"You wanted it...", by Wiggia

There is a trend nationally to “suggest” that you, the public have asked for something you really haven’t.

The latest is the increased taxes for the NHS. It was suggested that people would be willing to pay more for the NHS back in the annual winter crisis when the usual "there is not enough money" cries first went up. Somehow this poll, which was never as far as I know named, had surveyed a number of the populace with the magic words “would you be prepared...?” and the answer came back yes.
Whether there was anything else asked is not revealed, but if you ask at a time of crisis with all the attendant headlines of death and despair you would likely get an unthinking response if the questioning was put a certain way that would confirm the result.

The government must have either secretly paid to have this poll done or else could not believe their luck and soon rumblings of tax-raising for the NHS were heard and indecently quickly a promise was made to do just that; the Brexit extraction of monies is at this stage wishful thinking.

This did two things: (1) it gave the government the pretended right to raise taxes as if it was the will of the people, without ever asking them; and (2) it made them look caring. After all, successive governments have thrown money at the NHS when it was appropriate to do so, not necessarily when it was needed and never with any quid pro quo such as the total overhaul of the NHS which is desperately needed.

So no way do the government have to get their hands dirty and the people are happy, they asked to pay more and the real problems are once more kicked down the road.

But enough of the NHS, reams of paper are not enough to describe its many shortcomings; though I will highlight just one from this week, one could highlight one every week but this will do. It is a classic, a “senior lead” (whatever that is) defending diversity:

 “NHS wastes £46million on spin doctors, diversity advisors and a third sector environmental lead”.

The opening paragraph reads, “We can reveal that the NHS wasted over £46 million last year on 1,129 unnecessary jobs.”

The words that held my attention were "diversity advisors" and "unnecessary.”

Only diversity advisors are defended. She then goes on to say that the £41k-plus they get is entirely reasonable. Well she would because without them she would be out of a better paid job. The answer to all this nonsense is simply to employ the best people of whatever colour creed or religion apply but you can’t have that today and you end up with this nonsense.

A couple weeks ago I got a phone call from Anglian Water my supplier of water - well it was actually on behalf of Anglian Water. When told it was a survey I said no, but something about their business model being discussed and an Amazon voucher for ten minutes of questions intrigued me. Needless to say it was around thirty minutes in the end but that was partly because I started asking questions and surprisingly whoever was doing the questioning was in sympathy with what I said and took my my answers at face value, or seemed to.

In effect once the opening “how satisfied are you?” questions were dealt with the survey was about Anglian Water's business model for the next ten or so years. Anglian Water despite the very English name is now owned by a consortium of mainly Australian and Canadian pension funds and investment vehicles.

The survey continued and it became obvious quite early that the questions were asking me the customer about how I would be paying for the upgrading of facilities in the short medium and long term. It all seemed reasonable until the penny dropped that what was being asked was how much you were prepared to pay over what time for new facilities to be built.

There were flaws in the questions such as the longer term suggestions did not take in inflation or rising costs; somehow I think that was deliberate as once implemented the company could simply blame outside influences.

I also pointed out that Anglian Water has spent bugger-all since 2008 when the consortium took over despite a rising population, and the fact that unlike other water companies their infrastructure is less than those others as they rely largely on aquifers not reservoirs. All was said to be duly noted !

The bottom line on all this is that Anglian Water is a private company yet they are asking how you the customer would like to pay for their upgrading of facilities and infrastructure. The last time I looked private companies raised funds in the market and from shareholders for that but not any more: we are being asked would you like to pay now and which way and when the light comes on and people realise they have been conned the company can say well we asked you what you wanted and you said yes.

Up the road from me we have a reverse example, an imposed fee for a private enterprise that is not very popular and has had a dampening effect on the business, and quite rightly. Norwich airport imposes a £10 development fee on every passenger taking a flight from there. No one was asked and no one if they have a choice - and they do - pays it: they use Stansted or another airport. Norwich doesn’t go anywhere and is unlikely to in the near future, a private company charging the public for their expansion with - no other word for it - extortion.

We are starting to see a whole new way of extracting money from the public. Will they see through all this? No, unless someone starts calling out these practices in deception; and no one has yet.
It brings a whole new slant to interest free loans - or gifts, in this case.

Will we, the little people, fight back?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Cécile Corbel, by JD

Whenever my musical soul needs 're-grooving' I go back to my roots and revisit the music of my heritage. Here is Cécile Corbel who is an excellent Breton singer/composer who also plays the Celtic harp.

The harp is possibly one of the oldest musical instruments dating back to 3599BC and probably earlier. It features in many musical traditions around the world. The modern Celtic harp, as used by Cécile Corbel, began to appear in the early 19th century in Ireland, contemporary with the dying-out of earlier forms of Gaelic harp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harp

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Highwaymen, by JD

The Highwaymen were a country music 'supergroup' comprising four of the best singer/songwriters of the genre: Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highwaymen_(country_supergroup)

Cash and Nelson have featured on this blog previously so a few words about the other two. Waylon Jennings is probably best known for being the Balladeer of the TV series 'Dukes OF Hazzard' Before then he was one of the artists in the (in)famous package tour of 1959 during which Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died Jennings gave up his seat on the light aircraft in favour of J P Richardson (the Big Bopper) as J P had flu and the tour bus was freezing cold. For a long time afterwards Jennings, by his own admission, felt a sense of guilt about what had happened.

Kris Kristofferson is something of a 'renaissance man' He was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College where he earned a Blue for boxing. and played rugby for his college. He later joined the US Army and became a helicopter pilot and then flew helicopters servicing the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico but all the while he wanted to be a songwriter. There is a famous story that he landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash's lawn in order to deliver some demo cassettes of his songs. Cash eventually recorded "Sunday Morning Coming Down" the first of many Kristofferson songs and the rest, as they say, is history!

FRIDAY MUSIC: My Back Pages, by JD

A bit of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age.......

FRIDAY MUSIC: Nitin Sawhney, by JD

............... something different from Nitin Sawhney.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitin_Sawhney

An EU jawbreaker

Visiting a friend of a friend in Portugal, I admired his classic 1970s Triumph Stag.

(A bit like this)

He then explained that the Government had tried to charge him € 58,000 for registering it in Portugal. You can buy a house for that - even two - in some rural areas.

Apparently this sort of thing is illegal under EU law (a case where most of us would agree).

So the EU fines Portugal every year for doing it.

But not enough. Portugal is happy to pay the fine every year, because the swindle is so lucrative.

EU happy, Portugal happy.

It's a gobstopper of a problem, though - less EU, or more?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobstopper

Roll Up! Roll Up! - by Wiggia

We have an annual two-day fete and fair next door to us, really next door, every year. Today (Monday) is the last day and we get a firework display at ten o’clock to finish. The itinerary can be seen here….

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/costessey-fete-and-fayre-tickets-42268041851

The last couple of years have not been kind to this event, the weather spoiling (or worse) either one or both days, but this year a downpour was at the first day's end and so far today it has been sun all the way despite a “yellow” warning from the Met Office.

For various reasons and despite the proximity I have never been, though the firework display is as near in my back garden as you could wish and that has been enjoyed from the comfort of an upstairs window. But today we went, hardly an effort as we have a side door to the footpath that leads to the recreation ground and it is just 25 yards and we are in.

Today was different to Sunday: no WW1 trench experience for us - how they manage that I have no idea - no dog show and no classic cars; more of a kids' day I would imagine.

After a few minutes I wished I had brought my camera, so many were the photo opportunities, but with the ‘English’ moral Police seeing everyone with a camera as a paedo it was probably better I had no camera, even though we are the only country in Europe where this attitude abounds.

We passed through the side gate and almost straight away the first attraction was spied: the donkey ride. Six of the little fellas were working in shifts taking small children in hard hats round the showground for £2 a go. The queue for this was at least twenty long and obviously popular with the junior clientele, especially young girls - nothing changes in the equine world..

The rest was laid out in four avenues and the fair was at the entrance end; not a full blown fair as we had in our day but most of the essentials were there, though no “Big Bertha” or Helter Skelter, but most of the other rides were there including the Dodgems. Now the Dodgems always evoked a smell of burnt electricity in my day as the power was transmitted from an electric ceiling to the car by way of a pole that touched the ceiling, rather in the style of a trolley bus, and the Dodgems were a macho affair with riding on the back until chased off by the operators was de rigeur; this was a very family friendly sanitised Dodgem but still very popular as were all the rides with queues for tickets.

The obvious difference in the fair compared with the ones in my youth, which was the last time I went to a fair, was the new must-have item: the bouncy castle. Here we had a whole range of bouncy castles that had provision inside for war councils, slides for quick exits, stairs so fun jumps could be repeated, castles shaped like giant cars, one with windows shaped like a giant tea pot and assorted others.

There was also a sort of bungee “experience” like a swing on elastic. A small girl on a limited bounce was asked if she was okay, the small screwed up face nodded yes and wanted a bigger bounce; she could not have been more than eighteen months to two years old.The bouncy castle has found a niche with the very young no other entertainment can provide it seems, all of them were in full use with queues waiting, for the very young there were under sixes only castles. I was tempted !

A small pop concert venue for “budding” stars of tomorrow, and in the centre itself junior "how to pot plants" was proving popular, dirty little hands always goes down well.

Elsewhere there was the now obligatory face painting, hair plaiting, sparkly face decoration and a stall selling party princess tutus for the those youngsters who now seem to wear them as everyday attire.

If there was one thing that has changed over the years it was the supply of refreshments, aside from the beer tent and a fruit drinks and cocktails bar ! There were roughly twenty stalls supplying food from the humble and not so humble burger through fish and chips, hog roast (long queue and wait for that one), ice cream van with a queue into the distance on this hot day, two miniature cafes, homemade cakes, fudge, chocolates and everything in between. It appeared that everyone was eating or drinking, gluttony has no bounds on days like this, and yes, guilty! as I purchased a very nice cake with the excuse it was for my tea, though it was far too big for just tea ! With all this food I failed till later to notice one striking omission: no candy floss. No fair is really complete without it, I shall have a word with the organisers so as to rectify this oversight.

Any other obvious differences since those early days? Well yes, the people at the fair: it was the usual mix of what seemed a pretty good cross section of Britain today, in this area anyway, almost exclusively white, which no doubt those in power will do their best to revise in short time, but a good cross section none the less. So what was different? The most striking thing was that in my day the fair would be for teenagers, mods rockers and everyone else would make up a large segment of the fair goers; not so much now if this one was anything to go by, the place was full of the little darlings - I can only think the lure of the bouncy council has worked its magic not exclusively but to a very large degree.

In other areas the strange and the weird show up as they always do, some very odd-shaped people in misfitting clothes, more in clothes of poor taste, we had a lot of very bad tattoos on display in the sun (golden opportunity to show those off in the hot weather), several mobility scooters holding a union meeting in the shade of trees, alongside the picnickers.

Was it a success? Certainly! The raucous calls from the showmen, "Do you want faster and noisier?" were answered with a very loud yes and the delight of it all on the young children's faces was there to see.

Despite all that is going wrong in our country, it was all forgotten on the showground; not a uniquely British event by any means but still going strong and still giving a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.

Oh, the rain never appeared and the firework display that I wanted to photograph went ahead but as the wife prodded me at ten - the time the display started after I had fallen asleep on the sofa - my rushed attempts to capture the display were disappointing, I blame the wife: she deliberately let me snooze on, spoilsport.