A man with a squirrel on his head

The increasing ubiquity of IT means that, like, I suspect, many of our generation, we spend a fair amount of time attempting to provide long-distance tech support by phone for older relatives baffled by the workings of an iPad or the intricacies of the internet, often because they find themselves with no alternative but to go online for some essential transaction.

By and large, they’re all pretty competent with general browsing, emails and so on, but every now and then something goes awry: the title comes from a particularly surreal recent conversation where three attempts to send a link to an instruction video from a company’s website - a link we had both previously tested ourselves - elicited a baffled “But it’s a film of the weather forecast, dear” and then “All I’ve got is some people on a beach”, finally followed by “Now it’s a man with a squirrel on his head”.

Part of the problem is that the idea of proceeding by trial and error - the essence of learning to handle an iPad, phone or PC - is an alien one to a generation brought up to be careful and to avoid mistakes wherever possible; ‘click it and see what happens’ is not their natural reaction to a problem. It’s even worse for those who had experience of early computers at work many decades ago; they still suffer from the fear of failure learned in the days when a single error in input or timing could crash the whole system.

In a sane and humane world, they would be free to ignore the existence of the internet apart from its usefulness for entertainment or family and social communications. However, the increasing difficulty in carrying out day-to-day interactions with public services and businesses by any other means forces them into using it; companies and government offices alike are striving, to use the revealingly demeaning official term, to ‘drive customers online”.

It’s something I wrote about in 2017 and, since then, the pace has, if anything, accelerated, especially since Covid closed workplaces and obliged customers and clients to deal remotely with isolated workers, many of whom are still working from home nearly three years on. The telephone helplines nominally still exist but these days, if they are answered at all, there’s a strong chance of being cut off or left on hold while someone lets the dog out and no possibility of the call being passed to a supervisor or someone with better information.

It’s all well and good to put everything online and reduce telephone communication to a bare minimum to keep costs down but, in a world of online scams and cyber-crime, to rely on it to the exclusion of everything else is not only cruelly staking the least tech-savvy customers out like captive goats for scamming predators (as well as disenfranchising many with physical or visual impairments which prevent them from using the technology); it is also exposing all of us to risk, defended only by the weakest links in the security chain.

And that, of course, is before the inexplicable glitch, the solar flare or the cyber-attack which brings the whole thing crashing down; one day, firms - and government and health agencies - may have cause to regret putting all their eggs in the online basket. In the meantime, while it’s all still working, spare a thought for everyone unwillingly compelled to negotiate the mysteries of the internet and ending up with a man with a squirrel on his head.

Political Kryptonite

I’m afraid I have shamelessly stolen the title from a comment at A K Haart’s place in which Sobers points out that simply cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance for higher-rate taxpayers would not have raised enough revenue to justify the administrative costs:

‘It was always an all or nothing decision, total abolition raises a decent sum when you have pay rises for well paid 'public servants' to be paid for, the question really remains which bright spark in the Treasury suggested it, and what on earth made Reeves not dismiss it as obvious political kryptonite?’

I agree with Sobers that it may be paving the way for future tax increases but, leaving aside the fact that Reeves appears so far out of her depth she should be obliged to address the House in a pair of inflatable armbands (this is, after all, the woman who ‘found it hard to manage’ on a salary of £94k - to say nothing of her husband’s income - and had to get professional help with her tax returns), I suspect that the input of the numerous think tanks, pressure groups and lobbyists behind Labour’s policies also has a lot to do with it.

We have repeatedly seen an apparent lack of concern for the facts or hard data in favour of campaign statistics, theorising and figures seemingly plucked from thin air; the WFA cut, VAT on school fees and the inheritance tax for farmers were all proposed within a few months, apparently without any attempt to carry out impact assessments or in-depth research (take the case of Bridget Phillipson, who actually boasted of her refusal to visit any independent schools or meet their representatives while planning to impose VAT on the sector).

This is, of course, standard practice in opposition, where it’s all hypothetical and no one checks your workings. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Reeves, Starmer & co have fully grasped the fact that they are now responsible for the welfare of actual human beings rather than cyphers in the game of political rhetoric, fair game to be lavishly denounced for their presumed opinions (especially on Brexit) or castigated for attempting to give their children a head start.

In the case of the WFA, it is, I think, not impossible that Treasury thinking was influenced by the statement, frequently repeated in news articles and comments, that ‘one in four pensioners is a millionaire’ (a misleading over-simplification of ONS figures which double-counts the shared assets of couples while, at the same time, grossly over-estimating house values outside the capital). It took a while to track it to its source, a 2022 press release from a high-profile campaign group calling for ‘an end to intergenerational unfairness’ (with, naturally, a vested interest in dramatically overstating the wealth of the elderly).

A significant proportion of pensioners on low incomes are homeowners still occupying the former family home - many of them because of Right to Buy - and the Intergenerational Foundation wants them to sell up and move to more ‘suitable’ accommodation, potentially freeing up tens of thousands of houses for young families; it’s easy to see how, encouraged by the strident campaign against under-occupancy and facing a massive housing shortage, the government might seize on the opportunity to cut their WFA and effectively increase their heating bills as a sharp incentive to downsize.*

At the same time, Ed Miliband’s net zero people must have been casting around for new and exciting ways to stop people using energy. Given the blinkered approach which has led to target-driven initiatives with no thought for potential long-term consequences (and rookie errors such as basing costings on maximum potential output instead of real-world performance), I find it worryingly plausible that a single-minded zealot in the ranks might have managed to convince the high-ups that paying pensioners to turn on their heating was a Bad Thing.

With both these angles being persuasively pushed - and, as theTavern’s wise woman has frequently observed, growing contempt for and demonisation of the elderly in the media for their supposed outdated values and opinions (remember Ian McEwen blaming Brexit on ‘a gang of angry old men’?) - it’s easy to see how a certain limited mentality could entirely miss the political Kryptonite aspect and, instead, see cutting the WFA as a golden opportunity; gain £1.3bn, save the planet, free up housing and give rich, racist grandma one in the eye to boot - what’s not to like?

 

*Recent ONS figures for property ownership - some 80% of pensioner households with an annual income of £20k a year or less own their own homes - might also explain why Labour are now ignoring their own 2017 assertion that cutting the WFA would lead to extra winter deaths; if asset-rich elderly homeowners choose to turn off the heating to save money, adverse consequences can be attributed to their own miserliness rather than laid at the government’s door.

A brief rumination

Much fuss has been made recently about Bovaer, the feed additive designed to reduce the methane emission of dairy cattle, and the concern about its effect on milk for human consumption due to its ingredients (silicon dioxide, propylene glycol and 3-nitrooxypropanol).

To read the triumphant trumpetings of its developers (or, for that matter, the BBC verify ‘fact-check’ article), you’d think the development of the supplement was a gigantic leap forward for science and the answer to a hitherto insoluble and world-threatening problem - it’s almost the stuff of science fiction: who’d have guessed that feeding anti-freeze to cows would save the planet? (As they say, I think I’ve seen this movie; it doesn’t end well…)

This seems odd since, some fourteen years ago, researchers at Newcastle University found that adding ground-up coriander, turmeric and cumin significantly reduced methane emissions in sheep by 40%, 30% and 22% respectively (comparing favourably to Bovaer’s estimates of 35-45% in cattle). It sounds pretty sensible - all natural, no need to worry about getting the dose exactly right and very much in keeping with a wild-grazing animal’s varied intake of plants.

Perhaps subsequent research discovered unexpected problems with using curry spices - rather sadly for the cows, who might have enjoyed the flavour - but a cynic would be forgiven for thinking that it is unlikely anyone could claim a monopoly on bovine garam masala and so, outside the ivory tower of academia, real-world laboratories persisted in the search for a new, unique and above all patentable formula.

With some 9 million cattle in the UK and an estimated cost of £70 per year per animal, the developers of Bovaer are clearly keen to get a head start in the race to harness the cow that laid the golden cowpats, although they do have some competition, including a seaweed derivative, a blend of citrus and garlic  - I’m really not drinking any milk from those cows: remember the butter with a “twang” in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’?  - and, most bizarrely of all, a sort of yashmak which converts methane burps to carbon dioxide.

Like so many ‘green’ initiatives, there’s the potential for a wonderful exercise in distraction; after all, the planet did just fine, apparently, when 70 million bison roamed the Great Plains. In fact, there’s an idea; rather than just sitting back and watching the money roll in, maybe the Bovaer scientists should be obliged to run lengthy field tests in person on an assortment of American bison, musk oxen and Cape buffalo, preferably on camera, before they are allowed to tinker with our precious livestock.

(For an impressively clear explanation of Daisy’s internal workings and some interesting views on the subject, I suggest a visit to Leg-Iron’s place: https://underdogsbiteupwards.wordpress.com/2024/11/29/the-fart-of-doom)

“It’s the way I tell ‘em”

In what must be one of the most inappropriate speeches ever to (dis)grace the benches of the House of Lords (text in full here), the Archbishop of Canterbury’s valedictory address turned out to be a truly astonishing example of crass, self-righteous egotism and ill-judged humour, complete with a gag about who won when ‘revolting peasants’ played football with the severed head of one of his predecessors.

I’ve been torn between rage at his failure to take full responsibility for his ‘lack of curiosity’ and ‘tendency to minimise’ the problem in the case of John Smyth, especially in the wake of numerous other poor decisions and errors of judgement, and a certain horrified amusement at his spectacular failure to read the room or the mood of the country at large. That I have given way to the latter and tried to capture the bizarrely incongruous tone of the speech in music is in no way intended to trivialise or disrespect those who have suffered as a result of Welby’s actions (or inaction).

I’ve stuck pretty closely to the content of his speech and yes, along with the egocentric and tastelessly facetious opening remarks - and after referring to the Church of England’s past safeguarding failures - he really did make a light-hearted comment about being unable to find his way around the Palace of Westminster and using the carpet colour to navigate.

(There’s an incisive take on this story at Eccles is Saved.)

(The Archbishop of Canterbury kicks off at 2m14s.)

My lords, it’s said quite often

- A cliché, yes, but hey,

With my Archbishop’s hat on I am still allowed to say 

That God finds it amusing

When planning goes astray;

I bet he’s up there laughing as I speak to you today.

My diary secretary has had a lot to do;

All that rearranging has left him feeling blue,

But for the Church’s failures

A head must roll, they say,

And I’m in charge so that is why I’m bowing out today.

Whether I am culpable depends upon your view,

But resignation’s called for, so that’s what I have to do.

I still get lost around here

So, once I’ve had my say, 

Please show me the red carpet and then I’ll be on my way.

A

The Sunday Songbook - ‘Oh Mr Miliband!’

“Our department will be at the heart of the new government’s agenda […] to make Britain a clean energy superpower with zero carbon electricity by 2030, and accelerating our journey to net zero.”

Ed Miliband’s speech on his appointment as Energy secretary 

Lately I’ve been thinking of what Miliband has done: 

All those solar farms out there have hardly seen the sun, 

A week of turbines idling when the wind refused to blow 

And most of Britain freezing under early winter snow. 

A thousand miles of pylons will soon march across the nation, 

We’re told to put in heat pumps and to throw our boilers out.

Peddling his net zero lie, 

Decarbonise and don’t ask why;

From every cold and lightless home up goes the shout;

Oh! Mister Miliband, what did you do? 

You committed to renewables, now watch us all turn blue; 

Heading for net zero as quickly as you can 

Oh Mr Miliband, you’re a silly, silly man! 

As Ed’s net zero minions preach, in every way we must  

Reduce our carbon footprint; they’re sure we’ll all adjust,

Though to tell a lass in labour that gas and air is barred

Or taking away inhalers from asthmatics sounds quite hard.

It’s a very different matter when they fly the whole world over 

From conference to summit talks and then back home again, 

But what’s three million miles of flight 

When you are on the side of right?

Never mind the populace who cry in vain:

Oh Mr Miliband, what did you do? 

You want to save the planet so you fly off to Baku,

Hopping on the next plane as quickly as you can: 

Oh Mr Miliband, you’re a silly, silly man!

The Politics of the Nursery

A perceptive journalist (Matthew Lynn, Telegraph) compared the instigator of the current petition asking for a general election (2,644,897 signatures and counting) to the small boy who points out that the emperor has no clothes on; naive and simplistic, maybe, but getting straight to the point and hitting a chord with the public.

Reflecting on the events which have brought us to this, it starts to become clear that, as well as dispensing with the necessary prior research or consultation, this government has set about introducing measures which are not only of doubtful benefit but which, in extent and timing, are calculated to inflict a maximum of pain and hardship, stripping bare its destructive and malicious intentions for all to see.

For example, Starmer could have kept the Winter Fuel Allowance for all but higher-rate taxpayers (or for those paying over a certain amount of income tax), which would have spared a great deal of anxiety and financial difficulty for the two million or so pensioners who have no other income than the basic state pension.

Likewise, a threshold for VAT on school fees - perhaps at the equivalent of the sum the state would have spent on the child - would have reduced the impact on the least well-off fee-paying parents, people in ‘ordinary’ jobs who are investing their scant disposable income in their child’s education at the less expensive end of the market, often because the state system does not meet their needs, while taxing the more affluent.

Thirdly, the farmers; remember the gag from ‘Austin Powers’ where a criminal mastermind, reanimated after spending 30 years frozen in space, announces dramatically that he will acquire a nuclear warhead and hold the world to ransom for ‘…one million dollars!’? There’s a similar incongruity to the new inheritance tax threshold for the land and ‘agricultural assets’ of a working farm, apparently decided upon in complete ignorance of the cost of infrastructure, livestock, equipment and machinery needed to yield even a modest income from food production; in any case, it would surely have been possible to exempt round-the-clock, hands-on farming families while achieving the stated aim of targeting tax-dodging outside investors.

Even before considering the timing, all three of these policies give a distinct impression of being fuelled by malevolence towards the elderly, private school pupils and farmers (one key Labour adviser even advocates state ownership of farmland; presumably they hope to acquire it via seizures in lieu of unpaid tax); it’s no coincidence that all three groups have been repeatedly portrayed by Left-wing media and campaign groups as undeservedly wealthy, which makes you wonder why they set the thresholds so low. When you also look at the timescale within which the policies are being implemented, there is no room for doubt at all.

For instance, the WFA cut could have been deferred until next year, giving those affected time to plan ahead, instead of being sprung on them when the nights were already drawing in. A cold winter was being predicted by then (La Niña) and Labour themselves had previously announced that linking the WFA to Pension Credit would lead to thousands of extra deaths; even allowing for opposition hyperbole, to press on with the policy this year suggests either shameless mendacity or spectacular callousness.

With school fees, it is wilfully irresponsible to implement any reform mid-year in the knowledge that most public exams require two full years of teaching (many including interim modules), and an added refinement of cruelty to give such short notice, ensuring that any child forced out will have little chance of getting into a highly-rated or sought-after school - bad news for poorer pupils who moved to independent schools to escape bullying or because of the state’s inadequate support for their special needs. 

Meanwhile, the government suggests that farmers should plan ahead and take advantage of the seven-year rule but, leaving aside the fact that farming is one of the most unpredictable and dangerous jobs around, that isn’t much help if age or illness make the present incumbent unlikely to last another seven years - hence the distressing talk of a ‘suicide window’ for elderly farmers in poor health to ensure that their estates are settled before the changes come into force in April 2026. 

It’s hard to imagine the sort of person who would propose or wholeheartedly support all of this knowing the potential for harm - unless, that is, one considers the mind of a child. Children below the age of responsibility, as our law takes into account, are generally self-centred and don’t have the ability to evaluate the long-term consequences of their actions or fully appreciate how they will affect other people; they simply lash out and hurt or spoil things.

Whatever their legal and financial qualifications and experience (or lack of it, Ms Reeves?) it is becoming clear that we are being governed by a Cabinet of selfish and vindictive children, eager for designer goodies and treats, happy to reward their friends - £135m to the train drivers this year - and looking for ways to hurt anyone they don’t like.

Going nowhere fast

It’s hard not to think of this Labour government as the dog that has caught the car.

It’s taken them a while to work out that they are actually in charge - think of Keir Starmer repeatedly addressing Rishi Sunak as ‘Prime Minister’ - but now they are flexing their legislative muscles, there’s a distinct air of a triumphant Labrador in possession of a Ford Focus.

Opposition, as any former student politician or union activist will tell you, is great fun. There’s no need to bother with all that tedious research or fact-finding and nobody checks your workings; you just shout derisively about whatever it is that the other side is proposing and enjoy the fierce glow of righteous indignation.

When it comes to facts and figures, you are at liberty to gather them where you please, secure in the knowledge that you won’t be required to act on them or held to account in the real world - a pressure group website here, a speculative thesis there; it’s all grist to your political mill as long as it provides a stick with which to beat your opponent.

I have a horrible feeling that the lawyers, shop stewards and former SpAds of the Labour government still inhabit this abstract world where pensioners, farmers, private school pupils or small business owners are not real people but statistical constructs in the literature of lobbying campaigns and biased studies on which the party appears to be basing its policies. What is most frightening is that they don’t appear to consider relevant experience or background information to be of any importance.

Thus we have an Education Secretary imposing VAT on the independent sector while boasting that she has never spoken to its representatives or, for that matter, set foot through the door of any private school (she might have played hockey on the pitch of one but didn’t inhale) and the imposition of potentially ruinous inheritance tax on small farms while Rural Affairs are in the hands of a Streatham MP with no discernible connections to the countryside (although he does have a nice new pair of £420 wellies from Lord Alli).

The changes proposed so far do not augur well for the next few years - already we have the prospect of freezing pensioners (and the resulting pressure on the NHS), a hospitality sector and small businesses groaning under the new NI regulations, potential widespread strikes for parity with the train drivers and possible food shortages as irate farmers protest about the threat to family farms - but Labour appear to be congratulating themselves on doing a sterling job.

It must be fun, sitting with their paws on the steering wheel barking at passers-by.

The Rain in Spain

As yet another region in Spain starts the post-flood clearing up while bracing itself for another deluge, it is, perhaps, worth considering this:

The European dam removal movement achieved another record-breaking year. A remarkable 487 barriers were removed in 15 European countries in 2023 – a 50% increase on last year’s record number […] 

Spain, which had been crowned the trailblazer of barrier removal in Europe for two years in a row, was dethroned by France and now occupies second place. 

Environmentalists and fact-checkers have been quick to point out in the past couple of weeks that most of the ‘dams’ were weirs and irrigation culverts and that the amount of recent rainfall in eastern Spain was unusually large (which allowed them a happy detour into Climate Change) so the work did not cause the flooding. That may be strictly true, but removing several hundred dams, weirs and barriers in the interests of ‘biodiversity and fish migration’ can hardly have helped.

Although words like ‘unprecedented’ are cropping up in the news coverage, Spain is no stranger to catastrophic floods; the meteorological phenomenon which caused the heavy rainfall is familiar to the Spanish - so much so that they are the source of the acronym for it: DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos). Research has identified five separate flood-rich periods of several decades in the Iberian peninsula since the beginning of sixteenth century, while the success of a Roman dam in protecting a town in Aragon shows that, nearly two millennia ago, their engineers planned with an informed eye to the possibility of serious flooding. 

I’m not going to dwell on the horror and tragedy of what happened to the victims, but it is clear that the abundance of cars and lorries in a modern city has added a disturbing dimension to the dangers of a river bursting its banks in a built-up area; it looks as if much of the worst damage and loss of life was caused by water-borne debris, including vehicles, crashing into buildings or blocking the flow under low bridges and forcing water at speed into the gridlocked neighbouring streets.

Although It would be extremely difficult to prepare fully for the weather Spain has experienced, I do wonder whether, in a country prone to episodes of extreme rainfall and given the increasing potential risk to life, it might have been wise to employ at least some of the available expertise, machinery and manpower in developing more upstream water holding areas and creating overflow capacity and relief channels to protect the densely populated parts of the country below.

Sadly, the Dam Removal Europe website gives the distinct impression that, although they briefly congratulate themselves on reducing the number of swimmers and kayakers drowning in weirs and preventing the potential catastrophic collapse of decaying obsolete hydro-electric dams from the last century, humans may not be their main priority.

Dam Removal Europe is a movement of river enthusiasts, volunteers, activists, river practitioners, biologists, environmental agencies, and other actors related to water management and freshwater ecosystem restoration. […] the motor of this movement is a coalition united by one common goal: restoring free-flowing rivers.

In the light of the recent news stories, I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.

A Question of Identity Politics

There are numerous skills essential to a long and moderately successful career at today’s chalkface and not the least among these is the ability to repress one’s desire to say anything inappropriate in the presence of a class.

For me, the ultimate test of this was a mixed-race pupil who, half in jest, would invariably respond to any reprimand or rebuke with Ali G’s catchphrase, “Is it ‘cos I is black, Miss?”, to which I always wanted to reply - with a certain degree of truth - “No, Eddie, it’s ’cos you is an arsehole!”

It’s been a few years, but I immediately thought of Eddie when I read about the way Harris supporters were reacting to the election result:

“There are so many people who are against Kamala because she’s a woman, because she’s black,” said Sanaa Canady, a Howard student. (Telegraph)

Of course it is, Sanaa; what other reasons could there be? Meanwhile, social media posts have already appeared indignantly complaining about the women or minority ethnic voters who, as the authors patronisingly see it, voted the ‘wrong way’, as if sharing Harris’ ethnicity or gender should somehow outweigh the voter’s opinion on, say, her policies, integrity or suitability for office.

Part of the problem is that there is no profit for vested interests and anti-racism campaigners in, as one man eloquently put it, ‘a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’. The doublethink of the race industry has permeated the politics of the Left - both in the US and here - to a point where many of them appear to have the whole thing completely back-to-front, even while Dr King is still revered and held up as a shining example.

How future historians will regard the divisive consequences of identity politics and Critical Race Theory on politics and society is debatable - hopefully reason will eventually prevail - but we should certainly be lamenting that fact that, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, ‘no sooner had MLK knocked over the dragons of racial discrimination and segregation than activists boldly set them on their legs again in the name of MLK’.

You REALLY couldn't make it up….

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder or more surreal in Westminster, the Treasury has announced the appointment of a part-time Chair of the Office for Value for Money - or, as the headlines have it, a ‘Value for Money Tsar’ - at a cost of £950 a day.

Apparently his job involves advising the government on how to ‘root out waste and inefficiency’ and ‘scrutinising investment proposals to ensure they offer value for money’, a brief for which he appears to be uniquely qualified thanks to a CV which, according to The Telegraph, includes (after two years of teaching, an accountancy course and a spell in local government finance):

• Responsibility for overseeing government investment in the delivery of the London Olympics (almost four times over budget at £9.3bn)

• CEO of London Legacy Development Corporation (major cost overruns on several building projects)

• Chief operating officer at the MOD (an estimated £4bn of taxpayers’ money ‘wasted’ )

• Leader of the Houses of Parliament Restoration & Renewal Delivery Authority (took a £168k bonus on a £311k salary despite no actual renovations being carried out during his four year tenure)

All in all, I think you’ll agree he sounds exactly the sort of chap this government would want keeping a watchful eye on their spending. Certainly they have been trumpeting his varied career history in happy press releases, although they seem to have glossed over some of the small print.

It’s not until you reach the hinterlands of the government website that you find out that this financial superhero will not be working alone; the Chair of the Office for Value for Money naturally requires an Office of which to be Chair and will thus be ‘supported by a multi-disciplinary team of civil servants’.

Now, in my (admittedly limited) experience, multi-disciplinary civil servants are unlikely to come cheap, especially when you include their pensions, and presumably, unlike their boss, they will be working full-time. Being important enough to be mentioned in the government description, they will probably be drawn from the ranks of those who toil not, neither do they spin, so I suspect there will also be a subsidiary team of secretaries and admin people attached, not to mention HR and ancillary staff to maintain their offices, computers etc.

In fact, it is likely that one of the most effective cost-cutting measures for the Office for Value for Money would be to abolish itself forthwith.

In the meantime, I think I have the perfect song for the situation….

Now… 

The techs who fix the laptops of 

The lawyers who write contracts for

The cleaners of the office of 

The clerical department for

The team of civil servants who

Are there to do the bidding of

The new Value for Money Tsar

Were just passing by…

(

(If it doesn’t play, try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MDVSHsFFh0)

“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.