Merkel Can And Thatcher Could Burn Midnight Oil
According to one reporter on the BBC this morning, Angela Merkel did her usual and kept going for many hours in the Greek debt negotiations.
I’ve also read reports, that Margaret Thatcher used to show the same stamina. In fact, she was awake working, when the Brighton Bomb went off.
Interestingly, they are both women with a scientific training!
Are There Secondary Effects In The Budget?
I have a feeling that there could be some secondary effects from the budget and particularly the announcement of a National Living Wage.
Nowhere will this measure be felt more than at the bottom end of the employers. If you read the tabloids, you get the impression that dodgy low-quality businesses are the big employers of illegal immigrants, keeping them in squalor and paying them in cash, if they’re lucky.
With a solidly enforced living wage, will this make it more difficult for these companies and operators to survive, so this country might be less of a magnet for illegal immigrants. I don’t know, but a higher level of living wage gives the Tax Authorities a good reason to investigate the sort of businesses who rely on no-questions-asked labour.
I very much watch innovation in the media and also have been in touch several times with universities in the last few years. I think we’ll see companies using their local innovators to make sure they support their now more highly-paid employees. I know several universities are giving students real projects in local companies.
So will we be pushing our employment up-market? I think we will!
As an example, an industry that we all seem to use more these days are couriers to deliver the goods we’ve bought on-line. They have got so much better over the last few years and that is just not the delivery reliability, but the staff as well, who seem to be polite and very much on-the-ball. Incidentally, most staff who’ve delivered to me lately seem to have been British born and educated.
I don’t know what will happen in the next few years, but I have a feeling that the Chancellor’s announcements may be helping to move the country on from a low-wage, low-skilled and badly-supported work force to one where a job, where you work hard and efficiently gives you a real living wage.
Of course Labour think that the restructuring of Tax Credits will mean many will lose out. But then Labour’s solution to a low-wage, low-skill economy was to pay people at the low-end to do nothing or crap jobs.
The other thing the Chancellor must do to help, is make sure that our transport links are improved. It’s one thing to get a job and often it’s a much more difficult thing to get to that job every day. You just have to see what the Overground and the fleets of new buses have done for Hackney and the surrounding boroughs, here in London, over the past few years.
A Touch Of The Battersea
The Times has a report today about a web site called sexymp.co.uk, which is searching for the sexiest MP.
I gave it a try and all the MPs I was shown to judge, had rather a touch of The Battersea about them!
HS2 And The General Election
In some ways the impact of HS2 on the General Election was more noticeable by its absence. I have only found one serious article in Rail News, that even discusses the subject. This is the first two paragraphs.
Ahead of the general election campaigners against HS2 made much of the opportunity for opponents to vote for parties that wanted the project scrapped. But the final election results suggest HS2 had little impact.
Only UKIP and the Greens put scrapping HS2 as a core issue in their manifestos. And a lone single-issue candidate also campaigned against HS2 in the Westminster North constituency but came bottom of the poll with 63 votes, or just 0.2 per cent of the total cast.
Ukip are a law unto their own, but why are the Greens against HS2?
I do wonder if HS2 is going through a similar popularity as Crossrail, where parts of London were against the building of the rail link in the early days of the project. Now Londoners seem to be getting enthusiastic about their new railway.
Ukip Founder Calls Party BNP-Lite
I was listening to BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday, when in a fascinating interview, Alan Sked, the original founder of Ukip, called the party BNP-Lite.
I certainly wouldn’t touch either toxic bunch of ists with a bargepole; mine or otherwise.
The Heaviest Suicide Note In History
When I first saw the EdStone, I thought Miliband had not only fallen off his trolley, but crashed it in a big way and given himself a serious brain injury.
I have just found this article in the Daily Mail, which has the headline of Do you know where Ed’s stone is? Mail offers reward to person who can tell us where Miliband has hidden ‘heaviest suicide note in history’
Ed Miliband doesn’t have enough common sense to run a whelk stall!
At least the electorate, who on average have a lot more intelligence that Miliband, have consigned him and his leadership of the Labour Party to the dustbin of history.
He may have left the Labour Party in such a state, that no sane and sensible person will ever want to lead it voluntarily.
A Rum List Of Candidates
When I went to vote today, there were eleven candidates; three from the major parties, one from a one-issue party and an almost complete spectrum from the ultra-left to the far-but-not-ultra right comprising the remaining seven. Some of the last group would have been certified by some dictators and despots of the past.
One of the candidates didn’t even have a cv. Would you vote for someone, who you know nothing about?
I think the result in this constituency is a foregone conclusion, but isn’t it in hundreds of places.
Democracy is a wonderful thing, but it could be improved a lot!
A Surprising Election Leaflet
I have got quite a bit of electoral junk mail this election, but one today was different.
It was the usual A4 or A5 well-printed flyer, from a party I have voted for in the past, but my name and correct address was actually printed on the glossy paper.
Admittedly, they had used last year’s register with my incorrect name, but that was understandable, as the register was only finally corrected a couple of weeks ago.
Perhaps, we need a law to say that nothing goes through a letter box, unless it is properly addressed.
I’d probably get about four letters a week.
The Two Big Election Issues The Politicians Aren’t Addressing
The tragedy unfolding off the Libya coast, where hundreds are dying every day as they try to get to Europe is impossible to solve.
We can’t say it’s an Italian problem and put our heads in the sand, as most politicians seem to be doing. Especially, as it seems most of the migrants want to get to Northern Europe and often the UK, where the jobs are.
Suppose we just said that none of these migrants would be let into the UK, as probably the Ukippers would say. How long would it be before the rest of Europe applied policies to get us to accept our fair share?
If on the other hand, we took a selective number, then this would signal to those organising the trade, that there was a good chance you may get residence in the UK.
I haven’t a clue what you do! And neither have the politicians!
I do have some sympathy though for the migrants as three hundred years ago, my two closest male lines; one Jewish and one Huguenot, were welcomed in this country, after escaping from persecution. One was probably a tailor and the other was an engraver, so all they brought was their brains and skills. I don’t know about the Huguenot, but the Jew was probably single and converted to Christianity within a few years, so he could find a lady and get married. My two close female lines are both internal migrants from Devon and Northants. London has always been a magnet for migrants, so nothing has changed.
There is also the problem of Greece going bust, which could happen before our General Election.
It could be argued that it is nothing to do with us, as we’re outside the Euro zone!
But then we have a strong economy and a country where there are a lot of Greeks.
Certainly, if I was a Greek engineer living in Athens with a cousin in London, my savings would have been long gone.
I do wonder how much of the Greek bailout money ended up safely invested outside of Greece.
So we may not lose money, but we are probably going to suffer some collateral damage. Especially, if the various financial institutions want their money back!
It will not be as serious a problem as the Libyan migrants, but where are the politicians heads on this one?
Deep in the sand!
Removing One Hundred And Seventy Years Of Inadequate Design
The Manchester to Preston railway is san important line in the North-West of England, that was completed in 1841.
To say that is not fit for purpose is a total understatement, as it is not electrified and has a speed limit of just seventy-five miles per hour.
Finally, the line is being electrified and the speed limit will be raised to a hundred. From December 2016, hopefully refurbished Class 319 trains will be speeding from Manchester via Bolton and Preston to Blackpool and possibly Windermere.
The major problem on the line are the twin tunnels at Farnworth. They have a history of make-do-and-mend and are too small to take the overhead wires and Network Rail have come up with a practical solution, that should last several hundred years at least. This Google Earth image shows the ends of the tunnels with respect to the location of Farnworth station and the A666.
Farnworth Station And Tunnels
The smaller of the two tunnels will be refurbished and given a concrete lining, so that during the works, there will always be one track for trains. They will then bore out the larger tunnel, so that it is big enough to take two tracks and the overhead lines.
This will require that between May and October this year, there will be significant disruption to rail passengers. The whole project is described in this article in the Bolton News. It may cause a lot of disruption, but the passengers seem philosophical, as these paragraphs from the article show..
Jeff Davies, part of the newly formed Bolton Rail Users Group, said: “The station closures are the bad news, but there is good news here actually.
“It is the beginning of big investment which could take us out of the present problems and the companies have been at great pains to minimise inconvenience and ensure that Bolton people who work in Manchester will still be able to get there.
Perhaps this is because Network Rail have done their public relations well, if this YouTube video entitled Rebuilding the Farnworth Tunnel is anything to go by.
It all goes to prove that politicians should have sorted out the mess that are the railways of the North many years ago.
The Anonymous Widower 