVING CARS – PLEASE...
We rode home from Heathrow last week in a Tesla taxi. It was beautiful, especially the glass roof and the giant display screen that controls everything. Part of that screen showed the whereabouts of every nearby vehicle and pedestrian, and this mass of data and smart technology will form the basis of the self-driving cars we will all be offered very soon. And for me, it can't come soon enough. The standards of driving in Britain are now appalling: motorway lane discipline, never terribly apparent, has vanished completely; queue-jumping is dangerously endemic. A machine could surely do far far better and make life on the roads less miserable for all those happy to abide by the rules.
MAY 26 2024
My manifesto for government is becoming more clear and today I can reveal three central elements.
The first is compulsory community service. Sunak has proposed something along these lines but only for 18-year-olds. This is both a further nail in his electoral coffin and an example of “small think”.
Let me explain what I would do. When writing my book, The Rise of Antisocialism, I came to the depressing conclusion that the forces of consumption and individualism were so deeply ingrained that they could never be overcome, even in the face of a warming global climate that threatens our very existence. I simply couldn't see how the great debate required to achieve a transformation of society from one based on greed and selfishness to one based on community, involvement and localism would ever take place. But then came the pandemic and many people discovered the joy of simple pleasures – crafts, games, creativity – and wished to devote more of their time to them. It was a first chink of light that could lead to a more satisfying lifestyle that did not involve rabid consumption.
Alongside the need for us all to spend less time polluting the planet through valueless and ultimately unsatisfying jobs, I also accepted that certain functions were necessary to maintain an acceptable level of comfort and happiness. Then, again, along came the pandemic and its identification of “essential workers” – those valuable professions, notably health workers and those engaged in keeping the lights on, for example, who we applauded weekly.
But I could still not see how the need for a simpler life and the need to share out society's essential work could move within reach. There seemed to be no mechanism that would allow for a gradual transition to a “de-growth communitarian” society that I held to be necessary – and desirable. But then along came Rishi Sunak and his conscription plan. It is very easy to dismiss, especially if your instant response to any Tory proposal is anger, scorn and negativity. It does, however, if considered objectively, contain much that is good, and would make the UK more closely aligned with countries such as Sweden, Finland and Switzerland. Young people might not like it, but they would learn much and the country would benefit. This led me on to thinking about community service for all. Having visited Rwanda last summer and seen its wonderful communitarian policies in action, with Sunday morning road closures to allow for community activities, and regular compulsory service days – even the president is obliged to take part – and now heard Sunak propose a system of service for Britain, the path to a sustainable society began to emerge.
Community service should be for all, perhaps beginning with two weeks a year assisting charities and public bodies or emergency services. If co-ordinated well, this alone could go a long way towards plugging gaps in the provision of social services. Once the idea of service has become embedded, the time spent each year could be extended. After that, it could be made compulsory to spend a week or two of the annual service period learning crafts and skills – carpentry, painting, pottery, music, knitting, you name it. Through this gradual process, it might just be possible to cure ourselves of our deadly and destructive “work and consume” culture.
In The Rise of Antisocialism, I could see no way of getting from A to B. Now I can. It's not easy and in all probability would not be deemed acceptable by vested interests (which includes most people!) until it was way too late to be of use in saving the planetary ecosystems. However, it will form the basis of my concluding chapter in any revised version of the book. And it would be the primary plank in my election manifesto vision for the future.
The second policy initiative would concern housing. It is one of my specialist subjects, enabling me to see through the housebuilders' constant barrage of complaints regarding planning regulations and the need to build more houses to end what it is happy to keep claiming is a “crisis”. Neither its analysis nor solutions are worthy of any lengthy consideration and so we must look at the real issues in the housing sector. Low interest rates have, of course, caused a dramatic rise in nominal house prices. I say “nominal”, because the actual amount most people pay for their home is entirely different and usually many times greater. As I have said before, the only figure that matters is the monthly mortgage repayment sum. When interest rates fall, monthly payments fall – or would do but for the fact that the market “corrects” itself by increasing the nominal price, so that monthly repayments remain roughly the same. It's a simple see-saw process, but now greatly complicated by fixed rate mortgages of various lengths, which give lenders some temporary protection.
What happens when interest rates rise, as we have seen recently, is that monthly repayments rise, squeezing the market and causing nominal prices to fall. The problem today is that fixed rate lending greatly diffuses the impact: only a proportion of borrowers are exposed to new rates each year and so we see no sudden mass increase in mortgage defaults and negative equity, as would happen with the variable rate mortgage that was standard up to 30 or 40 years ago. House prices therefore now shift so slowly that rates can come down again before much impact is felt.
But this is not to say that we should be building no new housing – just that no matter how many enormous estates or tower blocks are built, it will have virtually no impact on nominal prices. So what should we be building to meet the needs of society – a society that is ageing but has very little suitable housing for the elderly? I would therefore severely limit what the developers want to build – vast housing estates on green fields – and instead focus on building for the elderly. This might look self-serving, given that I am retired, but the main beneficiaries would be those seeking family homes. The elderly need to be enabled to downsize and at present there is nothing for them. It's not their fault that they feel trapped in houses that have become too large after the family has grown up and gone – it's just that they have nowhere else to go. Many are almost forced to rattle around in a too-big house until they need a care home. So let's look at successes in other countries, such as the Netherlands, which has combined student accommodation and elderly housing with big wins on both sides. There are numerous options available to suit all tastes and needs. And enabling the aged to move not only liberates a great supply of family homes, it has knock-on effects along the chain, all the way to the first-time buyer.
My third manifesto pledge would be to fix the roads. Instantly. Whatever the costs. I realise I need more than three policies and so tomorrow I'll set out my thinking on the culture wars.
MAY 25 2024
What is Rishi Sunak thinking? Calling a general election for July 4 is possibly the biggest admission of political defeat for decades. While the horrors associated with the Tories are depressingly familiar, the prospect of a Labour government under Keir Starmer and including the likes of Yvette Cooper, is positively terrifying; the ridiculous LibDems equally so. Bizarrely, it means we could soon be the only country not sending illegal migrants to third countries, now that the Rwanda scheme has, in effect, been abandoned. As the push factors from Europe increase (more failed EU asylum claims, such as the man who placed his daughter in a lethal boat in the Channel having been refused asylum 14 times in various EU countries; more deportations and deals with third countries) the pull factors under Labour will increase dramatically as our threat of deportation evaporates and our asylum system becomes even more of a soft touch and hopelessly gullible.
Similarly, the present government can no longer claim any credit for getting to grips with scandals that have festered for decades. Instead of being able to say: “Look, we have been playing pass the parcel with these issues – infected blood, the Post Office, smoking, landlords and the rental sector, and more – for years and decades, but this government has said enough is enough. We cannot put right past injustices but we must do all we can to compensate, and that is what we are doing for the blood victims and are doing with the Post Office scandal victims. These things must be put right and this is the government that will do it.” All this is now lost.
But I still say that one of the biggest obstacles to a Tory revival is the state of the roads. Potholes and broken, unrepaired surfaces are a daily reminder of failure and incompetence. Rishi stands no chance.
MAY 17 2024
A MORTGAGE THAT'S ISN'T SO PAINFUL AFTER ALL
Younger daughter has decided she wishes to live in Chippenham. Fair enough. Nice place. Good train service, we're told. And she has saved hard, earns a decent wage and can afford to buy a house in the £280,000 range. It's exciting and I joined in the house-hunting online. I found a lovely property, which she liked a lot; sadly, it was just too small. But at £220,000, her mortgage would have cost about £750 a month – a fraction of what she and her flat-mate pay in rent for a small and grubbily modest flat in Streatham. Coincidentally, it is almost exactly what we paid as our monthly mortgage repayment in the early 1990s – more than 30 years ago. Admittedly, it was only for a short time, but it did form the peak of a long trend of high repayments – and it was in the days before fixed-rate mortgages became common, when repaying a mortgage was a precarious, unpredictable and often painful business.
EUROVISION HORROR SHOW
The Eurovision Song Contest 2024 last Saturday night was not, in my view, fit for family viewing. I'm no prude, but I have watched the show head steadily downhill from being a song contest, through its gently camp years to today's full-strength soft-pornography with not even 10 continuous seconds of worthwhile, memorable music. It has suffered from complete capture by LGBTQ+ extremists, the rainbow flag (the only flag allowed apart from those of competing nations) and gender identity campaigners. Throw in a monoculture of Israel-hating pro-Palestinians and you have a show that is not fit for viewing. It has an ugly, narrow, exclusionary feel to it – if you're not one of us then you can eff off. Rude and unpleasant participants abound. So if you balk at watching two half-naked men licking each other's backsides, you are a bigot, a homophobe, a transphobe, and must be cancelled and issued with death threats. How ironic, then, that the majority of the participants would be banned, if not killed, were the contest to be held in a country run by the people for whom they insist on waving their Palestinian-Iran-Hamas flags.
UNWANTED COMEDIANS
Out of work, redundant, useless – what do you do with washed-up comedians? Now that the cheap panel shows they used to infest have largely disappeared from TV screens through over-use and tedium, they are truly surplus to the requirements of our society. But, sadly, they have names that are known, familiar to the public, and so gullible broadcasters are happy to use this flimsy reasoning to allow them to infest more serious corners of the schedules. Rather then nurture real professional talent, it's the easy option: Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett go on holiday; Katherine Ryan becomes a parental guidance expert; Nish Kumar finds a platform for his hate-filled political podcast; the odious Joe Lycett introduces the Commonwealth Games with snide and plainly inaccurate personal opinions. The list goes on. I suppose Michael Palin started it.
And things are just as bad regarding politicians. Times Radio makes a boast of having former minister Ed Vaizey and member of the House of Lords Ayesha Hazarika hosting a lunchtime “political chat” show. It already has the supposed comedian Matt Chorley (who has yet to be remotely funny) writing for The Times newspaper and appearing on its radio station. Is there really no room for professional journalists and broadcasters any more?
NO QUESTIONS ON RADIO FOUR....
Mishal Husain: “This is what I think – I'm right aren't I...” Welcome to the new method of asking questions on Radio Four's Today news programme. The old style way of inquiring while ensuring you keep your own views well hidden is now very old hat. And please – someone needs to calm Emma Barnett down. I am a big fan of hers and she has presented Women's Hour extremely well, being questioning when necessary and gentle and understanding, as appropriate. But her nasty confrontation with Education Secretary Gillian Keegan this week, in her new berth on the Today programme, was painful and embarrassing to listen to. Keegan was giving perfectly coherent and logical answers but Barnett failed – or refused – to understand what she was saying. Resorting to shouting: “I presented Woman's Hour for four years so I know what I'm talking about” is desperate. The interview is not about you. I hope she develops into a high-quality news presenter and interviewer. But this week was a terrible start.
BIG PHARMA
We have just finished watching Dopesick, a powerful dramatisation of the sheer evil that drove the Sackler family to destroy the lives of so many innocent victims through corruption and greed. Astonishingly, its lethal “miracle” drug, OxyContin – in reality a dangerously addictive narcotic – is still in use today, presumably in a safer form and hopefully only prescribed under close supervision. The message of Dopesick was truly enraging: a company squirmed and bribed and corrupted its staff, customers, regulators and the medical profession with lies, pay-offs, non-disclosure agreements, bullying and threats. Purdue Pharma is now, thankfully, in a state of bankruptcy but the instigators of the disgusting behaviour remain rich – Richard, the most vile and slippery, a billionaire, with Kathe Sackler even having the temerity to claim she is proud of OxyContin in spite of the opioid epidemic it caused. I also watched a film in a similar vein – Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt – which depicted a pharma company prioritising marketing and money over medicine and integrity.
The continuing fear is that big pharma has not been tamed. The dangers of OxyContin were clear in the 1990s but it took many years to overcome the Sackler family's mania for money and slimy methods in shutting people up and bypassing regulators and the legal system. We now have a highly worrying trend of medicalising every life event from feeling a little gloomy, to giving birth, to attending university – and there are pills for all of these. Of course there are – because big business wants to sell them. It is in its interests to treat tiny blips in happiness or normal life as an illness and sell pills to cure it – all it needs is to give it a name. And so post-natal depression becomes post traumatic stress disorder; exam fears become a phobia. This is how Purdue operated – we sell a pain drug, so let's find more pain and sell more drugs. Even better when we find the drug stimulates even more pain as well as an addiction that creates an ever-escalating need for more of the pills. It's the perfect drug-dealers' money machine. Big pharma is still at it – creating markets for its drugs. We need to beware.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MEN'S HEALTH
My school friend Ant recently posted a short video on Facebook, saying he had been for a prostate cancer check and had met a young man at the hospital who had confirmed prostate cancer, with a whole heap of medical procedures in front of him. Ant's message was that men should talk about their health more, not to be embarrassed about it and to seek rapid treatment when anything appears to be wrong. And so in that spirit, I will reveal my recent brush with surgery that concerned the repair of a hydrocele. I had planned to tell the world the op was just follow-up treatment for an inguinal hernia operation in 2013 – which in some ways it probably was. But gradually, I am realising there is something to be learned from sharing the full story.
It begins at puberty, when boys' testes descend via a tube into the scrotum inside a membrane that is supposed to close and seal once the journey is complete. Sometimes, however, the membrane does not close. Or it can be damaged. I don't know, but I strongly suspect mine was injured during that hernia operation, because the scrotal swelling that followed it, which I put down to the hernia operation, did not subside. Instead, it slowly increased over the next decade because once the membrane is breached, it slowly fills with fluid. In some cases, I am told, the fluid sack can become unbearably huge. It is not dangerous, just uncomfortable and unpleasant, which I discovered after rapid diagnosis: fearing something sinister, I contacted the GP and saw him on the same day, was offered a scan the next day and given the explanation the day after that. The GP said I could go on a list for repair if it was troubling me enough and I decided it was.
A few weeks – and a couple of hiccups – later, the job was done. All appears to be fine and I should be back on the tennis court very soon. Having stitches in such a sensitive area and having to sit on the wound has been awkward but is improving by the day. So, Ant, that's my story shared, too. Thank you for inspiring me to reveal all.
STARMER'S 'MISS WORLD' WISH LIST
Keir Starmer's “six pledges”, supposedly outlining what a Labour government will do after the next election, is being compared to Tony Blair's five pledges in 1997. I think a far superior comparison is with the speeches made by winners of the Miss World contest in the 1960s and 1970s: “I want to make everything lovely and bring peace to the world.” Good luck with that, Starmer.
AND IF I WAS RUNNING THE TORIES' PR CAMPAIGN
The Tories stand no chance of mounting a sufficient recovery in the opinion polls to have any hopes in the next election. But they might narrow the gap considerably and make life uncomfortable for Labour (otherwise known as Tory Party No.2) if they follow my advice. Dig out that note left in 2010 by the departing Liam Byrne, the Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury telling his successor “I'm afraid there is no money”. It has been played down as a joke – but it was certainly not funny and, following Gordon Brown's crashing of the economy just two years earlier, not far from the truth. It made necessary the austerity years and, thanks to Covid and the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it is still having an impact today. So my message to the voting public would be: “Labour left us penniless in 2010. It's taken 14 years to get back on track, despite Covid and the invasion of Ukraine. And repairing the damage is far from finished. If you think Labour can do better, then fine. But rest assured that when we are once again penniless, we will be here for you in 2029, ready to start putting things right again.” So that's the economic argument sorted.
APRIL 15 2024
I LOVED MY JOB – AND RETIREMENT JUST MADE IT EVEN BETTER
I realised last week, as I published a book (a play) and prepared to publish two others (this blog and a collection of LSE students' memoirs), that that's what I do. I write, I edit, I design, I commission, I organise, I publish. That's what I did at the FT for nearly 30 years and that's what I do now. That's why retiring was so easy for me – my life didn't change too much. I lost the misery of the daily train commute and lost the joy and laughter of comradeship in the office; I lost the stress of extreme responsibility, deadlines and working to benefit an organisation. But I replaced those with the freedom to do what I choose, needing to please only myself; a vista of endless choice, freedom and variety.
YOU HAVE TO FEEL SORRY FOR MISTREATED GENERATIONS
As the race to medicalise the trials and tribulations of everyday life continues apace, we must be grateful for voices of sanity and reason, such as that of Dr Meg Jay. The American clinical psychologist is, of course, not alone in arguing that the alleged mental health epidemic among so-called Generation Z youngsters has been foisted on them. Their parents – and society – is mainly to blame. But she is among the more eloquent at spelling out the problems – and the solutions.
She believes adulthood is now experienced much later than half a century ago: between 20 and 25 was the normal age for settling down with a partner, a job and a somewhere to live. Now, it is more like 30-35, which leaves most youngsters dangling in uncertainty over their place in the world and what their future might be for most of their 20s. She says this doesn't mean things are better or worse – just different and she is sceptical of the doctor-prescription route for dealing with these anxieties. She is an advocate of “skills not pills” and looking at the youngster's whole life, helping them to overcome the negative thinking that can fog the developing brain. Their symptoms might tick boxes that suggest a mental health disorder but it's just as likely to be “situational”, she says. A doctor helped her at that age by reassuring her: “You're not crazy, you don't need hospital, you're just having a hard time.” It all makes perfect sense, Dr Jay.
KIKI DEE – CAN A CONCERT ACTUALLY BE BETTER THAN IT SEEMED AT THE TIME?
Kiki Dee, a pop star from the 1970s, has been performing for 60 years – so you would have thought that at the age of 77 she might be relaxed and chatty and able to put an audience at its ease. But no. We walked to Esher Theatre on Saturday night to see her and guitarist Carmelo Luggeri in concert and were left cold by the atmosphere. The auditorium was barely half full and Kiki's awkwardness in her movements and communication with the crowd made her appear nervous – and a seemingly nervous performer rapidly transmits their fear back to the fans. Everyone was willing her to relax and loosen up, which she did a little in the second half. And it was all such a pity, because the music was mostly excellent. We had done no homework, having only made a last-minute decision to attend, and so had no idea what to expect – and if we had prepared a little we might have been more ready to embrace the songs' jazzier, stripped-down arrangements at the time. As it is, I am only now beginning to appreciate the craft and thought that went into the show. And it is getting better all the time.
EVEREST: A TALE OF DEATHS – AND THEN WE HEAR THE DREADED 'C' WORD
There have been several radio programmes commemorating tragedies on Everest recently. One on Sunday morning reunited the survivors of a disaster in 1996 which cost the lives of several climbers. During the re-telling it became apparent that the guiltiest party and most to blame for the killings could be summed up in a word: commercialisation. Climbing Everest became a business, admittedly providing work and income for the local sherpas, but bringing with it statistics, targets, finance, profit. And with all those came, inevitably, risk and a big increase in numbers on the mountain. And, of course, more bodies.
AND SO TO AN UNHAPPY ENDING
My heart is thrice broken. First, by the atrial fibrillation that causes it to beat unevenly; second, by the near destruction of my treasured journalism profession; and third, by my two daughters' admission that they consume and value the mutant rump of what used to be called journalism. This is not some theatrical, histrionic heartbreak written about for effect: it is real and painful.
Never mind about the AF: the NHS is on to it and might – or perhaps not – cure it one day. It seems a tricky condition to treat. The real agony comes from something I wrote about last month: a podcast that bills itself as “your weekly fix of political news”. I have dedicated my entire career, and indeed a huge part of my life to objective, accurate and fair journalism, delivered with respect for all views and, most important of all, integrity. But last night and this morning I listened, for the first time, to a podcast fronted by Nish Kumar (there are other people involved but the third-rate comic turned “influencer” is the loudest, rudest and most obnoxious). I listened to as much as I could stomach.
“Political news” it absolutely is not. I have now endured well over two hours of hatred, filthy banter, desperate attempts at “humour”, ignorance, skewed assumptions and worse. The word that constantly leaps to mind is “snide”; I have never heard anything so ugly and nasty, so lacking in respect, so devoid of decency, so casual in its vicious attacks on people and personality. The level of debate is summarised in these random descriptions of Nigel Farage who, like him or loathe him, is a figure at least deserving of being taken seriously: “deeply, deeply unpleasant vile man”; “I'd rather he got strung from a palm tree”; he is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. All Tories are, of course, “smug and arrogant”; it is a one non-stop character assassination. The perfectly valid opinions of others are dismissed as “completely farcical” or a “nonsensical feedback loop of stupidity” with no substance, evidence or explanation offered: it's a simple case of good versus evil – we're right, you're wrong.
For balance, I listened to half an hour of Farage's podcast on GB News. It was extraordinarily professional by comparison – not that that is saying much. But otherwise, these podcasts are identical in their form and intent – presenting one side of a debate and misrepresenting, mocking and trashing any alternative viewpoints. It begs the question as to why anyone would listen to them – there is nothing to be learned: their views can be heard extensively elsewhere in objective and balanced contexts and every claimed “fact” quoted needs taking with a giant pinch of salt. This is basic tribalism at its crudest: foul name-calling across an unbridgeable political divide; no debate, no discussion, no understanding. Its coarseness explains the enormous rift that has silenced intelligent discourse in the UK since any embittered soul with a laptop was able to set themselves up as a “journalist” and present “their news”.
For indeed, identity politics is part of all this: the “daily me” that I warned about 15 years ago, when commenting in the Financial Times Digital Business section on the ability of individuals to tailor their intake of news to suit themselves, has come into being. And the resulting narrowness of thinking and ghastly echo-chamber effect of hearing only what you want to hear is far worse than anything I could have imagined and far more chilling. Reasoned debate simply isn't possible when terms of reference are so eroded and dwindling areas of common ground are so riddled with mines and hatred.
Media organisations have always nurtured their tribes but it might still just be possible for “Guardian readers” and “Daily Mail readers” to argue with decorum and civility, even though neither publication offers anything like a balanced view of the world. It is, however, completely impossible for listeners of the Kumar podcast to conduct any meaningful communication with those of the Farage podcast, for example. Their world views are irreconcilable and no Kumar listener would ever countenance listening to Farage and vice versa. Which drags us back to the question as to why listen to either – or indeed to any of the other countless campaigners and “influencers” banging their own drum? I choose to minimise the levels of bias in my news and current affairs consumption by sticking with the last remaining trickle of professional news coming from the FT, The Times and the BBC, plus the odd credible online debating site, such as UnHerd. None is perfect but I still hear all of the the rancid views from every extreme in any debate, but in context and (mostly) in a reasoned and balanced forum. From the BBC, with its (highly flawed) Today programme, the World at One, PM, From Our Own Correspondent, Today in Parliament, and more, plus reading The Times and scanning the FT I consume hours of current affairs every day – all professional, all respectful.
What I cannot forgive the likes of Kumar and Farage and all the other podcast “influencers” is their near destruction of my beloved profession. It breaks my heart to think that anyone listens to the worthless Kumar when there is so much better to be had – and to think that it could be a long long time before they understand what's been done to them. We desperately need a reasoned debate, not narrow bubble-speak, before terrible global events take over.
Because I strongly suspect the world to be sliding into a conflagration that will affect us all: the lessons of the second world war have been forgotten, allowing today's global leaders to give free rein to their worst psychopathic tendencies. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, and many more, are all run by small, insignificant men hoisted to power by corruption, death cults, religions and violence. Israel, showing all the diplomatic sophistication of a pummel-brained heavyweight boxer, is today's powder keg. The fragile status quo cannot hold. And a media infested with hatred and ignorance tragically amplifies the rage. With the defilement of all shared values, how can there be reconciliation?
APRIL 12 2024
IDIOT BUYS HOUSE ON TOP OF CRUMBING CLIFF; CLIFF FALLS; IDIOT SUES GOVERNMENT
It took just a couple of days for the idiotic European Court of Human Rights judgment demanding the Swiss government ends climate change to have real-world effects. In the UK, a fool bought a house on a cliff-top – beautiful views, nice house, rapidly crumbling cliff. He was on the radio yesterday lunchtime explaining how his friends (with marine qualifications) had promised him it would last for 100 years. It lasted 14 and the council recently had to evacuate him and demolish the house before it fell on to the beach below. He said it happened sooner because climate change had not been tackled quickly enough – and so it was the government's fault and he expects to sue it at the ECHR, presumably citing his human rights to live in a house on top of a flaky cliff. There are so many absurdities to this ridiculous claim they cannot be listed in the time available. I felt sorry for him when I first read of his plight last week – but not now that he has shown himself to be a complete idiot. I am sure the ECHR will find in his favour and the government will have to cease funding the NHS and the army in order to stop climate change allegedly hastening natural coastal erosion.
APRIL 11 2024
Bernard Donoghue became the questioner at the end of his interview with Nick Robinson on this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4. Lord Donoghue, an old Northampton Grammar School boy and London School of Economics academic, was an adviser to Harold Wilson when he was prime minister in the 1970s. He became head of the policy research unit in 1974, a body that Wilson made official as a part of the civil service. The debate today was over an affair Wilson is said to have had while in office, one that Donoghue and his press secretary Joe Haines kept secret until yesterday – 50 years on. Donoghue had already mentioned that the prime motivation of advisers in those days was to act for the benefit of the country and in the national interest, which involved supporting and protecting the prime minister. He then asked whether a prime minister has ever had a close adviser who would have kept such a secret to protect them – and others – for 50 years. Or had something changed? I'm not sure whether he was mourning the death of loyalty and the rise of the political civil servant, or telling us that today's politicians do not deserve such devotion. Either way, he was right in saying everything has changed.
NOT THE “BUS LIES” AGAIN...
Another day, another columnist decides that the Vote Leave campaign claimed on the side of a bus that Britain would spend £350m more a week on the NHS. It did not. This is a simple, demonstrable fact. Just look at the side of the bus. The picture accompanying the column did not extend this luxury, showing only the back of the bus, with it's “Take Back Control” message. The side of the bus – once again – said that we send £350m a week to the EU, so “let's spend more on the NHS”. No figure was attached. It's clear for all to see. So why do commentators keep lying about it? (Individual politicians might have said different things – but the truth is that the side of the bus did not lie.)
ESTATE AGENTS' RELIEF AS SLUMP IN DEMAND EASES
“Build more houses,” cry the developers and those who naively believe that constructing hundreds of thousands of homes will bring down prices. Yet today, we read that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is relieved that the lack of demand for properties appears to be coming to an end. Hang on... Sorry... Lack of demand?
THE CASS REPORT AND THE SHAME OF THE NHS GENDER CLINICS
Shame on all those who sought to block, confuse or otherwise scupper the independent investigation by Dr Hilary Cass into the scandal of Britain's gender identity services. Astonishingly, this includes most of the NHS's gender identity service units who, it is said, have a legal duty to co-operate, assist and provide essential information to the inquiry so that future generations of youngsters can be protected from the zealots, who view gender transition as the answer to every child's worry, confusion or mental health concern and who behave little better than equally deluded female genital mutilators.
It does seem, though, that Cass's excellent report, produced in the face of vile abuse and threats, is part of a turning of the tide back towards common sense. Even Wes Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary, now admits he was misguided when making such bald statements as “a trans woman is a woman”. The Labour man now admits that this simplistic view ignores a multitude of complexities and that he was wrong. Fair enough. But we must also acknowledge the damage that his hefty support for something so plainly wrong has left in his wake.
THE ECHR IS NOT WORTH KEEPING IF IT CAN'T BE PUT RIGHT
The insanity of the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, which demanded the Swiss government alter its policies in order to preserve the right to life and health of its citizens, has taken a while to sink in. But commentators are now beginning to see that the ecological campaigners' case marks the most outrageous overreach on the part of a judiciary. It is not for judges to order sovereign governments to make fighting climate change their top priority, no matter how sensible that might be. Governments have to balance endless competing interests and are answerable to their electorates, not a group of appointed and out-of-control judges.
That the judges are uncontrollable and are overstepping their remit is now beyond dispute. What also seems depressingly true – and familiar – is that the court is beyond reform. Iain Martin points this out in his excellent column in today's Times. He says this is all horribly reminiscent of the debate in Europe as the EU's gathered unto itself ever more functions, treading on the toes of individual nations, some of whom, such as the UK, objected. When reforms that would have made the EU acceptable were flung back in the faces of the proposers, Brexit became inevitable. Reform of the increasingly ludicrous ECHR has been on the agenda for years but, just as with any multinational body, securing unanimity is impossible and the power of the veto ensures a continual free-fall into absurdity. It happened with the EU and it's been happening for years with the ECHR. As Martin says, most people voting for Brexit never set out with that intention but could see that vital fundamental reforms would never ever happen – and were forced by common sense to vote “leave”. The ECHR is surely on precisely the same track.
SPREAD THEM MORE THINLY – IS THAT REALLY THE ANSWER?
The EU heralds its “historic” accord on dealing with the flood of illegal migration across its borders. It is jubilant, triumphant! It has thrown away the Dublin Agreement! Brilliant! This agreement imposed on illegal migrants a requirement to apply for asylum in the first safe country they reached. Scrapping it will make no difference in practice as it's been ignored and migrants have wandered across European borders unhindered and unchallenged for years. The new aim seems to be simply to spread migrants more thinly across the EU, easing pressure on countries such as Greece and Italy, the gateway countries for the people smugglers, their willing victims and this deadly and disgusting criminality. Poland and Hungary are less than impressed at this move to allow illegal migrants to choose their destination and vowed not to accept the EU-imposed quotas. They do have a get-out – an expensive one: they can pay 20,000 euros per migrant they refuse to take. I hope they stick two fingers up to those practising such extortion and blackmail and suggest that a more intelligent approach would involve stopping the criminals by various mean, including flights to third countries (being considered by several European states) and detention centres aimed at rendering the journeys pointless, as well as vigorous policing to secure borders. Is simply spreading the migrants more thinly any sort of rational answer? Of course not. But to the EU it is a triumph!
APRIL 8 2024
IT'S NEITHER BETTER NOR WORSE – JUST DIFFERENT
Draw a bell curve of the physical ownership of music (by which I mean records and CDs) over, say, the past 200 years and you see an astonishingly steep – on both sides – line squeezed into the right-hand side of the graph. Until the 1930s, music was consumed only by attending a live performance; from the 1930s until the 1950s, the line of our curve would have risen slightly as small numbers of 78rpm records were sold. Through the 1960s, 70s and 80s the curve would shoot almost vertically as vinyl rapidly created a mass market for recorded music, with compact discs then taking over into the early 2000s. But from about 2015, the line on our graph plummets back down again as streaming becomes the dominant medium; now, the consumption of music in physical form has become a curiosity – no one wants CDs and only a tiny amount of new and second-hand vinyl is purchased by retro lovers.
This dramatic rise and fall took roughly 60 years – a couple of generations, with my baby-boomer cohort at the centre. Buying records and CDs, for us, was a way of defining ourselves. Our collections became part of our identity – something tangible and finite. It became difficult for us to imagine it had ever been different – or ever could be again. So we felt sorry for the following generations, doomed to grasping at an ephemeral cloud of bits and pieces, with no affiliations or real-world markers – a sort of unending, limitless radio station offering single-listen shallowness for eternity. Our world view, our experience, suggested that our enjoyment of music was the ideal, the definitive version and that losing this would prove to be a tragedy.
But reading David Hepworth's history of the Abbey Road studios made me realise that things had not always been as we found them: we were antiquity's outliers – a weird blip. Previous generations felt no more need to own physical music than those following us. I sold my vinyl records, apart from 20 or so special albums, about 10 years ago, having transferred all the music on to my computer using a USB turntable. I now face having to decide whether to do the same with my CDs: I have getting on for 1,000, and not all of them are available on Spotify, the streaming service to which I subscribe. Is Spotify future-proof? Will more artists withdraw their content from streaming platforms? Should I keep the CDs?
On the other hand, getting rid of CDs would be a huge de-cluttering step – and I hardly ever listen to them. Even if I own the CD, I am far more likely to play an album via streaming than taking it out of its case and switching on the player etc, etc. They might have to go.
Of rather greater import, I am coming to see social “progress” as a blip, too. Or a series of blips. I am reading Fintan O'Toole's ambiguously titled “We Don't Know Ourselves”, in which the Irish journalist charts the social history of Ireland from around the time of his birth in 1958. Setting the scene, he recalls how the Irish population had nose-dived during the 20th century, people being driven abroad by poverty and the Stasi-like stranglehold imposed by the fanatical idiocy of the Catholic Church, highly reminiscent of the paranoid and deluded Islamic and other religious extremism making life miserable for entire populations today. Even up to the time of his birth and into the 1960s, Ireland was a backward country in which “being modern” was enjoying running water and electricity. The Catholic barrenness and hardship made Ireland worse than most western countries, but conditions were pretty bleak – by today's standards – elsewhere, too. I grew up in a house in England with no telephone, no central heating, no washing machine or any other of today's “essential” conveniences.
But I learned more. Questioning the conventional wisdom that each generation throughout history has been better off and more comfortable than the last, O'Toole has made me realise that this has never been the case. It is just another blip that has occurred since the second world war. We all tend towards laziness in our thinking: what we have known is how it has always been. But this is obviously not the case. Golden ages have come and gone, as have eras in which people have suffered and starved; climatic changes have had an impact on well-being; volcanoes and earthquakes often leave lasting repercussions that drag regions down. There is no eternal right to being better off than your parents. And even if there was, can we really say that today's youngsters are, in any meaningful way, worse off than we were at their age. The youngsters I know travel, enjoy technology and make choices to an extent undreamt-of when I was a similar age. The only way I can see in which they find life more difficult than we did is in buying a property of their own, a result of economic foolishness in the first decade of this century. But it isn't impossible: two of my nieces – and countless others – can prove that. The biggest gift from one generation to the next is to keep it free from war, and we have achieved that. But in all other respects, as throughout history, today is no better nor any worse than any other period – it's just different. And, in the grand sweep of things, only slightly different at that.
FOOTBALLING POSTSCRIPT
I have to confess that when I heard that West Ham had beaten Wolves on Saturday in controversial circumstances, I felt a frisson of joy. After all the injustices, something had at last gone the way of my team. I hate feeling like this – but that's what mismanagement and cheating in football have done to me. And millions of others. Fairness is for losers! Come On You Irons!
APRIL 7 2024
FOOTBALL MANAGERS AND PLAYERS ARE THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES
Gary O'Neil was ranting and raving on the touchline at the Molineux Stadium yesterday, his Wolverhampton Wanderers team having just been beaten at home by West Ham. The Wolves manager was furious that a 98th minute “goal” – a header from a corner – had been disallowed because another forward was in an offside position and impeding the goalkeeper. Even as a West Ham fan, I had some sympathy. I always understood there to be no offside from corners, although whether this provision is cancelled as soon as another player touches the ball is debatable. The forward probably was impeding West Ham's goalkeeper, but lightly. The referee had allowed the goal and then the dreaded VAR – video assistant referee – intervened and suggested the ref check the pitch-side screen, after which he changed his mind and disallowed it. West Ham won 2-1.
What I find odd is that O'Neil rages over this bad decision, yet is happy to accept two equally appalling refereeing blunders earlier in the game that went his team's way. Wolves scored first from a penalty following a challenge by a West Ham defender that on many other occasions would have been hailed as a perfectly timed tackle – the player took the ball beautifully: it's what defending is all about. O'Neil welcomed this piece of poor judgment. He was equally happy to overlook an even worse injustice that favoured his side when a powerfully headed goal was disallowed for some imagined foul on a defender. Replays showed clearly that no offence had been committed. A grave injustice. No complaint from O'Neil.
These two – or three – refereeing howlers bring the total of result-changing clangers in two recent West Ham games to five. In the other game, two penalties were awarded against the Hammers, one very soft and dubious, the other a clear foul on the West Ham player!
Several of these incidents were accompanied by blatant cheating on the part of players involved. In at least two of them, bodies were seen rolling in agony on the grass in a pathetic – but successful – bid to sway the ref's mind. Fans often see managers and players berating each other for play-acting, simulating injuries, wasting time, slowing the game to relieve pressure. Ironically, they are the only ones with the power to prevent this fraudulent behaviour. Referees and the game's administrators are either too weak or too stupid to stamp it out. But as Gary O'Neil's selective ranting shows, those responsible only see what they want to see. And anyway, who wants to be first to give up this massive, often match-winning, advantage?
SCOTLAND – TWINNED WITH SALEM
As hatred levels rise to stratospheric levels in Scotland – hate crime accusations seem to be piling in at the rate of about 1,000 a day since a new law was implemented there last week – Janice Turner in The Times draws a lovely parallel with what is happening there and the 17th century horror show that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. Everyone in Salem became a potential witch, thanks to the fevered mind of a maniacal religious zealot, and women were hanged on the mere say-so of a neighbour. And so from 1693, we leap forward to Scotland 2024, where police have promised to investigate every claim of “stirring up hatred”, to rid the country of nastiness. Fortunately, the legislation is so poorly drafted and loosely defined it gives the police ample scope to slide free from their pledge. But 6,000 cases in as many days? Where is this hatred coming from?
One answer could be the Hate Crime and Public Order Act itself. This ham-fisted attempt at telling people what they should think and say is bound to provoke anger, rage and yes, hatred. It might not be the first law that falls hideously foul of its own provisions, but it must be one of the most obvious. I would therefore like to report the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act to the police for “stirring up hatred”.
APRIL 4 2024
WHAT'S SO 'LEFTIE' ABOUT BEING 'LIBERAL'?
According to analysis carried out by The Economist, girls are now increasingly “left-wing”, while boys are moving to “the right”. This idea sort of rings vaguely true, based on anecdotal evidence, but would be in danger of collapsing completely should it fail to define carefully and correctly what constitutes “left” and “right”. And collapse it does. Because in the description of the new “leftie girls” cohort, there is not a single mention of socialism, class-based politics, feminism, redistribution of wealth, and so on. The definition of “leftie” merely requires them to show sympathy for “the underdogs” – migrants, people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community and the traditionally marginalised. But pressing for more individual “rights” and “freedoms” for these groups, in the full knowledge that this will not degrade their own comfortable existence in the slightest, is not remotely “left-wing”: quite the reverse in some cases, as more impoverished and exploitable migrants mean cheaper coffee and plumbing but damage both local workers and the migrants themselves.
This flawed analysis therefore continues the modern myth that anything to do with liberty and rights is “liberal” and therefore “left”, while anything to do with preserving broader society-wide norms is “conservative”. This is 100 per cent backwards. Liberalism – especially the hyper-liberalism practised today – is concerned with individualism, self-interest, freedom and rights. This makes it the most right-wing of ideologies. In order to disguise this fact, the word “progressive” is often attached, as if this dusts from the 19th century liberal ideology the shame of being self-centred and individualistic. John Stuart Mill (minimalist government, social liberty), should we need reminding, was no “leftie”.
Left-wing politics, on the other hand, concern the collective, the community, contributing to society as a whole, making sacrifices for the greater good, and are as far removed from individualistic liberalism as it is possible to go. In many ways, the right-wing boys are to the left of the so-called “left-wing” girls in that they advocate a more conservative approach to the radical lurch to hyper-liberalism that has caused society's current schism. They wish to swing the pendulum back a small way to a more inclusive and co-operative time. Perhaps one in which they held sway. This is certainly conservative and right-wing – but still well to the left of the radical progressive liberals now making all the noise.
MARCH 28 2024
THE FULL HORROR OF THE BBC STUMBLING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean.” And the BBC has now shuffled shamefully through that nonsensical looking glass, too, deciding that Amol Rajan's disgraceful disrespect, rudeness and prejudice aimed at the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer in a recent “interview” on the “Today” Radio Four programme was “professional” and “courteous”. This absurd ruling stretches the meaning of the words “professional” and “courteous” beyond breaking point and into the realms of Humpty Dumpty land in Lewis Carroll's “Through The Looking Glass”. We know that identity politics allows anyone to define themselves as whatever they wish, and to maintain “their own truth” and their own “lived experience” – that is, make up whatever they like – but we might have expected better from the BBC when answering my serious complaint that Rajan had been discourteous, mocking and shown blatant contempt for Jeremy Hunt.
MARCH 27 2024
THE FULL HORROR OF THE DEMISE OF NEWS
I had no idea just how horrific the demise of trusted, objective, impartial news had become – until yesterday. We now have an entire generation growing into middle age living in an echo chamber of their own views: a generation that fails to rely on journalists and prefers instead to take its information – upon which it will form its beliefs – from opinionated, know-all comedians with an axe to grind. I know this because one of my daughters – possibly both of them – admitted yesterday that she knows what's happening in the world thanks to a podcast thrown together by not-very-good-comic Nish Kumar. Kumar is one of the many hyper-liberal individualists who thought it clever to be offensive and abusive towards the working classes during the Brexit debate – mocking their stupidity in voting for their own self-interests, rather than his. That made him a person for whom I have no time whatsoever.
I dread to think what other sources of narrow, biased opinion my daughter consumes to help form her opinions, but one of them is not, as she admitted yesterday, Radio Four. For all its faults – and, as we know, they are many and serious – Radio Four news remains a trusted (for the most part) journalistic endeavour, sadly let down by most of the Today programme's presenters and dopey correspondents such as Mark Easton and Hugh Pym. But its foreign correspondents, such as Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and others, are unrivalled – and keep their own politics to themselves, as a good professional should. Nish Kumar is none of these things: he is an ungifted amateur with a big mouth, an “influencer” now influencing my daughter.
So she listens to Kumar – but why not listen to a podcast by Nigel Farage? I am certain she would not consider it – and the reason would be that she can't stand his views: she disagrees with him. And so I could rest my case at this point: the echo chamber effect is confirmed. However, I can go one step further and ask how she would feel if another mediocre comic shoved his way into her world and started writing children's books (she is a senior editor for a publisher of children's and young adult books). Again, I know the answer, because she hates David Walliams for trampling all over her home territory. Yet it seems that it's fine for the equally nasty and unfunny Kumar to trample over mine and her mother's? Objective and impartial journalism with integrity might be dying, killed by appalling amateurs and an audience preferring to be fed back its own views, rather than truly understanding the world. Once real journalism is gone, the idiots with the biggest mouths and access to media will truly be free to take over the asylum. And the consequences of that could be truly horrific.
THE CONSERVATVE PARTY – MUST DO BETTER
As if the Tories were not yet in a big enough state of disarray, the forthcoming local elections have identified yet another weakness. A leaflet calling for us to vote for Redmond Walsh was on the door mat when we arrived back from Catalonia last night. It was a good flight, setting off from a shambolic and badly designed Terminal One in Barcelona and arriving at a highly efficient Gatwick, where not a single person was waiting to clear passport control. But my back was hurting and it was raining hard, which sufficiently suppressed my forgiving side to persuade me that Redmond's leaflet deserved a rocket.
So here goes. Nowhere on the leaflet does it mention the body to which Redmond wishes to be elected (I presume it's the borough council); he only seems to have three fairly routine policies (full community centre service; protect the Green Belt; fix roads and paths); and even these are set out in a most ungainly language – “stop overdevelopment...like behind Raleigh Drive”; “paths repaired that have been damaged from the winter weather”. All terribly sketchy and inelegant. And worse, the mention of roads and paths reminds us that they are in a terrible state because the Conservative government has reduced its funding of the responsible body, Surrey County Council – also run by the Conservatives.
THE BALTIMORE BRIDGE WORKFORCE
A bridge collapses as easily as a child's toy after being hit by an out-of-control container ship leaving Baltimore port. At present, there are six assumed fatalities, all men working on road repairs when the accident occurred at about 1.30am. Bizarrely, six workers were also killed when a wall collapsed in the UK a few years ago: I cited it in my book as an example of how a massive influx of migrant workers had reduced pay, working conditions and regard for health and safety. The dead were all migrants. The six dead in Baltimore are also migrants, as far as the news so far indicates – from Mexico, Guatemala and other southerly nations. Perhaps if the organised US workforce had not been undermined by cheap migrant labour, there would not have been workers on the bridge in the middle of the night. It's tragic, but yet another symptom of a very nasty disease. But as it's not one that affects the likes of Nish Kumar, no one will bother to find a cure that works.
MARCH 20 2024
LABOUR TERRIFIED THE TORY PLAN WILL WORK
The Labour Party is clearly terrified. It is gathering its forces to fight at every turn the government's Rwanda legislation, which aims to remove the incentive to cross the Channel in a deadly small boat by sending illegal migrants to the African state. Labour is certain it won't work. In which case, why not stand aside, allow it on to the statute books and watch it fail. A sweet “told you so” would then be the final coup de grace in its battle to take power.
But what if it did work? That would be a disaster for Labour – and so it cannot let it happen. It cannot take that risk. Its own policies are exactly the same as the status quo – policies that are virtually useless in defeating the criminal gangs and stopping their lethal trade. Labour has nothing to offer. And it is too terrified to gamble on allowing a fair trail for this one last-resort policy – in case it might just work.
DESPICABLE 'BLOKES IN PUB' ANALYSIS BY THE BBC
In one of the most baffling – and most comical, it seems – mysteries of our age, the National Audit Office has found that it will cost more to house asylum seekers on barges and military bases than in hotels. The BBC, of course, is completely bemused by this and decided to set two of its dimmest presenters the task of explaining it this morning. Which they disgracefully failed to do. Amol Rajan was involved, obviously, as Radio Four's Today sought to make the NAO findings clear. Unfortunately for the listener, he only had the easily confused dolt, Mark Easton, to talk to. Easton waffled on about how the Home Office had agreed with the NAO that it would cost more but then sent out another message saying it disagreed; he tried to make everything sound as confused and incompetent as he could. And indeed, it seems a large amount of money was wasted during the setting up period of finding cheaper alternative accommodation for asylum seekers.
The problem for these two useless BBC saps, however, is that there is no contradiction, no confusion, no mystery. Anyone who has ever set up anything will know that costs are incurred at the beginning. Indeed, the NAO report itself said the costs of barges and bases would only be higher for the first four years. Once up and running, the expense falls well below the ugly and big-budget contingency measures of using hotels. It was clearly not on these presenters' political agenda to point that out. When Easton had finished his idiotic, prissy pirouetting around this simple subject, Rajan actually laughed, told Easton he had spoken with relish and that his “expertise” was vital “to make sense of some of the things that come out of the Home Office”.
So, the whole simple story discussed between two plainly biased, anti-government presenters and made out to be a case of incompetence, confusion, money-wasting and irreconcilable statements. I cannot believe they are both so stupid as not to know what they were doing – which was behaving like two blokes in a pub having a laugh by making things up – which means, yet again, this was a deliberate act aimed at undermining the government. It was completely lacking in integrity. And that, in my book, is a sackable offence for someone claiming to be a journalist.
HOW FAR CAN THIS GENDER BULLYING GO?
A lawyer is being sued for “her belief” (I quote The Times intro on this story) that only women menstruate. And a teacher is fighting for his job after refusing to call a girl by a boy's name and use male pronouns – in spite of her asking to apply to enter a girls' maths competition! With fellow students reported to be rolling their eyes at these antics and nonsensical distractions, education must surely be suffering. Teachers should be told to revert to using surnames only. Although I guess it wouldn't be long before this, too, became the subject of some psychopathic extremist gang's campaigning. People with common sense and perfectly reasonable views – whether you agree with them or not – are being harassed and losing their jobs while organisations squander a fortune on hiring toxic activists to instruct employees on what to THINK. Welcome to 1984.
THE VIEW FROM ACROSS THE BORDER
It's surprising how different things can look from a few miles away. I've just read Tim Butcher's account of his navigation of the Congo River in 2004 and enjoyed it very much. As someone who loves Africa and spent last summer in Rwanda and Uganda – including a few days in towns bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo – I could picture the geography and the people, and his story is quite extraordinary. Butcher certainly took risks and was lucky to escape alive. And his observations on the region, drawn from his experiences and the people he spoke to, are insightful.
Where I must take issue with him, however, is over his simplistic claims that Rwandan forces entering Congo in the late 1990s did so purely to plunder the natural resources so freely available there. This is to overlook the facts that the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was the culmination of several decades of violence inflicted upon the designated “Tutsi” population of Rwanda by the designated “Hutu” majority – a violence that did not stop just because a new government took over in Rwanda to end the genocide. Indeed, France and Belgium provided safe passage into the jungles of the DRC for thousands of “genocidaires” and armed them with the aim of retaining Francophone influence in central Africa through the trouble they could cause. Dealing with this menace is how any insurgencies by Rwandan troops into the DRC would be seem from the Rwandan side of the border.
Butcher wrote his book in 2005 and 2006 and the situation has changed greatly since, as has knowledge of what was happening in that period. By eliminating corruption, Rwanda has created a stable and increasingly prosperous haven; the DRC continues to fail to clean up its act. Butcher puts this down to the sovereignty that colonial powers stole from the African people, along with the region's physical treasures. I am sure he is right. Rwanda is a small country, easily managed by a leader with integrity and genius; the DRC is a giant, sprawling mess of tribes, impenetrable forests and corruption. Butcher has much to say that is important. It's just a pity he couldn't see that there are different explanations just across the border.
MARCH 19 2024
I agree with Melanie Phillips. Now there's something I can't say very often. But the controversial commentator hits the nail on the head in today's Times with her lambasting of the diversity, equity and inclusion zealots who have overshot their brief by several million miles. Exhibit A in her argument was the laughably stupid “Gemini” AI software from Google that could not bear to show any representation of a white face on the grounds that it could “promote harmful stereotypes”. Emerging from the blizzard of Pythonesquely idiotic examples comes a powerful message of hatred for all things white: whites are privileged, only whites can be racist. Is this not, in itself, hideously racist, Phillips asks. Of course it is.
Today, I spent an hour and three quarters at Kingston Hospital. I interacted with (held conversations with) 11 people. All were women, three obviously white British, the rest a mixture of nationalities and ethnicities. It mattered not in the slightest – we all smiled and joked and formed that special momentary bond that accompanies a joint endeavour in a potentially stressful environment. If the white-people-hating lobby has its way, those smiles and bonds will be replaced with miserable scowls and uncaring contempt.
MARCH 17 2024
DEPRESSING EXHIBITION'S MESSAGE IS: 'WOMEN HAVE ACHIEVED NOTHING'
On Mothers' Day, my wife and I visited the Tate Britain exhibition “Women in Revolt” with our two daughters – but the trouble is, that's all the exhibition was. Just revolt. There were no stories, no curated narrative, no outcomes, no mention of achievements or victories, no sense of progress. It was a dull, ragged and depressing collection of bits and bobs, as if thrown together by a disgruntled A-level student. There were copies of Spare Rib and other important feminist publications, mentions of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Poly Styrene – whose LPs I bought in the late 1970s and early 1980s – and videos to watch, though the over-crowded Sunday afternoon session made this difficult. But epitomising the whole spectacle was a giant video screen showing a screaming woman – with sound. Almost non-stop. The whole event felt like a desperate cry for help, a festival of victimhood, rather than a rallying call to build upon the extraordinary progress of the past half century.
Perhaps you needed to have experienced how things were to be able to appreciate how things have changed. But even so, where was the strength, the power of women? Where were their triumphs? To have overcome absolute male domination in the space of just a few decades is surely worth celebrating. So why no mention? Throughout the entire animal kingdom there are clear divisions of labour; through preliterate societies, men hunted and women nurtured; through the ages and right up to the two world wars, women enjoyed only subsidiary roles to men. But since the suffragette movement, and more noticeably since the feminist movement began in earnest in the 1960s and 1970s, changes have been radical. Is there more to do? Certainly. Could everything be better? Of course it could. Will it ever be perfect? Not the slightest chance. But let's have the full story, not just non-stop screaming.
HAVING IT ALL. NICE IF YOU CAN GET IT
When the complaint from singer Lily Allen (privileged daughter of a successful actor, let us not forget) is that she couldn't “have it all” after starting a family, you see that British society has reached the stage of finessing, tweaking and tinkering, compared with the giant leaps that were needed 50 years ago to establish parity for women. (Not yet fully achieved, by the way.) Allen really does her cause no good when she presents having children as a burden that “wrecked her career”: children are a choice; the domestic arrangements of the rich and famous give them almost limitless choice. Fathers have difficult decisions to make, too, and miss out on so much of the wonder that spending time with their young children offers. The poorer sections of society have few or no choices to make. But the option of having absolutely everything does not, and should not, exist. You cannot undertake a 38-date European tour and look after your baby – but you do have a choice.
IS THIS THE BEST THE TRAINS CAN DO?
Engineering works on the line: it's a familiar weekend excuse for poor service from the train companies. But far worse is the dreadful service provided when there are no engineering closures. Our busy and already under-served line through Surrey between Guildford and London Waterloo only enjoys two trains an hour at the best of times; on Sundays this reduces to one an hour and involves changing trains at Surbiton. Miss your connecting train on the way home (which we did, by seconds) and you face wasting an afternoon on freezing platforms. South Western Railway has introduced many welcome improvements and the service is undoubtedly more reliable than when the appalling South West Trains was supposed to be running things. But why inflict this Sunday horror show? It means travellers resort to using cars for all or part of the journey and undermines the good the new regime has done.
TECHNOLOGY RUINING SPORT
England lost a rugby union match in Paris, thanks to the interference of a video official alerting the referee to a minor infringement that no one on the pitch had even noticed. A former top referee wrote in The Times this morning that the result-deciding intervention was “beyond a joke”. West Ham were denied a winner from a crazy goal-line scramble in the last minute against Aston Villa after a video check lasting nearly six minutes – the second goal the team had had ruled out for possible handball in the match. Technically, some of these decisions might have been right – but they have wandered a very long way from the spirit of sport and making games a great spectacle. The excitement of scoring a goal can no longer erupt across the stands, as it is now nearly always accompanied by fear and anxiety over the tiniest and most immaterial of “infringements”, barely visible to the naked eye in real time. I suggest a new rule: video refs have 60 seconds – shown counting down on a large clock – to overturn the on-field decision: if it still isn't 100 per cent clear after one minute, then the real referee's decision stands. It might lead to a slight increase in technically incorrect decisions – but better that than boredom, frustration and distorted results.
MARCH 8 2024
RUDE RAJAN'S ROW WITH CHANCELLOR IS THE FINAL STRAW
Smug, arrogant, opinionated, know-all – it might be what you expect of a politician. But sadly, to the BBC's shame and humiliation, it is its worst news broadcasting appointment in history that embodies and epitomises those hideous characteristics. Amol Rajan's disgraceful assault on Jeremy Hunt yesterday morning – the morning after he had delivered a reasonable, if short-sighted – budget speech hit such a low that I have re-tuned our radios to Times Radio.
What made Rajan's outbursts even more contemptible was that his attempt to belittle the Chancellor followed hard on the heels of a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party, aided and abetted by the feeble Martha Kearney. Kearney asked Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, how her party's spending plans could be implemented now that the main source of additional revenue – the tax breaks for non-domiciled individuals – had just been announced by the present government. Would she increase taxes, cut spending or borrow more? Reeves could not answer, instead promising that she would “look at the documents”, or something equally banal and forgettable. And yet her answer was good enough for Kearney, who gave her a radio pat on the back and a silent “well done”. No follow up, no repeated demands for an answer, no haranguing, no pub slanging match, no deliberately distorted and incorrect summarising of her words – Reeves was allowed to continue blustering along, burnished, rather than tarnished.
Then, bring on the chancellor of the exchequer. Rajan called him the “fiscal drag queen” and made an idiotic reference to some abbreviation sounding a bit Soviet. Eventually, even the otherwise mild-mannered Hunt had had enough and pointed out the rudeness of such remarks. Amid the shameful insults, Rajan listed five previous attempts at securing improvements in public sector productivity – labelled “a” to “e” and all delivered with a sneer and a sarcastic “yes, you guessed it – public sector productivity”. He was clearly assuming that all previous initiatives had been failures, with the clear implication that the newly introduced drive would be equally useless. Fortunately, Hunt was able – again – to correct the sloppy Rajan, pointing out that each of the efforts listed had borne fruit.
Several times, Hunt had to interject and correct Rajan's prejudiced assumptions. But Rajan simply does not care. He clearly believes himself to be above all judgment and fearless of any sanction, no matter how appallingly he behaves. Perhaps his BBC bosses even thank him for his vicious attacks on anyone who mentions the BBC. Hunt did just this, fairly pointing out that rudeness and fabrication were not, and should never be, part of the BBC's tradition – only to be shouted down by a raging Rajan, ranting loudly about how the BBC's listeners were so grateful to him for the wonderful way he exposes the truth. In the real world, Rajan was either so ill-prepared for this “interview” and so ignorant of the subject that he revealed himself – yet again – to be the fool he is; or worse, he knew exactly what he was doing in a carefully – if misguided and flawed – planned demolition attempt on the chancellor personally and the government's economic strategy. Whatever you think of either of those, it is the job of a BBC journalist to inform, not to shove their own opinions down the nation's throat and be rude and offensive. And so we see – again – that Rajan is not a journalist. Shame on the BBC for continuing to employ him.
TIMES RADIO AND UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE
Sadly, Times Radio is dull, dull, dull. It sounds heavily under-resourced, slow, ponderous and heavily focused on “news” that is cheap and simple. This morning, for example, someone droned on for ages about Teresa May's record as a politician, she having just announced she is standing down at the next election. It was backward-looking and boring, with no relevance to what is happening today. We'll give it a try – but it really is third rate. And sadly, I am no longer watching University Challenge – presumably soon to be re-named “The Great Amol Rajan University Quiz Show”. His presentation is unbearable: slurry speech and a pretence that he knows all the answers are just too much. He repeatedly greets a correct answer with “of course it is”; or an incorrect answer with “how could you not know that”; or a little aside to indicate his superior knowledge, such as “yes, the great so-and-so”. Sickening.
MARCH 1 2024
This is getting ridiculous: can politicians say nothing without their every word being subjected to forensic textual analysis? Can we no longer debate the importance of what they mean, rather than feigning offence at something they plainly – and sometimes explicitly – did not mean. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, is the latest to fall into this childish bear pit, in a week in which several have been similarly misunderstood – deliberately or otherwise. Sunak was very clear in not including peaceful protests in his accusation of “mob rule” endangering the democratic process. He said intimidation of MPs' and others' families at home and at their places of work and elsewhere was unacceptable, which is utterly reasonable. So why did one interviewee on the radio yesterday morning drone on and on about how lovely and peaceful the pro-Palestinian marchers are, in a blatant attempt to misconstrue what Sunak said. Senior politicians have repeatedly supported the right to peaceful marching: recent criticisms of the organised weekly marches has focused solely on the stress and costs it imposes on the police – for which we all end up paying. Again, perfectly reasonable. Of course politicians need to be careful what they say – but to be hounded for using phrases such as “controlled by his mates”, or “mob rule” is oppression and an outrageous limit on free expression. Focus on the argument, not the words – and I say that as a pedantic editor.
MY FIRST – AND NEARLY LAST – DAY OF RETIREMENT
March 1 2014 – the day after February 28, as there was no February 29 that year – was the first day of my retirement. And nearly my last day on the planet. With the River Thames in lethally dangerous flood mode, I cavalierly stepped into a boat – a smallish open wooden one that could have been propelled by oars but had a small outboard motor on the back – and set off , very slowly, upstream. There were three of us on board, including the “driver”. None of us was wearing a life jacket; yet we were all well wrapped up in thick coats against the biting cold. The river was raging; there were no other boats to be seen. We chugged agonisingly upstream and swept wildly downstream, between terrifying moments of turning side-on to the torrent. If we had gone over and in, we would have been dead. No question.
FEBRUARY 28 2024
Ten years ago today, I took the train to Waterloo and walked to the Financial Times offices at Southwark Bridge. I spent the day at my desk and it would have been like any other day, but for the trolley of refreshments that turned up in the mid-afternoon – and for the fact that it was my last day of work. February 28, 2014, was the day I retired.
WHO WANTS TO BE MANAGED BY AN AMATEUR?
There are many reasons people might wish to give up work – boredom, fatigue, illness, sudden wealth, old age, simply hating it, and many more – but a big factor could well be the sheer hopelessness of managers. Not long ago, managers were appointed because they knew the business and would pick up management skills as they rose up the ladder. Today, managers are only “specialist” in managing: they are often ignorant of the business itself. OK, it enables them to claim they have “transferable skills” – but it can make the life of workers thoroughly miserable: who wants to be managed by someone who has not the foggiest idea what you do or how you should do it? And what is the use of a “transferable” managing skill if it is useless wherever it goes? The huge rise in the number of graduates is partly to blame for this managerial merry-go-round: everyone has to be a manager. And it leaves those actually doing the work at the mercy of “superiors” who are very much their inferior when it comes to knowing the business. No wonder they vote with their feet.
WHEN DID THE TALKING STOP?
Our bedroom window overlooks a stretch of road used by school coaches to pick up pupils each morning. Occasionally, pulling back the curtains, I see a gathering of 10 or a dozen school girls on the far side of the road and four or five boys on our side, going the other way. What I hear is silence: they make no noise; they do not talk to each other; they do not sing; or seem in any way joyful in each other's company. In fact, they hardly seem to notice anyone else is there are at all. They are all staring at their phones. This, to me, is totally unnatural and does not augur well for their future as social human beings. If you can't relate at all to the person standing next to you waiting at the same bus stop, in the same village, for the same bus, to the same school – someone you should know well – then how are you going to cope with real life?
FEBRUARY 26 2024
BREATHTAKINGLY DESPICABLE
I am finding the idea of “Breathtaking”, Jed Mercurio's TV “docu-drama” extremely troubling. I cannot bring myself to watch something so vile as to take real life tragedy (terrible events on hospital wards during the early days of the Covid pandemic) and lace it with clips of politicians battling to contain a pandemic, thereby giving a clear impression that the latter was responsible for former. Forgive me if this is a false interpretation of the programme – but it is in complete accordance with all the reviews I've read. If it does, however, present this despicable – and wrong – “cause and effect” view of history, then that is unforgivable: it's insulting, simplistic and built on blind hatred. As even The Times' TV reviewer kept saying in his column on Saturday: “That's not how I remember it.”
WHAT DO MURDERING PSYCHOPATHIC INADEQUATES GET OUT OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION?
That headline says it all, really. I'm referring, of course, to Putin – the little, pathetic inadequate whose only claim to fame is inflicting death, destruction and misery on everything he touches. Does it make him happy? Does he wish to be remembered by history as running Hitler a close second in the most hated dictator of the past two centuries? Does he think he's popular because Russians are forced, on pain of death and torture, to vote for him? If it dose, it merely makes him more warped than we could have imagined.
LEE ANDERSON: COMPLETELY WRONG, OR JUST PARTIALLY?
Lee Anderson, former Conservative Party deputy chair, is a feisty character: he was appointed to high(ish) office precisely because he favoured a no-nonsense, outspoken approach. Now, he has accused the odious little London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, of allowing his “islamist mates” to take over London. He refuses to apologise and, indeed, has doubled down on his attacks by repeating and widening them today, in the face of accusations that he was being islamophobic. But calling him “islamophobic” only makes sense if you believe islam and islamists are the same thing. To me, they are very different things and being opposed to islamists (violent extremist fascists dedicated to imposing their screwed up Medieval delusions on normal people) is perfectly sensible. Holding a healthy disregard for Islam is, to me, sensible, too – just as a healthy disregard for christianity, judaism, catholicism, hinduism, mormonism or any other crackpot set of beliefs is a sign of a healthy and properly functioning brain.
But it is important to understand the difference between the two: I think it is wrong to be abusive towards people because they believe in something daft – as long as their daftness does not translate into violent fascism. Hence, I would not throw hate at a muslim or a christian, but when it comes to islamists, anything goes. Well, almost anything. Anderson was perfectly entitled to attack islamists, but wrong to accuse Khan of allowing them to take over London. Because this is clearly nonsense. For now, at least. For the time being, it is incorrect to say that islamists run London but it is fair to say that they exert influence over both Khan and the rest of the Labour Party. Pondering how far that influence will be allowed to go is terrifying – and one of the reasons a Labour government is such a terrifying prospect. So Anderson was wrong, but in my view only partially. The fuss being made is, of course, out of all proportion to his clumsy choice of words – that's all down to cheap party political points scoring.
FEBRUARY 21 2024
SHAMEFUL SHENANIGANS IN PARLIAMENT
Today's news is dominated by the meaningless posturing in Parliament of the Scottish National Party and the Labour Party over what sort of ceasefire they would like to see in Gaza. The virtue signalling is of almost Pythonesque proportions – we are almost literally talking “The People's Front of Judea” versus “The Judean People's Front”. But while the two feeble Opposition parties contrive to wreck the other's minutely calibrated “ceasefire/stop fighting/peaceful pause” or whatever, it is obvious that none of this matters one jot to the people of Gaza – or Israel – and none if it will make the slightest scrap of difference to events in the Middle East. UK politicians might blether on about “what we say matters”, but on this, it does not. What DOES matter to these two muddled parties is the domestic audience in small but increasingly vocal and therefore influential pockets of the country. Labour is in the highly dangerous state of being dazzled by its Muslim activist section, yet its leadership still has to try and display a modicum of common sense. An impossible task: hence it is tying itself in knots trying to display its pro-Palestinian credentials without appearing any more anti-Semitic than it already is. But either way, the importance of today's debate, if there is any importance at all, lies thousands of miles away from Gaza in those UK areas most worked up over the latest Middle Eastern skirmish. As this includes quite a lot of London, it is made into news. But not the news it appears at first sight. Make no mistake, this debate is for domestic consumption only.
FEBRUARY 5 2024
The term “duh-brain” us one of those innovations we should all admire: there's something about it that surpasses explanation; it is almost onomatopoeic as a descriptor. We have a family living not far away that fits the term perfectly. And today's Times was so full of stories about duh-brains that they deserve to be listed.
DUH-BRAIN 1
A police force that allows its own firearms officers to be charged with offences and disciplined for doing the incredibly difficult job they have been asked to do has to be on the list. Deciding whether to fire a weapon or refrain under intense pressure, probably in fear of your life, is a dilemma few of us have to face: we are happy and relieved to be able to delegate it to others. And so over the past year or so, whenever officers have been suspended or prosecuted for firing their weapons, the intelligent mind will have asked: “So who will want to be a firearms officer in these circumstances, when your own employer not only fails to defend you, but actively attacks you?” When officers inevitably decide to refuse to bear arms in their droves – which is what is being reported today – then we have to ask – who are the duh-brains here?
DUH-BRAIN 2
In the calamitous Labour years of the early noughties, a vast and colossally expensive attempt was made to build a health IT system that would provide a “patient passport” for all. A brilliant idea – but completely unachievable with the technology of the time – and perhaps of this time. It might be a great idea but when it has been tried and failed once, you might have thought coverage in The Times would have mentioned this fact. But no. And so we will hurtle headlong into another go at what could turn out to be another epic failure. The duh-brains here are those who fail to learn from those past mistakes.
DUH-BRAIN 3
Man sees chance to make easy money. Man buys extremely dangerous dogs and breeds from them. Man invites “close relative” to his house. Dogs kill relative.
DUH-BRAIN 4
The Church of England, in the most disingenuous statement imaginable, says it is not its job to decide on asylum applications, but the Home Office's. In its clinically gullible way, the church then decides islamic asylum seekers have converted to christianity, allowing them to claim they will be persecuted if returned to their backward countries of origin. The Home Office's hands are then tied. Thank you duh-brain Church of England. Shame on you. How many more mutilations and vicious assaults on the streets of Britain will the church facilitate before it removes its duh-brain ingenues from interfering in the political, administrative and security processes?
DUH-BRAIN 5
Mary Harper, the BBC World Service Africa editor. Violent men enter the UK illegally. They rape and sexually violate teenagers and, thankfully, are caught and tried. Who could bring themselves to speak up on behalf of such monsters? Mary Harper, of course. An “expert witness” prepared to confirm how how horrid it would be for these criminals to have to go back to Somalia. Poor things. And so we have another duh-brain facilitating vicious crimes against teenage girls in Britain. Incredibly, she is still in post at the BBC. I am sure she loves Somalia and wants to help – even though, as an objective journalist, that is not her job. But can she not see the difference between a poor country whose people are in desperate need of support and violent, predatory criminals allowed to roam the world in search of their individual prey who should be made to face the consequences of their crimes, whatever that entails?
I could go on – for example, by pointing out two glaring mistakes in the reporting of yesterday's Manchester United versus West Ham match – but that will have to suffice for today. There will be more tomorrow, without doubt.
JANUARY 17 2024
Libby Purves, a sensible Times columnist, could have been writing as book review on Monday – a review of my book. Put my name and the title “The Rise of Antisocialism” at the top and it would serve as an almost perfect precis of a large chunk of my 2019 work on capitalism, business, and society and its demise. I obviously therefore agree with, and applaud, Libby's column. It's so good, I reproduce it here in full – as a tribute to its sagacity, rather than stealing it because I hadn't thought of it already.
The prime minister was baffled. “Do I think our country is three times sicker than it was a decade ago? The answer is no.” But something certainly is happening; one in five people of working age are “economically inactive”: not in work or looking for it.
Some may be new parents, necessary caregivers or homeless youth (another figure on the rise), but more people than ever claim disability benefits. Spending on these is forecast to rise by a third in the next four years.
Why? It isn’t mirrored in equivalent countries. Probably NHS deficiencies in primary care, dentistry and waiting lists have a part to play, but a startling amount of long-term sickness relates to mental conditions.
A third of new claims last year for “personal independence payments” were for anxiety, social phobia, depression, stress or some form of “neurodivergence”. The rise is fastest among under-25s. Nor can you argue that the system makes it easy: there’s a backlog of 250,000 claims.
Some suspect that extreme use of lockdowns and furlough not only shrank the economy but damaged the assumption that working was a norm. Others cite actual medical damage. But we are where we are, and it won’t be affordable for long.
Dreamers say that one day robots and AI will do everything while we all sit back and draw universal income, but even that improbable utopia would clash with a deep human need: to be occupied, constructive and needed. No psychiatrist prescribes inactivity, lonely telly and a sense of personal uselessness as a cure for depression.
The chancellor promises a £2.5 billion “back to work plan”, a new fitness test and a mixture of pastoral support and punitive sanctions. The latter are likely to damage the genuinely disabled most: the charity Scope speaks of “all stick no carrot” and mental health campaigners bewail “pejorative language”.
But the rise in claims of psychological helplessness opens up more revolutionary thoughts: have we built a society inimical, dismissive and scornful towards a huge proportion of its workers? Is our chief product the creation of stress, depression and an impatient medicalisation of even mild neurodiversities?
Consider an individual with a low-wage, low-security and depressing job (cold-calling and being sworn at daily, or working against the clock in a vast warehouse). It may involve three unreliable buses or a trek through dangerous streets, offer no prospects and an insulting, poorly regulated employer who could send you back to the jobcentre tomorrow. Would you bother, if there was no actual risk of starving?
It befits policymakers and commentators to exercise imagination about such lives. Many people live them, gallantly, but it is not surprising when others declare themselves mentally overwhelmed, crippled by their own misery and believing their “struggle” so abnormal that they must become permanent dependents.
I doubt that is ever a good feeling. But when people feel powerless to fix their unsafe environment and precarious housing, or restore public facilities lost to a distant austerity diktat, they might assume it is they who don’t fit the “norm” and need social pity. Declaring yourself helplessly fragile is easier than starting a revolution.
In many ways Britain has improved in humane and liberal values (certainly in theory and law). But in half a century the world of work has become harsher for many despite the prating about rights and human “resources”.
Fifty years ago in local radio, my personal documentary mania was about “ordinary” jobs, blue-collar or boiler suit. I spent time up cranes and down sewers, admired the skills of chimney sweeps, stonemasons, lorry drivers, railway signalmen, seamstresses, bus cleaners and motorway canteen chefs.
I asked naive questions around manholes, machine shops and British Leyland assembly lines (where, interestingly, quite a few disliked not only their white-collar managers banning topless pin-ups but their union leaders for frivolous tool-downings like the great cat-droppings stoppage). Several attitudes stood out. There was an acceptance that going to work was inevitable and a presumption that there were always jobs, however lowly.
But by 1975 there were stories about a novelty called “youth unemployment”, and I was sent to interview shamefaced kids who, shock horror, had been unemployed for a whole year since school. They hated it, vowing they would do factory or shop work or cleaning, and dreamt of apprenticeships (at the time only about 8 per cent went to university). Not working was dead embarrassing.
The second constant in those distant times was the way most interviewees (chiefly male) talked of their public usefulness and personal responsibility, often laughing that “someone’s got to do it”. And the third was the acceptance that when your shift was over, unless you rashly accepted promotion to a supervisory or admin role, your life was your own. Your rent was payable and you could happily devote yourself to pigeon racing, building cathedrals out of matchsticks or running the Morris Motors Athletic and Social Club caged birds society.
That world had many shortcomings (especially for women) but the succeeding decades kicked it to pieces without preserving the good bits. Industrial jobs shrank, cheap foreign labour competed, and proud local government autonomy was eroded year by year by Westminster. Grabber capitalism overwhelmed any remaining postwar social spirit.
It was interesting to see a brief flaring of respect for that spirit during Covid, when suddenly WFH white-collars were forced to notice that as well as the NHS we utterly depended on key workers to keep the lights on and shelves full.
But we don’t display the same respect for “ordinary” work as in those last decades of postwar rebuilding. So maybe it is unsurprising when many potential workers don’t either.
JANUARY 11 2024
WHAT IF IT HAD BEEN ME?
Listening, in an almost permanent state of shock, to the revelations of increasingly disgusting behaviour by all those involved in the Post Office fraud scandal, I frequently wonder what I would have done if accused of stealing money I had not stolen but being assumed guilty despite a complete lack of evidence. One victim recounted how an “investigator” had glibly told her that £50,000 was unaccounted for and despicably asked her how she could explain it. Would I have fared any better in avoiding prosecution, persecution and jail if I had returned the question? “No. I have stolen nothing. You have not a shred of evidence. And will never ever find a shred of evidence, because there isn't any. So how do YOU explain it? Oh, and by the way, everyone knows that your IT system is faulty and makes it appear as though money has gone missing.” I doubt it. It's Kafka-esque.
I cannot bring myself to watch the ITV drama, excellent though I am sure it is: it would make me too angry. Because the glacial pace of the public inquiry is an appalling example of “justice delayed means justice denied”. I believe no public inquiry, investigation or commission should ever be constituted without a deadline. And that deadline should be measured in months, rather than years: journalists are able to gather enormous amounts of information in hours or days, so six months for an inquiry should be ample. Delaying tactics, such as withholding information or refusing to co-operate should be treated as contempt of court and dealt with instantly and severely.
My fury would also extend to the disreputable lawyers involved in the many prosecutions, for their withholding of documents, failure to assess the lack of evidence, failure to call a halt to these trials, and for their general attitude of being an arm of the prosecutors rather than upholders of justice and reason. Many should be barred from practice – at the very least – for their part in assisting the gravest miscarriage of justice in this country in our lifetimes. It goes without saying that the Post Office executives should be prosecuted for fraud, and their bullying, uncaring henchmen prosecuted, too.
Also in the dock should be the civil servants and responsible politicians who facilitated the crimes against the Post Office workers, along with the ridiculous judges who utterly failed in their duty to ensure trials are fair. In the UK, anyone can initiate a prosecution, so it is not sensible to argue that removing the Post Office's right to prosecute would ensure such a travesty is repeated. But, clearly, more oversight is needed if those whose job it is to ensure our legal system is fair and honest are so incompetent or corrupt that they let through – and adjudicated upon – so many shameful cases. What were the judges thinking when allowing prosecutions to proceed without evidence and on the basis that the accused were “guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent while being denied access to vital documents that would have killed the process stone dead”. There are so many guilty parties involved, all of whom should be hanging their heads in shame and embarrassment and considering their positions.
The government's proposed quashing of the convictions and handing out of large sums in compensation is a small step in the right direction: it covers a lot, but not all, of the miscarriages of justice; much more needs to be done. But, of course, there are always idiots who would prefer to prolong and obfuscate and deny reconciliation. That intellectual molehill Dominic Grieve has denounced the overturning of the convictions, saying that a few genuine thieves might go free. Well, tough. Better that than the innocent continuing to suffer. He also says it raises dangerous constitutional issues regarding the independence and supremacy of the judiciary, which should not be subject to being overruled by legislation. Again, tough. When the judiciary is so utterly hopeless and wrong, there has to be some mechanism for achieving a correction. And remember, this is the same judiciary that recently declared Rwanda to be an “unsafe” country (admittedly on an extremely narrow and technical point of administration – although that is not how it has been reported, nor the impression of Rwanda it has created). That was an absurd and irresponsible judgment that pushed at the very boundaries of the judiciary's sphere of responsibilities – a clearly political judgment. With a legal system this bad, and one that seems determined to overreach its powers while turning a blind eye to evidence and justice, is it any wonder that outrageous miscarriages are occurring?
WHAT I MISS ABOUT THE OFFICE – AND WHY STAFF NEED TO GET BACK THERE
I was at a lovely drinks party last night: FT editor Roula Khalaf invited the media organisation's alumni (we can't call it a newspaper any more, with 1.5m online subscribers and only a handful of hard copies sold!) to get together and resume a tradition halted by lockdown. It was well attended: Sir Geoffrey Owen, a wise and kindly man who was editor when I joined; Sir Richard Lambert, another wise and kindly man who took over from Sir Geoff; former chief executive David Palmer, famous for a solo sailboat crossing of the Atlantic in 1976; sort-of celebrity Rachel Johnson, Boris's sister and former reporter who went on to giddy – and rather surprising – heights at various magazines; and many other extraordinary intellects and great thinkers. I retired almost 10 years ago and have loved every minute of it. But last night it struck me what I have been missing – the cut and thrust of debate, the banter, the humour and more that comes from sharing a space with brilliant others. There must have been more than 120 people in the room and I knew roughly half of them well and the other half a little – I could have happily spent time talking to virtually any of them about any subject.
There is no substitute for such intellectual challenge and sharing of meaningful experiences. It made me recall the joy of wandering around the office and holding serendipitous conversations with fellow journalists, or commercial staff, or executives, or anyone – every encounter was important and contributed something of great value. I always made it my aim, every day, to enjoy my work, and to ensure that those who worked with me or for me, enjoyed their days, too. I believed – and still believe – that that was how we achieved our best results. The FT offices are exceptional, of course, but it is surely important that human interaction is maximised, not only for the experience and knowledge that can be handed down, or for the ideas and information that can be exchanged, but also for the sheer fun of it. The sheer fun that makes being at work such a positive experience.
JANUARY 8 2024
HOW A BAD INTERVIEWER CAN DESTROY THE MESSAGE
I cannot stand Sir Howard Davies. I believe he is a man of narrow specialisms and a dull and unimaginative outlook. I am particularly aggravated by his tarnishing of the reputation of my beloved London School of Economics, which he led for a while. Having said that, I believe he was horribly wronged by the even more appalling Amol Rajan, the Today programme's trashy presenter on BBC Radio Four. After a morning “interview”, Davies was later harangued by almost everyone for saying that buying a house today is no more difficult than it was decades ago. Rajan rudely sneered and scoffed at him, asking him which country he lived in and whether he had tried to buy a house recently, as if he was involved in a punchy, boozy pub slanging match. Davies could hardly get a word in to explain his reasoning.
I'm sure Rajan spent the rest of the day preening and congratulating himself on having beaten up the hapless and clueless old bloke. But the trouble is that Davies was on his home ground – discussing one of his narrow specialisms; and he was making very good points that hardly anyone else seems to understand while being given no chance to explain, thanks to the witless blabbering of Rajan.
One of those joining the ill-informed anti-Davies pile-on was a hopeless leader writer in The Times, who castigated Davies for his ignorance – the headline even read “Banker Sir Howard Davies is woefully ignorant of housing realities” – while displaying off-the-scale levels of ignorance themselves. That leader used just two statistics to make its case that Davies was wrong – it said that in the 1970s, house prices were, on average, a multiple of four times average earnings and that in late 2022 they were nine times. It claimed that such a gulf left young people excluded from the housing ladder.
But what it – and most other commentators and “experts” fail to gather – is that the level of monthly mortgage repayments were, in real terms, roughly identical in both periods, thanks to the malign magic of interest rates. If house prices had been four times annual income in both periods, then monthly mortgage payments would have been minuscule in 2022. This is because house prices always adjust to match what buyers can afford in terms of monthly repayments – not the headline price of the house. It is a simple “see-saw” rule – as interest rates come down, house prices go up, and vice versa – but the monthly loan repayments are always roughly the same.
Part of the misunderstanding comes because when we talk of someone buying a house, they are actually NOT buying a house. Someone else is buying a house in which they will live. It is a purely financial arrangement, with multiple balancing factors, the crucial one in this case being interest rates. And it has always been the case, as I stated with crystal clarity in my book, “The Rise of Antisocialism”, in which I said that the extremely low interest rates of the 1990s and early 21st century carried huge potential dangers and that anyone arranging their affairs relying on the low-rate era continuing would, sooner or later, find themselves in deep trouble. I called it a dangerous one-way street, and so it has proved.
This is what Davies was trying to explain to the boy Rajan, but was not permitted to. Meeting the monthly repayments is indeed no more difficult today than it was in the 1970s, 80s or 90s; and up until Gordon Brown's crashing of the economy in 2007-08 securing a deposit was no barrier either. In fact, the reckless and profligate lending of the New Labour era, with its 125 per cent mortgages, scant checks on buyers' ability to repay and its enthusiasm for the securitisation of junk loans actually led to Brown's crash in the first place. When rationality returned to management of the economy, the pendulum inevitably swung too far the other way and significant deposits were demanded of home buyers. This is the true barrier to house purchase today – the protections made necessary by the collapse of New Labour's “free money” foolishness. So yes, it is harder to secure a place on the housing ladder today because overly cautious large deposits are needed, and this requires saving – which we have to accept is difficult for youngsters seeking their independence in rented accommodation. Saving large sums also takes a while, which means that by the time younger buyers are perusing Rightmove, they are older and in search of a three bedroomed house, rather than the one-bedroomed flat that earlier generations of twenty-somethings might have settled for to get them started. Young people's expectations today are also beyond the imagination of anyone living in the 1970s, with technology, frequent travel, eating out and so on accounting for a large slice of income. All of these luxuries were either non-existent or at minimal levels at that time. Buyers in those days also had to contend with mortgage rationing – and there can surely be no bigger barrier to buying a home than being told there are no mortgages available. Even then, those that secured them could not seek the security of a fixed rate deal – they were exposed to the doubling and even trebling of mortgage rates that hit 15.5 per cent in the 1980s.
And so in some ways it is more difficult for young people to access the housing ladder – but in other ways less so. It has never been easy or predictable and has always demanded sacrifices. The game is slightly different today but, overall, no more difficult for those prepared to make those sacrifices. And this is what Davies was trying – but not allowed – to explain.
CAN'T PAY THE LIVING WAGE? THEN YOU DON'T HAVE A BUSINESS
More and more bad employers are beginning to squeal about the crippling costs of having to pay their staff the newly enhanced living wage. It has gone up to £11.44 an hour, a rise of almost 10 per cent, or less than £24,000 a year for someone working 40 hours a week. The reality is that many low-paid jobs are irregular, unpredictable, precarious and unpleasant, including all of those in the UK's filthy slave labour markets. But now that the flow of impoverished and desperate eastern Europeans has dried up, businesses are actually having to pay proper wages – and they don't seem to like it. Even the otherwise reputable ones. But frankly, if your business's survival depends on paying rotten wages and zero hours contracts, then you really don't have a business at all.
JANUARY 7 2024
A NEW YEAR RESOLUTION: TO COMPLAIN MORE
Businesses and service providers are getting away with appallingly low levels of customer service, which we can ponder at length as we sit listening to endless repeats of that most obvious of lies: “Your call is important to us”. Or “Everything is closed because we're improving it.” An example: on the Saturday before the turn of the year our house alarm sounded for no reason: it was switched off yet the alarm was blaring with only one person in the house at 7.45am – in a bedroom out of sight of all watchful “eyes”. We pay ADT a small fortune every year to monitor and maintain our system and were told when we called to check and rectify the fault that an engineer would call us back within an hour. This would not have disrupted out planned day too much. Two hours later we inquired again and were told it should be within 20 minutes. But it took nearly five hours and more phone calls before we eventually spoke to an engineer, leaving us embarrassed with the two households whose plans we had disrupted. The repair took just three or four minutes. I shall be complaining. More than that, the next day I bought an entire new alarm system – for less than the price of an annual subscription to ADT, with extra features galore. Every time a business asks me “how they did”, I now plan to tell them.
BUT I HAVE NOTHING BUT PRAISE (AT THE MOMENT) FOR THE NHS
I have been concerned about a lump for a long time, and as it has worsened I finally stirred myself to see if our local Capelfield Surgery in Claygate, Surrey, would check it for me. I emailed on Wednesday morning and was seen that afternoon by a GP. He ordered an ultrasound scan. Two hours later I received a phone call from Kingston Hospital offering me a choice of two ultrasound appointments the next morning at Raynes Park Health Centre. I was scanned by 11am on Thursday and the GP texted me the reassuring results late on Friday afternoon. All that in three days. I know this is not everyone's experience – but how can I complain about a service like that?
DECEMBER 12 2023
AN INQUIRY – OR A MALICIOUS WORK OF FICTION?
I think we can let today's leader in The Times, on the shocking rewriting of history taking place at the Covid Inquiry, speak for itself: “The Covid pandemic was the making of Rishi Sunak. To put it so baldly may now seem crass. But it was in those uncertain weeks of March 2020, now nearly four years ago, that the then novice chancellor showed an anxious Britain that he had the skillset of a statesman: an empathetic approach to public policy, an intuitive grasp of political communication, and a willingness to think the unthinkable for the sake of the national interest. All of this endures in the public consciousness to Mr Sunak’s credit, despite his current political difficulties. Some participants in the Covid inquiry, however, appear determined to make sure the pandemic is the prime minister’s undoing. They must not be allowed to rewrite history.
“Mr Sunak appeared for the first time before Baroness Hallett’s inquiry. He did so after weeks of evidence in which his decisions as chancellor have been criticised and his character impugned. Most damaging have been accusations, luridly phrased and amplified by counsel who seem more interested in political point-scoring than the inquiry’s terms of reference, that he wilfully endangered life...
“It is difficult to conceive of a graver set of charges to level at a politician in high office at a time of national crisis. Mr Sunak is effectively accused of putting economic growth before human life. It would be a devastating indictment of the prime minister were it true, but the evidence the inquiry heard proved otherwise...
“Take Eat Out to Help Out. It is now fashionable to dismiss the hugely popular discount scheme, under which some 64 million meals were served in summer 2020, as a disaster that fuelled a second wave of infections. For that accusation there is no good evidence; were that the case, the scientists who have appeared before the inquiry would have provided it. There are criticisms to be made of the government’s approach to the autumn spike in cases that hit Britain, but Mr Sunak’s lifeline to the hospitality industry is not one of them.
“Yet still the inquiry’s lawyers persist with the fiction that Mr Sunak deliberately and recklessly allowed infections to spread and as such was indifferent to human suffering. It is not borne out by evidence. If they are genuinely interested in their own terms of reference and learning lessons, they should desist. With each passing day, evidence mounts that this inquiry is misbegotten.”
DREARY, DOLTISH, SLOW AND STUTTERING – WE BETTER GET USED TO IT
Anyone still needing to disabuse themselves of the notion that throwing the hated Tories into a skip will produce a Garden of Eden, a land of milk and honey, should take time to listen to Sir Keir Starmer. This doltish, dreary pipsqueak of an intellect was boring us all on the radio this morning, being quizzed over the Labour Party's alternative to deterring illegal migration. The unasked question that should have begun Mishal Husain's gentle interview was, of course: “Do you consider illegal migration to be a priority at all?” Starmer, I suspect, would have waffled but eventually had to agree that, no, Labour doesn't really see it as much of an issue. Instead, his first words stated his “hope” that he could do something about the criminal gangs, the deaths, the flimsy boats, the enormous costs, etc. What followed was basically a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party: Starmer said when he was a lad he stopped all terrorism by working with Interpol to crush the terror networks – and he'd do the same with people smugglers. And Labour would ensure that 160,000 (his figure) outstanding asylum claims by undocumented illegal arrivals would be dealt with immediately. His third great idea was to send failed claimants back “where they came from”.
This laughable collection of dud and already failing ideas shows just how seriously Labour will treat the issues – ie, not at all. What do these “hopes” amount to? “Smashing the gangs” is a non-starter. First, it is already being tried, to some extent – and failing: the gangs are nimble and much smarter than Starmer and his enforcers. Second, and more importantly, western countries are playing a game of pass the parcel: none of them want economic migrants sitting in their chairs when the music stops, and so it is in their interests to keep them moving. And in achieving this, the smuggling gangs are extremely useful. So how about processing the claims? Does he not think this is being done as swiftly as possible already? Illegal migrants, by definition, will use every trick at their disposal to make the process difficult, if not impossible, with their ack of documents and fake identities. They know that once they land, they are here to stay. Which brings us to “Send them back where they came from”. Well, good luck with that – they came from France. And France is not taking them back, having gone to such trouble to help inflate the boats and launch them into the Channel in the first place. Even if an official does happen to discover a migrant's country of origin there is an industry built on preventing them from ever being returned.
Dusting off these failed and doomed policies might have a minuscule effect – perhaps lowering the illegal migration figures by about 100? Which is the figure Starmer used repeatedly during his interview as being the sum total of migrants that could be accommodated in Rwanda. He claimed this figure was authoritative, definitive – because the Court of Appeal had mentioned it last year. He probably mentioned it enough times that it will now be taken as fact by the gullible and the BBC. This small figure was one of the reasons for Starmer planning to repeal the Rwanda agreement laws and investing the money saved in a new police unit – presumably empowered to operate beyond the UK's jurisdiction, where the people smugglers hide. But what if Rwanda begins working before the next election? Illegal migrants are flown there and the boats dwindle. What then? Still repeal it and go back to playing the deadly “Cross the Channel and claim your prize” game?
RWANDA MUST REGRET MIXING WITH THE UK'S IGNORATI
Poor Rwanda – a beautiful country, full of aspiration and energy, ambition and pride. Spending August there was a revelation and we left feeling just as nearly every other visitor feels – strongly attached to and deeply affected by the enormous progress it has made since the dark days of 1994. President Paul Kagame has proved himself a genius and a role model for all other national leaders; the country itself has so many lessons for rich, lazy, arrogant western nations. And yet a Times columnist decides to take it upon himself to rip Rwanda and its government to shreds. Philip Collins' article was utterly disgraceful (although he was perhaps not responsible for the picture caption ignorantly describing Kagame as “hardly a role model”). If it had stuck to facts it might have retained some credibility. But stating as a fact that the UK Supreme Court had declared that “Rwanda is unsafe” when it said no such thing is unforgivable. One small aspect of its immigration policy – the risk of refoulement – was deemed potentially unsafe. Quite a different thing.
Collins then refers to “extrajudicial killings”, “political disappearances”, “journalists in jail” – with no explanation or evidence, nor understanding that in order to achieve stability today, violent political opponents wishing a return to genocide had to be somehow dealt with. He baldly states that the Rwanda judicial system is “riven with government interference”. Again, this is presented as fact without evidence. The actual fact that Rwanda is insisting on the UK obeying its international obligations – a responsible demand displaying the highest quality of decency and integrity – is ignored. He says “There is more, a lot more”. And still no evidence. This is a disgraceful slur. As is “the mistreatment of refugees in Rwanda would be appalling”. Complete condemnation built upon a an entirely made up “fact”. We know we have to put up with stupid people now being able to display their foolishness online, thanks to social media (see “Lineker”, below), but for a respected newspaper to allow such dirty and ill-informed trash to be committed to print is truly appalling and disgusting.
SACK THE WRETCHED LINEKER – NOW
Ex-footballer Gary Lineker is repeatedly bringing the BBC into disrepute – which takes some doing these days. But his brainless and offensive tweets aimed at politicians he hates are disgraceful. If his latest personal insults don't get him sacked, then nothing will, and we will have to endure more and more of his cosy middle-class, rich-boy virtue signalling.
And while we're at it, could someone please explain to the hopeless Enver Solomon, head of some refugee campaign, the difference between a refugee and an illegal economic migrant. You'd think he should know but he plainly hasn't the first clue.
DECEMBER 11 2023
Wokeism is not left-wing. Liberalism is not left-wing. Individualism is not left wing. Conversely, neither communitarianism, nor a belief in society and responsibility and sharing are right wing. And yet this part of the gibberish being spouted by the woke thought police. Matthew Syed wrote a vitriolic column in yesterday's Sunday Times, pointing out that wokeism is the opposite of a left-wing ideology. It distracts from the real worl problems of the poor. It has no time for the working class. It is a vacuous middle-class virtue signalling exercise. He writes: “Wokeism has nothing to do with left-wing politics or social justice; it is more akin to a kind of religious fundamentalism. I mean, how is the condition of a kid living in a tower block materially improved by performative activism about 'intersectionality' or pedantic quibbles about 'cultural appropriation'?
“This isn’t an agenda for the working classes; indeed, nobody with the slightest contact with the real world has the faintest idea what these kids, indoctrinated into a farrago of unfalsifiable pseudo-ideologies, are babbling on about when they proclaim that 'words are violence' or that 'feelings are facts'. No, this is a luxury belief system, a doctrine of upper-middle-class adolescents whose dawning realisation that their soggy humanities degrees are not going to get them far in life has coalesced into a searing and increasingly unhinged hatred of their own nations and histories.
“And this explains perhaps the most conspicuous political paradox of our age: why has the rise of economic inequality not led to the election of left-leaning governments whose raison d’être is (or should be) to offer redress for social injustice? Why has it benefited populists such as Trump, Farage and Meloni, whose policies often shaft the aspirational poor? The reason, I’d suggest, is that most working-class people are even more repulsed by woke ideologues and their rampant anti-western, antisemitic bias than by their demagogic opponents. And I don’t blame them. In this sense, wokeism hasn’t merely undermined our universities; it has ruinously split the patriotic left – the kind personified by great figures like FDR, Ernest Bevin and Attlee. This should not just make us sad but shudderingly angry in an age where we need a new social contract more than ever. “
He is so right. Politics can no longer be seen in left-right terms. Those claiming to be “progressive” and leftist are predominantly guided by libertarian, liberal, individualistic rights-based thinking. Those in favour of protecting communities and social well-being, of believing in responsibilities and duty, once the preserve of the left, and are now deemed to be right-wing. This obviously renders “left” and “right” meaningless today: you are either a hyper-liberal, believing in freedom, rights, and individualism, or a communitarian believing in society, community, sharing and responsibility. One of these camps is “progressive”, the other most certainly is not.
DECEMBER 10 2023
THIS CHARADE OF AN INQUIRY SHOULD BE HALTED FORTHWITH
Sunday Times columnist Camilla Long has been attending the Covid Inquiry and writes scathingly today about how it is so obviously biased; so obviously in the hands of sharp-suited rich people (what do they all do? she asks); and has so obviously made up its mind already. She points out how just a few minutes consideration was given to how school closures affected the young and only a brief hearing given to the negative aspects of locking down, while hour upon hour was devoted to the concerns of the bereaved and how a lockdown should have been introduced sooner and made harder. She reminds us that she is no fan of Boris Johnson but finds herself having to defend him, just as I do, against blatantly unfair slurs, false interpretations and condemnations based on zero consideration of the counterfactuals – thereby ignoring the fact that any alternative decisions could have been far far worse. She accepts the inquiry has provided evidence that Johnson was dithering, uncertain, frightened, but she points out that it also showed him to have been engaged, sceptical, keen to encourage debate and differing opinions, and to push back against nonsense. Her first-hand account of the conduct of the inquiry and those involved is so damning it really should spark an inquiry into the inquiry. It is plain to see from the daily news coverage that this charade is a disgrace; it should be halted forthwith.
HOW TO MAKE LOCAL WORKERS ANGRY, FRUSTRATED, DEPRIVED AND POOR
I forgot to say “well done” to Times columnist Juliet Samuel for her fist class analysis of Tory migration policy way back on November 30. My, so much has changed since then, with new legislation planned, treaties signed and the Immigration Minister resigning. But Samuel's commentary still holds firm. Referring to the “temporary” visa measures allowing migrants from non-EU countries to fill important vacancies, she says: “The main effect is to prevent wages from rising and working conditions from improving. The Migration Advisory Committee has stated for years that we do not have enough care workers because care homes don't pay them enough.”
As I pointed out in my book, this “cheap labour” strategy has been dominant since EU expansion pushed the UK's labour market to the Russian border. Temporary visas for foreign workers are, for now, essential to keep these vital services running – but where is the non-temporary solution? Where are the trainees? Where is the higher pay, the higher prestige, the better conditions? A start could be made by reversing the perverse incentive for employers to hire from abroad: they must pay a migrant less than the going UK rate for the job. What a nonsense! The opposite should be the case: if employers could only recruit from overseas at a large premium, they would quickly seek to train up local people and pay and treat them well. Samuel correctly identifies so many of the issues I raised in my book that drive down wages in so many sectors, leaving local workers angry, frustrated, deprived and poor. The perfect conditions for a leap to the right, as seen in the US, Argentina, Italy, Sweden, Germany and now the Netherlands.
THINGS ARE NOT AS BAD AS CLAIMED – AND CHANGE WILL BRING CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT
When you have seen as many governments come and go as we in our seventh decade have, then you can confidently state that the current – and recent – Tory governments have been nowhere near as bad as those who hate them would have you believe. And we can guarantee that the next government will be nowhere near as good as those seeking a change of regime are hoping. It will be a crushing disappointment to anyone who expects anything to improve. This is partly because our plight is largely beyond the control of any politician. For example, the cost of living crisis is not the consequence of the government's incompetence – it is a global consequence of the war in Ukraine, plus an inevitable hangover from the pandemic. Anyone listening to Radio 4's “From Our Own Correspondent” programme at the weekend would have learned that concerns over the economy, migration, the cost of living, social tensions and so on prevail across Europe. In many ways, the UK is faring so much better than many of our former EU partners.
WISE WORDS
“A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.” – Saul Bellow.
“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” – Einstein. Albert – we are there already...
And in “The Giggle”, last night's episode of Dr Who, a dystopian version of the present formed the backdrop for the plot: everyone was behaving in the streets and in real life as they already do on social media. It was a grotesque sight: everyone believed they were right and had a right to do whatever they wished. A pilot decided to crash his plane; a man decided he had a right to stand in the road. Rational thinking and decency had disappeared. A perfect caricature of the cesspit that is social media.
DECEMBER 7 2023
Once again the BBC's Today news programme prefaced an item about the Covid Inquiry with an interview with a bereaved woman whose mother died in a care home during the pandemic. This, of course, is terribly sad. But it was not the only consideration politicians faced at the time. Maintaining the general health of the nation, avoiding the NHS becoming overwhelmed, protecting the economy, concerns over individual liberty and “lockdown fatigue” – these all carried great weight, too. But the BBC, in its blind hatred of Boris Johnson, who was about to give his evidence, decided to focus on just one aspect, in another clumsy attempt to portray him as a killer, as some of the more dim-witted banners displayed at a protest suggested. It was completely biased and one-sided. It also flies in the face of the British legal system – and indeed the purpose of legal systems everywhere – which is to restrain victims and keep them from exacting their own vengeance. Courts, lawyers, juries, judges, all exist to impose order: no victim is allowed to be judge, jury and executioner in their own case – the system applies impartiality, integrity, distance. But the BBC – and indeed the ludicrous inquiry – seems determined to place some angry “victims” at the centre of the trial (because that is what it has turned into). This is simply wrong on so many levels.
And this morning I had to switch to another radio station. Nick Robinson was so unbelievably rude, obnoxious and disrespectful to an interviewee he so clearly hates it became unbearable. There will be many who also hate the interviewee in question – but that does not excuse rudeness and disrespect on the part of someone who is supposed to be a professional journalist interviewing an important elected political figure.
ROYAL RACISTS?
So who are the royal racists? The family that welcomed a beautiful mixed race woman into their midst, or those who accuse them of racism for merely showing an interest in a forthcoming birth? To argue that it is racist for a family member to wonder about the skin colour of a baby being born to mixed race parents is, in the real world, racist itself. Trevor Phillips made this point in an excellent column in The Times this week, pointing out that his extended family includes people of all skin tones and that speculating over how the next infant will turn out is a sign of love and caring. He rightly says that barring discussion of skin colour is itself racist: people of colour are not feeble snowflakes in need of such silly paternalism. The writer of a hopeless and tawdry recent book (and the couple behind it it) should take note.
MIGRATION IS UNDER CONTROL
The number of migrants entering the UK is at unsustainable levels, placing impossible demands on housing, services and social cohesion. And yet it is under control. It is just that it is not being controlled well. The list of “shortage occupations” has broadened to become a Pythonesque absurdity, to include dancers, “arts officers”, graphic designers, artists, and loads more. Take a look, it's hilarious. If the idea was that the UK would grant work visas only to migrants able to fulfil essential functions where the country is experiencing shortages, then it is failing horribly badly. And long term, the solution to staff shortages in the social care sector, or health, or hospitality, or agriculture and so on, is not migration – it is raising the status of these vital tasks, training the millions of individuals of working age already in the country who are not in work, treating workers in these sectors as heroes, offering them excellent conditions, and paying them accordingly. In a rational, intelligent labour market, nurses' jobs would be so highly paid and prestigious that everyone would want to be a nurse. Using migrant labour is a short-sighted quick fix that in the medium term does far more harm than good. It might be essential for short periods while a nation sees sense and adjusts, but it can become dangerously addictive. The UK should know this better than anyone – it led directly to decades of low productivity and Brexit.
LOCAL POLITICS – SCHEMING AND NASTY
Two LibDem parish councillors in our village in Surrey – Sue Grose, the current chair, and Janet Swift, her sidekick – have been found guilty of bullying the brilliant and wonderful parish clerk so badly that she was forced out of her job. An independent investigator is reported to have said it was the worst case of bullying he's seen in his career; Elmbridge Borough Council held a panel hearing and confirmed the pair were guilty of breaching the code governing behaviour. The sanctions, sadly, are piffling – an invitation to apologise, a public summary of the findings and a training stint. A few people familiar with the case (not many are) will be wishing the guilty parties to resign. I believe they should. I am fairly certain they will not. They have brought shame and embarrassment upon themselves, their party and, to some extent, our village. I think this raises the question as to whether we should continue with a parish council at all.
I raise this subject, because I played a small role in it and a villager who attended the hearing mentioned my part in the story. I had been editing the Claygate Courier, the parish council's newsletter, up to the local elections in May this year, when the guilty pair seized control of the parish council for the LibDems. The villager said that I had resigned from this (voluntary and unpaid) post in support of the clerk. This is not quite right – I certainly supported the clerk very strongly, but I would have been prepared to continue editing the newsletter if I felt confident that editorial integrity would be maintained. But after two meetings with Grose, one of which was also attended, to my surprise, by Swift, I quickly realised the council was becoming politicised (in defiance of the rules governing parish councils) and that they would be impossible to work with. That was my primary reason for walking away. But as a microcosm of how nasty and scheming even local politics has become, it is an interesting case.
NOVEMBER 28 2023
THANK GOODNESS AIRLINES DON'T HOLD INQUIRIES LIKE THIS
A friend of mine enjoyed a successful career as an airline pilot. An entrepreneurial and altruistic sort, towards the end of his flying days he became involved in advising the NHS on how to learn from its clinical mistakes. The airline industry tends to be extremely keen to learn from its blunders – for obvious reasons. Inquiries are therefore conducted without blame: all energy is directed at identifying any faults and rectifying them, leaving witnesses and those involved to speak honestly and openly about the salient points without fear of condemnation.
Exactly the opposite is happening at the dreadful Covid inquiry, as I've pointed out before. And now another professor has written in The Times to join those of us who condemn this travesty of an investigation. James Naismith, professor of structural biology at Oxford and Investigator at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, writes: “Imagine if an aeroplane crashed every day for a week and the big insight was 'pilot X was to blame', 'pilot Y was to blame' and so on. What would we learn from that: don't fly again with pilot X or Y, or ever?” And from conversations with my pilot friend, I can confirm that he is absolutely correct when he writes: “Aircraft accident investigations are conducted by experts who focus on what led to the accident and learning what can be changed to make a safer future.” He then adds that the Covid Inquiry has “degenerated into theatre” (I would say pantomime) and that what might seem like “good clean fun”, hearing about embarrassing emails and WhatsApp messages, is actually corrosive. Indeed, it might be fun for professors of politics to read the tittle-tattle of daily life behind the black doors of Downing Street and lightly entertaining to see serious politicians and scientists with their trousers down. But it is no earthly use in dealing with future pandemics.
THE UK'S HUTU AND TUTSI MOMENT
It took the Belgians several decades to split the Rwandan people into two warring factions – those designated either Hutu or Tutsi. Yet it took the merest blink of an eye for the same to be achieved in the UK, where two rival religious fundamentalist camps dug their trenches in response to the simple question – “Do you wish to remain in the European Union?”.
The population of the UK is generally very good at debating whether an extra halfpenny on income tax is a fair price to pay for slightly better public services – we understand that millions of people contributing a minuscule amount adds up to a lot (although tax-cutting parties seem to fail to grasp that the reverse is also true – reducing the overall tax take by a lot provides only a minuscule amount to each individual). Beyond that, the differences between our two main political parties are tiny: they are virtually indistinguishable. This means that it matters little, in the grand scheme of things, which party wins an election – they both hold basically the same beliefs and differ only in subtle nuances. And this is why democracy works so well in the UK – because there are no serious consequences resulting from a poll. In fact, democracy can ONLY work well where the outcome of elections doesn't really matter because it makes almost no difference.
But the Brexit debate was different: it moved us away from “a wee bit more of this and a smidgeon less of that” to a simple, binary, in or out, division. There were to be winners and losers – and it mattered. And we are not good at that, it seems. Rather than debating the finely balanced issues, which I tried many times to do, the country leapt into two camps and individuals took on the cloak of “Brexiteer” or “Remainer” with a manic religious zeal. It all came down to blind faith with whichever gospel people felt more in tune. I suspect most people chose on the basis of their own self-interest. I, on the other hand, chose to vote against my personal interests in support of a working class so damaged by the enormous influx of cheap east European workers, who had undermined their way of life.
Even worse was the contempt shown towards the “unbelievers” on the other side: anyone adhering to the opposing faith was stupid, or downright evil. And the repercussions continue to this day: public debate has become simplistic, conducted by idiotic and ignorant celebrities on Twitter, where they seek to confirm their virtue to the “followers” they attracted for an entirely different reason. Debate has also become nasty and ill-considered: there is no room for discussion and appreciation of an alternative when dogmatic statements and opinions are presented as final and someone's undeniable “truth”. Dopey comedians, singers, footballers and the rest are abusing their fame by influencing vulnerable minds on matters they know little – or care little – about. But the disease has spread to those providing the news as well: the BBC's Today presenters, almost all newspaper reporters. These were the last bastion of objective reporting on the world. Now, we have an increasingly unintelligent society dragged further and further away from sanity by a combination of social media channelling confirmatory opinions to each user, keeping them in their bubble; a failing fourth estate; and a handing over of influence to “entertainers”.
WOW – WHAT A GREAT HEADLINE
“I don't know plan to cut arrivals, says Badenoch”. That was the headline on a story about the government's plan to seek to limit inward migration. Anyone reading it might think this a dreadful failing on the part of the Business and Trade Secretary. But when they learn that there is, as yet, no plan, they might think again. Many options are being considered, as any reasonable observer would expect. So to accuse Kemi of not knowing what has been decided is therefore a little dumb, to say the least. Or if not dumb then horribly impartial.
BEING FUNNY DOES NOT MAKE YOU RIGHT
Marina Hyde, the Guardian columnist, often manages a witty turn of phrase; and she uses her skills to trumpet her narrow, hyper-liberal, intolerant political views. Unfortunately, she is also now part of an extremely unholy trinity – with Gary Lineker and Richard Osman – responsible for a podcast called “The Rest is Entertainment”, in which Hyde and Osman seek to be humorous while explaining just what entertainment is. The Times' fawning review today calls it “well-informed” and “insidery”. But should we not question this judgment when the first subject mentioned is not showbiz at all, but Nigel Farage. Hyde says he is a “man with no hinterland”. This is deemed “hilarious” by the boy reviewer. Hyde is also rudely offensive about Farage's presumed taste in music. And she has a nasty dig at Boris Johnson. I can only assume that if the podcast is indeed so “well-informed” then Hyde knows Nigel Farage very well and that he does indeed listen to CDs “that came free with Sunday Times in about 2001”. Because if she doesn't, then she is making up this tediously unfunny rubbish. Once upon a time it would have been deemed slanderous, today it's called “comedy”. Don't get me wrong, I carry no flame for Nigel Farage, but my impartiality and integrity as a lifelong journalist demand that I treat his views with respect. He is, after all, talked about as being perhaps the most influential UK political figure of the past two decades. Whereas Hyde is merely displaying the bitterness of a loser.
PLEASE – NO MORE WHINING BOOKS BY IDIOTS ABOUT HARRY AND MEGHAN
What on earth does HarperCollins think it's doing publishing the dreary nonsense spouted by the pathetic little twerp, Omid Scobie? And why is The Times devoting so much space to it while at the same time slating it for its rank stupidity. I won't mention the title, but it's about the UK royal family – one long whine, we're told, about how unfair it's been on Harry and Meghan. Nuff said.
THE REAL IMPACT ON SOCIETY OF THE TRANS LOBBY'S ATTACKS
A lunchtime debate and anyone who supports women's rights in the face of attacks from the trans lobby is deemed right wing. I'm not sure how that works? But my case that trans activists are causing real harm was met with the arch liberal response of “let them be”. I had already said that a decade ago, transitioning was no big deal: those who felt so powerfully moved to change gender were able to do so and the woman I interviewed who had once been a man was treated with the utmost respect and dignity. Her transitioning was not even the story: I wanted to know about her different gender experiences and it produced an extraordinarily powerful and insightful feature.
Things have changed dramatically, however, and an industry has grown up around encouraging all children to question their sexual identity, with a view to facilitating a transition. The repercussions are horrific: youngsters too inexperienced and immature to make such decisions have undergone surgery which they deeply regret – and seek to reverse; primary schools are preyed upon by private “educational” businesses too scared even to allow parents to see what they are telling their children; health bodies removing all references to “women”, “breast feeding”, “mother” from their advice and literature; biological males dominating women's sport – and creating serious danger to women on the rugby field, for example; and self-identifying trans women (men) seeking to invade women's safe and reserved spaces. Intelligent feminists, such as Janice Turner and JK Rowling, are clearly hugely sympathetic to those who feel they are trapped in the wrong gender – but they are also concerned at the damage this can do to women's rights and safety. This is not a simple “right or wrong” argument, no matter how violently the trans lobby might suggest otherwise.
If the trans lobby stopped at supporting those genuinely in need of guidance, instead of seeking to obliterate the idea of gender altogether, then we could all support it and assume a reasoned discussion on how best to protect all interests. But, as usual, the extremists take over the asylum and bring shame and embarrassment to their cause, alienating the well-meaning wider world, and blocking all progress.
NOVEMBER 22 2023
THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO THE NHS STORY
Our National Health Service comes in for the most appalling negativity: waiting lists, under-funding, strikes – they're all we ever hear about. Well, this is what I wrote on Facebook about my experience at Kingston Hospital yesterday. “I have been hugely impressed by the efficiency and caring approach of Kingston Hospital and its staff. The NHS endures so much negativity and abuse, it only seems right to highlight an excellent experience. My relatively minor heart 'readjustment' was actually pleasant – wonderful to have a morning to do nothing but watch other people working quietly and effectively. The 'pit-stop' system means patients are wheeled on their beds into the large day surgery theatre and hooked up to a workstation. It's like an F1 car having its tyres changed. After the procedure, you continue on to recovery and are then pushed back to your bay. Smooth, quick – and lovely people. Thank you to such a superb team.”
THE COVD INQUIRY IS REALLY GETTING TO GRIPS WITH RELATIONSHIPS
I sent this letter to The Times today. I doubt they will use it and so I offer it here: “Dear Letters Editor, I am so grateful to the Covid Inquiry for revealing the dislike the key players held for each other while battling the pandemic. Far better to know this than the outcomes of decision-making and any international comparisons. Because, presumably, the Inquiry is expecting all of these individuals to be put back in their various offices when the next disease strikes, making their relationships the only factor worth considering.”
I sent the letter in response to the staggering stupidity of Monday's session, starring Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's former chief scientific adviser. It's not clear who is to blame for the ineptitude with which this inquiry is proceeding – the lawyers, the “witnesses”, the chair – but it is now clear that it is purely a blame game, a witch hunt, a trial of people no longer relevant to future crises of any type. Vallance's evidence was extraordinary: he claims he was told that Rishi Sunak wanted to let people die – “Ahem, objection. This is hearsay m'lady”. It is also obviously patent nonsense. Vallance also claimed to have said the “eat-out-to-help-out” scheme, aimed at saving the hospitality sector and allowing safe temporary relaxation of the lockdown rules, was “highly likely” to have spread the virus – “Ahem, objection. Speculation, m'lady.” Did it spread the virus or not? This is surely what we are paying a fortune to find out? And did it undermine public caution? Vallance thought so – but provided no evidence. So who knows?
He then joined the mob kicking Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time, saying he couldn't understand the intricacies of exponential curves and other obscure statistical formulae. Thank goodness this was not his job, then. All he needed to know was that things were getting worse and needed action, a state of affairs reached by the weekend of March 14, apparently. Vallance said it was “difficult to conceive” of a lockdown happening before that date. Which is one of the more logical statements he is reported to have made. But to anyone who was paying attention at the time it is pretty old hat: the public, political and prevailing international conditions would have made it impossible to demand a lockdown any sooner. In any case, it seems Johnson was in good company in not being a statistician; when Europe's scientific advisers held one of their support group virtual meetings, Vallance complained about Johnson's bafflement – and said his peers burst into laughter. The rest of Europe's leaders were in the same boat. Luckily, they should have had scientific advisers on hand to make sense of the figures – that is how it works. So what did it matter?
The former chief scientific adviser even appeared to turn on his colleague Sir Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, calling him a lockdown “delayer” because of his concern over the possible wider damaging effects on health caused by such draconian action and any resulting poverty and isolation. Two scientists with very different views, then. Yet Vallance then goes on to accuse the government of ignoring “the science”. What science? There were many many opinions – even among these two leading scientists.
Vallance was also concerned about strategy: we appeared neither to be “letting Covid rip”, nor seeking to eliminate it. Given that neither course was possible, for practical or political reasons, it is surely sensible that the UK followed a middle path – just like every other European nation, bar Sweden. (And Sweden is very much a special case with highly atypical characteristics and culture – yet achieved only a very similar outcome to everywhere else.) In particular, Vallance wanted the UK government to place a figure on what level of mortality would overwhelm the health service. “It would have been helpful to have that,” he said. But he failed to explain HOW or why it would have been helpful. What possible difference would it have made? The NHS quickly built extra capacity – never used – with its specialist Nightingale Hospitals, so how would placing a figure on the number of deaths have changed anything at all? Apart from making the administration a hostage to fortune?
As The Times' science editor, Tom Whipple, says, we are dealing with the unknowable, conjecture, opinion. Not usually the sharpest of writers, Whipple does sum it up when he says: “It all feels too much like a parlour game, using perfect hindsight to perfectly tune a perfect response (by whatever ideological criteria you choose) to a virus that will never cause a pandemic again.” In fact, it is far worse than this – because the inquiry is being used by most participants to further their own careers, causes or campaigns.
SO NOT FUNNY – NOR CLEVER
Another day and another pathetic “cartoon” in The Times. A drawing of Rishi Sunak is shown holding a five-point policy plan which includes items such as “Reducing Bad” and “Cutting Annoying”. Apart from being the opposite of how this micro-managing prime minister operates and declares his strategies and policies, it also happens to be the precise approach of Keir Starmer, whose aims consist of “a booming economy” and “loveliness all round”, without a single realistic idea as to how anything good can be achieved. The Times needs cartoonists with wit – not dimwits and half wits.
AND SPEAKING OF IDEOLOGICAL DIMWITS
I found myself agreeing with Jonathan Sumption, former justice of the Supreme Court, not long ago. But I did point out that it was on the basis that absolutely no one can be completely wrong about everything all the time: occasionally, they will accidentally be correct. But in the Sunday Times, he was back to his old ridiculous arch-libertarian ideology, this time make offensive and ignorant comments about Rwanda, a country of which he clearly knows nothing. Perhaps he is giving us an insight into the way Supreme Court judges think when he baldly and glibly states that Rwanda is “a very poor country with a history of political instability and civil war. It has a bad human rights record”. Does he know nothing of the true causes of the nation's suffering last century? Belgian colonial abuse, appalling French interference and almost criminal abandonment by the United Nations. The fact that the country has managed to achieve great stability and a rapidly rising level of wealth for all its people in such a short time is simply remarkable. When examined, its human rights record is not that different from the records of many western nations, who manage to hide their misdeeds while claiming purity. And Rwanda is still wrestling with the effects of French-supported insurrectionists and potentially violent malcontents on a scale that would prompt the same responses from any regime anywhere.
But Sumption does not let his ignorance rest there: Rwanda, he claims, has “a palpable prejudice” against asylum seekers from the Middle East and Asia because all claimants from Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria have been rejected in the past three years. We do not know how many people this involved and he offers no evidence to suggest these were poor decisions – just an assertion that those three countries are unpleasant. Sumption says that the UK's migrant deal with Rwanda would result in the same thing – failed asylum claimants being sent to a country in which they have a right to reside – that is, in effect, their country of origin. But where else can they go? No other country will have them; France will not take them back, having successfully got rid of them; they have no right to stay in either the UK or Rwanda. This is the Catch 22 that Sunday Times columnist Matthew Syed pointed out in his column this week: the concept of “refoulement” – the risk that migrants might be returned to their home country – makes it impossible for any recipient country ever to remove those who enter illegally, thus removing all control over their borders in these cases. He suggests the refoulement provision, created after the Second World War to deal with a very different set of circumstances, is now so out of date and out of touch with reality that it should be scrapped. He is right – it is clearly an absurdity. Yet Supreme Court judges and Sumption are happy to base their crucial findings upon it – and that of an out-of-date and nonsensical report by the UNHCR which completely contradicts its close relationship and work with Rwanda.
Perhaps if Sumption had visited Rwanda, read books on the country, or even studied the UNHCR's own assessment of its own operations in Rwanda he might realise how stupid is his statement that Rwanda “has a dismal record of disregarding its obligations under the Refugee Convention”. The UNHCR has little but praise and gratitude towards Rwanda for the hospitality it offers to the refugees it sends there. This does not prevent Sumption from implying that Rwanda would not be a reliable partner in the migrant deal and accusing the country of not having the mindset nor the facilities to “deal fairly” with migrants. Worse, he makes the offensive slur that Rwanda needs to create a “new political and administrative culture with fair-minded officials and independent courts”, clearly not realising that Rwanda already has an administration and officials that put most western countries to shame.
But proving again that a person struggles to be wrong about everything all the time, Sumption does conclude that Australia's system for dealing with illegal entrants has worked – because it offshores the problem (Australia retains responsibility for assessing claims), rather than outsources it (asks another country to take responsibility for the economic migrants). Australia removes most failed illegal entrants to their original countries, a few to third countries, with the remainder staying in detention on the island of Nauru. The result: people no longer drown off the coast of Australia. Overall, what Sumption does, is give us an insight into Supreme Court judges' thinking. They do not have to educate themselves or know the truth and reality, they only need to study documents submitted months or years earlier to lower courts that might be long out of date and politically motivated. It is no wonder the government's perfectly reasonable and respectable plan is doomed to founder on the rocks of ignorance, primitive ideology and prejudice.
NOVEMBER 14 2023
We simply cannot allow Nick Robinson's disgraceful slur of Nadine Dorries on Today a few mornings ago to pass without comment. I know, you thought it impossible to denigrate Dorries, the former Tory minister – but the odious BBC presenter managed it. At the end of a tetchy interview, during which he hurled all sorts of unprofessional low blows in her direction, they were arguing about the alleged “gold wallpaper” that Boris and Carrie Johnson included in their designs for Downing Street. Dorries said the gold wallpaper never existed and the accusation was another part of the undermining campaign aimed at Johnson. In his pay-off at the end of their discussion, Robinson made the mistake of lying. He said the gold wallpaper had been pointed out to him. Dorries had no opportunity to call him out, as Robinson, as he nearly always does with anyone with whom he disagrees, reserved the final word for himself: “Funnily enough, I've had that wallpaper pointed out to me by someone inside 11 Downing Street.” But he hadn't, because it was never there and, according to his own pitiful explanation, the wall he was shown was painted red. Robinson also claimed, completely implausibly, that he had not been aware of the gold wallpaper scandal until Dorries mentioned it.
Seriously?
Having implied that Dorries was lying – by lying himself – Robinson then compounded his felony by making a truly disdainful and flippant “apology” to Dorries. Through his shocking behaviour, Robinson merely made his bias and his stunning disrespect for Dorries more obvious. His crime, being on air to millions of listeners, is heinous: any decent employer would have hauled him over the coals and possibly sacked him for blatant unprofessionalism. I have heard many such highly questionable statements and assertions from Robinson over the past few years, often delivered in semi-hushed asides: it's reached the point where I can hardly believe a word the amateur says. He has shown disrespect, not just to his interviewee, but to the profession of journalism, for which he should be sacked.
NOVEMBER 7 2023
I always try to support and defend the NHS: it is, in principle, a most marvellous thing and has to function in an extraordinarily difficult environment – under-resourced, under-funded, and facing a largely idiotic public. Overall, I think it does a great job and, in my own experience, I have had only occasional little causes for complaint. Until Friday, when I tried to perform what should have been the astoundingly simple task of confirming the date and time of my appointment for minor surgery at Kingston Hospital. The appointment letter demanded, in no uncertain terms, that were I not to confirm, I would lose my slot. But only two means of achieving it were provided: telephone or write a letter. And so at just after 11.45 on Friday morning I rang. More than 40 minutes later, success! FORTY MINUTES. And two phone calls – the first was cut off after going through two operators. The second call bothered the same two operators – there was no extension number given in the letter – and then placed me at number three in the queue.
Not too bad, you might think – except each call ahead of me took an average of eight or nine minutes. And this is the cardiology unit! How many patients peg out while fuming on the end of an unanswered phone? My call took less than a minute. If you wish to cancel an appointment, there is a dedicated email address; if you wish to confirm, it's letter or phone. There is the possibility of using the NHS app to confirm – if your appointment appears on it. My pre-med did, but not the op. Why? I was left with the impression that this hospital is inefficient and incompetent – that is the message it is sending out by its failure to use the multiple technologies available. Phone or letter. Honestly. Next time, I shall write a letter.
ARE WE ALL IN AGREEMENT YET?
Another man in the know confirms what we have already established about the dumb Covid Inquiry – that it is wasting its time (and our money) on meaningless tittle-tattle, name-calling and personality clashes, while any lessons are studiously ignored. This focus on the behaviour of the individuals left to face this global onslaught of disease is irrelevant: they will not be in charge when the next pandemic strikes. As Hugh Pennington FRSE, says in a letter in today's Times: “The Covid Inquiry should not be wasting time faffing on about rude words but should be learning lessons.” And he should know: the emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University has chaired two inquiries into E.coli O157 – one that lasted four months, cost £46,000 and produced useful legislative changes and another that took three years, cost £2m – and, he says, achieved nothing.
TWO WRONGS
I am growing sick of hearing Hamas spokesmen complaining about the death toll in Gaza. These are weasel words: the Hamas attack on Israel was designed and executed to produce exactly this result. This is what they wanted. I am also sick of pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israeli protests. There is no “pro” to be had in this nasty sordid swamp. Both sides behave abominably. It's not entirely their fault: they were thrown casually thrown together by cynical and stupid western powers, notably Britain. But that was long ago. They each have to recognise the wrongness of their stance, choose peace and life, and find a way to put right the idiocy of those who created this sorry mess.
NOVEMBER 6 2023
Jonathan Sumption in yesterday's Sunday Times encapsulated what I've been saying about this pitiful Covid inquiry. Sumption is a bit of an anti-lockdown libertarian headbanger but his analysis of the failure of this inquiry is spot on – a feast day for the lawyers, a trial-like blame game and with no intention of, or plan to, examine the vital lessons that could guide future decisions. There are six modules. None of them look at actions and outcomes, international comparisons, etc. Instead, the focus is on deliberation, personalities and name-calling – re-running the exact same arguments we heard day in and day out for 18 months. Sir John Bell, an EXTREMELY wise and clever man, said exactly the same on Today this morning. And if Bell condemns it, in my book, it stays condemned. As he said – this is what you get when lawyers take over. So we've learned that Cummings is wily and swears a lot and Helen MacNamara sounds like a drip – but this is as insightful, surprising and significant as knowing that Alastair Campbell was a power-crazed foul-mouthed bully. And even if we don't rate the politicians, there were some very brilliant people involved in the Covid response – often saying opposite things to each other. What on earth is Hallett (the chair) playing at? Other countries have held inquiries and learned lessons. We will spend years listening to rats fighting in a sack. All completely pointless, already known and a huge waste of time and money (unless you're a lawyer). There will need to be an inquiry into this appalling inquiry in due course.
A LITTLE LOCAL DIFFICULTY
There is much kerfuffle going on in our large village/small town, just beyond London's urban sprawl. It concerns a mysterious plan, hatched by our borough council, Elmbridge, and the local LibDems, who also happen to control the council, as well as the village's parish council since May. For some time, Elmbridge has been trying to find a use for a 90-something-space car park near the middle of Claygate: it was once heavily used and a great village asset – until the council imposed charges and the majority of drivers stopped using it. Somehow, the council manages to spend up to £20,000 a year (net!) on looking after this piece of Tarmac; during lockdown it shot up to about £45,000 but has since subsided. Even so, it is hard to see what the money is spent on – other than managing the charging system. If this was removed, the car park would, most years, surely break even, as not a penny would need to be spent on it.
I mention this as an early indication of council competence and financial acumen – which become vital to our story as it unfolds. Because the council has entered (almost) into a contract with a developer and Marks and Spencer to build a large supermarket on the car park, with eight Portakabin-type units on its roof for the borough's homeless, plus 40 retained parking spaces, free to M&S customers but paid for by those just needing to park. The council's own surveys show that roughly between 20 and 25 cars currently use the car park daily; the homeless units will doubtless contain some drivers – all of the other social housing in the area does; and M&S staff will need somewhere to park. That just about accounts for the 40 spaces, leaving the streets nearby to accommodate the rest. The main road has restrictions and so quiet residential streets will bear the brunt of it, as ever. Fourteen or 15 houses back on to the site – in fact, only half of one side does not have residential property bordering it, and a plan to create a new pedestrian access from neighbouring cul-de-sacs means they will be the spill-over car parks.
There has been fierce debate over whether a large M&S supermarket will damage the fragile Parade of mostly family shops a couple of hundred yards away. I believe it will inevitably lead to the closure of the existing small Co-Op supermarket near the entrance to the car park, probably the baker, the grocer, the fishmonger and the butcher. That would rip the guts out of Claygate's shopping experience. However, no one can be sure of the development's impact: some claim it will draw shoppers to Claygate and benefit the local retailers. The fact is, though, that we will not know whether it has been a disaster until too late: it is a gamble and a risk with the future of the village that it simply does not need to take.
Elmbridge has its own motives, of course. It cares little for Claygate and is focused on its own finances – as so many councils across the country are, following the cuts in central government grants following the crash of 2008. The borough council believes that spending £7.5m on building a supermarket and retaining freehold of the land will provide it with rental income into the future, hopefully recouping the investment in a decade or so. Councils everywhere seem to think they can play the commercial property markets and enhance their finances. The results tend to be disastrous: councils do not have the expertise or the single-minded focus and continuity required to keep such investments working and on track. A political change could wreak havoc with the plan; M&S might walk away if it fails to deliver. After nearly 30 years working for the Financial Times, you become very familiar with seemingly “great” ideas that turn sour for a host of foreseen and unforeseen reasons.
Until recently, the plan had seemed to be to use the site for dwellings. But behind the scenes, Elmbridge had been switching tack and late last year revealed, in the vaguest possible terms, that its new idea was for a “food store” and accommodation. It justified its secrecy by citing barely applicable technical criteria and commercial confidentiality. Only after a disguised LibDem slate of parish council candidates was elected by an unsuspecting public in May was the virtually done deal announced – to triumphant fanfares from prominent LibDem supporters in the village: “Great news!”, they all began. The backlash was immediate and the developer was shoved in front of the public to mount a minimalist display – on the eve of the summer school holidays and on two dates that clashed first with a parish council meeting and second with the village's huge annual flower show. This feeble approach at consultation sparked further fury and the backlash grew. The council responded that it still had to seek planning permission. Residents obviously saw that the council would be deciding on its own application and swiped away the council's quoting of the rules in such situations, which basically amount to “don't worry, we promise not to pre-judge”. Eventually, Claygate's LibDem representatives on Elmbridge council were forced to apologise and the council was forced to put the whole sordid mess on hold.
So what now? Few people look at the bigger picture, of course. Some like the idea of an M&S nearby – and it would be convenient, given the parlous state of our hopeless Co-Op; others can see how it would tear the heart out of Claygate. But I have heard no one thinking more broadly and arguing the case for housing. In a sane world, the car park would return to being a free and well-used village facility, enhancing the environment by removing the hordes of parked cars that have cluttered the streets since the day charging began. I remember the first day of charging so clearly – the change was sudden and dramatic: I could not believe my eyes on leaving the house and seeing cars left everywhere – a blight we now have to take for granted, as we do the near-constant illegal parking on the ever-spreading yellow lines painted to alleviate the worst of the nuisance.
But this is not a sane world, and stupid blunder will be piled upon stupid blunder. The Conservative government recently allowed everyone opposed to the concreting over of the country's green spaces to heave a sigh of relief when it abandoned the appalling housing targets that demanded homes be built regardless of appropriateness or impact. But we may soon have a Labour government committed to reinstating these absurd and destructive quotas. And when we do, Claygate will be ordered to build 50, 60, 100 – who knows? – homes. The car park space is the only plot on which housing could reasonably be provided without wrecking green belt land and turning Claygate from a vibrant village into another dreary suburb. Up to 25 units could be built there, making a big contribution to our quota. Once a supermarket is stuck there, all of our new properties will have to be allocated to fields, common land, woods and meadows.
Would this housing solution be such a financial disaster for Elmbridge council, as it now claims? Of course not. Instead of £7.5m of debt to service, it would have £2m-£3m tucked in the bank and be saving itself whatever figure it chooses to attribute to the cost of running the former piece of Tarmac. No future expertise would be needed, no expensive external financial advice, no debt worries. Less income, perhaps – but there would still be council tax from the new properties and interest on the money for the land, which any developer would be desperate to get their hands on. And the council can focus on its statutory duties of serving the community and providing services, rather than playing the markets. Either way, any council in the country would be mad to develop any brownfield potential building plots in its area for the next couple of years: throw them away now and have nothing left when the instruction to build build build is imposed from the uncaring centre.
AND THERE IS WORSE...
Subtly hidden among the desperate justifications for plonking a super-size supermarket in the middle of a village, with hardly any parking, is a move to re-classify Claygate as, in effect, a town. The language is technical and barely noticeable unless you begin to question its meaning. And as far as I understand it, Elmbridge wishes to redesignate Claygate from “village” status to “urban centre”. The actual words appears innocuous to the unsuspecting, but there is a world of difference between a “district centre” and a “local centre”. “Local centre” status describes Claygate perfectly – a small number of shops serving a community; a “district centre” is a large centre, hosting banks, a supermarket or superstore and serving a wider area. It's a small difference – until it comes to deciding planning applications and areas for development in a local plan. Then, suddenly, a district centre status pushes to one side many of the defences and protections that maintain the character and use of local centres: supermarkets and other “town” related developments gain a presumption of acceptance and far harder to prevent, no matter how damaging to a community. The LibDem Elmbridge council clearly sees Claygate as an under-developed town, rather than a slightly overgrown village and is trying to slip this change through unnoticed. But I noticed it – and so, belatedly, has the parish council.
NOVEMBER 3 2023
NO WONDER THERE ARE NO CHEAP PLACES TO LIVE...
The young demand that houses be built for them on the green belt, as I discussed the other day. Very eco-friendly. Much is made of the alleged shortage of supply of new homes. Yet the truth emerges when those seeking to sell properties are consulted: demand is currently very low, they agree. This was explained in detail in yesterday's Times. In any case, if increasing supply was the solution to what is widely and bizarrely accepted to be a “crisis” then multiple home ownership would be discouraged or even outlawed. Another little-considered factor affecting supply is the explosion in student housing over the past 20 years or so. Tony Blair's ambition of attracting 50 per cent of all school leavers to take a university course was always bound to cause huge accommodation problems. Some cities now have vast tracts devoted to students, who occupy premises for just over half the year. Is this a sensible use of our housing stock? Of course not.
NOW. WHO DO WE CHOOSE TO INTERVIEW?
British citizens are leaving Gaza via the Rafah border crossing and reaching the relative safety of Egypt. BBC Radio 4's World At One news programme mentioned this briefly before choosing to interview a man who had NOT left Gaza, despite being on a list to do so. He claimed no taxi would take him and part of his family to the crossing because “every car” is being shelled and it was too dangerous. He said he had called the UK Foreign Office and was told, perfectly sensibly, that he had to assess the risks for himself. Instead of taking the initiative, he called the BBC. And the BBC interviewed him, failing to challenge a word he said, no matter how far-fetched. Meanwhile, not a word from those who did leave Gaza – how they reached the crossing, what it was like there and what happened when they entered Egypt. No – just a rant from someone blaming the Foreign Office for their woes.
NOW. SHOULD WE FOLLOW UP ON THE MICROSOFT STORY?
Nah. It's good news. Let's leave our BBC listeners with the terrible impression we gave them of the Competition and Markets Authority when it blocked Microsoft's proposed takeover of Activision. Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief executive, criticised the CMA at the time for its decision, saying it was “bad for Britain”. This was reported on at length in negative and derogatory tones, echoing Smith's accusations.
Smith has now changed his tune completely: “I feel that the CMA acted with clarity, with decisiveness.” The takeover has now been cleared by the authority after it was restructured to make it acceptable. Smith said: “I was very impressed by the tough stand the CMA took while coupling that tough position with decisiveness and clarity and good communication. I think that's what those of us in business should ask for – clarity. And I think that the CMA provided that and we acted upon it. I accept the CMA criticism of Microsoft that we should have figured this out sooner.” Smith was also complimentary about the UK as a place to do business: “It is a centre for science. It is a centre technology, for great universities, for an important business community. It is an important market for companies around the world.” This view of Britain, as reported in The Times today, is so different from the one constantly painted by the BBC that they could be in opposite universes. And will the BBC's news programmes give a moment of airtime to Smith's endorsement of the CMA and the UK? Of course not.
NOW. ABOUT MARTHA'S LAW AND THE ECONOMY...
Anyone hearing Nick Robinson's introduction to an item about “Martha's Rule” on this morning's Today news programme will have been left with the impression that nothing has been done by the NHS, government or any other body to improve the involvement of parents in the medical treatment of their children. “Nothing has been done,” he said. This is completely false. In fact, much work has been going on to implement a sensible and delicate structure that aims to avoid the tragic consequences of doctors overriding parental concerns, as happened in young Martha's case. The news is actually very positive – but BBC listeners will not know that.
And was there any mention of UK government borrowing costs falling sharply and the pound rallying sharply against the dollar. No. Too much like positive news.
NOVEMBER 2 2023
THE PLANE THAT DIDN'T CRASH
On and on it goes: the absurd Covid Inquiry, enlightening no none but sparking idiotic headlines, such as the one on the front page of today's Times – “'Nuclear-level' bravado led UK towards Covid disaster”. The false premise behind this statement is colossal. It's the equivalent of an inquiry into an aircraft's flight through a storm that focuses entirely on how nicely the cockpit and cabin crew worked together – completely ignoring the fact that the team navigated the storm successfully and the airliner did not crash! There was no uniquely British “Covid disaster” – it was no worse a disaster than befell everywhere else.
'WE'RE GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY'
Helen MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary at the time of Covid, gave her evidence to the Covid Inquiry and claimed that she told Boris Johnson on March 13 2020: “This country is heading for disaster We are going to kill thousands of people.” She was, of course, utterly wrong – the government avoided a disaster and performed as well as all comparable governments. So what else was she factually wrong about? And how much weight should her own opinions carry when she shows such scant regard for facts?
ROBINSON AND RAJAN LOSE THE RIGHT TO CALL THEMSELVES JOURNALISTS
I have long felt that Today, on Radio Four, has become dangerous – insidiously undermining government, almost seditiously inciting its listeners to hate the country's leadership, with the inevitable consequences that UK interests are harmed, its reputation diminished and people left worse off. Its parochial coverage, along with all other BBC news programmes, creates an impression of a Britain in chaos with a collapsing economy, social breakdown, dead bodies piled high on every street corner, you name it. We know it's wrong, but the drip effect weighs heavily and we are all dragged down by it – especially those who believe it. The impact of the Brexit-hating and Tory-hating media during the pandemic has yet to be examined – and perhaps never will be. Perhaps a PhD student will one day seek to calculate the human cost of government skewing its policies, and its presentation of them, in order to survive the insults, assaults and attacks from a Today programme “interviewer”. Did ministers seek to avoid changing policy, when change might have been sensible, to avoid accusations of U-turns? Did they fight to sound more certain than they really felt to dodge being accused of not knowing? Will there be an inquiry into how media antagonism affected policy – and perhaps caused deaths? And indeed, will there be a wider investigation into the fullest effect on society of journalists ceasing to be objective observers and commentators and becoming active participants in the political fray?
Because that is what Nick Robinson and Amol Rajan, to name but two among very many, have become. They are no longer journalists; they have lowered themselves to the depths of becoming would-be “influencers”. A journalist, according to the profession's national union, “strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair”. The Indeed jobs website says: “A Journalist, or Reporter, is responsible for researching and writing informational news articles and stories about real events using a fair and unbiased perspective.” This is far from the way Robinson and Rajan behave. I had previously heard snippets of their ghastly Today Podcast – a spin-off from the news programme – and been shocked at how brazenly they had converted to being politicians. Opinionated, narrow-minded, smug (yet ostentatiously claiming to recognise the need for humility!), they have relinquished any claim to being journalists. If the Today programme is bad, the podcast is appalling. Disgusting. And filled with assumptions and false premises. Worse, it is infecting an already diseased news programme, with frequent plugging and cross-contamination.
This week's podcast effort plumbed new depths: “Covidshambles: The human cost of chaos in Number 10”. Setting themselves up as prosecution, judge and jury, Robinson and Rajan have decided that there WAS chaos in Downing Street and that it DID carry a human cost. Neither of those statements is certain: they are both opinions and judgments that are for others to draw – and journalists to seek out. Yet Robinson claims it is “incontrovertible” that there was a Covid shambles, caused by what he said we could “objectively call an indecisive warring government”. Rajan spoke of “huge national trauma”. National? Was no one else affected? There you have the BBC's short-sighted parochialism in a nutshell. (And yet they still refer to the economic collapse of 2008 as a “global crisis”.)
Louise Casey, appointed by Boris Johnson as Chair of the Rough Sleeping Taskforce in February 2020, admitted in the podcast that she was an infrequent visitor to Downing Street – yet could see in Boris's eyes that he couldn't concentrate. She threw excrement at everyone involved, using crude language, and reinforced her call for a Labour government. No surprises there.
More interestingly, her follow guest was Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, a statistics expert and voice of reason and sense. He immediately assessed, very fairly, what the government was facing: “I was both fatalistic and optimistic – I underestimated the impact of the virus...There was huge uncertainty.” He said that judging policy with hindsight was moving into the realm of the hypothetical but accepted that certain decisions could have caused harm. This is almost certainly and inevitably true in such a situation. But other issues were trickier, said the professor – for example, weighing up the benefits of voluntary versus compulsory restrictions; whether schools should have been left open. There were no obvious answers. Robinson then gleefully invited Spiegelhalter to condemn the UK for being top of the world's “excess deaths” league. But the facts were not as Robinson wished: his guest pointed out that, overall, Britain was mid-table in Europe – in the first wave we did badly but in the second “remarkably well”. But we must, continued Robinson, have done worse in England than in Scotland, where the saintly Nicola Sturgeon was in charge, in contrast to the chaotic Boris? Wrong again. Spiegelhalter corrected him by saying that Scotland, overall, fared worse than England. It is not as simple as relating death rates to policies or leadership. No matter what the podcast's title had already concluded.
The statistician gave another example of complexity, when asked whether living conditions could have affected death rates: he said there were two factors – the risk of catching the disease and the risk to those who caught it. This obviously put public-facing workers with a vulnerability at greatest risk and Spiegelhalter admitted that even he had thought the best approach would be to cocoon the vulnerable and let everyone else carry on. But he later realised it was just not feasible.
This is the reality of what we lived through. But this reality has become distorted by the individualisation of experiences – how it affected ME. Far more weight is given to the daughter wishing she could have hugged her dying mother than to the danger that that simple act could have posed to her, her family and the community. Sensible measures at the time are now reinterpreted as cruel, draconian, evil, misguided. But it is another glaring example of what an individualistic, self-obsessed society values.
Had anything been learnt, Spiegelhalter was asked. He said we had discovered that we can do some things very well indeed, such as the huge data sharing operation and communication with the public. He said a lot had been learned – but warned that institutions have horribly short memories. One thing we should all have learned is that written conversations, in the cold light of day, can look awful. What might have been considered perfectly normal and acceptable in a spoken discussion, debate or argument takes on an infinitely greater significance when submitted to WhatsApp for future scrutiny, taken out of context and when being used to mount a destructive campaign.
THE DANGERS OF TECHNOLOGY
I often warned of the dangers of technology when editing the Financial Times' Digital Business section. I didn't get everything exactly right, as noted earlier regarding social media, but I have learned from it and fear artificial intelligence as much now as I did when I made speeches about its threats in 2009. Mark Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, who I met in my editing role, seems to be on the same page. He believes that controls over social media have been a disaster – “everything has been altered by unregulated social media that went awry.” He is afraid AI could do the same if left unchecked. I agree. But I would go further: AI could be a disaster with or without decent regulation.
THE REALITY OF RWANDA
We spent most of August 2023 in Rwanda. We knew just a little about the awful events of the 1990s but travelled with no preconceptions and no idea as to what we would find. And what we found was extraordinary. A beautiful country, full of wonderful people, exhilarating things to do, gorgeous scenery and a recent history that is an education for us all. We now know that this nation, hideously abused most notably by Belgium, France and an uncaring United Nations, has overcome a century of disasters to become the jewel of Equatorial Africa.
It was the Belgian colonialists who sowed the seeds of conflict by driving a wedge between hutu and tutsi classes, creating an ethnic divide where there had previously been a vague and fluid definition based loosely on ownership of cattle and wealth. Identity cards were issued and stamped either 'tutsi' or 'hutu', often based on crude facial measuring.
The Belgians placed the wealthier minority tutsi people in charge, creating a new resentment among the poorer majority hutu population. After the second world war came calls for decolonisation and forms of democracy, leading Belgium to switch tack and place the hutu in power. By the time Belgium granted independence in 1959, angry extremist factions within the hutu leadership had already become strong enough to launch attacks on tutsi communities. Through the 1960s, many tutsi fled from violence to neighbouring countries, among them a two-year-old Paul Kagame, now president, who was taken by his family to Uganda.
As the hutu extremists tightened their grip, they drew up intricate plans for the elimination of all tutsi in Rwanda, while Kagame was quietly building a brigade of tutsi exiles within the Ugandan army, intent on enabling Rwandan refugees to return to their homeland. Tension built until April 6 1994, when hutu President Habyarimana's aircraft was shot down over Kigali, the capital – no one knows who by – signalling the beginning of genocide, following the detailed blueprint drawn up by the hutu extremists and reinforced by daily exhortations to murder from the radio station they controlled. No one could avoid becoming involved in the violence. France, desperate to retain Francophone influence in central Africa, helped arm the 'genocidaires'; the United Nations, unwilling to become involved, pretended it was just African tribal conflict, flatly refusing to define the murders as genocide. And so more than a million tutsi were murdered in 100 days of appalling bloodshed.
By the summer of 1994, Kagame's highly disciplined and well-treated fighters were sweeping across Rwanda and seized Kigali. Millions of hutu fled west to the Congo border, aided by a French operation that created a safe corridor for them. Kagame now led a country which had lost nearly half of its population – 10 per cent dead and more than 30 per cent fled. The hutu administration had left no money, no resources, no structure.
For the rest of the 1990s, Kagame pleaded with Congo, France and the UN to remove the hutu refugees from the Rwandan border: they refused. Instead, they provided them with arms, equipment and other support that ensured fighting and incursions continued to the end of the decade. It was only in the early 2000s that a measure of stability allowed Kagame finally to focus on domestic issues, sack his ineffectual chief ministers and assume the presidency himself.
To westerners, he might have appeared as just another African dictator, but Kagame, a harsh disciplinarian, was also a social reformer almost without parallel and a strategist of great genius. With a philosophy that demanded policies focus “on the future not that past”, he masterminded the most extraordinary reconciliation process in history: murderers faced their victims' surviving relatives, expressing shame and regret and begging forgiveness. Genocidaires who admitted their guilt had their prison sentences cut short. Against all odds, it worked.
Since 2000, this fragile and ruined country has been gradually re-shaped into a single community, with days each month set aside for communal activities. Clinics and schools provide health and education, food and shelter reaches everyone. Corruption is virtually eradicated and public administration is astonishingly fast and efficient; the country is spotlessly clean and sustainability and conservation are taken seriously.
Western leaders and commentators might cluck about the 'human rights record' of President Paul Kagame – partly to disguise their own shame and embarrassment, partly out of ignorance. What cannot be disputed is that Kagame's genius, discipline and determination has achieved what seemed impossible little more than two decades ago.
It is now a vibrant country, full of hope, ambition, aspiration and energy. The people remain quietly spoken and reserved – some conversations can still be difficult – but the young show less caution and are fun and engaging. Kigali has smart hotels, KPMG has a tower block, there is a fantastic new convention centre, a new airport is planned and the main stadium is being vastly expanded. The city is buzzing: traffic jams are frequent.
Outside the capital, economic activity takes place largely along the country's excellent roads: there are few cars, just painfully slow trucks, buses and tourist vans. But the roads are still busy: goods are mostly carried on foot or on massively over-laden bicycles – bananas, sugar cane, water, bricks, furniture and more are hauled up and down Rwanda's thousands of steep hills.
But this economy is finely balanced. Rwanda's wealth is growing – yet many people, while no longer starving or dying of treatable illnesses, remain poor. They deserve more. Foreign aid is welcomed – but only on Rwanda's terms. But the planet cannot withstand development and consumption on a western European scale. Somehow, fabulously rich countries must scale back as more deserving nations, such as Rwanda, grow. Our dirty, self-obsessed, throw-away culture looks disgusting from a pristine Rwandan roadside. We have so much to learn from this small gem in the heart of Africa.
NOVEMBER 1 2023
WHICH MATTERS MOST – OUTCOMES, OR PROCEDURE AND DELIBERATION?
Anyone following the nonsensical, expensive and completely pointless Covid Inquiry would be forgiven for thinking the answer to what matters most is that procedure and deliberation are all that matters and outcomes are an irrelevance. The UK had a fairly average pandemic, by all informed accounts, and an exceptionally good one when it came to finding a vaccine and a return to normal life. But these are outcomes and therefore of no interest. All that matters is that Dominic Cummings used swear words and Boris Johnson challenged his ministers when debating how to deal with Covid by adopting extreme positions. Not that any of this is news, of course – we heard it all three years ago, at the time.
But the picture being painted now by the current crop of “witnesses” – rats in a sack, we might more accurately call them – is of a Downing Street paralysed by chaos, with nothing being done to prevent the spread of Covid before it arrived. Oh, there is much to unpack here (I hate that phrase, but it sounds appropriate in this instance).
First, no country in western Europe was prepared for a Covid pandemic and the UK announced a national lockdown one day before Germany's; measures began to be taken in January and were gradually escalated through February as the scale of the problem became apparent and in the face of constantly changing “science”. Anyone sentient at the time will have been awe-struck by the historic order to stay at home: it would have been inconceivable even just a couple of weeks earlier.
Second, was no one allowed to voice alternative opinions in government? Boris is being castigated for suggested the UK should have let Covid rip – yet Sweden was being lauded at the time for pursuing precisely such a policy. His phrasing might have sounded callous (and again, it was reported at the time) – but this is how powerful points have to be made. I was once asked by a barrister to explain why I had written a memo complaining about the poor state of the chairs in the “Blue Lagoon” newsroom in the Financial Times headquarters, when I had just told him there were good chairs to use. I told him that the night editorial team would only get new chairs – which we wanted – by exaggerating. It's memo-speak, a campaign, a debate – you push a case to its limits. That way, all possibilities are considered.
Third, Covid was not the only concern of government at this time. Perhaps the inquiry will bother to mention it at some point, but until early March 2020, parts of the country were under water. Floods dominated the news agenda, day after day. This was the present and immediate crisis that understandably rose to the top of governmental concerns: this is what ministers were harangued about on Today every morning.
Fourth, the assumption that chaos is a barrier to great decision-making is utterly and plainly wrong. Some might argue it is a prerequisite. I would not go quite that far, but from personal experience I know that brilliance can emerge when minds are stretched and challenged and procedures appear dysfunctional. I was deputy editor at Weekend FT, first under Robert Thomson, a creative genius, and then Julia Cuthbertson, a sparky bundle of energy who ran things in perhaps the sort of way Boris might have run them. Robert shifted Weekend FT into the intellectual forefront of debate and circulation rocketed; Julia, his successor, added her magic ingredient and the section soared even higher. Ideas pinged out of Julia, left, right and centre and, as her deputy, it was my job to stay close, catch the inspired, and quietly sideline the crazy or unworkable. The department worked in a state of continual turmoil, out of which came unimaginable wonders: a less chaotic environment could never have achieved nearly as much. Perhaps it's a journalist thing: we tend to be contrarian, questioning and thriving in chaos – maybe needing chaos. Even an orderly person like me. Either way, I have seen that great things can come from chaos and just because Downing Street is alleged to have operated in that way is no reason to dismiss it as a failure. Quite the opposite.
CHAOS CAN ONLY BE BAD?
Chris Mason, the BBC's political editor, can certainly see no good coming from chaos: it's all bad to him. He was trying to explain why the Covid Inquiry's exclusive focus on process and deliberation, and the incredible discovery of “chaos” in government, actually matters. He said there were two possible explanations for the assumed state of chaos in Downing Street – it could be the result of extraordinary events that would have had the same effect on any government; or it could have been because of Boris. “We'll never know,” he concluded. I would advise him not to lose too much sleep over it: chaos, as I have argued, does not always have to be bad. But if you're running a witch hunt against a particular former prime minister, then it helps to assume that it is.
BAD HEADLINE DAY (WHICH IS MOST DAYS IN THE TIMES!)
“Half-term, hubris and 'slippery Hancock' hit efforts to save lives”. Did it? Really? This headline is from today's Times. It seems there's no need for a Covid Inquiry after all. This headline writer has given us their verdict.
THE UK – ALWAYS THE WORST AT EVERYTHING
The worst for Covid deaths; the worst performing economy; appalling human rights breaches over migration policies – the UK always manages to lie at the foot of every global league table. Or does it? The country's news media would certainly have you believe Britain is always rock bottom, especially the Brexit-hating BBC. But unfortunately for them, the facts don't fit their narrative. The UK suffered a very similar fate during Covid to all comparable countries – and, I would argue, did much better when regions of similar population density are considered. The UK's economy is also not in recession – but other countries' economies are: the UK is actually doing quite well in the circumstances. A large positive revision in the economic figures established this but, sadly, long after the broadcasters had condemned the government for failure and mismanagement. Daniel Finkelstein, Times columnist and political tinkerer, wrote in September about the dangers of jumping to snap conclusions based on incorrect and provisional findings. And if the full facts actually carried any weight and swayed anyone's opinions, he would certainly be wrong, as misinformation and mistakes would be corrected and assessments and assumptions revisited. Disastrously, he is right: attitudes and conclusions do tend to be shaped by the first iteration of news, no matter how erroneous. In fact, it is far worse: facts are not used to form judgments; they are used to support prejudices and hatreds already formed.
MRS MERKEL'S MADNESS FINALLY COMES HOME TO ROOST
When Germany opened its borders to the world's poor in 2015, I argued that Angela Merkel's policy was mad. It quickly proved to be, as it sparked humanitarian crises around the Mediterranean and beyond, as millions of migrants were encouraged to reach western Europe. The UK, long aggravated by the increasing flow of illegal migrants crossing the Channel in criminal-provided small boats, has been repeatedly berated and censured for its efforts to stop this deadly madness and process these unauthorised arrivals elsewhere. The idea is to remove the incentive for migrants to pay large sums to traffickers and gangsters to reach the UK by sending some to Rwanda, a beautiful and well-run country (we spent August there). This relatively benign measure has caused outrage among the hyper-liberals who have employed lawyers to search for any and every reason to block the move. As it is the only answer to this disgusting trade in humanity, it does rather place those who claim to be supportive of illegal migration on the side of the criminal gangs.
And that it IS the only effective way to combat this awful misery is confirmed by one of Germany's ruling parties calling for the country to process its “irregular” migrants elsewhere. Australia has long since proved that it works. Denmark enacted a law two years ago allowing asylum seekers to be processed in third countries. Italy, Greece and others are employing desperate measures to stem what The Times leader today called “this human avalanche”, while others are eyeing up the Australian model. As The Times says: “It is an issue that all Europe must now grasp, as Britain has long been saying.” In certain circles, of course, the UK remains evil for even considering any counter-measures. But, as Germany is discovering as its society breaks apart, it was merely ahead of the game.
LOST ALL YOUR LISTENERS, NICK? I WONDER WHY THAT IS...
Oh dear. Radio Four's flagship morning news “show”, Today, has been losing listeners. Could this be to do with its hideous clique of awful presenters? Nick Robinson, Mishal Husain, Amol Rajan, Justin Webb and Martha Kearney bear a heavy burden: they follow in the footsteps of great journalists such as former presenters Brian Redhead and John Timpson. I could not have told you what views either of those two held on any subject: they broadcast with integrity, objectivity and decency. But we know exactly where today's Today rabble stand – Brexit-hating Tory-hating hyper-liberals – because they tell us, constantly. Interviews are not information or opinion gathering exercises, they are rows; political bias is openly displayed as government representatives are insulted, with muttered asides between questions, and Keir Starmer is subjected to a mauling that's about as hurtful as Anton Du Beke's normal critique of the celebrities on Strictly Come Dancing: “Oh, when you had that glitter thrown at you, you just smiled and I thought you were MARVELLOUS.” Husain even failed to control her anger when interviewing Defence Secretary Grant Shapps recently – an unforgivable crime for any journalist.
And so the readers fritter away. I would too if there was alternative offering a similar breadth of coverage. Not that that breadth is wide enough: during the pandemic years it was if the rest of the world did not exist (it still doesn't for the wretched Covid Inquiry). But why is the audience fed up? The highly opinionated Robinson knows, of course: “People just want to avoid the news.” He said: “Market research literally calls them 'news avoiders'.” The smug Rajan said much the same. This doesn't account for the fact that other news channels have seen a rise in listeners. I think we all know why Today is faltering and failing – because it is not doing its job; its presenters see themselves as influencers. If you need proof that presenting what used to be the best news programme in the world is not enough for the current gaggle in the Today studio, then The Today Podcast is it: a pathetic vehicle for Robinson and Rajan to air their narrow group-think views with maximum smugness and minimal formality. Our ears deserve far better.
BUILD US HOMES ON THE GREEN BELT, SAY THE YOUNG ECO-WARRIORS
Ah, those trendy right-on, sensitive, “progressive” young eco-warriors (“Oops, sorry about the mess at Glasto”; “Oops, sorry we're not very good at recycling”, “Oops, sorry we left all the lights on and need to shower twice a day”, "Oops, can I charge my phone", etc, etc) now want the green spaces around our big cities Tarmacked over. “Build us homes on the green belt,” they demand. “Sod the environment, we want a house,” they imply. Apart from flying in the face of the common myth that young people are green and eco-conscious, this command is absurd: “the young” (whoever they might be) obviously do not realise that it would make not one scrap of difference to them. How many cheap homes would be built in these prime commuter belts? And how have the hundreds of thousands of dwellings built in recent years helped them? Exactly. Not one bit. Hundreds of thousands more buildings all over our cities' green lungs would have exactly the same effect: zero. I repeat yet again, the so-called "housing crisis" is not one of supply – it continues to be a "Housing finance crisis". A very different thing – which explains why it has yet to be addressed intelligently.
MORONS USED TO BE LAUGHED AT IN PUBS: NOW THEY HAVE A TWITTER FOLLOWING
A friend and former Financial Times colleague always enjoys reminding me that when Twitter first appeared on the social media scene, I told him the FT needed to take note: this was going to be BIG. I was the newspaper's Digital Business editor at the time and so at the forefront of technological developments: there were only a handful of us when I first started using Twitter. I don't mind him mentioning it – it makes me look prescient. What embarrasses me is when he goes on to point out that I also predicted it could be a great force for good in the world, with many potential practical uses and a unifying aura. Sadly, on this point I was completely wrong. Twitter, and social media more generally, are the planet's biggest scourge: they are giving voices and great power to frighteningly stupid and dangerous people. Where once a moron would be laughed at in the pub and, with luck, gradually become socialised, they now have a blog or a podcast and come into contact with fellow morons, amplifying their stupidity and influence. Conspiracy theorists, terrorists – this is their territory. But it's also home ground to all sorts of damaging anti-social idiots, too.
FRANCE IN ELLE OF A TWIST OVER PRONOUNS
The French, apparently, have come up with some hideous, meaningless and convoluted terms to hide the fact that there are genders and sexes in the world. They are creeping into business and general use – and the government doesn't like to see the French language despoiled in this way. And it has a point. As today's Times points out, many of the new “gender-neutral” words and phrases are laughable and unpronounceable. But there is a more fundamental issue involved here. Why are they doing this? Who are they doing it for? It can't be for the trans community. Because surely these are the last people who would want gender neutral language. They are more concerned about gender than anyone else – so much so they that are prepared to have their bodies sliced and drugged in order to switch from one gender to another. Why would they want to go all that way and find when they arrive that there are no genders any more?
THE NEED TO ENABLE INFORMED DECISION-MAKING ON SELF-HARM?
Alice Thomson often makes good points in her column in The Times. But she careered wildly off course when tackling the subject of ketamine use by the young. She said society was failing in its duty to provide youngsters with information and details about ketamine, a “powerful dissociative anaesthetic”, as she described it. But little blame is laid at the door of the kids, and others, actually buying and taking this cheap filth – they need something to help deal with the stress in their lives, it's claimed. “It's confusing for the young,” she says. No, it is not. It took me about eight seconds on Google to find out all I needed to know about how potentially lethal ketamine is – the side effects can be horrific and permanent. But Thomson goes on: “They need to know all the facts...so they can make informed decisions.” Informed decisions? What is she talking about? There is only one choice: do not take it. There is no mystery or confusion here, just stupidity.
HOW MANY DAYS CAN YOU FIT INTO 48 HOURS?
If you're the Royal Mail – you can cram up to five days into a mere 48 hours! It says its 48-hour tracked service “aims to deliver in two to three working days” – so if you post a parcel on Saturday morning, it could take until Wednesday. That's five actual days! And that's nothing like 48 hours. Worse, it's only an aim: a parcel I sent last Saturday morning still hasn't arrived – and it's now Wednesday evening.
OCTOBER 30 2023
ALWAYS LOOKING THROUGH THE WRONG END OF THE LENS
The UK needs, apparently, to upgrade its vetting system, because too many poor quality or even fraudulent care workers are finding their way into the country. Rogue agencies are acting almost as disgustingly as human trafficking gangs, by demanding large sums from would-be care workers in various parts of the world which they might one day pay off by working seven days a week, with no training and no experience. Behind this morning's news coverage was a hint of “Oh if only Brexit hadn't sent all those wonderful East Europeans home...” And the whole item, including all of the interviewees' – and interviewers' – contributions proceeded on the assumption that care work is for foreigners only.
As usual, the whole issue was viewed through the wrong end of the telescope. The assumption was that what the UK needs is a better supply of dirt cheap care labourers – not a highly paid, highly regarded and highly trained workforce. Of course this will cost money – but what would you rather spend it on? The country is rich but makes abominable choices as to how it spends its riches – all centred around the self, enormous consumption and individual pleasure. Imagine care workers being paid £100,000 a year, treated well, plentiful and highly skilled and regarded. No? Still prefer the 84-inch flat-screen telly and the gym in the new basement? Oh well. Problem not solved, then.
AUGUST 29 2023
THE UK IS A JOKE – GREEDY, LAZY AND STUPID
I am losing patience with the “developed” world. It is so wrapped up in its desire to consume it cannot see how greedy, lazy and stupid it has become. Very few people work “hard” any more: they think they do and like to tell you they do, but beyond some highly stressful occupations with long hours, such as in parts of health delivery, we enjoy an embarrassingly easy life. Real hard work is spending all day pushing a bicycle laden with jerry cans full of water, or a load of bricks, or enormous quantities of bananas up and down giant hills to home or market for meagre reward. In swathes of the real world, this is how people live – yet the main preoccupations of the “right-on” liberal individualists in the UK are fretting over whether women can have penises, or the evil of wearing “culturally appropriated” clothing at a rock festival. What a joke. For an indication of the extraordinary and laughable hypocrisy of our woke generations, study the aerial photograph of the disgusting tons of debris left behind at the Reading Rock Festival, including brand new tents. This is waste on an epic scale, in a world where so many have so little. When looking at that photograph, imagine it to be captioned with the title of a song by Liverpool pop duo, Johnny Boy: “You are the generation that bought more shoes and you get what you deserve”. Europe and America, plus the high-tech parts of Asia are driving the world into oblivion with their selfishness, and I am losing the will to care. These cosseted nations that are so little concerned with the real world should get what they deserve.
JUNE 20 2023
No blog posts for a month and a half – but for a very good reason. I released an album of 10 original songs in April and the seven-piece band had to work flat out to translate what we achieved in the studio into something playable on stage at Esher Theatre. It went well – thank you for asking. Although I feel it could have been better. But either way, with that gigantic distraction now out of the way, there is time to reconnect with the political world and how it is portrayed by the current generation of journalists.
BORIS IS A LIAR – WHETHER HE IS OR NOT...
First, we have the Kafka-esque spiral of dishonesty that is the Parliamentary Privileges Committee investigation into Boris Johnson's “lies and deceit”. To assess the enormity of the crisis and threat to democracy, we should return to the piffling, piddling, trickling source of this tidal wave of recrimination. During the Covid pandemic lockdowns, rules were in place governing gatherings of humans, sensibly aimed at reducing the spread of the disease. Some rules were made laws, which carried criminal sanctions when breached but there were many necessary exemptions and exceptions, as any sane person would expect from such emergency legislation. A separate body of guidance was therefore also in place governing workplace behaviour. This did not carry the force of law but, instead, a very strong moral pressure to make sacrifices for the greater good while still allowing co-workers to gather to perform tasks. This is from where the grey areas emerged: meeting colleagues for work purposes was acceptable, parties were not. And so this entire edifice rests on the definition of what constitutes a “party” as opposed to a necessary work gathering. I have commented earlier on how this distinction is far from clear cut in many fields, especially those of politics and journalism. However, it has to be conceded that in the circumstances, several gatherings were held by the main political parties in breach of workplace guidance, and a few were undeniably “parties”.
In normal times, this should have amounted to little more than several slapped wrists. But these were not normal times – these were post-Brexit times, and the chief architect of the Brexiteers' victory, the man who “Got Brexit Done”, was being manoeuvred into the crosshairs of the Remainers' sniper rifle. Al Capone was brought down on tax charges; Boris would be brought down by a slice of birthday cake.
But the initial charges failed: fines were paid, wrists left lightly stinging and nothing materially changed. And so to phase two. If Boris's misdemeanours were so minor that they barely caused a ripple in the real world, then the attack would have to turn to what he said about those misdemeanours. It would be far more serious if he could be made out to have lied to Parliament. And even after the Privileges Committee report, we still have no idea whether Boris actually lied – because we cannot know the state of another person's mind. The words he used were carefully constructed to ensure various interpretations were possible: we do not know whether he was at, or even knew about the obvious party at the Tory Party HQ and he only denied wrongdoing in Parliament and Downing Street. What we do know is that the assurances he gave to Parliament were also given by other prominent politicians and civil servants (none of whom are being hounded) and that the outcome of the Committee's work was completely predictable. And so Boris is gone, portrayed by every Brexit-hating media organisation and dud comedian as a liar, to such an extent that it is now unquestioned. Boris certainly has his faults – and serious ones – but he also has great qualities that the UK is now denied because he has been vindictively hunted down and driven to ground for the crime of delivering Brexit.
If it stopped there, this whole escapade would be bad enough. But it goes on. This morning on the BBC's Today programme, presenter Justin Webb indicated through his banal questioning that the next line of attack would be to taint the current Prime Minister through his associations with the now-radioactive Boris. Webb repeatedly claimed that Rishi Sunak was “weak” for not throwing away Johnson's honours list and for not being in the Commons for yesterday's debate on the Privileges Committee report, despite this not being required, despite him having to meet the Swedish prime minister, and despite Keir Starmer also being absent!
THE OH-SO-PREDICTABLE COVID INQUIRY
On the subject of predictable reports, we surely all know by now how the Covid Inquiry report will turn out in six or eight years time. Its disastrous early days revealed its true colours most clearly: it is seeking to apportion blame to those tasked with handling this global meltdown and might present one or two lessons for the future as a by-product. The row over private conversations held via WhatsApp, the messaging service, gave the first indication of just how pointless and protracted this whole “inquiry” is going to be. The simple fact is that WhatsApp has replaced verbal conversation as an instant means of communication. Yes, it is in written form, but its function, purpose and use are all entirely informal and conversational. The line into written communication is crossed with email – more formal, requiring careful consideration, and safekeeping for the record. And in conversations, participants, especially politicians seeking the best solution to an impossible problem, are entitled to test ideas, make outrageous suggestions, and fly kites in the interests of exploring every possibility. To make these musings public is ridiculous and endangers thorough examination of every angle, leading to poorer decision-making. Then, of course, there is the equally dangerous mix of sensitive information and personal chatter to consider. Legislation is urgently needed to safeguard the privacy of WhatsApp discussions and to formalise the role of email. These are new platforms that need to be given defined roles.
The committee chair, Baroness Hallett, said at the inquiry opening that she sought to answer three key questions: was the UK properly prepared for the pandemic, was the response appropriate, and can lessons be learned for the future? We already know the answers to each of those. Of course the UK was not prepared for this precise pandemic. No country was. The only way to have prepared would have been to spend billions of pounds on storing protective equipment to cover every eventuality – and renewing it regularly as it fell out of date. Or burning it, as France was reported to be doing in the pandemic's early days. The UK's response was also remarkably similar to every other comparable country: we moved to a full national lockdown one day before Germany, we imposed very similar rules, we offered very similar safeguards and protections, we chose the correct course out of the emergency by focusing on vaccines and led the world back to normality. As for lessons for the future: if we knew what the next emergency was to be, then we could prepare. But will it be an asteroid, giant volcano, disease, war, weather? We can only ensure that emergency decision-making structures are in place and that an early warning detection system is constantly monitoring and watching for threats. But filling warehouses with perishable “stuff” is idiotic, and prescribing or proscribing measures such as lockdowns or furlough schemes is pointless when we have no clue as to how appropriate they might be.
Instead, the 150 questions sent to Boris by Baroness Hallett before the inquiry began reveal that the investigation intends to focus on government procedures – and ministerial competences and priorities – rather than genuine lessons. Early comparisons of Britain's response with Sweden's also suggest that history is about to be rewritten: Sweden's outcome, despite its less prescriptive approach to locking down, was not dissimilar to the UK's. And yet any comparison is completely bogus because the two countries bear little relation to one another: one has a small and widely dispersed and relatively disciplined population, the other has some of the largest agglomerations of people in the world – the vast majority of them unruly liberal lovers of individual rights and freedoms. The truth is that the UK protected its population in regions that resembled Sweden far better than Sweden did.
Indeed, one factor that I have mentioned before and feel is crucial to understanding the spread of disease is density of population: one glance at the night-time weather map after the evening news reveals it perfectly – the Covid hot-spots all lit up in an almost perfect correlation. Yet I have never heard this mentioned by anyone in an official capacity. Of course, the inquiry begins by suggesting that the years of austerity economics are to blame for the UK's allegedly unusual lack of preparedness. Just how far back is it going to look? Will it later look at the causes of those austere years and question Gordon Brown's reckless encouragement of personal borrowing that inevitably led to the predictable (and predicted) crash? And worse, the early indications are that “witnesses” are merely going to use the inquiry for cheap political back-biting and points scoring. Someone today claimed that the parlous state of our health services meant there weren't the beds or facilities needed – plainly forgetting the speed with which the Nightingale hospitals were set up and ignoring the fact that they were hardly needed. Similarly, the nonsensical claims that international comparisons suggest only 1,700 or so lives were saved by lockdowns is now being taken seriously – which is only possible if you ignore the meaninglessness of those comparisons. This casual rewriting of history would not happen if this inquiry was really serious and really mattered and let the rest of the world know it was not the forum for a witch hunt. When aeroplanes crash, no one seeks to pass the blame or the buck; there is a genuine drive to unravel the truth and the salient facts to prevent a repeat. It seems no other inquiry is capable of such rigour.
One aspect that I am certain will be totally overlooked by the investigation is the role that news coverage and the behaviour of opposition parties and governing parties in the various parts of the UK played in muddling the message and sewing the seeds of discontent throughout the entire pandemic period. The BBC's Today programme on Radio Four was so blinded by its hatred of Boris for his Brexit success that its presenters' attitude in every interview with ministers was negative, aggressive and disastrously undermining. But it will simply be ignored. To have lost all confidence in such an important inquiry at such an early stage is worrying but, Baroness Hallett, I have little faith that anything much worthwhile come out of all this.
HOLIDAYS IN EUROPE RUINED – BY BREXIT?
An interesting little story ran in The Times the other day – tucked away on the foreign news pages. “Summer holidays spoilt by hotel staff shortages”, said the headline. So where was this? Devon? Dorset? The Lake District? No – it was the whole of Europe. “This is a problem that is being felt everywhere,” said the boss of Etoa, the European tourism association. But how can these unprecedented labour issues be being felt across Europe when they are so obviously caused wholly by Brexit?
OUR VILLAGE SHOPS CANNOT SURVIVE THE COMING DISEQUILIBRIUM
With great glee, Bruce McDonald, deputy leader of Elmbridge Borough Council, announced today that M&S will be opening a food store in our village, Claygate, Surrey. The cock-a-hoop LibDem hails this development of a shop and housing on the site of a village centre car park as great news for Claygate – and for its shops. He is, of course, deluded. The presence of M&S will very quickly kill our Coop store, and almost certainly push over the edge several more of our precious and varied shops – the fishmonger, the butcher, the greengrocer and the bakery will stagger on for a while but crumble in the face of this newcomer. McDonald, the dozy supporter of the move, claims it will increase footfall and help them all survive. It will, of course, do the opposite: shoppers will choose to park outside the M&S front door (a section of car park is to be retained) and go nowhere near the rest of the priceless Parade. Once the equilibrium is destroyed, annihilation is never far behind. RiP Claygate's shops.
THE BASIC FACTS ABOUT BUYING A HOUSE WITH A MORTGAGE
When people think they are buying a house, they rarely are. If they require a mortgage, they are actually asking someone else to buy the house for them while promising to pay them back. It is not a normal purchase, it is the arrangement of a loan and one of the results is that the usual rules of supply and demand do not apply: the loan providers dictate the price of housing according to the interest rates they offer. Demand hardly varies, regardless of levels of supply or increases in population. Anyone who has read “The Rise of Antisocialism”, my 2019 book, will understand this. And if they have watched or read Michael Lewis's “The Big Short” they will know intimately how the system works. Which makes it baffling as to why we hear on the news that homebuyers will struggle when their current fixed rate mortgage ends – because this is so obvious it barely merits saying, let alone being treated as news. Here's what I said in my book: “The actual asking price of a house is largely irrelevant to a purchaser. If you go to a building society for a mortgage, the first question is not about price but 'what can you afford per month?' This is because the property you can afford is a combination of price and interest rates. Put simply, if the mortgage rate at the time is 8 per cent, your £500 a month might enable you to buy a property valued at £100,000. A year later the mortgage rate might be 4 per cent – in which case, your £500 a month would buy a property valued at £200,000. Probably the same house. It’s obviously far more complex than this, but this illustrates the fundamentals.
“If you’re borrowing to buy a property – which most people do – then what matters is the 'cost of buying'. Prices naturally adjust as interest rates change. In an era of low interest rates, house prices inevitably rise because the cost of buying them falls dramatically, subject to the payment of a deposit.
“We have travelled up several one way streets – and it’s hard to see how we can back out. Let’s look at them. First – house prices. As we’ve seen, if interest rates come down, prices go up – and loans get bigger, without costing the purchaser more. But this traps people and makes them totally reliant on low interest rates. If a variable repayment mortgage rate rises from 2 per cent to 4 per cent – that’s a rise of 100 per cent. (Although it’s not quite as simple as that, as there are other costs.) But it still means a huge and potentially unaffordable rise in monthly repayments. So if rates rise, house prices can stabilise or even fall, and thousands of households could fall into negative equity – with repossessions of homes rocketing.”
MAY 4 2023
We voted today. Local elections. Although my wife didn't, thanks to me using our married name for both of us on the electoral register, whereas all my wife's picture identification (passport, driving licence etc) is in her maiden name, which she prefers and has used for all of her career. We must get this sorted out before the next general election, which is likely to come along in autumn 2024 – because this election could be rather closer and less predictable than many think. Labour might appear to have a huge lead over the Tories in the opinion polls – but who will admit to a stranger with a clipboard that they are likely to vote Conservative when they are subjected to a daily bombardment from the media and luvvie worlds, mocking and insulting them for the stupidity in supporting Brexit and favouring the monarchy and the nation state over presidents and open borders. Why would they risk humiliating themselves by falling foul of the liberal globalisers who dominate politics and all public life? But when alone with their fat crayon and a ballot slip, will they take their revenge and vote as they did in 2019? It would be their guilty secret.
A TIMES COLUMN STRAIGHT OUT OF MY BOOK - READ IT AND CHEER UP!
Juliet Samuel, Times columnist, has written a perfect riposte to the moaners and groaners upset at King Charles's coronation on Saturday. She writes: “What they don’t grasp is why the institution at the centre of this weird ritual, the monarchy, has lasted on and off for more than a thousand years. It is because it embodies ideas that are necessary to keep together a community beyond the immediate sphere of family and friends. Ultra-liberals tend to take for granted the idea that humans can and should be loyal to an abstraction like 'humanity' or 'freedom', but this is not at all obvious. In fact, our everyday lives are ruled by personal relationships, chores and emotions. Collective loyalty beyond this is built by communal experiences – like the coronation – shared culture and a sense of who would stand with us in the face of adversity or attack. The only political unit that commands this abstract sense of loyalty is the nation.” Another excellent columnist said something similar not long ago, pointing out that only a nation state with criteria governing who should be entitled to its benefits could provide the security and wealth for citizens that most western nations enjoy.
And in her column, Samuel writes: “This return of 'national' thinking has been greeted in most educated quarters with horror. 'Where did these fascist troglodytes come from?' the professional classes wonder. 'How can they be so small-minded?' To suggest that political solidarity and action should primarily be national is, to these ultra-liberals, to reject basic humanity. They view the nation as a relic, an obsolete invention of insufficient ambition, scale and empathy. On the right, they argue instead for borderless economic globalisation; on the left, for mass migration in all its forms.” This column is so precisely in tune with the thoughts and ideas in my book, The Rise of Antisocialism, that I simply have to commend it to you: read Samuel's column and cheer up this Coronation weekend.
APRIL 30 2023
I was just reminded, over a delicious lunch with two wonderful friends in the Griffin pub in Claygate, that one of the aspects of Antisocialism – the word I invented to encompass the rising tide of individualism and selfishness coupled with the collapse of any form of political socialism – is a decline in the willingness of individuals to undertake activities in which they have no special personal interest but which would serve or benefit the community. We were discussing the decline in social events, be it the local amateur dramatic society, the village tennis club, teaching children etiquette and manners, finding people to serve on committees or keep charities and societies going, and any number of socially valuable functions. There has been a shift, we agreed, towards a “what's in it for me” attitude: why would I serve on a committee and endure all the aggravation that goes with it just to benefit others? This explains so much and is perfectly in line with the explosion in liberalism and Antisocialism that I describe in my book. It's not an absolute, of course – there are still good people prepared to work selflessly and tirelessly for their community – but the trend is, sadly, in the opposite direction.
APRIL 29 2023
A CURIOUS TAKE ON SOCIALISM
A good friend has written a blog post for a website called East Anglia Bylines. It's all about what the Labour party needs to do to transform itself, and therefore its fortunes, in order to remain in office once elected. Martin, the friend, calls himself a Labour party member and activist, which I won't question but which does cause me some surprise. But good for him! And he has six fundamental initiatives for his party to consider: five or six seems to be the required number of policy drives at the moment. I shall list them briefly and then add my thoughts.
First, he recommends removing the voter identification requirements to encourage the young to vote and to look at introducing proportional representation. Second, we have “re-join the EU single market”; then a wealth tax on rich individuals; criminalise all tax avoidance; and fifth, review media ownership. Finally, Labour should reform the system of “appointing” MPs, generally treating them more professionally.
Are these the burning issues that you believe should top Labour's priority list once in office? Review media ownership? Really? Would any Labour supporters notice or care? And voter identification was introduced to combat serious election fraud – simply removing it to avoid confusing youngsters is not good enough. Apart from the fact that if they're put off by having to show proof of identity at the polling station then perhaps they shouldn't be voting at all. But as Martin and I suspect, the young tend to vote Labour, so any impediment to them turning up is of value to the party. My more simple and effective solution would be identity cards – also useful in many other fields of service delivery and crime prevention.
Making MPs more professional has long been debated: it's not a black and white argument. MPs are supposed to have real world experience and measures that remove them further from everyday life could well be counter-productive. But again, it's a nice subject for consideration over a glass of red wine on a warm evening when there's nothing more pressing to worry about. Hardly revolutionary. Similarly, a wealth tax always sounds grand – but why not simply have a fairer tax system? We already have wealth taxes – they just need to be skewed more and increased on both individuals and companies. Everyone should contribute a fair share. And many executive pay packages are obscene – and pointless. Who needs to spend a £10m salary every year? Clamping down on tax avoidance is also fine and dandy, and criminalisation a meaty tool to help make the rich behave. So, er, OK.
And then comes that middle-class liberal demand to re-join the EU single market. If this could be done without reintroducing free movement and we could achieve as good a deal as we had, with a rebate and all that, then it might be bearable to most real Labour supporters. But it can't. The EU would impose punitive contributions on the UK and, more importantly, demand it retains the purity of its principles by once again inflicting free movement on Britain, instantly re-extending the UK jobs market back to the Russian border – and recreating the very cause of Brexit and Boris Johnson's “Get Brexit Done” landslide. It was not in my personal interest to vote for Brexit: I am probably worse off because of it and subject to the same bureaucratic inconveniences as everyone else. But there are millions of working class people all over the country, and especially in the northern industrial towns and cities, who are considerably better off now that they are no longer having to compete for their jobs with impoverished eastern European workers happy to put up with pay and conditions that would be intolerable to a British worker. Now that so many east Europeans have returned home, thanks to a mixture of Brexit and the pandemic, balance in the UK's industrial relations has been partly restored: the pre-2004 equilibrium, which allowed workers to protest for improved pay and conditions, is seen in the widespread outbreak of industrial action in the public sector and the rapidly rising pay awards in the private. The boot might not have shifted completely to the other foot – but at least there is a boot on both feet now.
I am therefore confused by Martin's shopping list of revolutionary policies that will keep Labour in power: most are technical, a couple are uncontroversial and the single market suggestion is so anti-working class, so anti Red Wall, that it would put us back to square one in the EU debate and push those millions who desperately need Labour to fight for them back into the arms of Nigel Farage and his successors. That is the choice facing the working class people of the UK who have seen their livelihoods and lifestyles undermined by free movement and who have been insulted, mocked and bullied for complaining about it: either a socialist Labour party that notices them or the Faragist right that, if only as a side-effect, at least offers them protection from unfair competition and the serfdom that free movement brought with it. Martin's proposed single market pitch would force them back into the hands of the Faragists. So where's the socialism in that, Martin?
APRIL 25 2023
MY COMPUTER PING-PONG NIGHTMARE
My computer has been bouncing backwards and forwards between Cheshire and Surrey for weeks. I bought a reconditioned PC, understanding and accepting that I could be inheriting someone else's IT problems and for several weeks it worked fine. Then it started making heavy wheezing noises on boot-up and whirring madly before coming to life. And then it stopped coming to life at all. An IT consultant visited and declared it a hardware problem, advising it be sent back. HST Computers were good about it and I'd kept the box it came in – so off it went. It came back a couple of weeks later, having been declared fixed, and I plugged it in. But after the briefest of whirrs, nothing appeared on screen. Back it went. Back it came. No change. Back it went and back it came, working perfectly in Cheshire but doing nothing to light up the screen on my desk.
I was ready to bin it, cut my losses and start again. But HST, as baffled as I was, had an idea: could it be an unhappy relationship between the PC and the screen? I doubted it, as my screen is fairly new and fancy and the PC had worked perfectly (until it didn't) by being plugged in via an HDMI cable. But it would have been churlish to ignore the professionals, and so I bought a new cable, HDMI at one end to connect to the PC, and RGB at the other to lock on to the back of my screen. I never expected it to work. But it did! Full marks to HST.
But just for the record, there were clearly two problems here – the initial boot-up problem that my IT helper could not fix, and then the bizarre screen issue that must have arisen separately during the process of repair. Or during one of its long journeys up and down the M1.
THE PLAY'S THE THING
I can now call myself an actor. An amateur, of course. But I have now acted in two plays, one in which the cast could read the words and one in which they had to be remembered. The latter concluded its short three-night run in Claygate Village Hall on Saturday and, to my surprise, won us (the cast and crew of Claygate Dramatic Society) lavish praise and plaudits from those who came to see it. I have to confess that on reading the play before “auditioning”, I was dismayed at how dated it seemed and how poorly written. But, to be fair, it came dramatically to life when lifted from the page. And I hugely enjoyed working with a small group sharing a single mission.
When we moved into Claygate in 1994, we made a point of attending a Dramatic Society production, more as a gesture of support for a community enterprise than in any great expectation of quality drama. But we were pleasantly surprised: the quality was high and we went back for entertainment, coupled with feelings of loyalty, collective enjoyment and togetherness. But, sadly, the actors on stage in the mid-1990s are largely still the same people. The audiences, too. There seems to be little interest among the younger generations for being part of a society or supporting local efforts. There are exceptions, of course, but the dwindling numbers say it all. Without replenishment both on-stage and off, such priceless neighbourly ventures will exeunt left and never be seen again.
SURROUNDED BY LIBERALISM – WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THOSE SOCIALISTS?
I've never really asked, but I've always assumed that most of my close friends are left-leaning and broadly socialist in outlook. And so it is with some surprise that I note so many of them have installed “Vote LibDem” posters outside their houses. As discussed previously, Liberalism is the most right-wing of the prevailing political ideologies – if they can be called such – with its emphasis on individual rights and freedoms and the resulting preservation of comfortable middle-class privileges. Perhaps they are endorsing the Liberal party in a tactical manoeuvre aimed at defeating the hated Tories. Although with all three main parties advocating almost identical policies, I can't see a great deal of point in campaigning for, or against, any of them.
HATRED CAUSES BLINDNESS
Returning to the theme of hatred, we have seen once again in recent days how it can cause a blindness that prevents those caught up in it from seeing the facts and the issues raised by events. Take the resignation of Dominic Raab from his posts as Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister late last week. Those who hate were quick to cheer at his defenestration, presumably feeling they know the man, his style and his politics well enough to dismiss him as vile and unworthy without having met him, worked with him, or reading the report into the bullying claims that eventually led to his downfall. But I have met Raab on more than one occasion and found him quiet, polite and business-like. I know other people who, having met him, feel the same. I know yet others who have heard him speak and, while disagreeing with him most fundamentally, accepted that he is intelligent and argues his case well. Within his constituency, in which I live, there are many voices prepared to give testament to his assiduous and caring work, pressing the case for refugees at the highest levels on behalf of a local charity, or providing thoughtful and considerate assistance and support to the woman from Esher whose letter was printed in yesterday's copy of The Times. One of his personal assistants has worked with him for 11 years and only speaks well of him.
And even Matthew Parris, the former MP, Saturday Times columnist and arch Remoaner who clearly despises Raab, has managed to rise above his hatred of the man to see the truth in the “bullying” report by Adam Tolley, KC. He wondered why Raab had resigned when the report could substantiate only minor quibbles over styles of working, calling him occasionally abrasive. Parris – and others – also defend Raab's right to warn about the dangers of civil service campaigns to resist the will of cabinet and to make vague accusations that result in resignations or sackings – even when they have never even met the minister in question but merely joined the campaign to oust him in support of their colleagues. This is something I find quite extraordinary. Tolley, of course, disregarded their complaints but it raises vital questions about civil service impartiality, the bedrock of our democracy, and gives enormous weight to Raab's insistence that the accusations against him were part of a campaign of resistance that could be used in other departments. Indeed, there are indications already that this could be so.
At least the whole affair was dealt with quickly, in approximately 24 hours, in spite of several Labour party figures absurdly accusing the prime minister of “dithering”. Yesterday, it was delightful to see the boot on the other foot as Labour leader Keir Starmer “dithered” over what to do about Diane Abbott (see below). Delicious.
There are so many examples of hatred causing blindness in otherwise rational people, the poisonous trans debate being a prime one. But the monarchy is a more subtle case. A survey has found little support for the monarchy among the young. Indeed, I would have been among them in my student days. But as the scales of hatred fall from your eyes with experience and you can begin to see the full picture, with all of its awful alternatives and drawbacks, views can become more nuanced and more accepting of what, on the face of it, might seem unacceptable. It is easy to write off the monarchy system as archaic, privileged, unjust, wasteful, and so on. It is less easy to offer a viable and foolproof alternative.
The monarchical system provides the UK with a head of state, a crucial role in any nation. How much better would an elected supreme authority, such as a president, be? I would argue this is a hugely dangerous course. Even a stable democracy such as the US descended into chaos not so long ago, which could in other circumstances have led to bitter and prolonged civil strife, when an elected president refused to accept the poll results. If all we need is a figurehead, why take the risk of bestowing such powers? Others suggest doing without. But the same problem arises, with the prime minister now becoming all-powerful. What would have followed had Liz Truss called upon the generals last autumn to secure her premiership, in which she believed passionately? With armed forces loyal only to the crown, she had no choice but to go quietly. But with an army pledging allegiance to an elected head of state, she could have demanded far more. Overall, the monarchy is relatively harmless, it lures tourists and is a priceless international asset, and provides continuity of wisdom and experience at the top of government. Yes, it rests on privilege and heredity, but there are far worse alternatives. Because all we need is a flagpole around which the nation will rally in a time of crisis; a bulwark or champion with no actual power, other than to unite and see off threats to our democracy. Queen Elizabeth fulfilled this role brilliantly for many decades; King Charles will not share her longevity on the throne, but he surely deserves a chance to win sufficient respect and affection to make him that emergency brake on disaster.
DUMB MOTORWAYS
Many years ago, when the first “smart motorways” were being installed, I concluded that they performed poorly as a device for increasing road capacity and that they were lethally dangerous. I recall a trip home on the M1 on a busy Sunday afternoon when every six or eight miles a junction would create a bottleneck and tailback; the lack of a hard shoulder and replacing it with infrequent “shelters” looked seriously short of smart. I recall saying to a new acquaintance one afternoon that we needed smart drivers more than we needed smart motorways: the inside lanes are routinely empty, no matter how many carriageways are built. Oh well. Millions of pounds later, the programme has been stopped.
WHO IS MAKING UP THE NEWS?
“Police arrive at Shell offices”, shouts the headline. But did they? Nowhere in the story in yesterday's Times does it say police attended. All there is, is a disputed allegation that police were called by Shell personnel when the former Archbishop of York, Lord Sentamu, turned up at its headquarters to deliver a letter protesting at the company's role in climate change. Shell refused to open its door and Lord Sentamu had to leave his letter on the step – something he described as “the most arrogant experience I've ever had”. What a sheltered life he must have led. The whole story is a non-event – but the headline is outrageous.
SUDAN FALSE IMPRESSION
The government stands no chance of coming out of the Sudan civil war evacuation without its reputation being shredded even further. The whole tone of the BBC reporting, especially on its increasingly ridiculous Today radio programme, is that the UK's efforts at rescuing the 400 British citizens and 3,500 more with dual citizenship from the country is that our efforts are appalling: ministers have washed their hands of these people, abandoned them to their fate at the hands of the warring generals in Khartoum, while the EU and its governments breeze in and out on rescue missions galore. The presenters' assumption is that the UK is an outlier, failing in its duties – it comes across powerfully in every question, accusation and statement they make.
But then anyone with a gripe against the government is guaranteed a hearing on the Today programme. Can't find a dentist? Call Today. Can't find a red pepper on the supermarket shelf? Call Today. Etc etc. There isn't much more hill left for Today to tumble down.
DIANE ABBOTT – HALF RIGHT BUT THEN COMPLETELY WRONG
Isn't Diane Abbott wonderful. The Labour party has sanctioned her for writing to a newspaper to argue that Jews have not suffered racism in the way races have. Now, by my definition, Judaism is a religion, not a race. Anyone can become a Jew or cease to be a Jew: it is a system of belief, identical to Islam, Christianity, or Diabolism: most people in the world are born into a society or culture believing in some nutty religion or other but when they grow up, their faith becomes a matter of choice. Race, on the other hand, is biological and cannot be changed. No matter how hard Diane tries, she cannot be Caucasian. So up to this point, I find it hard to find her distinction between race and religion controversial. This is not to say that Jewish people have not suffered probably the worst discrimination in history – a religious persecution on a disgusting and industrial scale. But this should not lift their religion, no more than any other religion, above criticism and even mockery.
Abbott did not express herself well, of course, referring to “red hair”, making her sound flippant and trivialising the plight of Jewish believers. But this was not her only blunder. Far, far worse was her idiotic retraction of everything she said: she had got it all wrong, and apologised unreservedly. And then, worse still, she made the unbelievable claim that she had sent the wrong draft of her letter to the newspaper! Is it credible that she had written two, completely opposite versions? It's all a nonsense. But in taking several hours to sack her, Keir Starmer was clearly dithering, by his own standards – which demand lightning fast reactions. Apparently.
It's all such a pity. Abbott is one of the very few politicians with socialist leanings still in the Labour party, it having been taken over by liberal individualists and atomisers. It's a pity, too, because she has clearly suffered terribly herself at the hands of racists. But wading into this debate without defining her terms at a time when sensitivity over antisemitism in the Labour party is sky high shows a political clumsiness that is extreme, even by her standards. And her incompetent and laughable attempts at withdrawing from the debacle is another hammer blow to supporters of a socialist future.
MY 2010 BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN – AND IS NOW WRITING ITSELF
From 2006 to 2010, I edited the Financial Times Digital Business supplement, keeping business readers abreast of technological developments that would affect them in the future. In that time, several significant themes struck me as important and which I melded together into a speech, or talk, that I would give when invited to address a lunch or other gathering of FT readers or IT leaders. I was surprised at how unconcerned most listeners seemed to be. But they are concerned now. It seems I was merely a decade or more ahead of my time.
But why should you believe in my extraordinary prescience? I could just be making it up. But one of the advantages of being a journalist is that so much of your work is recorded and saved for posterity. And so I present to you the outline for a book I planned to write in 2010, exploring the confluence of three main forces – artificial intelligence, data sharing and robotics. It was never written because I was offered the equally exciting, and less daunting, prospect of launching and editing a new FT supplement called Executive Appointments, which proved hugely successful. It meant I never returned to my book proposal – and now my book is writing itself in real life. Here's the pitch that was received favourably at Prentice Hall, the FT's book publishing arm. Elon Musk's fears over AI might be leading the debate today, but this book could have been our guide for well over a decade, had I not been happily distracted. This is what I proposed in 2010:
File under Popular Science….
An unstoppable force been unleashed. Science fiction saw it coming – but now today’s technology is on the brink of turning those writers’ visions into reality. The “intelligent” machine is being born.
A perfect storm, made up of technological developments in several fields, is sowing the seeds: but will the infant grow up to be a destructive Terminator or Cylon – or offer a wealth of opportunities for humankind? Are we now embarked on a journey that is leading us to create machines that one day we can neither control nor predict?
Dave Bowman: “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” HAL: “I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.” - 2001: A Space Odyssey
Number Six: “Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur.” - Battlestar Galactica
Gaius Baltar: “Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that Cylons are, in the final analysis, little more than toasters... with great-looking legs.” - Battlestar Galactica
The Terminator: “I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.” - Terminator
The Terminator: “My CPU is a neural-net processor – a learning computer.” - Terminator
Where are computerised beings taking us and how far can they go? If machines are able to evolve so that they can analyse data more quickly than the human brain and make decisions based on those calculations in the context of external information, then how much of the human future will they be able to take over?
Battlefield robots are already a reality – armed with “autonomous intelligent control systems”. Academics are working on ethical control systems for such robots and they can even power themselves by “eating”. When machines are gathering the data, analysing it, predicting outcomes and evolving their own best practices, how much longer will the human mind be required in each field? This original book draws together the previously disparate strands in technology that are driving this process.
The issues it will raise are of vital concern to anyone involved with planning for the future in any walk of life – government, public sector services, business and other organisations. The book will also prove fascinating to the general reader interested in what is possible and to anyone who has ever enjoyed a science fiction movie, play, book or TV series. It is only by drawing together the apparently unrelated strands at the forefront of technological development that a picture of a future featuring intelligent machines becomes realistic. The only question that remains is over the extent to which they will become autonomous.
The key elements involved include: the enormous amount of data now being created and stored; supercomputing; pattern recognition; systems that can interrogate data and make sense of it; systems that can analyse it and use it to predict outcomes; software that can “self-evolve” by selecting the best options through countless generations at lightning speed; software that can learn; artificial intelligence that seeks to mimic human thinking and responses; high-speed wireless communication; and advanced robotics.
Academics and other experts in the above fields all have gripping stories to tell about their own work, which will be presented as written narratives, perhaps alongside self-penned contributions. Each step taken towards establishing the proposition that machines will become “thinking” entities that take over a range of functions from humans will be assessed by specialist commentators and analysts in the field.
Its findings and conclusions will provide essential material for public policy decision-makers, national leaders, business people, and anyone interested in looking into, and planning for, the future – plus those who are simply fascinated by science.
Some examples of the insights the book will offer:
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The evolution of computerised characters that interact based on their own decision-making
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Battlefield robots – setting the pace in decision-making; and how “ethical” can their decisions ever be?
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The Turing Test and human-computer interaction, including the chess-playing encounters.
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A real vision of the future: comparing the science of the big and small screen with what we can expect to achieve with real-world technologies.
The shape of the book:
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Introduction. Sets out the scope of the book.
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Chapter 1. Outlines the technologies – the perfect storm of powerful computers, data, intelligence, and robotics etc.
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Chapter 2. Science fiction. Looking at how closely real events have matched the predictions of the sci-fi world. Telling the stories of Terminator and Battlestar Galactica, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and others, assessing their technologies and how they relate to reality.
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Chapter 3. The chessboard – the arena for the opening rounds in the Man v Machine contest. From The Mechanical Turk to Deep Blue and beyond – to IBM’s “Watson” question answering system able to take part in the Jeopardy! game show.
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Chapter 4. The First Element: supercomputing. The powerhouses, performing trillions of calculations a second – faster than a human can think.
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Chapter 5. The Second Element: Evolution. What scientists and mathematicians have discovered about the relationship between biological systems and machines: from Turing and MorphoGenesis, through Benoit Mandelbrot and fractals, to Torsten Reil and artificial brains. How complexity emerges from simple rules to make self-evolving software a reality.
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Chapter 6. The Third Element: Data. Data is being created and stored on an epic scale. What is it, where does it come from, where is it stored? What is its scope and does it cover so much human activity that it could be used to automate all decision-making?
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Chapter 7. The Fourth Element: Making sense of the data. Business Intelligence software is now able to interrogate data, turn it into “intelligence”, identify patterns, and make reliable predictions.
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Chapter 8. The Fifth Element: Artificial Intelligence. The annual Turing Test moves ever closer to finding a machine that can fool a person into thinking it is human. How AI and work on the mathematics of probability – including Gaussian processes and Bayesian inference – are creating new possibilities.
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Chapter 9. The Sixth Element: Robotics. “Intelligent machines” can take any physical form but rely on robotics if they are to become mobile. Battlefield robots already come with learning and decision-making capabilities built in; in time, the decision-making capabilities will be combined with more machines of various designs.
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Chapter 10. The Seventh Element. Machine-to-machine communication, combined with high-speed wireless connectivity, makes possible the sharing of “learning” and “experience”.
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Chapter 11. What is “a decision”? How far along the decision-making chain will a machine be able to go? They already take small, easily automated choices, such as when to apply the brakes in a road vehicle using ABS. How closely can they be involved in setting strategy?
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Chapter 12. Ethical and philosophical considerations. Can ethics be built into a machine? Attempts are being made to do this with battlefield robots.
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Chapter 13. Peaceful co-existence? A future in which machine intelligence and other capabilities augment the human – and the robot never achieves its independence.
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Chapter 14. Conclusions: The future. One vision of where we might be headed.
Writing such a book requires the ability to step back from the individual fields of research and identify trends and the bigger picture. All advances throughout history – and especially in the computer age – have come about when all the required elements have come into line (all the gates are opened; all the ducks are in a row, etc). My work as editor of the Financial Times’ Digital Business supplement has enabled me to identify and see the significance of the key elements that are combining to create the intelligent machine. As a professional journalist who for 30 years has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and websites, and creating audio and video programmes, I am well qualified to undertake this project.
I will approach a number of academics and other experts for input and to review progress of the book, including Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at Reading University; Dr Alan Arkin of Georgia Tech University in Atlanta; Torsten Reil, chief executive of NaturalMotion; Colin Angle, chief executive of iRobot; Jim Al-Khalili, professor of Theoretical Physics at Surrey University; Benoit Mandelbrot, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University, IBM Fellow Emeritus, and Battelle Fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Chris Bishop, professor of Computer Science at Edinburgh University; David Munt, managing director of GenSight; Carsten Sorensen, senior lecturer on Information Systems and Innovation and the London School of Economics; Daniel H. Wilson, a roboticist at Carnegie-Mellon’s Robotics Institute.
The authority and credibility of the Financial Times will bring weight to the book’s cover. It will receive coverage, promotion and perhaps some serialisation in The FT and its technology supplement. I would expect some of the aforementioned potential contributors to endorse the book and I would approach the makers and stars of Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, 2001: A Space Odyssey etc for further high-profile endorsements.
Key messages could include:
“Have we unleashed an unstoppable force that will lead to conflict between Man and Machine?”
“Science fiction is becoming science fact as machines march towards intelligence.”
“The seven required elements are now in place to spark technology’s perfect storm.”
“Patterns are emerging from today’s computerised chaos that will change human relationships with machines for ever.”
Search terms used in the book that would feature highly in potential customers’ lists of results would include: Robotics; intelligence; artificial intelligence; business intelligence; science fiction; Terminator; Battlestar Galactica; 2001: A Space Odyssey; data; pattern recognition; man v machine; intelligent machines; machine intelligence; software; evolutionary software; evolution; machines.
This book sits in the Popular Science genre – potentially complex subjects simply explained and placed in context. It will have as much appeal as works by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, for example. There are a number specialist books and very expensive academic works available on most of the elements to be discussed in this book but very few that draw together all the strands.
The exception is Ray Kurzweil’s book “The Singularity is Near”, which sets out to predict the future of artificial intelligence and foresees a world in which information technologies enable humans to transcend their biological limitations. Kurzweil’s book and mine, while taking slightly different approaches, would appeal to much the same audience.
Daniel H. Wilson’s book, “How to Survive a Robot Uprising”, takes a humorous approach to dealing with the possibility of a robot mutiny, and is a light introduction to robotics. And Peter Cave’s book, “Can a Robot be Human?: 33 Perplexing Philosophy Puzzles” is full of intriguing philosophical questions that will be dealt with in my proposed book. “Self-adaptive Systems for Machine Intelligence” by Haibo He is another valuable source and complementary book; as is “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Prentice Hall Series in Artificial Intelligence)” by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig.
Given that most books around this topic are heavyweight academic works, the main competitors to my book would come from those mentioned above. My book, however, will be broader in scope than any of them, enabling it to make more interesting conclusions.
Additional publishing opportunities include individual essays by academics and experts; audio or video conversations with various experts; online feedback and discussion forums; and live events. I would estimate the book to require 600-700 pages to cover the ground thoroughly, although economical writing and my editing experience could reduce this. The project is at a very early stage. Nothing is yet written, other than a brief précis. I have spoken to colleagues in other specialist areas at the Financial Times and received very positive and encouraging feedback. I would expect the research and writing of such a book to take a minimum of six months of full-time work – perhaps a year.
APRIL 5 2023
UNDERSTANDING MY OWN POLITICS
I have been called a communist and I have been called a Tory. How can this be? It’s a question I have wrestled with for some time but am now beginning to understand. And I can see exactly what my accusers - for those epithets were meant most accusingly - meant. As anyone who has read my book will know, I am opposed to rampant materialism, meaningless economic “growth”, pollution and greed, among other things. I am in favour of a simpler, green world in which people come together in communities, behave as a society, with the emphasis on responsibilities, rather than individual rights. We work too much, produce too much, consume far too much. And during lockdown, many saw glimpses of what life could be like without the weight of production and consumption pressing the joy out of everyday existence. Many reacted by deciding to leave the workforce, prioritising living over serving a pointlessly destructive economic model. We have also seen strikes increase since Brexit - a sure sign that the necessary equilibrium between business and workers is being restored: industrial action had to be off the agenda when employers could click their fingers and hire limitless numbers of east Europeans at rock-bottom pay rates. These are encouraging signs that the population is regaining its voice; that business is no longer calling all the shots. And it gives me hope that other priorities might change, too: that we will seek satisfaction and pleasure from activities other than consumption and that we can begin to talk about an economic model that does not rely on “growth” - whatever that means.
I heard part of a fascinating radio debate on the subject of economic growth the other evening. Various speakers were challenged on their views, including the excellent Kate Raworth, author of Donut Economics and one of the few economists I’ve heard who actually understands that “economics” amounts to far more than mere “business finance”. A gaping hole was picked in her world view over how to pay for the lifestyles her proposals envisaged without economic growth. But others were ripped apart because their limited imagination could not comprehend a world in which economies did not grow. One hapless candidate merely kept repeating that if there was no growth then there would be no growth and that would be terrible. My prescription is for managed de-growth. There were no such things as de-growth communists when I wrote my book - or at least I failed to find any mention in my long period of research. But I find that I can comfortably be labelled as such. I believe economies built on never-ending growth and consumption must be put in reverse, people must be allowed to live more fulfilling and interesting lives, and the planet must be allowed to recover from the damage we have inflicted. This is what we should be debating: how best to achieve this? And so the communist tag makes sense. But what about the Tory label? Can you be both? And my answer is that, in a way, yes, you can. Because there are many conservative aspects to my Utopian version of communism - making do with less, discovering new ways of spending time, being creative, enjoying nature, and so on. These all have a conservative flavour, easily confused with the Tory ethos of conservation and preservation. The difference would be that my version is forward-looking and positive, whereas the Tory vision harks back to a happier, bygone age and the hope of recreating it. But then so does mine, to some extent. And so there you have it - the Tory communist explained.
The one thing I know I am not is a “liberal progressive”. These are terms that send shivers down my spine and that formed the basis of Matthew Goodwin’s majestic feature in last weekend’s Sunday Times. How “liberals” have come to be seen as “left-wing”, or “progressive” is a complete mystery. Liberals are, by definition, right-wing libertarians, espousing the virtues of individual rights and freedoms at the expense of society, community and responsibility. You can call me a communist, or even a Tory - but please, never call me a liberal.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT FRANCE
How do they get away with it? The French. How come no one holds them to account? France has suffered humiliation and embarrassment recently over having to postpone King Charles’s official visit because of chaos on the streets. Fair enough. But the country’s shame at the way it treats migrants, refugees and asylum seekers is both shocking and never mentioned. Yet its northern coast is littered with squalid camps, full of tens of thousands of migrants. In the UK, hotel accommodation is offered, with free meals and a tiny amount of pocket money. In France, they are left to fight and rot in the open. But, of course, the UK is the nasty, uncaring, evil one and France the victim. How can this be possible? What status do these migrants have in France? Are they asylum seekers? Refugees? Illegal migrants? Welcome visitors? All we know is that at some point on their journey across the Channel, they magically transform, one and all, into asylum seekers and on arrival they are treated as such. The conditions are not wonderful but they are a million times better than anything on offer in France. So we have to ask why France does not afford them the same courtesy - treating them as asylum seekers and providing food and shelter, as the UK does? If the answer is that the individuals do not claim asylum in France, then the next question is - why not? The answer can only be that they choose to seek refuge in Britain, not France. And this, in a logical world, means that they are no longer refugees or asylum seekers: they are no longer fleeing from danger or persecution, or from anything at all - they are forcing their way into a country of their choice. The libertarian individualists who dominate the public debate and speak loudly and incessantly on their behalf support their right to choose which safe country they decide to settle in, whereas those of a more socially minded bent can see that there are deserving cases being denied the opportunity to reach safety in the UK by the bedlam caused by tens of thousands of undocumented economic migrants hogging all the available admin capacity and accommodation.
IDENTIFYING THE REAL PROBLEM
The Labour Party is quick to accuse the government of incompetence over its handling of the migrant boats problem, claiming that of its several initiatives, none has succeeded but in fact made things worse. This is, of course, true. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Of all the measures planned and proposed, none has been allowed to shift from the starting blocks. As soon as a plan is put forward, Yvette Cooper and her battalion of lawyers crawl all over it, stifling it to death. So the real problem for the government is not how to deal with the migrant boats, but how to stop the libertarian individualist “progressives” from making sure every effort fails.
BIG NEWS - READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Sterling is the best performing major currency so far this year! Fantastic news! The UK can’t be quite as bad as we’re constantly told it is. So read all about this heart-warming positive news - at the bottom of Page 37 of today’s copy of The Times.
BIG NEWS - READ ALL ABOUT IT! PART 2
Yesterday’s early headlines on the BBC radio news bulletins all led with an attack on alleged government plans to halve spending on one aspect of social care. Listeners had no way of assessing its importance as a news story, because the government’s announcement, policy, plans and thinking had never been explained. The first we hear is the backlash. This item gradually slipped down the priority list as it emerged that more spending is still to be allocated and there are other factors at play. But never mind that - the BBC’s policy is to put the boot in first and then ask questions later.
MARCH 14 2023
So the saintly Gary Lineker claims to be speaking up for those without a voice? By this he means economic migrants prepared to pay large sums of money to vicious criminals in search of an easier and more comfortable life in the UK, travelling via several perfectly safe European countries en route. But the truth is that these “victims” have legions of people speaking on their behalf - lawyers, politicians, celebrities, pretty much the entire libertarian globalising middle class, in fact. The fact that they have such an incredibly powerful lobby ranting and plotting on their behalf is a fundamental stimulant to the endless march of migrants making their way through Europe and a prime cause of the tragically life-threatening flow of inflatables across the Channel.
I prefer to speak up for the silenced majority in the UK: the under-privileged and vulnerable “precariat” to be found in the country’s working class communities. These are the people who endure poverty and horribly precarious livelihoods, having been made to compete for jobs alongside east European migrants prepared to work for very little. Low paying terrible conditions have become the norm because EU migrants would still be far better off on low UK wages than they would be at home in their completely incompatible economy. I would speak for the working class people who dared not go on strike because they were told they could be replaced in the blink of an eye by far cheaper workers. Why not speak for the people who were given just one opportunity to express their anger and desperation - in the form of one cross on a ballot paper over Britain’s continued membership of the EU. They expressed their opinion loud and clear - and have been attacked, insulted, mocked, pilloried and damned for it ever since by the likes of Lineker and the unthinking libertarian “celebrities” who monopolise our society’s Twitter-led debate.
Because Twitter itself is merely an echo-chamber of like-minded middle class individualists. A fine example is the ridiculous furore manufactured over Laura Kuenssberg reading out a handful of anti-Lineker Tweets on her Sunday BBC programme. How dare she! Someone asked how many thousands of supportive Tweets she would have had to trawl through to find the few criticising Lineker. And that is precisely the point: the silent and long-suffering majority do not use middle-class Twitter, just as they don’t attend rock festivals to sing “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn”. These are expensive libertarian, middle-class, globaliser pursuits presented as the prevailing orthodoxy. And the Brexit vote showed just how blindly wrong and misleading that is.
You might argue that the voiceless and under-privileged have a chance to express their views on every polling day, and indeed they did in the last general election, voting in their droves for the only candidate even to acknowledge their existence. In the main, however, they face a choice between three or four virtually identical political parties, all explicitly devoted to business-first economic policies and right-wing libertarian, individualistic values. The Labour Party does not even dare to offer support to those now able to strike, thanks to the labour shortage. I would like to credit Brexit with creating this renewed balance in the worker-business relationship, but it has probably more to do with a general realisation among the population during the pandemic of just how pointless and demoralising so many jobs are - and just how satisfying it can be to spend your time as you wish.
It is therefore catastrophic that an institution such as the BBC has sunk, in a craven and cowardly fashion, to giving in to the unthinking and hyper-smug Lineker and his celebrity cronies who have no concerns over where their next meal will come from, whether the BBC fires them or not. Which it should. Football pundits are ten-a-penny and most are as poor as you would expect amateur presenters to be.
MARCH 12 2023
FREE SPEECH FOR LINEKER! DEATH TO JK ROWLING!
Good on you, Gary! Leverage that audience! Delight your followers! But not you, JK. You’re a witch with evil, hateful views and must be cancelled, silenced, threatened with violence and death. So go Gary go and spread you hatred of the government - all the right-wing luvvie libertarians will circle round with their wagons to defend you, even though they haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. But the trouble with you, JK, is that you’re clear: you mount a coherent, intelligent and thought-out argument in the form of a reasoned debate. You throw out the occasional soundbite but you have something positive and meaningful to contribute. So it’s 6-0 to Gary. JK, you could learn so much. Look how Gary does it - he fires off a little soundbite denying there is a problem at all with illegal migration and then says he hates the government - which we all knew anyway. The agonising soreness over losing the Brexit argument looks like becoming permanent among the bitter and twisted.
There are so many issues involved in the Gary Lineker case that it almost defies untangling: there are principles, opinions, policies, guidelines, morals, precedents, BBC competence and plenty more. But let us have a go and start with an easy one. That Lineker broke the BBC guidelines on political bias is not in doubt. He is a TV monster entirely of the BBC’s own making, feted and rewarded at absurd levels to the point where his natural smugness and arrogance clearly make him feel bigger than the corporation itself. Even so, the BBC rules obviously apply to him and he has wantonly disobeyed them.
But, say his apologists, others have done the same. What about Alan Sugar in 2014 endorsing Boris Johnson as a potential Tory leader? Yes, true, Sugar should have been reprimanded. But his association with the BBC is far weaker than Lineker’s and his following smaller. But does this failure to address Sugar’s misdemeanour put the footballer in the clear? Of course, not. Why should it? But the BBC has got itself in the most appalling tangle by pulling up Lineker for churning out precisely the same biased, ignorant and toxic opinions that are spread by almost all of its presenters, comedians and other entertainers. Joe Lycett’s disgraceful introduction to the Commonwealth Games last year was a particularly low point but the Now Show and the News Quiz, for example, have become unlistenable to anyone who refuses to buy into the rightist libertarian individualist cult that has taken over most of broadcasting and the arts. To endorse such hate-fiiled and poisonous views in a comedy show and then feign horror at an identical tweet smacks of insistency at best.
Comedy shows, of course, have always attacked politicians and fed off political satire. Spitting Image was vicious in its assaults on all public figures, and its portrayal of the Queen Mother as a gin-soaked dipsomaniac was especially cruel. But it trained its guns on all parties equally: anyone in the public eye was fair game and Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock were ridiculed in equal measure. This no longer happens. Humour is all one-way - anti-government, or more precisely, anti-Brexit. The working class half of the population that supported Brexit is continually told to feel foolish by the constant barrage of Europhile mockery.
Then we have the knotty problem of free speech. And it is interesting that those prepared to go the barricades in support of Lineker’s right to free speech are among the most outspoken in cancelling, silencing and threatening the likes of JK Rowling, Janice Turner and the raft of scientists who dare to question dubious beliefs on gender identity. I believe in the right to free speech but, like all rights, it cannot be absolute. Every right eventually rubs up against another and has to be curtailed. Our right to free speech is therefore limited: incitement to various hatreds is forbidden, for obvious reasons; we have laws on defamation and libel; the damage done by dangerous and foolish ideologies, such as conspiracy theories, has to be limited; and indeed, today’s cancel culture goes to ludicrous lengths in a bid to curtail our freedoms to say, write, hear and read what we wish. So should Lineker be allowed to say whatever he likes? A headline on a column in The Times yesterday asked why the presenter should not be allowed to speak his mind. But it could equally validly be asked what he should be allowed to lecture on matters about which he knows little and which has no responsibility for dealing with. His offensive tweet first denies that there is a migrant problem at all - flying completely in the face of reality - and then pours hatred and bile on the people tasked with preventing the rapidly growing criminality that is causing death and mayhem on an industrial scale. His ignorance alone is surely grounds enough for demanding that he refrains from such simplistic politicking in future and answers the question as to whether he should be allowed to say anything he chooses.
Social media plays a part, too. We have yet to grasp the depth and breadth of the harm that unfettered social media is causing to societies. Allowing ignorant, biased and hate-filled people unfiltered access to millions of “followers” can have lethal consequences. Even before social media, “influencers”, such as religious cult leaders, were able to manipulate the thinking of others - even up to the point of mass suicides. But they had to work so hard to achieve such control that incidences were rare. Today, anyone in the public eye can spread their venom with a few clicks on a keypad. Andrew Tate is a prime example. Free speech for Tate, anyone? Thirty years ago, Gary Lineker would not have been able to spread his views via an unchallengeable medium: the biases of show business personalities and sports people were largely unknown. I recall learning that Cilla Black was a Tory and feeling quite shocked, not just that she could be a Tory but that this was something I now knew. And this wasn’t a view she was able just to announce in a few words, she had to argue her case and justify her stance. Twitter sweeps away all these checks and balances, allowing anyone to say anything, no matter how vicious or stupid. She was prepared to enter the political fray and face the opposition. Lineker hasn’t given anyone this opportunity: he’s poured out his idiotic, half-baked little “truths” and run away: no debate, no reasoned argument, not even any positive proposals for solving a problem that the world can see - but that he denies even exists. This is simply not good enough. You want to be a politician? Then enter the debate and open up your ideas and way of thinking to scrutiny.
This, however, Lineker cannot do, as his “thinking”, such as it is, falls apart at the first hurdle. “There is no problem,” he says. Er…wrong. “I hate the government - they’re talking like Nazis,” he says. Again, idiotic, wrong and offensive. What would happen if such hate speech led to an attack on the home secretary or other government minister? Would Lineker tweet that they got what they deserved? In the post Jo Cox era, temperate, intelligent and informed political debate is essential. The ill-informed Lineker must be made to understand this.
As with all of those pouring their hatred on to the government as it seeks to tackle to people smuggling rackets, Lineker has nothing positive to offer. He and other rose-tinted right-wing libertarians resort to that convenient three-word slogan “safe legal routes” for migration. Sounds marvellous. But what does this utterly vacuous phrase actually mean? How would these “legal routes” work? To whom would they apply? Would anyone unhappy at home in Bangladesh, Nigeria or Albania be able to fill in a form and apply to live in Britain? Where would they do this? How many would the UK be prepared to provide a home for? How many would apply? An open system such as this would invite applications from tens, possibly hundreds of millions of people. There is no bureaucracy in the world that could cope with this. Which is why the current safe legal routes operate as they do, via the United Nations. The UNHCR identifies real refugees who are in the most dire need - as opposed to the millions and millions of potential economic migrants - and countries, including the UK, help them. If the mythical gay teenage African, persecuted at home, fell into the category of the world’s most vulnerable and endangered people, then he would have a safe route to Britain, or many other compassionate countries.
Were the UK government to advocate sending gunboats into the Channel to turn back the inflatables, or sink them, then public opinion would be enough to prevent it happening. But ministers’ measured and reasonable attempts to close down an inhumane trade that risks people’s lives should be debated intelligently, not summarily trashed by “influencers”. I am no fan of Suella Braverman, but I found it almost impossible to disagree with the detailed and measured case she made for the government’s proposals in a radio interview and in Parliament this week. Anyone prepared to listen patiently to the debate will also have heard sensible commentators this week pointing out that the current set of international laws and rights declarations were drawn up in a different era and today appear hopelessly inappropriate, dysfunctional and prone to making a bad situation far far worse. It is shameful of those who have no solutions to offer to stand in the way of the only non-violent means of resolving the issue - the “activist blob” of individuals who identify as leftists but in fact are firmly in the right-wing, libertarian, individualist tradition. Their abuse of the legal system - using delaying tactics and endless spurious appeals - has already resulted in criminals properly prepared for deportation being freed to commit further horrific crimes.
And then there is France, the country that allows migrants to wander across to the Channel coast, the country that refuses to provide or care for them, leaving them to fester in temporary camps. Again, shame on the French MEP who told the Today programme this week that these people are “human beings”, when France treats them like animals to be herded across to the UK as quickly as possible. This is how France deals with its migrant crisis. It takes the UK’s money and gives the migrant boats a helpful little push in our direction, occasionally sticking a knife in one or two to justify demanding more millions from British taxpayers. But then, what interest does France have in stopping the crossings?
These are all issues that demand proper debate, not a hate-filled little tweet from someone I found to be completely different from his public image when I spent an afternoon with him several years ago. I had expected a fun interview, with banter and self-deprecation and a two-way confrontation. Instead, I found a smug, self-obsessed and arrogant ex-footballer. It surprised me then how and why the BBC wanted or needed to create such a deity; it surprises me even more now.
TODAY EVEN POLITICISES THE DEATH OF TOPOL
The sad death of Topol, the actor known for all time for his role in Fiddler on the Roof, was reported on the BBC’s Today Programme last week. Nick Robinson said he had seen the musical and the programme played part of the soundtrack. And as the lengthy item was drawing to a close, Robinson suggested we should all watch “Fiddler” again, to absorb its message on refugees. I wondered why the obituary had dragged on for so long.
FEBRUARY 22 2023
Much has been written about the seemingly reactionary views of Lee Anderson, the new Tory party deputy chairman. Why on earth, goes the cry, did Rishi Sunak, prime minister, appoint a man who advocates the return of the death penalty? But Anderson’s journey from deep-rooted, left-wing labour politics is far more interesting and important than his current opinions. Because the path he has taken is extremely well trod and illustrates beautifully how and why the Labour Party’s “red wall” turned blue.
Many commentators assume this colour shift took place in 2019, sparked by Boris Johnson’s charisma, appeal to the working class and his determination to bring an end to the appalling stalemate over the implementation of Brexit. But the first hints of redness in the neglected working class areas of northern England could be detected much earlier. While Gordon Brown was fuelling the cheap money fires then raging around the world and preparing to crash the blinkered western economies, swathes of workers were experiencing competition for their jobs and livelihoods from east Europeans now free to move to the UK. From 2005 onwards, millions arrived to enjoy the higher wages on offer. Unfortunately, the new workers were prepared to work for far less, as even reduced UK pay rates were still well above those on offer at home.
Inevitably, wages and conditions were undermined. And those in sectors such as the trades, hospitality or lesser skilled jobs all noticed. The seeds of the UK’s exit from the EU had been sown. New Labour, an avowedly pro-business party at the time, was little inclined to intervene, while old Labour catastrophically failed to represent this constituency. Labour’s heartlands in the country’s industrial areas were abandoned and even left-leaning Jeremy Corbyn did nothing during his bizarre tenure, perhaps held hostage by the party’s trendy Islington brigades, so passionately pro-EU, passionately pro free movement, passionately pro cheap flat whites. By the time this century moved into its teens, those “red wall” areas knew full well that Labour would not protect them from the expansion of the UK’s labour market to the Russian border. Suddenly unrepresented, they were searching for a saviour; someone who understood their plight and was prepared to do something about it.
Into this melee walked the naïve David Cameron, promising a referendum on the UK’s EU membership. The neglected north saw its chance: vote Brexit. With Corbyn lacking the sense to tune into his natural supporters’ hopes and fears and backing Remain, and half the parliamentary Tory Party using every trick in the book to frustrate the implementation of Brexit, where could those old Labour supporters turn? The only mainstream politicians representing their interests were the Tory Brexiteers, culminating in Johnson’s landslide in 2019.
And who had followed this precise same route? Lee Anderson. There will be those who claim that ageing has changed his views. And there may be some truth in this. But Anderson, and millions more like him, are now reluctant Tory supporters because of the failure of Labour; they have nowhere else to go.
The next election is likely to land the country with a Labour government under the leadership of Keir Starmer, an archetypal pro-EU Islington brigade politician, passionately pro free movement, passionately pro cheap flat whites. In London, Labour already has Sadiq Khan, the preening little mayor openly campaigning for a return to the EU free market, with all the alleged business benefits that resuming free movement would bring! By what he has said and done in the past, we must assume that Starmer believes this, too. He might say that Brexit is done and we must move on – but who should trust him? Certainly not the millions of Lee Andersons. And certainly not me.
THE ROTTEN UNIVERSITY BUSINESS
Universities are supposed to be educating the country’s young, making them job-ready, armed with high literacy and numeracy skills, creative talents and expertise in every aspect of science and technology. But they are not. These goals have slipped way down their list of priorities. Top of that list is business success and making money. Educating local youngsters does not tick that box – but educating the rest of the world does. UK institutions are now awash with lucrative foreign students, some barely able to speak English (I speak from personal “lived experience”!) This is the legacy of Tony Blair’s idiotic “education education education” mantra.
DECEMBER 11 2022
What a lovely and thoughtful column in yesterday's Sunday Times by Matthew Syed. All he did was point out that grief, sadness and a host of other "negative" feelings are not mental health issues, they are part of being human, of caring, of loving. They are the inevitable and necessary flip-sides of joy and happiness, passion and comfort. He quotes CS Lewis: “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.” It is, indeed, the deal.
RISHI NOW GETTING THINGS WRONG
The new prime minister cannot rely on being "nice", "sensible" and a "safe pair of hands" for much longer. Real issues and challenges need addressing urgently if Rishi Sunak is not to be seen as weak and his near identical twin, Keir Starmer, as the sensible strong one. The easiest and quickest win for the government would be to settle the public sector strikes, especially those blighting the health service.
Nurses deserve to be paid more – a lot more. They are now very poorly rewarded and appallingly undervalued, given the priceless nature of the work they perform. They are also overworked because a succession of governments running down the profession has left it threadbare and unattractive. A flight to the relatively less badly paid private sector and to other more lucrative and easier occupations is an obvious consequence. I have yet to read a story complaining of a shortage of nurses in the private sector. Indeed, a friend challenged me on Saturday afternoon when I said a group of us retired folk should buy one of the many small abandoned villages in Spain that were written about in The Times that day, and hire a couple of nurses to see us through our dotage. He said that would be fine if we could find any nurses, because there aren't any. I replied that if the pay was right, there would be nurses.
Public sector workers should not need to strike for a fair wage increase. The pay review body should recognise their value and importance and make recommendations accordingly: suggesting that an average 2 per cent rise is sufficient, as is reported, when private sector pay is going up by a headline average of 6 or 7 per cent, is bound to spark anger. It is then incendiary and disingenuous of ministers to refuse to speak to nurses' union leaders on the grounds that the employer is the NHS: everyone knows the government holds the purse strings – it says as much every day and makes it the reason for limiting wage increases.
The right way forward for Rishi is to accept these basic truths and agree a medium to long term strategy with providers of essential public services, such as nurses and ambulance crews, that makes these professions attractive and sought-after again. Sit down with the workers, agree a six or seven year package that will increase pay by at least a third in real terms and make the working life easier, more efficient and more fulfilling, and you come away looking strong and decisive, give nurses and the like a better future, and all without breaking the bank next year. And Rishi: do it now, because if you don't, Keir will propose it and you'll look a dithering fool.
DECEMBER 11 2022
England are out of the disgraced world cup – hoorah! And it was all down to Harry Kane – a player I said should have been sidelined before a ball was kicked (see November 21, below). I did not watch any of the qualifying games, and I've seen none of the tournament matches, and my only concern is that all of the West Ham players involved return uninjured. Declan Rice seems to be OK but there have been scares around Morocco's Nayef Aguerd, a top-class defender who has yet to start a Premiership game for the Hammers since they bought him in the summer, thanks to injury.
So this season is looking a write-off for my team. And what a horrible, messy, disrupted season it is, thanks to the disgusting Fifa event. Pity the poor lower leagues, who have battled on while no one is really watching, all eyes on the Middle East. To add to the list of reasons the world cup should never have been awarded to a country with no infrastructure and a permanent population the size of Greater Manchester is the fact that despite the hundreds of workers' deaths, the country could still only provide eight stadiums, when 12 were needed. This has resulted in poor pitches and the environmentally dubious growing of huge areas of spare grass for repairs or complete replacement.
A friend said last night that we should not exclude the Middle East or an Arab country from hosting a world cup, and I agree, even though the heat in the Gulf area means football will never be huge and always impractical. But North Africa would surely be a better choice – Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt all have credible teams, facilities and populations. Saudi Arabia might be hard to stomach – but we do send them lots of weapons – and Iran would be controversial. But at least they all have more than one city.
SUSSEX, GET THEE TO CALIFORNIA – AND SHUT UP
You have to feel sorry for poor Harry Markle. He did endure a horrible childhood, including the ghastly and sudden death of his much-loved mother. He has problems and issues that it would be difficult for any family to contend with, let alone one in the public eye. His brother William seems to have come to some sort of peace and has found a stable but vibrant and attractive partner to provide comfort and support. Harry has chosen an airhead. Self-obsessed, narcissistic, parasitic and no use to anyone, Meghan is a disaster for Harry; she is the precise opposite of what he needs. The Netflix series, which I suspect we will have to suffer watching out of journalistic curiosity, provides all the proof anyone needs that this is a vicious, bullying woman who, coming from a broken family, is hell-bent on destroying another. She is a spoilt brat who, unable to have her own way in the UK, ran back "home" and began lashing out. Hypocritical, too: if the royal; family is so evil, then renounce all titles and have done with it. This would, at least, remove one extra aggravating factor from your absurd claims.
It's easy to say that we should ignore the Sussexes and their childish ravings, but that would be to ignore the damage they are doing to the reputation of Britain. It's easy to hurl unfounded allegations of racism but far harder to clean away the muddy smears that will inevitably stick in the minds of the unthinking, ignorant and gullible. Unfortunately, there are many who fall into this category around the world, with plenty in decision-making positions at all levels. And so if that grant you were hoping for from America or elsewhere is cancelled because of the UK's damaged reputation, you know where the blame lies.
HUSSEY VERSUS FULANI
We can also feel sorry for poor Ngozi Fulani, the black British charity boss who was asked repeatedly by 83-year-old Lady Susan Hussey, former Queen's lady-in-waiting, where she was from. We know that black people have suffered discrimination and that Britain contains plenty of unpleasant people happy to insult anyone of colour. We also know that the UK is one of the most racially tolerant countries in the world and that it tries its hardest to be better. When black people are deliberately insulted, it is right that the offence should be called out and dealt with; when the offence taken is a deliberate act in itself, then we are in a different realm.
I am not at all surprised that Fulani received much online abuse for her behaviour following the most minor of contretemps with Lady Hussey. She purposefully destroyed the life and reputation of an otherwise blameless elderly woman for not sticking to the letter of the updated rule book concerning acceptable small talk. It was a nasty, unnecessary thing to do – more the behaviour of a six-year-old tell-tale than a mature, intelligent grown up equipped to deal with such a triviality on the spot. She could easily have put Lady Hussey in her place and helped her to understand why her persistent questioning was rude and moved on. Her subsequent absurdly exaggerated "pain" made her look even more phoney and vicious, provoking an understandable reaction.
Yes, Lady Hussey was wrong and should have known better in her position. And her timing was catastrophic – coinciding perfectly with the ludicrous wailing from California that the royal family is institutionally racist. If that is indeed the case, then virtually every family in the UK is equally racist: I would not put it past my 88-year-old mother, or other ageing family members, to come out with something similarly embarrassing. They do occasionally. And we correct them. And in that way society is a little improved with every incident. No need to wreck anyone's life or manufacture a bogus international incident that damages and seeks to polarise us all.
NOVEMBER 23 2022
All hail Keir Starmer. Credit where it is due. He appears to have seen the light! The Labour Party leader's address to the Confederation of British Industry yesterday said precisely what Labour leaders should have been saying for the past 20 years: undermining jobs and the labour force by feeding off a constantly gushing supply of cheap imported workers is neither acceptable nor sustainable. For the past 20 years or more, British business has used foreign workers to degrade, and in many cases destroy, the pay, conditions and status of so many lines of work. There is nothing intrinsically awful about working in a factory, an abattoir, a field picking crops, driving a delivery van, or serving in a cafe or bar – most of us have experience of one or all of those. I have experienced them all at various times. What is awful is the way people have come to be treated when performing these tasks. We need to learn to separate the nature of the task from the treatment meted out to those expected to carry it out: they are very different things, but easily confused.
What access to cheap migrant labour has achieved is a catastrophic demolition of the status, enjoyment, pay, conditions and social structures surrounding these roles. Working on the land was once a valuable social activity with an annual calendar built to accommodate its seasonal demands; it still could be. But the factory farms that import virtual slave labour – passports surrendered, piece-work pay, outrageous hours, caravan living, communal facilities, etc – have made working on the land unrealistic for native workers. Similarly, our seemingly endless need for more nurses and staff in all forms of social care results not from a shortage of youngsters wishing to pursue this fulfilling and once highly desirable career but from the miserable rates of pay and high-handed and contemptuous treatment they have to face – all enabled by a ready supply of migrant workers prepared to endure such conditions because, incredibly, they are still better than they can find at home.
This mismatch between the value and importance of the job and the pay and conditions attached to it has been festering for so long that the gap between where we are and where we should be, in terms of rewarding people working in essential industries, is now huge and cannot be rectified in a short time without causing even more damage. So while it is welcome that Starmer has at last understood what a few of us have been saying for years, his measure as a decent leader will only be seen when we discover how he plans to use this new-found insight. And let us not forget that cheap migrant labour swung the vote on Brexit: if the likes of Starmer had undergone such a magical conversion before the country's working environment sank into such a sorry state, and they had forced the EU to take such complaints seriously, then Brexit might never have been needed.
What is required now is a mature and intelligent debate about how we bridge the enormous gap between essential work and the way those jobs are valued. The rail unions, nurses, civil servant and more, along with TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady, who I have met several times and like and respect, need to recognise that closing the chasm between important jobs and the rewards attached to them is a long-term project, but one that must transcend party politics and will continue unabated until local workers are lured from their inactivity and the currently repugnant occupations are attracting queues of applicants. Starmer could be leading this mission: it has taken a generation and more to wreck these jobs; it will take a generation to restore them. But setting out a clear path now, with a schedule of significant changes, should work to pacify the understandably hungry unions and show unhappy workers that things really can only get better.
NOVEMBER 21 2022
GENERATION LAUGHING STOCK
"Nearly half of the young believe Britain is steeped in racism", says a horrifying headline in The Times today. Sadly, it is all too believable, given the nonsense they are exposed to: education used to be about educating pupils; today it is about indoctrinating them into some absurd cult of self-flagellation or other. While the fascist bullies of the trans lobby assure every vulnerable and confused youngster that their problems are caused entirely by being the wrong gender, the "critical race" theorists tell UK children that their country is built upon, and remains riddled with, racism – "structurally racist". No one needs to deny that things were different and unsavoury in the past. Of course they were, and we need to study this history and learn from it. Which this country has been exceptionally good at.
There are still racist elements and always will be. But any "survey" that seeks to measure attitudes of young people should also challenge them. After the loaded question "How racist do you think the UK is?", the questionnaire must then ask "Now please name three countries that are LESS racist than the UK". Only then does the "racism" accusation gain any meaning at all, especially when the youngsters can't name any less racist countries – because there aren't any. A mixture of "critical race theory" and dumb surveys are making our younger generations look a complete laughing stock.
KENNEDY LAUGHING STOCK
As if it wasn't enough of a travesty that the current Robert F Kennedy insults his assassinated namesake father, another nutty Kennedy is planning to give an award to the most away-with-the-fairies couple on the planet. RFK, the bonkers vaccine conspiracy theorist, is a terrific laughing stock in his own right, but Kerry Kennedy, another child of the former US attorney-general Robert F Kennedy who was killed in 1968, is threatening to outdo him. She calls herself a lawyer and human rights activist and believes that the dimwit duo, Meghan and Harry Markle, are "heroic" for challenging the "structural racism" that infects the British royal family.
Ignoring the fact that Meghan was given a huge and super-warm welcome by both the royal family and the UK public before she threw away all the goodwill in a tantrum, KK witters on about the wonderful work the fruitcakes have achieved. It beggars belief that such stupidity can be let loose in any society, let alone one that is supposed to have an education system designed to eradicate such ignorance and foolishness. The Markles are a slick money-making machine and little else: their vacuity and meaninglessness do not even register on any scale known in the real world and to award them anything merely encourages their madness. It is made all the worse by the fact that they hold themselves up as role models to the young, giving all intelligent people a duty to deny them credibility. Which makes handing them an award monstrously irresponsible.
FOOTBALL'S LAUGHING STOCK
Beer will be allowed – and now it's banned! Hahahahaha! We'll wear a rainbow armband. Oh no we won't! Hahahahahaha! From the moment the corrupt voting was completed and the announcement made that Qatar would stage the 2022 Men's World Cup, I decided to have nothing to do with it. I studiously ignored the qualifying games and have taken no interest in Fifa-organised events since that day. Qatar is a vile little country, but one that is keeping our country warm with its gas exports: we are under the thumb of a Qatari government, or family, ruling over a population that is roughly the same size as Greater Manchester's. The French are possibly even more in hock, as there had clearly been something underhand and ugly going on during the lobbying period before the vote – and some very lucrative deals heading France's way shortly afterwards, we understand. So no one is going to speak truth to this ghastly, over-heated den of bigotry, backwardness and religion.
In that light, I am delighted the past few days have proved so humiliating for Fifa and several of the countries and players involved: it is an event that should never have been allowed to take place and England's players should never have boarded the flight. It was always obvious this would be an odious and awkward shambles, and so it is proving to be.
It has to be admitted that other events have been held in disreputable countries and we should also remember that when England won the World Cup in 1966 at Wembley, homosexuality was illegal in the UK. But we have moved on, learned and redeemed ourselves. Any country now refusing to recognise women's rights, gay rights and workers' rights has no excuse. Some argue that China and Russia are as disreputable as Qatar and indeed they are, today. But at the time they were awarded Olympics and World Cups, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope that they wished to join the global community, which made their applications acceptable. Sadly, this hope later faded. And at least these were appropriate countries in terms of the sports being played: China and Russia are both athletics superpowers and have had strong national football teams; they have infrastructure, an interested population, a benign climate. Qatar has none of these plus, in many ways, its record is even worse than China's and, until recently, Russia's.
One means of establishing whether a country is fit to host a significant men's tournament is to insist it hosts the women's version, too. Would Qatar have passed this simple test?
Meanwhile, on the footballing front, every England world cup squad contains a player that has to be discarded for the good of the team. In 1966 it was the unlucky Jimmy Greaves, who lost his place through injury to Geoff Hurst and never regained it. More recently it was Wayne Rooney – way past his best but playing for a manager who insisted on building a team around him. Failure was inevitable, predictable – and incredibly accuratelypredicted (see my Tweet of June 19 2014!). This time, it's Harry Kane. England's squad is packed with exciting young players who make him look a relic from another age. Sorry Harry, you need to take one for the team, or England's stay in the hell-hole of Qatar will be short-lived.
SUNDAY TIMES LAUGHING STOCK
The UK is to seek a Swiss-style relationship with the EU, screams yesterday's Sunday Times splash headline. The UK is NOT to seek a Swiss-style relationship with the EU, says The Times this morning. I said yesterday when I saw that headline that it would not stand. The Sunday Times' record on getting big political movements right is abysmal and close to zero and so it was not a difficult call to make. But as a former editor, it does trouble me that no one at The Sunday Times saw fit to come to the same conclusion: its story was based on little more than a vague rumour, no doubt planted by a Remoaner Tory insider. Why was it not checked? Why were the actual decision-makers not asked for a response? The Sunday Times, once again, makes itself look a laughing stock.
TROUBLED AGAIN BY SLOPPY JOURNALISM
The Times is not alone in allowing incorrect and prejudicial assumptions to become facts in its retelling of familiar stories – but it is the paper I read and so the one I notice. A prime example from this morning's edition: "Awaab's parents complained repeatedly about the state of their flat in the three years before his death...but were ignored." This is plainly wrong, even according to The Times' own highly slapdash analysis that ran last week. The family was not ignored. Several agencies responded until the family instructed a solicitor, at which point action is, to all intents and purposes, frozen. This is a case of lazy, casual shorthand that can, when so wrong, prove so misleading.
In its big feature on this tragic death a couple of days ago, there were many many unasked questions and contradictions and had I been in charge of the newsdesk that night, I would have thrown the story back to have it explained properly. I have not seen in any medium any explanation of what actions the family members themselves took to protect their child from the mould; they appear to bear no responsibility whatsoever for his falling ill. Similarly, there has been no reporting of how the flat fell into such a sorry state when presumably – we don't know, because it doesn't appear to be an issue to anyone – it was in a reasonable state when the family first moved in. All we know is that they held someone else entirely responsible for the condition of the place in which they were living and complained repeatedly. It seems they were expected to do no more. I cannot help but think that the pendulum of correctness has swung beyond the sensible equilibrium. I suspect that 30 or 40 years ago, this terrible story would have been presented more as "Migrant family do nothing as mould kills their baby son". This would have been equally one-sided and racist. But to ignore their role entirely is just as blinkered.
It has to be said, in mitigation, that complaining does seem to be a sufficient response to any difficulty. The Times listed a few appalling cases of late ambulance arrivals, some of many hours and one of a 19-hour wait at a care home! Again, there was no suggestion that any of the complainants, on finding the ambulance was not arriving, should have to take any action of their own. And as for a care home waiting 19 hours for an ambulance! Was there really no other means of transporting a patient to hospital – or was it really not that serious? We don't know, because the sloppy journalism only tells us part of the story.
AND TROUBLED BY LAZY BUSINESSES
I am also troubled by lazy businesses. "Labour shortages hold Britain back, CBI to tell Sunak" reads the headline. And I am sure businesses do really believe it to be the case. But the alleged and mysterious five million or so inactive workers in the UK do not seem to count as a resource to be nurtured. It is far easier for lazy businesses to call for imported cheap labour than to address the issues of poor pay, conditions and training that have driven so many to reject the world of work in the past two years. Billions of pounds have been removed from pension funds to enable individuals to liberate themselves from the joyless drudgery of so many workplaces and to enjoy the only lives they will have. They have made a choice. It might not be an economically rational one but, for the time being at least, it is satisfying them.
Henry Ford faced a similar problem in the early 20th century, when he realised that workers in his factory in Detroit found conditions so awful they kept leaving, creating an enormous and swift turnover of labour. His response: double the pay and shorten the shifts. The $5 a day reward for workers saw people migrating across the country to seek work with Ford. This is how to solve the problems of a so-called labour shortage: there is no "shortage", just a strong dislike of many employers. Change the pay and conditions, train them, and they will come. There are supposed to be five million waiting to be lured back. The lazy way is to argue for cheap imports.
No doubt Remoaners will argue that businesses are suffering because of Brexit and the flight of so many EU nationals back to eastern Europe. Even some Brexit-supporting businesses are calling for more imported labour. But the UK must resist. Nigel Farage and I both argued in favour of Brexit – but businesses taking the Farage line on EU membership wanted freedom for themselves; I wanted worker power. Workers now have the power to choose whether they work or not, or whether to strike or not. So I have partly achieved what I was after from Brexit – and businesses don't seem to like it.
NOVEMBER 11 2022
HANCOCK UNWISE TO SEEK ANOTHER HALF HOUR OF FAME
Matt Hancock is suffering now. In return for a £400,000 pay cheque (reportedly), he's happy to suffer the indignity of appearing on that ghastly ITV "Get Me Out Of Here" game show. But I fear his worst suffering, beyond being covered in slime and insects, will be the gratuitous and unfair depiction of his time as health secretary during the worst global health crisis in living memory. During the pandemic, I heard him being interviewed over and over again by openly hostile and aggressive BBC Radio 4 Today presenters seeking to undermine his and the government's efforts in balancing the saving of lives and their ways of life. And there was hardly a sentence he uttered that I could take issue with. He steered a course that led to the UK leading the world out of lockdowns along with a tragic, but inevitable, Covid-19 death toll. Just glance at the night map of Europe and you will instantly see where the Covid deaths would occur: they are all lit up like beacons and were obviously where the coronavirus would strike hardest.
Admittedly, there were few other options - politicians, scientists and other "experts" offered opinions that covered the entire spectrum, from "no lockdowns" to "total lockdowns" and so a central path was always the only realistic way. Some things, with hindsight, could have been done sooner, or later, or slightly differently but, at the time, I could not see any rational alternative to what Hancock was telling us we must do. He spoke perfect sense, day after day, under the severest pressure and the severest assault.
Yet all that the Brexit-hating commentators now seem able to remember about his tenure was that a few contracts for providing PPE were awarded to a few unlikely businesses - completely ignoring the fact that the protective equipment shortage was short-lived, thanks to the government's "throw everything at it" approach. A few misfiring deals was a small price to pay for fixing a serious problem quickly. The whole pandemic was a case of learning fast and on the hoof, so of course not everything was perfect. But I did not hear a single credible counter-suggestion from any of his opponents.
Sadly, he is now coming across as a bit of a jerk on the telly. I watched a few moments of the jungle nonsense last night and he clearly had no clue as to the lyrics of "Sweet Caroline", yet insisted on trying to sing along, embarrassingly. And allowing the understandable love affair that toppled him from office to be exposed by cameras in the office was similarly embarrassing. If I was Hancock, I would seek to substantiate my "as good as it could have been" record in fighting Covid, rather than play the fool on a celebrity game show and make himself an easy target for those who simply hate him and will never see any good in him, nor allow him an iota of credit for anything that worked.
FOLKS, YOU ARE NO SUFFRAGETTES
The suffragettes of the early 20th century had a simple, clear and easily deliverable goal: votes for women. Their campaign was designed not to hurt others, not entirely successfully, but mainly so. They disrupted meetings, and chose the targets of their more militant actions carefully, smashing windows of businesses and the wealthy, burning pavilions, churches, golf courses, second homes, all aimed at avoiding pain for the majority of the people. They did use bombs but not to injure. If there were physical victims, they were the suffragettes themselves - those who went on hunger strike in prison or who risked their lives disrupting horse races. Some supporters baulked at this escalation and it is a little acknowledged truth that there were women's groups opposed to the suffragettes: they were far from universally supported, despite the obvious rectitude of their cause. But they eventually prevailed, not entirely because of their own actions, but because of the enormous contribution women made to the war effort, which simply could not be ignored. It was a combined effort.
Similarly, anti-Vietnam War protesters demanded a straightforward change of policy; an easy, binary decision. Again, the decision fell their way but not entirely because of their protests: the US was being out-smarted in Asia and was ready to withdraw. And the pro-war policy could easily be switched to no-war, with a little humiliation and a tiny whiff of contrition.
But phasing out oil and gas is already happening in the UK, with the country one of the leading nations in reducing emissions. It is a vastly complex manoeuvre to undo and rebuild centuries of reliance on fossil fuels without causing economic and social strife on a scale that would threaten humanity anyway. It is impossible to correct an entire eco-system by making a simple binary decision. It is also the case that there is very little opposing argument to the case put forward by Just Stop Oil protesters - not even from government, or at least Boris Johnson's government. We can't be so sure about the current Sunak regime.
It is an infuriating stand-off because the devil lies in the detail - over how far and how fast we move away from oil and gas; how we balance environmental considerations against the need to build alternative sources of energy; how we keep people warm in the short term. Of course, the Just Stop Oil protesters are right, despite the vacuousness of their slogan. The authorities absolutely should not be issuing gas and oil exploration licences: this is not the future. And they absolutely should be promoting solar, wind and water power generation, offshore and onshore - everywhere. I believe every town and village in the country should have its own wind and solar farm - and tidal barrage, if by the coast and it's practical. We should care less what they look like and care more about the saving of life and the planet. I said in my book that with humanity having reached the limits of consumption of the Earth's resources, its challenge now is to find ways of living well by consuming less: not so hard to imagine for those over a certain age, who grew up with far far less.
But how to get this message across? How to win hearts and minds? Surely not by blocking the paths of ambulances, threatening the lives of critical patients; not by preventing a man from attending his father's funeral; not by forcing innocent individuals who might well be fervent supporters of the cause to miss and cancel appointments and meetings. And to sit burning fuel on the M25. These protesters are no suffragettes: they could not care less who they hurt and damage; their arrogant sense of righteousness in their own actions leads them to damage their own cause. The suffragettes would have been ashamed and embarrassed if their members had behaved so thoughtlessly and recklessly in hurting others. The hard but right way to make their point would be to go on hunger strike - and only agree to eat again when the government concedes there will be no more oil and gas licences issued in the North Sea. I would fully support that. But I cannot support the harm and damage to innocent people being caused by doing things the easy way.
NOVEMBER 7 2022
It might fit your narrative, but a lie can never be turned into the truth. Well, perhaps "lie" is a strong word to use regarding journalistic incompetence, but when a known falsehood is repeated with the aim of establishing a case, then it runs pretty close. Here are two quick and recent examples: on the BBC TV news last night, the climate correspondent, seeking to hammer home the urgency for action on global warming – which hardly needs his help in any case – referred to "one third" of Pakistan being under water due to climate-change induced flooding. My former FT colleague Tim Harford hosts a BBC radio programme devoted to debunking nonsensical statistics and a short while ago reported that claims of one third of Pakistan being flooded were incorrect: one third of the country's regions or states were affected, but a far smaller proportion of the country was actually flooded. To repeat such an obviously absurd statistic that has been exposed and explained in detail by your own organisation is sloppy at best.
Equally culpable was The Times on Saturday which, in a story about pensions, referred to the Bank of England spending £65bn on buying gilts to avert a bonds crisis. An easy mistake to make at the time, as everyone, including the BBC's holy Today programme, was referring to this fictional £65bn "loss". But since presenter Nick Robinson's grudging mea culpa in admitting the cost was actually more like £1.5bn, no one should be making this mistake again. But no, there it was – £65bn. And with no explanation that the Bank had only "pledged" to spend "up to £65bn" on buying gilts – nor that this was the Bank buying back its own debt, its own IOUs!
Pensions themselves also seem to be a huge mystery to most "experts", let alone us punters. But that doesn't stop them dishing out advice. Katherine Denham, The Times' personal finance "Troubleshooter", recently advised someone seeking to maximise their state pension that they would need 35 years of fully subscribed national insurance payments to achieve the full pension. And that £4,000 spent on plugging gaps now would be recouped in a couple of years. It sounds simple and a no-brainer: dig into those savings and get your money back in no time – after that, it's all "profit". The problem, however, is that this is dangerously wrong and misleading.
First, it only works if the individual has never been contracted out of Serps (state earnings related pension scheme), which most people will have been on becoming members of a company scheme. This pushes up the required number of qualifying years well into the 40s for those who spent long periods contracted out. I will need 47 years, for example. Second, anyone with a decent occupational pension or other income could be in, or be pushed into, a higher tax band, meaning that the annual net benefit of raising your gross state pension by £2,000 a year from the guaranteed minimum to the maximum will be £1,200, as 40 per cent of your increased income could go in tax. Assuming a state pension of £10,000, the pensioner would, in effect, receive £6,000 after tax. The minimum pension of, say £8,000, might provide £4,800 after tax – a difference of £1,200, which would require several more years for the lump sum national insurance payment to be recouped. This is a highly complex and technical subject which "troubleshooters" try to simplify, including the over-excitable and not-always-rightMartin Lewis. The government website does provide a snapshot of where each person stands, but it is inevitably confusing and almost impossible to work out what to pay without individual personal advice. The "experts" should know better than to provide misleading advice that could result in individuals spending large sums for far less benefit than they were led to expect.
NOVEMBER 3 2022
A deep-seated difficulty with the migrant debate is that each side is talking about different things. Those desperate to keep the migrants coming and to roll out the red carpet for them see them all as refugees, escaping hardship and deserving of help. Those who see the damage being done to communities and the drain on resources tend to see them all as illegal migrants who have willingly participated in the vile people-trafficking industry now established in France and therefore undeserving of help. While there might well be some genuine refugees among those crossing the Channel, all the evidence presented to us (by a government-hating media, no less) suggests the latter view is the more accurate. A clearer definition of terms would lead to a more informed debate.
NOT JUST BIASED – BUT USELESS, TOO
Amol Rajan. BBC Today programme news presenter. Utterly useless. This morning, he was interviewing a man about the Albanian "invasion" of Kent, and was happy to let the interviewee heap the blame on the UK government. The interviewee said there were actions Britain could take. Rajan then posed another question-cum-statement, with the response again concluding with the interviewee claiming there was much the UK could do to stem the flow of migrants. On neither occasion did Rajan think to ask what those actions might be. A vital skill of a real journalist is to listen to the interviewee and interact with them, responding to their statements. But Rajan is so full of himself, he can't do this. And so the listeners were left wondering what on earth it is that Britain can do to resolve this nightmare. Whether the interviewee had genuinely helpful ideas or was just ranting, we will now never know.
NOVEMBER 2 2022
First, the astonishing and appalling discovery that Maria Caulfield, the new minister for women, is a raving anti-abortionist. How can this appointment have ever been made? As if her intolerance of abortion is not enough, she had the temerity to argue that the gangs outside abortion clinics and hospitals might contain individuals seeking to comfort those attending appointments and should therefore be allowed to continue harassing women. She cannot possibly believe this idiocy and is therefore a liar, and clearly unfit to be a minister of any sort, especially for women.
WHAT IS IT, IF NOT AN INVASION?
I have no problem with home secretary Suella Braverman using the word "invasion" to describe the invasion of our shores by illegal and unwanted migrants seeking to take advantage of the UK's generosity, kindness and laxity. Their actions comprise the very definition of an invasion, just as in "pitch invasion" or "invasion of privacy" – "an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity" or "an unwelcome intrusion into another's domain". It describes it precisely.
As I say in my book, the opponents of all measures aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from France are responsible for the current discomfort experienced at some of the UK's reception centres. These are establishments that the UK should not need and certainly does not want: they are forced upon us by economic migrants with enough money to participate in the cycle of violent organised crime that gives them their best chance of crossing the Channel and entering Britain illegally. To say the welcome is insufficiently luxurious is akin to criticising a householder for having a paltry collection of valuables for a burglar to steal and insisting they build an extension to accommodate more burglary. At least on British soil they are safe from the bombing, gunfire, persecution and torture they were presumably exposed to....in France.
For this is indeed a French problem. France's uncontrolled borders cause huge headaches for the country, which it is more than happy to export to the UK, firstly because it eases its own desperate plight and second, because it riles the British. This is why no deal with pipsqueak Macron will ameliorate the all-round suffering – the French have no interest in slowing the traffic.
There is, of course, much that the UK could do itself – all of it, sadly, opposed by hyper-liberal individualists posing as upholders of human rights. Identity cards, as proposed by The Times today would remove a plethora of incentives to reach the UK, making access to work, benefits and services dependent upon having a valid right to be in the country. This would merely put us in line with several other European countries, yet is painted by some as a denial of fundamental liberties. It would, in fact, be no more onerous or intrusive than holding a passport, a National Insurance number or a driving licence.
The UK could also amend legislation so that anyone arriving illegally is automatically declared persona non grata and subject to deportation, within days, to Rwanda, France, their country of origin or even a country of their own choosing. This might create conflict with international obligations towards those seeking refuge or asylum – but given that, by definition, those crossing the Channel from France have already reached a country of refuge or asylum, this should not be an insurmountable obstacle. If the civil rights lawyers manage to scupper this option (as they have every other possible solution to this trade in death and misery), then setting up extensive detention centres, whether on land or at sea, as proposed by a high-ranking official yesterday, and a high-speed asylum process with instant deportation would be a serious deterrent to the tens of thousands living in French squalor awaiting a calm day to risk their lives at sea. Little criticism is levelled at France for its treatment of migrants; in fact, it deflects blame on to Britain for not welcoming them!
The point of this is to highlight how hideously distorted this debate has become. The prime cause – France – escapes condemnation, while the UK is lambasted for failing to spend taxpayers' money on providing a five-star welcome. Our country can do no right.
RISHI CAN DO NO RIGHT
Rishi Sunak can do no right, either. The prime minister said, perfectly reasonably, that he would not be attending the forthcoming climate summit in Egypt because he was needed at home to oversee the plan for economic recovery following the short-lived Truss debacle. He had appointed an environment secretary perfectly capable of ensuring our voice was heard and message brought home. Following a ridiculous assault on his allegedly casual approach towards the environment, he now appears to have caved in, leaving himself looking weak – and open to charges that he ought to be at home at a time like this and others can cover the COP conference! He could not win, whatever he decided – but he has managed to harvest the worst of all worlds by changing his mind.
THANK GOODNESS I DISAGREE WITH MELANIE PHILLIPS AGAIN
I grow anxious when I find myself agreeing with the likes of Melanie Phillips and her ideological rants. Fortunately, it does not happen often – but on the basis that no one can possibly be wrong on every subject all of the time, I put up with occasional convergences in our thinking. But we are poles apart again on the subject of economic growth, thank goodness.
Her latest accusation, made in her column yesterday's edition of The Times, is fired at the World Economic Forum and a paper issued in June that tries to explain (not very well) theories surrounding the concept of "degrowth", which is the idea that in order to preserve the planet, we have to live with less. This seems an entirely uncontroversial notion, given that the globe has reached peak consumption and is dying before our very eyes. However, this is not Melanie's interpretation. She implies that economic growth means "progress, advancement, improvement". She claims degrowth means deindustrialisation, and that growth is "hardwired into us as human beings. To want to halt growth is akin to wanting to stop the world."
This extraordinarily short-sighted view makes no mention of what might happen if humans continue to consume resources at their present rate and beyond. She dismisses the WEF reassurance that living with less does not mean "living in caves with candles", as if it is not possible to live more simply.
As I say in my book, our challenge is work out how we can live well with less. There is no choice in the matter: the Earth cannot support present and growing populations indefinitely. This is what is actually hardwired into nature: when a population of any creature becomes too great it cannot be sustained and will die. The meaningless pursuit of economic growth for its own sake provides no progress: it is deeply conservative and rests on perpetuating a state of permanent dissatisfaction designed to encourage endless and pointless consumption that stimulates economic activity but breeds only further discontent. It can never be fulfilling to buy goods for which you have no great need, or even desire; it can never be a substitute for achievement or creativity. Industrialisation has, of course brought progress in many areas – and this is our challenge: to decide what really matters. During the pandemic we found no difficulty in defining "key workers"; it would be no more difficult to define "key functions" that benefit society as a whole, either by providing essential services or scientific advances. There is no reason for degrowth to require humanity to regress: quite the opposite – we might grow to be more than mere shoppers.
OCTOBER 28 2022
Whatever happened to substance and principle in politics? The Labour Party simply cannot continue behaving as if its leaders were acting in the Monty Python Argument sketch ("Yes it", "No it isn't", "Yes it is", "Oh this isn't a proper argument", "Yes it is", "No it isn't", etc). For example, Rishi Sunak's suggestion that he is too busy with the domestic agenda to fly to the COP27 meeting in Egypt is perfectly reasonable, yet has been lambasted by gain-sayers. I cannot call them environmental champions or campaigners, because there is no substance to their complaints: they are merely gain-saying anything the government does or says. So, in scenario one, we have Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions, asking: "What on earth does the prime minister think he is doing by failing to turn up at the COP27 climate conference? What sort of message is this sending?" In scenario two, he asks: "What on earth does the prime minister think he is doing by jetting off to Egypt when there is so much that needs his attention at home?" There is no principle, no philosophy, no ideology, no position – merely an automatic knee-jerk opposition to whatever the other side does. Precisely the level of debate seen in that Monty Python sketch.
OCTOBER 13 2022
We went to the theatre in Soho last night to see The Death of Anna Mann. It was hilarious and moving, a complete triumph. But I only approached London with huge trepidation. I had been listening to the BBC radio news for several weeks and was expecting beggars, families in rags with huge pleading eyes, zombies shuffling the streets and bodies piled up on corners. This is the picture the BBC has been painting of the UK since it failed to get its way over Brexit: the sore loser has been stamping its little foot on anyone associated with Leave ever since. And this involves running down our country, painting it in the worst possible light, ignoring all context and perspective, and in the process doing it considerable harm.
So the impression I had built up of our urban areas was one of decline, decay, death, poverty and misery. The reality, however, could hardly be further from the truth: there were people everywhere, happy, smiling, drinking, eating – a Wednesday as vibrant as any other Wednesday I can remember in London for the past several decades. But these people are the silent majority: no BBC reporter is interested in anyone enjoying themselves, making the best of what they are given. Only the desperate and the politically on-side are invited to queue outside a Radio Four news studio so that their terrible tale of woe can be heard. It will, of course, be a tale no different from the one deprived people could have been telling for decades, or centuries. But they were the silenced minority until the vicious beast was stirred by its Brexit humiliation.
Meanwhile, US interest rates rocket, putting pressure on all global currencies; the pound holds up reasonably well and is roughly where it always is against the euro; and France has no petrol at its filling stations – with reports of fights breaking out and police cars running out of fuel. Not heard about this? No, of course not. It would provide an unhealthy perspective against which to judge our relative comfort, despite the incompetence and political naivety of our new prime minister.
OCTOBER 9 2022
I have never cowered in a "safe space" and never wish to; I have never knowingly been in a "safe space" and find the thought of it abominable. I'm not even sure what a "safe space" is supposed to be or why they appear to be cropping up in various institutions, such as universities and schools. I assume they are meant to protect the mental health of youngsters unable to process and deal with any opinions, facts or ideas that do not conform to their own "lived truth". If that is so, then give me "challenging spaces", "confrontational spaces", or "courageous spaces" (as Matthew Syed calls them in his excellent column in today's Sunday Times). These are the sort of spaces I have always encountered, especially at university, and I believe they are essential to enable reasoned argument, intelligent debate and a broadening of minds and understanding. Allowing young people to retreat and cower in a "safe space", hearing only kind and gentle words that soothe them and bolster their pre-existing beliefs is simply to reinforce and magnify the tiny intellectual bubble in which they subsist.
We see this happening at quite a pace as presumably well-meaning but certainly misguided individuals take it upon themselves to impose absurd and dangerous rules on the rest of the world: "Thou shalt not use the words 'mum', 'dad', 'grandmother' etc"; "You are forbidden to say 'economic migrant' etc". This linguistic fascism flies in the face of sense and reason and requires an enormous degree of pretending that things are other than they so clearly are. We are being ordered to become delusional.
A small example from last night's "Strictly Come Dancing". Jayde Adams danced badly: she was out of time, the choreography was unpleasant, the outfits were grotesque, and it all looked a mess. However, because she is on the show to represent the obese, her performance is described as "body-positive": she said before the dance that she wanted to prove that being overweight was no hindrance to performing a beautiful dance. Sadly, she proved precisely the opposite. Only those who agree that obesity is to be celebrated could possibly have found anything "brilliant" or "beautiful" in her dance – as the judges were clearly instructed to do. Judged objectively, she would have been in the bottom three; judged politically, she was near the top. I have nothing against her and would never dream of demeaning her for her size – until she decides to make a statement of it herself.
STAYING IN ON SATURDAY NIGHTS
That Strictly dance was not the only horror on the show last night. The camera work and special effects have become so obtrusive, garish and cheap-looking that spotting the dancers in a jungle of brightly coloured digital detritus becomes an effort. Similarly appalling camera work marred "Later With Jools", as the producer ordered close-up after close-up of nostrils, ear lobes, fingernails, armpits. The beauty of Later used to be that we were all in the audience together with a perfect view of an artist. An occasional close-up would add detail and contrast, without destroying the flow and continuity of the performance. I was left with a vague impression that rock band PVA were quite good, for example, but the wild and intrusive camera angles were too distracting to be able to tell.
OCTOBER 8 2022
A YouGov poll suggests, apparently, that most people in Britain do not realise that the current economic strife, involving inflation, rising interest rates and high energy costs, is a global issue and instead blame our government. I wonder why that is? Perhaps it's something to do with the way the media are portraying events, constantly ignoring the rest of the world, constantly ignoring the pound's value against the euro and the basket of currencies, and constantly quoting nonsensical figures. While I do not believe the government is doing a great deal to help the situation, it is outrageous of media organisations to provide neither context nor perspective and to pretend that the UK is an outlier in a mess of its own making.
OCTOBER 7 2022
"Ah, Mr Hitler, thank you for coming in, and welcome to the Charity Commission's head office. We've been looking at your application for charitable status for your new Nazi association, and we think it's a marvellous proposal to seek to improve the conditions of people with blond hair. It all sounds very exciting and some of your money-raising suggestions look novel and effective – mass gatherings might well tend to encourage generous giving and participation. So, well done. Go and do your charitable thing! We won't trouble you again.
"Love the logo, by the way."
Every day, we read of the shocking behaviour of so-called charities: a rag-bag collection of religious cults and fanatics issuing death threats, maniacs advocating female mutilation, political factions. Adolf's Nazis would have fitted in very nicely.
TOO FAST OR TOO SLOW?
Bizarre. The Bank of England now has one foot on the accelerator (buying guilts and creating money) and the other on the brake (raising interest rates to stem inflation). Does this mean we are in equilibrium or veering into an uncontrolled spin? On balance, whichever it is, I suspect the effects will not be as bad as the doom-mongers would like us to fear. The current trend of interpreting every tiny event as a catastrophe and a crisis is becoming extremely tiresome.
SWEDEN EXPOSED AS MEAN AND INCOMPETENT
Everyone loves Sweden – such tolerant people, such an efficient and well-meaning government. And anyone who has never had much to do with Sweden might be forgiven for believing that. However, a dear friend who cares for her granddaughter In England has been trying to renew the 14-year-old's Swedish passport. It expired during the Covid travel ban; efforts to renew it have been going on for many months. The child is of English descent but was brought up in Sweden and is a Swedish citizen. Sadly, a succession of awful events have left her unable to apply for a British passport without risking the reignition of a potentially ugly court battle, leaving her reliant on super-cool and friendly Sweden. Except, the Swedish embassy in London is a disastrous failure and it is impossible to book an appointment to launch the passport renewal process – Sweden insists on face-to-face applications, for some reason.
Between us, three or four helpers have clicked on the online form thousands of times over several months and every single time, the message in red at the top reads: "At the moment, there are no available time slots. We are adding new time slots on a regular basis, please try again later." It is inconceivable that, were this to be true, we would not have stumbled across a vacant time slot at some point. And reading the embassy's Google reviews simply confirms what we fear – it has abandoned its citizens living abroad, or at least, in the UK. Its reviewers have suffered the same experience as us and are furious.
This ought to be a deeply shaming and embarrassing failure on the part of the Swedes and were any UK organisation to be treating people in this way, it would castigated and vilified by our media and be forced to put it right. Which is why we have alerted the Swedish news agency and have asked the embassy and its now tarnished ambassador, Mikaela Kumlin Granit, to reveal when it last issued a time slot for an appointment, as we have ceased to believe any are being released at all. Or, if they are, it cannot possibly be in an open and fair manner. We shall see if they respond. Granit has been ambassador for more than a year and so has had ample time to sort out this travesty.
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old Swedish citizen in England is unable to travel on school trips abroad or visit her loved ones in Sweden because of her embassy's disastrous incompetence. What makes it worse is that a child's passport has to be renewed every two years! The London embassy is the only option, as the child cannot travel – obviously. It might be possible to demand an emergency passport to get to Sweden to pick up a full passport but they are only available two days before a trip commences and upon production of a valid ticket – and still involve a trip to the embassy in far-away London. On top of which, tickets often cannot be bought without providing a valid passport number! If it is ever renewed, subsequent renewals can take place in Sweden before it runs out and she will not be subjected to the shambolic and uncaring embassy again. I have had one response from someone at the embassy, who claimed staff were working hard but she notably failed to apologise or sympathise, leaving me to conclude that they really could not care one jot about their own people. I leave you to make up your mind about the true nature of Sweden.
OCTOBER 3 2022
In considering the government's recent behaviour, it is important to separate two key elements: economic rationality and political competence. What Liz Truss, prime minister, and Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor of the exchequer, are trying to achieve through their economic policy is growth, using the tried and tested methods of stimulating economic activity – ie, spending – by removing barriers to any and every means of spending money. These methods have not always worked – no economic policy does for long, and this one, with its central principle of "trickle-down", from rich spending to poor pockets, is particularly simple-minded.
It is, however, rational and an acceptable strategy if simply achieving economic growth is your goal. Those of us who believe the planet has reached – or even gone beyond – peak consumption and therefore advocate economic contraction and a new, more satisfying, way of living obviously object to that goal and are therefore naturally at odds with all that the policy entails. But, even so, we have to respect the fact that elected politicians have a right, a duty, to pursue the path they believe will lead to the best outcome for all.
Political competence, on the other hand, is the ability to implement policies while retaining the respect that everyone owes to our grand constitutional institutions. In this case, Truss and Kwarteng have failed badly. They have allowed a collection of relatively modest and far-from-radical fiscal nudges to bring their offices into disrepute through their ineptitude. Today's announcement that the 45p tax band will, after all, be retained is an indication of just how surprised the pair in charge must have been at the response of the public, party and markets. The introduction of this measure was, in the first place, a fairly trivial one, involving only small sums and affecting only those wealthy people unable to dodge paying it; we managed without such a tax band throughout almost all of the last Labour spell in charge. So if this small back-down does anything to pacify the markets and head off a Tory revolt then it will show just how overblown their reaction was – or confirm that it was the impression of incompetence they created that really sparked the fear, not the numbers themselves.
And once again, the media must accept a sizeable chunk of responsibility for pouring petrol on the flames in recent days. One notable trick being used by the Tory-hating and Brexit-hating hyper-liberals is to repeat endlessly that the pound has crashed. It has not. It is severely weakened against the dollar, yes – because the US government has raised interest rates faster and harder than elsewhere and the dollar, being a reserve currency, has become a good buy. It has therefore risen strongly, leaving other currencies in its wake – including the euro and those currencies that make up the basket usually used to assess the value of the pound. Proper comparisons have been avoided, to give the impression that the pound alone is suffering. But its value against the euro is roughly where it has been for the past decade or more. Some crash!
LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT MEGHAN AND LITTLE HARRY
A frightening survey of the public's views on Meghan and Harry Markle seemed to suggest that people under 30 actually liked and respected them, while older, wiser and more experienced judges of character had come to loathe the whining pair of spoilt brats. I have been told that it is pathetic to be concerned about them – just ignore them because they're nothing to do with me. Well, I am sorry, they are very much to do with all of us. If Meghan is indeed popular with the young, she is setting a terrible example as she promotes herself as a role model. She began with brownie points galore – huge public admiration and support. But bit by bit she has squandered it as we learn more and more about her behaviour, both from her own mouth and from others. Those who have bothered to listen to her endless complaints as well as the responses of those she has accused and attacked will have reached the opinion that her place in the public eye is dangerous. How many of the young people who so admire her will have spent time, for example, studying a book by Val Low, a former newspaper colleague of mine, listing a catalogue of hard evidence of Meghan's bullying, lies, arrogance, narcissism and sole focus on herself. As if we weren't already suspicious, following the ghastly Oprah Winfrey "interview", Val, a national newspaper royal correspondent for nearly 15 years, reports on highly decent, respected and dutiful courtiers, and others trying to help her, who found themselves unable to work with such a prima donna, reduced to tears and throwing up their hands in horror.
If her "me, me, me" attitudes and total focus on herself appeal to the young, that is hardly surprising, as social media has made looking inwards the norm – with gruesome, and sometimes fatal, consequences. Come on youngsters – arm yourselves with some knowledge. You are going to look back on these years and wonder how you could have been so dim and blinkered. We must hope. Otherwise, we truly are doomed.
SEPTEMBER 30 2022
THE TROUBLE WITH TRUSSONOMICS
The joy of economics is that you can never be wrong: it is the equivalent of choosing a route to a non-existent destination from your own imagination. You state your goal and how you intend to get there, and that's it. There are, of course, good ideas and bad ideas, but not "wrong" or "right" ideas. Another analogy: it's like making a cake. You choose your ingredients and your method and decide how you would like your cake to look and taste – and off you go. In this sense, there is nothing fundamentally "wrong" with Liz Truss' economic policy, now known as Trussonomics.
This is why the BBC's local radio lynch mob, which yesterday saw a succession of unknown DJs trying to out-do the previous ones in hurling insults at the prime minister, was so completely unacceptable as a journalistic exercise. Yesterday morning, Truss submitted herself to a barrage of abuse in several short "interviews" with the likes of Radio Leeds and Radio Norfolk, or whatever they are called. This morning, the Radio Four Today programme celebrated this assault by giving a platform to these DJs to repeat their rudeness. One even claimed to be a journalist.
But journalists seek to challenge with politeness, decency and intelligence, all of which were in horribly short supply yesterday. The local radio hacks barely asked a question, happy to settle for having a row with her because her policies differ so radically from their own personal beliefs. Some used the shield of "listeners" to provide cover for their attacks: "This is what my listeners are telling me" etc. Well, it might be what SOME listeners are telling you, and you might choose to elevate these opinions because they are also your own, and the prime minister might well have embarked on a reckless gamble with the economy, but that can in no way excuse the the barrage of rudeness, disrespect, coarseness and boorishness Truss faced. Challenge, yes; bully and harangue with your own opinions, absolutely not.
And so, with all due respect to the prime minister, I should explain why I believe she is wrong in almost every aspect of her economic policy. This does not make me hate her and want to bury her under a tirade of curses: I am prepared to learn more about what she proposes and debate with her. More than that, I have already set out a radical alternative agenda for western economies and societies in "The Rise of Antisocialism". And my agenda does not involve economic growth, putting me at odds with Liz Truss from step one.
So first, we should ask: what is the one thing that is threatening the very existence of life on our planet? And the answer, quite simply, is a meaningless pursuit of economic growth in order to fuel rabid consumption and "business". My path for the economy therefore involves looking in the opposite direction and working out how to deliver and manage economic contraction. In my book, I outline how our hyper-liberal consensus on individual freedoms, greed and selfishness must be turned around and become a focus on community, society, sharing and responsibilities. It is, perhaps, a hopelessly Utopian vision – and I do indeed conclude in the book that it is unachievable, given our current sorry state of mind. However, it is where I would begin in questioning Trussonomics. Because even if Truss's strategy works, it will fail – it will have moved us ever closer to planetary oblivion and increase the difficulty of ever achieving a repair.
A wise and all-seeing prime minister would not be obsessed with pointless and counter-productive economic growth; they would be seeking ways in which sufficient wealth can be created to sustain a simpler lifestyle, based on enjoyment and satisfaction for all citizens, while providing the basic services and provisions we will always need. They would ditch the current philosophy of maintaining high levels of permanent dissatisfaction throughout society in order to sustain ridiculous levels of consumption, so that individuals can find miserable and pointless "work", so that they can earn money for more consumption, in an insane death spiral of greed.
There is room here for a discussion with the prime minister; no shouting or accusations, just reasoned argument. The difference is that she has the power to implement her views, which I fully respect. It doesn't mean I agree with her and it doesn't mean she's right – but that still doesn't mean she should be subjected to a hate-filled BBC lynch mob.
SEPTEMBER 29 2022
HOORAH! WE'RE BACK TO TRICKLE-DOWN!
It's hard to know what to say about Liz Truss's government and its instant lurch to the right on economic policy. We know "trickle-down economics" are an absurd notion – almost as big a joke as a Russian referendum. Even if the policy works and boosts growth, it won't work for everyone. The Tories will now lose the next election and Brexit, miserably, will become a live issue again. Keir Starmer must surely be thanking his lucky stars for delivering him, at last, a Tory leader who is more right-wing than he is.
LONG LIVE THE QUEEN – AND THE KING
As a graduating student in 1979, I declined an invitation to attend my graduation ceremony, partly because it was for the whole of the University of London, not just the London School of Economics, and partly because the awards were being presented by the Queen Mother. As a republican, she was no great lure to go along and receive a certificate. Pop it in the post.
I fear, however, that I was afflicted at the time by a shortcoming that seems to affect all radical youngsters: being against things. And worse: being against things without any real idea of what would be better. The Queen was an extraordinary person, one of the greatest "leaders" the world has ever seen. And while we should not let her greatness whitewash the potential pitfalls of a hereditary system, we are also obliged to examine the wider picture when assessing the value of a monarchy in a constitution such as ours. Loyalty and allegiance to a nominally powerless figurehead is a priceless gift in a world beset with dangers. Without such a head of state, a prime minister could command the armed forces to impose whatever ghastly regime they chose; replacing a monarch with a president would be worse – they would have to be elected and from that, gain power. But power to do what? And where would it leave Parliament? Our delicate balance and separation of powers, devised over many centuries is, without doubt, the best in the world. It also brings the added bonus of soft power galore – even in death, the Queen provided a spectacle for the world, a reminder of respect for tradition, continuity, experience and wisdom. And so I am won over. And I will remain a constitutional monarchist until someone comes up with something that would work better.
SEPTEMBER 28 2022
WHEN WILL JOE LYCETT DISGRACE HIMSELF AGAIN?
I was glancing in the window of a small art shop and gallery in Woolacombe, Devon, a couple of weeks ago and noticed it had a collection of pictures, cleverly created, of notable figures. Plus, bizarrely, Joe Lycett, the sort-of comedian. His image looked ludicrously out of place – but then Lycett is both ludicrous and, lately, has been hideously out of place.
His first offence was making an inappropriate and incorrect statement while supposedly presenting part of the BBC's coverage of the opening of Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. At this grand sporting event, in front of (presumably) millions of viewers, he accused the government of being unwelcoming to foreigners. This political statement could hardly be further from the truth, as the UK welcomes increasing numbers of migrants, has opened its arms to refugees from Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan, and has provided a haven for Hong Kongers fleeing the creeping fascism of China. The UK is one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse countries in the world and it is difficult to fathom just what the idiot Lycett was talking about. I can only think that any rules that stand in the way of anyone in the world entering Britain must be interpreted as hostile and unwelcoming. If not, then where exactly would Lycett draw the line over who is "welcome" here and who is not?
The trouble is that this unfunny "celeb" seems adept at fooling the BBC. He appeared more recently on Laura Kuensberg's political TV show and, we are told, promised the world in a Tweet that he would behave as if he was on "Would I Lie To You" – which he did. He pretended to be "very right wing" and applauded everything Liz Truss said. This was a puerile and childish gesture that raised questions both about Lycett's motives and the BBC's competence. I am sure the great institution saw Lycett's participation as a means of brightening up an otherwise dull political discussion group. "I know! Let's stick a comedian on the panel!" Brilliant. And bound to backfire. Although Lycett's facetiousness will doubtless have appealed to young hyper-liberals – seemingly the target audience of all of today's output. I suspect the BBC has not yet been sufficiently shamed for its poor judgment and is very likely to allow a repeat performance.
I am sure Lycett felt he was being so clever and smart, managing to keep a straight face while talking rubbish among the grown-ups charged with serious real-world responsibilities. If he wishes to be involved in politics, then he needs to become a politician and submit his half-baked ideas and opinions to scrutiny. He would not last 10 seconds.
AUGUST – CATCHING UP
A few observations from August – a busy month in which I had little time to comment on events. We are now in late September, having passed the equinox, the death of the Queen and the installation of Liz Truss as prime minister. But, looking back on less momentous events of the summer, I did note that on August 23, BBC Radio 4 Today presenter, Amol Rajan, complained that until recently, political debate had been all about silly little inconsequential matters, such as birthday cakes and parties – but that now it was turning to big important issues, such as the cost of living. "And not before time," he commented, without a hint of irony at this extraordinary hypocrisy. As one of the shameful conspirators in the BBC's relentless campaign to destroy Boris Johnson, Rajan was repeatedly guilty of trivialising the debate and insisting on discussing cakes and parties. What absolute brass neck from the odious and increasingly stupid Rajan.
And then Emily Maitliss and Jon Sopel, in the process of promoting their new non-BBC podcast, moaned and whined about the problems of being a journalist at the BBC – because of its insistence on impartiality. Excuse me, amateurs, but impartiality is the bedrock of decent and accurate journalism. We know what ugly impartiality looks like – the witless Maitliss ranting away and broadcasting her personal opinions about Dominic Cummings on Newsnight, safe in the knowledge that in this BBC echo-chamber only like-minded hyper-liberals would be watching. She was rightly chastised for this abhorrence. Andrew Marr made the same stupid gripes and grumbles about the Beeb's impartiality requirements when he left his political show. Yet a proper measure of a journalist's worth is whether they keep their politics to themselves: I never knew the personal views of Brian Redhead or David Frost, but it is all too clear what Maitliss, Rajan, Nick Robinson, Mishal Hossein and many others believe. I always placed Sopel in a higher category, and so have to ask what he thinks he is doing sloshing around in all this unprofessionalism.
If it has been a terrible few years for journalism, then politics has fared little better. Yvette Cooper, for example, again stamped her foot and demanded that "something be done" to stop the flood of migrants entering the UK illegally. Yet she is responsible for blocking every single idea and attempt aimed at stopping it. Her only positive contribution is to suggest that asylum claims might be assessed in France – but what could be the point of this? Most are doomed to fail, even if you ignore the glaringly obvious fact that they are sitting in France, completely safe from whatever threat they claim to have left behind. And then what? The failed asylum seekers simply resume their illegal – and deadly – journeys with the assistance of the sniggering French authorities.
Going back in time, The Sunday Times managed to publish three excellent columns on August 14. Matthew Syed wrote: "The ayatollahs have found their accomplices in western liberals". Following the stabbing of Salman Rushdie in Chautauqua, New York, he recalled an incident in which British gymnast Louis Smith and a friend were larking around and one of them shouted 'Allahu akbar'. Syed wrote, scathingly: "Liberal commentators were united in outrage. None saw this as two kids harmlessly mocking religion. None saw it as a trivial episode of ridicule of the kind that has always existed in liberal societies. None stated that no citizen, religious or otherwise, has a right or even a reasonable expectation to not be [sic] offended. Instead, they called for Smith to be banned – and he was, for two months, by British Gymnastics. He was accused of Islamophobia, racism, you name it." He said Smith received death threats and lost his livelihood and continued: "To be clear: this punishment beating was perpetrated on Smith not by fanatics, not by knife-wielding fundamentalists, but the monolithic liberal ideology that will not tolerate opinions (or even jokes) that breach their [sic] antiliberal creed."
On the opposite page, writer India Knight pointed out that the "Snowman author knew kids weren't snowflakes". She was writing about the death of children's author Raymond Briggs. She said: "Many of today’s writers and illustrators write as though they were children, with a faux-naif child’s sensibility. Briggs and so on were very clearly adults, making books for children. This meant their work was meaty and had real heft...I worry that some of this is lost with some contemporary children’s picture books, which seem so nicely and predictably behaved. They are thoughtful and inclusive, which is obviously great, they teach a nice moral lesson about sharing or suchlike, hurrah (and also, slightly, yawn), but the most anarchic or subversive they get is poo, pants and fart jokes – all of which have their place, and many of which are funny, though perhaps not as hideously funny as the Plop-Up edition of Fungus the Bogeyman. But they are not thrilling. You don’t gasp as you turn the page. You aren’t shocked, and there isn’t that sense of being absolutely and instantly submerged in a whole other world where strange things might happen."
And completing the hat-trick was the paper's Leader comment: "We must never give in to intimidation on free speech." Echoing Matthew Syed, it said: "The rise of thuggish Islamic extremism has dovetailed with the rise of excessive sensitivity in the West. The assault on Rushdie and the massacre of staff at the Parisian magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 are not unconnected to the 'cancellation' of JK Rowling for her defence of women’s rights in the face of a militant trans movement." It went on: "The craven response of some publishers to outrage – such as Picador, which parted ways with the poet Kate Clanchy after she was accused of perpetuating racial stereotypes in her memoir 'Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me' – has encouraged yet more outrage and had a chilling effect on artistic licence. Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel prize in literature, said last year that a 'climate of fear' meant young authors were self-censoring lest they anger an 'anonymous lynch mob'. The writer of 'The Remains of the Day' said that 'novelists should feel free to write from whichever viewpoint they wish or represent all kinds of views'. This should be a statement of the obvious. But in recent years ridiculous unofficial rules have been proposed, such as that only gay actors play gay roles and only black women write about black women – suggestions that, followed to their conclusion, would mean the end of most art. The insidious advent of 'sensitivity readers' leads to censorship. One suspects 'The Satanic Verses' would not have fared well with this breed.
"Standing up for free expression tends to result in victory because its opponents’ arguments are rooted in emotion, not logic. Netflix refused to cave in when Ricky Gervais joked about the 'new women', the ones with 'beards and cocks'. The streaming service updated its culture guidelines with the long overdue edict that staff disagreeing with its content should quit. Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, explained that comedians could test boundaries only by 'crossing the line every once in a while'. The row faded away, the black-and-white purveyors of indignation having been confronted with a nuanced truth."
These are all powerful and obviously important values that have been undermined and are now being eroded at an alarming rate by people who think they are being nice but in fact are pandering to bullies, thugs and fascists.
On August 15, another excellent column in The Times. Libby Purves, who might almost have been quoting directly from my book, wrote: "Society pays the price for our cheap goods". She argues that western liberal consumers enjoy low-priced luxuries because others suffer to make and deliver them. Again, pretty obvious – and all explained in "The Rise of Antisocialism".
And online, a video accidentally stumbled across showed how Uruguay had made itself self-sufficient in renewable energy. This contrasted hideously with a news story about a Scottish planning official having turned down a large wind farm because "it wouldn't look very nice". Dear oh dear.
THE PROBLEM IS FRANCE – NOT US
After a good run of intelligent comment pieces in The Times, it was inevitable things would collapse and so it came to pass in a ridiculous Leader comment on August 23. It called the UK's handling of the migrant crisis a source of national shame and claimed the issue was the responsibility of UK border control. But this is glaringly wrong. The migrant crisis is a French and EU border issue – they are the ones letting in anyone and everyone, allowing them to wander freely until they end up in Calais and illegally enter UK waters, kindly escorted by the French police. The UK then, apparently, has no other option but to be nice to them, carry them to England and roll out the red carpet, upon which they wave and raise their fists in triumph. Once they are here, our liberalism demands that we set them free to enter the black economy or join criminal gangs. The Times offers no solutions, ideas or suggestions as to how this human traffic can be stopped, other than to call for the new prime minister to be friendlier to the nasty little Emmanuel Macron. Good luck with that!
The only way to stop this appalling business is to be tough. The vast majority are not genuine asylum seekers at all (by mid-September it was being reported that 60 per cent were Albanians – an increasingly popular holiday destination!) and only undertake such a hazardous journey because they have no right to be in the UK. There are workable remedies but they are all ruled out by hyper-liberals and refugee campaign groups masquerading as charities. One would be to introduce identity cards for those entitled to live and work in the UK, without which no one could claim benefits, work or receive care. Alongside this, swift repatriation is vital: to their home countries for those prepared to admit their origins, and to welcoming countries such as Rwanda for those who refuse. It is neither pleasant nor painless – but then it is considerably better than encouraging the people traffickers to ramp up their business.
And it is time to name and shame France as the prime culprit in all this. Imagine a Kent coastline dotted with camps run by criminals, with cheap hostels full of migrants seeking to cross illegally into France. The UK would be labelled an international pariah – there would be an outcry. We would not be pocketing tens of millions of pounds from France while giving the migrants a gentle push into the Channel – we would be rightly castigated and attacked. The problem is France. It is time to wake up.
JULY 30 2022
BBC – THIS IS THE FINAL STRAW
Having watched what seemed like an 11-hour interview with Chris Hoy on BBC1 (and occasionally, of course, BBC2) yesterday, my last vestige of sympathy for the licence fee has evaporated. The BBC's coverage of the Commonwealth Games is disgraceful. Viewers want curated and edited coverage of every event, not fleeting glimpses of sport hidden between endless, boring and pointless chats around a coffee table. The red button actually makes the BBC coverage worse because it enables it to give the impression that the viewer need never miss a thing when, in fact, to watch real sports action, they have to disappear into an iPlayer channel to watch netball, boxing or rhythmic gymnastics, or whatever, without any idea of what other exciting action is taking place. The BBC used to brilliant at this: we never saw a presenter's face all day long, just constant, non-stop action, superbly edited and curated. That is how the viewer gets to avoid missing a thing.
And as for allowing a mediocre comedian to become entangled in the Games' opening ceremony and make ignorant and hate-filled remarks – it simply beggars belief. Joe Lycett's disgraceful slur, claiming that he was going "to do something now that the British government doesn't always do" in "welcoming some foreigners", not only ignores the fact that our current administration is the most racially diverse in history, it ignores the fact that our government has recently put enormous efforts into providing for tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing their country, tens of thousands of Afghans and Syrians, tens of thousands of economic migrants welcomed into the country. A welcome of sorts is even extended to those forcing their way into the country illegally in the selfish pursuit of their own economic interests: they are at least treated humanely, which is more than can be said for the treatment they might receive elsewhere. And worse, Lycett's shameful stupidity has dragged every duh-brained knuckle-head out of the woodwork to vent their unthinking knee-jerk hatred of people with whom they happen to disagree. Are these fools seriously saying that every single person in the world who wishes to live in the UK should be welcomed with open arms? Have they not spent a single second wondering about the consequences of such lunacy? Lycett's appalling smear remains on the BBC iPlayer and, as far as I can see, no apology has been issued.
DO PANELLISTS HAVE TO PASS AN ANTI-INTELLIGENCE TEST?
Where do they find the guests for Any Questions on Radio 4? Do they have to take an intelligence test and only the failures are allowed on air? The dimmest panellist today, so-called "journalist" Ash Sarkar, talking about rising energy prices, demanded action because "right now you've got pensioners riding the bus just to keep warm". First, this single alleged incident was discredited as a political stunt long ago, and second, who is riding on buses "right now" when the temperatures are in the high 20s? Moron.
BAD BLOOD AND A FALSE DICHOTOMY
Three consecutive interviews this morning on the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme debated the subject of contaminated blood products administered in the 1970s and 80s and the need to compensate those affected. The first was with a woman who received blood transfusions from the age of a few months old to treat her haemophilia: she agreed that her physical side effects were relatively mild but that her mental health had suffered and so urged rapid compensation, as recommended by an interim report issued yesterday. The third interview was with a campaigner on behalf of the victims of the contamination, which could leave patients with Hepatitis or HIV. He called the affair a grave injustice and also demanded large payments be made immediately.
But was it "a grave injustice"? The second interview with an experienced and concerned specialist medical practitioner provided the necessary context and perspective – and indeed several potential questions that should have been put to the campaigner but were not. The doctor explained that the risks of contamination in blood had been known about since the 1950s but that in the 1970s and 80s the tools did not yet exist to test and purify blood donations. It meant that every transfusion carried a degree of risk and every patient was treated on the basis of the lesser harm. The medical profession of the 1970s and 80s was not acting negligently or recklessly; it was not deliberately infecting patients: it was saving lives. The crude radio presentation therefore proposed a grotesquely false dichotomy: the choice faced by those patients, mostly haemophiliacs, was not a "normal life" versus an infection, it was a grave risk of death versus the hope of a cure. Patients face precisely this dilemma today when weighing up the risks of agreeing to experimental and pioneering treatments. Even after these issues were sensitively and clearly spelt out by the specialist, they were ignored by the interviewer who failed even to challenge the third interviewee's assertion that a "grave injustice" had been committed and failed to ask what the alternative life would have been for these "victims of injustice". The BBC is now routinely and casually referring to all this as "the scandal".
JULY 29 2022
Lionesses? The exciting England women's football team that has reached the final of the European Championships should surely be referred to as "lions with wombs" or some-such? I've lost track.
DIRECTION OF TRAVEL IS EVERYTHING
So many comparisons are made with times gone by: the hottest day/driest summer since 1976; the worst inflation since the 1970s; the homophobia/racism/sexism of the 70s, and so on. But do not forget the surge of change that was taking place during the 1960s and 70s: barriers were being broken down in every social sphere; the general population was collectively gaining power and influence; art and culture were vibrant. It was a phase through which we had to travel in order to progress from the conservative, narrow-minded, inequitable past. The second world war lit a flame that sparked a wildfire of reforms, almost a revolution, that laid down the rough template for a modern Britain – before an attempt was made to stop it in 1980. But up to that point, the pace of improvement in so many fields was astonishing and the momentum so great that even 40 years of Tory rule failed to derail it completely. Of course, the 1960s and 70s look bleak from this distance. The country was still recovering from the costs of war and was in only the early stages of ridding itself of so many social ills. But any graph plotting the rate of social betterment over the past century would show a precipitously steep gradient during this period with a downwards blip through the early 1980s and then a slower and more gradual rise thereafter. Just think where we would have been now had the forces of change in the 1960s and 70s been allowed to blossom to their full potential.
JULY 27 2022
OH, HOW THE FRENCH LOVE A QUEUE
The French certainly love a queue. Anyone who's suffered the repeated and seemingly endless waits at peage booths will appreciate this Gallic passion. And when the opportunity arises to inflict an enormous queue on a neighbour, then so much the better. Never mind that the innocent holidaymakers trapped waiting to cross the Channel at Dover are bringing money to spend in France: the chance to poke a finger in the eye of Brexiteers is far too tempting. Of course, there is a minuscule chance that the unattended French passport booths in Kent resulted from a bizarre coincidence of sickness, train failures and suchlike. But Brexiteers and Remoaners alike know this to be nonsense – the difference being that Brexiteers are outraged at the sabotaging of months of planning for this busy weekend, while Remoaners say "serves you right" – you voted for it". But let us look at it as a divorce. If one party behaves reprehensibly, does that make the divorce a bad idea? Quite the opposite. most people would conclude.
It will, of course, be sorted out. Stamping passports has been one of the few airport functions not to have caused huge delays – it is not difficult to do. And in my own experience of using ferries and the rail tunnel, the French border officials have always been slow and awkward in their work. The weekend's chaos does raise the question, however, as to why people working in such critical jobs in the UK are living in another country, leaving them vulnerable to a range of obstructions. If we have to conduct these checks in England, then a simple requirement that staff live nearby would at least remove one potential obstacle to turning up on time. Also, does it remain sensible to retain a French border control in the UK? If passports were dealt with in France, any queues would then clearly be their entire responsibility. But then, the reciprocal arrangement would be cancelled and the French would allow a constant stream of undocumented migrants to reach Kent.
The irony of this rigid and rigorous system being imposed on travellers from the UK should not be forgotten, either. Holidaymakers on one side of the country are made to suffer while the complete lack of restrictions on the other side of France allows economic migrants to pour in and seek illegal and lethal entry into Britain. Again, this suits France nicely, as it gives its odious politicians and civil servants another opportunity to rile a neighbour as they help blow up the inflatable rafts and give the migrants a little push into the deadly Channel.
JULY 22 2022
WHAT EXACTLY DO WOMEN WANT?
I have been a huge fan of actress Jodie Comer since watching the opening scenes of Killing Eve, the TV series that, for its first five episodes, was among the sharpest TV drama ever made. And she is undeniably extraordinary in portraying a barrister in the one-woman play, Prima Facie, which I saw last night streamed into the Everyman cinema in Esher to an audience largely made up of women. It is an undeniably powerful production, dealing with a raw and painful dilemma with an unrelenting intensity.
But I came away with several reservations and a little disappointment. The very relentlessness of Comer's performance meant it lacked light and shade: the very few quieter, reflective moments were fleeting before the polemical barrage resumed. She had presumably been directed this way and she was still fabulous to watch but it sapped its impact slightly.
What spoiled it for me, however, was when Comer's acting ceased to portray her character, a barrister who withdraws her consent during a sexual encounter and reports a rape, and began speaking the words of the playwright. When a character becomes the author, a play instantly loses its edge and this is precisely what happened towards the end. The art should be allowed to speak for itself: Leonardo da Vinci felt no need to scrawl captions across his paintings; Charles Dickens needed no appendix at the end of his novels declaiming social conditions and calling for change. Great art can do its own talking and is so much more powerful for it.
In spite of these relatively minor disappointments, the play achieved its goal of raising a vitally important issue: how society deals with this specific form of rape. This is not violent rape by strangers, which is clearly a vicious crime, but a situation where two people are together, each knowing and accepting that sex will, or is likely to, take place but where one party at some point changes their mind. In the play, two people went to a room expecting to have sex and sex took place; but not in the way it was intended, at least on the part of the victim. The motives of the alleged rapist were left unclear.
Either way, and as things stand, such a case can only be dealt with, if at all, via the legal system, which is hopelessly ill-equipped for the purpose. Such cases involve deeply subtle and nuanced points of view, misunderstandings, the nature of a relationship, trust, the point at which consent is withdrawn, and more; whereas the law, in its clumsy, binary approach, is interested more in how the alleged rapist held down his (always "his") victim, as highlighted in Prima Facie, and other largely irrelevant factual details. These cases involve two people who cared for and had feelings for each other, from simple, short-term lust, to a deeper, longer, more complex entanglement.
Rather than use specious statistics to claim that the legal system is failing rape victims, any debate on this issue ought to begin by asking "What is it that women want?" following an alleged rape in such "consent" cases. Is it years of detailed testimony and being examined and scrutinised by police, doctors and lawyers; years of hatred, wrangling and stress, followed by the destruction of the life of someone with whom they once had some sort of positive relationship? Or is it the establishment of the truth, an acceptance of wrong? Is it clarification over misunderstandings, apologies, reconciliation? In the particular circumstances outlined in the play, no one benefits: all are left scarred and damaged, as much by the legal processes as they were by the incident itself. It would seem that offering an alternative resolution process in the case of "relationship rape", aimed at truth and reconciliation, would provide significant benefits for all.
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Drug lords and dictators – why do they lead such miserable lives? Take Pablo Escobar and Vladimir Putin: they are, or were, constantly in fear of their lives and those of their family, friends and associates; they have knowingly destroyed the lives of others; they have been responsible for thousands of deaths; they are hated and will enjoy notoriety throughout history – their legacy is revolting, and even their day-to-day activities are proscribed by fear and loathing. What a pointless and miserable life. It is a misery they deserve, of course, having killed and cheated their way to great riches. But we have to ask why on earth they continue with it once they have an opportunity to be better, smarter and decent?
JULY 16 2022
DUE DILIGENCE, MORAL HAZARD AND THE RIGHT TO MOAN
Cambridge undergraduates say the rise in suicides at the university is because of its high academic standards and demands. Er, yes. And what did you expect when you applied? Some students need support, help and guidance – I myself felt slightly homesick and confused at times during my first term at LSE but I learned to adapt. I found friends (easy when sharing a treble room, now frowned upon) and by my first Easter would have been happy to skip the holidays and stay in London. It makes me wonder just how far hand-holding should go and how much damage society has done to its young by cosseting them, selling them false dreams and reassuring them that nothing horrid will ever happen. No wonder they have no coping mechanisms when encountering new and challenging environments. But to sign up for three years at one of the most prestigious and high-pressure universities in the world and then moan that it's all a bit academic and affecting students' mental health displays a remarkable degree of ignorance and absurd expectations.
Even actresses fall victim to their own self-obsession. Meghan Markle signed up to become part of one of the most regimented and documented firms in the world. To then complain afterwards that the organisation will not bend to accommodate you shows remarkably poor due diligence. Or outrageous arrogance and self-delusion.
Similarly, illegal migrants, via their spokesperson, the UK's chief inspector of prisons, seem to share these types of absurd expectations. Young, fit and enterprising young men decide to leave their home countries and walk, stow away or pay criminals to help them reach England's beaches. At which point the UK authorities are slated for failing to have booked them a nice hotel. These people are uninvited, have committed offences, many will have disposed of documents and lied about their age and backgrounds, risked their own lives and those of others, fuelled the human trafficking and people smuggling businesses, denied their home countries whatever skills and energies they possess, and reduced the chances of genuine refugees reaching safety. And the bad guys turn out to be those who fail to roll out the red carpet for them!
The red carpet has certainly been rolled out for a young man called Adnan, however. His cricketing prowess – suspiciously extraordinary for a boy of 16 from a war zone – means he is feted as a star. He features in Freddie Flintoff's TV series about putting together a cricket team consisting of deprived young lads in Lancashire. But Adnan, who looks surprisingly mature for a 16-year-old, stands out. The story is that he somehow made his way to the UK from Afghanistan and now the UK is lucky to have him: phrases such as "It just shows what refugees can do for our country" are scattered throughout the episode I saw.
But this is surely a stupid, dangerous and counter-productive response to such a glaring trail of lies and deceit. If Adnan is 16, then I am 24; if he has never played cricket, as he claims, then I am Joe Root; and is he indeed from Afghanistan at all? His word simply goes unchallenged by the liberal, globalising programme makers. But they should remember this: when they say "good for Adnan", they are forgetting or ignoring the fact that there are another 2bn, 3bn, maybe 4bn more Adnans in the world. Why should this clever and resourceful Adnan be raised shoulder high because he has somehow managed to make his way into the UK by making himself part of the disgusting human trafficking business? Is it right and good that the UK harvests his talents that are now denied to the country he has left behind, a country desperately crying out for his contribution? And do we care about the people he will displace in this country, people who will continue to lose heart and hope? It's an incredibly short-sighted way of looking at migration: a typically individualistic and simplistic response to a global issue of failed governments around the word.
WE'VE SET THE WORLD ON FIRE
Almost every activity you read about on the business pages of newspapers and media sites is contributing hugely to global warming. And a huge amount of it is pointless. It has to stop and my book warned of this three years ago.
JULY 7 2022
WHAT A WIMP: IT WAS ONLY A FLESH WOUND...
So, Boris has gone. Inevitable, really. And a shame. He had some of the qualities required of a great prime minister, but sadly not enough. And his drawbacks became too big to excuse. I still maintain he was extremely careful to avoid lying. He perhaps evaded the truth at times but then all politicians do. He relied heavily on smoke and mirrors. But he was the man for a crisis, it's just that he couldn't be bothered with normality and so was leading us nowhere. He was also subjected to the most blatant, vicious and sustained media campaign. It was unfair, inaccurate and unprofessional. And it was epitomised by the glee so obviously emanating from the BBC Radio Four Today studio this morning as a wave of ministers resigned. It was revolting and amateurish. Mishal Husain was giggling with excitement as she announced one resignation and full of cloying and smug self-satisfaction when interviewing another minister.
So who next? I would choose Priti Patel. Not because she would make a good prime minister but because she has the hide of a rhino. I love watching, hearing, and reading about her responses to questions in the House of Commons – it's hilarious. She is a potent mix of Jonny Bairstow and Nick Kyrgios. Ben Wallace is, apparently, loved by some – but only because he has made a quick and recent splash over Ukraine. Who had heard of him before he began dishing out missiles? Liz Truss is a loose cannon and horribly inflexible; Penny Mordaunt cannot seriously be among the favourites; Nadhim Zahawi has far too much grubby-looking baggage; Sajid Javid is nowhere near bright enough; and Jeremy Hunt? You might as well have that dozy Starmer bloke. Steve Baker and Tom Tugendhat – heaven forbid. Dominic Raab is undeniably clever but hardly a man of the people and has, in any case, ruled himself out. Mark Harper (who?) is said to be interested and carries the advantage of anonymity, while Grant Shapps appears too lightweight. Which brings us to Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman. Given that no one knows anything at all about Braverman, she stands a chance. And who knows what might then happen. We know more about Sunak, however. He was treated disgracefully by the media over his wife's perfectly rational financial affairs and he appeared to be an inventive and concerned chancellor of the exchequer – until his spring statement, which failed to hit the spot as far as ameliorating the cost of living was concerned. The removal of the £20 pandemic uplift in benefits also looked mean when so much money was sloshing around: his laser focus on the requirement to work shows a lack of understanding of real life. There is also Lord Frost, an excellent and sensible negotiator but far too conservative for the times. And then there's Michael Gove. I hated him when he wrote his column for The Times, calling him an ignorant pipsqueak. But he has shown deftness of touch, resilience as an under-fire interviewee and has impressed in key departments, such as law, education and now levelling up, especially with his attitude towards planning rules and guidance. Sadly, he appears not to want the highest office. He would have my serious vote. But regrettably, the winner will not be the best candidate, but the least worst – the lowest common denominator. Of which there are a frightening number of frightening candidates.
JULY 6 2022
IS IT JUST A SCRATCH; A MERE FLESH WOUND?
Two Cabinet ministers resign from your government, saying the country cannot continue to be led in the way it has been. They, of course, have their individual agendas but that cannot disguise the perilous state in which it leaves the prime minister: Boris Johnson's days are now numbered. For the moment, he is toughing it out, making new appointments, filling gaps, fire-fighting. But the distasteful revelations surrounding Chris Pincher's behaviour and the way in which he was picked for the team prompted another apology from Boris – and it is one apology too many. Daniel Finkelstein writes about Johnson in this morning's copy of The Times, saying he has many qualities along with many flaws. I agree that he is far from the worst prime minister the UK has endured in the past half century and he has certainly not been judged fairly or accurately by a baying anti-Brexit media and "liberal elite" determined to sabotage his leadership. But the balance of politics has now shifted from dealing with the change and chaos of "getting Brexit done" and seeing off the pandemic, which played to his strengths, to tackling the normal mundane issues of inflation, taxation, gas supplies and so on, in which he clearly has little interest. This explains his passion for fighting the Russians in Ukraine – it's straightforward, easily understandable and easy to make an impact. For the sake of "business as usual" politics, which is beginning to go haywire, the country now needs a new leader, someone with a plan and vision for putting right the "small stuff" now that the "big stuff" has been done.
PRESENTER INFLATION GETS NOTICED AT LAST
I rarely read Martin Hemming's column in The Sunday Times, but this week he joined, without knowing it, my campaign to force the BBC Sport department to focus on sport, rather than its presenters. We'll skip over the fact that almost all of them are not professional presenters at all, but former players "having a go", and return to a theme I have been commenting on for many years: that the BBC seems determined to turn all sport into a ghastly sofa-based version of the appalling One Show. Olympics coverage consists predominantly of retired athletes sitting around a coffee table desperately trying to find things to talk about; Wimbledon coverage has similarly been teetering on the edge of absurdity for a very long time. I recall Sue Barker once almost apologising to viewers for having to return to live action following a rain delay, as if this refocusing on the sport was somehow depriving the audience. Hemming also launched an assault on the BBC's Glastonbury output, which required three presenters to gush over the wonders of the band they were introducing. I actually thought this was an improvement on recent years, when it was a challenge to find live music amid a sea of "presenting".
At least the BBC has a nursery playground in which it can nurture its crop of presenters: the red button. It should, of course, nurture, assess and test its budding voices, but that clearly does not happen – how else would the utterly hopeless Marion Bartoli have slipped through quality control? But with iPlayer now showing play from all courts at Wimbledon, the demand for commentators and "analysts" has rocketed. Not long ago, there was very little commentary. Now, each match seems to have two old players describing what we can see with our own eyes. The costs must be eye-watering, too.
But for anyone still requiring proof of the BBC's incompetence over its sports scheduling, the constant switching of matches between BBC1, BBC2 and the fall-back option of the red button makes the case watertight. Last afternoon and evening, Cameron Norrie, a sort-of British player, was battling for a place in the singles semi-finals, the match being shown quite happily on BBC2. It had all the hallmarks of being a long struggle running into the early evening: anyone with a smattering of knowledge or understanding would have left it to run continuously and uninterrupted on that channel. After all, the alternative match featuring Djokovic and Sinner on BBC1 looked likely to finish in time for the early evening Six O'Clock News. But the incompetents at the Beeb decided to switch the matches at around 5.30pm. Any fool could see that this would necessitate another channel switch to accommodate the news. And lo, as 6pm approached, Sue Barker told us that the news would be delayed until the conclusion of the Norrie match – a ridiculous suggestion, as it was quite likely to take an hour or more to complete. So the news was now disrupted as well. Having created this complete mess, the Norrie match returned to BBC2 at about 6.20 to allow the news to be broadcast. Heaven help anyone trying to record it. The BBC's Wimbledon coverage was criticised yesterday for looking old and tired and it is indeed hard to think of anything older, more tired and more stupid than the Beeb's bonkers fixation over the primacy of BBC1 – that channel has to show the "best" at all times, regardless of the viewer's experience or convenience, as if BBC2 is somehow inferior or doesn't work as well. Madness.
WIMBLEDON'S HORRIBLE DOUBLE FAULT
As if the BBC's idiocy was not enough, Wimbledon itself has been doing its bit to increase global levels of stupidity. Abandoning a rest day by playing on the middle Sunday might have seemed a good idea in theory. But in practice, it has spread out the matches to provide increasingly thin fare as we approach the semi-final stages. And even worse, the scheduling of the singles quarter-finals is a disgrace. I have always congratulated Wimbledon for ensuring a fair contest for all, in that no one is asked to play on consecutive days, as happens at the other grand slam events. This year, a fool somewhere in the organisation has ordered there to be two women's quarter-finals and two men's quarter-finals on each of the second Tuesday and Wednesday, copying the failed system used elsewhere. This means that the two triumphant women from Wednesday's quarters will have to play on consecutive days, with the final being on Saturday. The men are not so badly damaged, although two men will enjoy two rest days and two only a single day. And even worse than that debacle, the women's quarter-finals have all been played in the graveyard slot at lunchtime, when hundreds of corporate seats are empty, while all of the men's matches have taken place at peak viewing time in the mid afternoon and early evening. Wimbledon has therefore successfully sunk from running the best and fairest scheduling, with all women's quarter-finals on Tuesdays and men on Wednesdays, to copying the biggest failing of the other slam events, while adding in a grotesque sexist and discriminatory element. Well done, Wimbledon.
Then we come to the excruciatingly bad on-court interviews, often with exhausted players who want nothing more than to get off the court but invariably with players who have absolutely nothing of any value or interest to say. Perhaps this is why the interviewers are so atrocious at their job. But they could at least try to ask questions instead of making statements. The sweet Elena Rybakina, on securing her place in the semi-finals was told by her interviewer that her win was important for her country, among other things. Barely a question to be heard. If Wimbledon has to continue with these toe-curling sessions, then at least it could find someone who knows how to ask a question.
THE DANGER OF LOW INTEREST RATES
Low interest rates are wonderful, in one way, for those buying a property. The downside is that they tend to be associated with low inflation – and high inflation is the great debt-killer that enabled so many baby boomers to clear their mortgages swiftly. The Price of Time, a new book by Edward Chancellor explains an even more dangerous side to low interest rates: they lead individuals to invest in the impossible. Chancellor believes that rock bottom rates create asset bubbles as the wealthy make ever more desperate efforts to find a good return for their investments and, indeed, history would suggest he is on to something. The current example would, of course, be crypto currencies and non fungible tokens.
CAMILLA LONG PROVES NO ONE CAN BE WRONG ALL OF THE TIME
Well done Camilla Long for proving the theory that it is impossible for anyone to be wrong about everything all the time. She has said some terrible things and many dumb things in her Sunday Times column over the years but last Sunday's (July 3), about the real issues facing feminism, is very good. It falls apart slightly towards the end but the points she makes about how trivial nonsense is distracting campaigns away from what really matters are very well argued. It's worth seeking out on The Times website.
THE ALBUM IS TAKING SHAPE!
I am currently working on the recording of 10 original songs that will form an album called "All The Notes There Is". The aim is to have it finished before the end of the year and the song arrangements are developing well. They were all written at different times and with different songwriting partners, some during a songwriting retreat run by Chris Difford of Squeeze, some with old friends, one based on a poem fragment written by former colleague Allison Pearson and the rest solo efforts. Two tracks were given their first public airing in their studio-ready shape last night at the Hare and Hounds pub in Claygate. where Yasmine Giles and her husband Pete, a former member of King Crimson, had invited Derek Huff and me to be guests at their new series of "Planet Giles music club" events. A small audience seemed to find our songs acceptable. It was my first proper public performance of music since before Covid and was enough to remind me how addictive it is. Great fun – and thanks to everyone who came along.
JULY 2 2022
THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF MISS RADUCANU
Emma Raducanu, lovely tennis player and delightful person, I'm sure, played two matches at Wimbledon bedecked in expensive Tiffany jewellery. It all looked as extremely pretty as she does. But the teenager received plenty of criticism for accessorising her sporting whites in this way. And those critics were, in their turn, criticised for daring to question her choice of bling: one said, apparently, that everyone should stop going on about the jewellery, leave the poor girl alone and focus on her tennis. But I fear this is the last thing the young woman and her sponsoring jewellers are wishing for: Raducanu will tumble down the world rankings once she has been eliminated from the US Open; and the sole purpose of telling her to wear the pearls and diamonds was for them to be talked about. This was advertising, pure and simple: Raducanu is as much advertising hoarding as she is tennis player at the moment. I am not sure how this sits with Wimbledon's relatively strict rules on promotions and advertising, but we can be sure that unless Raducanu, who looks increasingly lost and clueless on and around the court, assembles a coaching team and concentrates on her tennis then advertisers' interest in her will quickly wane: exclusive brands tend to avoid too close an association with losers.
JUNE 30 2022
ONE RULE FOR CRICKET, ANOTHER FOR TENNIS
Michael Vaughan, former England cricket captain turned commentator, has stepped down from his broadcasting work having been cold shouldered by the BBC over comments he is alleged to have made. He strenuously denies any offence and has yet to be found guilty of anything. Meanwhile, over on Centre Court at Wimbledon, we have the BBC's very own supreme court judges – Sue Barker and John McEnroe – declaring their love for Boris Becker and telling him how much they miss him, followed by tennis's biggest dolt, Novak Djokovic, telling the world how he keeps in touch with his friend, the inmate of Cell Block H. Becker is a convicted criminal serving two and a half years in jail.
BIG MISTAKES NEED MORE THAN A TUCKED-AWAY CLARIFICATION
The Times confesses to its most heinous blunders in a tiny slot in the bottom corner of its letters page. While I applaud any media organisation that owns up to its mistakes, I am becoming extremely concerned at the nature of the errors being recorded. A story this week about the popularity of the prime minister among Conservative voters carried figures that were wrong; another admitted that a review of Scottish police was not connected to the fatal arrest of "Scotland's George Floyd", as its coverage had stated. Everybody makes mistakes, but when the mistake affects the meaning of the story then it needs a rather larger correction than a heavily disguised and barely noticeable "clarification". There are, after all, people still going around believing that a disabled old man died at Gatwick because of gross neglect.
JUNE 27 2022
Well, that's a big "Wow" to Glastonbury. There is usually enough entertainment on offer to outweigh the gushing BBC presenters and make it worthwhile tuning in. But this year, the presenters were kept to a brief gush before each act – and there were terrific performances on all stages. It's impossible to catch everything, especially if you attend in person, but I must have watched about seven hours of TV coverage and enjoyed almost all of it. Paul McCartney's set, lasting nearly three hours, was history in the making, featuring sparkling songs from his 60-year career and the most dramatic opening to a set I have seen in a long time, with a dynamic three-part vocal harmony. First Aid Kit, the Swedish sisters performing with three extra musicians, were superb; Haim have developed into a highly watchable band, Sam Fender was well worth a listen and Celeste, serene in white, showed the power of her voice, although I needed a break after half an hour of it. But Olivia Rodrigo's naming and shaming of the grotesque US Supreme Court judges was the political highlight of the weekend. Her duet with Lily Allen was full of anger and disgust at the judges' decision to allow the banning of abortion – yet still managed to maintain the joyous, smiling, youthful tempo she had brought to the event.
This ruling on abortion, returning an advanced country to the dark days before the great social reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s, is another example of how an appointed judiciary has taken it upon itself to make its own law. To be fair, in the US, this has always been the case – the abortion law itself stems from the Roe v Wade litigation of 1973. But when judge Clarence Thomas, an aged, right-wing bigot, threatens that he will now turn his attention to undoing laws governing same-sex marriage and the right to use contraceptives, it is time for elected politicians to step in and assert their democratic authority. The Americans' sclerotic political system means that this won't happen, however, especially with such a weak and doddering president. And so women in the US will have to endure enforced pregnancies, no matter what the circumstances, as the country slides ever closer to becoming Gilead, the dystopia predicted in The Handmaid's Tale.
The sadness is that this assault on common sense and decency is being launched by older people, who should have the experience, knowledge and intelligence to know better. It is important that wiser, more socially enlightened people of age loudly denounce the US Supreme Court judges as rotten apples, unrepresentative of the vast majority of senior citizens. The greater tragedy is that the wealth of understanding and perspective amassed by older people is more generally discarded. Those of us with first-hand experience of high inflation, high interest rates, conflicts, shortages and all sorts of crises take a calm view of the current economic blip; we are far less likely to share the panic of the young, stoked by media desperate to portray the UK as the world's basket case.
Similarly, with regard to "woke political correctness", those who have experienced the enormous social changes set in train by the victorious crusades of the 1960s and 70s, and can appreciate the continuing direction of travel and constant improvements in the levels of respect shown to all minorities, are far less likely to go to the barricades over such dubious, complex and highly personal and individual campaigns as the one mounted by the aggressive and bullying transgender lobby. It is almost as though the trans campaign is employing tactics used by terrorists – create a divide, create enough hatred and tension towards your own cause that it stirs sympathisers to extremes. Its latest atrocity demonstrates this: Julie Bindel, the noted feminist campaigner and powerful advocate on women's safety issues, was banned from debating women's safety by a council in Nottingham. It said her views ran counter to its "transgender rights policy" and fell foul of its "inclusion strategy". I hope there is someone associated with this Nottingham council who is bright enough to point out that being "inclusive" cannot include actively excluding anyone with whom you happen to disagree. This is shocking ignorance and hypocrisy; a council has to live a lie in order to appease a vicious minority. This is not how the great social reforms were achieved.
It is, however, a tried and tested terror tactic and it is certainly achieving at least some of its aims. Plenty of people are becoming sickened by the idiocy and illogic of the trans movement's complaints and nebulous demands, but most people have more pressing issues to concern them and so are less vulnerable to being stirred to rage by its provocations. The same applies to Greta Thunberg and her finger-pointing, accusatory style. She talks perfect sense on climate change but does so in such a divisive and deploring manner that she alienates so many who would otherwise applaud her. This is not the way to encourage people to make sacrifices to protect the planet.
Equally worrying is how those great social movements of the 60s and 70s are currently being portrayed. Back in Time for Birmingham is a BBC series in which the Sharma family experience 50 years of British Asian history, recreating the conditions of previous decades and re-living its news. I caught a glimpse of the family experiencing the 1970s but it was enough to persuade me that the programme could not be taken seriously. Old newsreel showing cards in windows barring people from ethnic minorities from applying for jobs, or rooms, was greeted with understandable horror by the family: these were hideous manifestations of widespread racism and the younger Sharmas could not believe that such discrimination was legal. What the commentary failed to point out, however, was that it was only legal in the sense that it had not yet been made illegal: no law had been passed declaring it to be acceptable. This was a new phenomenon that had arisen following a period of social disruption caused by large-scale immigration. Gradually, most people came to regard this brazen racism as completely unacceptable, so much so, that the various Immigration and Race Relations Acts of the 1970s outlawed it, beginning a steady and continuing process of tolerance. There will always be further to travel along this path but, for now, we are still heading in the right direction. We should all be very frightened, however, that misrepresentation of the past, along with political judges and the nastily divisive nature of current "debate", means this can no longer be guaranteed.
AN ARMED INVASION OF SPAIN
Extraordinary scenes broadcast on the internet showed armed men attacking the Spanish territory of Melilla on the north African coast this week. There are two ways of viewing this: it was an attempt at an armed incursion into another country and should be dealt with harshly; or this is a sign of things to come, as conditions deteriorate across Africa and Asia and the search for a better life in a wealthy nation becomes a genuinely desperate, life or death journey. We have to look ahead to the endgame here: as global warming causes parts of the world to become uninhabitable, how will we respond? With walls and soldiers to resist incursions? Or the destruction of our own economies, social structures and environments by accommodating every migrant? These are appalling, but very real, choices. A dystopian vision of warring continents – us versus them – is rearing its ugly head. The reality could be even worse, though, as the developed countries could also become uninhabitable, not just from the pressure of hugely unsustainable populations but from climate change. Developed nations are not immune: Rome has turned off its fountains because of drought and the UK has just seen Glastonbury take place in dust-bowl conditions. We have plenty of important things to worry us.
ACTUALLY, PERHAPS IT'S BEST TO STAY AWAY FROM KYIV...
I said last week that the re-settlement of people from western Ukraine might have been over-hasty when conditions there now seemed safe for many to return. I did also say that this situation was precarious and indeed, that has turned out to be the case, with Cruise missile attacks on Kyiv the capital.
JUNE 21 2022
Party or work event? You decide...
DECEMBER 9 2019
How to vote? Having set out my political vision of how we have reached this sorry pass in my book, The Rise of Antisocialism, and explained where we might find an acceptable route forward, I feel I should use the book's analysis and premises to survey today's party political landscape a few days before the 2019 general election.
It is easy to rule out several contenders. Labour's bizarre manifesto contains some excellent ideas, such as higher taxes – I have always voted in favour of everyone, especially the well off, making a greater contribution to social provision of services. Some nationalisation is certainly justified. The trains, for example, are no better now than before privatisation – I used them as a daily commuter both before and after – yet large amounts of money are being diverted from the sector into individuals' pockets. But there is so much wrong, too. Its idiotic blanket promise to compensate every “Waspi” woman, regardless of their situation, shows a blinkered and misguided idealism that smacks of danger. Its Brexit policy, the most pressing issue in this election, is also utterly incoherent.
We needn't waste much time on the arrogant and foolish LibDem leader and her undemocratic, illiberal denial of the 2016 referendum result: her party has spent three years doing everything possible in Parliament to thwart the declared will of the electorate. Her hubris is sickening and the leaflet bombardment to which we have been subjected shows a blatant disregard for planetary resources. And Swinson's unthinking wokeness, for example, in support of the fascistic trans extremists is frightening. 'Tis a pity for the party. I have voted LibDem in the past and locally they work hard. But its present stance is nasty, middle class and objectionable.
The Greens cannot see the wood for the trees, almost literally. I have also voted Green in the past – rather pointlessly – whenever I felt the need to make a point! The problem is that its policies are a jumbled mish-mash of bits and pieces that are supposed to add up to a different way of life, but don't: there is no holistic view of how we will need to change in order to survive a ravaged planet, which is one of the things I try to draw together in my book.
In Scotland, the SNP leadership is positively toxic. Flailing around for anything that will hurt the majority, Sturgeon has lost two recent referendums, refused to accept the result of either and yet calls for more! As a Scottish woman said on the radio the other morning: “I'll keep voting for independence until Scotland gets what it wants.” Which completely ignores the fact that Scotland does already have exactly what it wants. It voted to remain part of the union and that is what it is. What she meant was “I'll keep voting for independence until I get what I want.” And that is the nub of the ghastly SNP message.
The Brexit Party is merely a dangerous distraction. It claims to want Brexit, but not this Brexit. By getting in the way of those who should be delivering Brexit, it is threatening the one thing it claims to care about.
Which brings us to the Conservatives. It has sort of shaken off the nasty party tag but attached to itself the “we're just having a laugh” party. It's hard to take Boris seriously. But the manifesto is not outrageous – it's quite bland. The party, quite rightly, sees “getting Brexit done” as the first priority. This running sore will fester and worsen if left untreated, which is exactly what Labour and the LibDems – and others – propose. But there can be no peace until the referendum result is enacted. Boris's deal is not great but far better than Corbyn's suggested “vassal state” version. Given that Parliament, finely balanced in party terms but overwhelmingly Remain supporting, has spent three years trying to wreck what could have been a fairly smooth Brexit process, progress can only be made by giving the Conservatives a significant majority. As an avowed and genuine socialist, I find this paradoxical and uncomfortable, but there is no acceptable alternative. Any other result plunges us straight back into chaos and misery, requiring another election next year.
And a word on climate change: it is not a slow, gradual progression towards a warmer, wetter uninhabitable planet spread over centuries, giving us plenty of time to wish and hope that technology will save us. Change doesn't work like that. What we will see is a series of ever more critical and sudden events that will step us down to a new level of degradation. For example, the current drought and fires in Australia and elsewhere creates smoke and haze, which in turn forms a blanket producing further warming. And the ash lying on glaciers in New Zealand will help them to melt more quickly, etc etc. An event such as this rapidly accelerates our decline for a period, after which we adjust to living on a relatively event-free plateau for a while – but a lower and more dangerous plateau. Each event creates knock-on effects that step us down closer to an emergency. It's the same with getting old: it rarely happens gradually. More often, something happens – an illness, a fall, a change of circumstance – that sparks a sudden deterioration to life at a new, more debilitated, level that in itself accelerates the ageing process.
OCTOBER 20 2019
The divisions in the UK will never be healed until the country leaves the EU. Families and friends remain divided over this issue and are becoming ever more deeply so. Parliament's shameful behaviour in blocking every avenue, from leaving with a deal, leaving without, holding a general election, or another referendum means the wounds are being aggravated, rather then soothed.
If our tawdry parliamentarians continue their juvenile game-playing and achieve their true aim of thwarting Britain's departure from the EU, as mandated in the 2016 referendum, what do they think will follow? The genie is now out of the bottle. The turmoil will not be stilled by simply forgetting that 2016 ever happened. The festering will spread and deepen; there will be no healing; this issue will dominate our politics and distract us from meaningful progress for the foreseeable future.
Leave, with or without a deal, and the largely unfounded concerns of the suddenly fervent pro-EU community will quickly melt away. Europe will still be there – our leaving of it is a physical impossibility. We will still communicate and co-operate with its bureaucracy, the EU. Far less will change than we think. Unless we wish it.
And on this point, I applaud Caroline Flint and those Labour socialists who think like her. These are the last genuine socialists in parliament. The discredited McDonnell tendency has shown itself to favour business success over traditional labour-voting working class communities, on the spurious ground that it provides jobs. At the same time, the absurd Starmer wing demonstrates an astonishing defeatism unworthy of politicians of any hue. These people seem so assured of their own failings and inability to win an election for a decade or more that they blithely assume right-wing Tory governments will prevail long into the future, undermining workers' rights and steering the UK towards rabid free market madness.
Flint and her ilk can see the true possibilities that Brexit can bring. If the Labour Party can shed its third-rate student politicians and replace them with people like her, then it COULD win an election. And having done that it could implement whatever improvements to employee rights, social services, industrial policy, environmental protections and general welfare that it wished. This thing cuts both ways. The Tories might bring us one form of Brexit – and until someone does, the country will remain mired in ugliness. But a resurgence of real, grown-up socialists, of which there are now so few, could deliver immeasurable improvements to the lives of Britain's poorest and most vulnerable and deprived, bringing about changes that would be impossible within the limited remit allowed by the EU.
These are the issues I discuss in my newly published book, "The Rise of Antisocialism", published by Amazon and available by clicking this link.
APRIL 13 2019
Having re-read a few of my posts below, I felt I should point out that they are all written from my particular standpoint and that taken in isolation they could be misconstrued or misunderstood. Therefore, to anyone venturing into these texts, I simply ask that you bear in mind that I write as someone who wishes to refocus our society towards fairness and sharing, communitarianism and place, and away from a world run by, and for, business. I seek a society run by, and for, people. For all people, not just the winners in the game of winner-takes-all who flit along the path of least resistance and take whatever pleases them. Our business-first culture is destroying not just the planet, but human relationships and important values such as caring and decency. In all these musings I am merely seeking an end to the materialism, greed and selfishness that I believe lie at the root of what currently drives western culture. This cannot go on. And once you assume this stance, so many other things, and so many things people say, take on a very different perspective.
I am currently working on a book that expands on these ideas.
APRIL 12 2019
This year has been overwhelming so far. A sell-out gig in February for the band, raising about £3,000 for the Down's Syndrome Association and performed at their lovely theatre in Teddington. Then Dad took a turn for the worse, spent a month in hospital and died on March 30. I was booked on a Chris Difford songwriting retreat the following week and decided to go anyway. And what a mind-blowing experience it was: wonderful people, music and place. Everybody on it was left suffering with a type of PTSD! We handled Dad's funeral service ourselves, which was a lot of work crafting the service sheet and the schedule. But it was beautiful. Lots of people attending. And now Australia. It will be the maddest few months ever.
At least we can get away from Brexit. As Janice Turner said before the referendum, it's a lonely existence being a left-wing communitarian leave voter. No one really wants to hear the caring, socialist Brexit viewpoint, so I've really lost all interest and am past caring whether we leave or not or on what terms. Our politicians have let us down and a gruesome alliance of free-market headbanging Tory extremists combined with the Remain Establishment, which will never let Brexit happen anyway, have wrecked everything and almost ensured we'll never leave. I voted leave as the only way to begin dismantling sweatshop Britain and changing society and the way we spend our days for the better. The vulnerable and neglected deserve big improvements in their lives, which they cannot get while under the ultimate control of an undemocratic, business-first bureaucracy. I feel European, I love Europe - but this is not the same thing as loving the EU, which cares only about business, competition and profits and little about people, culture and justice. How else could it not only allow, but actually feed the appalling growth of sweatshop work practices across Britain. It is the weakest who suffer, those who have no voice. Or when they did have a voice for a day in 2016 are now told they are stupid and should shut up, because we are never going to help you.
JANUARY 10 2019
It seems the new year is beginning with a deterioration in political behaviour that hardly seemed possible a few weeks ago, when the level of debate and common sense in Parliament had already reached a record low. The shameful and irresponsible behaviour of so many MPs is seriously shocking. One appalling cohort is seeking to rule out both a deal AND a no deal Brexit - the most blatant attempt at scuppering Brexit so far. Up to now, most attempts have been underhanded. Another overlapping cohort is seeking a second referendum. But one has to ask to what purpose, when these people have shown such utter contempt for the result of the first one? The mendacious behaviour of those Remainers intent on sabotaging every aspect of Brexit is, in fact, an attempt to discredit the whole idea by making it appear impossible - when it is only impossible because of the power of so many wreckers. As for those calling for a general election - it's the only thing Corbyn has actually said for the past few months - I would accept this, on one condition: no current MP is ever allowed to hold public office again and therefore cannot stand. The behaviour of pretty much everyone in Parliament has been so reprehensible that they do not deserve another chance.
NOVEMBER 16 2018
I propose two new crimes. First, running a gambling company (obviously). Second, and punishable by years and years of community service, the offence of using the phrase "stolen my future". This should apply most severely to the next selfish, pampered, privileged kid to go on TV (witness last night's Question Time) and whine on about how Brexit has "stolen their future". First, they should be made to list precisely what has been "stolen" from them – we want details. And second, being made to serve their community until the age of 30 or more might focus the minds of anyone else thinking of using the same pitiful, self-obsessed slogan. It might make them compare their plight to that of a 19-year-old in 1914, or to teenagers on poverty-stricken sink estates across Britain. Countless youngsters HAVE had their futures stolen from them – but you will never hear them whimpering about it on telly.
Further to the mini bus analogy (see below, November 9), I should add that the majority five cannot actually agree on which bit of the north to head to either, making the minority wreckers' task all too easy. The fact that the mini bus ends up in a tangled, confused heap in a car park in a bleak spot in the Midlands, having gone nowhere in two years, pretty much sums up the abysmal EU negotiations.
And so to May's Brexit deal. It is, of course, a dog's breakfast. An abomination. It pleases no one, except, it seems, Theresa May. But it's the only game in town. Let's get real. Apart from the staggeringly stupid lack of a "notice to quit" option that would enable the UK to exit the customs arrangement – which sounds extremely unlikely to be enforceable anyway – there is little point in any of us listing what we don't like about the deal when there is no prospect, at this stage of, of achieving anything else. Every single person in the country can easily find something they feel is abhorrent in this package. But that's where we've been heading all along with such a flawed negotiating strategy – the worst of all worlds. The talks on the UK side have been approached throughout from a grovelling, supine position, while the vain and unelected EU ideologues have behaved with their usual arrogance, dogmatism, fanaticism and imperiousness. Preparing for no deal from day one, and informing the EU Commission that we would be willing to listen if it had anything worthy to contribute, but otherwise, please don't bother us, was the only way to meet the EU's entirely predictable and uncaring intransigence. Mervyn King and others pointed out this blindingly obvious strategy more than two years ago. But now we are where we are. On our knees, kowtowing to a smug, grinning European Commission, with no other option but to take this wretched deal, hope it sees us through the next few years and then keep the good bits while gradually amending or ignoring the bad bits and shredding the worst. Trying to race to a no deal exit from here is no longer possible; a second referendum would be a catastrophe when Leave supporters refuse to participate, denying it any legitimacy; a "people's vote"? On what?; or an indefinite postponement? And carry on like this for ever? To be fair, the EU negotiators have said all along that they would only ever offer us a bad deal. On this they have stuck to their word. Why we ever thought otherwise, I have no idea. Even then, it still doesn't guarantee the whole of the EU will endorse it. Our strategy has been naive, weak and clueless.
At least the Labour Party has an agreed stance on Brexit at last – and indeed everything else: "We need a general election." What's your view on the backstop? "We need a general election." What's your policy on the single market? "We need a general election." Any policies on FOBTs? "We need a general election." Anything to say to working class people or the poor? "We need a general election." Brilliant. Thank you.
And why were these two news stories presented separately in The Times on Wednesday? Two sides of the same coin; one story, really – yet appearing on separate pages. Whatever happened to joined-up thinking?
NOVEMBER 9 2018
An old friend of mine – a professor, actually – was accidentally caught up in the recent "Remain Minority March" in London (the one demanding the wrecking of Brexit). He made one observation: "Not a single trade unionist or working class person to be seen..." (or "stupid, racist people" to be seen, as pro-status quo, pro-business, middle class, "liberal" Brexit wreckers see them).
Another old friend drew parallels between a pro-Tommy Robinson march that ended in violence, and the peaceful nature of the Remain Minority March. He wrote: "A few hundred Tommy Robinson supporters turned up in London had a march then a riot. Hundreds of thousands of Remainers turn up and no trouble at all. Perhaps politicians could stop listening to racists [sic] and pay more heed to the decent ordinary British people [sic]." This all rather reinforces the point that the Minority March was populated by the comfortably off demanding the continuation of the advantages and privileges safeguarded by the business-centric EU. It was peaceful because it wasn't a protest. Marches are usually calling for change: this one was pleading for maintenance of the status quo. "We like things just the way they are" is hardly a call to arms. "Whadda we want?" "Everything exactly the way it is!" "When do we want it?" "For ever!"
This same friend opines on Facebook that we cannot leave the EU because it is "impossible". He uses "the banning of gravity" as an analogy. This is a clever friend, but his analogy is painfully absurd. Leaving the EU is not denying the laws of physics: it is admin; paperwork. I posit a far more apposite analogy. You are in a coffin on your way to the furnace. You wake up and start knocking furiously, yelling: "Let me out. I've got to get out! I'm not dead yet!" But the reply from outside comes: "I'm sorry. It's just impossible. There's no way we can undo all the paperwork and admin. It's far too complicated. You'll just have to stay in there." In this scenario, you might hope someone is prepared to put a little effort into achieving "the impossible". And that there are no complaining hordes doing everything they can to stop them.
There can be no denying that the Brexit process has been appallingly badly handled and is a shambles. One significant reason for this is the refusal of the minority to accept the referendum result. Virtually everyone I have heard who begins their argument with "Of course I/we respect the referendum result" then goes on to show precisely the opposite. Even traitors such as Blair and Clegg (having written to foreign countries urging them to punish the UK), have claimed to respect the democratic decision reached in 2016. Drawing another analogy, try seeing the referendum as a decision on where to go on holiday to be made by nine people in a mini bus. There is only one mini bus, so everyone has to go to the same place, whether they like it or not, but all agree that the destination will be decided by a simple democratic vote. Five vote to head north, four to go south. But sadly, this doesn't settle things. The four who voted to go south repeatedly say: "While we fully respect the vote, we don't think the majority really meant to drag us all into the cold wilderness of the north." And they keep tugging at the steering wheel, wrenching on the hand brake, covering the driver's eyes – anything to prevent progress towards the north. The mini bus eventually breaks down, thanks to all the mistreatment it has received, having gone round in circles at a service station for two years. The minority claim they were right all along: "Look – it's impossible to go north. We'll have to have another vote and then go south." The quiet majority – "decent ordinary British people" – just shake their heads in dismay.
Yet another old friend said recently that she fears the divisions created over Brexit may never heal. And she could well be right. This is partly because the topic is now taboo. It cannot be discussed rationally, even by intelligent people, because it is now in the same category as religion and education as a dangerous subject – though far, far more toxic. No one on either side seems prepared to listen to anyone whose views differ even slightly from their own. I may be guilty of that myself. But at least I am bombarded every day with Remain and Pro-EU arguments – for a start, virtually everyone I connect with on social media is a Remainer – and so cannot avoid hearing them. On the other hand, no one, as far as I am aware, has been even slightly interested in exploring my views or understanding my viewpoint. If someone was prepared to listen and still disagreed with me, then fine. I could respect that. But as things stand, the noisy pro-EU lobby listens with all the interest of a committed christian being told there is no god.
Everyone, of course, hears things only within the context of their own viewpoint. I understand that. It means everything anyone hears simply reinforces their previously held views and the divisions widen. Only when you delve back into the underlying assumptions can you make any progress on mutual understanding and closing the gap between the two viewpoints. So here are some of my assumptions, outlined as briefly as possible....
First, I abhor our business-centric culture. Spending more than a quarter of a century working for the Financial Times gave me ample time – and a ring-side seat – to survey and assess the increasing domination by businesses and business principles of every walk of life – education, health, crime, entertainment, housing and home-owning, sport, hobbies, transport, charity, the list is endless. Every decision made by authorities at every level has to be decided on its benefit or otherwise to business. Life and death decisions in hospitals have become financial decisions. Powerful business lobbies have seized control of their own areas of operation – the gambling sector, housebuilders etc etc. They dictate the terms of the debate and policymakers are forced or fooled into supporting and protecting their interests.
Second, the mindless consumption and materialism upon which vast swathes of business depends, is degrading the planet and its resources at such a rate our very existence is under threat. Many species are already extinct or on the brink of becoming so; humans will, sooner or later, be in that same boat. We simply cannot go on living like this. This is not a choice. But with a business-centric culture that feeds economic growth and very little else, the status quo is secure. Siren voices warning of the dangers are silenced by arguments citing fractions of percentage points, a possible loss of jobs, competition, lack of choice in supermarkets and so on. A new relationship between business and society, and a way of life that does not rely on permanent economic "growth" are urgently needed. Read Kate Raworth's "Donut Economics" before dismissing any of this.
Third, this business-centric status quo is failing to deliver on even the single narrow promise it makes – rising material prosperity for all. This week's Times reports that there are 14.2m people in the UK living in poverty. Queues at food banks, schoolchildren unable to sleep at night because their only bed is an uncomfortable armchair, shoddy tower blocks burning down. What stake do these people have in the status quo? On TV this week we saw "Doing Money" – a drama based on a true story about Romanian girls being tricked or kidnapped into the arms of criminal gangs and trafficked to Ireland. Forced – brutally – into prostitution, the victims are ferried backwards and forwards across national borders to evade national police forces. This is all enabled by "freedom of movement" and made necessary the first anti-slavery legislation in Britain for 200 years. This what we've become. Modern slavery is regularly reported; sweatshop labour is commonplace; labour gangs waiting for a day's work have reappeared; the "gig economy", with its zero-hours contracts and rotten pay – OK, it might work for some, but for most it has reduced wages and productivity. And don't believe for a second that the statistics painting a rosy picture of near full employment are giving a true impression: millions are "employed" for a few hours here and there, or paid so little they have to be subsidised by the state, or trapped in miserable sweatshops. And yes, state benefits maintain this sickening status quo, especially those that are, in effect, given to businesses under the guise of "in-work" benefits. It means we have whole sectors full of businesses that are not really going concerns at all – they cannot afford to pay for the labour they exploit without being subsidised. Business-on-benefits. It's grotesque. And much of it is a direct result of freedom of movement within the EU. Give businesses access to a limitless supply of cheap labour and they will exploit it to the max. And they have. The consequences are tragic for all – some businesses that would otherwise fail are propped up by their ability to exploit cheap workers from eastern Europe, aided and abetted by business-on-benefits subsidies; other businesses use the cheap labour source to enrich themselves. We have seen this week the boss of Persimmon, for example, shamed into quitting after being offered almost £150m in pay and bonuses for one year. The exploited migrants suffer, the countries losing them suffer, the labour forces they are undercutting and replacing suffer – as one policeman in the "Doing Money" docu-drama mentioned as an aside: "Even British prostitutes can't compete." No wonder pay has stagnated and productivity declined when employing half a dozen migrants on sweatshop wages to spend a week doing a job with primitive tools is better for business than investing in technology and training. There are millions of unemployed and under-employed in the UK just longing for a job offering decent pay, security, respect and opportunities. We are not so short of labour or expertise that we need to import it - it's more that we have down-graded, undermined and refused to invest in vast swathes of the workplace, from catering and hospitality to health and the trades.
Fourth, many of the people voting Leave in the referendum could not care less whether the UK is in the EU or not. That is NOT the great divide in our country. Anyone who thinks membership of the EU is either the real problem or the solution to our ills really has no conception of how serious our underlying problems are. The polarisation of wealth, the complete domination of our culture by business, the gradual destruction of the planet – these are the underlying issues that stirred people to vote as they did. The EU got caught in the crossfire because, for all the good things it does, there are an equal number of abominations. The greatest of which is "freedom of movement" of people. When the populations of the eastern European accession countries gained this right, it swept away the rough equilibrium that had made this freedom tolerable. It worked when pay, conditions, lifestyles, benefits etc were approximately balanced between the participating countries – but this collapsed once the relatively impoverished former Soviet bloc nations entered the fray. This simple fact provided a focus for all of the anger felt by the underprivileged, the poor, the dispossessed. A map plotting the location of Leave versus Remain voters very closely matches one plotting the areas of greatest deprivation. Ask yourself why these people would vote for the status quo, given that the chance of righting these wrongs within the EU is non-existent - the unelected, unaccountable, agenda-driven ideologues making up the European Commission have made that crystal clear on multiple occasions. And so even if the alienated majority couldn't care less about EU membership one way or the other, this was a chance to be heard. I believe it is outrageous to brand them as stupid, feckless and racist and seek to silence them, while fighting to wreck the process of leaving the EU in order to preserve the middle class privileges many of us enjoy. Your Ehic card versus a trafficked Romanian girl? Your fuzzy, warm sense of "belonging" in a greater Europe versus slavery, sweatshops, poverty? Perhaps if one of the choices on offer was a continuing union with the people of Europe, the vote would have gone the other way. But it wasn't. The union is a union of businesses, resting on the key business principle of exploitation of resources, human or otherwise – and the victims of this business-centric alliance, and their supporters, understood that well enough.
MARCH 15 2018
So the odious Vince Cable declares all Brexit voters to be racist and stupid in his shameful "white faces" speech.
Perhaps he should read James Bloodworth's book, "Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain" – or even just Nick Cohen's excellent review of it in The Guardian – to get a hint at how working people are treated today. Cable clearly hasn't the first clue. Even these few paragraphs from the book review give a clear insight into the motivations of many many Leave voters who believe in standing up against exploitation and abuse in all its forms. Shame on you, Cable.
Nick Cohen wrote: "Immigration and class are now inseparable subjects. By Bloodworth’s account, the native working class has respectable reasons to worry about mass migration. The recruitment agencies that supplied eastern Europeans to Amazon warned their workers that, if they made a fuss about their conditions, there was a reserve army of their fellow countrymen ready to take their place. Bloodworth and his colleagues made about £250 a week. The average weekly wage in Romania was a little over £100. One migrant told Bloodworth he worked like an animal and was a nobody in the UK. But in Romania he would be a nobody without enough to eat.
"Bloodworth argues it is progress that most British workers will not take jobs from employers who treat them like animals. He does not want to lionise migrants for putting up with intolerable conditions. Instead, he takes a nice swipe at stereotypical reactions to migration. The average eastern European meets two types of people in England: “those who wanted you to go home and those who wrote letters to liberal newspapers waxing colourfully about how wonderful and hardworking you were”.
"The point is that no one should have to work in the conditions Bloodworth experienced. This is an easy sentence to write. But if we were to build a society where its sentiments were made a reality, every reader would have to accept paying more for the goods and services they now receive at bargain rates. Even from a selfish point of view, I think it a price worth paying. Jason Moyer-Lee of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain warns at the end of this book that, if we do not stop the mistreatment of Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders, one day everyone could wake up to find their employment rights gone.
"It feels wrong to say that it is a pleasure to read Bloodworth when he is describing the true location of poverty in Britain, which is not among the allegedly workshy, but in the lives of the women at checkouts and the men packing boxes for 30 hours one week and two the next. That said, the element of pleasure or at least satisfaction cannot be denied. For Bloodworth is the best young leftwing writer Britain has produced in years. And it is not only the exploited who are lucky to have him."
MARCH 2 2018
Here are my notes from a speech I gave to an FT Conference on education and recruitment in about 2011. It's in note form but I think it gives the gist. It didn't go down well with the head of Universities UK, also on the panel of speakers. But just look at the mess we're in now.
MY NOTES
Based on: Anecdote, facts and figures, observations of recruitment sector and personal beliefs. And experience.
Facts and figures.
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1960 – 50,000 applicants for 20,000 places. / Today 730,000 for 490,000. 25x
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Unemployment is 8 per cent. But 18-24 year olds = 18 per cent.
16-24 – it’s 20.3 per cent. This is DANGEROUS.
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Nov – Ernst and Young – rush for places – 4,500 grads going for 700 places on training programme.
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totaljobs.com research:
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38 per cent graduates claimed jobseekers allowance since leaving university.
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37 per cent of those for more than 6 months.
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44 per cent saying university not equipped them for world of work (well-should it?).
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24 per cent would not recommend it. Shocking.
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Richard Lambert – welcomed 10,000 work experience places ie NOT jobs.
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But High Fliers research shows 6 per cent fewer grad vacancies at the large recruiters than in 2007 – with growing numbers of grads.
So how to get a job?
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FreshMinds Talent study emphasised importance of work experience.
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Says 90 per cent of its candidates making top-tier companies have had extensive work experience.
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75 per cent of its FTSE 250 clients are asking for 6 months W-Exp as a pre-requisite.
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Also – employers are favouring graduates who have done a year’s work and are now looking to move – at cost of new graduates.
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Lead headline in yesterday’s Metro – “Jobless urged to work for free”. Unpaid training or volunteering.
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Forcing new graduates to intern for ever. Demanding ever greater work experience
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How did we get into this mess?
How it started…
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Someone dreamed up idea of lots more universities – then a target of 50 per cent of school leavers going to university.
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Not achieved – but nearly there – partly by re-badging CFEs and Polytechnics, which did an excellent job on more practical and vocational courses.
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So universities needed to take more students? Commercialised – businesses – to encourage them to take more - student heads carrying a value.
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Numbers grew. Old grant system couldn’t cope with numbers. So start charging fees.
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But had to be done via loans – so who puts money up front? And not paid back for at least 3, 4, 5 years – or never.
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Government wants to give less support, so demands more from students. Fees go up – but then so does amount needing to be loaned. To make this palatable - needs higher interest rates – and even penalties for early payment etc.
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And so we get to £9,000 a year.
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What a mess…..
Results…
1. University explosion – disaster. Courses that fitted well in flexible CFE colleges look ridiculous as three-year university degree courses. Some sound like little more than training. A 3-week training course in using a software package stretched to three years of media studies.
2. Loss of sight of what universities are for – Learning for its own sake. Academia. Never even thought about a job at LSE in the 70s. Now more “training” and universities are businesses…
ZeFrank – LA blogger – recent cover feature – Argued both ways – for and against university – saying in an era of instant and constant access to information, what could universities offer? “Students are expected to perform redundant tasks in exams with artificial restrictions on access to information – learning to live with inefficiency rather than to challenge it.” Saying outdated.
But he also says it is where we learn essential survival skills. “learn to spell in case the spell-check stops working; learn to use the library in case Google goes down; learn to appreciate the classics in case a boss mentions one at a party; learn basic maths in case your accountant is a cheat”
It’s also about making contacts/friends and having a good time – nothing wrong with that.
But at what cost? We’ve introduced value for money
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Debt culture – I’m low church on this = plain evil. Ghastly message.
Debt is a gamble you’ll be able to repay.
But gambling seems to be OK too – eg Sky ads offering starter packs.
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Debt and gambling go hand in hand - and are diseases – and if you’ve known an addict, you’ll know what I mean. Wrecks lives, relationships.
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We are, remember, living with the mess left by a massive debt bubble bursting.
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Debts don’t seem to diminish… Talk to people in this room – Becs etc.
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Elsewhere – Scotland and Wales. Not like US – where prepare for 18 years. More expensive than Europe. World’s worst?
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We had a review. Lord Browne – laziest ever? Just charge more.
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No analysis of what students actually pay for (Professors writing books and lecture tours subsidised by students
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No look at course lengths - could be two years – I did 90 weeks (less in reality.) Oxbridge = 72.
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No look at pre-payment – earning credits during school/gap year
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So is it worth it?
“A university education resulting in debts of £30,000-£40,000 is astonishingly bad value. Why pay so much to spend three or more years memorising facts and theories, and performing tasks that the internet has already made redundant - and that might never be called upon again for the rest of that student's life? Apart from those seeking a vocational qualification in science, medicine, the law etc, it will surely be folly for a student to choose university.”
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At that price there must be better ways of spending three years.
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At that price only those confident of high pay will apply. “Study” will die.
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Reduced attraction means employers already looking at school leavers. KPMG 6-year scheme.
What do employers want?
Plethora of graduates = good and bad for employers. “Universality of skill-sets”.
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So recruiting on character, personality and cultural fit - teach the rest.
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They moan about talent shortage. But self-imposed. (See Thursday) – in order to de-select as many as possible.
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No good going to campuses (or digital marketing, fliers etc) etc with unrealistic pre-conditions and then complaining.
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They want “oven-ready workers” – but chicken and egg – young people need experience to become “workers”. But why should they? Why not accept them for what they are – and their potential – and develop them?
To do otherwise is to see employers interfering in study. Blurring academia and training for work.
NOVEMBER 17 2017
What am I against?
- I am against sweat shops.
- I am against exploitation.
- I am against inequality and injustice.
- I am against racism.
- I am against religious dogma.
- I am against gambling and debt.
- I am against unearned income (and that includes absurd levels of executive pay).
- I am against greed, selfishness and impatience.
- I am against pitting the workers of one country against those of another in a fight for jobs.
- I am against statebenefits needing to be paid to people actually in work (ie - businesses on benefits).
- I am against zero hours contracts.
- I am against mis-selling a vision of their futures to our children.
- I am against global warming.
- I am against goods being transported thousands of miles.
- I am against rabid and pointless consumption and a culture of consumerism.
- I am against a throw-away culture that sees goods go from sweat shop to recycling bin in a matter of weeks.
- I am against oceans full of plastic.
- I am against the rampant destruction of countryside.
- I am against everything (homes, hospitals schools, universities, public services) being turned into businesses and markets.
- I am against the biggest migration of peoples the world has ever seen – and its catastrophic consequences.
- I am against globalisation that turns the whole planet into one giant market.
- I am against a world that is treated as a playground in which big business is allowed to run riot.
- I am against tax dodgers and "financialisation" (read Rana Foroohar's book "Makers and Takers")
- I am against every important decision being made to facilitate "business".
- I am against many many more things, too....
What do I favour?
- I favour localism.
- I favour seasons.
- I favour clean oceans.
- I favour popular democracy.
- I favour businesses run for the benefit of society, not their owners and agents.
- I favour saying "enough".
- I favour fairness, justice.
- I favour the opposite of all of my "againsts" (where applicable).
- I favour many many more things, too...
So why did I vote to leave the EU?
Never-ending "economic growth" - the only measure of "success" today - is simultaneously a physical impossibility, the direct cause of the gradual destruction of the planet, and the pathetic justification for global greed and consumerism. Britain has often been a proud leader of global changes – the industrial revolution, parliamentary democracy, etc. It can lead again – against the trend of business-led globalisation and cheap, poisonous consumerism, towards a cleaner, sustainable, localised culture that indulges more in leisure and pleasure and less in rubbish and consumption. That means plotting a new path – away from globalisation and consumption, and ever freer trade and pollution – towards sustainability, shorter supply lines, seasonality, and a whole new way of thinking and living. Being the first to leave a huge free trade area that fosters, promotes and encourages many of the things I am against would be a start. (Even though the motivations of most right-wing Leave voters were to achieve precisely the opposite!)
AUGUST 24 2017
So much foolishness reported in one day:
1. Provident Financial is in trouble with its sub-prime loan book. Surprise, surprise. The first small domino in the next financial meltdown is starting to topple. This follows years of failing to deal with the last meltdown, thanks to a complete misunderstanding of the forces at work.
2. The idiot president of France (who many, quite bafflingly, call a "centrist" when he is anything but) now admits that eastern European workers are damaging employment equilibrium in the "wealthy west". His fellow EU leaders will be shocked to hear this, as they have been denying this oh-so-obvious phenomenon for years – at enormous cost to workforces across the continent.
3. The madness of Mrs Merkel is now seen starkly in the misery of the Libyan holding centres for African and Asian economic migrants. The EU's various policies that encourage migrants to risk their lives at sea is criminally insane. Do EU leaders think this is some sort of game? "Cross the Med and claim your prize!" The Australian solution looks far less cruel when you come face to face with the filthy consequences of "trying to be nice".
4. And all this to the backdrop of the vile Trump creature's joke presidency; the UK's "dog's breakfast" approach to Brexit; the top exam grade now being a Nine; and Jon Snow rightly pointing out in his lecture that hardly anyone working in the media today has even the slightest experience of what austerity means to the UK's deprived and forgotten millions.
It makes you want to weep.
JUNE 3 2017
LET GRAYSON PERRY RUN THE COUNTRY
Grayson Perry's brilliance was again demonstrated in "Divided Britain" a programme he made for Channel 4, in which he created two large pots, one decorated with images representing the hopes and way of life of "remainers" and the other the "leavers". It took an artistic and intellectual genius to achieve what he achieved – two almost identical vases.
The most telling moments, apart from the warm embraces between the "opposing camps" at the end, came with the realisation that in the 2016 referendum everyone, in reality, voted the same way – to protect the way of life they have, desire, or fear they are losing. And the way of life that everyone wants, at least in Perry's sample, appears to be pretty much the same.
The stark differences only appear when the extreme complexities of life in Britain are reduced to a simple binary question and the population is divided into those who already have the way of life they want, and those who don't or who see theirs disappearing.
In one scene, Perry spoke to a typical group of well-to-do metropolitan young mum's at a yoga class – all naturally fervent and unquestioning "remainers". In the programme's most daramatic moment, one expressed deep regret at how little she understood of other people's plight and feelings in her own country – she even said she felt ashamed at the realisation.
Treating everyone with complete respect, dignity and good humour, Perry got to the heart of what matters and illustrated how little difference there really is in what we want – but how great the differences are in what we have.
MAY 25 2017
A REAL LABOUR MANIFESTO
I was called "a socialist" at a dinner party recently. It was said in tones that were as accusatorial as is decent during an otherwise convivial evening. But, to me, it came as quite a relief and a back-handed compliment. I have always equated socialism with caring about the weak and deprived in society, about social justice and fairness, sharing and co-operating, working together for something better. But with age, increasing material comfort and a growing frustration and cynicism towards political orthodoxy, I had become concerned that my own views were less clearly "socialist" in nature. Thankfully, when put to the test, it appears they are not.
More importantly, why can the Labour Party not find a "socialist" solution to its pathetic floundering in the shallows of UK politics? There is a glaring chasm into which it could march, as torch bearer for the underprivileged, the forgotten and the victims of unfettered market forces and globalisation. Perhaps its leadership already sees the party in that role. Few others do, really.
I offer here, therefore, the brief outline of a Labour manifesto that deals with the world as it is and that would reconnect the party with the millions of people it has deserted in favour of doctrine and woolly wishful thinking.
Vitally, Labour must seize the Brexit debate rather than stand bleating at the edges, swaying this way and that. Without a Labour presence, the arguments are dominated by the combined ultra-conservative forces of Leavist Tories, markets, big business, finance and the economy. This leaves the bulk of the population unrepresented and Labour failing in its purpose.
There is, in fact, a very strong socialist case to be made for Brexit – it was what earned me my dinner party accolade – yet Labour is almost silent on the subject, leaving the field clear for odious types such as Farage, and for far more dangerous types across the Atlantic and Channel. Brexit is real and Labour needs to have a policy, an approach, something to question the right-wing nationalist free marketeers who will de-regulate whatever they can and leave working people facing all the handicaps that weighed down on them before.
The case: markets and globalisation are not inherently bad – but become very bad and very dangerous when uncontrolled and operating on a "winner-take-all" basis, as my former FT boss Sir Richard Lambert warned in 2012 (see items below). He, as I had been doing for some years, was warning of the rise of the right – now all too apparent. Completely free markets are very dangerous devices indeed: for a start, they are completely amoral. Only the welter of social and employment legislation slowly introduced over recent centuries – and now, extraordinarily, being rolled back in the UK – reined in its worst excesses and abuses and today only a mad person would advocate trusting a totally free market to deliver anything other than brutality to many on one hand and vast riches to a few on the other. Similarly, the opposite extreme – state corporatism and controlled markets – as experimented with in the Soviet Bloc and elsewhere, is equally unpalatable and equally ruthless.
Today's politics are therefore all about how, and to what extent, business, markets and finance are regulated, controlled and tamed to do the bidding of the whole of a society, rather than enriching a few. The right-wing view is that minimal control frees businesses to flourish and enrich the whole of society via the mythological (and absurd) notion of "trickle-down". The domination of society by big business to the point we have reached today, where politicians are of only marginal relevance, ensures that this is the prevailing view and is the main driving force behind the right-wing anti-EU movement. The alternative pro-EU right-wing view is that free access to nearby markets matters more – but both cases assume the first priority is to give business what it wants. The differences occur because big business, markets and finance want more than one thing. The referendum debate was essentially an argument between these two rightist camps.
The left, Labour, "socialism", stood bemused and isolated on the sidelines, failing to understand the underlying philosophies, and said nothing of the slightest consequence.
So where does this leave left-wing, socialist, Labour ideals and policies now?
First, Labour has to come to terms with the fact that it was never part of the Remain-Leave debate. Second, it has to accept that the Leave argument prevailed and that it has to adapt. Third, it must ask why millions of instinctive Labour voters ended up supporting a right-wing, "deregulationist", free market movement, quite probably against their own interests. And fourth, it must write a manifesto that will persuade them back. The overwhelming dominance of the right-wing agenda requires at least some questioning and countering, and a coherent Labour opposition is needed now more than at any time I can remember. Instead, we have nothing.
It could be some time before Labour even reaches the first of my four steps to recovery. But let us hope that it can accept points One and Two and reaches the difficult question regarding its natural constituency. And this is all about employment – or "dead-end jobs for peanuts", as it might be summed up. Many economists have declared the rise in employment, coupled with stagnating wages and falling productivity, a mystery. But study this enigma from the native workforce's view and you see how extending unfettered competition for jobs across the whole of Europe cuts their wages and stifles productivity. Naturally, business loves it – a cheap, plentiful labour force working with low technology brings huge payroll savings and reduces spending on research, investment and modernisation. Companies' standards have plummeted to the point where one employer was reported as not even bothering to advertise jobs in a new plant in the UK – it went straight to the cheap, exploitable labour markets of eastern Europe, claiming local people were lazy and not interested in working. One look at the job description made it crystal clear why no self-respecting local would want to work there. Other employers have demeaned existing staff, threatening them with replacement by eastern Europeans if they fail to toe the line. Worse still, migrant workers, prepared to operate in dangerous conditions, have lost their lives as safety standards are undermined.
And of course, the hard-working reputation of eastern European immigrants is nonsensical. Only those with sufficient energy and gumption arrive in the UK and, when here, are enthusiastic and diligent. However, they quickly respond to the way they are treated and attitudes and motivation become indistinguishable from the native labour force – a piece of research on the subject (by the University of Bath) puts this disillusionment period at about two years.
So why does Labour not speak up on behalf of the newly uncompetitive native workforce, or indeed the exploited youngsters from eastern Europe on poorly paid (by what used to be UK standards) zero-hours contracts? Or even the communities in Poland, Romania and elsewhere suffering the loss of their brightest youngsters who arrive in the UK to work in bars and restaurants or in hospitals and on building sites? Why leave the field open for UKIP? These are real issues that affect working people. They understand it only too well and, given the chance to express their pain, did so in the referendum.
Yet Labour sided with business. It's easy to blame Corbyn and his allies for their internationalist focus, but they are not the whole party. The rest must wake up and provide a voice for those natural Labour supporters who voted Leave and to whom the UKIP message makes perfect sense, based on their everyday experiences.
The referendum did indeed produce the strangest of alliances. The millions voting for change did so with many different ideas, hopes and motivations – from right-wing nationalist, deregulationist Tories to neglected and angry workers reduced to accepting "dead-end jobs for peanuts". These workers are the people who NEED Labour now. They need the valuable social and employment legislation that has come from the EU, often against the wishes of the UK's business-first governments of the past 40 years, to be kept and enhanced. The threat from a right-wing government is that much of the good that came from the EU will eventually be thrown away at the behest of business and finance.
The corporate world is obviously worried about a drying up of its ready supply of cheap labour to fill its many downgraded jobs. It fears that restricting mass population movements from east to west will increase the power of the workforce to demand better pay and treatment. It is worried that it will have to pay wages that enable employees to secure a mortgage, eat out occasionally, take a holiday – all the things that even the Just About Managing middle classes (and above) still take for granted. To meet these fears, Labour has to grasp the fact that there is now a global rate for a job and a local rate for a job. UK businesses offshoring their work to cheap labour markets have been setting new – and very low – benchmarks for "the rate for the job". Now, with mass migration and porous borders, offshoring no longer becomes necessary as those cheap labour markets arrive on the doorstep.
Facing up to the reality of how mass migration has transformed the employment landscape, distorting the supply and demand equilibrium, would enable Labour to re-engage with its natural constituency. Arguing that limits to population shifts will leave hospitals, the hospitality sectors, agriculture, construction and many other sectors short of workers is, of course, a nonsense. First, because some movement of people from the EU will continue, just as it always has for people from outside the EU. The UK has significant communities from almost every country in the world living and working here, mostly to the benefit of all. Why would that change? Second, because importing cheap workers and exploiting them harms both them, the communities from which they come, and leaves the local labour force unable to compete for the jobs they once had without reducing their living standards to those that migrant workers are prepared to accept. The only winner is business.
On the other hand, where strong unions still exist, for example in the railways sector, jobs that had become hard to fill – such as train driving – are vastly over-subscribed because the pay and conditions are now very good. Local workers would be queuing up for jobs if they were restored, offering good pay and conditions, decent treatment and respect? If nurses' pay rates, or sandwich-makers' salaries began at £50,000, and they were treated as respected professionals, would we still have problems recruiting native staff?
This would, of course, make such jobs even more attractive to migrant job-seekers, which us why the EU's desperate clinging to the principle of "free movement of people" is a logical absurdity in a community of nations that has been knocked completely out of equilibrium. It would also, of course, need paying for. But the UK is a very rich country. Sadly, swathes of it have grown selfish and greedy and are not prepared - or able- to pay the going rate for anything.
This is where the Labour case, the Socialist case, must be focused: a new social contract advocating a more equal society; a society that pays the going rate; a society that improves the lot of the many at the marginal expense of the few; a society that kicks its addiction to "something-for-nothing", gambling, materialism and rabid consumption. But it can only do this by acknowledging and understanding the issues that are affecting its constituency.
FEBRUARY 8 2017
THE NEED TO TACKLE THE HOUSING FINANCE CRISIS
I discussed the question of Britain's housing "crisis" in my 2011/12 business school lectures on the rise of big business and executive pay (see JULY 9 2016, below, as the month I added it to this blog). So it inevitably makes me weep to listen to Sajiv Javid, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, introducing measures to tackle this "broken market" when he clearly has not the first clue as to the nature of the problem.
Radio 4's "You and Yours" programme of February 7 2017 on housing provided plenty of clues about the reality on the ground, as caller after caller agreed there were plenty of houses to buy – but none that they could afford. The "crisis" we keep hearing about in the UK is obviously not one of supply but of finance and it is equally obvious that building 1m, 2m, or 10m new homes will make barely a scrap of difference unless the financial crisis is tackled. It makes as much sense as arguing that building more lanes on to the M25 will end south-east England's traffic jams.
As outlined in the lecture below (under JULY 2016), low interest rates are the primary cause of rapidly rising house prices. Even in the 1990s, when the UK population was static and births were running at below replacement levels, prices were soaring, thanks to low interest rates. This is because it is the mortgage rate that governs the level of monthly repayments, which is the figure in the equation that matters – the headline price is merely a reflection of what people can afford to pay each month. The snag is that while monthly mortgage repayments are still roughly in line with private sector rents, or lower, the initial deposit required to secure a mortgage is out of reach of a large proportion of first-time buyers – because prices are so high.
This was far less of an issue before the banks' recklessness and greed crashed the economy – they were happy to forgo a deposit and lend 100 per cent, or even more, of the purchase price. A fool's paradise if ever there was one. One of the "more responsible" post-crash lending policies imposed on the banks was the re-introduction of deposits which, after the years of deposit-free lending had pushed up prices even further, leaving potential borrowers locked out.
The state of the market is complicated by many factors, including: the treatment of property as more of an investment than a home; the huge number of properties standing empty; the vast number of second – and third – homes; the short-term market manipulation by developers sitting on banks of land with planning permission; the focus of developers on pressing to build on green field sites where they can maximise profits; the power of the developers' lobby to hijack the debate; an adversarial planning system; increasing housing demand from mass inward migration and the resultant steep population growth (although to mention this is taboo); also "house-blocking" by an ageing population delaying downsizing; and a confusion of the terms "housing demand", "housing need", and "housing desire". Most of these are also financial factors.
Why, then, is the government seeking to tackle a complex housing finance problem with a housing supply solution? The trap we have fallen into, caused by low interest rates, is not an easy one from which to escape without causing terrible and widespread pain. But compare the probable impact on house prices of building 1m houses in the next four years with a mortgage rate rise to 6 per cent or 10 per cent – levels that, until recently, were pretty standard. The first initiative would satisfy developers and do very little to prices; the second would see a repossessions epidemic and big reductions in prices.
Those are the two main choices facing policymakers – so is it any wonder they always choose the first, and hopeless, option? It gives the appearance of taking action but changes nothing. The only real, practical actions that can be taken without seriously hurting existing mortgage holders involve dealing with the many complications – such as taxing empty houses into use, forcing developers to build once planning permission is granted, shifting economic assistance to areas with excess housing, building units for the elderly to ease them out of larger homes and ease the social care/NHS beds crisis, etc etc. None of these can overcome the central issue of the interest rate/house price equation but might help in other ways and mitigate against some of the worst effects of a rise in interest rates which, when it eventually comes, could be devastating – and will be beyond the scope of policymakers to control.
FEBRUARY 7 2017
TRUMP-MARES
For the record: the stuff that the usual shouters are shouting about (Trump's travel bans, use of torture etc) is bad, of course, but what really threatens global stability are two far greater things: Trump's planned dismantling of the financial regulations that have averted anything worse than a few crashes and recessions since the war; and his weak and unstable personality that will make sensible long-term diplomacy almost impossible.
Of these, the second will create a succession of international crises that, with luck, wiser heads will be able to resolve. The first, however, will unleash the ruthless and amoral forces of finance, markets and business which, when they collapse again, will result in a deep slump/depression, dwarfing the little banking crash from which we are still suffering. More immediately, it displays a touching faith by Trump supporters in the idiotic concept of "trickle down". This will, in time, infuriate the blue-collar workers who gave Trump his chance as they see billionaires enriching themselves while they suffer increasing exploitation.
We can only hope the men in white coats are ready to administer the necessary injections when things reach maximum crisis point....
NOVEMBER 9 2016
AND STILL NOBODY LISTENS
If the right people learn the lessons of the recent poll results around the world, then a Trump presidency – if we survive it – could be a wonderful thing. Sadly, the omens are not good. As some of us have been saying for two decades – Joe Rogaly and Charles Handy are two people I particularly admire in this area – a world run by business, for business, inevitably produces inequality, injustice, waste, misery and hatred and will generate a backlash. Globalisation and the unfettered rise of pointless financial services (in truth, gambling) brought about the painfully predictable meltdown of 2007-8 which, instead of being seen as a warning by the establishment, was treated as an aberration to be “cured” so that the whole pantechnicon could rumble along again towards its next precipice.
In lectures I gave in 2011 on levels of executive pay, I charted the course of the rise of all-powerful businesses (see “July 9 2016”, below) and said at the time: “Fairness DOES matter. It comes back to our instinct for cheating. You can get away with a bit of self-interest at the expense of the group – but only up to a point. And while everything was going well and we all had gadgets and holidays and lots of eating out, no one cared too much. But that’s changing. A lot of people are becoming worse off, some losing their jobs, their benefits, their homes.
“And this makes having 'an unfair advantage' matter a lot and so we see the social group reacting to deal with the 'cheats'. The Occupy movement, rioting – and even shareholder 'revolts', as at Trinity Mirror, AstraZeneca, Aviva and now WPP. We are also seeing a mass movement towards very nasty right-wing political parties, for example in France and Greece – an obvious refuge for the discarded and disregarded.
“As my old boss Richard Lambert, former FT editor, said recently in the FT: 'Public support for free markets is based on two broad arguments. The first is that they deliver more efficient outcomes than the alternatives. The second is that over time they create increased prosperity for society at large. Both these assumptions have taken a severe jolt in the past few years. It may be that capitalism is approaching some kind of tipping point, away from the winner takes all culture of the past three decades. If left unchecked, public disquiet will sooner or later bring a political response.'
“Notions of fairness and cheating matter a great deal.”
And so we now have a Trump presidency – surely the stupidest-sounding man (during the campaign, at least) ever to hold an important office of state. And the extraordinary irony is that the public's disquiet in the US has been expressed via a member of that very ruling business clique. But how else could it be expressed? Better Trump than a country in flames, perhaps?
But now we risk a whole world in flames because the warnings about the real dangers continue to go unheeded. The global dangers are real. The damage a reckless US president could do are infinite.
What has to happen now – though I very much doubt it will – is that the lessons that democracy keeps throwing in our faces are actually acknowledged, understood and acted upon. The lessons are that globalised business is not satisfying vast swathes of the world's populations. Shame on anyone who blames the electorate or democracy for creating this situation. And shame on the establishment media, which has for far too long relied on so-called "experts", who know very little, and which has failed to connect with the people feeling - and suffering - the real effects of a world run by and for business (see Brexit debate, below, for examples).
We can do something about it. More likely,however, the lessons and dangers will not be understood or appreciated and we will change nothing. More and more extreme individuals and political movements will be voted in to power around the world by electorates that know things are not right but have no other way of expressing their anger. Where this might lead is what should really concern us.
JULY 30
I know it's hard for the generations brought up in the "age of business" to perceive of anyone making choices based on anything other than self-interest, but this does not excuse their displays of glee at reports of pension funds being hit by the Brexit vote and that the old Leave voters are "getting what's coming to them". Suggesting that this proves "the link between age and wisdom is broken" is completely wrong: in fact, it is precisely the opposite. Voting against your own narrow economic self-interest because there are far greater issues at stake that affect everyone else is the very essence of wisdom.
JULY 29
If you've ever asked the question "What is the EU actually for?" then I commend to you a piece by Frank Furedi. Read it here: A Project With No Name
or cut and paste this into a browser if that link doesn't work: http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/a-project-with-no-name-brexit/18591#.V5szG7grLy1
It cleverly explains why - and this puzzled me during the referendum debate - anyone daring to ask questions of the EU was instantly branded a right-wing racist nationalist xenophobe, even when they were patently the opposite. It also explains why virtually nothing positive came from the Remain camp during the whole campaign. It's one of the most interesting and intellectually sound pieces I've read on the subject and is certainly in line with my experience and thinking (as reflected in writings below).
The key points Furedi makes are that the EU has failed to find a raison d'etre since the end of the Cold War beyond that of "economics" and that it has had to create purposes for itself while relying on merely the "implicit consent" of the European people for its grand schemes. This lack of real purpose, allied to PR campaigns that label its critics as right-wing racists and the pursuit of extreme integrationist policies has had the dangerous and disastrous consequence of fuelling a huge rise in nasty right-wing parties across the continent. They are a direct product of ill-thought-through EU behaviours. A change of direction is desperately overdue and with the EU hierarchy not even prepared to accept minor reforms, the Brexit vote here - and similar votes elsewhere - have become inevitable. As has a lurch to the right, unless something is done. But read Furedi's piece, he puts it all very eloquently.
JULY 13 2016
If Theresa May really believes in her “business's role in society” speech and acts upon it effectively, it would make her the most left-wing British prime minister since Attlee. That's a very big “if” - and she carries plenty of “nasty party” baggage with her. And sadly, business will not allow it - what business says, goes. But on the face of it, in one speech she might have seized the radical non-socialist left-wing agenda that could and should have been the popular platform for a resurgent Nick Clegg.
JULY 12 2016
Here's an experiment based on a brilliant “Occupy Democrats” video, being circulated on Facebook:
Would you please raise you hand if you would be happy to be treated in the same way unskilled migrant labour is treated in the UK. How many of you reading this would be happy to swap places? If you have your hand up, you must be either a liar, a fool or haven't understood the proposition. If you don't have your hand up, then you must KNOW about the level of exploitation these people are prepared to put up with – but do you feel a need to do anything about it? I quote the words of Jane Elliot, the extraordinary former US teacher and anti-racism activist, who challenged members of a white audience to stand if they would be prepared to tolerate the treatment meted out to black people by American society (and not a single person stood). She said: “That says very plainly that you know what's happening; you know you don't want it for you. I wanna know why you're so willing to accept or to allow it to happen for others.”
Exploited workers endure these conditions because they might be a lot better than anything they can find at home. And this is how developing world working practices have become increasingly widespread in the UK, as downward pressure on standards and pay puts into reverse so many of the advances made over the past century. We could ask the five Gambian-Spanish labourers working hard for their minimum wage at a Birmingham recycling centre, where health and safety concerns had been raised in the past, how they feel about it. But a wall collapsed on them on July 7 and they died.
Of course, globalisation in recent decades has brought about a reshaping of global labour, with expertise gathering in "hotspots" and unskilled work heading for where labour is cheapest (NOTE ADDED 18-7-16: see Philip Aldrick's excellent article in The Times, 16-7-2016 on this very subject and in which he points out that even President Kennedy in the 1960s was aware of the issues and warned that measures needed to be taken to mitigate against its worst effects). But EU-wide “free exploitation of labour” - let's call it what it really is - involves pitching the workforces of one country directly against another. There are EU rules that aim to protect workers but this merely makes it the equivalent of a lightly regulated cockfight. EU employment legislation barely touches the real-world issues unskilled workers face – what use have they for maternity/paternity rights, working time directives, temporary worker legislation, etc etc when they are desperate to be included in that day's work gang, working on zero hours contracts, in dangerous environments untouched by health and safety, and paid a minimum wage – if they're lucky.
People have, of course, always been free to move, subject to sensible safeguards. The UK hosts significant communities from almost every country in the world. Migrant labour has been and should always be welcome as long as it meets a need and does not undermine hard-won UK working conditions and standards. As I say in my Referendum reply to Frank Brierley (see June 22, below), those needs would be greatly reduced were the UK and its businesses to take proper responsibility for training and skills, and to treat those that it trains sufficiently well to keep them from disappearing off to countries such as Australia. Ending the logical absurdity that is “free movement” will not prevent any business from moving its employees into or out of the UK or from recruiting skills from anywhere it finds them; it simply means there will be safeguards – amounting in most cases to straightforward paperwork – to prevent the sort of exploitation outlined above. Unchecked, we will eventually come to see this “freedom” to be as noxious as the irresponsible lending that led to the 2007 banking collapse – about which there had also been plenty of prior warnings.
JULY 11 2016
Would you BELIEVE it. For years and years - decades even - I've been waiting for someone in power to listen to the warnings that I and plenty of higher profile minds than mine have been issuing regarding the role of business in society, its behaviour and its drivers. Then finally, after we vote to leave the EU, Theresa May, UK prime minister in waiting, comes out and says in today's Times, almost word for word, what I (and others) have been saying for so long (see the next item, below, in this "blog"). Perhaps if anyone had cared to listen to the obvious - and had had the courage to act on it - BEFORE the referendum vote, things might now be very different, both in the UK and in the EU.
JULY 9 2016
This is a piece written from notes I used to give a short series of lectures in late 2011 and early 2012. The ideas were those I had been carrying - and expressing to anyone who cared to listen - for a couple of decades, based on learning and watching the world from the vantage point of the Financial Times' editorial department. It's obviously a little dated in some of the detail and I've largely resisted the temptation to update it with the benefit of hindsight. But I think it relevant to today's debate and that it was one of many warnings given about the state of UK capitalism, business and society that has finally led to a series of predictable, and predicted, popular protests. It's also very long. And way down below it are some related thoughts on the 2016 referendum.
For nearly 27 years I worked as a journalist at the Financial Times, watching the world change and trying to make sense of it.
I enjoyed several different roles there – from editing on the main news desk to being deputy editor of Weekend FT, editing a section on technology and ending with nearly four years editing the weekly Executive Appointments supplement and the FT’s Non-Executive Directors’ Club website. I took early retirement on February 28 2014 and have since gained yet another perspective on the debate over business, executive pay and related issues.
So what do I know about how hard it is to run a big company? I’ve never run one. Departments, yes. But not a large business.
But I think if you asked someone who HAS actually done it, you would get a very one-sided, biased point of view. As the quotation goes: “It is incredible what a person can believe when their salary depends on it.”
When I first gave this lecture in November 2011, I had a couple of helpful criticisms – that I was being political, and there were not enough statistics.
Well, it remains political – because I don’t think there is anywhere near enough politics around these days. And there aren’t many stats because I’m dealing in ideas, not figures. Our lives have been run too long by figures – and look where they have got us.
I think journalists, as professional observers and analysts are in as good a position as anyone to provide an impartial and informed outsider’s view. And I should stress that all the views expressed below are my own. Although they were formed while working at the FT, the FT is a broad church. Some at the FT might broadly agree with me, others will not. But I always speak as an individual.
So – to the questions of business and leadership. I believe you can only make sense of where we are today by looking back at where we’ve come from – and we'll take that trip shortly.
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But first…. Just how hard is it to run a large company? Let us look at how some have done:
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In 1985, Coca-Cola launched New Coke – it was a complete disaster and had to be withdrawn almost immediately. No one wanted it.
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Cerberus Capital Management investors took a $7.4bn stake in Chrysler, the car maker. The following year it collapsed.
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When Royal Bank of Scotland took over ABN Amro it was another disaster – described as “value-destruction on an epic scale”.
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And of course we had Enron, the US energy company – some of its leaders ended up in jail.
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More recently, in the Mexican Gulf, BP didn’t do too great a job handling a giant oil spill.
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Closer to home – HomeServe, the emergency plumber and electrician had to suspend its telesales after fears of mis-selling its products.
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And NPower was fined millions for mishandling complaints.
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G4S, the security company, had to back out of buying a Danish rival company – because the chief executive misread the mood of the market. The failure cost £50m. And that's to say nothing of its contribution to security at the London 2012 Olympics.
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And as customers of large companies, we see the shambles every day – someone from British Gas came to my house a while ago to fix a valve. On the first visit, the engineer had no valves on his van. Then when he came back, he managed to lose power to the whole hot water and central heating system.
At every level, history is littered with examples of not-so-great leadership. Yet someone is supposed to be running these businesses – and they are being paid a fortune to do it. In my view, it is simply not good enough for a chief executive to say “I can’t know everything,” because they set the culture – and the incentives – for their staff. They DO control everything. The buck stops at the top. And I haven't even mentioned the banks.
Much of the time it hurts few people other than the business itself and its shareholders if a concern messes up. But in the case of the banks being run badly, it matters to everyone. Their failure has macro-economic effects. Tesco (with a market capitalisation roughly similar to Barclays Bank at the time of writing) can go bust and not cause widespread disaster. Suppliers will be hurt, staff and shareholders - and customers might have to go a bit further for their groceries. It would be messy but the impact would be limited.
But if Barclays goes bust people’s money disappears. As Andrew Haldane, a director of the Bank of England, said in a Wincott lecture: “The risks from banking are now widely spread throughout society but the returns to bankers are held privately and very narrowly.” Of course, in 2014, Barclays is still in and out of court facing fines for its market behaviour in previous years.
We could go on – the list of extraordinary failures is endless. Yet we are supposed to have the world's very best people running these businesses. At least that's what we're paying for – that's how they justify their sky-high salaries.
There might, of course, be an argument for saying that entrepreneurs who have created and invented things – people such as Richard Branson, James Dyson – even the annoying Alan Sugar – can be said to have earned a decent reward. We could argue over how much.
But we have reached the point where simple managers, who have created or invented nothing, enjoy fabulous wealth – no matter how badly they perform.
Chief executives have surrounded themselves in mystique; they have even created a cult of minor – and in some cases major – celebrity. Which is simply laughable. Most men would like to be photographed with their arm around the model Kate Moss, I'm sure – but how sad and foolish does Philip Green look doing it in the “celebrity” columns?
Lord Turner – Adair Turner – came to breakfast at the FT and he referred to this idea of “star CEOs”. He was highly dubious about the idea of a “transformational chief executive” and said the cult status they enjoy is overdone. He said performance was just as heavily dependent on team, culture and economic climate.
However – we must not make this personal. Chief executives are merely doing what they have been encouraged and incentivised to do. Their bonuses have been linked to short-term profitability and the share price. There have been few rewards for caution; no incentives for wisdom. Quite the opposite, in fact. So, being fair, business leaders have been behaving perfectly rationally. How can this be?
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The title for this lecture led me to consider much bigger questions about business and leadership. And I believe you can only make sense of where we are today by looking at the context in which today’s business leaders operate.
First, a lesson from zoology: animals, including humans, are programmed to cheat. They will act in their own self-interest and take advantage of others. But there is a conflict between this selfishness and each individual’s need for their social group as a whole to survive and prosper. So an animal will cheat – up to the point at which it endangers its own survival.
Capitalism, in the form of individually owned organisations, exploits this idea of self-interest. But businesses have little need for altruism or responsibility to wider society – just look at working conditions even today in some parts of the world. So business and capital have needed regulating to provide this balancing force. Creating a centuries-long struggle of ideas – between liberty and authority.
Adam Smith thought the “invisible hand” of the market might serve as a sort of regulator. People pursuing their own selfish interests would automatically benefit society and keep everything in check. But even he himself seems to have doubted the purity of that idea. And it plainly doesn’t work. John Stuart Mill and the Utilitarians had similar libertarian leanings. But even Mill accepted limits on what companies could do, such as being required to pay taxes for the social good.
For about two centuries, efforts went on to referee this struggle between the opposing forces of liberty and authority. We see the creation of joint stock companies and the limited liability acts in the 1800s – which created shareholders -- and then the great court case of Saloman v Saloman, confirming that a company is a legal personality, giving the shareholders protection.
This made companies strong. Capitalism flourished. And countervailing political forces, such as social reformers and increasingly, trade unions, kept it roughly in check.
But then, in 1976, Mike Jensen, an American economist, wrote about something he called “agency theory” – and it led directly to the creation of executive bonuses and the culture of business leadership we see today.
The idea was to align managers’ interests with those of the shareholders by giving them a stake in maximising shareholder value, by promoting the widespread use of stock options in executive compensation. The idea of giving them some “skin in the game”.
And today we live with the consequences. It led to “jacking up the share price”, severe short-termism and an explosion in executive pay. It tempted bosses to play with the figures – hence Enron and the like – and other financial trickery, such as share buybacks (largely achieved through savings made by outsourcing labour).
But most of all, it shifted power from the politicians to the people in the new glass towers. So how did it happen?
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This is where we have to take that step back in time to provide the context. And when you’re looking at things that are wrong with today, you usually have to begin with Margaret Thatcher.
I left the London School of Economics with my law degree in 1979 and started work as a news reporter with the Chronicle and Echo evening newspaper in Northampton. I was excited – the previous few years had been thrilling. Indeed, 1976 is routinely voted the year of greatest happiness by people who lived through it, and the years either side of it saw huge political debate and activity that is today portrayed as a national calamity, the country going to the dogs, rubbish in the streets and so on. But compared to what we have today, it was a high point of vibrancy, participation, democracy and creativity. Everyone had a voice of some sort and a broad range of riches were valued.
But 1979 was a year of brutal, ugly and overnight change. Very quickly, the incoming Thatcher government used high interest rates to reduce inflation, squeeze the economy – and keep the money supply tight. There were no thoughts of quantitative easing then.
Nigel Lawson was chancellor of the exchequer (younger people might be more familiar with his daughter, Nigella). This is how he described the Tories’ philosophy: “Free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, 'Victorian values', privatisation and a dash of populism.” In my view, that is a truly ghastly mixture.
But what did it amount to? Well, there was one overriding and truly fundamental change: from 1979 onwards, business has come first. Completely and utterly.
All attempts at fair distribution of wealth and social justice were abandoned. There was a vague idea that as rich people became richer their wealth would “trickle down” to the poor – as the rich would be able to employ more cleaners, for example. It was obviously sheer nonsense.
Back in real word, it was actually the other way round – rewards were sucked up to the top and people lost their jobs in order to make the wealthy even better off.
Under the Tories, everything became a market – homes, hospitals, phones, public transport, education, gas, electricity. Everyone became a “customer”. The watchword was competition – with the inevitable result that there would be winners and losers. Collaboration was abandoned and Thatcher’s hideous vision of society was one of competing individuals. Nothing was communal, there was no community – as she said, “no such thing as society”.
All this, along with such ideas as stock options, kick started the emergence of today’s almighty business leaders. One by one, the building blocks were put in place.
First, on October 27 1986 came Big Bang – the liberation of the City of London. UK financial markets were deregulated. One crucial change was from open-outcry trading to electronic, screen-based trading. A huge increase in market activity was expected. And encouraged. And boy did it happen. Money flooded in.
It was seen as a huge change – but no one at the time could have fully realised just what had been unleashed. Even so, a few people WERE worried – it wasn't long before some started calling it “casino capitalism”.
The second building block involved the crushing of the unions. Thatcher took on the powerful unions and, for the most part, won. But there was spectacular resistance, notably from the miners, led by the very left-wing Arthur Scargill. There were running battles, through the mid-1980s, notably at Orgreave Colliery in Yorkshire.
In the end, the miners lost – they lost many of their rights as workers and they lost the physical fight. They were, in effect, starved back to work. And it was a hugely divisive period for many of the country’s mining communities, some of which have yet to heal.
There is a counter argument that the unions had become too powerful and irresponsible and too rooted in the past and were preventing businesses from adapting to changing conditions. Which might have been true, up to a point. But the unions were attacked, rather than engaged – the tactics were confrontation and violence, and the only consideration was the needs of business, not communities.
The third building block was the unleashing of vast wealth into individuals' hands via the privatisation of state assets.
The Tories set about selling communal property – the nationalised utilities including gas, phones, water, steel etc. And they sold council houses. Selling utilities raised billions of pounds for the government – as did council house sales.
But the amounts don’t look very big today – partly because of inflation, but partly because they were deliberately sold cheaply at the time. To encourage people to buy, big discounts were offered. This was Nigel Lawson’s “populism” element: the public – or rather individuals – were invited to buy shares and sell them straight away at a profit. There was talk of creating a “share-owning democracy” which was, of course, pie in the sky. In fact, it was the start of “Money for nothing” on a grand scale.
As for council houses, these were well built to very high standards, and were offered for sale to tenants at very big discounts. All the new owners had to do was keep the house for a few years and then they could sell it at a huge profit. Between 1980 and 1998, it is estimated that 2m council houses were sold. And this was a process that transferred enormous amounts of value from communally held assets into the hands of individuals.
This might be good in some ways. But, looking at the bigger picture, it was part of a terrible trend. Towards a society focused on money, markets, consumption, greed, self-interest, self-obsession, short-term thinking and individualism.
In political terms, it suited Thatcher perfectly – enriching just enough of the electorate to give them a stake in continuing to vote for her.
It was also the beginning of the end of politics in its old sense. And politics finally died completely during the 1990s, when Labour gave up the fight. Politics was replaced by a dour managerial consensus, in which everyone was assumed to agree on the primacy of the economy and economic growth, fuelled by consumption. A promise of binge drinking, electronic gadgets and cheap foreign holidays was enough to keep the voters happy – while it lasted.
Internal Tory politics continued, however, and in 1990, Thatcher was ousted in tears from Downing Street and we endured seven years of muddle – not all of it terrible – under John Major. By 1997, the Tory government began to look tired and sleazy and the people turned to a young, fresh-faced Labour leader – who turned out to be a snake-oil salesman of the worst kind.
Tony Blair was elected on a wave of optimism and euphoria. It lasted less than a year.
To be fair, Labour had faced a dilemma – it had to move to the right, join the consensus and become electable, or stick to its principles and stay out of power. So Labour gave up, moved to the right, changed its name to New Labour and continued Thatcher’s work.
The business-first policies continued. And we saw some dreadful decisions – for example, New Labour said “yes” to the narrow business interests demanding a third runway at Heathrow; it said “yes” to the developers wanting to set up a huge business in the heart of the green belt beside the M25 in Surrey in the guise of a service station, to name but two. But every decision that had to be made between people and business went business’s way. Cheap labour? No problem, as Blair opened his arms to exploitation of the pittance-wage workforces of eastern Europe, sparking a battle for jobs that the UK's already low-paid, low-skill working class communities could not win and a further degradation of pay and conditions that continues escalating to this day, with widespread dire – and sometimes deadly – consequences.
New Labour had to appease the left of the party by taking some money from corporations through taxation to spend on worthy projects. Companies squealed but because of the apparent strength of business, money appeared to be plentiful and Labour was able to shower it across the public sector with considerable generosity. Labour's spending was also heavily funded by borrowing and debt. Yet all this has hardly eradicated poverty or injustice. In fact, I don’t see much change in equality of opportunity since the 1960s.
By the end of the last century businesses ruled the world. Joe Rogaly, the late and very great Weekend FT columnist who I used to work with every week, was writing columns on how tight a grip businesses now had on the world. His columns from the late 1990s are well worth reading today.
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So what was Blair’s contribution to creating new business leaders?
First, he had one main policy – consumption. He made shopping our number one national pastime. Blair breezed into power shouting “Education education education”. But Weekend FT ran a column by Michael Prowse on September 16 2000 with a far more accurate headline – it read “Consumption, Consumption, Consumption”. Michael Prowse had spent several years living in the US and Switzerland and had just returned to London. And he was shocked by what he saw.
He wrote : This new Britain is rich in everything that can be readily priced and sold on the market, and poor in everything that cannot be easily commodified. Market forces have turned the urban landscape into a parody of shop-until-you-drop America.”
He saw workaholism, individualism and vast wealth in private hands. What he said at that time makes uncomfortable reading: “As in the US, this cornucopia of private wealth contrasts starkly with the inadequacies of public services – from transport and healthcare to education. You don't, I think, need to read accounts of failing schools to grasp the poverty of state education in the UK. You just need to look at the blank, yobbish faces of young (and not-so-young) people. Most seem untouched by any form of culture, which is not surprising since none is on offer, least of all on television, which is now mostly a commercial business.”
He saw the UK slavishly imitating the US – which was hardly surprising given Thatcher’s infatuation with Reagan, and Blair’s with Bush.
Prowse wrote: “Those urging ever more deregulation always talk the language of economic efficiency, or, more dubiously still, of personal 'freedom'. They tacitly assume that people stay the same regardless of the kind of social structures that surround them. This isn't true. If a society becomes too thoroughly 'marketised', if the principle of private pursuit of personal gain becomes too dominant, then people become greedy and selfish.”
Michael wrote that in 2000 – and today it’s far worse. You just have to look around a depressing shopping centre with people slowly wandering about, trying to find things to buy… it’s not even proper shopping.
Blair's second contribution to creating the new business leader was to turbo-charge the “something for nothing” culture, with various measures, including the freeing up of gambling.
The Conservatives had set up the National Lottery in 1993 – partly to raise money for good causes. But it set a tone – people started dreaming and fantasising of escaping the drudgery of their daily life.
Then in 2005, New Labour passed the Gambling Act. Casinos, and gambling advertising sprouted up everywhere. Spread betting became commonplace. And we now have the grotesque sight of actors peddling gambling websites in TV ad breaks in sports matches at all times of day.
The truth is that gambling is hugely addictive – it can become a disease. It undermines common sense and responsibility and replaces it with false hope and desperation. Only the gaming houses – the businesses raking in the profits – are winners. The rest – the punters – are, by definition, losers.
Gambling, and its symbiotic relationship with debt, brings us to the third of Blair's contributions – the normalisation of debt.
Debt used to be all about borrowing to build something, or to buy a house. And not much else. When I was growing up, people did borrow to buy consumer items, but it was frowned upon and referred to disparagingly as “buying something on the never-never”, or “tick”. Now, debt is normal – it’s even seen as funny. People make jokes about it. Perhaps they have to. But casual debt is bad, wrong and hugely debilitating.
And yet we now routinely saddle students with huge debts at the start of their adult lives, which could not send out a worse message about how to manage their personal finances.
Blair's fourth force, working alongside debt and gambling, was the continuing rise of the City and financial services. The culture of gambling and debt reached its epitome in the City of London. Strangely, it was scientists joining investment banks who perfected the system. The Quants – quantitative analysts – brought incredibly complex maths to the job of providing financial services. And, to be fair, they found some incredibly clever things to do with debt. They took junk, sub-prime mortgage loans, and the like and dressed them up to look good, called them “derivatives” – and sold them to gamblers – aka suckers.
At the same time, trading systems became automated with the rise of technology. Machines – running complex algorithms – trade automatically, making tiny margins on vast volumes of artificially created trading. Few people running the banks understood what was going on. But they only had to make money. No one was responsible for “good” or “sustainable” or “creative”. It was all incredibly short-term. And government not only did nothing – it helped, assisted, encouraged and incentivised the whole ghastly edifice.
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So where did all this debt come from? Well, a lot of it came from mortgages and housing. At one time, rising house prices were seen as wonderful – people could get rich just sitting on their sofas – on paper, at least. But the big snag with this is that the actual price of a house is largely irrelevant to a purchaser.
If you go to a building society for a mortgage, the first question is not about price but “what can you afford per month?” Because the property you can afford is a combination of price and interest rates.
Put simply, if the mortgage rate at the time is 8 per cent, your £500 a month might enable you to buy a property valued at £100,000. A year later the mortgage rate might be 4 per cent – in which case, your £500 a month would buy a property valued at £200,000. Probably the same house.
If you're borrowing to buy a property – which most people do – then what matters is the “cost of buying”. Prices naturally adjust as interest rates change. In an era of low interest rates, house prices inevitably rise because the cost of buying them falls dramatically, subject to the payment of a deposit.
Unfortunately, in this perfect storm that was gathering, low interest rates meant large sums could be borrowed, which gave investment banks increasingly large bundles of debt to play with – by dressing it up and selling it on, making a profit along the way – and fuelling a giant derivatives boom. Which created a demand for more debt to play with – the system needed more borrowing and hence mortgages – which led to reckless lending.
Things might not have been disastrous if all the mortgage loans were solid and sensible. But the financial services sector was dishing out 125 per cent mortgages, requiring no deposits, and lending to people with no hope of keeping up their repayments. It was absolute madness – a defiance of gravity.
All through the 1990s – when the UK population was not even increasing – up to today, when it is growing, thanks to immigration, there has been enormous pressure to build homes. And it was as much to do with creating mortgages and debt as it was about providing homes. Properties became one of the key raw materials of the derivatives boom – among many other factors, of course. And while a little more common sense is being applied to mortgage lending, they still are.
Lobbyists for the developers, builders and property industry keep talking up a so-called “housing crisis” – but you could go out tomorrow and buy thousands of houses if you had the cash. It suits the builders to talk of unmet demand, to which they contribute by sitting on vast land banks upon which they will not build until profit can be maximised. Admittedly, uncontrolled EU free movement of people policies have now created a shortage of homes – but the “housing crisis” cries pre-date the recent population explosion.
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So this is what our “strong economy” was built on – shifting sands, a house of cards, and an aimless reliance on permanent economic “growth”. Yet even children learn very early that you can only build a brick tower so high before it collapses. Andrew Simms, in his book “Cancel The Apocalypse” writes brilliantly about the meaningless of growth without any pursuit of maturity or equilibrium.
So much for the “end of boom and bust” and the “prudence” of Gordon Brown. It was actually the opposite – everyone was being incentivised to do the same wrong thing at the same time – gambling, borrowing, spending, thinking short-term – making it the most extreme example of reinforcing the cycle imaginable. The good times only lasted as long as they did because the boom was so enormous – and the bust equally enormous. And it’s far from over. Because very little has changed. Even today, we have George Osborne, the chancellor, saying: “We are unashamedly business first.”
The trouble is, it’s very difficult to change. We have travelled up several one way streets – and it’s hard to see how we back out. Let's look at them.
First – house prices. As we’ve seen, if interest rates come down, prices go up – and loans get bigger, without costing the purchaser more. But this traps people and makes them totally reliant on low interest rates. If a variable repayment mortgage rate rises from 2 per cent to 4 per cent – that’s a rise of 100 per cent. (Although it’s not quite as simple as that, as there are other costs.) But it still means a huge and potentially unaffordable rise in monthly repayments.
So if rates rise, house prices can stabilise or even fall, and thousands of households fall into negative equity – and repossessions of homes rocket. Which is politically dangerous. This phenomenon works in other areas, too, and makes us slaves to low interest rates – and this is shaping and distorting economic policies.
Second – consumption. We are similarly reliant on consuming: we cannot – must not – stop spending. And so far, we haven’t. Figures from shopping centres and Amazon are healthy.
But the need for mass consumption prevents government from taking too much money out of individuals' pockets via taxation for fear of reducing their spending. At a Tory party conference in 2011, David Cameron had to change his speech. He wanted to say we needed to pay off our debts. But he couldn’t – because if we all used our money to reduce our borrowing, it would hit spending. So we are now officially slaves to consumption.
Third, we are also slaves to The City and financial services. Some of the UK economy’s largest eggs are now in one basket – in financial services. This could be reversed out of – but with great difficulty.
oughly 10 per cent of our economy consists of financial services – much of which is actually nothing at all. It might be dressed up as “providing liquidity” or enabling investment – but most is actually simply making money from moving money around.
More than anything, we’re slaves to big business.
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So our politicians and our business leaders have locked us into a tight corner. And now that things are in such a dreadful state, is there any hope of our business leaders – or indeed, our relatively impotent politicians – steering us out of the mess?
And who are the people running our large businesses – and our society? How is the system working?
Well, not too well, really. Everything that can realistically be done to smooth the path for business HAS been done, and it has given business leaders an incredibly narrow focus. Because there is such a close alignment between their own personal interests and the short-term interests of the businesses they lead, they seem to find it hard to see the bigger picture.
Let’s look first at what this 35-year process has produced in our boardrooms.
It’s left the leaders of our big businesses increasingly out of touch with reality. Their wealth creates a bubble. It certainly doesn’t make them wiser – instead they become naïve and detached. I’ve met lots and most are really nice and clever and well-meaning. But many also have little contact with, or understanding of, other people’s issues.
They are highly focused on their own results and the business. Anthony Hilton, a financial commentator in the Evening Standard, pointed to research in March 2011 that showed how the well-off don’t have a clue about what life is like for everyone else. He wrote: “They grossly over-estimate how many people earn as much as they do. They think the average wage is two or three times what it actually is.”
Leading a large business for vast pay packages also leaves bosses resisting change and being a real drag on progress. If the strong trade unions were holding us back in the 1970s, the leaders of big businesses are doing the same today. But the benign system that has provided them with great wealth, privilege and access to government, is bound to be defended. I would argue that in a rich nation such as the UK, they represent today's Neanderthals, holding us back from creating a society with a very different set of values and aspirations to the narrow, money-obsessed, materialistic world we have now.
But they have a lot to defend. In the past decade or so, the average year-end share price has performed poorly. Yet directors' pay has increased dramatically. Statistics from the “Manifest and MM&K Total Remuneration Survey” show that in the 12 years from 1998 to 2009, total remuneration of FTSE 100 chief executives increased by a factor of 3.89, roughly quadrupling.
Less than 20 per cent of that was paid in salary up to the belated and fairly feeble regulation that slowly filtered in during the downturn. Total remuneration packages are now made up of a complex mixture of bonuses, pension payments, share options, etc.
The High Pay Commission, an independent body set up to investigate high pay, monitors rewards. And in one of its reports it argued that there is “rarely” a link between company performance and executive pay. Its chairman at the time, Deborah Hargreaves – a former FT colleague of mine – says: “The evidence exposes the myth that big bonuses and high salaries result in better company performances. There has been massive growth in what has been termed as performance-related pay yet no such corresponding leap forward in company performance. Corporate governance reforms attempting to link pay with performance appear to have done little more than add to the huge complexity of executive packages, reward schemes and bonuses that make up the pay of FTSE 100 directors.”
In the US, there have been moves at least to expose the truths about pay. The “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” contains a raft of measures – one of which requires the disclosure of ratios of average earnings to executive pay. This requires a company to reveal the chief executive’s total compensation as a multiple of the median total compensation of all other employees (the “CEO pay multiple”).
There is snag, of course: there are arguments over how to make the comparisons. And there are fears it could lead organisations to outsource more of their poorer paid workers to raise the median wage. But it’s a start and it might give shareholders some insights and perhaps a lever to control pay.
How else might pay be moderated? One idea might be to include employees – or their representatives – in the process? Or perhaps use “the veil of ignorance”. It’s fascinating to guess how different pay levels might be if they were set for all employees, top to bottom, by one person from behind this veil – a brilliant notion from John Rawls. The idea is that the person making decisions on pay would also be on the payroll but have no idea where they fitted in the organisation. You might assess people’s worth very differently in that situation.
There are plenty more horror statistics: The Hays Group, for example, in February 2011 estimated that chief executives were earning up to 43 times the average wage in their businesses. Other figures suggest that that could be a huge underestimate – citing up to 200 times or more, which sounds more realistic for some of the largest enterprises.
Either way, there are only so many hours in a day, and can a chief really contribute 43 times, let alone 200 times, or even 1,000 in the most extreme cases, more effort, hours, brilliance, responsibility, stress and sacrifice than other employees? Especially when they might also have other jobs as well – perhaps as non-executive roles with other companies – and the task of running their own considerable financial affairs.
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So what do business leaders do to earn this money?
Here are a few things they DON’T do – from a fine song called Pretty Penny by Steve Tilston:
“They don't plant wheat,
They don't cut corn,
They don't pick tea,
They don't dig coal,
They don't forge steel, ….
They just push numbers all about,
They push too far we bail them out”
Another thing they don’t do is take risks. Entrepreneurs do, bomb disposal experts do, but chief executives don’t – because they are staff. They used to be called managing directors or general managers. They are employees, just like all the others.
Carl Mortishead in the Times in March 2009, wrote: “Once upon a time a managing director was just a superior manager. Today they are rewarded like venture capitalists – risk takers who claim a big return for taking a personal financial risk. This is absurd because Sir Fred [of RBS fame] and the other CEOs have no skin in the game; they are staff.”
I think it’s actually worse than this. Because so many of the incentives offered to chiefs are related to short-term financial performance targets, one way they can hit them is to “improve efficiency” or “increase productivity” – in other words, sack people to make the balance sheet look better – for bonus purposes. These incentives create huge temptations to cut corners and run the worst sort of risks.
And so we see chief executives being jailed and businesses fined for insider trading, ponsi and pyramid schemes, mis-selling, tax dodges (keeping empty offices in Jersey etc for “subsidiaries), insurance scams, phone hacking – every day something new. The court cases drag on.
And this decline in morality spreads. When role models become the wealthy we start to celebrate wealth. And those excluded from wealth choose occasionally to riot, or to occupy, or equally dangerously, seethe silently and helplessly, waiting for a chance to lash out. And when those who are bold, desperate or reckless enough to riot take to the streets, the chances are it will turn into looting – an orgy of “something for nothing”. Which, while we can't condone it, seems to be perfectly logical.
So what DO chief executives do? They have responsibilities as a communicator, decision maker, leader, and manager. I found a 30-year-old list with none of the business buzzwords we all use today. It just stuck to plain words, and is all the more revealing for it. It says chief executives are responsible for: “Planning; Organization; Management of recruitment and development; Policy; Standards of performance and performance reviews; Controls; Management of morale; Product development; Community relations; Profitability and growth; Relationship with board of directors.”
But then we have to ask whether they actually do all this satisfactorily. And the trouble is, there are very few measures of performance. Investors might look at share price – but is this all there is? How about honest feedback? Well, there’s not much going around. You can’t ask subordinates to appraise their bosses for fear that non-flattering feedback may stall their career. And so we can see that “being adequate” becomes “good enough” – and extravagantly rewarded.
Warren Buffett said as far back as 1988: “A CEO who doesn’t perform is frequently carried indefinitely. One reason is that performance standards for his job seldom exist. When they do, they are often fuzzy or they may be waived or explained away, even when the performance shortfalls are major and repeated. At too many companies, the boss shoots the arrow of managerial performance and then hastily paints the bull’s-eye around the spot where it lands.”
This, clearly, is still very much the case today.
Being in a sort of “CEO club” helps: once you’re in, it’s hard to break out. My Appointments section at the FT spoke to Dr Roger Barker, head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors. He believes it is more difficult to break into top management, even for those with an impeccable record, than it is for those already in top management to be kept out, even after blotting their copybooks. He says: “Once you have made that break, even when you are sometimes unsuccessful, you still have the qualification to go forth on that level.”
Tom Lloyd, a visiting fellow at Northampton Business School also wrote a short series of columns for my FT Appointments section, and in one of them he quoted Rakesh Khurana of Harvard as saying the so-called “market” for CEOs is “closed”, in that CEO jobs at large, listed companies are only open to those “who fit certain socially defined criteria”. Which boil down to: “Must be a C-level executive at a well-performing FTSE 350 company” – ie already at the top of a big business.
So a small pool of “qualified” business leaders keeps revolving around, no matter how bad they are at it. Three recent high-profile departing CEOs, at AstraZeneca, Trinity Mirror, and Aviva, will soon be back in a job. And for the companies, it’s “the CEO is dead; long live the CEO”. It looks like a “perpetuocracy”, if there is such a word.
Even when it all goes wrong, the key to making a recovery, says Dr Barker, is simply to explain yourself: “If you can explain what went wrong and the lessons you learned, the fact that you have already operated at such a high level gives confidence.”
For those who mix in CEO circles and know they will, at worst, enjoy a soft landing, it must affect their thinking. They have nothing to lose. No skin in the game.
Even worse, on a day-to-day basis, research on chief executives' diaries shows they spend an embarrassing amount of time managing their own personal interests – their fortunes, their careers, their images – which is unsurprising, given that some of them have incomes larger than many small businesses.
As Tom Lloyd again points out in a recent column he wrote for me on the subject of what CEOs do all day – when you pay CEOs such huge sums they become lucrative one-person businesses in their own right, which require managing. He wrote: “This might involve regular meetings with accountants and asset managers or networking with headhunters and influential business people, to maintain and enhance their personal brands.” And some of these might even take place in “work time”.
The remoteness that all this creates leads to several more unwanted characteristics in business leaders. Other commentators and researchers have found a list of dangers that chief executives must guard against – but often don’t.
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They can assume an air of unreality and infallibility.
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There is then a danger of arrogance – “I know best” – and they stop learning.
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When things go wrong, they can blame everyone else: “My employees just don’t get it.”
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Remoteness can breed ignorance – chief executives often don’t know what’s going on at grass roots level.
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They can become fearless – because they never “fail”. There are rewards even for failure. And no bad consequences. Their wealth shields them, with the very great assistance of “golden hellos and farewells”.
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And if things get tough, they can call in the consultants – at vast expense – to hold their hands.
As Adair Turner said – the “transformational capabilities” of chief executives are overblown. Even in normal times, success is actually more down to team, culture and climate. Large companies have plenty of advisers presenting a chief with options for them to pick from. And when things go wrong, they might well be right when they say there’s nothing they could have done about it – so much is outside their control anyway. Markets move, conditions change, the macro economic picture is shifting all the time – affecting businesses. All of these factors make chief executives feel bulletproof.
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So how can they justify their rewards?
Businesses and boards talk about “paying the market rate” to get the best leaders. But pay is set by a small club – and the comparisons are only within that small club – not the rest of society. So a parallel universe is created. Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, the advertising giant, was interviewed on the Radio 4 Today programme and said the comparison SHOULD be with other CEOs. But this is a circular argument. They’re saying: “We have to pay it because everyone else pays it.”
And arguing that “We’re competing for the top talent” assumes a limited supply of top talent. Which, given the managerial functions they are tasked with, the mistakes they make, and what we’ve seen about what they do and how they are measured, is a spurious assumption.
Dr Douglas Board another contributor to my section and a visiting fellow at Cass Business School, highlights this very wittily in a book called “Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead”.
He takes us to another planet and describes how they organise their big business leadership. He writes: “On the planet Delusio there is a pyramid of increasingly well-paid jobs. Delusians believe that the better-paid jobs are harder, requiring high levels of skill as well as the training which comes from working up the pyramid from one level of difficulty to the next. But the opportunities are few and this makes it tough for ordinary Delusians to have a go at a top job. However, if they could, they would find it no more difficult than the job they are doing already.
“No senior Delusian ever visibly screws up, in the sense that every junior Delusian who has to pick up one child from school while taking another to the doctor and working a late shift, will definitely screw up.”
I think the telling point is that most people, I am sure, would find a CEO’s job to be no more difficult than the one they are already doing, given the right training and experience. After all, they are only tasked with managerial functions, and they still manage to make plenty of mistakes.
I argue there is no justification for such levels of executive pay. Whether you base pay on their contribution, levels of risk, or effort, they simply don’t do enough. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.
In any case, it’s surely a very poor worker who can only be energised, motivated and inspired by a seven-figure pay packet. If I went for a job interview and said “You have to pay me more – I am only prepared to do the job properly if you pay me a massive salary,” I don't think I would get that job.
But it creates a big problem for society. We have seen City protests outside St Paul’s and all over the world. Everyone understands why they happen – most of us feel some vague notion of a deep unfairness.
Just as badly, it also misleads youngsters as to what their futures might hold. Surveys have shown that new graduates all greatly over-estimate their likely salaries and speed of progress in a job.
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Which raises the question of whether any of this matters.
Well, consider this. A friend of mine, Mrs Moneypenny, said in a Radio 4 Today programme debate on this topic that no one over the age of eight should complain about things not being fair.
But I disagree. Fairness DOES matter. It comes back to our instinct for cheating. You can get away with a bit of self-interest at the expense of the group – but only up to a point.
And while everything was going well and we all had gadgets and holidays and lots of eating out, no one cared too much. But that’s changing. A lot of people are becoming worse off, some losing their jobs, their benefits, their homes.
And this makes having “an unfair advantage” matter a lot and so we see the social group reacting to deal with the “cheats”. The Occupy movement, rioting – and even shareholder “revolts”, as at Trinity Mirror, AstraZeneca, Aviva and now WPP. We are also seeing a mass movement towards very nasty right-wing political parties, for example in France and Greece – an obvious refuge for the discarded and disregarded.
As my old boss Richard Lambert, former FT editor, said recently in the FT: “Public support for free markets is based on two broad arguments. The first is that they deliver more efficient outcomes than the alternatives. The second is that over time they create increased prosperity for society at large. Both these assumptions have taken a severe jolt in the past few years.
“It may be that capitalism is approaching some kind of tipping point, away from the winner takes all culture of the past three decades. If left unchecked, public disquiet will sooner or later bring a political response.”
Notions of fairness and cheating matter a great deal.
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So – I contend that it’s actually very easy to run a large business in this environment. And the rewards are fabulous. But is it sustainable? And if not, how might things change, or be changed?
One force for change is entering the workplace in the form of technology. Today, we still operate industrial revolution work patterns, that were created for factories in the 19th century. People were paid for their time, not results. Talent isn’t necessarily rewarded – but face-time is. Which leads to presenteeism – workaholism. You can’t go home before the boss, regardless of whether you have anything to do or not.
Technology is changing this – by enabling people to work any time, anywhere. This means they can be more task-based. And managers will have to trust their staff to perform when they can’t see them.
Technology is also changing the way younger people think – and their priorities in life and work. Those brought up in an age of broadband – known as “digital natives” – use social media. This vastly enlarges their networks and expectations. And it’s become part of their life – and something they’re not prepared to give up in the workplace.
I offer one quick example. I was advised to follow a young lady called Poppy Dinsey on Twitter – because she was funny, observant, incisive, fearless and witty. As editor of the FT's Executive Appointments section, I asked her to write a feature for me on why she had rejected the traditional “grad scheme” route to finding her way into a well-paid job on the corporate ladder.
She wrote that she wanted to do her own thing. She wanted to work – but she did not want a job. So she set about building expertise and making a name for herself – and creating her personal brand via online social networking, which in her case revolved around fashion. She wrote about how attitudes in sections of her age group towards companies are changing.
Which brings us to the question of talent and leaders of the future. Because this is now a problem for employers. They have created a new model of leader, which is not in tune with the way younger people think. It’s a problem for organisations when the top young talent starts to reject them.
The early signs of this came when employers began to complain of a “talent shortage”. But rest assured, there is no talent shortage. In fact, the UK has a glut of talent, with ever more well-qualified youngsters, which is partly down to the massive increase in university student numbers – Blair’s random target of 50 per cent.
The trouble is, that target was set without any thought for what the result would be. Because what we see now are large numbers of new graduates every year with very similar qualifications – especially in arts and humanities, because these courses are easy and cheap to set up and run, and are therefore good business for the newly commercial universities. And this has created a huge rise in applications for jobs – because there are many more graduates and technology makes it ever easier to make multiple job applications. Employers then have to introduce processes to handle the volume - and you see that recruiting becomes a process of mowing, rather than cherry picking.
Employers try to wipe out as many candidates as possible in a first sweep – by allowing through only certain degrees, or certain universities, or other basic attributes. It's understandable why they do it – but dismissing whole categories of applicants is likely to mean they miss the best people – who might have non-standard qualifications, or have been brilliant at an unfashionable university.
So there appears to be a talent shortage, partly because employers discard so many talented people in their first sift. In fact, I argue that you could train almost anyone to do any job – including running a large business. And nearly all would do it well – most, very well. What more could you want?
To make things worse, this apparent talent shortage is exacerbated by the changed expectations of businesses, who expect to find the finished article – someone who can tick eight out of their 10 boxes, instead of four or five previously; someone who can do the job from the moment they walk into work on their first day.
This is partly because businesses have become pared back to the essentials in order to be “leaner” and “fitter” and have less and less time or money or inclination to train and nurture staff. Many have fallen back on outsourcing jobs to cheaper parts of the world, or more recently exploiting cheap labour from eastern Europe. [Read this relevant piece by former FT editor Richard Lambert or this about the views of Tidjane Thiam ]
This slimming down of organisations is gradually making some of them just a core of “experts” who form a central team that hires niche skills on contracts to do the actual work.
Luckily for them, technology and the changing attitudes of the broadband generation are in line with this and we are starting to see the emergence of “talent clouds” – or “talent on demand”: people who are happy to work on contracts and projects and fit working into their lives, rather than the other way round. This “IT-enabled flexibility” could well suit both parties.
There are also demands from younger workers for organisations to be more socially responsible, and to enable a better work-life balance.
Another force for change might come from alternative business models – the John Lewis model, The Co-operative model, or employee-owned organisations.
Today, there is virtually no role in running businesses for the people who work in them – other than the top executives, of course. Yet the staff often have the biggest REAL stake in any organisation.
Or what about a different attitude towards allocating jobs and work. Rather than either being IN work or EXCLUDED from work, why not give everyone a job so that we all do a little less. Everyone contributes and everyone shares. After all, the system requires us to work, so why should so many be excluded?
We might also change the incentives for business leaders which caused so much rottenness in the first place. In the hope that it changes the way they think and behave.
And please don’t think I’m anti-business per se – or even anti chief executives. I’ve met many and most are charming and reasonable. Ruby McGregor-Smith, chief executive of Mitie, and Karren Brady, chief executive at West Ham, both come across as sensible, down-to-earth young leaders who can see things a little differently. And I think more will start to “get it” as younger leaders emerge. I just think business is not performing the social function it could and should be performing.
To make it work more widely, we need new thinking on what constitutes a competent modern business leader. I think these are the essential characteristics they will need:
- They will want flexibility – and enable it for others.
- They will be collaborators, rather than being competitive for the sake of it.
- They will be service providers, rather than profit maximisers.
- They will be technologists, and avid online networkers.
- They will champion local community involvement.
- And at the same time they will be international in outlook – sharing best practice from anywhere in the world.
■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
I think work will change, too. As we have seen, technology and the next generation’s attitudes are moving to a more contractual, task-based model – with a priority on flexibility and work-life balance.
I also think we will eventually learn how to live in an age of extraordinary riches. It might not feel as though we are rich – but we are. No other era has had what we have.
The irony is that we can’t handle this fabulous wealth and comfort. We still want more – partly because we are constantly bombarded by a system that’s built around people consuming and wanting more and more. We have a whole society that is geared to achieving material gains. The overwhelming driver has become money and “stuff”.
We will – hopefully – learn to value other things – such as time, the simpler pleasures of doing less. A pursuit of happiness, rather than expensive gadgets, flat-screen TVs and designer clothes. It’s interesting that in surveys that ask when people were happiest, they tend to say 1976 – if they're old enough to remember it. It was a hot summer – but it certainly wasn’t the richest year on record.
And for all that we have it doesn't seem to make us happier. A survey [2011] by PwC and Demos, the think tank, found people in the UK to be pretty miserable because of working hours, income inequality, transport costs, etc. It’s an inherently depressing system because it relies on permanent dissatisfaction.
In short, business must be made to serve people and society, and not the other way round, as at present. And George Osborne should ask himself why he is, as he said, “unashamedly business first”? To what end? And if the end is not “to enrich an elite”, then he needs to think again.
I also think there has to be a huge shift from society holding so much of its wealth in a few private hands. This vast personal wealth creates dreadful stresses in society because individuals spend their money to suit themselves, which is often anti-social. If you walk around the wealthiest parts of west London, the pavements are blocked every few yards by builder’s machinery and hoarding – because they are digging out basements. Some have even collapsed, endangering neighbours and the public. This is surely the most stupid, anti-social waste of money. But people have had all that cash shoved in their wallets, so they can do what they like with it.
Shifting a large proportion of this unearned, or lightly earned – and definitely undeserved – income into communally held funds could reduce such selfish madness and raise the quality of life dramatically for everyone.
There is, of course, an obvious problem with this – it requires trust in the quality of public administration. Sadly, competent public administration is VERY hard to find. A lot needs to change there.
■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
For any improvements to be made, we need brave, intelligent and socially minded politicians to listen – and to be leaders, rather than the lapdogs of big businesses that have taken a stranglehold on what we do and how we live. Politicians helped stoke all this up – promising material riches and an easy ride for businesses – to stay in power. And when it started getting out of control, a very long time ago, they were the only people who could stop it. Plenty of people were pointing out that things were going wrong – some of us at the FT were saying that we were living in a fool’s paradise and way beyond our means as far back as the 1990s. It was blindingly obvious, even at the time.
But the political leadership had neither the knowledge, nor the inclination to stop the unsustainable economic bubble growing. And when it burst, they all claimed it was “unforeseeable”. Gordon Brown repeatedly blamed everything on the “world economy”, global forces beyond his control. Which, of course, was all complete rubbish.
We need someone who can relieve the intellectual and political constipation from which we have been suffering for decades. We must stop thinking that everything can be solved with flashy maths and financial wizardry. And we must decide whether Big Business is our servant or our master.
I leave you with three quotes:
This first one is from 2009, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a veteran trader, and professor at New York University's Polytechnic Institute – and an influence on David Cameron (so perhaps there is hope). It’s from his “Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world”. He came up with the Black Swan theory, which is that history does not make steady linear progress – it leaps in response to surprise events that it then subsequently rationalises, in a sort of “re-writing of history”. Here are brief versions of his principles 3 and 4:
“3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
“4. Do not let someone making an 'incentive' bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.”
The second one comes from Einstein: “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
And the last one is from something I wrote shortly after the financial catastrophe of 2007-8: “We have been on a bus hurtling towards the edge of a cliff at increasing speed. Luckily, that bus has broken down. Unfortunately, the response of those in power is to try and fix it and get it roaring along again in the same direction. It has to change course.”
JUNE 29 2016
Does anyone agree that the EU would look a very different place if my "Approval Rating" system had been in place? The idea is that every EU country holds a referendum each year and instead of the binary option of IN or OUT, voters would score the EU's performance over the previous year out of 10. The UK referendum of June 23 was basically this, but with only the possibility of awarding 10 out of 10 or zero out of 10 - with the inevitable result. But an annual rating from the entire EU population - or those that care enough to vote - of between one and 10 would send a clear message regarding satisfaction levels, especially if any score below six - or maybe seven - resulted in the expulsion and replacement of every commissioner. It might take three or four years to find an acceptable group, but after that we might have a competent commission acting in the interests of the vast majority of the European people.
JUNE 25 2016
There is no need to be bewildered by this vote - the numbers were shocking, I agree - but the depth of feeling has been there for a long time, for anyone prepared to look. Janice Turner's brilliant column in The Times today says it all, and is very similar to the arguments I outline below. PLEASE read her column.
JUNE 23 2016
For anyone demanding evidence of EU incompetence, dysfunction etc, (accusations levelled below) I give you: last year's "madness of Mrs Merkel", barbed wire borders, falling hostage to Turkey, vehicle emissions testing, TWO parliament buildings, farm subsidies, to name just a few of the big ones that are barely even mentioned in the piece below.
And to those bemoaning the threat of continuing division and rancour - don't worry, it's always been there. It's just that for a fleeting moment the weak, poor and ignored have been given a tiny voice. They will go back to being subjected to Business As Usual from tomorrow.
JUNE 22 2016
Why I cannot vote for the EU - but don't like Brexit campaigners either (In reply to an essay “Why I shall vote to stay in Europe” – by Frank Brierley)
Frank wrote an intelligent and thoughtful piece on why he supports remaining in the EU. I felt there were other ways to interpret the issues he raised and annotated his original essay. Frank then provided further notes and the beast grew to unwieldy proportions. I have therefore extracted my thoughts into this reply, attempting to introduce each section with a very brief summary of the point Frank was making. If I have misinterpreted him in any way, or been mistaken, then I apologise, as that was truly not my intention. You should already have been sent his original article, so you can judge for yourselves, if necessary.
But reflecting on our friendly exchanges, I can now see the underlying difference in our approach. Anyone who believes the status quo to be most excellent will have no trouble deciding how to vote in this referendum: they will choose Remain. I don't think either of us are in this camp.
But if you see the EU's influence as less than perfect, then how you vote may depend on your priorities and how you regard the EU's willingness to listen and change. This is becoming an increasing theme in the debate as the EU's imperfections are at last being discussed, as seen in The Times' leader column on June 21, headlined “Leading, not Leaving”. Frank believes that staying in the bloc will enable the UK to engage more deeply with EU member states and to argue for – and bring about – great reforms, as The Times leader argues. I take the view that the EU is not interested in our concerns and is fundamentally incapable of reform. Having been an enthusiastic Europhile for so long, I am hugely disappointed at the direction it is taking.
Also, neither of us has delved into the arcane and largely meaningless realm of economic forecasts. During my many years working for the FT I always felt they were on a par with trying to predict next year's football results. Frank alludes to them tangentially a couple of times and I am prepared to concede that a Leave vote would inevitably cause market turbulence. How things might look in 10 or 20 years obviously cannot be known. Beyond that, I hope Frank will agree that our cases are more to do with principles and the future of our society than numbers.
But to get to our debate:
Frank and I agree that the level of debate by leading politicians has been infantile and irresponsible on both sides. The Prime Minister should be especially ashamed of himself for offering the country a choice regarding a matter upon which he now claims there is none. In our discussion Frank and I have ignored the sorry state of the current political leadership on both sides of the argument, probably both assuming (certainly in my case) that this cadre of unworthy, here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians will be an irrelevance within five years.
Overall, I am not especially political – at least, not party political. Although I suspect Frank and I are far more “political” than we are admitting. But either way, being an FT journalist for nearly 27 years provided me with a ring-side seat at the main political and socio-economic events of the era and a close-up view of the oppressive rise of the corporation since the mid-80s. Also, my upbringing in the low-church, anti-establishment, heavily work-centric and justice-seeking environment of south Northamptonshire might help explain the distribution of my sympathies.
For his part, Frank said he was temperamentally more attracted to the Remain case and wanted to examine whether he could justify his stance objectively, choosing the issues that have influenced him. I have stuck to Frank's agenda in this response. There are, of course, many more issues, but we hope the ones chosen will prove illustrative of our stances.
I, too, am idealistically and temperamentally strongly supportive of a co-operative Europe and would, in other circumstances, be – and indeed have been in the past – an enthusiastic EU supporter. But I cannot overlook the manifest and widely acknowledged failings of the current embodiment of that co-operation, the EU. This is where the distinction between “Europe” and the “EU” becomes critical. The act of endorsing an incompetent, dysfunctional, out-dated, anti-democratic organisation that is riddled with dubious practices and waste must surely involve holding one's nose quite tightly. It would not be out of the question, depending on how we weight our other priorities, but very unpleasant. It is also amusing to see so many politicians who were deeply critical of the EU until a few months ago now extolling its virtues and denying its vices.
Waste
Frank's first issue concerned the enormous waste that leaving would entail, in terms of adjusting to being outside the EU on multiple fronts and levels. I counter that this has not become an issue in the debate because it really isn't one. Why? First, the EU itself is a gigantic bureaucracy and renowned for its wasteful procedures, which we would be spared. Second, while there would be much to be done if the UK votes to leave, those carrying out the bulk of it would have been doing the same or similar work anyway, whether in the civil service or business. Third, to argue that there would be a lot to do could be applied to virtually every action or change, no matter how worthwhile.
Peace and prosperity
In response to Frank's argument that the EU has made a vitally valuable contribution to peace and prosperity over the past 60 years, I agree up to a point. It is certainly likely that the EEC and EU have had some effect on peace and prosperity since the war. But how significant the causal link might be is debatable. The unifying effect of the cold war, Nato, political developments favouring democracy over authoritarianism in the west (capitalist democracies tend not to go to war with each other – all possible outcomes show negative returns), and the suffocating dominance of business, markets, money, economics and self-interest must also have contributed. And not all of those had much to do with the EU – or are even completely desirable to a mind devoted to social justice and fairness.
Worryingly, EU pressure for eastwards expansion, coupled with its blindness to social unrest within, caused by mass uncontrolled migrations, are fast becoming potential causes of future conflict. The parties – and gangs – of the far right are increasingly prominent across EU countries as ordinary unheeded communities respond, perfectly rationally, to what is happening to them. And it is not Farage, or newspapers creating this frightening rise of the right – they are reflecting it in one instance and feeding off it in the other. It is thus perfectly plausible to argue that the EU is now turning into one of the biggest potential causes of conflict and serious unrest within Europe.
In theory, the EU as a bloc ought to carry a political weight greater than the sum of its parts. In practice, it has rarely acted as a “cohesive world power” politically, usually becoming paralysed by the conflicting viewpoints and interests of its members. Its role during the Balkan wars, for example, was hardly decisive or effective. Similarly, its role in courting Ukraine can be seen as fuelling Russian paranoia and aggression, leading to an unnecessary worsening of relations, sanctions and tension.
In economic terms, yes, Spain and Portugal's economies have expanded hugely, but from a very low base following liberation from dictatorships. Similarly, Ireland has veered from basket case to “tiger” and back again. Many countries around the world, outside the EU, have had very similar experiences: the BRIC countries, for example. It can be equally logically argued that the rise of business globally and the easing of trade barriers around the world have had a far greater effect than the EU economically. Indeed, the EU's one-size-fits-all, lowest common denominator arrangements can be seen as less than optimal in securing the most advantageous conditions for all of its members. And as for the euro experiment, it seems to have dragged the EU economy as a whole into the doldrums.
Meanness
Frank and I are both upset at how Britons seem to have become meaner and more selfish over the past 50 years. I completely agree with him that the era since the late 1970s has been characterised by meanness and selfishness. The direction of travel since the rise of the corporation in the 80s has been towards money, greed, and unearned income. We need to examine the causes. But before we look at the three categories Frank identifies as examples, I would suggest that the “natural” state of British people is to be open, generous and caring. The UK experienced repeated waves of immigration throughout the last century, the vast majority of which was met with tolerance and charity. Where there have been tensions initiated by the pre-existing population, these can largely be attributed to secondary factors directly affecting communities' well-being. So to call ordinary people “mean” and “selfish” for reacting angrily to losing their jobs to people prepared to undercut their wages, for example, seems to ignore the real underlying causes.
Meanness 1 – Immigrants
Frank argues that immigration, as an issue, is exaggerated and exacerbated by the emphasis politicians have placed on it and tries to downplay its real significance. But I reply that we have to accept that immigration clearly IS the most significant issue for millions of people. It is the number one factor cited in polls and interviews etc (outside the south-east England wealth-belt, at least).
And this brings us to the very nub of the debate. How you view immigration seems to depend largely upon whether you are a beneficiary or a victim. The business case is that immigrants work hard for low wages. This, they say, benefits business, the economy and the treasury. They “pay their way”. The alternative, and far less heard, case is that lowly paid immigrants are prepared to endure conditions that would be considered unfit by the vast majority of the pre-existing population, and depress wages or even destroy “proper” job opportunities entirely, at enormous cost to individuals, communities, and the taxpayer footing the bill for the benefits of the locally displaced.
Consider these two paragraphs by an old colleague of mine, the FT's John Gapper. He puts in a nutshell the conflict between attitudes in the south-east cosmopolitan wealth-belt and the under-reported realities of life beyond the home counties. He is talking about that wonderful “wealth creator” Mike Ashley, and his disgraceful Sports Direct factory at Shirebrook, staffed mainly by long-suffering eastern European migrants. What he describes here should be, for all of us, the nub of the issue:
"To a university-educated, London citizen such as me, the benefits of technological innovation, free trade and free movement of labour are clear and unalloyed. They stimulate economic growth and raise the quality of goods and services, as well as making it cheaper and easier to shop online. Leaving the EU and European single market would be a deeply damaging mistake.
"For those in Shirebrook, who swapped a mine that provided quite rewarding jobs until it closed in 1993 for a warehouse that employs outsiders on low wages, the gains are less obvious. Sports Direct employs people — but not the same ones and not at the same rate. It is now hard to find a good job if your education is limited to school.”
This is the reality for millions of British people, of whatever background, that has shaped their “meanness”. I am not prepared to judge them as “selfish”. Yes, Shirebrook is only one appalling example of exploitation – but this is how modern business operates: cutting costs to maximise profits. Across vast swathes of the UK, free movement of labour is reversing the business trend of “outsourcing” and “offshoring” – so popular only a decade or so ago. This is because businesses no longer need to go to the trouble of employing low-cost labour overseas – they can hire it on their doorstep. The fact that so many poorly paid people qualify to have their wages topped up by the state – which we might call “businesses on benefits” – speaks volumes. Is this steady, business-led downgrading and cheapening of our society really the way we want to proceed?
And consider this extract from a piece of first-class reporting by John Harris in The Guardian:
“Instead of the comparative security and stability of the postwar settlement and the last act of Britain’s industrial age, what’s the best we can now offer for so many people in so many places? Six-week contracts at the local retail park, lives spent pinballing in and out of the benefits system, and retirements built on thin air?
“It may have been easy to miss in the London-centred haze of the “knowledge economy” and the birth of the digital future, but this is where millions of lives have been heading since the early 1980s – and to read that some Labour MPs have come back from their constituencies, amazed by the views they encounter on the doorstep, is to be struck by a political failure that sits right at the heart of the story. How did they not know?
“What has any of this got to do with the EU? Not much, but such is the nature of referendums: offer people a ballot paper, and they will focus whatever they feel strongly about on to it. There again, one obvious issue is directly linked to the EU, and so central to the political moment that it arises in countless conversations within seconds.
“Yes, some people – from bigots in the stockbroker belt to raging gobshites in south Wales shopping precincts – are simply racist. But in a society and economy as precarious as ours, the arrival of large numbers of people prepared to do jobs with increasingly awful terms and conditions was always going to trigger loud resentment. For many places, the pace of change and the pressures on public services have arguably proved to be too much to cope with.”
He warns later: “People have good reason to worry about [free movement], and their anger and anxiety will not go away.”
Frank goes on to say that we need Latvian farm workers, Polish builders, Indian doctors, Filipino nurses, and IT workers from wherever we can get them and accuses Brexiters of only playing the immigration card to stir voters' emotions towards their cause. I think this accusation is fair – I agree that it has been a nasty aspect of the right-wing Brexit case. But there are complex issues here that are often jumbled into one, concerning EU legal economic migrants, non-EU legal immigration, illegal economic migration, and refugees.
First, whatever the precise figures on EU versus non-EU immigration – and most figures show them to be roughly equal – the population shifts from eastern Europe to the west and the UK are now large and have multiplied enormously in recent years. This has effects both for us and the countries of origin. At present levels (184,000 net per year), EU immigration alone would require building a city almost the size of Birmingham (1.1m) every six years simply to be housed. Frank counters that wide distribution of migrants in every town across the land would make their presence barely noticeable. But this is not the reality – some communities (not ours in Surrey) bear far greater burdens than others. Consider the outrage sparked in Claygate by threatened encroachments into the Green Belt, for example. This ought to make us empathise with those communities facing the arrival of hundreds or thousands of, rather than one or two, people on their doorsteps. And population growth on this scale must inevitably pose huge challenges to policy-makers and service providers at all levels.
In the future, this population explosion could, of course, reduce. Or increase. The prime minister's feeble attempt at slowing it shows that which way it goes currently depends entirely upon the free and unfettered choices made by millions of individuals in eastern Europe. And the disequilibrium within the expanded EU's economies makes it a rational choice for most of them to move west.
Second, non-EU immigration is high, too, because we are importing skills. There are several problems with this. One is that, because of uncontrolled EU immigration pushing up the totals, the government felt forced to impose restrictions (salary threshholds, restrictions on “indefinite leave to remain” etc) on non-EU migrants. This is limiting our ability to access some skills. Why do we need skills from other countries? Because, for example, we don't train enough doctors, IT specialists, engineers, etc – nor do we provide those that we do train with a sufficiently attractive work-life to keep them in the UK. And we need to import these skills from beyond the EU because the bulk of the self-selected EU immigrants tend to secure work through their low cost, rather than bringing the specialist skills we seek.
It is therefore perfectly reasonable to argue that immigration could be reduced and managed at a level closer to our choosing were we allowed to control EU migration, focus on training for the skills we need, and provide a greatly improved working experience for those we do train.
As for the rest, illegal economic migration from across Africa and Asia into the EU is an immense problem. Fortunately, the stunning incompetence that European leaders have applied to this crisis has not had a profoundly adverse impact in the UK – yet. But it surely will, whether we stay in the EU or whether we leave. And worse, the ineptitude with which the illegal migrant crisis is being handled – or not handled – is hampering anyone's ability to do more for genuine refugees. It is deeply infuriating that illegal migrants, criminal traffickers, and the witless EU policies that aid and abet them are diverting so many energies and resources and so much capacity away from helping people who genuinely ARE in desperate need.
So yes, as things stand, we need Indian doctors, Filipino nurses and IT workers because of the UK's “training and treatment gap”. Sadly, we now need Polish builders and Latvian farm workers because UK labourers cannot live reasonably on reduced standard rates of pay. And I would not be prepared to ask them to. A recent news story illustrates the point: a sandwich factory in Northampton was reported as advertising for staff in eastern Europe, claiming local people were lazy, not prepared to work and preferred benefits. But a closer look at the working conditions – zero hours contracts, low pay, and the prospect of Sports Direct-like maltreatment – made it unlikely you would want to send a dog there to work, let alone allow someone you cared about to go there.
In summary, I think it unfair to accuse every Leave supporter of using immigration to whip up jingoism and racism. Yes, Farage is an unpleasant man, as are many of the right-wing Brexiters (who are making most of the noise). But there is a very strong, little-heard, left-leaning Brexit case that can see what immigration is doing outside the home counties to the weakest people in the UK. This referendum is giving those people a say; what would you expect them to do?
Meanness 2: The Social Chapter
Frank admits he was “dead against” the 1992 Social Chapter, aimed at improving living and working conditions, because of the extra costs and reduction of the power of company managements (eg to dismiss employees). He now sees it as having had significant benefits for workers across Europe, in areas such as maternity and paternity leave, health and safety legislation, etc. Franks says: “It is an example of European membership having pushed Britain in a more humane direction....I personally am very pleased in retrospect that European social legislation still exercises some influence on a Britain where I believe the mean, materialistic attitudes of successive governments and big business have nevertheless succeeded in polarising wealth distribution to a morally indefensible degree.”
In response, I think it's marvellous that we now all love the Social Chapter. I've always been a big fan of regulations that protect workers and ordinary people. So to hear that initial business-led opposition (“Stop! - we need to be able to sack people more easily”) can be turned around by time, experience and reality is encouraging. But it does raise the question as to how much influence we should be allowing business on other issues.
It also raises a question around effectiveness. Mike Ashley has been operating happily without worrying too much about workers' conditions. It's true to say that we don't know how much worse things could have been without a basic minimum provided by EU regulation. What we can say is that while UK workers' ground-level power – via trade unions – has been seriously eroded under both Tory and New Labour governments during the UK's 40 or so years inside the EU, all workers have been granted protections “from above” by EU rules governing working time, parental leave etc etc. And, of course, EU rules have had positive effects in other areas, such as the environment. Although I do find it deeply troubling that we now have to rely on the EU for protections against our own governments and employers. And we might ask to what extent this "safety net" has affected the UK's political discourse and even its choice of governments.
Meanness 3: The money criterion in education
Frank and I agree that higher education policy in the UK is “marginally economic and misery-making” and needs to be changed. Frank argues that this could he done by “leading the way within Europe to persuade our partners to join us in far wider governmental support for education”. He also cites the Erasmus programme as “a glowing example of the benefits available in this field from EU membership”.
My only quibble in this area is over whether much-needed improvements in the UK's education and training sectors can only be achieved within the EU. There has to be a strong case for saying that education policy changes are far easier to write and implement within an independent country than within a large group. And we are in a poor position to persuade other countries when the financing of our own higher education system is such a shambles. It might also be pointed out that the UK, Germany and France initially opposed the creation of the Erasmus programme (itself an amalgamation of pre-existing programmes) because they already had superior student exchange systems of their own – and so it was, at least initially, another example of “lowest common denominator” politics.
Sovereignty
I have no huge concerns over sovereignty per se. Government is either good or bad, whatever its jurisdiction. However, the undemocratic ways of the complex EU structures are undeniable, and the anti-democratic force of the “rule of law mechanism” is shocking. Some MEPs themselves say they are frustrated at their lack of power. But again, if everything else was fine, this would not be a big issue. I would always argue for decision-making to be closer to the people, in principle, for reasons of accountability and change. But against that, our own government or councils are just as capable as the EU of being misguided, blind or idiotic.
Idealism
I hope I haven't misrepresented any of Frank's views, and I hope he agrees that on this subject he is calling for the UK to use its influence, and the respect it enjoys in the world, to spread learning and enlightenment across the EU. And who could deny that this is a wonderful ambition? But the evidence stands piled high against the possibility of success. The EU has shown itself to be completely uninterested in reform or significant change. Yes, it has allowed the UK a few opt-outs when we have insisted, but it is hard to see much sign of UK influence within the EU beyond this. The commissioners pursue their agendas with blinkers firmly in place. The idea of a rosy European conversation or round-table learning experience is not on any EU agenda.
Having said that, it might be forced on to the agenda if a big enough shock were to be delivered. Clearly, the possibility that the UK might vote to leave is of insufficient concern in Brussels to have made it worth discussing meaningful concessions or reform. But Austria almost achieved a shock with its recent election. And what was the response of the EU? Not “it's time we thought about the causes of this frightening rise in fascism across Europe”. But “if the people of Austria elect a far-right president, we'll just take over its government”. This simply fails on so many levels. The EU is breaking down and no longer functions as it once did. The cavalier admission of the accession states threw away the delicate equilibrium that had enabled it to work so well – yet its current unbalanced condition has not even been acknowledged, let alone dealt with.
I would dearly love EU leaders to be capable of seeing the real problems they are causing and to address them; then my enthusiasm would be renewed. Failing that, we should be in no doubt that a vote to leave will incur a heavy price as a vindictive European Commission takes its revenge. But looking further ahead, I sadly conclude that only a big shock will force the EU to recognise the deeper damage it is doing. And that's why I cannot bring myself, whatever else I might do, to endorse it with my vote.
MAY 17 2016
Two quick points: I think it's a great pity that the EU membership debate is being conducted almost entirely between members of groups one and two, as identified in my April 25 notes. Also, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Remain campaign has to work harder to overcome its basic message that "this is as good as it gets". It has no grounds for optimism and is essentially a conservative, defensive stance. The Leave campaign, on the other hand, has to overcome the problem of which philosophy will prevail in the event of an exit vote: the one that will free businesses to trade and exploit, or the one that will protect society and the environment. If the former, we would probably be better off staying in the EU.
APRIL 25 2016
Views on the EU debate seem to fall into a four-way matrix. Two groups view the issues from the business/economy perspective - and reach opposite conclusions, and two view them from the people/social perspective - and also reach opposite conclusions.
The first two groups, most prominently supported by right-wing politicians, both see the economy and business as paramount - but one focuses on trade deals, the threat of financial services firms to move abroad, and cheap labour and predicts catastrophe if we leave; the other focuses on mass immigration, business regulation, EU costs and employee protections and says freeing ourselves of these will help businesses.
The second two groups, most prominently supported by liberal and left-leaning commentators, see the environment, culture, society and workers as paramount. But one group focuses on EU environmental and workplace protections and sees these as an overriding reason to remain; the other focuses on mass migration and its impact on lowering wages and overloading services, causing social conflict and destroying the environment.
Each group makes perfectly valid and reasonable points but is also vulnerable to criticism from each of the other three. For example, the pro-business Remain group might be right in saying there will be a shock to the economy from which we will all suffer financially. But the second group would counter that this is short-term speculation and that a new equilibrium would emerge; the third group argues that a more positive message than pessimism and scaremongering is required; and the fourth group would argue that as business interests and workers' interests become increasingly misaligned, a large part of the population has too small a stake in business to support it at all costs. Such strengths and weaknesses apply to each group - and there may well be other groups and sub-groups, too.
The two people who have impressed me most with their views on the EU vote - Janice Turner, Times columnist (Leave) and Jeremy Corbyn (Remain) - illustrate these divides. They make almost the same arguments but reach opposite conclusions - such is the nature of this debate. Corbyn is a group three man and argues that the EU's employee protections make everything else a price worth paying. And here's Janice Turner's column, she's group four:
http://marcpontinblog.com/brexit-great-article-by-janice-turner/
It's therefore a highly complex debate. And the greatest danger I see is that those taking part place themselves in one of these groups and fail to acknowledge the legitimate claims and nuances of the others. This is why I have looked at what I see as the key issues and categorised them as reasons to stay, leave or both/neither.
APRIL 18 2016
SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO?
The EU affects many aspects of our lives. Here, I have selected the key factors that will influence my vote in the coming referendum. It is far from a clear-cut decision.
I see three powerful reasons to stay in the EU.
The first reason for staying is to retain the employee protections afforded by EU laws and regulation. These would almost certainly be stripped away by business pressure if we leave the EU, leaving workers exposed to ever more exploitation and relative impoverishment.
The second is that I have no confidence whatever in the politicians responsible for dealing with our proposed exit. There has to be a huge fear that they will not make a clean break and will negotiate a deal with the EU that is even worse than the one we have now. Talk of the “Norwegian model” or “Canadian model” is worrying and distracting. We would only be better off leaving if we choose the “UK model”. And if that model placed the protection of society, workers and the environment at its core.
A third reason is the romantic idea that we should strive towards a greater understanding of, and deeper relationship with, our neighbours in Europe, which has enormous value.
I see the following six factors as neutral.
EU spending. Redistributing the UK's EU contribution and spending it on hospitals etc is a simplistic argument and cannot be a decisive factor. Money flies in all directions around the EU and the overall impact either way is unknown and subject to manipulation.
Business/trade/economy. Arguing that the country will suffer because business and trade will be badly affected is to argue that the UK is merely a business machine and nothing else matters. It also assumes economic forecasting has any value - which it hardly ever does. On the other hand, UK businesses are artful, ruthless, largely amoral, and capable of operating in whatever environment they find themselves. Those that are not are probably not real going concerns at all. Businesses abhor change – but tend to adapt well to new trading circumstances. The levels of UK trade with the EU also appear to be rather lower than we are often led to believe. Overall, the UK's medium and long-term economic behaviour and fortunes are unknowable and cannot therefore be a defining issue.
'Things will change'. The “things will change” argument also works both ways. Some things will be better, other things worse. But the constant bombardment of scare stories, mostly from the Remain campaign, are merely statements that things might change. But would change be so awful, given our recent history of financial disasters and “austerity” (for some)?
International relations. Again, this works both ways. Being part of a bloc adds weight, but the EU is prone to blundering and disunity. And as for the EU preventing renewed war in Europe? Today, the EU is just as likely to be the cause of a war than prevent it.
Security. Security can hardly be called an EU competence. The UK is already a leading global force in security and will remain so, in or out of the EU.
Law. Sovereignty of the legal system is no deciding factor, either. I have no great confidence in the EU or other international courts, but the UK's own can be equally daft.
The following six factors support leaving the EU.
Mass migrations. The EU has proved itself utterly incompetent over economic migration, illegal and otherwise, from beyond its borders. Germany's role in this has been astoundingly stupid – and this will have serious implications for every EU member country.
'Free movement'. Mass movements of populations within the EU are also a potential catastrophe. Mass migrations throughout history have invariably resulted in social unrest, hatreds, rivalries, civil wars and bigger wars. Taken to its logical conclusion, the EU “free movement” policy is a dangerous absurdity. In spite of what the government's pro-EU booklet says, the UK does NOT have full control of its borders, which inevitably undermines security.
Population explosion. This is to say nothing of the unprecedented population explosion, the effects of which range from overwhelming pressures on social services and serious and growing social tensions, to being the predominant factor in fuelling the frightening levels of housing demand. Building a city the size of Birmingham every three or four years is not physically sustainable. Unrestricted migrations also hamper our capacity to contribute towards resettling desperate refugees (who are very different from migrants - we are ALL potential migrants).
Jobs and wages. Economic disparities across the enlarged EU have destroyed the former equilibrium, creating a strong imperative for uncontrolled mass migrations, with eastern European workers free to compete for jobs in western European economies, which drives down wages to a level that UK workers - especially youngsters - cannot reasonably live on, thereby alienating an important section of the workforce. High levels of employment, coupled with low pay, stifle investment and create low productivity in a slowly growing economy. (Some see this as an inexplicable paradox!)
EU expansion. EU plans for wider and deeper integration and expansion to the east and south are further reasons for exiting. The EU's ambitions in each of these areas are unrealistic and extremely dangerous, and are already causing tensions which are likely to lead to some level of EU disintegration whether the UK stays or leaves.
EU refusal to change. The EU will not countenance meaningful reform. Even David Cameron's trivial attempts at reform were resisted and EU leaders have made very clear that basic principles are non-negotiable. It is possible that the impact of a “leave” vote on other restless EU member states might make the EU hierarchy more willing to listen, opening the possibility of real discussions and perhaps even renewed UK participation in a reconstituted European entity.
On balance...
In some areas the EU is valuable – for example, as a haphazard protector of employee and consumer rights; in others it is dysfunctional, wasteful and potentially dangerous. A vote to stay would be to endorse the current sorry state of affairs – and the repercussions of that are frightening: the UK will be walked all over. As in most relationships, by the time the “stay or leave” question is asked, the only sensible answer is “go”.
While I find some of the reasons given by “Brexiteers” for leaving the EU (avoiding EU employment regulation, for example) to be odious, and while most “Remain” campaigners merely peddle hypothetical scare stories about the effects on business – as if nothing else mattered – I have to conclude that a vote to stay in the EU is marginally worse than a vote to leave. I shall therefore be voting Leave on June 23.
2014
April 21 2014. In the few weeks since retiring I have visited Copenhagen in Denmark and A Coruna in northern Spain; rearranged our cupboards at home to create a working environment for me, should I decide to work; sold my first items on eBay; begun sessions with a.personal trainer; been to the golf driving range and Hampton Pool for swimming; attended several functions, including interviewing Lord Chris Smith at an "audience with" event; have re-started the process of transferring my vinyl records into digital format; played tennis; and held several meetings. And much more besides.
March 1 2014. This is the day I retired from the Financial Times, after almost 27 years in various roles at the newspaper. I began on June 1 1987, when it was very much a newspaper. By the time I left, it had grown into a multi-channel, multi-media company. I was only 55 when I quit - but believing that quitting while you're ahead and not doing anything purely for money are two good principles, I decided I could just about afford to take early retirement and really couldn't afford to stay.