Week 31 2012

Tendring Topics.....on Line

The Mote in your neighbour’s eye…….

 A month or so ago, when the back-boiler in my kitchen that serves my hot water supply and central heating systems had its annual service, I had quite a shock.  I was told by the heating engineer that it had sprung a leak and needed to be replaced urgently.  My dismay was compounded by the fact that its manufacturer no longer makes back-boilers.   I would need to have a new modern boiler installed in quite a different position!

This, I thought, is going to be an expensive job – and so it proved to be.  It took two heating engineers two full days to remove the old boiler and complete the installation of the new one (and they really did give me two days service – taking only half an hour or so for lunch, and drinking while working the mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee that I made them)  In addition, another operative was called in to arrange the new boiler’s ventilation by means of a pipe and fitting taken through the roof, and there were several hours work by an electrician who provided and tested the boiler’s electronic controls.  Then of course there was the cost of the boiler itself!

Yes, it was expensive.  Fortunately though I have an emergency fund saved for just such a crisis (though I wouldn’t want too many of them!) and I wrote out my cheque in payment without resentment at the cost of the work.  I had no doubt that I had received value for money.  Furthermore, the efficiency of the new boiler would complement my solar water heating system to reduce my energy bills still further.

What I did resent though was the £500 VAT charge that the Heating Engineering firm had to add to my bill and hand over to the government.   I never complain about my regular income tax payments because I appreciate the public services (depleted though they are nowadays!) that I receive for them, and because I realize that I am fortunate in having an income large enough to be liable for income tax.  I do object though to having to pay a considerable sum to the government for the privilege of carrying out the essential maintenance of my own home!    

I remember Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher explaining unctuously that the great thing about VAT (unlike income tax!) was that you could choose not to pay it.  That may well be the case for those considering the purchase of diamond ear-rings or designer ball-gowns, or having a new garage built to accommodate the second car.  There’s precious little choice though about mending a leaky roof, keeping a car that you need for work, on the road or – in my case – replacing a leaking boiler!

My resentment at VAT payments was reignited last week when Treasury Minister David Gauke complained about the way in which, so he claimed, tax liability was being regularly avoided by the payment  of small bills in cash. He claimed that jobbing builders, gardeners, domestic cleaners, window cleaners and the like would offer substantial discounts for cash in hand to avoid paying tax.  The resulting loss to the Treasury was comparable with the loss resulting from the tax avoidance by the wealthy that had recently been publicised.

Much of the news media seems to have assumed that David Gauke was referring to avoidance of VAT.  I find that difficult to believe.  Surely he must be aware that only quite large firms are required to be registered for VAT (the proprietor of the garage where I used to have my car serviced took some pride in the fact that he managed to keep his turnover below the level of liability) and I can’t believe that many, if any, jobbing gardeners, odd-job-men, window clearers and general cleaners need to be VAT registered.

What probably does happen is that these small self-employed entrepreneurs pocket unrecorded the fruits of their labours and neglect to declare them to the Inland Revenue. Probably quite a few of them would remain below the level of liability for income tax anyway! I’d be very surprised if many formally offer a discount for cash.  They simply agree to do a job at a lower rate than they would were they expecting part of their earnings to be skimmed off by the government.  They work on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and some of them may not even have a bank account. 

It isn’t all that long ago that all transactions of ‘working class’ people were carried out in cash or with postal orders.  As a lower ranking local government officer I was paid in cash (and paid all my bills in cash) until I came to Clacton in 1956 and opened an account with the Co-op Bank. 

It is probable that the government does lose a small amount of revenue through the unrecorded cash receipts of some of these self-employed workers.    I am quite sure though that it bears no comparison whatsoever with the tax avoidance of the super-wealthy and of Britain’s and the world’s giant corporations, though Mr Gauke and his well-heeled friends and colleagues may prefer to think otherwise.

I suggest that they take the advice in Chapter 7 of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which can be loosely paraphrased as,  ‘Don’t worry too much about the speck of dust in your neighbour’s eye until you have got rid of that enormous log obscuring your own vision!’

A Prophetic Email

The news that Britain had slipped even further into recession than had been forecast  (due, according to our Chancellor, to the weather, and to our all having taken our eyes off the ball, our shoulders away from the wheel and our noses from the grindstone for a whole working day to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee!), and David Cameron’s subsequent public affirmation that the government would not change its economic policy, reminded me of a prophetic email that I had received from a regular blog reader a month or so earlier.

I really feel that George Osborne’s and David Cameron’s financial strategy is now in ribbons, don’t you? The country’s debt burden is growing as tax receipts go down and benefit payments rise.  The Governor of the Bank of England seems to be convinced that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, so that’s it – the economy just carries on shrinking.  The really pathetic thing is that these two failed leaders have only one response to everything, which is to do more of the same; carry on with policies that have been shown to be counter productive.

The Bank of England is considering cutting interest rates further (to zero?)  This is like driving a car with one’s foot flat on the accelerator, and trying to push it through the floor to get some more power!  As for George Osborne; he’ll need to make more cuts to benefits and public services to pay for the cost of the cuts that he has already made!  Meanwhile David Cameron, the front man, will run a diversionary campaign, whipping up suspicion and hatred against groups of claimants, the old, the disabled, the unemployed, against public sector workers (despite the fact that they have cleared up the muddle in which the private sector had left security at the Olympics) and against our European neighbours and partners.

Cameron was right in one respect – about the problem of a ‘benefit culture’. .It takes some of the sting out of poverty and unemployment.  If the victims of the government’s policies were actually starving and their families were actually out on the streets, I have little doubt that we would see demos and riots that would make those in Egypt and Greece seem like Sunday-school picnics!  As it is I suspect that most of those affected didn’t even bother to vote in the last election, and probably won’t bother to vote in the next one either!

‘Which came first - The chicken or the egg?’

This ancient conundrum comes to my mind when I think of the government’s ineffectual efforts to solve our national economic problems.  To deal with youth unemployment they make every effort to make unemployed young people employable by learning new skills; and to find employment by learning how best to apply for a job and to behave at a job interview.  These skills are not much use while there is little demand for either new or old skills, and a score of applicants for every job that is available.

One reason for the shortage of jobs is that the banks, despite all the financial support they have been given are reluctant to lend money to entrepreneurs who would like to set up a new business or expand an existing one. The banks’ reluctance to lend is because they are by no means certain that the new or expanded businesses would attract enough customers to service and ultimately repay the loans.

The remedy is to make sure that the potential customers, the general public, have enough money for them to buy the services or manufactured products that those new or expanded enterprises would offer.  But the government’s austerity programme, coupled with a taxation system (VAT and customs duty increases and reduction of the highest rate of income tax) that penalises ‘ordinary’ people at the expense of the super-wealthy, has precisely the opposite effect.

Another blog reader (I really do read and appreciate readers' comments!) reminds me of my pie-in-the-sky dream of a UK government funded largely by a compulsory annual ‘citizenship membership subscription’ consisting of 20 percent of the gross annual income of every adult citizen from the very poorest to the most wealthy.  This could, at a stroke, be a means of redistributing our national income without impoverishing anybody, and would put money into the pockets of those who would spend it to revive our moribund economy.

One day that pie-in-the-sky may be seen as the only diet capable of restoring our nation to health.  The chances of my seeing that day dawn are pretty slim - but there's no harm in hoping!

Lord of the ‘Olympic’ Rings!

That, I think, certainly describes Danny Boyle, creator and director of the wonderful Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.  It was watched and appreciated world-wide.  Here is an email that I received early on the morning of Saturday 28^th July from a friend in Zittau, in what is to us the most remote part of Germany.

Dear Ernest,

Did you watch TV yesterday evening? Julia and I watched the opening performance of the Olympic Games in London. It was marvellous - congratulation!

Yours Volker and Julia

            My friend is a Cultural Senator of the Federal State of Saxony and is a Ph.D. whose specialism is European history.   His praise for what was a graphic portrayal of the transformation of the verdant England of tiny villages, green fields and rural pursuits of the 17^th and 18^th centuries to the chaotic and ugly (but productive) ‘dark satanic mills’ of the industrial revolution of the 19^th and 20^th  therefore carries some weight!  I thought that the idea of the symbolic forging of the Olympic rings as one of the positive results of that revolution was especially brilliant.  

So too, was the idea of visiting Buckingham Palace and involving the Queen (and her corgis!) at the very beginning of the celebration.  James Bond was, I suppose, an appropriate escort though he isn’t one of my favourite fictional characters. I’d have preferred Brother Cadfael or the first Chief Inspector Barnaby, and think that the Queen would have found either of them a more congenial temporary companion. The helicopter ride and parachute drop would surely have tested Brother Cadfael’s faith to the utmost, though to Inspector Barnaby it would no doubt have been just another of those last-minute calls of duty that constantly prevent him from spending a quiet evening at home with his family.

Other highlights of the evening for me were the splendid celebration of the NHS, one of the achievements of the immediate post-war years that hasn’t – yet – been totally destroyed by the forces of Mammon, and that wonderful soprano solo voice singing Blake’s Jerusalem.  At first I feared that we were to hear only the first verse of that magnificent poem but later – at an appropriate moment – we had the other verse:

Bring me my bow of burning gold.

Bring me my arrows of desire.

Bring me my sword, O clouds unfold,

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I shall not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till I have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

It is a wake-up call that the disheartened, disillusioned and dispirited Britain of today badly needs.

  

  

Week 7 2012 16.2.2012

Tendring Topics....on Line

The Thirteenth of February

           Tuesday of this week (13^th February) was the 67^th anniversary of an event has played a major role in moulding the political and ethical attitudes that motivate me in the weekly production of Tendring Topics….on line.

  Regular readers of this blog will know that I spent the final eighteen months of World War II at a working ‘camp’ of thirty ‘other rank’ British POWs in the small East German town of Zittau, at the point where the frontiers of Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland now coincide.  By February 1945 no-one in Zittau, not ourselves, not our guards, not the conscripted foreign civilian workers, nor the German civilians with whom we were in daily contact, had any doubt that Germany had been defeated and that the war would be over within weeks.  The failure of the Christmas offensive (‘the Battle of the Bulge’) in the Ardennes had ended any hope of a German victory or of a face-saving negotiated peace.  The RAF and American Air Forces ruled in the skies, the news from the Western Front was uniformly bad and in Zittau the sound of gunfire from the east had grown from a distant murmur to an ever-deepening roar as the Soviet Army advanced inexorably through Poland into Germany itself.

Throughout that bitter winter the flow of refugees westward through Zittau  grew from a trickle to a steady stream.   There were old men (the young and middle-aged ones had long since been called up), women and little children.   There were British and allied prisoners of war, still under guard, and conscripted foreign workers mainly from Russia and the Ukraine.  There were defeated units of Germany’s allies – Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, renegade Cossacks.  Some were in ancient lorries fuelled by Holzgas  (a flammable gas produced from smouldering wood chips). Some had wagons drawn by oxen.  All the fit horses had been commandeered by the Wehrmacht.  Many trudged through the snow with all their worldly goods piled onto small handcarts. As the thunder of battle drew closer, folk from Zittau joined them.

A fellow-prisoner and I, with our German guard, returned to Kurt Kramer’s wholesale grocer’s premises in Zittau’s Neustadt Square, from delivering  groceries to local retailers, to find that a young woman refugee from Silesia had climbed to Kramer’s top storey and, in despair, thrown herself to her death on the  cobbles of their yard.

The refugees were heading for Dresden, sixty or seventy miles west of Zittau, where they would be sorted out and distributed to the rapidly diminishing areas of Germany that were still relatively safe.  As the second week of February drew to its end, Dresden was packed with them.

Dresden's Lutheran 'Cathedral'. Almost totally destroyed in the bombing raids of February 1945 but now lovingly restored to its former glory.

It was then that the Western Allies struck. On the night of the 13^th February wave after wave of RAF bombers rained fire and destruction on the capital of Saxony, a beautiful historic city crammed with refugees.  Thousands of incendiary bombs created devastating firestorms from which there was no escape. Zittau’s inhabitants saw the westward sky blood-red from the inferno.  With dawn the RAF withdrew and bombers of the US Air Force took their place. Estimates of the dead range from a conservative 30,000 to as many as 100,000.  Among them must have been many of Britain's and America's allies.

I have heard all the explanations and all the excuses.  I remain convinced though that those raids, slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians at a time when the war was all but over, was a war crime and a crime against humanity.  It was not, of course, on the same scale as the Holocaust or other crimes committed by Nazi Germany – but would we really wish to make such a comparison our excuse?

My memory of the cruel slaughter of the innocents in Dresden changed my whole outlook on life and was a major factor in the decision of my wife and I in 1948 to turn our backs on violence, whatever the provocation, and to join the peaceful Quakers.  

‘Full of sound and fury!’*

            ‘Fury’ is a word much overused in the press.  There is ‘fury in the city’ over the suggestion that heads of huge business corporations might be overpaid, ‘fury’ in the House of Commons at the obstinate refusal of the Bishops in the House of Lords to rubber-stamp their plans to penalise the poor, ‘fury’ almost every day in the Daily Mail about ‘benefit scroungers’ being subsidised by hard working Daily Mail readers.

  I try not to get furious too often.  I am sure that at my age it is bad for me. Just occasionally though I read in the press, or hear on radio or tv something that brings me very close to it!  Such a moment occurred this morning (10^th Feb.), making me choke over my boiled egg and toast as I watched a review of the daily press on the BBC’s tv Breakfast programme. A newspaper sympathetic to the government carried a headline telling us that one of David Cameron’s closest advisors (that usually indicates that the government is giving some thought to the matter) suggests that old people should carry on working longer and should downsize their homes. 

Why on earth, the advisor no doubt thinks, should an ancient widower like Ernest Hall, who is no longer a viable ‘human resource unit’ and whose children have long since left home, continue to live in comfort in a three bedroomed bungalow?  ‘A one-bedroomed flat would be ample and much more appropriate for his needs. At ninety he’s probably too old for most paid work but possibly he could take up some profit-making hobby, knitting or basket-making perhaps, that could help to prevent his being quite such a burden on the state’.

              What is the point of urging old people, well past their prime, to carry on working when there are tens of thousands of young, fit and active people looking in vain for jobs?  The government (well, I suppose that one can’t expect too much from a group that probably holds the biggest concentration of millionaires in the UK!) seems to persist in the delusion that unemployment is mostly, if not entirely, the fault of the unemployed.  Government efforts to reduce unemployment concentrate on making young people ‘employable’ – how to prepare a CV, how to write a winning job application, how to prepare and conduct themselves during an interview!  All that would be fine if there were jobs for which people could apply and be interviewed but, thanks largely to the government’s own policies, there aren’t. Perhaps we’ll finish up with having the best-qualified army of unemployed in Europe!

We learn that only one in five of ‘graduates’ from the government’s much-vaunted training schemes obtains a job within a year. That is about right, bearing in mind that nationwide there are at least half a dozen applicants for every job vacancy! 

           

As for the accommodation down-sizing - when the palaces, stately homes, desirable residences and second (and third) homes of the wealthy have been occupied to capacity by the homeless, I’ll think about the future of the modest bungalow that my wife and I bought with our blood, sweat, toil and tears in the 1950s,  '60s and '70s; the home in which, five and a half years ago, my wife’s life came to an end, and in which I hope  mine will come to an end too too!  I don’t think I’ll need to be consulting an estate agent just yet!

            Yes – it does make me furious to think that instead of the better, fairer and more peaceful future for which my generation thought we were fighting in World War II we find ourselves in a grubby and materialistic world of sleaze and corruption, of bankers bonuses and of a press controlled by non-tax-paying cosmopolitan billionaires owing loyalty to no-one but themselves; a world of wealth and privilege for a small minority and homelessness, hopelessness, poverty and enforced idleness for the many.

            I can only hope and pray that this triumph of Mammon is temporary and that goodness, justice and peace will ultimately triumph – though I no longer have any hope of seeing even the beginning of the beginning of that victory.

*From Macbeth again and perhaps particularly appropriate to politics today ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound  and fury, signifying nothing’

Toward a Godless Britain?

          It seems likely that the prohibition resulting from a court case, of official prayers at the beginning of local Council Meetings will be short-lived.  Providentially, the Government’s shortly to be enacted Localism Bill will restore the right of local authorities to begin, as Parliament does, with a short period of prayer if their members wish it.

            What disturbs me about this matter is the implication of the National Secular Society, which I haven’t heard effectively refuted, that religion is a private matter having nothing to do with local or national politics, that should be practised only by consenting adults in a church or other special building intended for that purpose.  As a committed Quaker and a communicant member of the Church of England, I believe the exact opposite to be true.  Our religion should inform and guide our every thought and action.

            George Bernard Shaw, no great lover of the Church, said that our faith does not consist of the things that we think we believe, but of the assumptions on which we habitually act.   Jesus said that those who heard his words and acted upon them were like the man who built his house upon a firm foundation. We may indeed hear the word of God in Church, Meeting House, Mosque, Temple or Synagogue but we act in our daily lives. St. Theresa pointed out that, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his work, no feet but ours to run his errands’.

Certainly, before beginning their Council business, Christian councillors should pray that they may be guided to speak and vote in accordance with God’s will.  As an Anglican I am happy for that prayer to be formal and vocal. As a Quaker I’d be equally happy for there to be a few minutes silence at the beginning of each council meeting to be used for silent prayer by those who wish to do so.  Even committed atheists might find a few minutes of quiet reflection helpful before the business of the meeting begins.

            The National Secular Society has the impertinence to consider that it speaks for the majority of Britons.  I am quite sure that it does nothing of the sort.  It will surprise me if the recent census doesn’t reveal that in the UK a comfortable majority of the adult population do have a religious faith and that the Christian faith is the one with the greatest number of adherents.  I am personally acquainted with dozens of committed Christians – Anglicans, Quakers, Roman Catholics, Methodists and United Reformed Churchmen.   I don’t know a single member of the National Secular Society.  Do you?

             I know, none better, that Christians have done some appalling things to each other and to other people in times past.  But I also know that it has been Christians ‘dabbling in politics’ who have pioneered every worthwhile reform that has taken place in this country during the past fifteen hundred years*.  Christians, from King Alfred the Great onwards, have pioneered education for the masses, have cared for the poor and provided shelter for the homeless.  It was a Christian priest, John Ball of Colchester, who preached that When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ He went on to become a leader of the medieval peasants’ revolt, and paid for his egalitarianism with his life.   Christians led the campaigns against the slave trade and against the exploitation of men, women and children in the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of England’s industrial revolution.  Christians pioneered prison reform and the provision of social housing and medical care for all.  Christian Bishops in the House of Lords today, lead the opposition to the penalisation of the poor and disadvantaged to help solve national financial problems created by wealthy, but greedy and incompetent, bankers.  Christian charities such as Christian Aid, Cafod and Quaker Peace and Service help people of every race, creed and colour world-wide.  

            Yet the National Secular Society would like to see Christian – and no doubt every other form of worship – confined to special buildings serving dwindling congregations and having no connection with their ‘real’ world!   We must not let them succeed.

*  It could be argued that Christian concern about material matters has a much earlier beginning. The triumphal prayer of Mary, when she knew she was to be the mother of Jesus, contains a note of distinctly radical and very practical politics: ‘He hath showed strength with his arm.  He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away’.  Isn't that just what is needed today?

            

Week 45 2011 15.11.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions!’

A well-meaning piece of advice given on the BBC tv’s breakfast programme this (7th November) morning threatens to upset the equilibrium of scores of  old people this Christmas and lead to many doctors’ phone-lines being jammed by anxious well-meaning callers in the New Year.

It seems that the early symptoms of dementia in the elderly are being missed and a great many of them are failing to get treatment and support that could help them endure their affliction and slow down (but not halt or reverse!) its progress. It was suggested that those who are seeing an elderly friend or relative this Christmas should look out for these symptoms and get in touch with his or her doctor to let them know.

The symptoms to look for are loss of short-term memory, anxiety, occasional confusion, and personality changes. It is, so we were told, all too easy to put these symptoms down to ‘old age’ when there may well be a more sinister reason. Well, I suppose that there could be, but I reckon that old age does have similar indications of its own for which there may be no other cause

None of us lasts for ever. Our bodies and our brains experience wear and tear as we get older. The results of this show themselves as ‘symptoms’ of what I believe is probably a natural progression for which the only remedy is to die young! There are, of course, lots of things that – with the help of medical science and possibly social services – enable us to make the best of it.

I no longer describe myself ageing or elderly. I am unequivocally old. No other member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90. I am in a position to confirm that old age is not ‘all beer and skittles. I am glad to say though that it isn’t either– at least isn’t yet – the extreme old age referred to by Shakespeare as ‘Last age of all is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’*. Mind you, without modern dentures, two cataract operations and two pairs of spectacles, hearing aids, on line access to my friends and relatives, and an electric mobility scooter to give me independent mobility, my condition might be approaching that. Much as we oldies sometimes complain about aspects of life in the 21st century, there’s no doubt that modern technology has made old age and disability a great deal more tolerable!

Yes – I do have an increasingly failing short-term memory (though I can remember, word for word, poems and short pieces of prose learned long ago!). I am absent minded, and any deviation from normality does make me anxious. I don’t think that my personality has changed much but perhaps I am not the best person to judge that!

I shall be visiting friends and relatives over Christmas. I know them all well enough to be confident that no one will be writing in a little note-book that ‘the poor old chap was anxious about leaving his bungalow empty for a couple of days’ and ‘He forgot to bring his reading glasses, fell asleep in his chair after Christmas Dinner and told us a story that I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times before’, all ready to be reported to my doctor in the New Year!

*From Jacques’ ‘all the world’s a stage…..’ speech in ‘As you like it’.

Age and Income Inequality

The fact that we are all living longer and those lucky enough to have a job are expected to work longer, has given extra urgency to the world wide demand for a more equal distribution of the world’s wealth.

A recent article in the Financial Times comments on a report by Sir Michael Marmot, professor of University College, London and former Chairman of the British Medical Association. Sir Michael forecasts that due to the inequality of health standards between rich and poor, two thirds of today’s population will not reach the new retirement age of 68 without chronic and debilitating illness. His report, based on the 2001 census reveals that the average difference in ‘disability-free life expectancy’ between people living in rich areas and those in poor areas is 17 years!

A blog reader points out that throughout Europe and North America we don’t have enough jobs for young people. We in the UK have 20 percent youth unemployment while in Spain no less than half of its young people are unemployed. Meanwhile the compulsory retirement age in Britain is being raised from 65 to 68 and old people are expected to work longer.

The reader asks, ‘How can it possibly be better for our economy to leave the strongest, fittest, child-rearing generation out of work while older people, many of whom are overweight, arthritic and suffering from mental exhaustion, are forced to carry on working?’ It is true that I was working – and earning – till I reached my eighties, but it was at freelance writing that I enjoyed, and from which I could take a break whenever I chose.

Have we already forgotten that a very high proportion of the rioters and arsonists of last August were unemployed young people. Satan will find mischief still for idle hands to do!

Signs of the times

There have been three items of news during the past few weeks that I have found profoundly depressing. They seem to me to exemplify everything that is wrong with Britain today. The first was the news that in a time of cuts in public services mainly affecting the poor, growing unemployment in both the public and private sectors and frozen or reduced salaries or wages for most people, the directors and chief executives of Britain’s most profitable enterprises have been awarding themselves salary increases of up to 50% - and 50% of a salary already nudging a million a year is a very large sum indeed!

I don’t know how they have the gall to accept it – but they have. I heard one of them interviewed on tv say that if an attempt were to be made to limit the salaries of top earners, they would all disappear to the USA or Asia. I’d say ‘Let them go – and the sooner the better!’ If, to stay afloat, Britain needs the support of those who have no interest in life beyond making money – then Britain deserves to sink.

Those who make such threats will be among the first to accuse public servants of holding the country to ransom when, very shortly, they go on strike because their jobs are imperil, their wages have been frozen, their savings are diminishing as inflation outstrips interest on savings accounts, and they are going to have to wait longer and pay more for their – in most cases – very modest pensions.

Then there were the pictures of long queues waiting up for hours to be the first to buy the very latest, most realistic and most violent and bloody video game on the market coupled with the news that creating the make-believe world of video games is one of Britain’s most successful industries. And to think that the writers of popular fiction used to be accused of encouraging ‘escapism’!

And the last item! It occurred on a day when the financial foundations of the world were shaking; on which we learned that an unknown number of terrorists may have entered the country because the Home Secretary had lost control of part of her Whitehall ‘empire’, and on which there appeared to be a real risk of the UK being dragged by its ‘special relationship’ into yet another Middle East conflict, this time against Iran. Not one of these matters was the lead story of BBC Breakfast, the first BBC News Bulletin of the day. Oh no – the first story was breathtaking news about who had actually administered the final lethal dose of a drug to an American Pop Star with a questionable life style who was already drugged up to the eyeballs. I had felt just a tiny amount of sympathy for the doctor who, it appears, was responsible – until I learned that he had been receiving a salary of 95,000 dollars a month as the pop-star’s medical attendant. That was in a country where, despite the efforts of its present President, millions live in poverty and thousands of the poor can afford no medical care of any kind!

A Damascene Moment!

This afternoon, as I was preparing a packet to send to send off to Germany by post, I had a vision of the future. Quite suddenly, I realized what global capitalism was all about, what was meant by preparing Britain to compete in a global market place – and the inevitable result of trying to do so.

My little ‘honorary’ German niece Maja had recently celebrated her fifth birthday. One of my British real nieces had thought that she would like to give the child a belated birthday present. She gave me a charming child’s shoulder and hand bag to send to her. I duly bought an appropriately sized padded envelope/bag at the Post Office and, with the help of Google Translate, wrote a suitable message in German to enclose with the present. I addressed it and took it to the Post Office for despatch.

It was as I sealed up the envelope that I had my epiphany (sorry about my Biblical vocabulary. It seems to go naturally with the nature of my vision). There was the envelope, bulging with its contents, with Royal Mail stamped proudly upon it, together with Maja’s address, an airmail label and – in small print in the corner - Made in China!

All became clear. Of course there are firms in Britain that could have manufactured and supplied comparable, perhaps better, padded envelopes. However, free competition and the global market insisted that even such a very British institution as the Royal Mail has to accept the lowest tender. A firm in China could manufacture them and transport them halfway round the world, just a little cheaper than any manufacturer in Britain, or in Europe, could manage to make them.

How then must Britain, or indeed any other European country, prepare itself to compete in the wonderful new Global Market, so beloved by both the Conservatives and New Labour? The only way that I can see is by reducing British wages to below the level of those of the factory workers of China and India, and increasing their hours of work, cutting public services, social housing and public transport to the level in those countries and by regarding the poor, the disabled and the homeless with the indifference that many in those countries regard them. ‘They’ve got families to support them haven’t they? Everybody knows that the poor breed like rabbits!’

Who knows, if we do it thoroughly enough we may one day be able to turn England’s green and pleasant land into a brave new world capable of obtaining contracts with the Chinese Mail Service to supply them with padded postal packets! Even then, of course, there’s still the chance that some country in Africa or South America will manage to undercut all of us.

It makes me wish that I were young enough and fit enough to join the protesters at St. Paul’s Cathedral!