Social mobility - sadly, it cannot be a one-way street

Everyone seems to agree that social mobility is a good thing, but we focus only on increasing the opportunities to move upwards.

Though since we can’t all be dukes or plutocrats, this is clearly only possible if other people are simultaneously moving in the opposite direction.

The post-war political settlement sought to achieve this with punitive death duties on the rich, balancing the grammar school ladder of opportunity for clever children from poorer backgrounds.

Direct grant schools like Newcastle RGS were, in the words of one Cambridge don I knew, “Powerful engines for turning lower-middle-class boys living in the north of England into upper-middle-class men living in the south.”

Which was perfectly true. Remarkably few of my own Oxbridge-educated RGS contemporaries ever returned to live in the North East.

Though this was balanced by the Durham and Newcastle graduates of my acquaintance who were born in the south, but loved this region so much that they could never bring themselves to leave.

I bucked the trend and returned to Northumberland because we Hanns don’t really do mobility. We have been hanging around the Alnwick area since at least the 1600s, and quite possibly longer (but we were not socially elevated enough for me to be sure).

Mrs Hann, on the other hand, is definitely from mobile stock, her immediate antecedents being Iranian or, as she prefers, Persian (because it conjures up warm images of cats and carpets, rather than bearded fanatics).

Having said that, there might be a touch of the fanatic here ...

She also continues to believe that holidays are best taken abroad, despite the tremendous break we enjoyed in Northumberland earlier this month.

Nevertheless, I would unhesitatingly place my wife in the “credit” column in the debate about that aspect of social mobility known as immigration. Though that, too, must come with the caveat that the entire human race cannot live in the UK, and those moving inwards and upwards must be balanced by others heading down and out.

These reflections are inspired by the fact that I am facing, with extreme reluctance, some potential moving of my own. I put my much-loved Northumberland house, with its marvellous views of the Cheviots and Simonside, on the market six weeks ago.

I did so because of the remorseless logic that my elder son starts school in Cheshire in a week’s time. And, once he does, our ability to spend time in the North East as a family will be greatly reduced.

It also reflects the lack of forward planning that can frustrate even the most determined would-be social climber.

The American songwriter Eubie Blake famously observed in his 90s: “If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” Similarly, if I had foreseen that I would have two young sons at close to what I always fondly imagined as my retirement age, I’d have taken care to save some cash rather than squandering it all on opera tickets and champagne (the rest, as George Best once said, I simply wasted).

On the plus side, this profligacy has equipped me to write the new edition of The Bluffer’s Guide to Opera, available from all good bookshops and tax-evading online dealerships just as soon as the ink dries.

So I have, late in life, finally achieved my ambition of getting a book into print, albeit not the blockbuster comic novel I have squandered a lifetime pretending to be writing.

I also find that I am deriving steadily increasing satisfaction from fatherhood, which may finally be edging me towards that elusive condition known as happiness. Which I already knew, from my wide-ranging acquaintance with both multi-millionaires and the comparatively poor, has nothing whatsoever to do with the size of one’s bank balance. (Though at least the millionaires get to be miserable in comfort.)

To date there has been an encouraging lack of interest in my house, though I await my estate agent’s feedback on today’s scheduled viewing with appropriate trepidation.

If it does sell, so far as I am concerned, it will definitely represent downward mobility of the worst sort, but at least it creates a golden opportunity for someone else to move up in the world. Does anyone fancy placing their foot upon the ladder?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Honour our saviour from the euro

Last week brought a flurry of anniversaries, several triumphs of social mobility and a disturbing sense of déjà-vu.

It all began on Sunday 14th, which would have been my parents’ 74th wedding anniversary and was the Prince of Wales’s 62nd birthday. Can you also remember when Charles was the future?

On Monday my father would have been 102, while on Tuesday my next-door neighbours, Andrew and Etta, celebrated 64 years of marriage. I was minded to crack open a bottle of something fizzy in their honour even before I heard the news of the long-anticipated engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which clearly demanded a proper celebration.

The only sour note for me came not from the legions of left-wing columnists churning out their entirely predictable critiques of the monarchy, but from Prince William’s father. Doorstepped by the media in Poundbury, he claimed to be “thrilled” but looked anything but, adding glumly that “they have had enough practice”.

The next day I read suggestions that Kate Middleton’s father bore a passing resemblance to Gordon Brown, both physically and in his evident discomfort as he read out his notes on how happy he and his wife were about the engagement. And as I did so, it occurred to me with mounting horror that the real parallel lies elsewhere.

An intelligent man with passionate enthusiasms who really believes he can do good for his country and is forced to wait far too long to fulfil his destiny. That would serve equally well as a description of both our last Labour Prime Minister and our King-in-waiting.

And given that The Queen is by all accounts much fitter than her mother was at 84, Prince Charles might have to kick his heels not just for another decade, which was long enough to leave Gordon Brown with no real clue what to do when he finally achieved his lifelong ambition, but until he is an octogenarian himself.

Meanwhile William and Kate seemingly resemble Dave and Samantha Cameron. Not appealing to all, no doubt, but clearly rather more in tune with the Zeitgeist.

With the coins already minted to mark the Duke of Edinburgh’s 90th birthday next year, a monarchy with longevity genes on both sides has important questions to consider on how it can continue to project the glamour that seems the key to popular appeal in any walk of life.

My own thinking on this weighty issue was interrupted by another night of celebration on Thursday to mark the 40th birthday of Iceland, the frozen food chain. A charity ball featured amazing pyrotechnics, performances by Dame Edna Everage and Tom Jones, and helped to raise £1.5 million for Help for Heroes. At the time of writing, the only attention this has received from the media has been through an anonymous e-mailer complaining that the fireworks disturbed his horses. As William and Kate surely already know, some people are never happy unless they are moaning.

Meanwhile on Friday, the heady social ascent of Miss Middleton was followed by the elevation to the House of Lords of a load of people no-one other than those passing around the party collection hats had ever heard of, plus Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. A mere life peerage is surely far too little for a man who is the essence of poshness and has done so much for national morale.

On past form Prince William will be made a duke on his marriage. Why confine this bounty to your own family, Ma’am? Surely the time is ripe for Earl Fellowes?

And, as we watch the precipitous downward mobility of the entire Irish nation, let us also give appropriate recognition to the man who may have failed as PM but performed the truly historic service of keeping Britain out of the euro: Gordon Brown, Duke of Kirkcaldy.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Are we really yearning for change?

Nowadays the base assumption of politicians of all parties, in every country, is that people are yearning for change. My suspicion, however, is that many of us want nothing more fervently than to be left alone.

Manufacturers and retailers also believe that they can do better for themselves through the constant quest for something “new and improved”. Even the world’s most powerful brands sometimes get this horribly wrong.

In the 1980s I twice visited the city of Columbus, Georgia. Here, in the aftermath of the American Civil War, druggist John Pemberton dreamt up a medicinal drink flavoured with coca leaves (the source of cocaine) and kola nuts (providing caffeine). He called it Coca-Cola.

Back in 1985, I was proudly presented with one of the first cans of a revolutionary drink called New Coke: like Coca-Cola, only sweeter. It had naturally been launched to replace the original only after a massive programme of market research, which demonstrated unequivocally that it was what the public wanted.

The result was a textbook PR and marketing disaster. However much they claimed to prefer it in blind taste tests, Americans soon made it clear that they were not prepared to drink the new stuff. Within months the old formulation had been reintroduced as “Coke Classic”, and New Coke was eventually dropped altogether.

Clearly having learnt nothing from this story, a couple of years ago Nestlé completely reformulated the 70-year-old Black Magic brand, filling the boxes with supposedly more upmarket square truffles. Once again a consumer backlash led to the reappearance of something called “Black Magic Classic Favourites”, though sadly I can detect little resemblance between these and the original selection my late mother enjoyed so much. On the other hand they have got rid of that Montelimar chocolate that was always left behind at the end, so at least there has been one small improvement.

Compared with New Coke, New Labour has won rather a lot of popular votes and had a decent run on the shelves, but has it ultimately delivered any more consumer satisfaction? The public finances are in ruins, just like in Old Labour days, inequality has increased and for some reason Mr Blair’s performance at the Iraq enquiry reminded me irresistibly of John Major’s cruel line about hearing “the flapping of white coats” whenever he encountered one of his more obsessive critics.

It is head-bangingly frustrating that so much political discourse is devoted to correcting the entirely predictable results of previous Government initiatives. You massively liberalise the licensing laws, then discover that you have a problem with binge drinking. Well, blow me down.

Sell off the playing fields and create a culture of fear in which it is deemed unsafe for children to walk to school, then find that you have an issue with childhood obesity. Who would ever have thought it?

Export the country’s manufacturing jobs to China and rely on the income generated from financial services, then discover that the fantastic results of the number jugglers were actually all achieved with smoke and mirrors. Who would have predicted that? Well, only anyone who had ever read some history.

The problem is that the tyranny of the focus groups gives us, on the other side, the equally flavourless, impeccably socially liberal New Conservatives. Every party is constantly scouring the world for exciting new ideas, and all profess a fanatical commitment to “social mobility” without ever acknowledging that there must be snakes as well as ladders. We cannot all be company chairmen, university professors or members of the cabinet.

I long for someone in British politics with the guts that the Coca-Cola Company showed in admitting that they had got it wrong and reverting to their original formulation.

Bring on an election fought between Classic Conservatives and Labour Classic Favourites, ideally minus that rather sinister ingredient, Lord Montelimar of Foy and Hartlepool.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

People Like Us never get the sack

Yippee! Despite the desperate state of the economy, and the likelihood that nutters are plotting to blow us all to kingdom come, the mood of the nation rose perceptibly last week when a couple of well-fed blokes in important jobs “did the honourable thing” and resigned.

It is hard to suppress a chuckle about the careless copper who had to fall on his sword because he had “lost the confidence of the Home Secretary”; a woman whose bath plug to porn films expenses saga has surely lost her the confidence of absolutely everyone. Except, apparently, Gordon Brown.

However, can I suggest that our jolly mood may cloud over a touch when the terms for the departure of anti-terrorist supremo Bob Quick and top Downing Street spin doctor Damian McBride become known?

The key will be in that word “resign”. We are straight into the world of “mutual consent” and “compromise agreements”, which can lead, to take one extreme example, to someone walking away with a pension of £700,000 a year despite all but destroying one of Britain’s largest banks.

You might have thought that would be enough to get a fellow sacked, but when did that last happen to anyone in the elite now running this country?

I have a friend who married a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police. Towards the end of an otherwise exemplary career, he was convicted of a criminal offence. Not only did he lose his job, but they confiscated his pension, too. The whole family was punished by the need to sell their home and change their children’s schools. What are the chances of one of the people who run the show facing similar hardship?

A huge gulf has developed in this country between us ordinary mugs (OMs) and the small elite who band together as People Like Us (PLUs). Bad things do not happen to PLUs. Come the creation of unitary councils, surplus PLU chief executives pocket hundreds of thousands in compensation. But you can be sure that when economies are required among the OMs who empty the bins or mend the roads, there will sadly only be enough in the coffers to pay the statutory minimum for redundancy.

In the same way, I regularly read reports of OMs receiving surprisingly stiff prison sentences for fraud, involving sums far smaller than those claimed by the PLUs in Parliament for what seem decidedly questionable expenses.

Every political party tells us that it is in favour of social mobility, and of widening the range of opportunities for OMs to become PLUs. Yet the game is played on a board amply provided with ladders and signally bereft of snakes. Once you attain PLU status, you are made for life. Boardroom cronies in the private sector have hugely inflated each other’s salaries through remuneration committees set up in the name of “good corporate governance”, while senior pay in the public sector has had to be ratcheted up to match, to ensure that it retains its share of “top talent”.

What seem to most of us to be vast salaries (because they are) are just the starting point; if you actually want a PLU to get out of bed and do some work, he or she needs to be “incentivised” with bonuses, share options and the rest. And if they fail, they expect to be cushioned through a long and comfortable retirement.

I am anything but a socialist, and like to think that I am not naturally vindictive, but I still long to see the occasional failed police commissioner, banker, spin doctor or even MP reduced to scraping a living like one of us OMs, rather than quietly enjoying a vast pension, securing lucrative publishing deals for their side of the story or attempting to recover our sympathy on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.