John Major Talks Sense
I have always liked John Major and I have liked him even more, since I saw his talk to the Cambridge Chief Executives Group. Then, in the depth of his troubles, he talked sense in bucketfuls and explained how the economy was coming round. He was so right in everything he said and it made me think, that what a lot of stupid idiots most of our politicians are.
Now in a speech in Norfolk, he has detailed his views. It’s reported here in the Guardian.
The first paragraph, criticises the lack of social mobility.
Sir John Major has criticised the “truly shocking” dominance of the upper echelons of power in Britain by the privately educated and affluent middle class, it was reported.
Both myself and especially my late wife, climbed from fairly ordinary families to somewhere near the top. C, who was a barrister, was one of the few of her profession, I ever met, who had come from a working class family and clawed her way up the hard way. But then we both had the sort of education, that John Major had enjoyed.
This dominance of power and especially in the Civil Service, by the privately educated middle class, is one of the things that I deplore. Last Thursday I was on a New Bus for London and sitting in one of the set of four seats in the middle. These tend to be where the chatty congregate, so as I moved over to let a guy about fifty sit down, I made a comment, as you often do. We chatted and he said that he worked in the Home Office and when I talked about the bus, I got the impression, he’d never used a NB4L before. I said I was living in Hackney after my stroke and he said he had worked with my MP. ~This could have been on the Identity Card Scheme. He pitied me in that I had to live in such a crime-ridden borough. He then asked if I thought that the country was going to the dogs. I said it wasn’t and said I was hopeful things would get better. If this idiot, is one of the Civil Service’s finest, then heaven help us. But I suppose, he went to a good independent school and probably a decent college at Oxford or Cambridge. Just like my labour MP! Not like my late wife and myself, who went to good grammar schools and a good redbrick University.
John Major went on to talk about education and is reported to have said this.
Major said: “Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born.
“We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn’t going to happen magically.”
If John Major, my late wife and myself had been born in the last couple of decades, would we have risen to the surface? The sixties was a time, when those that wanted to did and many of us, square pegs, managed to rise from the round holes where society pigeon-holed us.
I also remember that when I was at meetings of the educated in Cambridge, I was one of the shortest around, as my family hasn’t always had the good food of the middle and upper classes. But then they often didn’t have some of my better characteristics. Or my worse!
John Major also put forward his views on gay marriage.
On one issue that has caused Conservative grass-roots dissent – gay marriage – he urged people to accept times had changed. “We may be unsettled by them, but David Cameron and his colleagues have no choice but to deal with this new world. They cannot, Canute-like order it to go away because it won’t,” he said.
He is totally right. We don’t define the way the world chooses to go, but we have to live in it and accomodate it.
The report finishes by giving his views on Ukip.
And on another major area of concern, he recommended a less-confrontational approach to the threat of the UK Independence Party.
“We don’t need to make personal attacks on Ukip,” he said. “Many of the Ukip supporters are patriotic Britons who fear their country is changing.
“It is far more productive to expose the follies in their policies.”
I always wonder what would have happened to the world, if John Major had won the 1997 General Election.
The Tripe Talked About Building Warships In The UK
I have been listening and watching the debate about BAE ‘s decision to end warship building at Portsmouth and move this all to Glasgow.
Much of the argument has been based on emotional facts like Portsmouth has been building warships since the Mary Rose and political considerations of keeping Scotland happy. Little has got anything to do with having a Royal Navy that is fit for purpose.
This article on the BBC, gives a pretty good assessment of the political story. This section is the heart of the article.
So was this a sweetener to Scotland, to stave off a Yes vote? The Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was asked repeatedly in the Commons to say whether the Scottish poll had influenced his choice.
He made, broadly, three replies to the variety of ways in which he was posed that question. Firstly, he stressed that the decision to locate warship building solely in Glasgow was taken by BAE, with endorsement from the Ministry of Defence. It was, thereby, primarily an industrial rather than a political choice.
Secondly, he stressed the importance of cost. His entire statement was predicated upon the drive to contain rising costs in the aircraft carrier contract. The identification of a sole location was also, he suggested, driven by cost efficiency.
But, thirdly, he made a point with regard to the forthcoming orders for Type 26 ships. Mr Hammond’s core point in respect of the carriers was that a blunder had been made (by the predecessor government) in placing the contracts for these vessels before design was completed.
He would not repeat that error, he said, with the Type 26 contract. It would not be placed before design was “mature”. That would be at the end of 2014. He noted, twice, that would be after the Scottish referendum in September of that year.
So BAE, had to make a decision, before they know what orders are coming. They are a supposedly commercial organisation, so they will do what they see is best for the company. Given that costs are higher in Portsmouth than Glasgow for most things, I suspect that there was only two solutions; persuade the Government to buy lots of warships that we don’t need or close Portsmouth.
In the arguments I heard, no-one seemed to bring up the Falkland Islands. When Argentina invaded, as regards warships we were ill-prepared and had to scramble hard to get a task force together. But the rest as they say is history!
The one thing we can say with certainty, is that if we need to use the Navy in anger again, we’ll have the wrong ships, and they’ll be in the wrong place.
It was always thus!
I would suspect that the Navy goes through some of the most bizarre scenarios, and works out how they will handle them and that there will be a lot of improvisation in there.
Look at the operational history of HMS Ocean and you’ll find a lot of it, is in response to events. If you read the Wikipedia entry for HMS Ocean, you’ll find this gem.
While Swan Hunter viewed the ships as entirely military, “VSEL thought the design was basically a merchant ship with military hardware bolted on.” VSEL’s decision to sub-contract the build phase took advantage of lower overheads at a civilian yard as well as efficiency drives by its parent, Kværner. The cut-price build to commercial standards means that Ocean has a projected operational life of just 20 years, significantly less than that of other warships.
VSEL and Swan Hunter were completing for the work. But there was some serious innovation in the construction of this, in my view, successful warship. It’s certainly got us out of trouble a few times.
Innovation has been lacking over the years in the design of warships, which partly explains, why we and probably every other Navy has the wrong ships for a serious crisis.
One thing that should be thrown in, is if warship building is so important and BAE are so good at it, why aren’t we exporting ships to other friendly nations?
So are we subsidising warship building and BAE to an unsustainable high level?
Brent Bans Fracking
This story about how Brent Council is going to ban fracking, must be the most silly of the weekend. It’s a bit like me saying, I won’t allow someone like Kate Moss to come round to my house for a cup of tea and some scones. Fracking needing to take place in Brent, is probably just as likely! Or should that be unlikely?
Hollande Shows How To Ru(i)n Football
The top French football clubs, are showing what they think of President Hollande’s high earner tax, by going on strike, as is reported here on the BBC. Here’s the first paragraph.
French President Francois Hollande has rebuffed protests against a 75% tax on high earners, prompting football clubs to press on with a planned “strike”.
Mr Hollande stood firm by his plan to levy the tax on incomes above 1m euros (£850,000; $1.36m) at a meeting with club presidents.
Ed Milliband admitted in this interview to being a lapsed Leeds United supporter and now follows Doncaster, so expect him to raise taxes like Hollande if he gets elected, as it won’t effect any of his teams. It might even raise Doncaster into the Premier League!
We Need More Openness Everywhere
This story from the BBC is a big dose of common sense from MPs. Here’s the jist.
Councils in England should publish annual parking-charge accounts if they want to prove they are not being used as a “cash cow”, MPs have said.
I think we need much better access to all government data.
Here’s a few ideas.
If you run a company, as I’ve done several times, you have to publish a set of simple accounts, including things like cash flows and a profit and loss statement.
Why shouldn’t the government publish such a brief set of accounts, which the man on the Dalston Omnibus could understand?
But of course they don’t!
Some years ago, I tried to find the data to do create some simple accounts for UK plc. The data is there, but it is in several different places and despite help from a BBC financial journalist, I thought I had better things to do, than dig holes in treacle.
I would also like to see an anonymised database of those who are in prison. A man like me would be described as male, 60-70 in reasonable health, who was a non-smoker living in North London.
It would allow those, who make wild statements about prisons to be challenged and hopefully, it would lead to better justice and penal policies.
I must admit, that it has got a lot better in recent years with the growth of the Internet, but too often, data that would help us to have better lives is hidden from view.
The NHS is one of the worst for hiding data. There has been a lot of discussion about A & E units in recent years. Surely, a database should be available on the Internet, of all visits to this department. Again, it would be anonymised.
It would then be easy to find out for instance, how many drunks turned up at various hospitals demanding treatment.
The trouble is, that a national database in this area of the NHS, would show how A & E departments should change to get fit for the twenty-first century. Some would be obvious candidates for closure, whereas others would need to be expanded with special units.
As Charles Babbage said
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
Give everybody the data, so that we can all finish the job!
You don’t make a good omelette without breaking a few eggs.
y
A Car Is Not A Luxury, It’s A Necessity
Danny Alexander has just said this on television.
In my view, after not driving for three years and going everywhere by public transport, a car is a complete pain in the arse. And when you give up your car and stop driving, it’s a total change for the better.
Ed Milliband and the Daily Mail
We all have skeletons in our families. Mine is my uncle, who was one for the ladies and was always in trouble. During the Second World War, he actually had a bigamous marriage, from which there were children.
My father’s political leanings were very much Tory, but to the left of the party. He would probably have views like Kenneth Clarke today. But my father was a passionate anti-fascist, probably because of his partly Jewish ancestry. He was also one of the most non-racist men I have met of his generation. I can’t remember too well, but I don’t think he liked dictators and as he had names for them all in his Cockney poetry.
A couple of weeks ago, I met a man of my age, who said that his father was a died in the wool communist, who never condemned Stalin till the day he died. He joked about it, but I suspect that was because he was rather embarrassed by his father supporting Stalin. Alexei Sayle joked about his parents hard-line communism on The One Show last night.
I would suspect that the Milliband brothers, are in some ways embarrassed by some of the views of their father. Most of us have a similar view about our own father, although, I don’t think I ever heard mine, pontificate on anything controversial in a way, that we would find politically incorrect. Some of my mother’s views were not so acceptable?
All politicians live in glass houses, with everything they do, don’t do or have done under the greatest scrutiny. And all of their ancestors come under close scrutiny.
Just as the political views of Denis Thatcher, Alfred Roberts, Tony Booth and other related to previous Prime Ministers, have been important to the Press and the scandal-loving British public, Ralph Milliband‘s political views would come under scrutiny from a paper like the Mail, the Express or the Sun. Especially, as some on the left have hard left views very unacceptable to those in the Labour Party, who want to bring it into the twenty-first century.
So in my view the Milliband brothers should have clean about the more unacceptable views of their father years ago, and perhaps joked about it in a more sympathetic medium, as Alexei Sayle and others have done. I don’t have this problem with my father, but anyway, I’m not a politician and my father wasn’t either, so it’s not important.
Now that the Daily Mail has attacked Ed Milliband for his father’s views, the story is out in the open. The Mail’s behaviour since has been unacceptable, but Ed Milliband’s keeping it going is in many ways making it worse. I haven’t seen any comments from his brother. But then David’s in the United States, where communist connections bring a different reaction.
After all, everybody in the country now knows the full story of Ralph Milliband and it will play a large part in the next General Election. Those to the right will play the Reds under the bed card and those on the hard left will play their Class War one.
In my view though, Ed Milliband has shown a lack of judgement in how he handled his father’s views. Compare it with the way Tony Blair handled those of his father.
Today there is this report on the BBC entitled Ed Miliband urges Daily Mail owner to examine ‘culture’.
It’s not the culture of the Press that needs examining, it’s the culture of the country, where most people seem to value celebrity tittle-tattle well above real issues. Just look at the sales of celebrity magazines!
Ed Milliband is now on BBC Breakfast going on about it again.
Does he not know, when it is time to stop fanning the flames of an out-of-control fire?
Dealing With The Long Term Unemployed
Over the last few days, there has been a lot of talk about how you deal with the long-term unemployed.
In the 1980s, I interviewed a guy called Jim for a management job in Metier. He was at the time, a senior guy in the Department of Employment and told how a lot of the long-term unemployed were not in the obvious places. One thing he did say was that in London, many wouldn’t travel a few miles to get a job, especially if it meant crossing the Thames.
But one thing he said, was that if you call the long-term unemployed in regularly, a lot seem to disappear from the register and stop claiming benefits.
I suspect that some of the Coalition’s policies might have the same effect.
At about the same time, an economist from Lloyds Bank told me, that their predictions for the economy were different from the Government, as they took account of the Black Economy and the Government didn’t. I wonder how models and predictions differ these days?
I do think though, we’ll see a drop in unemployment over the next few years, as the rules get tighter and people find it much less of a hassle to work, as history repeats itself.
Labour Promises To Turn The Lights Out
Ed Milliban’s promise yesterday on energy prices is the sort of vote-grabbing bribe. that is typical of third-rate politicians. Judging by the response from the energy companies, If Red Ed gets power we’ll all be in for a hard time. It’s all here on the BBC. Even Britain’s worst Prime Minister of recent years; Gordon Brown, wouldn’t have issued such a cheap promise.
I think that this pledge could have serious effects.
Suppose you were in charge of planning at a large energy company. Would you be prepared to invest in an expensive new power station in the UK, until after the election of 2015?, I suspect that other countries with more certain energy policies and prices, would be a better place for the investment!
So the lights might go out, even if Labour doesn’t win the election!
I’ve just listened to the start of the phone-in on Radio 5.
They’ve started appealing for anyone in favour of Red Ed’s idea.
Labour Plays Their Scrap HS2 Card
Ed Balls has said that Labour could scrap HS2, if it wins power in 2015. It’s reported here in the Independent.
Is it just a bribe to all those Tory voters in Middle England, who will pay much higher taxes under a Labour government?
On the other hand, this statement may just have killed the project, as will Parliament now pass the HS2 legislation? I think they won’t, as Parliament is a body, that doesn’t do big thinking well!
The Anonymous Widower 