Every day is Groundhog Day

I no longer wake groggily from my drunken slumbers wondering what day of the week it is. Because now every day is Groundhog Day.

The evidence that we are trapped in a time loop is evident in the headlines: Greece battling with its never-ending financial crisis, doctors wanting to tax sugar, and idiots proving incapable of reading the warnings at the end of the Holy Island causeway.

The Greek people thought they had been offered a way out through a referendum, giving them the opportunity to say “no” to EU-imposed austerity.

Ignoring the evidence of all previous history that votes against the EU have no relevance, and cannot be allowed to stand.

The plain fact, obvious to all intelligent observers from the outset, is that you cannot have a successful single currency without a fiscal union, which in turn demands a full political union.

This sort of “beneficial crisis” was always part of the plan to bring that glorious day closer, though if it is happening at all it seems to be doing so in slow motion.

Partly, no doubt, because all pro-EU national governments feel themselves under threat, whether from the growth of left-wing anti-austerity parties in the poorer south or the parallel rise of right-wing Farageiste nationalist ones in the richer north.

Source: www.statista.com

The latter show little appetite for wealthier countries subsidising the poorer ones, as political union would inevitably entail. And who can blame them, considering the ungracious response of poorer countries like Scotland to the fiscal transfers they receive in the political union called the UK?

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Sir John Major and Gordon Brown for keeping us out of the continuing euro mess, at any rate up to now. Though if we vote to distance ourselves even further in our promised in-out EU referendum, remember that the political elite reserves the right to ignore results it does not like.

Meanwhile the British Medical Association proposes a fiscal transfer of another kind, by taxing the sugary drinks beloved of poor people to subsidise the fresh fruit and vegetables favoured by the middle classes.

I can still remember the first time my mother asked me to nip to the greengrocer and buy her a cabbage, more than 50 years ago. Used as I was to forking out sixpence (2½p) for a bar of chocolate, I queried whether the half crown (12½p) she had handed me would be enough for something so huge. I think it cost tuppence (less than 1p).

I was staggered by what great value fresh vegetables were then, and have been ever since. Their place in the forefront of the supermarket price war pretty much guarantees that this will continue.

We could all feed our families cheaply and more healthily if we bought cheap cuts of meat, and fresh fruit and vegetables when in season (or frozen ones when not), and cooked proper meals from scratch.

But we live in a topsy-turvy world where the poorest in our society are also likely to be the fattest, because they are the most reliant on takeaways and convenience food.

Might better education rather than new complexes of taxes and subsidies not be the answer to this conundrum? And if that is not feasible, why not simply invoke the terrorist threat to declare a state of emergency and reintroduce the ration book, which did so much to improve the health of the nation during World War 2?

There is zero evidence from around the world that attempts to tax particular foods will have any effect at all on their consumption.

But why bother with evidence when you are on a mission, whether that be to create a United States of Europe or to build a healthier, slimmer, fitter society in which doctors would be out of a job. (Has the BMA really thought this through, I wonder?)

It’s surely much more fun to take the approach of those bold individuals approaching the Holy Island causeway to find it underwater.

All previous attempts to cross it under these conditions may have resulted in cars being written off and their occupants ignominiously rescued from refuges. But this particular Groundhog Day will be different, won’t it?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The consoling power of favourite quotations

It is sad but true, as William Hazlitt famously observed, that “The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.”

Given my privileged opportunity to comment on any of the huge issues facing the world today, from climate change to the electability of Ed Miliband, it seems rather pathetic that the only thing of really gripping interest to me is today’s appointment at Wansbeck General Hospital to learn the outcome of some recent tests.

But there comes a tipping point in all our lives when death ceases to be a distant and theoretical concern, mainly affecting others, and comes to command our attention with the same sort of force as an oncoming juggernaut, careering madly towards us on the wrong side on the road.

It seems like yesterday that I was constantly making forward-looking suggestions and being frustrated by an older generation’s shrugging acceptance of the status quo, usually with the words, “It will see me out.”

Now I am firmly in their camp, my short-sighted selfishness tempered only by a sense of duty to my two sons, who could easily still be around in 90 years time. If anyone is.

Although constant awareness of the Grim Reaper’s stealthy approach is unnerving, age does have its compensations over and above the Senior Railcard. Perhaps the greatest of these is a sense of perspective, and the growing realisation that the Tory Prime Minister Arthur Balfour was right when he declared that “Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all.”

A.J. Balfour, nephew of Lord Salisbury: "Bob's your uncle!"

We are just moderately intelligent monkeys clinging to a rock spacecraft as it hurtles around a dying star. Our stay aboard is remarkably short and the best we can do is to make it as enjoyable as possible, both for ourselves and for our fellow travellers.

I have already tuned out the long-running general election campaign as so much white noise. It doesn’t look as though anyone can win it outright and it is hard to see any of the possible permutations of coalition making a material difference to our lives.

Particularly when you consider that many of the things Labour attacks most bitterly, such as the growth of private provision within the NHS, are simply the continuation of policies they themselves pursued when last in power.

We should always beware of anyone who presents us with a big plan to change things for the better. Socialism, communism and fascism all did that, and look how well they went.

The creation of the European Union and the euro were similarly billed as vehicles to prosperity and peace. Those of us who argued that they were likely to create just the opposite were cried down as reactionary fools.

Now that the continent is economically stagnant and mired in debt, with extremist parties on the rise across it, it is interesting to note how little we hear from those who screamed that Britain would be massively disadvantaged if it let the euro train leave the station without us on board.

Though they are the self-same voices issuing dire warnings of the fate that will befall us if we are mad enough to vote to leave the EU in a referendum, if we ever elect a Government so foolish as to hold one.

I’d like to think I might live long enough to vote for my country’s independence but I have to accept that the country I fondly remember has vanished forever, and no vote is going to bring it back.

So I’m off to see my consultant resolved to try and be a bit nicer to my fellow human beings for as long as I am spared; and I will endeavour to stick to that resolution even if what he mainly diagnoses is a bad case of hypochondria.

At the very least I will have had a salutary warning that should inspire me to try harder. For, as Dr Johnson observed, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

While if the worst comes to the worst I can always console myself with another favourite quote from Evelyn Waugh: “All fates are worse than death.”

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Who can be trusted to tell the truth?

You would not think it now, but I was a very trusting child. I believed my parents when they told me you could always trust a British bobby.

Evening, all. A classic octogenarian British PC.

I even believed my first headmaster when he told us, at the time of the 1961 census, that its secrecy was so complete that one could put down one’s occupation as “burglar” without any fear of retribution.

Scroll on to 2014 and it seems that you can report as many thefts as you like without anyone lifting a finger, though the European Union presumably marks them down as further evidence of burgeoning economic activity, justifying another whacking increase in its membership fees.

After all, it has just slapped in a £1.7 billion demand that seems to be largely based on previous under-recording of such vibrantly healthy UK economic sectors as tobacco smuggling, prostitution and drugs. By which I guess they mean the sort favoured by that “crystal Methodist” banker rather than my own statins and low dose aspirins.

Maybe this is the sort of British success story George Osborne has in mind when he bangs on about his “Northern powerhouse”, led by a directly elected mayor. You remember, the sort that the people of Manchester (and many other places) rejected in a referendum only two years ago but are now apparently going to have anyway, whether they like it or not.

Among his or her many other useful functions this new mayor will take over the role of the police and crime commissioner that a handful of people bothered to vote into office a few months later.

It all seems eerily reminiscent of voting ten years ago against both a North East assembly and a unitary authority for the whole of Northumberland. One of which has already been imposed upon us while the other is clearly trundling down the tracks once again, thinly concealed by more waffle about “city regions”.

Really, what is the point of voting for anything at all when no notice is taken of the outcome?

How would it go down if I adopted the sort of approach to the Government that it takes with me? Maybe sending my tax demand back with an offer to pay a token amount because it’s all I can afford (which has the virtue of being true).

Oh, and I’m terribly sorry, HM Revenue & Customs, but you won’t be able to check my records yourselves because I’ve shredded them all to comply with the Data Protection Act, as the House of Commons has done with all those dodgy expenses claims.

... apart from the ones we shredded

Regardless of election results, politicians of all parties display a shared and cynical determination to plough on with policies they have never deigned to explain properly, whether those be elected mayors or the encouragement of mass immigration.

Small wonder that the result has been a collapse of trust in authority over the last half century, which means that most of us no longer look up to anyone or accept what they say at face value.

In some instances, this is entirely beneficial. For example, if you were crazily thinking of buying a ticket to outer space from a music industry entrepreneur with a proven track record of failure in the technologically less demanding task of running a reliable train service into London Euston.

In others, the results are more questionable. Virtually no one but the most gullible green fanatics believes that there is a case for massively increasing our reliance on wind and solar power. But then virtually no one readily accepts the case for massive increases in fracking or nuclear capacity, either. 

If the UN’s scientists are right, and we need to get used to the idea of doing without gas and oil completely by the end of this century, a lot of us are going to need to do some pretty radical rethinking about who we can trust quite soon.

Either that or prepare to spend rather a lot of time sitting in the cold and dark. On the plus side, though, we won’t be able to hear George Osborne banging on about powerhouses. And, if the scientists are right, it won’t be quite as chilly as it might have been.

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.

Missing London, and why I intend to do more of it

“You must miss this,” my driver said as we sat in a huge traffic jam on the edge of the City of London on Monday.

To our left a bus inched past, leaving just about enough clearance to accommodate a sheet of graphene. To our right assorted Lycra-clad loons on bikes wove gaily in and out of the traffic, scattering pedestrians like confetti.

“Are you trying to be funny?” I asked, thinking fondly of the beauty and tranquillity of the corner of Northumberland where I had just spent the weekend.

I lived in London for nearly 30 years, and have never regretted handing back the keys of my rented flat in 2006. Though I do bitterly regret selling my small stake in the capital’s property market 20 years earlier.

I felt sure things must have peaked, having more than doubled my money on my fourth floor walk-up flat in Earl’s Court in less than five years. I pocketed a magnificent £73,000. Not so long ago I thoroughly depressed myself by checking a property website and finding that it last changed hands for not much short of a million.

Which is, by any standards, utter lunacy. If I were starting my career again, even in an overpaid trade like financial public relations, I could surely never aspire to buy my own home.

The Bank of England faces the uncomfortable challenge of setting interest rates that will dampen the undeniably overheating South East property market without visiting ruin on the rest of us.

It’s quite enough of a challenge maintaining a single currency in a country united by centuries of shared history, language and values, when its regional economies diverge so markedly.

How anyone ever imagined it was going to work satisfactorily across an entity as diverse as the European Union is completely staggering. But then, of course, they never did. The Euro was merely a lever to help achieve the grand objective of building a United States of Europe. Whether for the noble purpose of ensuring peace and prosperity or to allow a small elite to strut the world stage with added swagger I leave to you to judge.

A big fan of the Euro, you may recall, was one Tony Blair: a man still fond of global swaggering. We would be lumbered with the Euro now but for the sterling (in every sense) efforts of Gordon Brown, who deserves to have a statue erected in Kirkcaldy just for this. Even if he was perhaps motivated less by an appreciation of the Euro’s economic insanity than by a determination to deny Tony his desired place in history as the man who abolished the pound.

But, of course, Mr Blair has no need to worry about his place in history. That is assured thanks to Afghanistan and Iraq – and hasn’t that gone well?

Invading Iraq to eliminate non-existent weapons of mass destruction and clamp down on non-existent terrorists, we have managed to put great swathes of the country in the hands of real terrorists of particular savagery. The same brutes we support, oddly enough, when they are fighting the evil dictator Assad in Syria.

When the terror campaign spreads beyond the Middle East, as it surely will, I imagine that it will make rather more impact on life in London and our other great non-UKIP-voting, cosmopolitan cities than it will in the rural backwoods of the north.

Another great reason for all of us to count our blessings and ask just one question whenever we are asked to attend a business meeting in London: why?

If God had intended all our decision-making to be concentrated in one square mile, why would he have allowed us to invent videoconferencing and superfast broadband?

If the latter ever comes to my little hamlet, I’ll hardly ever need to leave the house again. And the cost of extending it would be a tiny fraction of the money we propose to lavish on HS2, to get people to their unnecessary meetings in London a fraction quicker.

Or, for that matter, on unnecessary wars that have achieved the exact opposite of what they were billed as being for, at a human cost that is almost unbearable to contemplate.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The referendum question

As every serious Westminster politician, European panjandrum and British business leader lines up to tell the Scots they would be mad to vote for independence, certain parallels spring to mind.

Suppose the UK (or what is left of it by then) were finally offered a referendum on its continued membership of the European Union in 2017.

Further suppose that Nigel Farage were our Prime Minister and enthusiastically leading the pro-independence campaign. (An unlikely scenario, I will admit. But then Labour engineered the devolution settlement in Scotland precisely to ensure that they retained power for good and the SNP stood no chance of ever forming a majority administration.)

Surely what we are witnessing now is a most instructive rehearsal of what would happen then. Multinational companies would howl that leaving the EU would be a terrible idea, and that it would cause them to reconsider their investments in the UK.

We would be warned that thousands of jobs would be lost, and we would all be far worse off.

Useful idiots would reel off lists of the marvellous investment projects funded by the EU, failing to mention that Brussels was merely returning to us a proportion of the money we had paid them in the first place.

Dire warnings of the impossibility of continuing to trade with Europe would be trailed out. And we’d be warned that we would have to obey all the pettifogging European rules and regulations anyway, so why not stay a member of the club and pretend that we have some influence over how they are framed?
All of which sounds to me suspiciously similar to the sort of pressure currently being applied to Scotland over the pound, EU membership and its future prosperity in general.

Of course, if Mr Salmond really wants to share another country’s head of state and currency, and stay in the EU, it is quite hard to fathom what his so-called “independence” is actually about.

At root, surely, it is an emotional rather than a rational response to the facts. In reality Scotland is too small to stand alone in any meaningful sense, and would surely be better off leaning on its nearest neighbour, with which it shares a language and so much history, than trying to cosy up to anyone else.

But then by the same logic Scots should always support England when they are not taking part in an international sporting contest themselves, and when has that ever happened?

I love Scotland. I spent all my childhood holidays in beautiful St Abbs. Their whisky is superb, and you can’t complain about the shortbread.

On the other hand, I hate Scotland. I have never been made to feel so unwelcome anywhere on the planet as I was the last time I made the mistake of taking a break there 20 years ago.

More importantly, I am sick to the back teeth of the two caber-sized chips so many of them seem to carry about on each of their shoulders, and their totally misplaced conviction that they have been getting a raw deal out of the United Kingdom for the last 306 years.

In fact, the Union was devised to save Scotland from the results of its own financial imprudence and it came in pretty handy again for them in 2008, when the British taxpayer picked up the bill for failing Scottish banks.

Plus there have been years of Scottish over-representation in British politics and the media … and don’t even get me started on Gordon Brown.

So if I had a say in this year’s referendum I might be strongly tempted to vote “yes” to get rid of the whingeing bunch of them, and look forward to enjoying some quiet amusement as they got their economic come-uppance for putting Braveheart emotion before common sense.

At the end of the day, though, although I am English I love Britain.

Which is why I’d like the Scots to stay in the UK and the UK to develop a much looser relationship with the EU.

We only have to observe the Scots, though, to see that great strength of character and steadiness of purpose will be required to achieve the latter outcome.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Coals to Newcastle

What phrase can replace “carrying coals to Newcastle” as the shorthand for total pointlessness, now that the Tyne is indeed a river importing coal?

How it was: shipping coal out

How it is: shipping coal in

I pondered the question at some length as I sat by my fireside over Christmas, particularly when excavations in my depleted coalhouse finally broke through more recent strata of Polish and Colombian dust. Unearthing, in all their glory, some substantial lumps of genuine Northumberland coal.

They had an effect on me pretty similar to that madeleine on Proust, transporting me back to the glorious blazes of Shilbottle cobbles that had me shrinking back from my parents’ hearth half a century ago.

There was a peculiarly dismal phase when we went “all electric”, until I faithfully promised that I would clean and lay the fire before school each morning. It was, I think, pretty much the only childhood promise I actually kept.

I suppose I should have kept back just one piece of this black gold: coated it in lacquer, perhaps, polished it up and put it on display. But instead I just revelled in the simple joy of a good old-fashioned fire.

Now I am hoping to harness the power of the press to see whether anyone can point me to a source of decent quality house coal, ideally from a British mine?

After all, it is to the imported stuff I have been buying for the last few years as a fine Islay malt whisky is to industrial drain cleaner, and I would be content to pay an appropriate premium price.

I have tried majoring on fashionably “renewable” logs but I am increasingly convinced that more warmth is created by lugging in several baskets of the things each day than my stove ever throws out.

Enough logs to warm my house barely perceptibly for about six months

Perhaps there is an opportunity here for a new generation of community micro-mines. After all, every pub and restaurant these days seems keen to emphasise the local sourcing of its food, practically telling you the name of the beast you are about to eat and the grid reference of the field where it grazed. So how about adding locally sourced coal fires to the list of attractions?

While for Guardian readers, the rival pub across the valley could offer state-of-the-art loft insulation, electric convector heaters powered by its very own wind turbine and free jumpers and mittens for all customers on those days when the wind disobligingly fails to blow.

Some will argue, no doubt, that we should not be burning coal at all if we are to “save the planet”. British coal fired power stations are closing left, right and centre at the behest of the EU.

Yet Germany, which was also in the EU last time I checked, is currently building no fewer than ten new ones, which seems odd to say the least.

Does anyone truly believe that converting coal-fired power stations to burn wood pellets that have to be shipped halfway round the planet will really make a useful contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change?

Any more than pricing our own heavy industries out of business so that the same processes can be carried out in China using coal-fired energy over there.

“Exporting aluminium smelting to the Yangtze” might be a reasonable summary of utter futility, though it can hardly be said to trip off the tongue.

So how about “teaching humility to politicians” or “giving climate change fanatics a sense of proportion and humour”? Or must we fall back on that sad old stand-by: “buying a new trophy cabinet for St James’ Park”?

I had intended to close by wishing all (both?) my readers a very Happy New Year and apologising for my absence for the last few weeks owing to a combination of depression, indolence and Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday. At least one of which will not recur in 2014.

But then I remembered that I should not mention my depression because, despite suffering from it for 40 years, every column on the subject provokes at least one irate reader’s letter complaining that I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.

Maybe “a depressive writing about depression” is the new “coals to Newcastle” I have been looking for.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

How the world looks this week to a swivel-eyed loon

Despite the denials, I feel sure that David Cameron and his Cabinet cronies would have no hesitation in categorising me as a “mad, swivel-eyed loon.”

The face and voice of sanity

And I must swiftly concede that they may well have a point, as I was mad enough to vote for their party at the last election. Though I foolishly thought of it at the time, as for the previous 40 years or so, as MY party: the one most closely aligned to my interests and ideas.

In much the same way, I suppose, as thousands of ex-miners and former shipyard workers across the North East kept voting for the Labour party of Tony Blair under the delusion that it might be on their side, rather than that of the international bankers.

David Cameron truly is the fabled “heir to Blair” in his belief that the way to get and cling onto power is to stick up two fingers at his natural supporters. At least it can be argued in his defence that the energetic pursuit of gay marriage is doing rather less practical damage than cynically engineering mass immigration or invading foreign countries on contrived evidence of wrongdoing.

And who can blame him? The focus groups make clear that “the young”, after the benefit of years of state school brainwashing on the merits of diversity, are all for homosexuals gaily tripping down the aisle together. And “the young” equal “the future”, while all the old fogies like me will soon be dead.

The only snag being that the elderly will, in the meantime, probably go on voting, while the young will be far too busy with their Xboxes (or whatever the 2013 equivalent of those may be). The traditional argument that we have nowhere else to turn also looks a bit threadbare when the affably blokeish Nigel Farage seems to pop up every time we turn on the news.

Now I, as it happens, am a libertarian, who could not personally care less about gay marriage unless they decide to make it compulsory. But I find it surprising that a supposedly Conservative administration should be expending so much political capital on a contentious piece of modernisation that was not proposed in their manifesto.

I would be equally surprised if they suddenly brought forward a Bill to abolish the monarchy, because it would not fit with what I consider to be a “conservative” view of the world. Making the schoolboy error of confusing the word, which accurately describes what I am, with the radical party of professional politicians that has usurped the name.

But if you really want to see swivel-eyed lunacy, take a look at last week’s EU directive banning olive oil bottles and dipping bowls from our restaurants. Observe the views you have cherished all your life being wrecked by all but useless wind turbines, or watch HMS Ark Royal being towed off to a Turkish scrapyard.

Consider the fact that we cannot afford to fill the potholes or repair the landslips on our roads, subsidise rural buses or provide adequate seating capacity on local trains. But we can apparently find £35 billion to build a new high speed railway that will suck yet more economic vigour out of the English regions by bringing more of them within the London commuter belt.

The worst of all this is the feeling of impotence: that “nothing can be done” because “they’re all the same”. As, in truth, the pole-climbing lifelong political monkeys of our major parties appear to be.

Change must come. I shall welcome the chance to vote “no” to European Union membership if a referendum ever comes, which I very much doubt, but why waste yet more time legislating for that theoretical possibility?

Focus on the needs of the people that elected you. Get on with fixing the economy and the infrastructure we have already got. Forget about huge vanity projects. Try treating ridiculous EU directives with the same contempt that you currently reserve for your own most loyal supporters.

Unless you do that, Mr Cameron, you certainly will not deserve to be re-elected in 2015. And if you really want to take a close look at swivel-eyed lunacy, you’ll just need to invest in a mirror.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Fed up with austerity Britain? Sadly, you ain't seen nothing yet

The canny chief executive, on reaching the top of the greasy pole, makes the shock discovery that he has inherited a total disaster.

The company’s profits are immediately trashed by massive write-offs, its workforce slashed and expectations comprehensively lowered to a level from which even a halfwit should be able to engineer some sort of recovery - for which the new boss will naturally be richly rewarded.

This Year Zero strategy was surely the only sensible option available to whoever was unlucky enough to win the UK General Election of 2010: a vote that any sensible politician should have done their utmost to lose.

Losing: something to smile about properly at long last

Incredibly, the incoming Coalition did not seize the golden opportunity to make our lives an utter misery straight away, in the admittedly faint hope that we would have forgiven and forgotten by the time of the next election in 2015.

They have now been in power for almost three years, and the confiscation of my family’s child allowances has only just kicked in. Wealthy pensioners continue to trouser unneeded winter fuel payments, while whole swathes of Government expenditure on health, education and overseas aid remain ring-fenced against cuts.

Small wonder that the deficit remains stubbornly high, the national debt continues to climb, and economic growth remains a fond memory. But not to worry, because our leaders are fixing the things that really matter: imposing yet another reorganisation on the NHS and restricting the freedom of the press (which, in the current state of the industry, seems about as meaningful as slapping a preservation order on a snowman).

Our collective memory is short, and any reminder that this Government is dealing with problems not of its own making is now the cue for loud jeers. Hence the likeliest outcome of the next election is the return to power of those who did so much to create the mess in the first place.

Balls. Nothing more to be said

No wonder that electorates elsewhere in Europe, faced with similar choices, tick the “none of the above” box by voting for comedians instead.

Despite their failure to grasp the nettle in 2010, it is increasingly hard to see what the Government hopes to gain by continuing to pretend that “the medicine is working” and things are going to pick up any time soon. It isn’t, and they aren’t.

This week’s confiscation of bank deposits in Cyprus (an island that still drives on the left but foolishly abandoned its pound for the euro in 2008) could well be the taste of things to come for all of us as the mad European project continues to unravel, with potentially dire consequences not only for prosperity, but for the very peace that idealists proclaim as the European Union’s crowning achievement. 

A typical Cyprus ATM

Retrospectively imposing a 110% tax on all bankers’ bonuses, and perhaps hanging a few of them from lampposts, might help relieve our feelings, but it won’t actually get us out of the economic mire in which we find ourselves. Nor will trying to borrow even more money in the hope that we can somehow spend our way out of the hole.

Sadly we all need to adjust our fond hope that life is going to get steadily cushier. “Living standards” across the board need to come down until we have settled the bill for the criminal folly of the debt-fuelled artificial boom of the Blair years.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Our material expectations have risen massively in my lifetime. We are warmer, fatter, longer-lived and more richly entertained than ever before in human history. But I see precious little evidence that we are any happier as a result.

It will come as no comfort to a better-off Cypriot saver to be reminded of this, but life is extremely short and the important thing is to try and enjoy it to the best of our ability. People can be blissfully happy working for a pittance for a cause they believe in, while even billionaires can fall prey to suicidal misery.

I for one would appreciate the Government finally admitting that we all are going to get considerably worse off for the foreseeable future, so that we can focus on learning how to smile with gritted teeth.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Nothing is inevitable but death - certainly not wind farms

I am sure my late mother was blissfully unaware that she was quoting Jane Austen when she regularly observed that “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

Substitute “passions” for “pleasures” and the gulf in understanding yawns wider still.

I am a strong opponent of “ever closer union” in Europe and look forward to the promised “in out” referendum, if it ever happens, but polls consistently suggest that the great mass of my fellow citizens do not care all that much either way (though they should).

On the Horsegate food contamination scandal, media vox pops certainly found some consumers who were beside themselves with rage at the thought of unwittingly munching Dobbin in their burgers or lasagne, but many more received the news with a resigned shrug.

Another horse joke, courtesy of the Huffington Post

Among other recent burning issues, I have not written about gay marriage because I really could not care less one way or the other. Nor do I regard it as a “scandal” that people who are lucky enough to own a house should have to sell it to fund their care home bills, so long as their partner is not rendered homeless in the process.

While Scottish independence, though a lousy idea in principle, would have the great advantage of taking whingeing Salmonds, Sturgeons and other assorted fishes with chips on their shoulders out of our newspapers for good.

Which brings me, inevitably, to the one issue about which I do feel pretty passionate at the moment: the despoliation of the matchless Northumberland countryside by the crazy wind energy subsidy scam (this century’s answer to the last one’s plague of subsidised conifer plantations – though at least we will never run short of wooden pit props for our thriving deep mining industry).

Follions as it would really look (compare the picture accompanying the planning application)

Last week’s column on the planned Follions Folly attracted a small handful of passionate e-mails of support, one castigating me for failing to appreciate the beauty of wind turbines, and another pointing out that they are less ghastly than nuclear power plants.

Well, up to a point, Lady Copper, though at least nuclear can produce large amounts of electricity consistently if not particularly economically, rather than relatively small amounts when the wind blows at the right sort of speed.

And from the great mass of the public, I suspect, total indifference. Fuelled by the sense that covering much of the countryside with gigantic turbines is “inevitable”, like German victory in World War II or the triumph of communism, and “the future”. Which is interesting considering that they combine the mediaeval technology of the windmill with Faraday’s cutting edge invention of 1831, the dynamo.

In my experience nothing is inevitable apart from death (we all know now that taxes are pretty much optional if you are rich enough to pay for the best advice). So I shall keep banging the drum for the total madness of wrecking a peculiarly beautiful bit of countryside, designated as of High Landscape Value and right on the edge of the National Park, just to put a bit of extra cash in someone’s pocket for the next 25 years.

The last week has seen the creation of a website - http://www.fightfollionswindfarm.co.uk - and Facebook page, which both feature a rather more realistic photomontage of the development than the one accompanying the planning application, plus some interesting height comparisons with existing turbines and buildings. Do please take a look and “like” the Facebook page if you feel so minded.

A public meeting has also been arranged at Whittingham Village Hall at 7.30pm on Friday for everyone concerned about the issue. Curiously, the applicants’ agents have declined an invitation to come along and explain why the turbine would be such a good thing for us all. Suggesting either total confidence that they are going to get their way regardless of what the yokels think, or a contempt for the views of the local community that almost beggars belief. Perhaps, indeed, a bit of both.

In a county that has already more than done its bit to help meet renewable energy targets, there can only be one sane response to opportunistic proposals for large turbines in beautiful, sensitive and remote locations. Just say no. Please.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

If fast trains are the answer, why isn't Doncaster Eldorado?

If I spent what little is left of my savings on a magnificent new train set, rather than on fixing the leaks in my roof, people might well question my priorities if not my sanity.

What exactly is different about the Government finding that it has £33bn to splash out on a new high speed rail link at a time of economic stagnation, widespread cuts and still relentlessly rising public sector debt?

It is the same logic that has us building two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy even though we can only afford to run one of them, may not have any aircraft to put on it and certainly cannot provide it with appropriate escorts.

The big vanity project always seems to stand a far better chance of getting through the selection process than the smaller and more sensible ones that might actually bring some real improvements to our lives.

If fast and frequent rail connections to London were the key to economic success, Doncaster would be Eldorado.

Booming Doncaster, courtesy of The Guardian

There is a persuasive case that, rather than boosting regional prosperity, high speed rail will simply suck yet more economic life out of provincial cities into the capital.

Personally, I would much rather be able to get reliably and speedily across the Pennines and back than to London. Questioned about this issue on Radio 4 yesterday morning, the leader of Manchester City Council responded that it wasn’t a matter of either or: we could invest in both.

Well, good luck with that. In reality, whether in transport, the NHS or any other area of Government spending, it is always going to be a question of either or. Unless, perhaps, fracking miraculously releases so much natural gas that it transforms the UK into another Qatar. Which might have its upsides, but is not the sensible way to bet.

Back in the 19th century, politicians spent an inordinate amount of time debating railway construction bills, whether a man should be permitted to marry his deceased wife’s sister, and Irish Home Rule. 

Scroll on to 2013 and we now have the eerily similar line-up of HS2, gay marriage and UK Home Rule, as the promised in-out referendum on the European Union might be characterised. All guaranteed to cause huge ructions among those on both sides who care passionately about the issues, and bemusement if not outright boredom for the rest of the population.

As in 1975, I suspect that most people who vote in the European referendum, if it ever happens, will plump for the option that seems likely to make them a little more comfortably off.

Hence we shall be driven to screaming point over the years ahead by hearing over and over again how many jobs depend on Britain’s membership of the EU, and the dangers of all those lovely multinational companies refusing to invest here if they believe there is a real risk of us voting to pull out.

Presumably those would be the very same terrible multinational corporations we are simultaneously urged to hate because of their marked reluctance to pay tax.

The central irony of this debate will be that the EU is simply the biggest politicians’ vanity project of the lot, in which any claimed economic benefits are massively subordinate to the holy grail of “ever closer union”, as Greece, Spain and Ireland have already found out to their cost.

I often wish that the optional approach to taxpaying extended beyond multinationals to the self-employed like me. Particularly today, on which I must meet the eye-watering demands of HMRC for the last tax year as well as making my first payment on account for the current one.

I seem to be paying for about half of HMS Queen Elizabeth plus Abu Qatada’s housing benefit for the next 12 months.

HMS Queen Elizabeth. An artist's impression, obviously. Particularly the planes.

Maybe the Government should pull into a siding and pause for thought on what those who actually pay their bills might like from those in authority. My advice would be to forget the vanity projects, whether in transport, defence, Europe or anywhere else.

Some simple, quiet competence in protecting and improving basic services, cutting red tape and encouraging entrepreneurship would get my personal green light.

 www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The successful Union that really deserved to win a prize

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee sighed deeply. He had now been spent three solid days stuck in a room with four equally obscure Norwegian politicians, arguing about who should receive the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Apparently.

They had finally identified the ideal candidate in the shape of indefatigable British charity worker Jimmy Savile, until someone Googled him and discovered that he was inconveniently dead.

The same difficulty that had done for the otherwise promising candidacies of Osama bin Laden, Harold Shipman, Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.

Bashar al-Assad had been running strongly, until deadlock resulted when one awkward member of the committee insisted on advancing the rival claims of the King of Bahrain.

Then it had started looking good for the relatively uncontroversial retired statesmen Tony Blair, who could clearly use an extra $1.2 million if anyone could. But then they remembered the risk of him bringing his wife to the prize ceremony, so it was back to the drawing board again.

“I know,” said the newest member of the committee. “Why don’t we stop searching for an individual, and award it to some well-intentioned organisation?”

“Like the Papacy, for example?”

There was a sharp intake of breath and some muttering about the Crusades and the law of unintended consequences in regard to priestly celibacy.

Another member remarked that this was where they always ended up when they hadn’t got a clue, which was why the Red Cross and the United Nations kept cropping up on the list of past award winners.

“OK, but how about a Union that has secured a long peace between warring nations, and is a model of successful political and monetary integration? What’s more, it is currently under threat and the prize might just help to hold it together.”

The five members of the committee gave a powerful demonstration of synchronised nodding, and reflected that this could be the breakthrough that would get them out of a room now beginning to smell quite unpleasantly of fermented trout.

“I like it,” said the Chairman. “I like it a lot.”

The newest member of the Committee acknowledged his praise with a modest smile.

“Hang on, though,” said the inevitable troublemaker. “Won’t people take the mickey out of us for awarding the prize to something we as a country have taken such pains to keep out of, jealously guarding our independence at all costs?”

The Chairman shrugged, and reminded him that the whole world took the mickey pretty much every year. And with a list of past recipients including Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Al Gore and Barack Obama, there should be no surprise there.

But a Union that had turned war into peace and brought prosperity in its wake: why, what could possibly go wrong?

“It’s brilliant,” said the Chairman. “I’ll ring the … hang on, who on earth do I ring?”

“David Cameron, obviously,” said the new boy.

“David Cameron? Well, I know he’s done his best by reneging on that promise of a referendum, and has as much chance of ever holding one as he has of closing down Eton College and turning it into a rest home for retired miners. But he’s hardly at the heart of the Union, is he?”

“Of course he is. He’s the …”

“No, no. It will have to be that bloke no one has ever heard of. Or the other one.”

“Nick Clegg?”

“No. Van something or other. Or the one that sounds a bit like an Italian wine.”

“Barroso?”

“That’s the fellow.”

“No, no hang on,” gulped the newest member. “I think there’s been a horrible misunderstanding. You thought I meant the European Union, didn’t you?”

“Of course. And it’s a great idea. Thank you so much for your inspired thinking.”

“But that’s not what I meant at all.”

“You said a political and monetary Union that had brought peace and prosperity to formerly warring nations. What else could it be?”

“Er, the United Kingdom?”

Edinburgh Castle: keeping up the standard

At which point everyone laughed uproariously, packed up their papers and returned to well-deserved obscurity for another year.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.