If only I could control my tail

You left me in the cold kitchen with no food. Closed the door so I couldn't sit on the back of the settee and keep guard over your (my) territory. I haven't been on a proper walk for days. You tell me off when I can't hold it in but it's just natural and I can't help it.

I hate the postman. We fight and I always win. He pushes stuff through the door and I kill it, make sure it's safe for you. He always admits defeat and goes away.

It's lonely sometimes when you go into the garden and leave me inside. What do you both do in the garden for eight or nine hours at a time?

I sometimes think that you get in that big thing with wheels and go somewhere without me. I have been in it a few times and it was fun. I put my nose out of the window and it ruffled my fur. But then you carried me around in a bag, like an onion. I didn't like that much. But people were nice and friendly. Maybe they thought I was disabled or something? I'm not am I?

Can we go for a walk today? I know it's a bit cold and muddy but you have wellies and coats and I don't. And I know I have to go in the sink for a bath afterwards - I like that if I'm honest - but can we? I'd really really like it.

It's OK if you don't want to. Maybe I can bring you my ball and you can throw it for me? Just a couple of times. I'll bring it back for you. But if you're watching that box thing in the corner that's OK. I don't mind. Maybe I can curl up next to you on the sofa and keep you warm? I like that. You sometimes stroke me and that's really nice.

The thing is, you leave me alone for hours, you kick me out of your rooms when I'm not wanted, leave me to fend for myself when it doesn't suit you for me to be involved. You either like me to befriend visitors and do my thing, or lock me away out of sight.

I should by rights be confused. Feeling unloved and neglected.

Next time you come home I'm not going to come running and show my unending unequivical love for you. I'm going to be indifferent.

If only I could control my bloody tail.

;)

    Jeeves Doonican

Not joining the Euro was a good thing. Anyone disagree?

Not even the most vehement europhile would even contemplate suggesting that the UK joining the single currency would have been a good thing for this country.

If we had done, we'd probably be Greece by now, only with a higher debt to GDP ratio we'd be even worse off.

And as the EU machine continues inexorably towards a federal Europe with a single everything, from defense to welfare rules, open borders to trade deals with the rest of the world (as Europe rather than individual member states), even Dave is committed to our staying in. Why? Eventually it will mean, as night follows day, that we'll have to adopt the single currency. There's no other credible outcome.

You cannot have a single tax state, a single economy or a single government without a single common currency. It has never been done anywhere else in the world and it won't be done in Europe. So in many ways a vote to stay in, based mainly on ignorance and apathy, is effectively a vote to give up our national identity, our sovereignity, our status as a free country, able to govern itself.

And the people who do currently fulfill that function seem to be committed to handing it all over to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg. What manner of total fuckwittery is at play here?

The question on the referendum paper (if we ever get to that, which I think is highly doubtful) should be: 'do you want the UK to remain a sovereign state or to be governed by the EU as part of the European Union?'

Because that, ultimately, is what is at stake.

But that may well be a moot point because the chances are, strongly, that Labour will be returned to government (God help us) in 2015 and in that eventuality, the referendum will be bunged unceremoniously into the dustbin of history. And we won't then have a choice. This negation of our ability to control our own destiny will have been imposed upon us. Probably permanently.

Our only hope, it seems to me, is for Dave to get his act together, to try (perhaps) to repatriate some vital powers to the UK from the EU (which will almost certainly fail because France can simply veto anything we want) and then to have a change of heart in line with what is actually right for this country. There are lots of 'ifs' there but it could, potentially be a way for Dave to save his skin and secure a victory in the next election. It doesn't seem that anything else is likely to deliver that result - despite the ongoing evidence of past Labour failures which don't seem to be denting their electoral popularity.

Dave needs to do the above and embrace UKIP and therein the 'firm' right, if he is to have any chance of turning things around in my opinion. That is very unlikely at this moment in time, but next year's Euro elections could just be a strong catalyst for this change of stance. That is why they are so important and why I will, again be advocating a vote for UKIP; just as this year's local election results caused him to rethink his position, a strong showing for UKIP, based on an anti-EU stance could, if it is strong and clear enough, make Dave see the reality of his situation.

The sad thing, these days, is that politicians put their own livelihoods and well-being way ahead of their party and the voters they supposedly represent, let alone what's right for the country. But if it becomes a choice between saving their own skins or being voted out, they will inevitably come around to thinking properly about the will of the people and what is right for the country.

I think this is a slim chance if I'm honest, but if we sleepwalk - as we currently are doing - into control by Europe and the EU, we will have lost our identity and I would argue our ability to control our home-grown prosperity forever. We'll be a left-wing minor state with the same influence as Moldova, rather than a driving force for good in the world.

Please wake up people. This is real and present and massively dangerous.

Thanks for reading.

A strong, coherent, consistent vision is your only chance Dave

We can argue all day and night (for five years or so) about the failings of the last Labour government. Many people on the right shudder at the prospect of a new 'old' Labour getting in at the next election after the mess in which they left the country last time and now with added union power pulling the strings: More here.

The financial disaster they oversaw; black holes in defense spending, failed IT projects, cover-ups of NHS neglect that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths, falling educational standards, completely uncontrolled immigration.

The growth of the welfare-dependent client state, selling off our gold reserves for a song, raiding the pension funds; the proliferation of mind-bogglingly stupid PFI contracts which mean paying for infrastructure and capital projects will cost ten times what they should have done and which were entered into, on the 'never never' when the economy was booming. Taking us into an unwinnable war on completely bogus evidence...

Dave has been trying to address many of these major problems and he has made some vital progress in many areas particularly in education and the welfare state where the problems are massive; were considered 'too difficult' by Labour last time, but need to be solved if we're to have any prospect of a prosperous future. The economy is turning a corner, jobs are being created and there continues to be fall-out from Labour incompetence on bank regulation, electoral scandals in Falkirk, NHS failings, the Co-op bank and, pretty much universal acceptance that Ed Balls' economic competence is non-existant.

Dave should be miles ahead in the polls, looking forward to ditching the woeful Lib Dems and taking the country forward on a sound footing for the first time since Maggie was at the helm. The polls suggest that a majority don't see Ed Miliband as a competent Prime Minister, don't trust Balls to run a whelk stall.. and yet.

The polls also suggest strongly that Labour will almost certainly win a majority at the next election. How is that even possible?

If you're of the opinion that there's no such thing as bad publicity, ask Gerald Ratner about it sometime. 

I have opined, here, that the current poll ratings of the parties in the UK are quite mad given all of the above: Labour incompetence leaving a massive mess and Dave starting to clear it up.

But, it seems to me, it's not just about achievements and making progress any more. Doing the right thing for the country. It's about tribalism, about what you as an individual are likely to get out of whichever party, rather than anyone taking a wider view of the good of the country. I think that's an unutterebly sad state of affairs but when our politicians of all shades of the political spectrum seem to be in it for their own gain; have a 'fuck you' attitude, it's hardly surprising that most of the population take the same self-interested view of the world.

Most importantly - and here's the 'thing' - it's about vision, reputation or (to use a marketing term) 'brand identity'.

In today's 24-hour media society it's no longer about achievement or reality, but about spin and about perception. And sadly for Dave, he has not sufficiently addressed the perception that the Tories are 'the Nasty Party'.   

So it doesn't really matter what great things he does if they don't add up to shaking off that epithet. Clearly Labour will continue to push the phrase for as long as they can (forever presumably while it still gains some traction) and until Dave or future Tory party leaders get to the point where they've debunked the concept, proved it to be invalid, it will continue to haunt them, probably fatally.

The way to achieve this is no longer just about improving people's lives and winning the argument through deeds. When the perception is so deep-seated (and latched onto at every opportunity by Labour supporters) it needs a much more concentrated effort in order to turn the situation around.

In short, it needs a clear, coherent vision: one which underlines every aspect of this government's achievements, one which effectively blows the old 'nasty party' tag off the agenda for good.

So fannying (technical term) around with half-baked slogans like 'in it together', 'the big society', 'aspiration nation', 'localism', 'hard working people', but not sticking to any one of them; making it the 'vision', the 'big idea', doesn't just fail to do the job, it actually adds to the confusion and makes you look like you don't have any real conviction. More here. And a more detailed look at the value of vision here.

I'm not suggesting that spinning rather than doing is the right approach - Labour did that with disastrous consequences for the country.

The terrifying trouble is, that their approach seems to be working better than Dave's.

Thanks for reading

Have the lunatics finally taken over the asylum?

It amazes me that despite the progress made by Dave and his team, made invariably in spite of Mr Clegg's unprincipled fuckwittery and blocking, he's still well behind in the polls and that the most likely outcome of the 2015 General Election is a Labour majority. Ben Brogan's piece today is good on this here.

It just defies all logic, to me, that people would vote to bring Labour back; a more left wing Labour party than we have seen since 1978, with the unions pulling Ed's strings.

What is wrong with the people of this country that they'd choose vote for a party that left us in such a shambolic mess in 2010 instead of the people who are clearing up the mess for the good of the country now?

What don't they get about the drive to improve educational attainment? To fix the £multi billion black hole in defense spending and to address the out-of-control welfare client state that is simply unsustainable?

What don't they understand about our failing NHS and the need for transparency and improvement that was simply covered up by the last Labour government? 

Yes the economy (stupid) is picking up but that is perhaps more about where we are in the economic cycle than can be directly attributed to government policies, but even that seems to have no resonance with the voting public.

It's almost as if people will vote on tribal lines even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the people they're voting for are idiots. And that makes them, erm, idiots too.

It begs the question as to what level of incompetence and shambolic failure would induce people to change the way they vote? My terror is that we are going to be finding out come 2015 and beyond.

And that will mean no EU referendum - probably our last chance to secure our own sovereignity, our last chance to have democratic control of our lives via direct control (such as it is) of the people who make the laws by which we live.

It will almost certainly be too late, if we don't have a referendum in 2017, for us to be able to claw back our democratic powers of self governance. The freedoms that were so hard won on two occasions in the last century. We won't be British or English, we'll be Europeans, governed by an undemocratic left-leaning super-state whose MPs will never have heard of the village, town or even county in which you live. How is that going to be good for you on a local basis?

We are sleepwalking into democratic oblivion and we're being led down this path by idiots who will vote Labour despite the abject fucking mess they have made every time they have had their hands on the levers of power in this country.

I'm an optimist by nature and I'm looking for some good news. I'm struggling. I want to scream 'WAKE THE FUCK UP' but sadly I'm not sure you could tell the difference as far as many (perhaps most) of my fellow citizens are concerned as to whether they are awake or not.

Government is being done 'to' us instead of 'for' us at the moment. And Dave is not without guilt in that assessment, but if apathy, tribalism and utter blindness to reality continues to win the day, we are, quite simply, fucked. As a proud nation and as a self governing, enterprising and 'free' people.

So the lunatics haven't taken over the asylum; they've just been watching x-factor and Big Brother (oh the irony), whilst we are all being sold down the river.

My views on Dave's opportunity here.

And lack of vision here.

And opportunity, here.

Sadly he seems to be blowing it.


Thanks for reading.

Chris Huhne thinks you're stupid

Gone fisking. I don't often (if ever) do this but a piece by that nice upstanding and honest Mr Huhne in today's Grauniad made me a bit mad, as you might be able to deduce. There might be a few naughty words dotted about. My comments in bold.

Here's the piece:  

Europe is once again turning into a disaster for the Conservatives. The prime minister is up for renegotiation and an in-out referendum: indeed it is his idea. Implicitly, if renegotiation fails, we should leave. But as David Cameron begins to realise the price of this promise in investment and jobs, he is desperately trying to reassure business that he can win a plebiscite backing EU membership.

Yes we know Dave will be for a 'stay in' vote in the referendum - he's a product of the same Common Purpose crap that guides your every waking move Mr Huhne, but at least Dave is offering us the chance to campaign and to have a vote - it's called democracy Mr Huhne, not something that you or your colleagues seem to have much of a clue about. This is the biggest issue regarding our freedom of determination, that has faced this country since the late 1940s and you would deny the people a vote? You like denying stuff don't you?

The big guns are pounding. Last week a CBI report estimated that every British household was £3,000 better off from membership, and urged that we stay. It rejected a Norwegian or Swiss half-pregnant option where you apply the rules but get no say over making them. Four-fifths of businesses backs EU membership, according to polls.

Plucking a figure out of the air (which is what the CBI did largely, more here) and then saying 'according to polls' without identifying the source is just a misleading cop out. Here's Dan Hannan in the Telegrah on the exact same issue. You'll have to do much better than that Mr Huhne in order to be credible. Actually, much, much more. If the argument is that we need to stay where we are so that we have a role in making the rules set by Brussels, how's that going in reality? The more entries (new members) from smaller countries, the less influence we have. If we were outside but part of EFTA we would have significant influence as do the Norweigians, (more here) and, what's more, if we didn't agree with or accept new rules we could just ignore them. What are they going to do in that eventuality, kick us out?..oh wait.. 

On Friday Nissan's most senior global executive said his company would reconsider its UK investment if we left. The company employs 6,500 people in the north-east. These warnings could cost the Tories votes in manufacturing areas where there are marginal seats.

Posturing. Would he really go if we offered an efficient tax environment and there was abosolutely no change to the UK's ability to trade with the Eurozone - indeed if we were better able to trade on a global basis, on our own behalf, with the Commonwealth and our special friend, the US, as 'us' rather than as part of an EU agreement? How is the jobs argument going down in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland Mr Huhne? Where they're yoked into enabling Germany to boom, while they endure the prospect of almost endless poverty and lack of opportunity as a direct result of what the EU is doing?

And why is an ex Lib Dem, a failed minor party politician worried about Tory marginal seats? (expletive deleted)

The Conservatives, once the business party, are in the fevered grip of activists who have no conception of what matters to the economy or indeed the electorate. Ambitious Tory MPs know how to stroke their party's erogenous zones, which is why the MP Adam Afriyie is playing games in calling for a referendum next year, before the election.

'Once'? If the Tories are not still the business party, then we don't currently have one in the UK. And since business is the source of all the money we have to spend on everything, that might get a bit awkward. What a fucking stupid thing to say. Here's what Digby Jones thinks - would you (dear reader) trust him or Mr Huhne to have the UK's interests at heart on this issue?

On Saturday the Bruges Group, whose principal purpose is to keep a candle flickering at the altar of St Maggie, held a conference in London entitled "Which way out? How Britain can withdraw from the EU". The Tory right is busy plotting the how, not the why.

Because the why - unaccountability, the ability to set our trade, foreign and domestic policies without our (electorate) input, to make laws that bind people who did not vote for them, spend billions in tax payer's money with no accountability and no approved audit for 18 years, is already well established. Try finding a reason - a real benefit - that would justify our staying. I have tried and couldn't. The nearest I could get was the strength that we would have being part of a larger trading block. But if we were members of the EEA (as part of the European Free trade Association EFTA) we would still be part of that larger block, but outside the cloying, controlling, left-wing EU mechanism and, therefore, better able to trade with many other parts of the world. This is what former Eurofile Max Hastings thinks. 

This is lunacy. The EU is simply incapable of being the bogeyman the Tory right and the UK Independence party try to put up. Its institutions are small: they employ 47,500 people, 11% of the size of the UK civil service. EU spending is 1% of EU output, or less than a 40th of total public spending. EU law is usually mind-bogglingly technical, and largely about establishing common standards. Without that effort, differing consumer protection can block trade. Unlike any other institution designed to tackle cross-national problems, the EU even has elected officials.

'Even' has elected officials. As if that's some justification. A few elected officials and most, in power are not elected by the majority of people whose money they spend. So it's a relatively small waste of our time and money so we should ignore it and let it get on with controlling our lives in the future? What kind of argument is that?  Most of their officials view their cushy lifestyles as being much more important than doing the right thing by their countries of origin. It's an out of control unaccountable and largely unelected power base that has too much power over us and must be wound back to serve us rather than control us.

Nor does the electorate give a toss. Our EU membership does not even rank in the top 10 issues concerning voters. In an Ipsos Mori poll in September, just 1% said it was the most important issue facing Britain, compared with 25% specifically citing the economy. Even Ukip-Tory switchers worry more about immigration and the economy than about EU membership. Yet Tory activists are obsessed with the issue.

By design, the EU has fanned the flames of joke issues like straight bananas over the years to the point where most people now read the letters 'EU' in a story and switch off as its being a joke. It's the boy who cried wolf in reverse - leaving the EU to get on with taking control on a slice by slice basis. Just because people have been thus put off by the EU's tactics does not mean that it's not the biggest threat facing our freedom and democracy at this time and as a (former) UK politician, if you cannot see, understand and communicate that fact, then you are unworthy of the post. Which is self evident from your past behaviour. 

How can we explain this? The Tories are a mix of two strands. The first is the whiggish, market-oriented and socially liberal strand. The second is the old Tory English nationalist tradition: militaristic, authoritarian and xenophobic.

Xenophobic? The Tories/British have been responsible for more growth of trade and uplift in living conditions in more countries around the globe than any other party/country on earth. That doesn't mean we roll over at the first sign of any dissent like you fucking idiots would, but neither does it mean we're xenophobic - that's just another example of opponents playing the race card, the man not the ball, rather than engaging properly and winning the argument. Just lazy journalism. Why am I not surprised?

That English nationalist strand runs all the way through Tory history: the archetypal leader in that tradition was Lord Salisbury. As a result, the Tory party has always needed a foreign bogeyman: the French until the entente cordiale in 1904, the Germans until 1945, and the Soviet Union until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

Oh do fuck off. We're talking about the future freedom of the British people here, as important now as it has ever been in our history. 

When the Soviets could no longer credibly perform the role of foreign threat, who should volunteer but Jacques Delors, then European commission president and a French socialist who proclaimed to the Trades Union Congress in September 1988 that there had to be a "social Europe". As the commission's campaign for its 1992 Maastricht treaty gathered strength, the Tory right had its enemy.
Boris Johnson, then the Daily Telegraph's Brussels correspondent, performed his own walk-on role in the transformation by inventing an entirely new – and largely fictitious – brand of journalism known as the "bent-banana story". The story, in many guises, held that the EU was about to legislate some daft law that would threaten a way of life enjoyed by free-born Englishmen since King Ethelred.
In fact, the EU offers a prize that has been the objective of English foreign policy since the Tudors. We were a small trading nation that wanted to stop any domination that would close our continental markets. We spent blood and treasure fighting the Spanish, French and Germans to achieve that objective. Now the EU gives us what we always craved – and the Tory nationalists look the gift horse in the mouth.

What utter, utter fucking crap. This is not something that we are leading. This was all about trade at first but has now become about a single federal state and one for which we are paying more than everyone except Germany and France to deliver.  Are you really suggesting that the objective of English foreign policy since the Tudors was to be governed by a foreign country? If so, your twattishness knows no bounds.

Pity the redundant Tory nationalist, because we live in a period with fewer external threats to our existence than at any time in our history. But the need for a foreign bogeyman does not depend on reality: it is a psychological urge that tells you more about the person who holds those views than about the world.

Bogeyman? Is this the Daily Star? Once again, playing the man not the ball. Insulting the person who holds genuine views rather than addressing his or her concerns. Unless you address the argument why should anyone take what you say seriously? In fact why should anyone take anything you say ever again, seriously Mr Huhne? And if you really think there are fewer external threats to our way of life now than ever before, have a look at Sweden and Belgium and the Middle East. Good grief.

This psychosis is a massive problem for Tory leaders. Cameron should have faced down these demons in opposition, just as his hero Tony Blair faced down the nationalisers with the abolition of clause IV from Labour's constitution. The tragedy for the Tories – and for Cameron's project – is that he never did.

The tragedy for you and those who support this view, is that Dave had no chance of ever facing down people who take the cause of the UK as being more important than being ruled from overseas. Who value our freedoms and our nationality and our sovereignty. You might advocate handing over our powers - powers, on this of all days, that have been so hard won, but there are still many people - not xenophobes, not racists, not 'little Englanders' but proud Britains who want to trade with the world, who love Europe but not the EU, and who want some control and some influence over the people for whom we vote and to whom we provide the money that they spend in our name. 

Worse, he threw red meat to rightwingers with a promise in his leadership campaign to withdraw from the European People's party, the pro-EU grouping that contains the sane continental conservative parties.

'Sane'. Again, insult anyone who takes a different view instead of engaging in a rational argument. This guy is truly a fuckwit of epic proportions. Where's the proof for what you say? Where's the source? You're just printing (writing) your own prejudices here. How objective or fact-checked is that Mr Rusbridger?

Cameron now lacks the courage to refuse more of the concessions that he began. Like so many leaders before him, he is a sad hostage to the way he won.

The sadness is mainly that he could only win by being forced to form a coalition with people who are simply not equipped for high office and who do not have the interests of their nation or their electorate at heart. A conclusion that you have confirmed, in spades, via this unbelievably naive article.

For what it's worth, if you want some more on my views on this subject you can find it:

Here (Referendum)
Here (playing the man and not the ball)
Here (Agenda 21, EU control of our lives etc)
Here (will leaving the EU cost British jobs?)
Here (getting back some control over our politicians)
and
Here (the end of democracy in Europe?)

Thanks for reading. 

We may have invented them, but why don't we understand - and use properly - our railways?

With all this current furore about HS2 and rail capacity, economic benefits etc., I've been thinking. India can get a 'vehicle' to Mars for £45 million (of our aid money, just kidding) whereas it'll take us 200 times that to get a man to Birmingham 20 minutes more quickly than he can do the journey now, by 2030. I know that's spurious but it is kinda funny in the great scheme of things.

I am working on an HS2 blog specifically and will bother you with it shortly, but this is potentially a bigger issue in my opinion. Not as glamorous perhaps.

If I were to tell you of a scheme (I hate the word 'scheme' it has such negative Dickensian connotations but you know what I mean), that would transport goods much more efficiently around the country and would largely solve the problem of congestion and maintenance on our roads (for a while anyway since greater capacity leads to more journeys inexorably), and which wouldn't cost us (the government) a bean, would you be interested? Read on Macduff.

Have you ever seen a traffic jam on the railways? Apart from maybe queuing to get into a London station occasionally? Do you ever think: 'Christ, if I happened to find myself on one side of the track (quite possibly illegally but that's not my point), it'd take me hours to get to the other side because there's so many trains coming and going' ?

The reason I ask is that one of the main reasons being put forward by the government as to why HS2 is needed is capacity. Our rail lines are, it seems, clogged with trains - or if not with trains, then with commuters traveling at the same time every day, there and back, in order to earn a crust.

But if you travel at 09.30 or before or after the period between 4pm and 7pm, on a normal weekday, capacity is not an issue at all. And according to The Engineer magazine (which you may not have come across before but, trust me, is a credible and highly reliable bible for the engineering industry), there is no current capacity issue on the lines between London and Birmingham and beyond. More here. Whereas there are clearly capacity issues (mainly to do with the age of the rolling stock and there being no time to implement a proper solution), on Network South East. A blog, perhaps, for another day. But I'm talking about using our exisitng rail capacity here, not just for people.

Between 11pm and 6am there's almost nothing moving on the rails. Imagine that, the capacity to move millions of people in a short period of time every day, not being used for around one third of that day. Now of course the issue here is that people don't need to travel during those hours and that the rail operators have to gear up to meet peak demand. That's me blown out of the water then. But think on this:

Freight doesn't have to move during peak times. Perishable goods perhaps, but getting Spanish tomatoes from Dover to say Birmingham takes maybe eight hours in a truck, on the roads, at all hours of the day and night. Is it really beyond the wit of man to get them there in maybe four hours on a train, during the night when the rails are massively under-used? And for non-perishable goods the time-frame is much more forgiving.

But, given my utopian scenario, once a proper, intelligent system for transporting freight by rail, and at off peak hours of the day was in place, the delivery times would actually be much more reliable than for goods transported by road. And transporting frieght by night, on the railway which has massive capacity to do this, would get huge numbers of trucks off the roads during the day, thereby helping to solve the mega problem of traffic congestion at the same time.

One truck axle movement is the equivalent of 38,000 cars. By which I mean that one set of truck wheels does the equivalent damage to the road surface of 38,000 cars passing over the same bit of road. And most trucks have six axles. So getting one truck off the road is the equivalent, in highway maintenance terms of getting almost 240,000 cars off the roads in terms of damage.

And making this change would not require any major infrastructure investment: The rails are already there - you might need some additional rolling stock and a better computer system to control their movements on existing lines, but it's not like building a whole new railway system. And it would go a long way towards solving traffic congestion on our roads.

And all it would take (OK this is a bit simplistic and the devil is always in the detail I know), would be for the government to say 'we'll charge you an extra amount of money (punitive) to transport goods during the day (especially in peak traffic hours) and less - or nothing - if you transport the same goods at night (by road). And, (and here's the best bit) we'll give you a bonus if you get together with the rail freight companies and move your goods by rail at off-peak hours'. 

The infrastructure and capacity is already in place for this to be made to work, quite simply and effectively. Yes the rail option would require freight handling facilities around the country but they're already there - they're called 'B8' in planning terms - warehousing and distribution points. And yes there would obviously be the need to transport the goods between these distribution points and the point of sale, but that already happens anyway.

There wouldn't be more traffic locally than there is now and if implemented, most of these journeys would be made at night or at off peak times, in order to 'join up' with the schedule.

And this approach would get what? 50%, 60%, 80% of heavy goods vehicles off of our trunk roads almost overnight. And make much better use of our rail capacity.

It would also reduce the damage caused to our roads by more than half, overnight and, almost certainly, reduce the number of deaths on our roads significantly if there were fewer trucks on them. 

The world of transporting goods  designed for TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units or 'containers' to you and me). They're used to transport good around the world on container ships and then onward distribution 'in country' mostly by road. But they can also be transported by rail in a way which is much more efficient and would also be much more reliable in terms of the planned time of arrival (subject to getting the rail handling system right). But it's 2013, can we not develop a schedule which makes use of the massive unused capacity on our railways in order to deliver a better transport system and take a significant proportion of trucks off the roads, especially during peak times?

All it would take is a government directive and then the business opportunity such a system would afford to operators would almost certainly mean that the investment required in systems and freight terminals located to make use of the rail network instead of the road network, would come from the private sector. How many ProLogis warehouses does the government or the taxpayer pay for currently? None at all.

Even if there was some 'pump priming' needed from government, it would certainly not add up to even a small fraction of the £80 billion earmarked for HS2 and it would bring serious, measurable benefit to the whole country.

Joined-up thinking on transport? Now that would truly be a first.

Thanks for reading.

    

Is work working?

Call me old fashioned - and you would perhaps be right in many ways. But then nostalgia is not what it used to be. And it never was really.

You see I always thought that work was work - an ability to earn money, stand on your own two feet; pay for what you and your family needs and out of that income a small amount is taken in the form of tax by the government in order to pay for services that require a bigger scale of funding, like the machinery of government, defence of the realm or the NHS; as well as to provide a safety net for those who are unfortunate enough not to have any work (ideally for a short period) or who cannot work for other reasons such as disability.

I also thought that welfare or 'benefits' were provided as I have described, as a safety net for people who are unemployed or disabled and therefore need a helping hand from their fellow citizens in our civilised society. And to declare my interests in this subject, I am currently unemployed but not claiming benefits and have a (registered) disabled daughter.

To 'old fashioned' me, the above seems to be a fair and equitable approach to creating a system that rewards work - so that those who do work are better off than those who don't, but ensures that those who can't find work are looked after and can live relatively comfortably in terms of food and shelter and dignity, albeit - and importantly - without being able to enjoy some of the 'luxuries' that going out to work allows. In this way people who are out of work are encouraged to find work and better themselves in a way which is good for their families, the wider community, the country at large, and perhaps most importantly, for the unemployed individuals themselves.

Having a purpose in life, a reason to get up, get out, earn money and 'get on' is a difficult thing to measure accurately, but in terms of mental well-being, self esteem, motivation, purpose and simply, as a positive role model, encouraging your kids to have a positive work ethic, it must be a better thing than encouraging people 'not to bother', to retreat from society and the world.

If you fundamentally disagree with any of the above, thanks for getting this far. And goodbye and good luck.

Because, once, as a society, you get to the stage where most people who go out to work (but on on low incomes) are also receiving 'benefits' because they don't have a 'living wage', you have fundamentally lost the plot. And once you get to the stage where many (if not 'most' and I think it is getting very close to 'most') people on benefits who don't work would be worse off if they got a job, then you're in a downward spiral of absolute disaster if you want to be a successful, thriving, achieving, successful economy.

And that is where we are right now.

Subsidising private sector companies' wage bills because they don't pay a living wage is a socialist approach but it is just lining the pockets of the stingy employer by reducing his costs and increasing his profits. Are you sure that's a good socialist thing to be doing?

And making benefits an 'entitlement' something that people have a 'right' to get, as opposed to being grateful for the safety net afforded to them by people who do work and pay their taxes, is certain to create resentment, particularly if those who don't work seem to be as well off as those who do. That simply cannot be right in a fair society.

Current benefit levels are trapping people and families into years, decades, generations of worklessness. Where there is simply no incentive for them to go out and find work (I'm not saying finding work is easy by the way), because they would lose out financially if they got a job. That is just madness.

I know of some young people (teenage girls mainly) in my part of the world who view 'starting a family' as a career move. As a genuine alternative to staying at school, going on to college (university is a different world to them), or getting a job. Because it allows them to leave home at 15 or 16, get their own place and have a livable level of benefits income. And while you might view this as me being critical of them, I'm not. I'm on their side and I am horrified that this short-term trap, which looks very attractive to someone living in a difficult home environment and who wants to be 'grown up', but which effectively wastes them and their talents and efforts, probably forever.

We are, as a society, doing this to people in order to be as kind to them as we can. We're killing these young people with kindness. And we feel smug about it. We think we're doing the right thing. We're so not.

These kids have kids of their own and get a lifestyle, a home, an 'income', from which they will never emerge to achieve their potential, to better themselves or to make a contribution to society. And we seem to think that this is a good thing? In order to be better off, they would have to be earning more than £300 a week (net), just to have a couple of quid more in their pockets. And they don't need that extra couple of quid so why bother? And how many 15 year olds with no qualifications and a kid (at least one) in tow, do you know who are earning £20 grand a year?

So that's a massive issue in my opinion for our society to try to address and whilst IDS is tinkering and moving somewhat in the right direction, it's nowhere near enough to address the fundamental problem.

But even more important it seems to me, is the current madness of 'topping up' the wages of people who are working full-time, in the private sector. What is the point of having a minimum wage if it is not enough to live on? And what is enough to live on? Who decides? Does it include fags? Nights out? Holidays? Are these fundamentals of life or 'pleasures' that make working worth doing? People were outraged earlier this year when the figure of £53 a week to live on became a public issue. But that figure was after housing and energy and other living costs had been accounted for. It was effectively £53 a week for food. I don't want to detract from my overall point here, but I can, and often do, feed three people, healthily and well for £53 a week. More here.

And how does this play with people who go out to work? When they know that what they're doing is not enough for them to earn a living wage? Of course they will take the extra money thank you very much, but it must diminish their sense of worth, of value, of purpose. If you go out to work for 40-odd hours a week and need to be subsidised by the state, that's not really standing on your own two feet is it? And whilst this situation is probably not front and centre of their thinking on a day-to-day basis, these people who are working but being subsidised, are not making any net contribution to society. So what's the point? They're just surviving.

And what does this state subsidy really achieve? Does it redistribute wealth or just leave many (most?) people trapped in relative poverty? Does it incentivise endeavour, achievement, effort? Or undermine those values upon which our nation has been founded? Does 'topping up' wages really help the employee or the inefficient, perhaps insolvent employer in the long-term?

Is it a likely plan for making Britain 'Great' again on the world stage or more likely to see us meandering slowly but inexorably downhill towards a meaningless, desperate, state-funded, uncompetitive realm?

If working doesn't pay you enough to live on, it's not really work. It's 'benefits but with a little extra something to do along the way'. If someone employs you to do a job and that job does not give you enough to live on, it's not really a job. If an employer can get away with paying you so little that you need state benefits to make ends meet, his business is not viable. Or, perhaps more likely, he's taking the piss out of you, the tax-payer, the government and this crazy system.

This subsidy is just propping up crap businesses, propping up ridiculously high rents and house-prices. And the people who suffer - or perhaps 'pay' is a better term - are those who make enough from their jobs (lucky bastards you might suggest) to pay 40% of their incomes to subsidise these greedy, inefficient, otherwise bankrupt employers.

Figures are largely meaningless in terms of the amounts of money involved but we paid almost £42billion in 'in-work' benefits to people in 2011-12. That's eight times what we paid in unemployment benefits. Source here.

To prop up crap employers and perpetuate this 'client' or 'nanny' state. Are we completely mad?

I'm beginning to think that we are.

Thanks for reading.



   


 

Football really is about more than life and death

I don't tend to blog much about football, it's too important. I tend to stick with the mere life and death issues of politics and energy, climate change and the EU. It's much easier. Besides there are loads of really fantastic Arsenal blogs which I won't name here for fear of missing someone out. Suffice it to tell you that I am unworthy to touch the hem of the garment of the writers of these blogs. And that is not said sarcastically or facetiously but genuinely. There really is some great stuff out there.

Funny, tactically brilliant, often challenging; capturing the mood of most Arsenal fans on a daily basis.

But I did just want to make a very small contribution if I may?

The thing is, we're nearly back. It's been a while and we have been meandering, doing OK but not really contenders. But we're now quite close to being genuine contenders and that makes a massive difference to me. I am optimistic by nature (thank goodness) but Arsenal doing well - and more importantly to me, playing well - is a real boost, a breath of fresh air.

When I worked in the North East you could tell whether Newcastle United had won at the weekend by the attitude and productivity of the workforce in the shipyards. Genuinely and measurably. It had an effect that was worth more than wages - a strange phenomenon, but I promise you it was true.

When Coventry won the FA cup years ago, sq.ft office prices in the city went up significantly. Weird but true.

It's strange, but football is probably unique in being able to deliver this optimism on a weekly basis - and of course the reverse is also true if the local team loses. A successful football team puts places on the map.

Nottingham Forest, by winning the European Cup, did more for that city's world standing and reputation than any amount of work that the local inward investment company could dream of doing.

Manchester is not the UK's second city - obviously Birmingham is - but on a world scale? Manchester is world-renowned because of its fantastic football teams and their heritage and achievements. And Liverpool, perhaps more than any other city, has a reputational benefit that far outstrips (sadly) the reality of the place because of the football team.

Barcelona was a crap port, a declining city, before they got the Olympics and the values of their football team has sustained their uplift. Not just winning but winning with style. It has a clear effect on the reputation and attraction of the place.

London is not quite like that. It doesn't really need that level of uplift (where other places clearly do or would like to have it) but nonetheless the success of Chelsea and Spurs and Arsenal has a contribution to make. Rome clearly doesn't either, but the success or otherwise of Roma or Lazio make a contribution to their standing in the modern world.

Anyway I meandered, sorry. My local team is 'Northampton Town Nil'. Go figure.

But this is a personal blog. Will Arsenal win the league? It's possible but I doubt it. The mega-bucks of Chel$ki and Citeh probably put that out of reach realistically, but we're not far off. And we're a real 'club' I think, in the true sense of the term. It makes one wonder whether it's possible in these days of unlimited oil money for real clubs to compete.

And whether we have (or will) abandon the traditional club mentality for sponsorship and major backers like Usmanov  Whether we will end up with 22 multi-millionaires kicking a pigs bladder around a field watched by a couple of billionaires?

All I know right now is that what we're doing is good, feels good and above all is entertaining. Most Arsenal fans would sell their souls for a trophy: a succession of boring 1-0 wins and a title. That is very tempting. But not for me. I need it to happen with style, with verve, with gut-wrenching tension. That way comes real value. In my opinion. Up the Arse.

Thanks for reading.

Are you planning to be a NIMBY?

It's time, I think, and if I may, to point out a few things about planning and development - as a slightly more serious follow-up to my tongue-in-cheek blog about that great ally of the NIMBY, the Great Crested Newt - here. I am both anti NIMBY and a fully fledged NIMBY too as are we all. It's really about exactly where you live. To the yard. And it's awkward for us all, but you should have some facts to hand in my opinion.

This is neither a party political blog nor pro or anti any specific developments. In general terms I am in favour of building more homes in the UK - we haven't been building enough for decades and the result is a current situation in which many young people - especially if they come out of University with a £40,000 debt around their necks - have little hope of getting onto the housing ladder anytime soon.

I read somewhere that the average age of a first-time buyer is now 34. And when one considers that the first time buyer is the foundation stone upon which the whole market rests, this is a scary prospect. Help to buy seems to me to be pretty close to a scheme to re-inflate the housing bubble that got the whole world into its current financial mess: It's not a solution to the overall problem, but another way of getting some movement into the market for the benefit (it seems to me) of people selling financial services, rather than people who are financially capable of buying and sustaining a home, without being saddled with crippling debt and essentially trapped into lifelong struggle.

And the pressure on the market - demand for new homes - is not just about immigration (although one would have thought that immigration doesn't exactly help); it's about people living independently into older age, rising divorce rates, people choosing to live alone and a growing population generally. It leads to ever rising house prices which are portrayed by the government and the media as a good thing, but unless you downsize or move northwards, they simply are not. They just encourage you to think you have more 'assets' so you'll spend more on 'stuff', but you still have to live somewhere. It's not generally 'accessible' money in your lifetime.

Anyway without going too far down that particular track, I think tackling the supply-side of the housing issue is massively important: Where else are our kids going to live? And how else can we try to breathe new life into some tired old towns and places particularly outside the south east, if not through the development of new communities and the provision of jobs and infrastructure that must be planned and delivered alongside the houses?

Planning is a massively divisive issue but, generally speaking, being in favour or against a particular proposal, almost invariably comes down to where you live. And I don't mean town or region, but street or indeed the very house that you live in. The Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) is really an extremely apposite and accurate description of the issue. People living in one area of town which will be largely unaffected by a proposed development tend not to have much of a view and can quite easily be persuaded of its merits and its value to the place. Whereas other people who are otherwise entirely rational, understand the need for new homes and the other benefits associated with the proposal, will never be persuaded that it should go ahead if it will impact negatively on their view (out of the window) and their 'space' even if only for a short period of time (building work etc).

And in this scenario, these people will do anything, use any argument, to oppose the plan.

I often see reported in the media, arguments like 'we don't have enough schools', 'what about the extra traffic?', 'our health service is already creaking' 'what about energy and waste and water?' 'What about the wildlife?' 'We can't afford all this'.

People who don't have kids, have private health insurance, know nothing about energy or waste or water supply and don't give a toss about wildlife suddenly become experts overnight. People who use the town as a dormitory, have never spoken to a neighbour, and would not themselves have anywhere to live if development hadn't been approved to build their own home 5, 10, 50 years ago, will make banners and placards, go on marches, threaten to vote out the local council; anything to stop the proposed development.

And that's not really a criticism of individuals (well it is a bit but bear with me); it's what happens, every time and everywhere. And ultimately, it's about their view, their 'space', rather than logic or generosity or recognition that more homes are needed. Suggest that the development be sited on the other side of town and they almost immediately agree and start to come up with reasons why that would be a much better place to build. It's not about principle but their 'view'.

Everyone is a NIMBY to one degree or another. I was involved in opposing the opening of a local sand quarry near to where I live some years ago. I am by no means exempt from the criticism outlined above. I have also worked on the side of the developer on plans for 50,000 new homes across a number of sites in North Northamptonshire. This is not a 'holier than thou' bog in any way, just an attempt to point out some realities and some facts that might make you think a bit more about this perplexing and difficult issue.

But there are some (planning) facts you should know about in my opinion.

You don't own your view. Unless you own the land as far as the eye can see (in which case you're probably the Duke of Buccleuch and live in Kettering - and were a partner in the proposed developments that I was, in a small way, involved in). And (and this blew me away) even if you do own the land, the local planning authority can grant planning permission on it if it falls within the 'local plan'. The uplift in land values from £2,000 or £3,000 an acre (agricultural) to over £1 million an acre (with planning permission) usually overcomes any principled problems with this.

New developments have to provide schools and healthcare facilities in line with the numbers of houses. Something like 800 houses equals a new primary school and 5,100 houses means a secondary school. The primaries are built by and paid for by the builder/developer via their Section 106 (S106, or 'planning gain') contributions and then taken over by the local authority, academy group or free school initiative. Secondary schools, a bigger ticket item, are also 'sponsored' by the developer but will also involve the local authority the DfE and others (school groups, Church schools etc) for whom this is a commercial opportunity.

S106 contributions will also part-fund local healthcare facilities (policy is now to provide healthcare more locally rather than at the creaking local general hospital, in a way which will also free-up capacity at the hospital - in theory).

There are also legally binding requirements for energy, waste and water provision. If requirements cannot be met then no homes can be built. Obviously the energy companies will do their bit so they can make their profits (no comment in this blog but much more here) and waste and water companies also benefit commercially from making provision, although they only review their capacity every 7-11 years so this can cause problems. (We threatened to build our own waste treatment plant in competition with Anglain Water and amazingly they found they could do something to help after all).

Then there's traffic - another 'show stopper'. The developer pays for the roads on site and the connections into the existing road network through S106. But the Highways Agency also needs to consider and address any traffic issues both locally and regionally and must provide additional capacity (new main road junctions, main roads, by-passes, even new motorway junctions but they're very expensive indeed) if the new development is to get the 'go ahead'.

So none of the 'we can't afford it' or specific schools, energy, waste, health, traffic etc.,  concerns are really issues for the NIMBY. They're taken care of by planning law.

And also you should bear in mind that the developer has to actually sell these houses once they're built, so he or she has to make the site attractive and ought to (and generally will) provide incentives and benefits to the wider location in terms of facilities, leisure and sports amenities, connectivity with other local communities etc. This will extend to the use of sympathetic building materials, energy efficient homes and homes that meet current and future demographic needs - single person homes (I find that sad but it's real) and homes in which a growing elderly population can live independently for longer - wider doors, wheelchair access, redesigned bathrooms etc.

So what's left? Bugs and bunnies. Wildlife. Our friend the Great Crested Newt - and badgers funnily enough, although we seem to be trying to kill about 70% of them, they're still protected in terms of development land and have to be found, negotiated with and re-housed somewhere else - presumably where the men with guns can get a clearer shot?

But whilst a major pain, the wildlife issue can also be reasonably addressed by the developer, it just takes more time, costs a bit more money, but in the end it's not a real obstacle, just a delaying tactic. And I have to say that delaying tactics quite often work when governments change, local politics change and policies are reviewed. All that money wasted for nothing. But you've saved your view, deprived people of a place to live, for a couple of years perhaps? Whereas if you'd embraced the plan, you could almost certainly have got more out of the developer in terms of benefits for the existing community. Go figure.

Finally, I would argue that bigger developments are best. I'm sure most people (depending upon where they live of course) would not agree, but what happens with a big development (more than 1,000 homes) is that these uplifts in infrastructure (compulsory and in terms of marketing the site) bring bigger benefits, bigger contributions on site and to the wider community and clearer compliance with the planning requirements described above. The alternative is a small, say 50-home site that doesn't require an uplift of infrastructure - schools, healthcare etc - but which does put additional pressure on local facilities. So, over time, 20 years or so, you have 800 extra homes but no new primary school or new healthcare facilities. Over a longer period (with smaller developments) you have extra pressure on healthcare, roads schools etc, but no significant S106 contributions to mitigate the population growth.

Finally finally, as part of its S106 obligations the developer will be required to build a certain percentage of homes on the site as 'affordable' or 'social rented' to you and me. 'Affordable' is such a misnomer it makes me laugh: all of the homes on a site must be 'affordable' to the target market or they won't sell, simples. But this percentage must be for the local authority to take into its own stock of council houses (let's call them what they are) as part of the planning agreement. The current figure is around 35% of homes should be 'affordable', but this is subject to negotiation and will - or should - reflect the make-up of the existing housing stock in the town. If the exisiting stock is 50% 'affordable' then the new development will probably have a lower percentage and vise versa, but this isn't always the case. I have argued (unpopularly) that recreating a town in its own image (same proportion of 'affordable' as currently exists) does not deliver 'uplift' but a continuation of the balance that has left it in its current tired, failing state.

I'm right about that, but it doesn't always win the argument.

So now you know. If you want to be a NIMBY either live somewhere else (i.e. not where anyone's going to build anything close by) or cultivate newts.

 But if you want progress and somewhere where your kids - our kids - can afford to live, try to be less in love with the view out of your window and a bit more generous to others. I know it's not easy.

Thanks for reading.