“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

 A question for the over-50s who grew up in Britain; how were the 1970s for you? 

This week, the Tavern’s Wise Woman described with astonishment hearing some younger friends reminiscing about a golden age of hot summers and fun - a far cry from her own memories of struggling through a decade of strikes, inflation and high taxes, not to mention mortgage rates of 15%

Perhaps the few extra years make the difference; while her juniors were still enjoying the burgeoning of pop music, cheap fashion, exotic food, foreign travel and colour television, she had moved on to domestic responsibilities - strike-generated power-cuts, shortages and transport problems might seem trivial or even amusing if you are young, free and single but rather less so to anyone with a family to support or caring for infant or elderly dependents. 

We have reached a point where the three-day week and the Winter of Discontent are more mythology than history, eclipsed for anyone between 50 and 65 - and perhaps for a number of senior Labour figures - by the positive aspects of a decade that was, in general, a fine time to be a child; it was the adults who bore the brunt of the extensive strikes by transport and haulage workers, gravediggers and refuse collectors or the NHS hospitals closed by picket lines.

With the unions flexing their muscles - even the NEU has been calling for the return of flying pickets and the closed shop - and a Deputy Prime Minister arguably promoted beyond her capabilities because of trade union backing, it looks as if we are about to see George Santayana proved right once again.

The Dunning-Kruger Cabinet strikes again

From today’s news, a chilling insight into the processes of what passes for thought in our current government; in the words of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury:

“We have inherited a £22bn black hole in the country’s public finances, including no plan to fund pay deals for millions of public sector workers. 

Strikes cost at least £3bn last year, so it was the right thing to do to end those damaging disputes.”

How comforting for those with the broadest shoulders - the impoverished elderly struggling with fuel bills, the children priced out of their schools and the people of modest means who have scrimped and saved for years to build up a nest-egg for their families - to know that their sacrifices are not being made in vain!

And how satisfying for Labour to bask in the warm glow of their own wisdom and generosity, knowing that they have saved the day by giving the doctors and train drivers what they asked for; after all, it’s not as if they or any other union would think of striking now, is it?

If only the Left had not cancelled Kipling, they might have learnt a useful thing or two…

…So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, 

    You will find it better policy to say:–

"We never pay anyone Dane-geld,

    No matter how trifling the cost;

For the end of that game is oppression and shame, 

    And the nation that plays it is lost!"

Update: less than a fortnight later…

‘Teachers, doctors and firefighters lashed out at Rachel Reeves after she said generous public sector pay rises would require improved productivity.’ (Telegraph)

Turning the Screw

Remember Morton’s Fork; political chicanery, fifteenth-century style, from Henry VII’s Chancellor - “You’re spending lavishly so you can clearly afford to pay more tax to the King” or, “You’re spending next to nothing so you can clearly afford… etc.”? Our modern-day equivalent, for the nearly-poor over 65s at least, is Reeves’ Ratchet Reversal. 

It goes something like this: 

• The cost of living rises and finances are tight, then the pension goes up to match and you can balance the books once more. 

• The cost of living rises further, the pension rises again to match. 

• The cost of living rises yet further but, at this point, Reeves steps in: “You have a pension increase due soon, so you clearly don’t need any help with your heating costs: no WFA for you this year!

 …at which point the whole process grinds to a shuddering halt as cold weather approaches and, with it, some of the highest household energy costs in the world; all well and good if you are reasonably well-off or had plenty of warning to prepare for the loss of the expected payment, less so if you are living on £221.20 a week and it is sprung on you after the nights have already started drawing in.

Never mind that the Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to be effectively double-counting (which is not reassuring!) and that the higher pension rate was calculated based on other increases in the cost of living already in effect or, for that matter, that the ‘shopping basket’ used to calculate CPI contains many things pensioners wouldn’t necessarily want or need and their real-terms percentage increase may be higher; theirs are the broad shoulders to be burdened with the Herculean tasks of filling the black hole in the public purse, saving the NHS and preventing a run on the pound. 

It’s a poor return for the elderly without private or company pensions who have paid a working lifetime’s worth of NI in the firm belief (backed, for some, by government assurances) that the state would look after them with dignity in their old age or the women who, more than half a century ago, were expected to give up work to raise their families. While the Left bandy about the oft-repeated - and irrelevant - fallacy that a quarter of pensioners are millionaires, some two million people receive nothing but the state pension; too much now to qualify for the WFA but little enough for the loss of an expected £200 to be a significant blow.

La Niña is predicted to bring us a cold start to the winter with strong northerly winds and and possible early snowfall, so, before long, those clever little display units sitting on shelves up and down the country, intended to placate the environmental lobby by making consumers aware of their energy consumption, will become a constant source of anxiety to the impoverished elderly as they show the pounds and pence of fuel debt inexorably clocking up minute by minute. 

A report commissioned by Labour* a few years ago produced an estimated figure of 3870 extra deaths if the payment were limited to those on pension credit. While it is to be hoped that families, charities and the wider community will do what they can for those in need - though it’s shocking that this should be necessary in a supposedly civilised country - many lone and isolated individuals will still slip through the net, spending their last days in fear and despair before finally succumbing to the cold. 

With winter fast approaching, it won’t be long before our hospitals (and morgues) start to deal with the consequences of pensioners afraid to turn on their central heating. The government will doubtless disclaim all responsibility and say it is a matter of choice - after all, who, in today’s easy credit society, would understand an older generation’s visceral aversion to going into debt? - but it remains to be seen what the effect on the public will be once the deaths start mounting up.

 

According to a contemporary chronicler, Morton ‘lyved not withoute the greate Disdayne and greate Haterede of the Commons of thys Lande’; from the evidence of the past few months, Reeves looks very much on course to be doing the same.

*from the Resolution Foundation under its then CEO Torsten Bell; he is now a Labour MP and PPS to the Cabinet office, so presumably the party still stands by its findings.

“You scratch my friend’s back…”

Typical! You wait ages for a story about a Baroness and then two come along (almost) at once. This time, it’s Baroness Uddin, whose brazen request to be reinstated to the Lords so she could use the daily allowance to repay the wrongful expense claims for which she was suspended in the first place caused much amusement twelve years ago - has it really been that long? - and who was finally bailed out by four benefactors to the tune of £124,000.

Two of those donors represented the Islam Channel, a TV station with some rather dubious history and possible connections, and a third, it now turns out, was none other than Lord Alli, the Cabinet’s Universal Provider of Good Things and furnisher of designer duds and luxury accommodation to the Starmer ménage; he and the Baroness go back a long way, having both been elevated to the peerage (as Blair creations) on the same day back in 1998 and, by 2012, were clearly on “Here’s £62,000 to tide you over” terms.

Of course, it may simply have been that Lord Alli and the others couldn’t bear the sight of Baroness Uddin’s sad little face when the stern Lords of the Committee locked her out of Parliament but, given the amounts of money concerned, a cynic could surely be forgiven for looking at the fingers she has in various diplomatic and international pies and asking some awkward questions.

Fortunately for the Baroness, Keir Starmer as DPP, ruled ‘after careful scrutiny of the evidence’, that there was no criminal case to answer - despite the testimony of neighbours, household bills, Baroness Uddin’s own Facebook account, the electoral register and even her own husband and family that her claims were fraudulent - because ‘a senior parliamentary official ruled that a peer's "main house" might be a place they visit only once a month’ (presumably dating back to the time when being Lord So-and-so of Somewhere meant having a country seat with all the associated hereditary obligations [rather than a two-bedroom flat in Maidstone]).

Leaving aside that, by that definition, I could claim to be permanently resident in the compost heap at the bottom of my garden, it all seems a little odd; it could be entirely coincidental that a close associate of Lord Alli’s was once let off a serious legal hook and restored to the political stage by Starmer on a technicality of startling flimsiness but, in the light of the nature and magnitude of the subsequent personal freebies received from Lord Alli by the former DPP, surely we are now entitled to ask whether it’s not merely a case of quid pro quo but also quid ante quo.

In the light of past posts, it seems only fitting to finish with a reprise from ‘Expenses - the Musical’ (with apologies to the late, great Freddie Mercury)

She keeps a home down in Wapping,

Where subsidies help pay the rent,

A mansion in Bangladesh,

And don’t forget the flat in Kent,

Pressed for a remedy, she says she’s in penury, 

But once she’s back in Westminster then all will be fine;

Three hundred quid a day she’ll get,

She’ll use your cash to pay her debt

Extraordinarily nice!

She's Manzila Uddin, 

Baroness of Bethnal Green,

House of Lords expenses queen; 

Her arrant greed will blow your mind.

Lady Gone Red

It’s a time-honoured novel and film plot device; the girl who seems like a friend at first but gradually starts emulating another’s behaviour, clothes and jewellery and eventually hairstyle and colour, at which point things inevitably start to get creepy/violent depending on the genre.

What, then, are we to make of Rachel Reeves makeover?* Gone is the stern dark bob of her WFA announcement and conference speech and, in its place, she now sports a straightened hairdo in a shade of red all too familiar to those opposite the Front Bench, accessorised with bright red outfits and chunky gold hoop earrings.

What’s next; 4am clubbing in Ibiza? Pints of venom and multi-packs of vapes? At the very least, this is what happens when a quiet, studious fifth-former - the one who plays the violin and always hands her work in on time - suddenly falls under the spell of the class Queen Bee and starts to draw ink tattoos on her hands and wear black nail varnish.

For a nation facing an uncertain economic future, a Prime Minister who should, perhaps, have picked his friends more carefully and conflict in the Middle East, Reeves cosplaying Rayner is all a bit too ‘Gone Girl’, ‘Single White Female’ etc. for comfort - at least for those of us who’d like some sane grown-ups in charge for once.

* A clue to the reason might be found in the sudden popularity of this clip after she announced the cut to the Winter Fuel Allowance…