A landslide victory is not enough. Tony Blair had one in 1997 and even many of those who hadn’t voted for him were prepared to give him a chance; a chance he threw away with both hands, preferring to fight the next election from Day One. His student-ignorant ‘eye-catching initiatives’ didn’t tackle the roots of our economic malaise – for a touchstone, just remember the meretricious stupidity of scrapping the Royal Yacht, that floating trade mission for the UK.
Johnson doesn’t have the luxury of a honeymoon period: the malcontents have already started their civil disorder in London. He’s ‘on appro’ and we’ll need more than fast talk to retain the nervous new Conservative voters in the North and other long-suffering working-class areas. Mess this up and it’s ‘après soi, le deluge’.
In fact, it could already be too late, if the banking debt in the Eurozone brings the temple down around everyone’s ears before we can get out. BoJo’s vow to work around the clock had better be sincere. And he’ll have to work at the right things. It’s no good fixing the roof when the foundations are cracking. It’s structural and it’s not going to be a quick job, so he’ll have to start straight away.
The late Sir James Goldsmith clearly saw the threat back in 1994, at the time of the GATT talks – the first part of the interview is here. His argument was that sweeping trade liberalisation sets workforces across the world against one another and tips the capital-labour seesaw savagely in favour of the former, inevitably causing growing social tensions in the developed world. It may seem odd that a billionaire should make such a case, but that is to forget that his moral roots were in one of the three Abrahamic religions, all of which impose an obligation to care for the less fortunate.
We are in a secular doctrinal crisis, because the two principal political parties have long since become institutionally globalist. For the party of the CBI, Institute of Directors etc there was just too much money to be made from undermining the British workers (many of whom now have to claim benefits even when working); for New Labour it was too much fun being ‘intensely relaxed’ feasting with oligarchs and too easy to get votes for flinging bones to the dogs under the table while pursuing the neoliberal agenda. Man, what a party that was, and ‘I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.’
What a stroke of luck it was for the Tories this time to face Corbyn, who traduced his own beliefs about the EU and tried to win popularity with a commitment to providing more bones; that, and his propensity for rubbing shoulders with people who shoot dogs. For I’m far from convinced that the life experience of our latest Etonian, though he is undoubtedly bright, has equipped him to understand the need for radical reform. I fear he feels it’s just a matter of ‘think pos’ and another dose of what’s made us sick, get it down you, mate.
If Boris is to prove me wrong, he needs to aim at what Sir James intended when setting up the Referendum Party: getting us completely free of the Lilliputian entanglements of the Berlaymont. If Gray May and Bullneck Robbins had negotiated with the French after Waterloo we’d have ceded Kent and Essex and paid compensation to the Grande Armée; yet Johnson still clutches the awful Withdrawal Agreement and the even worse Political Declaration (that love-letter from Josephine to Napoleon) with only a few of the more compromising passages redacted.
The current system, globalism, is designed to enable a concentration of wealth and power, which is deflationary: the money boosts asset values rather than being recycled within the economy. So the velocity of money slows, ordinary people find it harder to make a living, the tax base shrinks even as the demand for financial support increases, and austerity eats itself like the worm Ourobouros. It’s great for the winners, until suddenly it isn’t – where are the rich Mayans now?
For all its talk of brotherhood, the EU is a scale model of globalism. Its ‘four freedoms’ allow companies to trade goods and services within the Union, challenging smaller businesses with both the costs of universal regulation and also their bigger competitors’ economies of scale (though, so I understand, discriminating against the financial services where the UK has an advantage); the free movement of capital allows companies to incorporate in the cheapest tax regimes while smuggling out profits from their foreign subsidiaries under the guise of internal transfers to pay for training and other services; and the freedom of movement of people is their liberty to go wherever work is to be had, racing to underbid their fellows.
We have to escape both the frying pan of the EU and the fire of unfettered global ‘free trade’. We can’t abruptly start a trade war with the developing world, but we have to manage the rate of change, compensating via tariffs and trade agreements for the unfair disparities in hourly wage rates that have turned the British working class into claimants.
Perhaps then we can become once again what Napoleon so despised, a nation of small shopkeepers; a nation of modest prosperity, self-reliance and the love of liberty.
Is Johnson’s mercurial mind up to such a detailed and sustained campaign?
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Saving the NHS
Retail is detail, as the great shop managers say. So is medicine, but I’ll come to that in a moment.
In the latest GE campaign, the Left tried beating the Tories over the head with the NHS, again. That photo of the boy on a hospital floor was a good one, wasn’t it? Accusations of fake news from one side, of trolling on the other. All I’d observe from this report is that the hospital only apologised for having nothing but chairs to sit on rather than a trolley, so why the lad was on the ground is a puzzle.
I am also mystified by the empty gravity-feed drip bag lying uselessly across him - and tubes not attached to the nose in the second photo:
... especially since he was still waiting to be seen?
Yes, the NHS is under intense pressure. Partly because it can do much more than it used to; partly because demand then rises even faster than supply; partly because of drugs, drunkenness, quarrels ‘getting stabby’, self-harm and all the other symptoms of a country in moral crisis. And I certainly hold no brief for the chirpy Jeremy Hunt or his hapless successor, but the job description of Health Secretary appears to include ‘scapegoat’, as the Bethany case shows.
And yet, however much you spend, you still have to mind the shop. Let me give you an illustrative case history.
My good friend Jim (name changed) was driving a couple of family members somewhere when an idiot in a window-darkened fast car shot out of a side street at him. Having quick reflexes, Jim swerved clear but then hit a series of three unfilled potholes, jarring his spine. Though in his late seventies, Jim was fit and active – a keen archer – and so it was some time before the back pain intensified to the point where he was X-rayed and vertebral displacement discovered.
When you are old, the system writes you off. Jim told me his GP gave him three plan options, all of which amounted to palliative care. He was to slide bedridden down the helter-skelter into the slot, with painkillers to ease the way.
But Jim wasn’t a quitter, and was highly intelligent. He scoured the internet and found a surgeon able to do the operation to fix his back. It succeeded; now for the physio program to get him back on his feet. Jim was moved to another hospital for the recuperation phase.
The first thing was, Hospital Two took his bed – a highly specialised one – and swapped it for another that was shorter, so that his feet were constantly pressing against the end. There was a hoist next to him, to get him to a chair for a couple of hours each day as part of the rehabilitation program. A couple of times, the staff managed to bump his toes painfully in the process; and increasingly it seems, they just didn’t get him out of bed at all.
Jim had suffered from sleep apnoea for many years, and had a CPAP machine to pump air at night. But nurses tidying busily disturbed the mechanism, which then got blocked with its water. So when I first visited him in hospital he hadn’t slept for four nights. The nurses, often clustered around the workstation outside the ward, hadn’t noticed. I got that sorted, and in subsequent visits kept Jim supplied with newspapers and magazines to keep his active brain occupied; and a squeezy ball to exercise his slowly wasting arm muscles. They were eventually tidied (thrown) away.
Jim didn’t feel safe there, and wanted to go home – and no, he wasn’t demented. So a fresh home care plan was made and he had an adjustable bed delivered, plus a hoist. But soon after that the family were told not to use the hoist, since they weren’t expert and his wife was about his age. Flat in bed he lay, muscles weakening and even a slight angling up becoming more challenging for him.
Then there was the drugs program. The first painkillers tended to have constipation as a side effect, so Jim was also given laxatives to counteract this. But then the pain prescription was changed yet the laxatives continued, causing constant and strength-sapping diarrhoea until the foul-up was realised.
Speaking of pharmaceuticals, there were some he had never had, and should have had. Jim’s X-ray from the year before had also shown a shadow on his liver; but the technician hadn’t noticed. This was the ‘cloud no bigger than a man’s hand’ that was heading his way. I asked Jim what they were giving him to fight the cancer: nothing.
I last saw him in the hospice – he lasted only a few days there. His passing was peaceful. But long premature.
I don’t think money alone would have solved all this. It needed the close attention of a Stuart Rose, or a Philip Green; detail managers. Semi-ignored plans and responsibility sign-offs aren’t enough.
Money, of course; but money employed to best effect.
In the latest GE campaign, the Left tried beating the Tories over the head with the NHS, again. That photo of the boy on a hospital floor was a good one, wasn’t it? Accusations of fake news from one side, of trolling on the other. All I’d observe from this report is that the hospital only apologised for having nothing but chairs to sit on rather than a trolley, so why the lad was on the ground is a puzzle.
I am also mystified by the empty gravity-feed drip bag lying uselessly across him - and tubes not attached to the nose in the second photo:
... especially since he was still waiting to be seen?
Yes, the NHS is under intense pressure. Partly because it can do much more than it used to; partly because demand then rises even faster than supply; partly because of drugs, drunkenness, quarrels ‘getting stabby’, self-harm and all the other symptoms of a country in moral crisis. And I certainly hold no brief for the chirpy Jeremy Hunt or his hapless successor, but the job description of Health Secretary appears to include ‘scapegoat’, as the Bethany case shows.
And yet, however much you spend, you still have to mind the shop. Let me give you an illustrative case history.
My good friend Jim (name changed) was driving a couple of family members somewhere when an idiot in a window-darkened fast car shot out of a side street at him. Having quick reflexes, Jim swerved clear but then hit a series of three unfilled potholes, jarring his spine. Though in his late seventies, Jim was fit and active – a keen archer – and so it was some time before the back pain intensified to the point where he was X-rayed and vertebral displacement discovered.
When you are old, the system writes you off. Jim told me his GP gave him three plan options, all of which amounted to palliative care. He was to slide bedridden down the helter-skelter into the slot, with painkillers to ease the way.
But Jim wasn’t a quitter, and was highly intelligent. He scoured the internet and found a surgeon able to do the operation to fix his back. It succeeded; now for the physio program to get him back on his feet. Jim was moved to another hospital for the recuperation phase.
The first thing was, Hospital Two took his bed – a highly specialised one – and swapped it for another that was shorter, so that his feet were constantly pressing against the end. There was a hoist next to him, to get him to a chair for a couple of hours each day as part of the rehabilitation program. A couple of times, the staff managed to bump his toes painfully in the process; and increasingly it seems, they just didn’t get him out of bed at all.
Jim had suffered from sleep apnoea for many years, and had a CPAP machine to pump air at night. But nurses tidying busily disturbed the mechanism, which then got blocked with its water. So when I first visited him in hospital he hadn’t slept for four nights. The nurses, often clustered around the workstation outside the ward, hadn’t noticed. I got that sorted, and in subsequent visits kept Jim supplied with newspapers and magazines to keep his active brain occupied; and a squeezy ball to exercise his slowly wasting arm muscles. They were eventually tidied (thrown) away.
Jim didn’t feel safe there, and wanted to go home – and no, he wasn’t demented. So a fresh home care plan was made and he had an adjustable bed delivered, plus a hoist. But soon after that the family were told not to use the hoist, since they weren’t expert and his wife was about his age. Flat in bed he lay, muscles weakening and even a slight angling up becoming more challenging for him.
Then there was the drugs program. The first painkillers tended to have constipation as a side effect, so Jim was also given laxatives to counteract this. But then the pain prescription was changed yet the laxatives continued, causing constant and strength-sapping diarrhoea until the foul-up was realised.
Speaking of pharmaceuticals, there were some he had never had, and should have had. Jim’s X-ray from the year before had also shown a shadow on his liver; but the technician hadn’t noticed. This was the ‘cloud no bigger than a man’s hand’ that was heading his way. I asked Jim what they were giving him to fight the cancer: nothing.
I last saw him in the hospice – he lasted only a few days there. His passing was peaceful. But long premature.
I don’t think money alone would have solved all this. It needed the close attention of a Stuart Rose, or a Philip Green; detail managers. Semi-ignored plans and responsibility sign-offs aren’t enough.
Money, of course; but money employed to best effect.
Friday, December 13, 2019
FRIDAY MUSIC: Juletide Yazz, by JD
A Christmas selection for jazz lovers. Please note that the last video might be offensive to the puritanical youth of today as well as those who have had the statutory humour bypass (available free on the NHS):
Thursday, December 12, 2019
A Trendy Moniker, by Wiggiatlarge
When I was young a double barrelled surname would indicate someone from the upper crust, rarely did the lower reaches of society lay claim to such a fancy moniker.
The origins of such grandiose surnames goes back in time to when in this country the second surname was incorporated for heritable reasons, when there was no male descendant bearing the name and otherwise it would have become extinct.
In other countries there are other reasons for double barrelled surnames but that does not concern us here.
The use of a hyphen in all cases is optional and at the discretion of the people involved. Some families have both the hyphenated and the non versions in another branch of the family; the non hyphen versions cause the most trouble as often the first of the two surnames is taken as a forename.
There are even triple and quadruple barrelled versions; almost all involved landed gentry consolidating estates by marriage.
Why would I be interested in this rather arcane practice? Well, strangely I have a brother whose son has a double barrelled surname. Why they inflicted that on him with my surname as it is, is a mystery, but the business name of my brother and his wife (they live in Switzerland) is double barrelled and they for reasons of their own have given the son not just the double barrelled surname but a forename he will not thank them for in his adulthood; strange world.
But the current trend in these surnames has exploded of late. Watching Match of the Day I could not help but notice the number of footballers with double barrelled surnames emblazoned with difficulty across the back of their shirts; it now seems every Premier League team has a least one in the eleven, some have two or more. I am not really sure why; perhaps it has something to do with the growing preference for adult 'partnerships' over formal marriage. It is almost as if the non-primary-carer parent is staking a claim by imposing this naming. I could be wrong but there is a prevalence in that group of players; one of the first I noticed was Arsenal player Ian Wright's son, Shaun Wright - Phillips; in this case it is for the purposes of identity as Ian has eight kids by four mums ! Plus Shaun was adopted, all very complicated.
But I would assume that is not the norm ? and is there now a trend in taking two surnames simply because you can. Football would be a natural proving ground for such a trend, perhaps the tattoos and ridiculous haircuts have had their day, and the more trendy footballers or their parents are looking for the next thing, double barrelled surnames. We have after all had plenty of celebrities lumbering their offspring with forenames that beggar belief: certain pop stars and the likes of Jamie Oliver showed complete disregard for their offspring, planting names on them that should never have seen the light of day and will provide ridicule for years ahead for the poor kids, you have to have a serious deficiency to do that to a child.
Of course in the USA they have had the strange habit of naming kids in subsequent generations with the same name as the father and as the generations also have children we get the addition of Roman numerals after the names, the second third fourth etc. God help us if this is revived and becomes trendy here and is tagged onto double barrelled surnames, footballers will have to have enough room on their shirts for a paragraph.
Having a surname that is unusual, well it is in the South, has its moments and I remember a man I worked with in the sixties whose surname was Badcock who spent his time on the phone pronouncing it as in Cockburn's Port; the problem was nobody ever approached him and said that, it must have been a nightmare.
Names can be fascinating. Often they have a historical context and are a rich source of the English language. But they also promote an image: who after all would go and see a film star called Bernard Schwartz (Tony Curtis), or Archibald Leach (Cary Grant)? Not quite the same ring to them there.
And I finish with an oft told true story from my misspent youth. One of my friends had the use of his governor's MK 10 Jaguar at the weekends, but only for himself and direct family, all else was forbidden. But this weekend it was decided that four of us including the driver would go up west and have a night out in said car. All went well, until returning home: just a hundred odd yards from where we all lived we were stopped by police for the obvious reason - it looked dodgy having four youths in such a car.
The usual questions were asked and the driver was near breakdown as he saw this as a way to lose his job having broken the rules of usage. Anyway it then got to the stage of wanting the names of all the occupants and one by one we furnished them: the driver was Irvin Levy, the next was George Archibald, the third was (later my best man when I married) Lew Finesilver - it was a very Jewish area, you may have gathered - and lastly myself, John Wigglesworth. Having reached myself the plain clothes officer threw his notebook down and said, “Stop f****** about, now give us your real names,” and threatened us bodily harm if we didn’t. After much protest I was allowed to hot foot it across the road to get proof of identity from my parents' flat and all was grudgingly accepted.
Names, they can get you into a lot of trouble !
The origins of such grandiose surnames goes back in time to when in this country the second surname was incorporated for heritable reasons, when there was no male descendant bearing the name and otherwise it would have become extinct.
In other countries there are other reasons for double barrelled surnames but that does not concern us here.
The use of a hyphen in all cases is optional and at the discretion of the people involved. Some families have both the hyphenated and the non versions in another branch of the family; the non hyphen versions cause the most trouble as often the first of the two surnames is taken as a forename.
There are even triple and quadruple barrelled versions; almost all involved landed gentry consolidating estates by marriage.
Why would I be interested in this rather arcane practice? Well, strangely I have a brother whose son has a double barrelled surname. Why they inflicted that on him with my surname as it is, is a mystery, but the business name of my brother and his wife (they live in Switzerland) is double barrelled and they for reasons of their own have given the son not just the double barrelled surname but a forename he will not thank them for in his adulthood; strange world.
But the current trend in these surnames has exploded of late. Watching Match of the Day I could not help but notice the number of footballers with double barrelled surnames emblazoned with difficulty across the back of their shirts; it now seems every Premier League team has a least one in the eleven, some have two or more. I am not really sure why; perhaps it has something to do with the growing preference for adult 'partnerships' over formal marriage. It is almost as if the non-primary-carer parent is staking a claim by imposing this naming. I could be wrong but there is a prevalence in that group of players; one of the first I noticed was Arsenal player Ian Wright's son, Shaun Wright - Phillips; in this case it is for the purposes of identity as Ian has eight kids by four mums ! Plus Shaun was adopted, all very complicated.
But I would assume that is not the norm ? and is there now a trend in taking two surnames simply because you can. Football would be a natural proving ground for such a trend, perhaps the tattoos and ridiculous haircuts have had their day, and the more trendy footballers or their parents are looking for the next thing, double barrelled surnames. We have after all had plenty of celebrities lumbering their offspring with forenames that beggar belief: certain pop stars and the likes of Jamie Oliver showed complete disregard for their offspring, planting names on them that should never have seen the light of day and will provide ridicule for years ahead for the poor kids, you have to have a serious deficiency to do that to a child.
Of course in the USA they have had the strange habit of naming kids in subsequent generations with the same name as the father and as the generations also have children we get the addition of Roman numerals after the names, the second third fourth etc. God help us if this is revived and becomes trendy here and is tagged onto double barrelled surnames, footballers will have to have enough room on their shirts for a paragraph.
Having a surname that is unusual, well it is in the South, has its moments and I remember a man I worked with in the sixties whose surname was Badcock who spent his time on the phone pronouncing it as in Cockburn's Port; the problem was nobody ever approached him and said that, it must have been a nightmare.
Names can be fascinating. Often they have a historical context and are a rich source of the English language. But they also promote an image: who after all would go and see a film star called Bernard Schwartz (Tony Curtis), or Archibald Leach (Cary Grant)? Not quite the same ring to them there.
And I finish with an oft told true story from my misspent youth. One of my friends had the use of his governor's MK 10 Jaguar at the weekends, but only for himself and direct family, all else was forbidden. But this weekend it was decided that four of us including the driver would go up west and have a night out in said car. All went well, until returning home: just a hundred odd yards from where we all lived we were stopped by police for the obvious reason - it looked dodgy having four youths in such a car.
The usual questions were asked and the driver was near breakdown as he saw this as a way to lose his job having broken the rules of usage. Anyway it then got to the stage of wanting the names of all the occupants and one by one we furnished them: the driver was Irvin Levy, the next was George Archibald, the third was (later my best man when I married) Lew Finesilver - it was a very Jewish area, you may have gathered - and lastly myself, John Wigglesworth. Having reached myself the plain clothes officer threw his notebook down and said, “Stop f****** about, now give us your real names,” and threatened us bodily harm if we didn’t. After much protest I was allowed to hot foot it across the road to get proof of identity from my parents' flat and all was grudgingly accepted.
Names, they can get you into a lot of trouble !
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Election Special, by JD
We know this is just another Whitehall Farce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_farce so there is no point in taking it seriously -
Dozens more at Dutch Wogan - not sure if any of these are libellous!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-DYnJtsTeIYL61yoQrp-0A
Pour yourself a wee dram and look forward to:
Dozens more at Dutch Wogan - not sure if any of these are libellous!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-DYnJtsTeIYL61yoQrp-0A
Pour yourself a wee dram and look forward to:
GE: Politicians Make A Monkey Out Of Us
On my doorstep stood the chimp and his trainer, asking for my vote. What issues were of concern to me? A referendum on the EU, I said (this was 2010). We had a referendum in 1975, said Bonzo. No! I replied, that was the EEC and we were told it was about trade. The Labour minder’s face – she was obviously the brains of the outfit - betrayed amusement at his ineptitude (Mark McCormack was right: always go into a meeting alone).
This was the first time in twenty years anyone from any party had called in person. Prior to 1997 I had been represented by a Labour grandee and the only time I saw or heard him was when he toured the constituency in a tannoy car to say so long and thanks for all the fish. Then the boundaries were redrawn and the (still rock-solid Red) seat was gifted to a London-based nebbish - even now I have had to Google to get his name.
All went well for the heir, even in 2001, by which time my feelings about Blair had hardened into certainty: Smiler was dangerously mad and so I protest-voted Tory for the first time in my life, not that it was going to make the slightest difference.
Some commenters on my last piece deplored British political tribalism and warned against PR because it breaks the link between an MP and his constituents. I completely agree – and yet, what link? No wonder I went by the headquarters organ-grinder: I never saw the monkey.
Until 2010: another Boundary Commission Etch-A-Sketch job and Lucky Boy was no longer in charge of me. So now a LibDem candidate turned up too, contemplating me owlishly. Issues? Europe: I sensed a sag, a weary contempt. But he got in, and when I emailed him in 2011 about sovereignty he replied ‘The EU has no power over parliament. In fact the Lisbon Treaty included a change for a provision to leave the EU. Parliament can simply refuse to incorporate EU law and in my view should be a bit more critical.’ I look forward to expert comment on that.
Aaand… back to the idea of service to constituents. In 2012 I tried to get him to ask a question at PMQs, about restoring public access to NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates. At this time I was still an IFA and was concerned that one of the first acts of a new “Conservative”-led coalition government was to pave the way for rogering the people’s money with inflation – which they did, as you will have seen since (only global recession has stopped it really taking off, to date).
Commenters talk about the electoral system being unfit for purpose. It’s worse than that: never mind the promotion, look at the product. The MP’s first response was to recast the query as an official letter, and the Treasury Lord who responded gave me two pages of what-we-are doing-for-savers guff that absolutely did not address the question. I responded, “It is not at all up to the standard that I would expect from a Treasury mind; in fact, it is little short of a disgrace,” and pressed for an oral question.
Well! Would you believe how hard it was to get a Tam Dalyell-type gimlet thrust at a Minister in the debating chamber? The correspondence ground on and almost a year later the MP’s researcher had drafted the following - I think it’s worth recording for posterity:
'To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he has taken or plans to undertake to maintain the value of savings against increased inflation or devaluations of the pound, if he has given thought to the taxation of savings by the Exchequer in various forms putting off individuals from saving some of their earned income by eroding the investments value, if he shares a concern that efforts to tax the small scale saved income of individuals to rescue financial institutions, such as measures debated by the Cypriot Parliament recently as part of the European Union’s and International Monetary Funds’ bailout terms undermine general confidence and what measures he can or will take to reassure individual savers that their investment will not be used to rescue institutions which have grossly mismanaged their affairs and thus be penalised, via the reduction of the value of their savings, for the mistakes of risk takers on a systemic financial level.’
Most amusing. Of course, it never happened and was never going to, though my representative was happy enough to ask other questions of interest to him and to strain Parliamentary privilege while he was about it. I suppose he was reluctant to sow discord in the Con-LibDem love-match then ongoing.
Let’s face it, whoever you get and however you get them (AV is my preference), who are they going to listen to: an electorate misinformed and manipulated once every five years, or the bosses and buddies they encounter every working day in Westminster?
I do like the suggestion of MP recall – perhaps an ‘annual performance examination (APE)’?
Meanwhile, good luck selecting your own!
This was the first time in twenty years anyone from any party had called in person. Prior to 1997 I had been represented by a Labour grandee and the only time I saw or heard him was when he toured the constituency in a tannoy car to say so long and thanks for all the fish. Then the boundaries were redrawn and the (still rock-solid Red) seat was gifted to a London-based nebbish - even now I have had to Google to get his name.
All went well for the heir, even in 2001, by which time my feelings about Blair had hardened into certainty: Smiler was dangerously mad and so I protest-voted Tory for the first time in my life, not that it was going to make the slightest difference.
Some commenters on my last piece deplored British political tribalism and warned against PR because it breaks the link between an MP and his constituents. I completely agree – and yet, what link? No wonder I went by the headquarters organ-grinder: I never saw the monkey.
Until 2010: another Boundary Commission Etch-A-Sketch job and Lucky Boy was no longer in charge of me. So now a LibDem candidate turned up too, contemplating me owlishly. Issues? Europe: I sensed a sag, a weary contempt. But he got in, and when I emailed him in 2011 about sovereignty he replied ‘The EU has no power over parliament. In fact the Lisbon Treaty included a change for a provision to leave the EU. Parliament can simply refuse to incorporate EU law and in my view should be a bit more critical.’ I look forward to expert comment on that.
Aaand… back to the idea of service to constituents. In 2012 I tried to get him to ask a question at PMQs, about restoring public access to NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates. At this time I was still an IFA and was concerned that one of the first acts of a new “Conservative”-led coalition government was to pave the way for rogering the people’s money with inflation – which they did, as you will have seen since (only global recession has stopped it really taking off, to date).
Commenters talk about the electoral system being unfit for purpose. It’s worse than that: never mind the promotion, look at the product. The MP’s first response was to recast the query as an official letter, and the Treasury Lord who responded gave me two pages of what-we-are doing-for-savers guff that absolutely did not address the question. I responded, “It is not at all up to the standard that I would expect from a Treasury mind; in fact, it is little short of a disgrace,” and pressed for an oral question.
Well! Would you believe how hard it was to get a Tam Dalyell-type gimlet thrust at a Minister in the debating chamber? The correspondence ground on and almost a year later the MP’s researcher had drafted the following - I think it’s worth recording for posterity:
'To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he has taken or plans to undertake to maintain the value of savings against increased inflation or devaluations of the pound, if he has given thought to the taxation of savings by the Exchequer in various forms putting off individuals from saving some of their earned income by eroding the investments value, if he shares a concern that efforts to tax the small scale saved income of individuals to rescue financial institutions, such as measures debated by the Cypriot Parliament recently as part of the European Union’s and International Monetary Funds’ bailout terms undermine general confidence and what measures he can or will take to reassure individual savers that their investment will not be used to rescue institutions which have grossly mismanaged their affairs and thus be penalised, via the reduction of the value of their savings, for the mistakes of risk takers on a systemic financial level.’
Most amusing. Of course, it never happened and was never going to, though my representative was happy enough to ask other questions of interest to him and to strain Parliamentary privilege while he was about it. I suppose he was reluctant to sow discord in the Con-LibDem love-match then ongoing.
Let’s face it, whoever you get and however you get them (AV is my preference), who are they going to listen to: an electorate misinformed and manipulated once every five years, or the bosses and buddies they encounter every working day in Westminster?
I do like the suggestion of MP recall – perhaps an ‘annual performance examination (APE)’?
Meanwhile, good luck selecting your own!
Sunday, December 08, 2019
A choice between traitors - new post on "The Conservative Woman"
Yesterday's Broad Oak post has been published - very slightly edited - on The Conservative Woman:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/labour-traitors-v-tory-traitors-the-choice-were-stuck-with/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/labour-traitors-v-tory-traitors-the-choice-were-stuck-with/
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