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.

A get well card to a Fleet Street legend

I am writing this in the quiet carriage on Monday’s 06.53 East Coast train from Alnmouth to King’s Cross.

That is in the completely dead and wasted time that justifies lashing out £50bn-plus on HS2 to get busy executives into London a little bit quicker.

It’s not a journey I often make these days, though for two decades it was my weekly routine. Though back then, as I recall, the train left at a psychologically advantageous few minutes past seven, and arrived in London nearly 15 minutes earlier than it does now. It is hard to interpret these changes as an improvement.

It also does not help that I lay awake nearly all night worrying about whether my car would make it to the station. This is entirely my own fault for allowing patriotism and hope to triumph over experience, inducing me to buy another British-made Land Rover product.

The distinctive clunk and jerk of an imminently failing gearbox on the approach to Branxton was the only thing that marred my visit to the “Flodden 500” commemorations there on Sunday afternoon. The floral displays in the lovely church were truly outstanding, and the battlefield itself has acquired some useful interpretation boards since I last paid it a visit many years ago.

Floral tribute to King James IV

"Surrey and his men"

The killing field of Flodden is an amazingly small space to have witnessed the end of so many thousands of lives – and for what? The union of the English and Scottish crowns a mere nine decades later confirms the truth of my late mother’s favourite mantra: “It will all be the same in 100 years’ time.”

Flodden Field, viewed from the English lines

Although Mr Salmond has timed his referendum to coincide with the Scottish victory at Bannockburn next year, I do hope that some will reflect on Flodden, and the pointlessness of division and conflict, when casting their votes.

I am becoming quite familiar with the road north to Milfield, where my aunt and I enjoyed an excellent lunch at the legendary Red Lion to set us up for Flodden.

The Red Lion's unusual bar tariff

This is because my distinguished colleague David Banks, having devoted his column last Friday to our scheduled columnists’ lunch that day in Newcastle, rang me early in the morning with the sad news that he felt too poorly to make the trip.

Later, having compressed half a day’s work into a mere two hours, I rang him back and offered him a lift. I came to regret this when I discovered that the A697 north of Powburn was largely under water, restricting the caravans travelling in my direction to a mere 20mph. (Though lorries and vans coming towards me, oddly enough, still felt that it was fine to try cornering at a terrifying 60mph-plus.)

Banksy devoted the whole similarly unnerving hour’s drive to Newcastle to an account of his recent medical history – and that was just the executive summary. I don’t think I have heard a “looking on the bright side” line to match his “at least having the leukaemia back has got rid of my diabetes” since I heard that fine old joke about the butler ringing his absent employer to report that the grand house and its priceless contents had all been burnt to a cinder, “though on the plus side, sir, all the heat has brought your spring bulbs on a treat.”

It was also no doubt good for my own health that the need to convey the Fleet Street legend back to his Tweedo Paradiso forced me to revise my original plan of getting howling drunk and then wandering aimlessly around the centre of the toon for several hours until I sobered up.

At one point my passenger remarked that it was very kind of me to make a 50-mile detour to give him a lift. I said truthfully that it was a pleasure, but wondered whether he might like to reflect that it was possible for someone to be a Tory and a fairly decent human being at the same time.

He looked at me as though I had asked him to accept that the moon is made of green cheese.

Nevertheless, despite our deep-rooted political differences, this column comes with just one message: get well, Banksy, preferably soon.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

HS2? No thanks, I'd prefer broadband, heat and lighting

When I was young I found it ridiculous that every newspaper story wove its subjects’ ages into the text: what bearing did that have on anything?

Now, at 59, I know that nothing has more influence on our attitudes to any bright idea than our assessment of whether we are likely to live long enough to witness the outcome. That is why I feel the pain of seeing giant wind turbines advance across the beautiful uplands of Northumberland so acutely; because I know there is no chance that I will still be around when they come down again, if they ever do.

Image courtesy of SOUL, the Barmoor Anti Wind Farm Group

It does not take a genius to see that nearly all the arguments advanced in favour of building these gigantic bird-swats are self-interested or simply wrong-headed.

Which makes them curiously like those put forward for construction of the HS2 high speed rail line. On which, like Kevan Jones MP, I experienced a moment of horrible discomfort last week when I suddenly found Lord Mandelson agreeing with me.

Still, it could be worse. I’ve Googled “Gordon Brown HS2” and found no evidence that the new Sage of Kirkcaldy has come out against it, so there must be a sporting chance that I am still right after all.

The theoretical cost of this project keeps going up. It was £42 billion at the last count, and that was apparently without one small but useful addition: some trains to run on it. Still, why worry about that? We all know that the important thing is to get the aircraft carriers built, not fuss about whether we can afford any planes to put on them.

A chimera, and apparently an unbudgeted one at that

The Business Department now seems to be admitting that its key assumption that time spent on trains is economically dead because no one does any work on them is, to use a technical term, cobblers.

While the chief defender of HS2 tracked down by Radio 4 at the weekend claimed that the extra speed of journeys was irrelevant: the project was really all about creating much needed additional capacity for a rail system bursting at the seams.

Except that, as a regular traveller on the West Coast Main Line, I often survey masses of empty seats, particularly at those peak times when all those without calf-length pockets have been priced off the railway altogether.

If we do need more capacity, why not reinstate some of those passing loops and diversionary routes cleverly axed by Dr Beeching in the 1960s?

The Number One Hate Figure of my childhood, surpassing even the bloke who taught swimming at my school

If we’ve suddenly found a huge amount of spare cash to invest in transport, how about creating a Transpennine rail service that is genuinely worthy of the name “Express”? Reopen the freight lines in South East Northumberland to passengers, extend the Metro, build some more urban tramways (first learning all the lessons from the debacle in Edinburgh), stop cutting back bus services, relieve the congestion on the Gateshead western by-pass, and, yes, dual the A1.

I write as one who adores trains and whose youthful blood was regularly brought to boiling point by letters to this paper from the Railway Conversion League, arguing that the answer was to rip up all the rails, lay concrete and run buses. Even a schoolboy could see that their case was total rubbish.

I am delighted to have lived long enough to see rail emerge triumphant and enjoy a renaissance that seemed as least as implausible, back in the 1960s, as a British man ever again winning Wimbledon.

But it really is time to get back to reality and stop politicians grandstanding with ludicrous promises of massive public expenditure that actually cost them nothing because they will be long gone from office when the bills start rolling in.

In the vanishingly unlikely event that we really have got a spare £50 billion to improve the national infrastructure, please let’s spend it on something genuinely useful. If we must invest in something high speed, make it broadband. And spend the change on some new power stations that will keep working when the wind isn’t blowing at just the right speed.

Otherwise we are likely be spending our winter evenings in the cold and dark not in some imaginary, distant future, but uncomfortably soon.

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.

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.