You know things are really bad when politicians start saying "sorry"

One of the few things I remember about school physics lessons is being invited to laugh at the discredited belief in an invisible substance called phlogiston, supposedly released during burning.

It stuck in my mind chiefly because it actually sounded more plausible than many of the things I was told to believe as undisputed facts.

The man behind the phlogiston theory: was it really balls?

So I was delighted last week when some apparently reputable scientists came up with data that appear to challenge Einstein’s theory of relativity, even though I haven’t got the slightest clue what any of it means.

Does this man look relatively trustworthy?

It’s just that my spirits instinctively soar at even the faint possibility of experts, who nearly always have a greatly inflated sense of their own importance, being proved wrong.

So I suppose I should be positively ecstatic at seeing the financial geniuses who held such sway in the Thatcher, Major and Blair/Brown eras being so comprehensively discredited. And I would, but for the fact that their uncontrolled mishandling of the financial system looks certain to plunge all of us into a decade or two of relative poverty – which is particularly disappointing for those of us who only have a couple of decades left.

There is also the niggling sense that this setback will seem altogether more bearable from the comfort of a private island, luxury yacht, Swiss Alpine lodge or Cotswold mansion bought with the bonuses dished out for brilliance in conjuring up entirely illusory profits.

These people were not mere bankers, they were alchemists. The priestly caste of our age who could perform magic so powerful that no one dared to say “Hang on, this is total cobblers” when they invented supposedly AAA super-safe investments out of the mortgages insanely and aggressively marketed to crazed optimists and congenital liars living on the margins of society.

You know that things are really, really bad when a senior politician pops up on the media and says “Sorry,” as Ed Balls did yesterday morning, doubtless hoping that the electorate will react with a friendly slap on the back and a “Don’t worry about it, mate, it could have happened to anyone.”

Spot the Balls

I devoutly hope not, though my confidence in the alternative is not increased by hearing Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander attack his Eurosceptic Conservative colleagues in the coalition as “enemies of growth”.

Mr Alexander, you may care to recall, wasted five years of his life as head of communications for Britain in Europe, the expert-rich movement campaigning for the abolition of the pound, which was all too inclined to dismiss its opposition as barmy xenophobes and simpletons who did not understand the complex issues involved.

It would be rather satisfying to sit back and watch our euro-adopting neighbours trapped, as William Hague vividly and accurately warned, in a burning building with no exits, but for the certainty that the collapsing structure will almost certainly land on our own heads. Such are the perils of schadenfreude.

So instead let us focus on the sane way forward, based on a massive increase in scepticism about anyone pretending to expertise or presenting painless solutions to the gigantic hole in which we find ourselves.

As our living standards decline, remember also that material things in themselves never bring happiness. They merely fuel the appetite for that next material thing which, if only we could get it, would make us truly happy. Only it never does.

But why listen to me? I’m not an expert. In fact, I have been repeatedly told that I am fool. Notably when I turned down a series of fantastic opportunities to make me richer, from taking out an endowment mortgage to investing my meagre pension fund in dot.com bubble stocks or complex derivatives I did not understand. Luckily for me no one ever offered me shares in a phlogiston factory. I would probably have snapped them up.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The PR pathway to the very top

Hands up everyone who felt that “a new dawn has broken, has it not?” after last month’s general election. Were you not seduced by the promise of a youthful, innovative coalition, drawn from a squeaky clean new House of Commons, purged of expenses fiddlers by popular anger?

Those of us of a right-wing disposition looked forward to being able to buy the Daily Telegraph again, without being bored rigid by daily accounts of some unknown MP’s furniture purchases and the fact that he shockingly had the stuff delivered to his constituency home, where someone was in to sign for it, rather than an empty Westminster flat.

And what do we find? The news is so much like Groundhog Day that I keep thinking of that badge I used to see during the elections of the 1970s: “If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it.”

Although it attracted little comment at the time, I was struck during my long and pointless post-election vigil by the number of MPs returned with comfortable majorities despite having been at the very heart of the expenses scandal. For some reason the name of Hazel Blears springs immediately to mind.

Perhaps Liberal Democrats escaped closer scrutiny because they were drawn from a joke party seen to stand no chance of actually taking office. But now the Treasury has become a sort of shooting gallery, with David Laws already despatched because of his undeclared partner, and Danny Alexander in the firing line because of his alleged avoidance of capital gains tax.

If this ploy works, the process will presumably continue until the supply of Liberal Democrat candidates is exhausted, and Mr Cameron is forced to appoint a Conservative who shares the Telegraph’s prejudice against raising capital gains tax. Which would be ironic, to say the least. It would also be likely to precipitate the break-up of the coalition, but maybe that is the true objective.

The other argument being advanced against Mr Alexander is that he knows nothing about economics, and his previous biggest responsibility was as head of communications for the Cairngorms National Park.

Can this really be a valid objection when the Prime Minister’s only job outside politics was a seven year stint as director of corporate affairs (or chief spin doctor) for the ITV company Carlton Communications, in the course of which he acquired something of a reputation among financial journalists for not always telling the whole truth?

Nick Clegg, too, is a former lobbyist, which is the badge PR men like to wear when they are operating in the field of “public affairs”.

Far from being a new dawn, casting aside the black arts of spin employed by the likes of Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, the election of 2010 marks the very apotheosis of PR.

According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (of which I am not a member) there are now more than 48,000 people employed in PR in the UK and “the rate of growth in the number of jobs in PR at all levels has been higher than that of any management function over the last fifteen years”.

So that’s where we have been going wrong. Maybe the promised referendum on PR should address public relations rather than proportional representation.

There are currently 262 university courses in PR on offer in the UK, including such dazzling combinations as PR and dance at the University of Sunderland and PR with sports massage and exercise therapies at the University of Derby. Mind you, the latter also offers PR combined with culinary arts, which would have been just about the perfect grounding for my City career, assuming that it includes a decent wine-tasting module.

I wonder if there is any chance of signing up for a PhD to take my mind off our current political and economic morass?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.