Refugees welcome?

There are many excellent reasons for not attempting a column on the refugee/migrant crisis in Europe and the Middle East.

For a start, my own wife was once a refugee from the Iran-Iraq war, and if I offend her I will surely end up cooking my own dinners for the foreseeable future.

Even if by some miracle I avoid upsetting her, I am sure to outrage someone. The left-leaning bodies from which I receive most of my news (the BBC and Twitter) assure me that there is a massive groundswell of public support for allowing many thousands more refugees into the UK.

A picture from The Independent

Yet while only the most notorious internet trolls would dare to suggest that a certain number of drowned children are an acceptable price to pay for ring-fencing our own home comforts, I suspect that there is a large and largely silent section of the populace regarding Mr Cameron’s latest PR-driven U-turn with deep suspicion.

The same sort of people who nod enthusiastically when they hear Jeremy Corbyn speaking, then quietly vote Tory in the privacy of the polling booth.

However, the most powerful reason of all for keeping shtoom is that I have absolutely no idea how this crisis can be resolved. Unfortunately, neither has any government, opposition or supra-national authority I have heard pontificating on the issue.

The best we seem able to come up with is dropping more bombs on an already bombed-out country. Because clearly we made a mistake two years ago when Parliament would not let us bomb the evil dictator Assad.

Kobane

Now it seems we mainly want to bomb the evil dictator’s opponents in ISIS, ignoring the ancient and Churchillian dictum that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, however repulsive we may find him.

Given that military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and (in a smaller way) Libya all seem to have made things worse rather than better for the bulk of their people, I cannot help wondering what useful lessons have been learned along the way.

There are two key emotions driving all human conduct: greed and fear. Politicians and commentators attempt to divide those currently on the move into refugees driven by fear, with whom we are meant to sympathise; and economic migrants driven by greed, who can be sent back whence they came without compunction.

Yet the distinction can never be so clear. It is evident that the preference for Greece over Turkey, Germany over Hungary and Britain over France, for those encamped at Calais, has nothing to do with fear of persecution if they stay put.

Calais

Family ties apart, the motivation can surely only be the hope of a materially better life in their country of choice.

It is also a plain fact that those on the move are far from the poorest of the poor.

Revolutions rarely occur when people are cruelly oppressed, but when the oppressor lifts their yoke. Similarly, mass migrations are not undertaken by those with no money, but by those with smartphones to see the better life available in the West, and enough cash to pay people smugglers to get them here.

I feel a bit queasy about part of the foreign aid budget being redirected from the poorest in the world to those with the pluck and push to get themselves into the UK. Though admittedly not as queasy as I would be if I did not suspect that a fair chunk of the aid budget simply flows into the Swiss bank accounts of assorted Third World tyrants.

I really am not unsympathetic to those fleeing Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea or any of the other failed and failing states that are currently fuelling mass migration. I dare say I would do the same in their shoes.

But all of us already here, whether of Celtic or Norman stock or first generation immigrants, must recognise that a free-for-all on our borders is not compatible with the continuance of a functioning welfare state.

Where we come down on that issue is a matter for our individual consciences, and I wish those hashtagging #refugeeswelcome and offering shelter in their own homes the very best of luck.

My own conscience is clear. I have done my bit. Reader, I married her.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Who is really the nasty party?

Laws have been passed to protect people from abuse on account of their race, religion or sexual orientation, but Tories are still fair game.

Hence it should be no surprise that so many voters clearly lie through their teeth about their intentions when opinion pollsters come calling.

To many on the always self-righteous left, anyone who does not share their views is inhumane to the point of being downright inhuman.

I particularly remember the venom of the privately educated rich kids with whom I watched the results of the two 1974 elections on a flickering black and white TV in Cambridge, as each contest failed to deliver the Labour landslide they were confidently expecting.

The howls when Cambridge stayed Conservative were partly offset by one particular Labour gain. “At least they have civilised people in Oxford,” huffed Georgina.

I imagine Georgina’s trust-funded children in the front line of that mob baying obscenities and scrawling graffiti on war memorials in their attempted anti-Tory putsch at the weekend.

Because the election was clearly rigged, right? And if it wasn’t, then the stupid electorate was misled by the Murdoch and Rothermere press with their lies and scare tactics. Because every decent, caring human being is a socialist at heart, aren’t they?

Well, no they’re not. And no matter how many times the history lesson gets repeated, the left never seems to learn that England is fundamentally a conservative country.

Heaven knows there are enough clues scattered around, like the enduring hereditary monarchy, our collective love for unspoilt countryside, and the fact that Labour’s only landslide successes in my lifetime have been under a leader who made the party’s pitch significantly more conservative.

Yet still the cry will go up in some quarters that they lost because they weren’t left wing enough. Yes, that will be exactly why UKIP managed to hoover up so many of their traditional supporters on Thursday. Good luck with repositioning to offer even more red-blooded socialism. Oh, and next time maybe try choosing a leader who looks like a potential Prime Minister rather than the head teacher of failing comprehensive.

I have never understood what possessed Theresa May to acknowledge that characterisation of the Conservatives as “the nasty party”. True nastiness is found on the extremes of both left and right, not in mainstream Conservatism.

If the Tories really wanted to destroy the NHS don’t you think they might have done it by now, given that they have been in power for 40 out of the 67 years it has been in existence?

Left wing idealism rarely proves compatible with competent administration, as we have seen in a succession of Labour-run authorities over the years and most recently and strikingly in the now ejected Green council in Brighton.

The most interesting post-election Tweets I saw contained two maps. One compared Labour constituencies in England and Wales with the former coalfields, and the overlap was almost perfect, with the sole exceptions of London and Kent.

The other compared the political map of Scotland in 2015 with that of Ireland in 1918, when a Sinn Fein landslide swept the country outside Ulster.

Was last year’s failed independence referendum Scotland’s equivalent of the Easter rising of 1916?

Of course the parallels are not exact. Scotland already has its own parliament and the SNP’s MPs intend to take their Westminster seats, as Sinn Fein refused to do

I also think there is unlikely to be any popular demand to partition Dumfriesshire, Cydesdale and Tweeddale so that it can remain within the UK (though I am altogether less sure about Orkney and Shetland).

Even so, statesmanship of a high order will be required to prevent Scotland following Ireland through the exit door from the United Kingdom.

Do I see David Cameron as the great statesman who can pull this off? No, but I reckon he has far more chance than Ed Miliband ever would have done.

And who, a week ago, confidently saw Mr Cameron as an outright election winner?

Except in the Blair years, my lifetime experience of election nights has been of Tories exceeding expectations. Yet even I did not have the confidence to bet on it.

So have this one on me: “Typical stupid Tory”.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

A date that will go down in history?

If the opinion polls are right, and I hope they aren’t, the 70th anniversary of VE Day on Friday will also be Deadlock in Britain Day.

All round the country bleary-eyed candidates and would-be Prime Ministers will be surveying the wreckage of their hopes.

Just as Churchill did a mere two months after he was ecstatically cheered on the Buckingham Palace balcony on May 8th, 1945.

Spectacularly losing an election you entered with a personal approval rating of 83% is an achievement few can ever hope to emulate.

When Churchill’s wife Clementine tried to console him that his defeat might be a blessing in disguise, he retorted: “At the moment it’s certainly very well disguised.”

So where did he go so wrong? In popular memory Labour’s pledges of social reform overwhelmingly carried the day. Yet the Conservative manifesto of 1945 also promised “a nation-wide and compulsory scheme of National Insurance” and the creation of “a comprehensive health service covering the whole range of medical treatment from the general practitioner to the specialist”. This should not be altogether surprising.

The Beveridge Report of 1942, to which the post-war settlement owed so much, had been commissioned by the all-party wartime coalition Churchill led.

Personally, I put the Tory crash down to lousy PR. If only Max Beaverbrook or Brendan Bracken had said, “Winston, the thing to do is to carve your National Insurance and health service pledges on an 8 foot limestone obelisk and cart it around the country with you”, how very different the result might have been.

It is altogether more plausible that a post-war Tory government would have set up a National Health Service than that Labour would have instituted a “right to buy” for council tenants in 1959 – another counter-intuitive notion that has recently received an airing on the letters pages.

The unsuccessful Labour manifesto of that year does indeed contain a promise that “Every tenant … will have a chance first to buy from the Council the house he lives in”, but it was referring to privately rented homes that it proposed councils should take over.

Incidentally, imagine the furore that would ensue today if any party put out literature implying that all tenants were necessarily male. Well, maybe not in the case of UKIP.

The greatest counter-intuitive idea of all is that Margaret Thatcher was a Green pioneer because she closed so many coal mines (albeit not as many as Labour’s Harold Wilson) thereby anticipating the current left wing fetish for leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

If you rake through old manifestos you find Labour, now the staunchest opponent of giving the people a say on membership of the European Union, standing on a platform of withdrawal from the EEC in 1983.

Ideas pass back and forth between parties, and memories of past promises, successes and failures are selective. It is worth recalling that the revered socialist government of 1945 continued to award hereditary peerages, and pressed ahead with the creation of a British atomic bomb.

And, while independence was swiftly granted to India, there were ambitious plans for the continuing empire in Africa, including the once infamous scheme to improve British diets through the extensive cultivation of groundnuts in Tanganyika. It failed disastrously because the climate and soil were both completely unsuitable for growing peanuts.

A lesser known disaster of the time was a parallel scheme to boost chicken and egg production in The Gambia, West Africa … with the aim not just of feeding Britain but of reducing the colony’s dependence on the successful cultivation of groundnuts.

No doubt we can anticipate more expensive cock-ups of this sort, whoever finally comes to the surface clutching a lifebelt after tomorrow’s election.

I shan’t attempt a prediction, even though my family are still reeling from the fact that I accurately foresaw the Duchess of Cambridge giving birth to a daughter called Charlotte Elizabeth Diana – and then failed to place a bet on it.

Sadly for us David Cameron is no Churchill, Ed Miliband no Attlee. In a world of politicians no one much likes or respects, deadlock may be inevitable. But it is not to be desired, as anyone who remembers the 1970s will vouch.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

What if we were capable of running our own country?

The “what if?” game is a favourite among those of us who have spent some time studying history.

The end product of six years studying history, and a reminder of how I looked before old age and dissolute living took their toll

What if someone had said in late June 1914: “You know, Franz Ferdinand, I think it might be better if you didn’t visit Sarajevo today”?

Or what if Britain had decided to let France, Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary get on with it in August 1914, and sat aside whistling nonchalantly?

The rationale for intervention has always been that Britain cannot allow the Continent to be dominated by a single power that might act against our vital interests.

In which case our finest minds have done an absolutely cracking job, through 50 years of international politics and diplomacy, in creating a power bloc on our doorstep that seems to be almost uniformly hostile to our notion of who should run the European Union, and how it should develop.

This should not be altogether surprising. The Continental countries’ experience of revolutions, dictatorships and military occupations during the last century is vastly different from our own.

If they wish to forge an ever-closer union with a common currency and uniform laws largely handed down from Brussels, bully for them. But I sense that a natural majority of the British people shares my reluctance to join them.

Hence at some point we need to stop lying to each other, admit that we want different things, disengage and move on.

There are many respected economists willing to vouch that the net economic cost to Britain of withdrawing from the EU would be marginal at worst, and that the oft-bleated refrain of “three million jobs at risk” is a number simply plucked from the air.

Only one thing gives me pause about embarking on an unreservedly enthusiastic campaign for our early withdrawal from the EU, and it is not the potential impact on business. It is doubts about the calibre of those who would have to shoulder the burden of running a properly independent country.

Surely those with the privilege of voting in the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum must similarly consider the leadership of the SNP and think: “Really? All on their own?”

Wheezes pour forth from all sides in the year-long campaign for the 2015 general election. The Conservatives offer us HS3 to cap the monstrous folly of HS2, plus the alluring promise of elected mayors, even though the idea keeps being rejected whenever people are offered a say on the issue. The evident moral here must be: don’t ask the people.

Any sane person’s heart must surely sink when George Osborne proposes to merge the tax and National Insurance systems, given that the three words even more likely to induce despair than “England football team” are “Government IT project”: a guaranteed recipe for waste and chaos on a truly Brobdingnagian scale.

Meanwhile Labour’s own policy chief Jon Cruddas denounces the “dead hand” at the party’s centre that prevents it from proposing anything similarly radical, and Nick Clegg …

Well, there’s probably no point wasting ink on anything the LibDems have to say, given their electoral prospects next year.

Are any of our prospective national leaders really up to the job of leading a nation of 64 million people alone on the international stage?

Our Queen certainly is, but she is 88 and on a job share as head of state of 15 other countries at the same time.

Ed Miliband? Don’t make me laugh.

Nigel Farage? I refer you to my previous answer.

David Cameron is undoubtedly a bit of a lightweight. A former PR man, for heaven’s sake, and I can tell you from decades of direct experience just how useless they are.

But our “friends” in Europe have surely done him a massive favour in appointing as their supremo a man who apparently likes a drop and whose crowning achievement to date has been leading a country with a population around two thirds that of Tyneside.

Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, congratulations. You are officially the man who makes even David Cameron look like a proper statesman.

Now, what if Dave actually calls that EU referendum I am sure he would really rather avoid, and cannot wriggle around to recommending that we all vote to stay?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

You've let me down again

Like every right-thinking columnist in the country, I am extremely disappointed with your performance in the European and local elections.

I should perhaps clarify that I mean “right-thinking” in the sense of “correct” (though not, heaven forfend, politically correct) rather than as an indicator of my own allegiance.

Unlike many, I am not annoyed that 27.5% of you who voted chose a party led by Viz comic’s “Man In The Pub”. That is your prerogative.

But I am beyond furious that 66% of you could not be bothered to vote at all.

What on earth was so utterly riveting that it prevented you from nipping out at any point between 7am and 10pm last Thursday and marking a simple cross on a piece of paper? A journey that you could have avoided, as I did, by requesting a postal vote.

Don’t say “It doesn’t change anything” and “They’re all the same”. Because they’re not, as the triumph of The Man In The Pub demonstrates.

I keep hearing radio interviews with people banging on about how we need to increase numbers on the electoral register and perhaps extend the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, but surely this pales into insignificance compared with just persuading the two thirds of the electorate already on the register to get off their backsides and at least feign an interest.

Our former third party used to be fond of arguing that we would all be more engaged if we made every vote count by abolishing the unfairness of “first past the post”. In the circumstances, it would have taken a heart of stone not to laugh at the almost complete destruction of the Liberal Democrats under a system of proportional representation.

It had all the appeal of watching a famous big game hunter being trampled to death by an angry elephant.

Not so long ago “I agree with Nick” was the political catchphrase on nearly everyone’s lips. Now the only person likely to utter it is Mrs Clegg, and he probably can’t even count on that.

The ejection from the European Parliament of that other Nick from the BNP was another bright spot, burnished by his explanation that the electorate had “voted for UKIP’s racist policies instead”.

Meanwhile Labour are furious with what remains of the white working class for daring to vote for The Man In The Pub rather than their union-appointed leader, who has performed the great feat of making Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock look like top Prime Ministerial material.

Among the erstwhile major parties only David Cameron seems to be avoiding serious questions about his leadership by keeping his head down and praying that his natural supporters will now return to the fold after registering their “protest vote”.

Over the coming months we will grow very weary indeed of hearing “Vote Farage, Get Miliband” trotted out as the entirely negative argument for voting Conservative.

Where are the positives? I am a natural pessimist, but even I am weary of the endless doom and gloom that passes for political debate in this country today.

Britain is a great place to live. (Clearly it must be, or immigration would not be such a big election issue.) The North East is the best place to live in Britain (as I am reminded every time I have to leave it to earn a living).

In my view we all have much to be grateful for but, if you don’t agree, you have the power to change it. Thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 we already know that the next General Election will be on May 7, 2015. So you have nearly a full year to practise going out of the house or to get a postal vote lined up.

If the two thirds of you who did not bother to vote last week could be persuaded to do so, all the polls and calculations will go out of the window because literally anything is possible. Surely that thought must excite you just a tiny little bit?

If not, please remember that those who do not bother to vote automatically lose all entitlement to that most cherished of benefits: the right to moan about the result.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Is 'I hate politicians' the right way to vote?

People really hate politicians, don’t they? Not just the Tories, always major hate figures in my neck of the woods, but politicians in general.

The Conservatives for heartlessness, Labour for past economic incompetence, the LibDems for broken promises and all for hypocrisy and bloated expenses.

Yet amidst all this Nigel Farage somehow manages to shrug off a veritable tsumani of gaffes and extremist outbursts from his candidates that would have done for any mainstream party leader long ago.

Because people don’t see him as a serious politician, but an affable bloke with whom they would enjoy a chinwag in the pub. And, if they are at all right wing in their inclinations, agree that he talks an awful lot of common sense.

Particularly about those issues that every other party deems too politically incorrect to discuss; notably immigration, on which many traditional Labour voters harbour convictions every bit as “right wing” as their Tory counterparts.

I have considerable sympathy with Mr Farage’s view of the EU and I’d certainly rather spend an hour or two in a boozer with him than with Messrs Cameron, Miliband or Clegg.

But how many other UKIP MEPs or candidates have you ever heard of? Probably just that bloke who jumped before he was pushed for jokingly calling party activists “sluts”, though I’ll wager you can’t remember his name.

The other one's called Godfrey Bloom, in case you are wondering

How many UKIP policies can you list, for that matter? I’ve just taken a look at their website, and am not massively wiser.

I was surprised when a fellow lifelong Tory told me the other day that he will be voting UKIP in the European elections specifically as a protest against the Conservatives’ espousal of gay marriage.

No doubt there will be a similar range of motivations behind those who will grant UKIP a historic victory on 22 May, if the current polls are to be believed. But underlying it all will surely be simple loathing of professional politicians, allied with the certain knowledge that Mr Farage will not be moving into Downing Street as Prime Minister.

Meanwhile the smooth and quintessential professional currently occupying that role faces his own potential day of reckoning in September, when Scotland goes to the polls in the referendum that he granted on the assumption that the result would be a resounding “no”.

Survival of the Union still looks the way to bet, but only just. Because such is the hatred of mainstream British politicians that their every intervention pointing out the folly of voting for independence just seems to push a few more waverers into the “yes” camp.

In this respect, Alex Salmond may be characterised as McFarage Lite (or, more accurately, Heavy).

There must be considerable doubt as to whether Mr Cameron could survive as Prime Minister if the United Kingdom broke up on his watch.

And then what? There is only one potential Tory leader who can match the Teflon qualities of Nigel Farage. Another man equally at home on a TV game show and apparently able to shrug off all manner of revelations about his personal life. People don’t even seem to hold the fact that Boris Johnson went to Eton against him, because he is a laugh.

Boris: cleaning up?

Even if you rate Labour’s chances of victory in the General Election scheduled for May 2015, their prospects of staying in government cannot look good if their 40-odd Scottish MPs are booted out of Westminster. Particularly if, by then, the Tories are led by charismatic career politician successfully masquerading as a buffoon.

I keep reading that this is the age of tactical voting. Tactical voting for UKIP on 22 May will tell the major parties that we hate them all, but won’t get us one inch closer to exiting the EU. Scots voting for independence in September may do for Mr Cameron in the short term, but will ultimately be far more of a disaster for Labour.

These are certainly very exciting times for anyone with an interest in British politics. The sad thing is that many of us only seem interested in giving all the main parties a kicking. Perhaps we should all pause to reflect on the likely consequences before we do so?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

A Christian country?

Before the Easter holidays of 1965, my headmaster delivered a stern talk on the meaning of Good Friday to his class of ten-year-olds.

From this we learned that there were only two proper ways to spend the hours between 12 and 3 that sacred afternoon: in church or indoors at home engaged in quiet reflection on the sufferings of Christ.

We must on no account play noisily in our gardens or elsewhere, in ways that might impinge on the tranquillity of other believers.

I’d already felt obliged to lie when our teacher demanded an essay on “What I did at the weekend” and say that I went to church on Sunday, because every other child in my class claimed to do so. And it wasn’t even a Church school.

That lost England was unmistakably a Christian country and Good Friday was, appropriately enough, the deadest day of the year. No shops opened, no newspapers were published. No fun was to be had beyond the ritual consumption of hot cross buns, which were eaten that day and no other.

But what of the hornets’ nest stirred up by David Cameron’s insistence that Britain in 2014 is still “a Christian country”?

One might be inclined to take him more seriously if he didn’t issue similar messages about the importance he attaches to Judaism, Hinduism and Islam at Passover, Diwali and Eid, suggestive of a desperate sucking up to every faith community.

But, to be fair to the man, he has said similar things about Christianity before and, however harshly the unholy alliance of scientists, authors and comedians may rebuke him on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph, he is certainly correct in law.

The Christian faith of our head of state is proclaimed on every circulating coin and we have established State churches in both England and Scotland.

I go to church no more frequently than my parents did but, like them, I would unfailingly tick the “Christian” box on any form that was impertinent enough to enquire about my religious affiliation.

I was married in church using the 1662 Prayer Book (though five years on I am still waiting for my wife to obey me) and had my two sons baptised in the same style.

The late Sir John Mortimer encapsulated the position of many people like me very well when he described himself as “an atheist for Christ”.

I asked for a picture of John Mortimer in church and this came up; he must be thanking God

We love ancient churches and ritual. Few things delight us more than traditional Evensong sung by a cathedral choir.

Sadly our enthusiasm is rarely shared these days by the people who actually go to church, who seem more intent on ripping out the pews to installing comfy chairs, AV systems and coffee lounges.

When I enter a church I hope to hear comforting old words and sing familiar hymns, not to wave my arms in the air as some shining-eyed loon twangs a guitar.

So we have a small number of actual believers and a large number who consider themselves vaguely Christian and would like the church to continue to be there, doing what it always did and willing to receive us for life’s great rites of passage.

This view of the church is, in fact, curiously like my relationship with the Conservative party. I have been an inactive member all my adult life, attracted more by what the party stood for in the past than by anything it does today.

In that respect, I suppose, it is also akin to being a lifelong supporter of Newcastle United.

As it happens my membership is due for renewal and I was so disgusted with the whole Maria Miller expenses business that I felt seriously minded to pack it in.

Hence last week’s column, erroneously billed by one of my Journal colleagues as a bilious attack on the Labour party, when it was in fact a bilious attack on politicians in general.

Yet seeing the sort of people who oppose David Cameron’s latest pronouncement makes me waver. If only to ensure that I remain on his mailing list to see how he squares his support for traditional Christian values with his enthusiasm for gay marriage.

I wish you a very happy St George’s Day.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Concerning fat and fatheads

I find it hard to decide which gave me greater pleasure last week: Cambridge University announcing that there is no link between consuming saturated fat and heart disease, or George Osborne delivering his well-deserved kick in the teeth to the annuities industry.

George: clearly more familiar with banks than Banks's

It has long infuriated me that I might one day be required by law to hand over my carefully saved pension fund to an insurance company prepared to take a bet on how long I will live.

Gambling is for mugs because the house always wins. As we already know from any dealings we have ever had with insurers, who happily take our money for years and then invariably point out some obscure exclusion clause in our policy when the time finally comes to make a claim.

Mr Osborne’s announcement was made even more glorious by the initial tutting from the Opposition benches that it might be unwise to trust people with their own pension money. Why, they might go and spend it! This seems unlikely to be a massive problem among those who have been sensible enough to save for their old age in the first place.

Added to which, receiving a lecture about financial prudence from Labour is a bit like buying a half in the pub and being treated to a dreadful, slurred warning about the dangers of alcoholism from the cross-eyed, broken-veined drunk in the soiled trousers slumped in the corner.

The challenge in planning for old age is the regrettable absence of a “best before” date stamped on our bodies. None of us knows exactly how long we are going to live, though if Mr Cameron and his EU chums keep ratcheting up the anti-Russian rhetoric over Ukraine, the likeliest answer is “not very long at all”.

But putting aside World War III, another Noah’s Flood, an alien invasion or an asteroid strike, the odds are that we are going to keep living longer. The number of people in the UK aged over 100 has increased five-fold in the last 30 years.

My only worry is that we seem to be rather better at extending the end of life – the bit we spend sitting in a circle in the day room, placing mental wagers on who is going to be next to hand in their dinner pail – than the middle bit that is active and enjoyable.

I don’t particularly want to prolong my life in order to enjoy some additional years of infirmity and confusion.

Well-meaning people keep telling me that I could improve and extend my current spell of modestly active middle age if only I ate and drank less, and took more exercise. I fear, however, that this might merely make life seem longer.

I have not entered a gym since the wonderful day in 1969 when it ceased to be a compulsory part of my schooling, and I am certainly not about to go back.

So I celebrated George’s good news on my pension with a full English breakfast, which I enjoyed so much that I had one the next day, too. I tried to banish from my mind the fact that my aunt, who is the fittest 89-year-old I know, always brushes aside hotel menus with “I never eat a cooked breakfast” before ordering a slice of dry toast.

If you have an idle moment and need cheering up, do take a look at one of the obituaries of Madeline Gins, poet, painter and “visionary architect”, who died earlier this year. No, I’d never heard of her either.

Gloriously, she and her husband concluded that the key to achieving immortality was to construct buildings that were hideously uncomfortable to live in, with uneven floors and electric switches where you would least expect to find them. The idea was that these constant irritations would sharpen up the minds of the occupants and so stave off their deaths.

Obviously, because we all know how old folk can benefit from regularly falling over.

Madeline Gins was 72 when she died. I bet she never ate a cooked breakfast, either. Though I suppose that, believing she was going to live forever, she might well have invested her pension fund in an annuity.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Events, dear boy, events

Recent events confirm three lasting truths: the British are obsessed with the weather, politicians cannot be trusted, and you should think long and hard before giving an animal a name.

The disappearance of much of southern England beneath floodwater has generated a media frenzy calculated to move even the most stonehearted. What could possibly make the misery of those affected even worse?

Well, having ministers and quangocrats fighting like ferrets in a sack over just whose fault it is probably does not help much. And if my own home were underwater a personal visit from Dave “Doing Everything We Can” Cameron would be pretty much the last straw.

At this point I was going to insert a hackneyed but hopefully witty reference to politicians’ hopes forever being dashed by “Events, dear boy, events”. But I am deeply disappointed to report that my usual in-depth research has uncovered no evidence that Harold Macmillan ever actually said it.

Another much-loved anecdote spiked, then. Though when I was writing my opera book last year I read time and again that the story of Tosca leaping from the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo and immediately bouncing back into view was completely apocryphal.

Until I happened to listen to a podcast of Desert Island Discs in which the legendary British soprano Dame Eva Turner described exactly that happening to her. So perhaps dear old Uncle Harold did say it after all.

Should more money have been spent on sea defences and dredging rivers in the Somerset levels? Common sense says “yes”, but EU directives and budgetary constraints apparently combined to dictate the opposite. While the rights of birds and water voles naturally trumped those of mere human beings.

The resulting disaster provides ammunition for campaigners for the unlikeliest causes, such as reintroducing beavers to the UK. Hang on: don’t beavers block rivers and cause floods?

Yes, but the right sort of floods because they could slow down water that might otherwise gush downstream and inundate all those lovely houses for which some idiot council granted planning permission even though they are standing on a flood plain.

Is the wettest winter since Noah was in the shipbuilding business the result of climate change? Almost certainly.

Is said climate change caused by human activity? Quite possibly.

Will we solve it by covering the countryside with wind turbines? I very much doubt it, though maybe some of the schemes for tidal barrages that so upset campaigners for our feathered friends might serve a useful dual purpose in generating reliable power and keeping the sea at bay.

And maybe the billions we can apparently find to invest in turbine subsidies and high speed rail links, calculated to strengthen London’s grip on the nation’s economic windpipe, might be usefully redeployed to keep the electorate’s feet dry in their own homes.

Meanwhile over the weekend the Twitter-literate were temporarily distracted from the floods to bemoan the terrible fate of Marius the giraffe, shot and fed to the lions in Copenhagen zoo because he made too feeble a contribution to the gene pool.

Surely this line of thinking must have sent a particularly powerful shiver down the spines of those in charge of environmental policy and flood control?

When I was a boy some bright spark decreed that barred cages were out of date and built an elephant enclosure at London Zoo surrounded by a moat instead. One of the beasts promptly toppled into it while reaching for a bun.

The resulting tabloid headline “Death of a children’s friend” reduced me to tears until my Dad put me straight: “It’s only a ****** elephant, son.”

Yes, and it’s only a giraffe, too. But it had a name, like a dog or a horse, and this is always a massive obstacle if you are planning to turn something into food.

I would cheerfully eat the deliciously anonymous chickens raised by my late neighbours but could never bring myself to accept chops from the pigs to which I had been introduced by name.

So pro-beaver campaigners please note. If you want to keep them out of the Chris Smith blame slot when the next floods arise, ensure that they’ve all got cute names, ideally beginning with “B”.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The ultimate humiliation: being outclassed as a PR man by George Osborne

Most commentators agree that Cameron is to Osborne as Blair was to Brown. No 10 may house the smooth front man selling the Government to the public, but the real domestic power resides in No 11.

On the face of it, Mr Cameron is well qualified to major on presentation. His only job outside politics was as a PR man at a television company, where he garnered something of a reputation for being economical with the actualité.

The nice but dim PR man in action: bloody nice bloke

So it was ironic to discover that the true PR genius in the Government is actually George Osborne. I realise that this may seem a strange claim to make after all the fallout from his “millionaire’s Budget”, but my case is a simple one.

Boy George has given Greggs more national publicity in a single week than I managed in 24 years as the official spokesman handling their financial PR.

George, ne Gideon: the man with the power

I first became involved with Greggs as a company when I worked on their stock market flotation in 1984. I owe my entire subsequent career to that fact, because after a lacklustre initial six months in PR my employer was on the point of firing me when the opportunity to pitch to Greggs came along.

It was a beauty contest we were not supposed to win, but I had an unfair advantage over their merchant bank’s pet PR firm: I had been eating Greggs’ products for years. My mum used to make special trips to Byker to buy their stottie cakes even before that glorious day when a Greggs shop opened almost on our doorstep at the Four Lane Ends.

How it was in them days

Somehow, despite my involvement, the flotation was a great success and for years I worked hard to build Greggs’ media profile. Yet not all that long ago I was still struggling to persuade some national newspapers to take an interest in what they regarded as a rather obscure regional baker.

How times have changed. Greggs’ current media stardom is well deserved on any measure. I cannot even type their name without feeling a Pavlovian desire to go out and buy myself a sausage roll and jam doughnut. But they don’t just sell great products; they are nice people doing a wide range of good things, from their exemplary staff profit sharing scheme to children’s breakfast clubs.

How it is now

The Greggs Foundation, set up by Ian Gregg in 1987, is a model of what Mr Cameron’s “Big Society” should be all about: successful business people putting something back to help the less advantaged in the community.

So frankly, George, I cannot think of any organisation less deserving of the kicking you propose to administer through your half-baked “pasty tax”. A measure that appears to be backed only by lentil-munching health fanatics and the National Federation of Fish Friers: surely the least likely alliance since the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Too late for the Titanic: too early for WW1

If Greggs’ shops featured “hot snacks” cabinets of the type that graces the counter of Roy’s Rolls in Coronation Street, they would indeed be selling hot takeaway food that would be liable to VAT. But they are not. They are baking raw products, then allowing them to cool down. Their temperature therefore varies according to the time of purchase.

Indisputably a hot food takeaway

What idiot decided it would be a “simplification” to impose VAT based on the warmth of an item at the point when money changes hands for it? It can be absolutely guaranteed to create a bureaucratic nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions.

In fact, the only obvious way around it would be to impose VAT on all savouries at all times. But why stop there, George? You could slap 20% VAT on all food and close that irritating loophole of Jaffa cakes being classed as VAT-free cakes rather than chocolate biscuits while you were about it.

What could be wrong with that? After the granny tax and Francis Maude’s triumph with those jerry cans, it must surely be the next inspired move on the Coalition’s current vote-winning trajectory.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Have you read the news? Time to start screaming

Given that we are all clinging to a smallish rock that is hurtling through space at around 67,000 miles per hour, it constantly amazes me that we do not spend all our time screaming like passengers on the scariest ride at an amusement park.

Now there's something you don't see every day

Heaven knows, there is plenty in the news to scream about. Petrol prices reaching an all-time high, for a start. Plus our Prime Minister repeatedly endorsing the giant supermarkets’ bogus claims to be in the business of “job creation”.

When in reality we all know that they have thrown countless thousands out of work in the small retail businesses they have destroyed and the suppliers they have squeezed to death; and that they will not be entirely happy until they have trained us to stack the shelves ourselves, as well as learning to operate their wretched self-scanning checkouts.

Then there is President van Rompuy of Europe being reappointed without anything so tiresome as an election, Vladimir Putin winning a landslide in a charade of one, and the Yanks reaching “Super Tuesday” in their endlessly bizarre contest between a small assortment of multi-millionaire loons. None of whom a sane nation would trust to take charge of a school crossing patrol, never mind a nuclear arsenal.

Though all these look quite rational developments compared with the Iranian elections contested only by supporters of alternative fundamentalists Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rather like a British general election in which the only parties standing were the BNP and the English Defence League.

Probably not exchanging highlights from the Frank Carson Memorial Joke Book

Not to worry, though. If the Iranians ever do get their hands on an atomic bomb President Obama or one of the aforementioned Republicans will undoubtedly take swift military action, in the way that has worked so splendidly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Closer to home, we have the suggested privatisation of the British police: what a simply great idea. It has worked so well in the NHS, with never a case of MRSA and virtually every ward boasting a Michelin star since they contracted out the cleaning and catering. And the staff all so well rewarded and jolly, too. No wonder the Government wants to extend the idea wherever it can.

Of course, many of the functions of the police and judiciary were put into private hands years ago. Specifically those of a Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose minions have allegedly taken it upon themselves to boost the meagre pay of numerous serving officers, pass far harsher judgements than the courts on anyone who offended against their “values”, and even to provide an active retirement for some of the more intelligent members of the mounted branch.

Bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase “covert surveillance”. Fox coverts, that is. Sorry, but it is the only joke I have yet to see cracked among the reams of “Horsegate” stuff about hacking jackets, neigh-sayers and foal disclosure.

There have been many spoofs of Bond villains over the years, but it is increasingly hard to picture anyone better suited to preside over a missile-packing, hollowed-out volcano than Mr Murdoch. True to form, last week he even dropped his Mini-Me son James into the traditional tank full of hungry sharks.

But let us not despair. We may still look forward to 76-year-old Engelbert Humperdinck restoring our national pride in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, generously sponsored by the manufacturers of Stannah stairlifts and Zimmer frames.

Engelbert: heartthrob

Though technically it ought to be renamed the Centralasianvision Song Contest since it is taking place in Uzbekistan. Where? It is amazing to think that, within living memory, Neville Chamberlain was talking about German designs on Czechoslovakia as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing”.

I hear that Engelbert will be singing an updated twilight home version of his classic 1960s hit, “Please release me – where am I?”

Yes, you’re right. The time to start screaming is definitely right now.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.