Let's build a new Royal yacht - and bring the old one here

One thing is for sure: Tony Blair is really going to struggle with delivering Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” when it comes up on the karaoke machine at party nights in his twilight home.

So far he has publicly regretted the (admittedly nominal) abolition of foxhunting and the Freedom of Information Act. Under pressure at the Chilcot enquiry, he also said he was sorry for the loss of life in Iraq.

However, he is on record as having no regrets about removing Saddam, befriending Gadaffi or indeed remaining silent about baby Leo’s MMR jab.

What else, in the fullness of time, might he come to see as a mistake? The most recent example of the benefit of hindsight came in the debate about a possible new Royal yacht, when it was revealed that Mr Blair now regretted getting rid of Britannia. An unsurprising revelation to all of us who pointed out at the time that it was an egregious error.

The value of Britannia for projecting British prestige and promoting trade around the world was incalculable, though arguably it could have been worked harder for this purpose. I can vividly recall the surge of pride I experienced each time I saw her, even when being rudely awoken by a destroyer’s 21-gun salute as the yacht appeared through the mist at the start of Cowes week.

Since this column was recently maligned as Tory propaganda, let me concede that her demise was not Mr Blair’s fault. The decision to decommission the ship was taken by the Major government, which then decided in 1997 that it would spend £60 million on a new yacht, scheduled to enter service in time for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.

Even Denmark can run to a functioning Royal yacht - and it is 20 years older than Britannia

Cue outrage from Labour in general, and Gordon Brown in particular, who had not been consulted prior to the announcement by then defence secretary Michael Portillo. It is good to note that he has since moved on to a career evidently more suited to his talents, spotting trains on TV.

Look out! No, on second thoughts ...

How could a country in Britain’s dire economic state waste that sort of money? That was the question being asked as we poured £800 million down the useless black hole of the Millennium Dome.

Now the cost of a new yacht has apparently risen to an eye-watering £80 million. Precisely what we are about to squander on opening and closing ceremonies for the London Olympics that will be over in a flash and doubtless occupy little space in our collective memories.

The London Olympic mascots apparently hanged. Not at all a bad idea.

For comparative purposes, it might also be interesting to tot up the countless billions of taxpayers’ money wasted over recent years on endless reorganisations of the health service and education, grotesquely overpriced private finance initiatives and defence procurement projects that have delivered nothing but scrap metal.

You could buy five new Royal yachts for the price of one Nimrod, scrapped before entering service

But who needs taxpayers’ money? I for one would be happy to contribute to the cost of a new national flagship, if someone opened a bank account for that purpose. Come to think of it, I am surprised that those industrious gentlemen in West Africa, who are forever e-mailing me about my lottery wins and deceased relatives, have not already got in on the act.

It would be a nice gesture if a certain lightly taxed, globetrotting, multi-millionaire retired PM with an uneasy conscience could chuck in a few quid, too.

Personally I would simply confiscate Britannia from those ungrateful Scots in Leith, bung in some new engines and set her back to work. But if a new vessel that also provides sail training opportunities for young people has more appeal to the popular imagination, then that’s fine with me, too.

Though I would still tow Britannia somewhere a bit more attached to the concept she is named after. Like the Tyne, for example. Perhaps with a grand re-opening featuring ex-Prime Ministers performing karaoke. That should make Her Majesty smile.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Insurers? Don't you wish some disaster would befall them?

There are very few people we are allowed to hate or abuse these days, without calling down the wrath of the thought police.

Even the Welsh, the morbidly obese and people with ginger hair seem to be creeping within the safety net of protected species. Though apparently it is still all right to loathe bankers for their obscene rewards, and for expecting us to pick up the bill when their bets go wrong.

But if a banker is a man who cheerfully lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, then demands it back when it starts to rain – well, at least you’ve had the pleasure of holding an umbrella for a while. This to my mind, puts him several steps ahead of the insurer, who takes your money in return for a solemn promise to provide an umbrella when the heavens open, then comes up with 101 reasons why he cannot supply it.

Usually boiling down to some incredibly small print on page 38 of his policy document, pertaining to the definition of “rain”.

A typical insurer in action, apparently. You will note that it isn't actually raining.

I suppose my mind was warped by over-exposure to TV advertising in the 1950s. When we weren’t going to work on an egg and not forgetting the fruit gums, mum, we were all taking careful note of Fred, who had the reassuring strength of the insurance companies around him.

As a result I have faithfully insured all my belongings ever since I was a student. In 40 years I have made just one claim on my home policy, following a visit from a very unambitious and undiscerning burglar in London. The hassle involved in persuading the insurer to accept the claim was out of all proportion to the sum recovered.

Yet I kept paying the premiums, while occasionally wondering why. After all, which belongings would I actually rush to save if the house caught fire? The things that are most precious to me are those that hold memories, which means mainly photographs: priceless to me, worthless to anyone else.

I possess literally thousands of books, but I doubt whether I would replace more than a handful if they went up in smoke. That goes for most of my other belongings, too.

So the temptation not to insure at all is strong. But I live in a listed building which, if it disappeared, I would be obliged to restore exactly as it was. So some sort of cover against disaster seems prudent.

Last year, tempted by a leaflet through my letterbox, the recommendation of a fellow columnist and the lure of a modest saving, I switched my cover to a new company. They seemed ever so friendly and helpful on the phone. They even offered to send out an assessor to ensure that all my needs were being met.

Only one snag: it was obvious from the moment he walked through the door that the assessor loathed my house. He particularly disliked the combination of open fires, combustible possessions and one battery-powered smoke detector. The insurance company duly rang last week to advise that they would be cancelling my cover unless I installed a remotely monitored alarm that would automatically summon the fire brigade if it detected smoke.

This is, according to the alarm companies I have consulted, a stipulation rarely made even for stately homes, let alone modest country cottages, so it seems calculated mainly to persuade me to take my business elsewhere.

One could argue that it serves me right for hoping to save money on the soaring premiums demanded by my original insurer. Which the company then offered to reduce substantially if I changed my mind about leaving, as though I were bartering in some Middle Eastern souk. This chiefly taught me that loyalty is for mugs. I wonder what dear old 1950s Fred would have made of that?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Apart from the kid with the nuclear bomb, what could go wrong?

Every vaguely intelligent person accepts that you cannot believe everything you see in the media.

Generalist reporters irritate us as they trample heedlessly over our specialist subjects. Train nerds like me seethe at every reference to “a steam train” that actually means a locomotive, or the notion that freight is conveyed in carriages rather than wagons.

If Radio 4’s Today programme foolishly pronounces Alnwick as it is spelt, how many more of its “facts” may be similarly flawed?

Then there are those endless surveys suggesting that the great British public is bestially stupid, and recognises the name of Churchill only as a nodding insurance mascot.

Spot the difference: 1

I console myself with the belief that resentment of intrusive market researchers must tempt people to offer ludicrously wrong answers. At least until the next time I chance upon a TV or radio quiz show.

Then there are reports of the latest research proving that eating meat or drinking tea will give you cancer, or cure it. Usually both, on successive days.

Plus the news of fresh EU directives and European Court judgements, usually calculated to cause something to be thrown across the sitting room with a shout of “Haven’t they got anything better to do?”

At the highest level is live news footage of events that one can’t quite believe are actually happening. The fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and last year’s Japanese tsunami both fell into this category of a reality so dreadful that it seemed more likely to have been invented by a Hollywood studio with all the resources of computer-generated imagery at its disposal.

And then there is North Korea. Can any of us quite grasp the utter weirdness of that closed society: a hereditary monarchy that claims to be communist and whose leaders apparently enjoy lives of almost unbelievable self-indulgence while its people starve? Yet who stage epic displays of public grief when one Kim drops of the perch to be replaced by another, looking even stranger than the last. We have seen nothing like that in Europe outside Enver Hoxha’s Albania and the Miliband family.

Watching film of the elder Kim’s state funeral, I could not help thinking that the whole thing seemed far too much like a spoof conceived as a Christmas entertainment by the CIA. But then the catchphrase of another columnist kept echoing in my head: “You could not make it up.”

Dreaming up the sheer barminess of North Korea would have been beyond the satirical powers of Swift or Orwell, never mind the sort of American civil servants whose most original idea of the last century was trying to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar.

I have only made one New Year resolution for 2012, in response to strong representations from my wife, and that is to spend more time counting my blessings. I shall begin by giving thanks that I do not live anywhere near the Korean peninsula, and in a free and open society.

Those of us of a Eurosceptic cast of mind are sometimes dismissed as “little Englanders” but I, for one, am anything but. I am delighted to live in a country that punches far above its weight in so many areas of art and science, and which has given the great gift of its language to the world. As communications improve, why on earth do some people insist that we must narrow our horizons and hop into bed with the girl next door, particularly when it is Frau Merkel?

Spot the difference: 2

There is only one thing that slightly dents my unusual sense of optimism at this time, and that is the fact that a chubby kid who appears a dead ringer for Timmy Timpson, the legendary spoilt brat from Viz comic, is currently sitting in Pyongyang nursing a nuclear trigger. That and those predictions that the world will end on 21 December, when the Mayan calendar runs out.

But, apart from that, what could possibly go wrong? Happy new year, everyone.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2012: a year to remember

This promises to be a financially painful year for many of us, as unemployment rises and tax increases bite. Though these will not worry me if deathclock.com is correct in its prediction that I will die on 4 February. Irritatingly, it does not specify at what time.

If it proves to be wrong (and the same website did advise my older brother that he had already been dead for a decade) I look forward to the birth of my second son later in February, and to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June. Creating a welcome boom for Chinese producers of bunting and commemorative plates.

Which brings me to an uncharacteristically serious point. We do not have to accept the inevitability of globalisation exporting our jobs. We could all do more to buy locally made and grown stuff from local retailers, and to tighten our focus on buying only what we actually need.

The ‘savings’ made by cashing in on special offers at distant hypermarkets are every bit as illusory as the claims of constantly improving academic attainment, risk-free defence cuts or the affordability of free health care from the cradle to the grave when these are now around a century apart. Though maybe not for me ...

Keith Hann is a financial PR from Northumberland, a regular Journal columnist and a born optimist: www.keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2011: not a vintage year

Never mind the Arab Spring, the summer riots, the autumn anti-capitalist occupations and the looming winter of discontent. Forget about the deaths of bin Laden and Gadaffi, and the birth of Southern Sudan.

Ignore the tsunamis, earthquakes, mudslides, potential nuclear meltdowns and the relentless retreat of glaciers and polar ice caps.

Put from your mind, if you can, even the happy images of the royal wedding, including that arresting rear view of the bride’s sister.

Because none of those was the key event of 2011. That took place all the way back on January 1, when Estonia joined the euro. The first instance in recorded history of a rat commissioning a fast launch to get it on board a rapidly sinking ship.

The political class of Estonia are thus elevated to that pantheon of geniuses who can be relied upon to show the rest of us what not to do, alongside the Financial Times, the European Commission, the Labour and Liberal Democrat front benches, and virtually anyone called Bercow.

A quick internet search confirms this with the telling headline “Estonian wind power sector faces rapid growth”.

My top tip: keep a close eye on Tallinn to determine your business and investment strategies for 2012 and beyond.

Keith Hann is a financial PR from Northumberland, a regular Journal columnist and a born optimist: www.keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Just another Christmas with a two-year-old

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is nothing more tedious than other people’s children – not even columnists recycling opening lines from Jane Austen.

If this is your view, I can only repeat what newscasters say when they turn to the football results shortly before Match of the Day: look away now.

Because Christmas is undoubtedly a time for children. (Yes, that is three major clichés already.) Even for those of us who would have done most of our festive spending in the off licence, if only it had not been closed down by supermarket competition. Ho, ho, ho. (Four.)

So the chances of a memorably happy Yuletide looked pretty slim around 7pm on Christmas Eve when the exhausted teenager in charge of A&E announced that our two-year-old son should be admitted to hospital for observation.

This had a cathartic effect on young Charlie, who immediately burst into floods of tears. I sternly explained that it was his own fault for taking one of Mummy’s pills, carefully hidden in an apparently inaccessible part of the kitchen.

“But I didn’t,” he sobbed. “I didn’t.”

Which was interesting, because he had spent the previous three hours insisting precisely the opposite, and it is another of those aforementioned universally acknowledged truths that very young children never lie. All investigations of child abuse rely on this premise.

In the car home Mrs Hann proudly recalled an article she had read somewhere which claimed that the sooner a child starts telling porkies, the more likely it is to become a senior executive. (That figures.) I hope there are some talent scouts from the FTSE-100 reading this.

Charlie did not comment, though he was with us in the car because the (very) young man at A&E had gone on to say “Of course if you want to act against medical advice and take him home, that is up to you.”

For which I heard “That’s us covered against a compensation claim if the brat dies. Next please!”

So we decided to take the risk. Because the pill Charlie claimed to have taken, designed to control his mother’s gestational diabetes, was rather too large for him to have swallowed. While his adamant refusal to eat a huge range of delicious things, other than sausages and fish fingers, made it improbable that he would have gone to the trouble of chewing it.

It was our second visit to A&E in less than a week. Prior to becoming a father I had only entered a hospital emergency department once in my life, after a hilarious mishap involving a trouser zip when I was still only an apprentice drunk. Actually, I did not find it at all amusing, but I defer to the universal opinion of the nurses at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, who fell about with mirth. I have been a staunch advocate of button flies ever since.

Our previous visit was occasioned by the boy developing a grotesquely swollen eye after bumping it on a shopping trolley in Tesco. Not their fault at all, of course, though that did not stop me drawing up plans to build a new conservatory with our compensation cheque. Until his eye got better.

So mum endured a sleepless night keeping him under observation of her own, then we enjoyed a delightful Christmas morning unwrapping presents and walking the dog. Charlie quite liked the pedal-powered tractor that I had spent hours assembling, though he was seriously disappointed that I would not allow him to use its front loader to dig up the lawn. But he declared that it was outshone among his gifts by the model Land Rover from the splendid toyshop in Rothbury.

After which I confiscated the matches yet again, dragged him away from the cooker for at least the tenth time, and came close to a seizure of my own in the face of a massive tantrum about the lack of gravy on his Christmas dinner, even though its solid content was barely visible above a Lake Superior of the stuff.

Kids, eh? Who would be without them? (Clichés? I’ve lost count.)

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne. A fuller account of Charlie Hann's Christmas may be found at http://www.blokeinthenorth.com/2011/12/and-so-this-is-christmas.html

Nearly time to rejoice in the return of light

Nature dictates that this is the most miserable time of year, I reflected as I walked the dog in almost pitch dark at close to eight o’clock yesterday morning.

The list of things on which I agree wholeheartedly with Alex Salmond is far from long, but he can certainly count on my support in opposing the prolongation of this gloom for a further hour by shunting Britain into the same time zone as Berlin.

... or not, as the case may be

On the plus side, in just two days’ time the Earth will begin to swing those of us in the northern hemisphere back towards longer days. It is only natural that we should celebrate.

I have taken no great pleasure in Christmas for the half century or so since some smart alec at Akhurst Boys’ Preparatory School pointed out that Santa Claus did not exist. But now, with a two-year-old in the house, memories of the innocent magic of my own childhood come trickling back.

Helped by the Hann hoarding instincts which mean that we are still hanging precisely the same decorations on our Christmas tree, though even I have drawn the line at plugging in the 60-year-old fairy lights.

Somewhat knackered angel. Probably Woolworths, circa 1955

Distinctly sinister Santa. Allegedly an heirloom from my grandparents, he looks much more likely to dispense a good hiding than presents.

It is heartwarming to see young Charlie’s face light up each morning as he plucks another treat from his advent calendar (an invention that my own parents kept very quiet). I am hoping for a similar reaction to his main present, which has already been the cause of much sweating and cursing while its intended recipient has been peacefully asleep in his cot.

DIY Advent calendar, with pockets full of assorted treats. Nothing like this in my day.

Naively ordered online in the expectation that we would receive something resembling the attractive ride-on toy pictured on the website, I was surprised to be confronted by a kit of parts that presented the most exacting construction challenge I have faced since I started buying my furniture from antique shops instead of MFI (RIP).

It now looks exactly like the picture on the box but, rather worryingly, there are two screws left over. After a morning spent at A&E on Sunday, following a minor disagreement between my son’s eye and a supermarket trolley, I shall keep my fingers firmly crossed that they are not critical to the product’s safety.

What else has changed about Christmas since the days when I could look forward to receiving a Dinky toy and a couple of tangerines in one of my grandfather’s old shooting socks? Selection boxes of chocolate bars and drums of fags seem to have dropped off the list of acceptable gifts, and little boys are no longer encouraged to sit on the knee of a drink-sozzled tramp with a cotton wool beard to whisper their innermost desires into his NHS hearing aid. Who says there is no such thing as progress?

Santa as I remember him from the store grottoes of my boyhood

The other big difference is simply one of temperature. Ours was quite a posh house by 1950s standards, with a car in the garage and a telephone in the hall. This meant that we heated two rooms instead of just one, with a coal fire in the lounge as well as the kitchen range.

Bedrooms were freezing cold, with sleep only to be achieved in winter by wearing a pullover and woolly socks as well as pyjamas, and spreading an overcoat over the bed. Now my son has a baby alarm that nags us if his nursery is not within the “Goldilocks zone” of optimum warmth.

In short he is more comfortable, better fed and infinitely more generously supplied with toys than I ever was, just as my father and considerably older brother looked on with amazement at the material richness of my childhood compared with theirs.

Has this massive improvement in “living standards” over the last 50 years made its beneficiaries any happier than I was as a child? Of course not. Which is why I suspect that the end of the fat years of economic growth in the West need not fill any of us with too much regret. But this is hardly the time to dwell on that. Rejoice in the return of the light and have a very merry Christmas.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.