Week 49 2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

Be careful what you wish for!

          Do you remember how recently it was that we were all worried about Britain’s devastating drought?   Not much more than six months ago we were warned about the dreadful effects of a drier than usual autumn and winter.   It would, we were told, take weeks of steady rain to replenish reservoirs, fill rivers and bring underground water supplies to their normal levels. Quite early in the spring the use of hose-pipes for watering domestic gardens or washing the family car was banned in a great many areas.   We all yearned for soft refreshing rain.  In churches and places of worship throughout the UK rain was the object of many a heartfelt prayer.

            Oh dear!  What happened was like one of those fairy stories in which a wish is granted by an apparently benevolent witch.   The wish is fulfilled but with consequences that had not been foreseen.

            We had our rain, buckets of it, throughout a thoroughly wet summer.  Rivers filled and overflowed. Homes were flooded. For a brief period in some areas there were simultaneously hose pipe bans and floods!  Soon though the Water Authorities realized that they had, in a few weeks, received several normal months’ worth of rain.  Hose pipe bans were lifted and the faithful began to pray for a dry and sunny late-summer and autumn so that, at Harvest Thanksgiving services they could sing confidently, ‘All is safely gathered in, ‘ere the winter storms begin!’

But in many parts of the UK all was not safely gathered in, or at least harvest time had not brought the abundant crops for which farmers and gardeners had hoped. Autumn brought more heavy rain and now – at the beginning of winter – we have been having yet more.  Once again there have been flooded homes in the West Country, in Yorkshire and in the North-East. Some unfortunates have had their homes flooded three times in as many months.  This south-eastern corner of East Anglia, although having much more rain than usual, has escaped the floods.  Our Essex Sunshine Coast really is a good place to live!

New Year’s Day 1979. My motor caravan outside my bungalow in Dudley Road, Clacton. I hope that we don’t get a repeat of the weather!

What next?  As I type these words the sky has cleared but the temperature has dropped several degrees and the immediate weather forecast is ‘dry - but much colder!’   Oh dear, I do hope we don’t get standing snow.  It is the one circumstance guaranteed to keep my mobility scooter in its shed (or, as I prefer to put it, my ‘iron horse in its stable’!) and leave me house-bound!

I have distrusted forecasts of any kind on the front page of the Daily Express ever since in 1938 and early 1939 when their headline assured us that ‘There will be no war this year, nor next year either!’  In 2011 they kept up the tradition by forecasting icy weather just before that Indian Summer in October.  I have an uncomfortable feeling though that this year, as they forecast a bitterly cold and ice-bound winter – they may be right!

The Government - and the Press

I sometimes think that politicians must be made of sterner stuff than the rest of us.  During the past year we have seen disastrous failures in Government functions that, had I been the senior politician responsible for the department concerned, I would have felt demanded my immediate resignation.  However, the politicians concerned have simply shrugged their shoulders, blamed the disaster on the civil servants involved, assured the public that ‘lessons have been learned’ and carried on as though nothing had happened.

Reaction to the phone hacking and corruption scandal that has engulfed the press, the police and the politicians during the past year has been somewhat similar. All the press have been tainted but at the centre of the scandal was News International, a news media empire ruled by Rupert Murdoch, Australian by birth and a citizen of the USA by adoption.   Successive British Prime Ministers have courted his favour and that of his lieutenants in the hope of ensuring favourable headlines in the Sun, the News of the World and other publications under his control.   This hope was not unjustified.  ‘It was us wot done it!’ boasted the Sun after one of Mrs Thatcher’s electoral victories.

I have long believed that New Labour with its rejection of democratic socialism and traditional Labour Values and, in government, its willing acceptance of the leadership of the most right-wing American President of the last century, was created for no other reason than to persuade Rupert Murdoch to switch his media Empire’s political allegiance from the Conservative to the Labour Party and thus  make Tony Blair’s emasculated party ‘electable’.

David Cameron followed in Tony Blair’s footsteps, appointing Andy Coulson, one of Rupert Murdoch’s former lieutenants as his personal spin-doctor and becoming a close friend of News International’s Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks. Both these former employees of News International now face criminal charges in connection with alleged phone hacking and other scandals related to press abuse of its powers.

The Leveson enquiry investigated objectively and comprehensively the whole range of Press Activities, interviewing Rupert Murdoch and his senior lieutenants and former lieutenants,  Prime Minister David Cameron, Tony Blair and a great many others. David Cameron told victims of the phone hacking and other abuses of press freedom, that he would accept the verdict of the Leveson Enquiry in full, ‘unless it was completely bonkers’. As part of the verdict would inevitably criticise the Prime Minister himself for the closeness of his relationship with members of the News International organisation, I would have thought that his best course of action would have been to accept Lord Leveson’s verdict and recommendations in full, hurry through any legislation that might be necessary to implement those recommendations, and hope that the electorate would soon forget the whole sorry affair.

But that isn’t going to happen.  David Cameron has evidently forgotten his pledge to News International’s victims. While accepting Lord Leveson’s insistence on the need to have a strong and wholly independent (both of politicians and of those involved in the press) body to regulate press behaviour, he is strongly opposed to that body having the statutory underpinning needed to enforce its decisions.

The reason for this, so it is said, is to protect the freedom of the press – a future government might use any such legislation as a springboard to curb press freedom.  What total rubbish!   Does Mr Cameron really imagine that a government of the future determined to muzzle the press would give two hoots about decisions that might have been made a decade or so earlier?  Can you imagine Hitler, in 1936, having the least interest in whatever a democratic German government had decided in the 1920s?    In any case, how ‘free’ is a press where editorial policy and political direction of a large part of it are dictated by a cosmopolitan multi-millionaire with no roots here and owing no loyalty to this country, its culture and its institutions?

Until we give more thought to the ownership of the press we should worry less about having a government-controlled press and worry rather more about having a press-controlled government constantly ‘adjusting’ its policies in the hope of gaining a few more votes at by-elections as a result of positive headlines in the tabloids and the support of the press moguls!

Robin Hoods – in reverse

There is no field in which the members of the government have revealed what are, I fear, their true colours than that of housing.  It is there that their Robin Hood in Reverse policy of robbing the poor to benefit the rich is most clearly exposed.

In order to level off to some extent the difference between the proportion of their incomes that poor and very wealthy people pay in taxation, it has been suggested that there should be extra higher bands of Council Tax liability and/or an extra ‘mansion tax’ paid by those whose homes are valued at over £2 million.

Both ideas have been vetoed by David Cameron.  He really doesn’t think that those who have worked hard and saved all their lives for their homes, should be penalised for doing so. How many people who live in homes worth over £2 million acquired them by working and saving hard all through their lives?   You’d need to enjoy a salary of £50,000 every year for 40 years to earn £2 million, never mind save it!

When considering housing at the other end of the social scale, government attitudes are very different.  Council tenants, and tenants in receipt of Housing Benefit, are to be charged a ‘bedroom tax’ for every empty bedroom. No, they are not allowed to have a spare bedroom for occasional visitors. Those financially squeezed Daily Mail readers can’t be expected to subsidise the hospitality of ‘benefit scroungers’.

Never mind the fact that some of those tenants will be old people who have paid taxes all their working lives and are struggling to live on the state pension plus any benefits to which they may be entitled.   Others will be employed, but on or near the minimum wage.  They need the housing benefit, not for themselves, but to add to the wealth of rapacious landlords.  Nobody, says the government, will have to pay the bedroom tax.  There is the choice of moving into smaller accommodation (if they can find any) or taking in a lodger.

            A listener to the BBC’s Breakfast Programme, when hearing about the proposed ‘Bedroom Tax’, enquired how many spare bedrooms there might be at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country home, which is also publicly owned.

Week 25 2012 21.6.2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

 'Just good Friends!'

The Leveson enquiry rumbles on.   On Tuesday evening (12^th June), as I write this, we have just heard the report of Sir John Major’s appearance at the enquiry.  His evidence had the ring of truth and sincerity about it.  He recorded relevant events (and the result of offending the ruler of the Murdoch Empire) as he recalled them, without hesitation or prevarication.  He told us that for days after incurring the Murdoch displeasure, he had read in the press every day, things that he had not done and things that he had never said

            Let me now write a word or two in defence of Rupert Murdoch!   His statement, under oath, that he had never asked any Prime Minister to do anything, is said to have been contradicted by Sir John’s statement that he had wanted the government to change its policy toward Europe.  The two statements are surely not contradictory.  Mr Murdoch didn’t ask the Prime Minister to change his attitude towards Europe – he simply told him that unless the government changed its policy, the newspapers under his control would switch their support from his party to their opponents. The government didn’t change its policy – and the support of the Murdoch press did change from Conservative to New Labour.  Mr Murdoch keeps his promises. 

            No-one seems to have commented on the impertinence of a foreign media tycoon attempting to persuade a British Prime Minister to change British foreign policy. Imagine the outrage there would have been in Mr Murdoch’s flagship newspaper the Sun if such an attempt had been made by a Russian oligarch or an oil-rich Middle Eastern Sheikh rather than an American multimillionaire! 

            Everybody concerned goes to great lengths to deny that there had been any sort of conspiracy or agreement to grant favours to the Murdoch Empire in exchange for press support.  I don’t suppose for a moment that there has been.  All that happened was that Rupert Murdoch, his family and his senior managers went out of their way to make friends with our Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and other leading members of the government.  It helped, of course, that Mrs Rebekah Brooks News Corporation’s Chief Executive and her husband, were actually neighbours of the Prime Minister.  He and his wife, together with other top politicians, were invited to a Christmas Party and to other social events. The Prime Minister was encouraged to practise his equestrian skills on Mrs Brooks’ horse – which turned out to be ‘on loan’ from the Metropolitan Police!  The Prime Minister and members of the Murdoch inner circle became good friends. That was all there was to it.  But, of course, one of the characteristics of good friends is the way in which (without having to be asked) they help each other in every way that they can. I don't imagine that media millionaires and top politicians have much difficulty in finding ways of demonstrating their loyal friendship.   ‘If you sup with the devil you need a long spoon’, says the proverb.  At neither 10, nor 11 Downing Street, nor at Chequers were any of the spoons nearly long enough!

14.6.12  The evidence given today by David Cameron to the Leveson Enquiry confirms the accuracy of my conjectures above – except that the friendship between the PM and Mrs Brooks was rather closer than I had imagined.

 What goes around, comes around

          It isn’t very often that I find myself in complete agreement with a pronouncement of a member of the government.   Whether, had I been a teacher and facing yet another change of official policy, I’d have felt exactly the same is doubtful.  However, as I am just a more-or-less disinterested by-stander I warm to the idea that children in primary schools should be taught more things ‘by rote’ and that teachers should pay more attention to grammar and spelling.  That’s how it was done in my day!

A class of 8/9 year olds in 1930 at the Ipswich primary school where I learned ‘my tables’. I am the anxious little boy with glasses at the headmaster’s right knee.

           

Arithmetic, the foundation stone of Mathematics, was never my best or favourite subject at school.  Yet to this day if someone says to me ‘what’s seven times eight’ or ‘nine times six?’ the answers (56 and 54 respectively) come unbidden to my tongue.  This facility comes from my chanting, over and over again, with a whole class of some 40 eight year olds, the ‘times tables’. It is an ability that has been useful on occasion. Even more importantly, chanting those tables provided a learning discipline – the realisation that before learning can become enjoyable, there is hard and boring work to be done in establishing its foundation.

            Similarly History (to choose a subject at which I was good and in which I am still interested) is often said to have been ‘in the bad old days’ (my schooldays!) just a case of learning by rote a list of dates and notable events.  There was a lot more to it than that.  The fact remains though that until you have at least a rough idea of the sequence of events in British and world history you can’t hope to see the way in which, over the centuries, one event has led to the next.  Unless you know that the Roman invaders, about 2,000 years ago were followed by the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings and, about 1,000 years ago, by the Normans, followed by the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance; the Protestant Reformation, Thomas Cranmer, Shakespeare, Milton, Christopher Wren, and Isaac Newton   (Oh yes and, really much less importantly, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Cromwell and so on) you’ll never understand how today’s political and economic world evolved – and is still evolving.  Once you have acquired – by rote, by constant repetition and by boring hard work – that skeleton of events, you can start putting the flesh on it and begin to enjoy reading history.

            Being encouraged to learn poetry ‘by heart’ (rather than by rote!) in my primary school years, gave me the ability to store in my head a very considerable collection of poetry, ranging from extracts from the King James Bible,  through some of of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the work of the great poets of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, and more recent ones like Houseman, Belloc, Kipling and Betjeman, to modern less-than-prim-and-proper limericks.  This mental anthology has been a source of immense pleasure and satisfaction to me in the past and (though I may nowadays forget what happened yesterday – or an hour ago!) it remains in my memory and continues to give me pleasure and satisfaction today.

            I remember being told at school that although we had special English classes, every lesson was in fact an English lesson.  No matter how thoroughly a pupil may have mastered, for instance, a Chemical, Physical or Biological principle, that knowledge is incomplete unless it is accompanied by the ability to pass it on to someone else in clear and lucid English.  That means in grammatically correct and correctly spelled English prose, and legible handwriting.  In those days, that was what teachers and examiners demanded, not because they were fussy and pedantic, but because in later life it would be what other people including employers, would expect

       
           One proposed alteration to the curriculum that is definitely an improvement on that of my childhood and youth is compulsory introduction to a foreign language at primary school. I had no acquaintance whatsoever with a foreign language until I was introduced to French at the age of ten at my secondary school.  That, I think, was much too late.  I was taught French for six years and still only managed to scrape a ‘pass’ mark in the school leaving exam.  Where a school is really determined that its pupils will emerge from their education with a thorough command of a language (Welsh in all schools in the Principality and Hebrew in Jewish schools for instance) that language is taught from ‘infants’ level.  

            I wish the Education Secretary success with his proposed reforms.  It remains to be seen whether or not he’ll be able to introduce them without the firm discipline that was enforced in schools in my day*, and the then taken-for-granted co-operation and compliance of most parents.

*Take another look at that picture from my childhood. It’s clear that, especially in the presence of the headmaster, not one of us dared to step an inch out of line!

A timely reminder

            A timely reminder that it isn’t only the present Prime Minister and top members of the Conservative Party who stand accused of inappropriate fraternisation with Rupert Murdoch and his entourage, has come with the publication of an autobiographical record based on the diaries of Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s chief spin-doctor. This reveals the closeness of Tony Blair to Rupert Murdoch, ruler of News International, the international news media empire. 

            Mr Campbell reveals that in the week prior to Britain’s declaration of support for the American-led invasion of Iraq Rupert Murdoch phoned Tony Blair on three occasions to urge him to declare his support without delay.   How extraordinary that an American multimillionaire and newspaper tycoon, owing no loyalty whatsoever to our Queen and Country, should have immediate access to a British Prime Minister in order to exert influence on a matter of foreign policy!   This was the Prime Minister who allowed parliament to be deceived about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’* and about the presence and influence of Al Qaeda in that country; the same Prime Minister who ignored the million British citizens who marched through London registering their strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the further millions who supported them

Perhaps we need an enquiry into the behaviour of top politicians quite as much as we needed an enquiry into the behaviour of the press!

*It should be noted that Alistair Campbell, whose autobiographical publication has revealed these phone calls, was himself complicit in the compilation of the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction  that contributed to the deception of parliament and of many members of the public.

Those WMDs!

            Writing the above reminded me that it was several days – perhaps several weeks – before Iraq was invaded that I realized it was most unlikely that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (even ‘battlefield’ ones) at his disposal, and equally unlikely that Tony Blair and George Bush were unaware of this.

            I am not a great admirer of either of those gentlemen. I can’t believe though that they were so stupid or so irresponsible as to order the inevitably rather slow build-up of invasion forces in Kuwait just across Iraq’s border, if they had thought there was the slightest possibility of their being destroyed when, just before the invasion was launched, Saddam Hussein ‘pressed the button’ and unleashed his Weapons of Mass Destruction upon them.

            It really didn’t take either ‘rocket science’ or secret sources of information to work that out!

           

                               

Week 20 2012 17.5.2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

 Standing back…….and starting again!

          Everyone, I feel sure, is familiar with the story of the London police officer who, asked the best way to get to a destination on the other side of the capital, replied, ‘Well, if I wanted to get there I wouldn’t start from here!’   I think that neither the government, nor the main opposition, know how best to reach the country’s destination (a growing economy and a major reduction of the gap between national income and national expenditure) because their policies are based on false assumptions.  They need to stop tweaking at this or that detail, stop drawing attention to their opponents’ mistakes, and take a fresh look at the problem.

            What, for instance, is the point in the Queen’s speech to Parliament about supporting hard working families, when we know perfectly well that thousands of people, particularly young people, would desperately like to be hard at work.    Thanks largely to the government’s policies, they are jobless and unable to find work to do?  What is the point of congratulating oneself on having taken thousands of people ‘out of income tax liability altogether’ when there are thousands of others who would love to have incomes large enough to be liable for income tax?  What is the point of assuring us that ‘we’re all in this together’ when we know perfectly well that the government’s policies are impoverishing most of the population while permitting a very wealthy minority to get even wealthier?

            You may feel that our economy presents problems of such complexity that their solution is beyond the capacity of us ordinary mortals and is best left for the country’s most brilliant financial brains to solve. Perhaps, but it was  the best financial brains in the country that got us into this mess – and it could be that it is common sense and  natural justice that will get us out of it*. It doesn’t take a financial wizard to realize that there are two possible ways of reducing the gap between national income and expenditure; by cutting back on national expenditure or by increasing national income by means of taxation – or perhaps by a judicious mixture of both.   At the same time there is a desperate need to encourage the growth of the economy; to get the builders, the manufacturers and the retailers busy and productive again.   We need to reduce the number of unemployed, get people working again, off benefit (not by penalising them but by removing their need) and paying taxes again.

             The Government seems to believe that cutting back on national expenditure, cutting public services rather than increased taxation, is the answer.  Expansion of the private sector will, they think, compensate for inevitable job losses in the public sector.  No-one will miss all those bureaucrats who will lose their ‘well-paid jobs and gold-plated pensions’.  But ‘bureaucrats’ are only a small minority of public service employees.  These include doctors, nurses, other health workers, police officers, fire fighters, prison staff, teachers, university professors and scientists.

            Nor was it ever likely that the ‘private sector’ would provide work for those losing their jobs in the public service.   A substantial section of the ‘private sector’ depends for its livelihood on public service contracts.  Cutting public service expenditure means cutting back on those contracts too.  Building contractors, building and maintaining schools, hospitals and other public buildings are particularly hard hit.

            Public service cuts increase the number of unemployed who no longer contribute to the Treasury through taxation, and who become eligible for job seekers’ allowance and other state benefits. Their poverty means that they reduce their expenditure, hitting the retail businesses that had relied on their custom. Their lack of work adds to rather than reduces the gap between national expenditure and national income!   Meanwhile reduction of public services mean badly maintained highways, badly policed localities, an increase in crime rates, in vandalism and other antisocial behaviour, the evolution of what once were well-run council housing estates into unredeemable slums, and the gradual deterioration of the civilised environment in which the private sector is able to flourish.

             Where the government has increased taxes to help to narrow the deficit they have concentrated on indirect taxation – increased VAT and increased duty on petrol, alcohol and tobacco.  These penalise the less-well-off disproportionately and deal yet another blow to hard-pressed retailers!

            I think that we need to stand back, survey the situation – and then start again. To get the economy going I would suggest cutting the rate of VAT and cutting the duty on petrol and diesel oil. I no longer drive but the price of fuel oil, used for both long and short haul transport, affects the price of everything in the shops and of virtually every human activity. VAT is similar.  It is much more to the point to raise the income of poor and middle-class folk than to benefit the very wealthy.  We won’t use any increase in disposable income to buy a yacht, or a Premier League football club, or a palatial home on the shores of the Mediterranean.  We’ll use it to for shopping expeditions into the High Street, for maintenance to keep the family car on the road, or for giving our homes a fresh coat of paint.  Thus will the wheels of industry and commerce again begin to turn.

            I think too that taxation should play a much bigger part in reducing that deficit  – but it should be  fair taxation, based on no other factor than ability to pay.  I don’t believe it was a great achievement for the recent budget to have raised the lower limit of income tax liability to ‘take thousands of people out of the system altogether’

            I believe, on the contrary, that everyone with an income however small should repay a proportion of that income in tax.   Then everyone in the country would be able to claim a stake in the country’s common wealth.  Everyone, from the lowest to the very highest, should be required to pay that same proportion of his or her income.  The proportion would vary from year to year, according to the country’s needs.  For the very poor that proportion would be a very small sum indeed, for the very wealthy it would be a large sum – but for no-one  would it be a sum beyond his or her ability to pay.

            There should be no loopholes for tax avoidance or tax evasion.  That proportionate income tax would be the first call on everyone’s income.  Paying it should be a matter of duty and a matter of pride.  What the taxpayer did with the remainder of his or her income would be up to them – give some of it to charity, put it in an offshore account, buy a football club – it would all be nothing to do with the rest of us.  But we all, multi-millionaire, farm labourer, refuse-collector would be able to claim.  ‘This is my country – and every year I renew my claim on its ownership when I pay my income tax!’

            It won’t happen.  Human selfishness and human greed, from which few of us can claim to be wholly free, will make sure of that.  Still – a very old man can surely be allowed to dream!

*I have just heard on the news (11.5.2012) that the financial experts employed by one of the USA’s largest and most prestigious banks – surely the very best of the very best, have managed to lose two billion dollars.  It doesn’t inspire  confidence in the wisdom and skill of ‘financial experts’!

The Enormity of the Problem!

          A week or two ago I mentioned in this blog that The Times ‘Rich List’, then just published, made it clear that while most of us have become poorer in the past year, the seriously wealthy have become even wealthier.  I mentioned it again above – but I hadn’t really appreciated the scale of the problem until I was referred to a blog of Michael Meacher MP that I wholeheartedly commend to readers.  You can find it as I did by means of a somewhat complex link: http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2012/04/britains-1000-richest-persons-made-gains-of-155bn-in-last-3-years/   or you can type ‘Michael Meacher MP’ into Google and you’ll quickly find it there.

                However It definitely comes into the category of ‘things I wish I had written’ and I am sure that Mr Meacher won’t mind my quoting this particular blog in its entirety below:

Times Rich List, published today and compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand Britain’s power structure today, holds three extremely significant conclusions.   One is that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years – £155bn – that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door.   The second, even more staggering, is that whilst the rest of the country is being crippled by the biggest public expenditure and benefits squeeze for a century, these 1,000 persons, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains.   This is truly a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

The third is that despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, the slowest and most anaemic recovery, and prolonged austerity stretching to a decade or more, this ultra-rich clique are now sitting on wealth even greater than what they had amassed at the height of the boom just before the crash.   Their combined wealth is now estimated at more than £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain’s entire GDP.    They include 77 billionaires and 23 others whose wealth exceeds £750m.  

Despite these massive repositories of wealth, these are some of the very people to whom Osborne gifted £3bn in his recent budget by cutting the 50p tax rate.   That measure alone gave 40,000 UK millionaires an extra average £14,000 a week, at the same time as those on very low incomes in receipt of working tax credits who couldn’t find an employer to increase their hours of work from 16 to  24 a week were being deprived in the same budget of £77 a week, around a third of their income, through their tax credits being withdrawn.

In 1997 the wealth of the richest 1,000 amounted to £99bn.   The increase in their wealth over the last 15 years has therefore been £315bn.   If this increase in wealth were subject to capital gains tax at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, and that alone would pay off more than 70% of the total budget deficit.   However Osborne seems to share the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: “taxes are only for the little people”. 

Thanks Mr Meacher.  There’s really nothing I could possibly add to that.

‘With LOL (lots of love) from…….

Somehow that doesn’t seem quite the way in which we expect our Prime Minister to end text messages to the head in the UK of an international media organisation with its headquarters in a foreign country, even if that head is a highly intelligent, very astute and very personable business woman.

            Nor do we really expect present and past  prime ministers and other leading politicians to bid fond and regretful farewells to that same lady when, as a result of a phone hacking scandal, she gives up her job.

            Everything that we are hearing at the Leveson Enquiry confirms my recently expressed opinion that Rupert Murdoch and his entourage have never bothered to seek favours from our top politicians.  They just sat back and waited for our politicians to come seeking their favour.  And when they lose that favour, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown did, how very cross and petulant (according to Rebekah Brooks) they become!

            How demeaning!  How shaming!    We’re told in the Scriptures that it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if, in doing so, he loses his soul.  But to lose it for the sake of a few favourable headlines in The Sun - really!

         

           

             

            

Week 18 2012

Tendring Topics........on Line

 ‘The Proof of the Pudding…………’

            It was about three years ago that I decided to have a solar water heating system installed.  My bungalow has a south-sloping roof and Clacton-on-Sea has, statistically, a good deal more than an average number of hours of bright sunshine.   I was then in my late eighties and knew perfectly well that I would be unlikely to recover the capital cost of installation.  However, thanks to the present government’s fiscal policies, it seemed probable that the money saved would be greater than the interest the cost of installation was earning in a bank savings account.  In any case, again thanks to government policy, my banked savings were inexorably decreasing in value as each month passed.

            The solar water system installed was a complicated one – a development of the very primitive solar systems that I had envisaged when writing my books about domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage twenty years earlier!    An additional small hot water storage cylinder was provided in the roof space. A temperature controlled pump circulated an antifreeze solution in a closed circuit between the solar panel on the roof and the new cylinder to warm the water stored in it.  A second electronically controlled pump exchanged this solar heated water with cooler water in the main storage cylinder. The flow and return pipes between the boiler and the main cylinder remained unchanged.

            The system worked very well when it was working properly.   My monthly direct debit payments for gas and electricity dropped from over £100 to something over £70. There was a lot that could go wrong though – and did!  Faults were always promptly put right by the installers. I called them teething problems though it must be said that some of them carried on well into the system’s adolescence!!  Last year at this time, we had had a hard winter in which I had let the gas boiler run night and day for several days.  Several faults had occurred and had been rectified. My monthly payments rose to £98.  I began to ask myself if it had all been worthwhile!

           

            Providentially (though it didn’t seem like that at the time!) last summer my main hot water storage cylinder failed.   It had been in constant operation for nearly a quarter of a century.   Its heat exchanger was covered with hard water scale. The gas boiler was taking an unreasonably long time to heat the water in the cylinder. 

            One of the operatives of Solar Power Ltd. my installers, suggested that I should replace the old cylinder with one of their recently developed ‘dual action’ solar cylinders and thus greatly simplify my system.  It would, I was assured, give me trouble-free service.   It was quite simple really.  The small cylinder in the roof space and the second circulating pump were dispensed with.  The new hot water storage cylinder is rather larger than the old one and is very heavily insulated.   It has two separate heat exchangers inside; one, in the top one-third of the cylinder is connected to the flow and return pipes from the boiler.   The other, near the base of the cylinder, has flow and return pipes connected to the solar panel on the roof.  There is just one electronically controlled pump which circulates an antifreeze solution through this latter heat exchanger when the liquid circulating through the solar panel becomes hotter than the water in the storage cylinder.  

During the summer, it would be possible on sunny days to switch the boiler off and rely entirely on the solar panel and that lower heat exchanger for all domestic hot water.   Even in the winter just an hour or two of sunshine would be sufficient to preheat the water in the cylinder before it passed through the boiler. Less gas would therefore be needed to bring it to the required temperature.

            The new ‘dual action’ cylinder was installed in mid-July.  At about the same time I took advantage of a Government grant and had my roof space heavily insulated by a specialist firm.  As we moved through autumn into winter the prices of electricity and gas rose dramatically and the government cut services and benefits.  Some old – and not so old – people were faced with a stark choice; Eat or Heat!

            My new solar hot water system was working perfectly.  It had no ‘teething problems’.   I could hear its pump switch on to warm the water in the storage cylinder, as the solar panel on the roof began to heat up.  I felt that that extra insulation above my ceilings was helping to retain warmth in my bungalow.  I awaited the annual review of my E-on account with both anxiety and hope.  Had the new system plus the insulation cancelled the effect of the price increases?  Would my monthly direct debit payments stay unchanged?  Was it just possible that they would be reduced?  The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

            That proof arrived last week – a large official communication from E-on.  I opened it with some trepidation, but I need not have worried.  My hopes had been more than justified.  My account was comfortably in credit.  £74.64 would be repaid to me within the next few days and, with effect from 1^st June, my monthly direct debit payments would be reduced from £98.00 to £62.00.   Solar power plus insulation had saved money!

            My improvements had been made towards the end of July.  They had therefore been effective for only nine months (the least sunny nine months) of the year.  Next April there should, with any luck, be a further reduction.  However, as I shall be celebrating my 91st birthday in three weeks time, it would (if I were a gambling man) be unwise of me to bet too heavily on my ever seeing that reduction!

            I hope, by the way, that I am not so pleased with the success of my own efforts to reduce my energy bills as to forget that there are many old people, and many poor families, who are not able to take similar action. They really do sometimes have to choose between Eating and Heating!   I wish I could solve their problems as effectively as I have solved my own.

An Evil Empire?

          When the Leveson Enquiry first began its work, I wrote in this blog that I had little doubt that the nefarious press practices of phone and email hacking, and the even more corrupt and illegal practice of bribing and/or threatening the Police and other public officials, would be thoroughly investigated and exposed.   I thought it likely though that there would be far less investigation and exposure of an exercise of press power that affects every single one of us but is probably not even illegal.  It is the way in which those who own and control the news media influence the policies and decisions of senior politicians, thus promoting national policies to the advantage of those owners and controllers rather than that of the rest of us – the nation as a whole.

            On 25^th April Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose News International owns forty percent of Britain’s national press and has similar holdings in North America and in Australia and New Zealand., assured the Leveson Enquiry that he had never asked a favour of Mrs Thatcher or of any other British Prime Minister.  It was a claim that was dismissed by the Daily Mirror (not a Murdoch publication!) as codswallop.  I have little doubt though that the Mirror was wrong and that Rupert Murdoch’s claim was literally true.

            Mr Murdoch wouldn’t condescend to ask a favour of any politician. Why on earth should he?  He doesn’t seek their favour.  They seek his.  Tony Blair created New Labour, reversing everything for which the pioneers of the Labour Movement had fought, to gain the approval of Mr Murdoch and the electoral support of the Sun.  David Cameron, while still in opposition, interrupted a family holiday in Turkey to fly to Rupert Murdoch on his private yacht on the Mediterranean.  In office he consulted with him and his lieutenants again and again, inviting him to the back door of 10 Downing Street to escape the notice of the non-Murdoch press.   Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, former News of the World Editor, to be his personal spin doctor and pursued a neighbourly relationship with Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch’s ‘right hand woman’.  Rupert Murdoch doesn’t need politicians’ favours.   They need his!

            Murdoch has never concealed the fact that he owns and controls newspapers to promote political causes - unfettered free enterprise and extreme Euroscepticism!  Politicians who support those causes can expect the support of the Murdoch press empire – those who don’t can expect derision!   When, after a Tory electoral victory, the Sun claimed ‘It was us what done it!’ it was no idle boast.

            If we really want a free and independent press (independent of ‘big business’ as well as of the state) we will make certain that it is impossible for a substantial section of it to come under the control of one individual, particularly not someone who is a foreign national, has his home and principal interests outside the United Kingdom, and owes and acknowledges no loyalty to our country, its culture, and its traditions.

 ‘I don’t believe it!’

            My nature is, I think, to be somewhat credulous and unsuspicious; the uncharitable might say ‘gullible’.  I tend to believe what I have been told until I have good reason to do otherwise.  On balance, I prefer, very occasionally, to be deceived, rather than to suspect wrongly that someone is deceiving me.  There are limits to my credulity though. I find that these days those limits are constantly being overstepped by politicians and others in the media spotlight.

            Take, for instance, the case of Mr Jeremy Hunt, Culture Minister.   Mr Hunt took over from Lib.Dem. Vince Cable the decision about the ownership of the residual BSkyB shares when Mr Cable was trapped into remarking that he had declared war on Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire was eager to acquire BSkyB in its entirety.  Mr Hunt was on record as an admirer of News International, so David Cameron obviously felt that he could be depended upon to make an absolutely impartial judgement and arrive at the decision everybody (well, everybody whose opinion mattered) wanted!

            Adam Smith, Mr Hunt’s principal adviser, seems to have imagined that our Government was the political wing of News International (it was a mistake anyone might have made!) and carried on a considerable email correspondence with News International on that assumption.  What I find difficult to believe is that, considering the nature of the ‘advice’ that Mr Hunt must have been receiving from his adviser, he still had no doubt that he would  be able to make an impartial judgement on the disposal of those BSkyB shares.  I am reminded of the story of the judge in America’s ‘wild west’ who told a captured bandit, ‘We’ll give you a fair trial – and then we’ll hang you!’  

              There is little doubt in my mind that the acquisition of the whole of BSkyB by News International would have gone ahead ‘on the nod’ had not the extent of News International’s phone hacking activities come to light at a crucial moment – and Rupert Murdoch had decided that it would be politic to withdraw his bid for those shares rather than to risk its being refused on the grounds that News International was an unsuitable organisation.

That brings me to the other news story that has stretched my credulity beyond its limits.  I just cannot believe that Rupert Murdoch, the astute news media superman, who prided himself on keeping a tight rein on all his enterprises, on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Antipodes, could possibly have allowed himself to become a victim of a conspiracy of his underlings to prevent his learning about the wide-spread phone and email hacking that had become the practice in at least part of his British media domains.  He was, so he claimed, a victim of that conspiracy and not its source.

            As Victor Meldrew, anti-hero of One Foot in the Grave, used to proclaim on our tv screens, ‘I  don’t believe it!’

‘The Cruellest Month!’

          T.S. Eliot begins his poem ‘The waste land’ with the remark that ‘April is the cruellest month’.   April 2012 certainly was that for our Prime Minister and the coalition government.  A unpopular Budget benefitting millionaires was followed by a scathing comment from one of his own Conservative MPs that he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer were ‘two arrogant rich boys who don’t know the price of milk’

Then there were those emails to which I have referred above – and Lord Leveson’s disinclination to stray into the Prime Minister’s domain and decide whether or not Jeremy Hunt had breached ‘the Ministerial Code’.   Almost at the end of the month came the pronouncement of Scotland’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop that the government’s policies were benefitting the rich at the expense of the poor.  On the same day came the official revelation that the richest of rich Britons had become even richer!   The rest of us don’t need official confirmation to know that we have become poorer!

This week are the local government elections.  The Prime Minister must surely be praying that the electorate will concentrate on local issues!

           

           

           

           

Week 10 2012 8.3.2012

Tendring Topics..........on Line

 ‘The best that money can buy!’

            The Leveson Enquiry into the conduct of the press, having been absent from the front headline news recently, came back with a vengeance early last week. On the Monday we had learned of the successful launch the previous day of News International’s latest venture, the Sunday edition of the Sun. Over three million copies of the new publication had been sold and Mr Rupert Murdoch, who had launched it in person, was said to be delighted.

On the following day he may have been a little less happy. A high ranking police official revealed to Lord Leveson that bribery of the police and other public officials had been endemic among the staff of the Sun and that this corruption had been condoned at the very highest level.  It was believed that one public official had been paid as much as £80,000 to reveal confidential information!  Furthermore, this activity had been carried out despite the knowledge that it was against the law and that the jobs, pensions and liberty of those involved were at risk. Various devious schemes had been devised to conceal it.

No wonder the recent widespread arrests of Sun journalists, that aroused so much indignation among media pundits, had taken place simultaneously, at dawn, and by surprise.   This had clearly been intended to remove the possibility of evidence being tampered with or destroyed.  

Mr Murdoch is reported as saying that although those activities may have taken place in the past all News International employees would have clean hands in the future. Perhaps so – but it will be remembered that throughout this sorry ongoing saga News International has admitted wrong-doing only when compelled to do so by irrefutable evidence.  In the first instance it was claimed that just one lone culprit had resorted to ‘phone hacking’, and he was a freelance private investigator, not a News International employee.  Then it was just the one publication, the News of the World that was culpable.  Mr Murdoch closed it down, throwing it to the wolves to protect the rest of his media empire.  Now the Sun, News International’s flagship enterprise in the UK, is accused of being a centre of bribery and corruption.  In a tv interview singer Charlotte Church, who, with her parents, has been the victims of phone hacking and harassment, pointed out that when News International says ‘sorry’ it doesn’t mean that they are sorry about their wrong-doing – only that that they are sorry to have been caught out! 

Serious as is the systematic bribery and corruption of members of the Police Force and other public officials, it is the evil influence of News International at the very highest level that most concerns me – and should concern us all.  If the Police were, as is admitted, much too close to the Murdoch Empire – what are we to say of successive Prime Ministers who have enjoyed the close friendship of Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants?  It began with Mrs Thatcher but was closely followed by Tony Blair and by David Cameron, our present Prime Minister. There was the video shown on tv of Tony Blair greeting Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch’s ‘viceroy’, with an affectionate kiss. There was David Cameron and family spending part of Christmas 2010 with the same lady, and David Cameron appointing Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor, as his personal spin-doctor.  More recently we have had the cosy mental image of David Cameron enjoying  a brisk canter – on a horse ‘loaned’ to Rebekah Brooks by the Metropolitan Police! 

No wonder News International employees imagined that, with ‘friends at the top’ they could get away with anything.   Now I notice that, as a result of an internal enquiry, News International is handing to the Police evidence of the wrong-doing of some of its employees.  I am reminded of the German farmer who in 1946, when asked what he had been doing that morning, replied, ‘I’ve been de-Nazifying my carrot field – pulling out the little ones so that the big ones can flourish!’

No-one would dream of suggesting that our top politicians could be bribed – or that even the brashest of cosmopolitan media billionaires would be foolish enough to attempt to bribe them.  The former though, are well aware of the fragility of their electoral success and of the power of the rulers of the press to manipulate public opinion for or against them.  This power was impressively demonstrated when, to make New Labour ‘electable’ Tony Blair swung his party’s policies sufficiently to the right to secure Rupert Murdoch’s approbation, and the support of the Sun in the next General Election campaign - which New Labour then won.  Before the latest General Election the Sun returned to its support of the Conservatives, and the Conservatives emerged as the strongest party.  Rupert Murdoch must have been well satisfied with this exhibition of his power.

 The billionaire owners of most of the national press are able to exert far too powerful an influence on our political leaders – an influence that the revelations of the Leveson Enquiry may give us an opportunity to curb.  We boast of our ‘Free Press’ . It isn’t free.  It isn’t even cheap.  It is just the very best that money can buy!

‘When I hear the word “culture”……. I reach for my revolver!’

          Thus in the late 1930s, allegedly spake the late and unlamented Air-Marshal Hermann Goering, the most colourful of Hitler’s entourage.

            We haven’t yet reached that state in this country as we progress in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  There’s no doubt though that in our schools, lessons on what I think of as cultural subjects – history, geography, English literature – come a poor second to those which prepare the young to be employable human resource units supplying the needs of the global market economy; the ‘proles’ of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ .

             A basic knowledge of British and World History and Geography (where we are in both time and space, how we got there, and the direction in which we are heading!) is surely essential for us all in a parliamentary democracy.  How could we hope to exercise the vote intelligently and effectively without that background knowledge?  As for English literature – quite apart from the great pleasure that is to be derived from the magnificent prose and poetry of the past, it teaches us to express our thoughts clearly and concisely (without the constantly reiterated ‘know what I mean? that we hear so often today) and how those in the past have met and tried to resolve the problems that confront us daily.

            I heard a cocksure fifteen year old asserting on tv that Shakespeare is irrelevant these days.  Irrelevant, really?  Romeo and Juliet deals with gang warfare between the Montagues and Capulets,  the dangers of carrying knives (the gang members had long ones called swords!) for ‘protection’, the perils of teenage sex and of ignoring parental advice, and the dangers of meddling by well-meaning busybodies (Brother Lawrence).   And that’s just one of the plays!  Aspiring modern politicians could do worse than study Macbeth ­and Julius Caesar and those tempted to try to make a fortune on the stock exchange might try The Merchant of Venice. 

           

Watching University Challenge on tv can be a humbling experience.  I don’t really understand most of the questions, never mind know the answers.  However I do occasionally know the answers to questions on English history or world geography, and I quite often know more about some aspects of English Literature than any of the contestants.  I have been astonished to observe young men and women who know things about physics, chemistry, zoology, and mathematics that are a complete mystery to me, but who seem never to have heard of such poems as Milton’s sonnet On his Blindness, Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, Keats’  La belle Dame sans Merci, and John Betjeman’s Subaltern’s Love Song.   Betjeman’s poetry I have come to know and enjoy fairly recently (well, in the past half-century)  but the others, and the Shakespeare plays I have mentioned, were just part of the English syllabus for the London University General Schools Certificate that I took and passed before leaving school in 1937 at the age of 16.

            I can’t say that the maths and science subjects that I was taught at school have been of no value to me. I have always had enough Maths to cope with my income tax returns and to work out royalties due to me from book sales.  My knowledge of General Physics was a help to me when, in my 50s and 60s, I wrote half a dozen commercially successful books about domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage.  It is though, from my study of English Literature that I have gained my ability to string words together into a readable narrative, and from my knowledge of history and geography that I have the temerity to write and publish this blog every week. I wish I knew more about other cultural subjects such as classical music and art. 

            In Great Britain culture isn’t yet the target of a revolver – but it is being slowly strangled in the service of Mammon!

‘Bad News for Home Owners?’

          When the news reader announced that there was ‘bad news for home owners’ at breakfast time this (3^rd March) morning, I wondered what was coming next.  I needn’t have worried.  It was home buyers, not home owners that had reason to be anxious.  Interest rates on mortgages were set to increase, in some cases by as much as fourteen percent.  Some home buyers will shortly discover – when they find themselves unable to make their mortgage repayments – that it is the bank or Building Society, not themselves, who is the true owner of their home.

            I feel very sorry for those who may lose their homes, but not for the politicians who have lured them into a debt that they won’t be able to repay.  Remember David Cameron saying how proud the new householder was when handed the key of his own home?  Just imagine how that same householder will feel when his home is repossessed and he has to hand it back again!

’‘Essex Works!'

            Yes, as far as I am concerned it certainly does.  You’ll recall that a fortnight or so ago I recounted my experience of trying to get a hand-rail fitted to help me get safely from the threshold of my front door to the concrete front path.  A wooden ramp had been provided (by a friendly neighbour) over the two steep steps, but I still felt the need to descend that ramp with extreme care, never venturing upon it without my trusty walking stick!

            The biggest hurdle that I had to deal with was that of getting through to a human voice at the County Hall.  I gave it up one day and rang off while a mechanical voice was assuring me that my call was valued and that I was moving up the queue.  The next day I was more determined (and possibly a little more patient!) and eventually a human voice, of a very helpful young lady greeted me.  I was ‘assessed’ over the phone.  It became clear to me that despite my age there were not a great many things that I might want to do but was unable.  I could get out of bed, wash, shower and shave, do my own shopping, visit friends, cook my own meals and do the washing with the aid of a washing machine.   I had already arranged help with cleaning and with the garden.  No, I definitely wasn’t top priority.

            However, someone would visit me in due course to see about a hand-rail and to see if there were any other hazards about the house were capable of being remedied.  It took about three weeks but ultimately some-one did call.  He agreed that I needed a handrail but thought that otherwise I was coping well with the effects of old age.  Someone would phone and make an appointment to fix the handrail.  And so they did.  A very helpful operative phoned and said that, if it was OK with me, he would call and fix the handrail at about lunchtime today, 3rd March..

            And so he did, quickly and efficiently.  See for yourself.

            It will take a long while to erase from my memory the County Council’s former political leader, Lord Hanningfield.  But in the meantime I am happy to confirm that Essex Works – and worked effectively for me!

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