Hugh's Views

People won't vote for subtitles

2011-11-02T14:46:00.002Z

The Eurozone will fail. It may take a long time with false dawns along the way, but it will fail.

A currency cannot exist without fiscal integration. For awhile the evidence seemed to contradict this, but now we know. Fiscal integration will be unstable unless it is accompanied by political integration. For a time it might work with strong countries telling weak ones what to do but people won't tolerate that for long and they will want direct democratic control over the fiscal policy of Europe. And here is the problem. You cannot have political integration without linguistic integration. Nobody is going to vote for a politician that they cannot understand. Subtitles won't cut it. You need to hear the politician speaking to you in your own language.

And that won't happen. Ever.

Sympathy for the Devil

2011-05-05T10:54:00.002+01:00

I am very anxious not to show disrespect to the 3000 Americans who died on 9/11, not to mention the 300 English people who were also in the twin towers or the 700 Londoners who were maimed or killed on 7/7 so I hope that is taken as read.

There is a faction, possibly even a majority, in the Middle East who hate the West with a depth and vigour that we ignore at our peril. And it is not difficult to see why. It has nothing to do with hating our freedom or our success or our way of life or any of that nonsense. It has to do with how the West has behaved. It is much easier to see this if you take the West as a Bloc rather than looking at what Britain did, or what France or the US did. And I have to say that if someone had done to Europe what the West has done to the Middle East then I might be a hater, too.

In 1918 the West gained control of the whole Arab world from Morocco to Persia including EVERY country in between – Libya, Egypt, Lebanon – you name it. Much of that was Britain but the Italians and French were big players, too. Let’s just say The West. The West then ruled the Arab world until the early 1950s. During that time it enforced unpopular and unelected puppet governments on the people: the Saudis in Arabia, Feisal in Iraq, the Shah of Persia, the Hashemites in Jordan and so on. It then announced around 1920 its decision to set up a Jewish homeland in Palestine (The Balfour Declaration) and it began to pour Western migrants into that territory. Now I know that Jewish teaching says that this land was promised by God etc but if you don’t know or care anything about that you simply see a mass of Westerners arriving and setting up home in your country, protected by the might of the West. The Jew/non Jew distinction is probably lost on you and, anyway, the reason for the migration was largely driven by an internal Western problem – Germany.

After the second world war the West, now led by America, supported, indeed made possible, the existence of what would have seemed an alien state and also propped up hated and undemocratic regimes in order to secure its supply of oil and its strategic interests versus the Soviet Union.

In Bin Laden’s case the straw that broke the camel’s back was the arrival of Western troops in the religious heartland of Islam during the first Gulf War which was brought about because the West had made possible the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Consumed by anger and hatred he set out to hurt The West in any and every way that he could.

Now we have killed the guy. But whereas killing Saddam or Gadaffi removes a tyrant, you cannot kill a feeling or an idea. The removal of Bin Laden will have no effect on hostility to the West and Palin’s idea that releasing the pictures will teach America’s enemies a lesson is ridiculous. These people are not like Blofeld in the James Bond movies. They are driven by an idea and a feeling. And the idea will live on and gather strength and we will never defeat it by force. The Arab Spring is a very hopeful sign for us because it may lead to democracy which is independent of the West and this would remove one of the driving forces of anti-Western sentiment. But we won’t get out of this situation and live in peace until the hopes and dreams of the Arab peoples stand a realistic chance of being fulfilled. And that is what we should focus on if we want peace and security.

Did America intervene in World War II

2010-12-07T11:48:00.003Z

An American friend recently commented on US intervention in WWII. I don’t want in any way to be disrespectful to the memory of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who gave their lives in the cause of Freedom or to downplay the debt we all owe to them and to all those who fought. But I do want to make the point that it was not an “intervention”. Intervention, I would submit, is the voluntary involvement by one party in the affairs of a third party or parties. To that extent, Britain’s declaration of war on Germany was an intervention because it was not necessary and was brought about because we objected to the way Germany was treating Poland.
America did not intervene. It was attacked. At that point, America found itself in common cause with Great Britain and the two countries fought together as an alliance. I do feel that the extent of Britain’s role in the alliance is overlooked today by people on both sides of the Atlantic because they view history through the lens of today and, of course, today we are very much a junior partner. As I understand it, there were more British than American men and materiel in contact with all the enemies (Japan, Germany and Italy) until the middle of 1944, when the American war effort overtook ours. My source for this claim is Churchill’s seven volume account of the war. At the time of the D-Day landings, 60% of the forces involved were American but 40% were British or British Commonwealth. The Royal Navy began the assault on the Normandy Beaches (HMS Belfast beginning proceedings with a mighty broadside) and the American Navy followed in.

None of this, as I say, is to downplay the role of America. And without America, the war would have gone on for many years more and may well have resulted in a stalemate. We shall never know. On a personal note, I should say that after five years of fighting in Europe, my father, in 1945, was pumped full of tropical medicine shots and ordered to embark for Japan. Whilst carrying out this order, news reached him of the use of the Atom bomb and the subsequent surrender of Japan. As a result he was enabled to return to civilian life. Without that action by President Truman he might not have lived to see the Peace and I might not have been born. So I hope my pro-British sentiments won’t be mistaken for being anti-American.

Why we couldn't lose in 1940

2010-12-05T19:02:00.002Z

I grew up with the myth of the Battle of Britain - how a handful of British heroes stood alone against the might of Nazi Germany and saved the world for Freedom. It is a lovely myth and one that stirs the soul of every British person who considers it. But it is not true. It suits us to think it is true because it paints us in such an heroic light but it is viewed through the lens of today and the world is very different today than it was in 1940.

I am reading James Holland's excellent history of the Battle of Britain and it is helping me to understand just how different that world was. And it is apparent that the Germans could not win in 1940 and that the RAF was simply the most visible part of our almost impregnable defences.

If you are going to invade an island, you need to be superior at sea, in the air and on land. The Germans simply did not have this superiority. Although it is hard for a modern Englishman to imagine, the Royal Navy in 1940 was the most powerful maritime force in the world. The only navy of comparable proportions was the American one but if you add in the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy and the Royal South African Navy, all of which were effectively part of the same fighting force in 1940, you have easily the most powerful navy on earth. On top of that, Britain in 1940 controlled the largest part of the world's Merchant shipping. Incredibly, we were able to deploy a thousand ships into the English Channel and North Sea during the Battle of Britain and no force on earth was going to get through that.

By comparison, the German Kriegsmarine was a minor irritant. The only weapon they had of any significance was the U-Boat but there were nowhere near enough of these to break British sea power.

In terms of air power, we had the world's first and only fully integrated, modern air defence system. There were two chains of radar defences - inner and outer - which covered the aerial approaches to Britain and fed their findings back to vast underground control rooms where the commanders could see large maps showing the progress of the battle in real time. The Germans had nothing comparable and, as one young Luftwaffe pilot wrote in his diary, "nothing we do seems to surprise the British. They are always expecting us and are always above us, ready to attack". On top of this technological edge, we had a superior industrial capacity. By the summer of 1940 we were producing twice as many aircraft as the Germans could manage and, more importantly, we were producing them faster than we were losing them, whereas the Germans were not keeping up with their losses. And this Allied advantage only got greater as the war progressed.

Hitler abandoned his attack in October 1940, realising that it was hopeless, and he turned his attention to Russia, thereby guaranteeing that he would lose the war. Unfortunately, it was to take another five years and countless human tragedies before that was to be.

Would we still have won if America had not come into the war a couple of years later? We simply can't know. A large part of our strength would have been diverted to the Far East and the Japanese onslaught and it would have been difficult to invade Europe in those circumstances. Certainly, it would have taken much longer. And probably we would have ended up with a Russian zone encompassing much of Western Europe. So it is just as well that we never had to find out!

Bielefeld Sept 2010

2010-09-12T14:35:00.000+01:00

A two state solution

2010-09-01T15:25:00.002+01:00

So Obama is trying his hand at sorting out the Israel-Palestine issue.

The preferred solution (preferred by everyone who wants the problem to go away) is a two-state solution. This has been talked about as though it is the obvious solution and the only one that will work. The history of two-state solutions is not encouraging. They tend to be applied when one group claiming a piece of land thinks that it has won and, since the other group won't go away, decides to offer the other group the cruddy land that it figures it can manage without.

In North America, the European settlers had a problem with the Injuns. The Injuns figured that they had lived in the country for a pretty long time and that they had a right to continue doing so. The settlers didn't like this idea but they did like the idea of a "two state" solution - the settlers get whatever they want and the Injuns get the barren land that is left where they can enjoy full rights as an independent people. Arguably, this has worked, at least from the standpoint of the incoming population. Whether the Injuns think it is a good idea doesn't really seem to matter. Great casinos, though.

In South Africa the incoming population didn't think much of the indigenous black inhabitants. The apartheid government came up with the idea of "equal but separate development". This means that I will live in this beautiful house over here and you can live in that shack over there but only because you choose not to be as rich as I am. As the Blacks became more irritating, the government came up with a two-state solution - the Bantustans. These were independent, self-governing states within the borders of South Africa where the Blacks could enjoy full rights as an independent, self governing people. I actually visited Sun City in one of the Bantustans. It wasn't like visiting Germany or France. It was more like, well, an Indian Reservation. Great Casinos, though.

Unlike the situation in North America, the sheer numbers of the indigenous population meant that this was never going to work. And, as we all know, the attempt at a two state solution failed and we now have the only stable and sensible outcome - a one state solution.

In Ireland, the incoming Scottish and English Protestants didn't think much of the indigenous Catholic population. For a few hundred years they found the answer was to sit on the locals - hard. However, when the locals made it clear that they were not going to be sat upon indefinitely, the incoming population came up with the idea of a "two-state" solution. They would take an area of the country where they were in the majority and call this bit a separate province and thereby solve the problem of being in a minority in the island as a whole. But this solution isn't working. After decades of bloodshed and violence we are in a hiatus caused by an outbreak of reasonableness all round. However, I think we all know that we are headed for the only long-term stable solution which is a one-state solution encompassing the whole of Ireland. It is just taking a little time for the protestants to get used to this idea - fifty years or so is my guess, but they will get there eventually.

Now we have Israel/Palestine. Your view on this is undoubtedly affected by whether you believe in the Bible. If you do, you may believe that God promised the land of Israel to the Jews and that is that. It is difficult to argue against this proposition other than by pointing out that the same God also promised it to the Muslims in another book. If, like me, you believe that this is an nonsensical as the Mormon belief that the Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israel then you are left with the conclusion that a large group of mostly Europeans moved into country that had been the home of the Palestinian people for centuries. The did this whilst under the protection of the British Empire which had promised to create a homeland for the members of one religion in the occupied territory of another.

For some reason, we in the West, who would never accept the proposition that members of one religion should be given superior rights to members of another, seem to accept that this is OK in Israel. But this cannot be right. What the Israeli government seems to be hoping for is a "two-state"solution in which one group (theirs) get the good land and the other group get the stuff they can manage without. And we in the West seem to be acquiescing in this aim. To me, it is clear that there will only be one long-term stable solution and that is a one-state solution. This will be one in which the whole of the land that was Palestine becomes a single, secular state in which the religious practices of all groups are protected by law but in which no one religion is given special status. Within this secular state Jew, Muslim and Christian (and anyone else) could live in peace and harmony together. Anything else may hold for a time but will just lead to more trouble before the people living there finally get it. And they will, but probably not in my lifetime.

The Widgery Report

2010-06-21T09:28:00.000+01:00

Everyone is now dismissing the Widgery report (delivered shortly after the event) as a whitewash.

“Whitewash” implies conscious distortion and I doubt if that was the case. Widgery was not just a judge – he was the Lord Chief Justice of England. As such he had lifetime tenure and the power to override government if it behaved without the Law. So how could such a man be leaned on to give a false version of events? I don’t think he was. I think it is a demonstration of the impossibility for human beings of being impartial. In fact, I am not even sure that “impartial” has a meaning – I suspect that there are only “points of view”.

Widgery was an elderly man at the time and he would have been born in the Victorian era. He would have grown up with a belief in the virtues of the English way of doing things that he would have taken in with his mother’s milk. I am guessing that he would have found it impossible to believe that a British Officer could lie and he would have had an inbuilt distrust of anyone who was not English. I am guessing (and we will probably never know) that he conducted what he believed was a detailed and fair review of events but that he was simply inclined to believe the evidence presented by the army and to discount the evidence presented by the “terrorists” and so he arrived at a skewed conclusion without knowing it.

This is not to defend that enquiry. But I do think it is worth asking, “how could it have been so wrong?” and I think the idea that a senior judge woke up one day and decided to fabricate a story that yielded him no personal advantage is too simplistic.

The framers of the Saville enquiry had the great good sense to invite a senior Canadian judge and a senior judge from New Zealand to sit with Lord Saville to counter unconscious bias. I think that was wise.

Pouring oil on untroubled waters

2010-06-10T17:02:00.003+01:00

At at time when hundreds of British service men and women have died supporting America in Afghanistan, and more are tragically joining them every day, the increasingly strident comments coming out of America regarding the BP oil spill are not playing well here. There is a growing demand amongst politicians and the public that the Prime Minister should pick up the phone to Barack Obama and tell him to back off. A feeling that I am beginning to share.

This is, after all, not Bhopal. There are not thousands lying dead or dying due to corporate negligence. This is an oil spill. A disaster, certainly but the kind of accident that is inevitable when a nation explores for oil in deep water. It may be that BP has been at fault but it is probably no different to any other oil major in this regard and the time for recriminations is not now but after the emergency is past.

For my own part, I admire what Tony Hayward has done in coming down from the comfort and safety of Britannic House and going to America in person to take the rap. A lesser man would have left his American lieutenants to handle the situation. His good intentions have, unfortunately, backfired because he didn't take the trouble to adopt an American persona. When in America, I make a point of talking about curved balls coming in from left field and stepping up to the plate even though I have no idea what this means. But I do know that Americans are stumped by sticky wickets. Tony Hayward has said things in a very British way that make perfect sense to me but have upset Americans. He should have done better.

The American demands for a freeze on dividends is bizarre. BP has more than enough money to deal with this situation and it is showing absolutely no sign of wishing to duck its responsibilities. But the major beneficiaries of BP's dividends are not fat-cat tax-exiles but millions of British pensioners. An attack on dividends is an attack on their pensions and they are certainly not responsible for the oil spill. The American Attorney-General is talking about taking out an injunction. It is not clear what the grounds for such an injunction could be - not Specific Performance, surely and not Tort, I would have thought. Also, it is not clear to me how such an injunction, if granted, could affect a British company in Britain paying British shareholders. However, it must be possible to have an effect or the Attorney would not be considering it.

The worrying thing for me is the way the Britishness of BP seems to be an issue (see my entry on Sarah Palin). I don't remember anyone here mentioning that Occidental was American when Piper Alpha blew in the North Sea. Americans talk a lot about diversity and integration but they often see this only in terms of different stripes of American. When faced with an honest-to-god foreigner, they often seem to fall back on prejudice in a way that astonishes those of us in smaller countries who have to maintain good relations with neighbours who are in every way our equal.

I guess the sensible thing to do is just to grin and bear it and rely on the short memories of the public on both sides of the Atlantic. In six month's time, nobody will remember which oil company caused the problem. And it could have been worse. It could have been Total!

Macau overtakes Las Vegas

2010-06-03T17:13:00.002+01:00

A little-noticed fact that is probably significant. Macau overtook Las Vegas last year in terms of revenues to become the world's largest resort of the type. To see Macau, take a magnifying glass and look a little to the left of Hong Kong.

Sarah Palin and BP

2010-06-03T17:01:00.002+01:00

So Sarah Palin thinks that Americans should not trust BP because it it foreign!

Fortunately, Sarah Palin is below the coverage threshold here - most people don't know who she is - but I stumbled upon coverage of this item on the web and if it did get coverage here it would irritate people mightily. There are plenty of people in Britain that don't like the fact that Americans own huge swathes of the British economy - far greater as a proportion than is the case the other way around. As a matter of fact, I don't like it. Any suggestion that Americans were intolerant of the few inroads we have made back the other way might produce a serious backlash.

I was surprised to read that BP is actually the largest exploration company in America looking for oil and gas. It is certainly the largest contributor, through dividends, to British pension funds. If the suggestion of a couple of American senators were to be taken up - that BP should suspend payment of dividends until the mess is sorted out - the losers would be British pensioners. I wonder if Union Carbide suspended dividends until it stopped killing Indians?

This is undoubtedly a catastrophe. But it was an accident and could have happened to any oil company. Creating an international incident over it would not be helpful.

A Liberal future

2010-05-31T15:03:00.003+01:00

I am fascinated by what the Coalition means for the future of the Liberal Democrats. Here is one possibility:

There is a significant anti-Labour majority in this country but it is split between the Tories and the Lib Dems. This allows Labour to form a government sometimes even though two thirds of the population are opposed. The question is why would anyone vote for the Lib Dems when there has been no possibility before now of their forming a government and I am guessing that these are anti-Labour voters who cannot bring themselves to vote Conservative because of what they see as the harshness of the Thatcher years.

The Coalition means that the Lib Dem supporters have effectively voted Conservative without having to admit it. I suspect that they will be pleasantly surprised and will recognise that their best course of action is to throw their lot in with the Conservatives and keep Labour permanently out of office. I suspect that the Coalition will therefore mean the end of three-party politics and the re-emergence of a two party system in which the Tories represent around two-thirds of the population and the Labour Party the remaining third.

2010-05-26T21:21:00.002+01:00

Homer, this one is for you - largely because you are the only person who reads this thing.

I note your comment that we "might not agree, politically". You may be right but it is difficult to tell across the two bodies politic. It would be a mistake to equate the American Republican party with the British Conservative party or the American Democrats with the British Labour party. The histories and traditions are completely different and the positions of the parties don't really coincide.

The British Conservative party was acutely uncomfortable with the Bush administration, for example, whereas the Labour party was closely aligned with it over Iraq and Afghanistan. But more generally, the Conservative party is socially liberal in a way that would appall modern Republicans. Alan Duncan, an openly gay Conservative, pushed through the Civil Partnerships Act ("Gay marriage") during the last Parliament and the Conservatives have more openly gay politicians in Parliament than does the Labour party. The welfare state, including the National Health Service was conceived under Winston Churchill during the second world war - he described it as "a net below which none may fall but above which all may be free to rise". It has become a net below which none may fall but above which all may become entangled, but that is another story.

The Conservatives also have no particular religious bent and certainly no ideological position on abortion. Where they do overlap with the Republicans is their belief in Freedom as an ideal and their preference for private enterprise over state intervention where possible.

The Labour party was born during the revolutionary days of the early twentieth century and was committed to the replacement of capitalism by socialism which they saw as requiring the seizure of the means of production by the workers. Until Tony Blair modernised the party it was still bound by Clause 4 of its constitution: To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service. This was undoubtedly an anti-capitalist, anti-free-enterprise ideal that would never have been allowed to take root in America. During much of my life, the Labour party has acted according to this ideal -by nationalising such companies as BP, British Airways, the Railways, the Steel industry and the telephone companies. The last truly socialist Labour government in the 1970s even tried to manufacture cars!

So for much of my life the choice has been between the Conservatives - a coalition of everyone who believed in a broadly free-enterprise society in which people could succeed according to their efforts and an authoritarian socialist party that believed in enforcing equality on the population by the central control of the means of production. Within that Conservative coalition you would find people who would be comfortable in the American Republican party and people who would be comfortable as Democrats. They were united by a belief in freedom of the individual and the right of people to live their own lives as they wished, without the State telling them what to do.

Blair did change that. He revoked Clause 4 and replaced it with the much blander: The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect. But the instincts of the Labour party have not really changed. They reach for the State at every opportunity where the Conservatives prefer individual freedom.

So there you have it. I would say that the British Conservatives are a much broader coalition than the American Republicans without some of the nutty religious and social overlay. It may be that you and I would be on opposite sides if we shared the same environment, but it may also be that we would not.

Dunkirk

2010-05-25T09:12:00.001+01:00

It is seventy years today since the miracle at Dunkirk. A story that makes every Englishman and woman who thinks about these things stand tall with pride and gratitude.

Half a million allied troops, cornered in North West France. The German Panzers moving in from all directions and the Luftwaffe overhead. Behind, just the sea. The Royal Navy standing impotently off-shore, unable to navigate the shallow waters of Dunkirk. The Free World holding its breath and thirty miles away, the people of Britain watch in horror and disbelief at what is about to happen. Then the miracle began.

From every river, from every creek, from every beach on the East Coast of England came the little ships. Young boys in sailing dinghies; old men in fishing boats; women in rowing boats. Luxury cruisers and old ferries; boats that had never seen more than a local lake and boats that had spent their years at sea. Rafts and barges. Anything and everything that could float or be made to float and that could move. Onward they came across the cruel North Sea. Past the mighty warships and into the hell of Dunkirk. They had come for their husbands, their fathers, their sons and their friends. And under the guns of the Third Reich at its most terrible they pulled three hundred and fifty thousand men to safety.

A defeat, of course. But a defeat that showed the Nazis and the world that this was no ordinary people and no ordinary country. This was one that would never stop fighting until the victory was won.

Forgive me for getting emotional on these anniversaries.

Hugh

The Euro

2010-05-23T18:26:00.002+01:00

The Euro has failed. Many of us in this country thought that it was doomed from the start but I, for one, had begun to doubt my own judgement over the past few years when the Single Currency seemed to go from strengh to strength. But now the thing we predicted has happened.

The reality is clear. You cannot have a currency union without a political union. The Right in England saw this clearly several years ago. The Left denied it. Now we know.

There are only two ways to escape the crisis - forward or backwards. Either the Eurozone moves forward to full politcal union ("The United States of Europe") or backward to separate currencies. Nothing else will work. But the European Union is determined to try neither of these things. Instead, it wants to bolster the weak countries until they become strong. The result will be to bankrupt the most successful country in Europe - Germany. The Germans, and to a lesser extent the French, will pump in billions and trillions to ungrateful and uncomprehending Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain and nothing will change. Eventually, they will abandon the attempt and retire, seriously wounded, to convalesce.

Thank heavens that Britain stood apart from this madness.

So which route will the continent eventualy take? Here is my prediction. It won't move forward to political union because the peoples and the vested interests in Europe won't stand for that. Even the Thirteen Colonies in America, sharing a common language and heritage, only united reluctantly (Rhode Island very reluctantly) in the face of a common threat. In the absence of such an external impetus, Union is not on the table. So the only way out is to revert to separate currencies. But not until the Germans and the French have exhausted themselves in their attempt to hold the line.

And once that has happened, the desire for greater union will recede and we will eventually move to what we should always have intended - a Free Trade Zone.

Decision time

2010-05-02T09:50:00.001+01:00

After examining the alternatives with, I believe, a more open mind than I have ever done before, I have decided to revert to type and vote Conservative next Thursday.

If you are interested (and I quite forgive you if you are not), here are my reasons:

During the past decade the Labour government has achieved some notable things. It has abolished the hereditary principle in the House of Lords (Two hundred years late, but at least it has happened now), it has given a large degree of autonomy to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and, in the latter case, has succeeded in ending bloodshed that had blighted these islands for generations. All this is excellent. Personally, I would go further and include the Queen in my reforms (thank you, ma’am, you can retire now – we’ll take it from here democratically) but that is not going to happen in my lifetime as most of my fellow citizens still adore the idea of a Monarch. Labour has also taken us into more wars than any recent government. Sierra Leone is generally considered a success, as is Kosovo and all those Balkan bits I don’t really understand. Iraq was predicated on a lie. We (the British Public) were told as absolute fact that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could reach our bases in Cyprus and be deployed within forty five minutes. I believed that and supported the invasion. We now know that there was never any convincing evidence of this and that Tony Blair had made up his mind on personal grounds to commit British lives and treasure with absolutely no foundation in fact or Law. And we have Afghanistan, on which the jury is still out. At the time we all felt huge sympathy for the USA after 9/11 and wanted to do whatever we could to help. I certainly supported our intervention. As the bodies continue to pour back in ever greater numbers I find my resolve wavering. It is no longer clear to me why we are there.

But the big issue for me is the economy. Labour claims, rightly, to have lifted large numbers of people out of poverty and to have raised spending on healthcare, education and many other laudable things. But there is one problem. They never paid for it. They never had the guts to impose the tax increases necessary to cover this spending or to increase the productive capacity of the economy so that tax revenues rose sufficiently. They borrowed the difference because it was easier and less unpopular. So they created the illusion of rapidly rising living standards. But that illusion is now shattered. We now see that the Labour Decade has been the lowest growth decade since the War. (The War here is wwII – everything else is just a war.) It looked good for a while but now it has all reversed.

Here is my (depressing) analysis of where we are and what needs to be done. Britain has been living beyond its means. We have been borrowing huge sums from the International Markets and spending these on public services that might make us feel good but that are not tradable with other countries. So we have been borrowing huge sums to spend on people who have been using their wages to buy Panasonic from Japan, BMW from Germany and, dare I say it, software from America. Public spending now accounts for close to half of our economy, which means that roughly half our people are working in ways that may or may not be useful (and in many cases will not be useful) but that do not produce anything that either can be sold abroad or used locally in place of things that are made abroad. To me, it seems that we must rebalance the economy. We must move people out of public service and into the private sector where they can make things or offer services that the rest of the world wants to buy or that reduce our dependence on the rest of the world. And I don’t see how this can be done painlessly. The analogy in my mind is that of the Heroin addict. At first, the Heroin makes the addict feel good. But after a while the addict discovers the terrible price: his/her health and wellbeing are collapsing but to get off the drug is more terrible than to stay on it. Eventually the addict dies or goes through hell to recover. In our economy, because of our historic creditworthiness (we are, even today, Triple A rated) the Labour Government found it easy to borrow. The things they spent money on made us feel good and got them re elected three times. But now there is a terrible price to pay. The only way, it seems to me, that we can rebalance the economy is to make draconian cuts in public expenditure. These WILL throw large numbers of public employees out of work. Furthermore, the reduction in government spending generally will hurt millions of small businesses, including mine, causing further unemployment. So the price to pay for Labour’s glory years will be massive, possibly unprecedented, unemployment and a grotesque increase in poverty and hardship. This will last for several years. Eventually the Private Sector, less encumbered by high taxes and heavy regulation, will start to recover. The weak demand at home will force it to look overseas, probably to the East for markets and we will, very slowly, start to rebalance ourselves as a productive, export orientated country, rather as Germany did after its near-total destruction in 1945. This period will be the equivalent of the withdrawal symptoms experienced by our poor addict. It will be terrible. But eventually we will emerge as a strong trading nation again and then we can once again start to spend on “good” things but please, let’s use our own money this time.

Labour today are in total denial about all of this. They are still talking about maintaining public spending in order “not to threaten the recovery” If they are returned on Thursday then we are heading for Greece. The Tories may understand what is happening but are pretending they don’t. They are talking about saving on paperclips and government buildings when they should be admitting that carnage lies ahead. However, they are the only party that might, just might, grasp the nettle. Oh, Mrs Thatcher, where are you now that we REALLY need you?

So, like a turkey voting for Christmas, I shall put my cross next to the Tory candidate next Thursday.

Hugh

Resurrect the blog?

2007-06-03T18:26:00.000+01:00

I had almost forgotten that this blog existed. We have been very busy building Scott Bradbury into a successful enterprise and blogging faded from my thoughts. I only remembered the blog when a chance search on Google turned it up.

I suspect that nobody reads it, in which case I shall let it die. If anyone is reading it, could you let me know?

Terror in London

2005-07-15T17:01:00.000+01:00

Part of the problem, in my view, is that we do not communicate enough across racial and religious divides. It is one thing to blow up a group you don't like. It is another to kill someone you know. So:

Make friends with a Muslim
be jolly with a Jew
shake hands with a Sikh
and hug a hin-du

(with apologies to Budhists, Humanists and others who would have been included if only they rhymed)

The true story of the Chicago underpass

2005-04-21T12:41:00.000+01:00

It was a dull Thursday in Heaven. God came across Jesus standing over an old picture. "What are you doing, kiddo?" asked God. "Hi, Dad. I'm just zapping this old picture" came the reply.

"But I like that one" said God. "Mom hates it" said Jesus," she says it makes her look too biblical". "She is bibilical" replied God, "Tell you what. Let's put it somewhere safe until she changes her mind."

" We could hide it in the British Museum" suggested Jesus. "Nobody would see it in there".

God thought for a few moments. Then a smile came over his face. "No," he said, "give it to me. I know just the place......."

Why should Charles apologise?

2005-03-27T18:00:00.000+01:00

So the Bishop of Salisbury thinks that Prince Charles should apologise to Andrew Parker-Bowles for committing adultery with his wife (Parker-Bowles' wife, not the Bishop's). What absolute bunkum! If anyone should apologise, it should be the Church for marrying Charles to a woman he did not love.

I am all for loving, long-term relationships but the reality is that a great many people who get married in good faith subsequently discover that they have made a mistake. When that happens, they need all the support and help they can get - not sniping from the Church.

Faith and Patriotism – an Easter reflection

2005-03-27T17:55:00.001+01:00

Bryan Appleyard has once again stimulated my thoughts – this time with his article Beyond Belief? in today’s Sunday Times.

His article was triggered by Michael Howard’s move to make abortion an election issue and the resulting eruption of advice and instruction from the heads of the various religions in the country. He explored the differences between the way this issue plays here and in America and traces some of the differences to the different ways in which the two countries view religion.

The headline figures on the difference are startling. Here, fewer than 8% go to Church. In America, about half of the population go to Church every week. The US Dollar states, “in God we Trust”. We have the portrait of Darwin on our £10 notes. 78% of Americans believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Here, only 48% could tell you what Easter is supposed to commemorate. And here, 44% of people are quite certain that God does not exist. In America, almost everyone believes in some version of God.

The trends are significant, too. In 1968, 77% of Britons were certain that God existed. Now, a majority are either certain that He does not exist, or are uncertain about whether He does or does not.

Appleyard’s conclusion is interesting. He reasons that, since every civilisation in history has had a religion, the current lack of religion in Britain must be an aberration. He argues that religion must be a human need. Look how it has re-emerged in the communist countries, despite years of suppression, for example. His view is that religion will always come back and that the current secular phase in Britain is not a pointer to a world free of religion in future.

He may be right. But there is one aspect of the subject that he did not consider in his article and that is the relationship between religion and patriotism. As a general rule, the most religious countries are the most primitive ones. As you go up the international food chain, you tend to find religion playing less and less of a part. By the time you get to France, Germany and Great Britain, you find religion playing a very minor role in national life. But then you get the gigantic exception. America which should, following the trend, be totally atheistic is overwhelmingly religious. Even those at the forefront of technology - the astronauts – seem to put their trust in God ahead of science.

It is quite easy to see why a primitive people should be religious. It is not so easy to explain why an advanced people should turn to religion on such a scale. It is true that the early British settlers in New England were motivated by religious ideals, but this was certainly not true of the settlements in Virginia and further south, and England itself was extremely religious in the 17th Century, so the Pilgrims were not particularly out of line with the mainstream. Yet America has remained very religious and England has not.

The clue might lie in national success. England at the height of her power in the 1880’s was a very religious country. At the very point when her industry and science were changing the world, the British people peaked in terms of their religious observance. In Victorian England, every community had several churches of different denominations and we sent missionaries to the four corners of the Earth. Great religious movements such as Methodism and Calvinism took hold and made ripples we still feel today.

At the same time, a strong link between patriotism and religion appeared. Movements like the Boy Scouts arose with a strong blend of patriotism and religion. National songs blended God and Country. “Wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set/ God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet” thundered the words of Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory. It seemed obvious to everyone that God must be an Englishman, or at least have chosen England as His special tool to spread civilisation and His word.

All the time England was the most successful country on Earth it seemed natural to suppose that God was on our side and it made sense to thank Him for all the good things he seemed to be doing for us. But some time in the 1930’s he seemed to abandon us in favour of his new favourite, America. And then he began to show signs of preferring Japan, Germany and even France to us. And this, despite all we had done for Him in terms of spreading his word and sorting out the mess in the world!

It is undoubtedly more difficult to believe in a God who seems to be more interested in other countries than he is in your own. I suspect that His decision to drop his support for England has a lot to do with England’s decision to drop its support for Him. If this view is correct, then we can expect to see America become considerably less religious in future if, as widely predicted, first China and then India overtake it during the next one hundred years.

The first immortal human?

2005-03-15T12:59:00.000Z

There is a fascinating article by Bryan Appleyard in this week's Sunday Times. In it, he postulates that the first immortal human being may already have been born. He bases this thought on the premise that, at present rates of progress, we should be able to produce the first immortal mouse by about 2020 and that we should have extended that to humans about twenty years later. So, a child living now may have the option by about the age of 40 to arrest the ageing process and live forever. "Forever", he argues, averages out at about 1400 years as this is the average time statisticians have computed before a fatal accident would occur. Some people would go on for thousands of years while some would be killed in their early 100's or even in their teens.

He addresses some of the implications of this development. For example, he argues that human memory is ineffective over such long time scales and so we would continuously change, forgetting the person we were and becoming someone different. We would have to choose between having children and living forever, as the population could not accommodate both. Overall, however, he seems to assume that this development is a good thing.

I think it is a bad thing and we should ask ourselves how we are going to handle the possibility of immortality when it arrives. Here are some of my concerns:

Entrepreneurial drive would decline. Shortage of time is a key driver of entrepreneurial activity. In my case, I reached a point at which I realised that I either started my own business now or not at all. The realisation that I had all the time in the world would have caused me to put it off forever.

New ideas would dry up. New ideas come from new people. Old people can improve things, but they do not have the radical eye of youth, untainted by experience. Only young people can fully fail to appreciate that something cannot be done.

Relationships would eventually fail. Nobody could stay married for 1000 years to a constantly evolving person.

Life would become so dull. We would soon find that we had done everything new that we could think of and then we would get so bored.

We would become over-cautious. The thought that a risk like climbing a mountain might cost you eternity is a much greater deterrent than the thought that we might knock a few decades off our lives.

Immortality? I'm against it.

Civil liberties and Parliament

2005-03-12T09:55:00.000Z

I profoundly disagree with the tabloid view that the current spat is simply politicians playing politics with the nation's security.

The proposed terrorism laws seem to me to undermine the principles of liberty that have stood us in such good stead since Magna Carta.

I am delighted that Parliament is giving the government such a hard time over this. Long may it continue.

Grotty in Guernsey!

2005-02-17T15:59:00.000Z

The weather is really grotty in Guernsey. Grey and bleak.

I have finished the course at Barings now and am off to get my hair cut. Then I am going to relax and have a bath. I feel I have earned it! Roll on tomorrow and my flight home.

Fenman under its new owners

2005-02-16T15:35:00.000Z

Huveaux Trading Statement

Read the section on Education and Training. I obviously have no idea what is happening at Fenman but the pre-tax profit seems to be around half of what it was when I sold my share of the company in 2002. They seem to believe that cutting marketing and setting up a targeted salesforce will bring profits back up. I don't believe this will work. The answer is editorial investment. They need to produce stunningly good product reliably and regularly.

I wonder if this will be an example of a larger company failing to run a small one successfully? I hope not as many of my friends still work there.

In Guernsey again!

2005-02-16T15:31:00.000Z

I am currently in Guernsey at Barings Bank running yet another course.

I fly home on Friday. Boy, am I looking forward to that. Who'd be a successful businessman?

Waiting for a plane in Glasgow

2005-02-09T16:54:00.000Z

I have just completed the Accuracy course at CIGNA Healthcare in Greenock and here I am waiting for another 'plane. Again, the course went amazingly well. This time, I was accompanied by Stuart Watkinson our trainee trainer. Fortunately, the course went precisely to plan, so Stuart saw it in the best possible light.

Ellen MacArthur

2005-02-09T16:52:00.000Z

What a gal!!! This is one of those achievements that lifts the entire nation and certainly makes me feel good.

Young Enterprise 2005

2005-02-05T21:08:00.000Z

I am a volunteer director of Young Enterprise in the East of England and this is the time of year when I have to judge all the young entrepreneurs in our schools at the annual trade fair at the Grafton Centre.

This year, I photographed every stand and you can view them at:

Young Enterprise 2005

Houndville training videos

2005-02-02T11:17:00.000Z

http://www.telephonedoctor.com/houndville.asp

If you have not seen these yet, you should do so now. They are very amusing.

Prisoner abuse in Basra

2005-01-19T14:44:00.000Z

BBC Coverage

This is very sad. Everyone was upset by the atrocities at Abu Ghraib but we somehow all hoped and believed that British soldiers would not do this kind of thing. Now we know that they did. General Mike Jackson has pointed out that 65,000 men and women have served in Iraq since the start of the war and that only 3 are believed to have committed this kind of act. This may be true, but I find myself wondering: if some people have behaved like this, could there be more?

Auschwitz is in the news at the moment because of the anniversary of the discovery of its horrors. I have always felt that the British people could never have allowed, or condoned, the kind of horror that took place there. Now I find that people acting in my name and funded by my taxes have behaved in a bestial manner. Maybe we're no different to any other country and that is a shame.

BBC SPORT | Cricket | Hero Hoggard crushes South Africa

2005-01-17T21:48:00.000Z

BBC SPORT | Cricket | Hero Hoggard crushes South Africa

This is what we like to see!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Titan probe yields fresh images

2005-01-15T16:32:00.000Z

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Titan probe yields fresh images

I think this is one of the most incredible achievements in my lifetime. It's particularly gratifying that European science has played such a key part in it.

Tital is bigger than either Pluto or Mercury. It it was a planet, it would be the next biggest after Mars. Presumably, it is bigger than our Moon? Anybody know?

Huygens down!

2005-01-14T16:10:00.000Z

The BBC is reporting that the European Space Agency probe Huygens is on the surface of Titan. This is one of the most exciting moments in space research in my life. I can't wait to hear some results and am desperately hoping we don't have a repeat of the Beagle disaster.

BBC coverage

And, from CNN:

Grinning scientists watching from the ESA operations center in Germany said the first obstacle -- a tricky atmospheric entry -- had been a great engineering feat. Time will tell if all of Huygens' precious data will reach their destination.
"So far so good," said David Southwood, director of science for ESA. "The signal has been solid for a long time."

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"

2005-01-09T13:53:00.000Z

Edge: "'WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?'"

This fascinating question has been posed by the Edge Foundation, a philosophical meeting place on line. I had not heard of it before this morning, but the BBC picked it up and ran an interesting item on both the question and the various responses to it.

Jerry Springer - The Opera

2005-01-09T13:43:00.000Z

I watched the first half hour of the TV broadcast last night but got too bored to continue. So I never saw the part about Jesus being gay. However, if 45,000 people called the BBC to complain that the show was blasphemous, what on earth is going to happen when the show transfers to Broadway? Britain is not, frankly, a very religious country, but the Americans take their christianity seriously.

Ironically, the only reason I watched even 30 minutes of this third-rate stuff is that I wanted to see what the protesters were protesting about. Otherwise, I would never have known it was on.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK public pledges soar to £100m

2005-01-06T18:20:00.000Z

BBC NEWS UK UK public pledges soar to £100m

...and Australia has pledged a billion A$. The world-wide response to this is just incredible.

Two daughters in France

2005-01-06T18:13:00.000Z

Both our daughters are in France on Skiing trips at the same time. Ellen is here and Emily is here.

New Year's Eve

2005-01-01T20:02:00.000Z

Swynford Paddocks

Last night we danced the night away at the Swynford Paddocks hotel in the gloriously named village of Six Mile Bottom.

Music was provided by the Masqueraders and the hotel did a splendid job of catering for us all. We are considering getting a party together for next year and taking over a whole table.

Interestingly, the hotel was once the home of Augusta Byron, the poet's sister with whom he is alleged to have had an incestuous affair.

British Entrepreneurs

2004-12-29T14:23:00.000Z

Richard Branson was on the radio this morning. He asserted that it is as easy to be a successful entrepreneur here as anywhere else in the world. In particular, he didn't think it was easier in America. The one caveat he made was that the British entrepreneur has to think globally as the home market is too small for may businesses.

In my experience of having run businesses in both the US and here, the great advantage the US has is that you can let people go quickly and easily when you have to. Here, you have to go through long drawn-out procedures and even then you can have to face an employment tribunal. Branson is probably big enough not to have to worry about this, but it is a serious obstacle to employing people when you are a small business.

Catastrophe in the Indian Ocean

2004-12-28T19:08:00.000Z

The scale of the disaster really defies comprehension. A couple of small-scale thoughts:

This time last year, both my children were in the Maldives on holiday. If they had chosen this year, rather than last...........

We also have some friends who have a business out there - Maldive Scuba Tours. They were visiting Bali when the Tsunami struck and so were not in danger. Luckily, as we understand it, their dive boats were in deep water and rode out the waves OK. However, they have real problems now in locating all their clients and getting them safely home. Beyond that, their business must surely suffer, both from the loss of infrastructure and from the damage to confidence.

Ankylosing Spondylitis NASS Home Page

2004-12-28T19:06:00.000Z

Ankylosing Spondylitis NASS Home Page

Argee asks about Ankylosing Spondylitis. Like most spondies, I tend not to talk about it much, but it can be a real pain at times. The link above should take you to the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society, which has some useful information on the illness.

In reponse to your specific concern, Argee, it is hereditary only in the sense that the HLA-B27 antigen does tend to run in families and this antigen makes any children slightly more vulnerable to the disease. However, there is no automatic link that means that they will get it and neither of mine seem to have it.

dayofagringo

2004-12-26T19:57:00.000Z

dayofagringo

Argee in Brazil has begun his blog after reading mine. How incredible! I am still not entirely sure how he found mine, but there you go. Apparently we both have Ankylosing Spondylitis and this may explain it.

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

2004-12-24T15:52:00.000Z

That's it, really. Merry Christmas!

She made it back!

2004-12-24T15:41:00.000Z

In case you were worrried, Catherine eventually made it home at around 9:30.

Traffic nightmare

2004-12-21T20:27:00.000Z

Poor Catherine. She has been stuck outside Bromley in stationary traffic for over two hours. She went to visit Nana and got caught up in a terrible jam caused by an accident at the A20/M25 junction. I have asked her to call me every half-hour that she is still stuck. That way, I will know when she has started to move as she obviously cannot call once she is driving. It is now half an hour since she last checked in and I am hopeful that the phone will not ring again. if so, she must be on her way, but she is still one and a half hours out.

I shall put supper on and prepare a hot bath. The house is nice and warm and the Christmas tree looks very welcoming.

The Blog lives!

2004-12-21T20:25:00.000Z

I have just had a comment!!!

Argee, an Englishman living in Brazil, has commented on my thoughts on Girl with a Pearl Earring. How on Earth did that happen?

Extrasolar Planets

2004-12-18T20:39:00.000Z

Extrasolar Planets

During our trip to France, we attended a fascinating evening at the St Michel Observatoire on the theme of "Exoplanetes", the French word for planets in other solar systems. Apparently, the Swiss were the first to discover another true planetary system, back in 1995. Since then, about 130 more have been found.

This link is to PlanetQuest, the Nasa site dedicated to the search for planets in other systems.

The British Journalist

2004-12-18T20:29:00.000Z

I am reading Andrew Marr's entertaining history of British Journalism, which is peppered with anecdotes from his own experiences of reporting from around the world.

The book opens with this wonderful quote from Humbert Wolfe:

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.

But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

Guy Ritchie at the Sefton

2004-12-18T13:51:00.000Z

I was sitting having breakfast at the Sefton Hotel in Douglas, IOM, yesterday with the HR Director of Manx Telecom. As we were leaving, he asked me if I had recognised the guy at the next table. Of course I hadn't, but it was apparently Guy Ritchie. He is filming on the IOM and always stays at the Sefton. Madonna comes over to join him at the weekends and the two of them love the island because they can go wherever they like without anyone bothering them.

I must remember to bother them next time!

Although I like the Sefton too, I had some problems this time. I actually changed rooms twice in three days, which is unheard of for me. The first room was fine, but the shaving lights failed. The night manager told me he would fix it in the morning butI was in a bad mood, having just had a delayed flight, so I told him to fix it now or get me another room. I got another room.

The next room had a problem with the plumbing that only became apparent at four in the morning. There was an annoying noise in the pipes or somewhere in room 192 and it woke me up. Furthermore, the temperature was just a tad too low and I could not increase it, whatever I did with the control.

I moved again.

The third room was great. I imagine Madonna and Guy had better luck.

Mobile blog!

2004-12-16T16:55:00.000Z

This is a first! I am updating my blog from my laptop which is not physically connected to anything. The Sefton hotel has a wireless network and my laptop has detected it and connected to it.

I am sure that this is a common occurrence, but it is completely new to me.

Wonderful time in France.

2004-12-15T19:36:00.000Z

The weekend with Rod and Gilla was a huge success from our standpoint.

Of course, it was wonderful to see them (and the dogs) again and we had a terrific time. The weather in the Luberon is fantastic. They have 320 days of sunshine a year there and certainly we saw only pure blue sky with not a cloud in sight the whole three days. The nights were cold, crisp and clear and the days warm and sunny. Rod and Gilla had organised a visit to the St Michel Observatory and this was stunning. The sky was crystal clear and we spent a couple of hours in the open air, viewing the universe through the medium-reflector and through powerful mounted binnoculars. I saw Saturn clearly with my own eyes, which was fun, and also the Andromeda Galaxy.

Perhaps the highspot of the visit was the Sunday lunch. Rod and Gilla had invited three French couples to lunch and it was wonderful to be able to converse with French people about every subject imaginable. The lowspot was possibly the moment when, by chance, we witnessed the end of a Wild Boar hunt. The Boar was cornered and shot only yards from where we were walking and we saw the whole poor animal die. We all like Wild Boar and we understand that you cannot eat something until somebody kills it, but all the same, it was upsetting to see.

Douglas at Christmas time.

2004-12-15T19:34:00.000Z

I made it to Douglas! I finally checked into the Sefton at around midnight and went straight to bed.

The course at Abbey is going well. But Douglas is a revelation. I had formed the impression that it was a sleepy and dowdy town, but that is not the impression I am getting now. The Christmas lights are some of the best and merriest I have yet seen and the town seems much buzz-ier than I had remembered.

Stuck at Stansted!

2004-12-14T19:22:00.000Z

Well, this is a pain. I checked in at five this evening for my flight to the Isle of Man, where I am running a course tomorrow, and it is now 7:20 with no further information on when, or if, I am going to get away.

The last announcement was over an hour ago and estimated the time of departure at 8:15. However, the screens are saying, "wait in lounge" with no time given. I was looking forward to a pleasant evening in my hotel in Douglas, but that is clearly not going to happen. Damn!

Ici au Luberon

2004-12-11T10:15:00.000Z

We have arrived safely at Rod and Gilla's. The weather is gorgeous and the house is fantastic. More to follow.....

Fascinating Dyson

2004-12-10T10:08:00.000Z

James Dyson gave the Dimbleby lecture this week. He made a powerful case for engineering and manufacturing in the the UK and talked about the culturally destructive nature of being surrounded by things we did not make. He strongly attacked the idea that we could survive on services in a "post-industrial" age. The BBC has published a digest of the lecture at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4081937.stm

One idea that he advanced was entirely new to me. He reminded us of Britain's industrial past. In 1600, China produced one third of the world's output of manufactured goods and Britain produced effectively nothing. By 1800, with 2% of the world's population, Britain produced half of the world's output. What was new to me was Dyson's argument that this was a fluke and not due to the innate superiority of British inventiveness. He pointed out that we simply ran out of wood! The world economy prior to the Industrial Revolution had been wood-driven. We built from wood and we heated from wood. We also used Charcoal for smelting. Around 1700, we ran out and the goverment imposed strict limits on the use of wood in order to conserve what was left for shipbuilding and other essential uses.

In desperation, we turned to coal and brick and iron. But these required totally new methods of extraction and creation and so we were driven to invent, for example, the steam engine to give us the power to drive the mines. He argued that any country in our position would have had to industrialise or die and that it was chance that we got there first.

If this thesis is correct, it does address something that has always puzzled me: why here? Why, given all the intelligent people there must have been all over the world did Britain suddenly surge ahead and create the world we see today. Surely a better-resourced country would have been a more likely candidate. Dyson may have explained this.

Festive evening at CBHRD

2004-12-09T15:17:00.000Z

Last night we had an enjoyable end-of-season evening at CBHRD, the local forum for professionals in the HRD and HR fields.

You can read more at www.cbhrd.org.uk

Anyone want my dollars?

2004-12-07T19:47:00.000Z

The dollar is a basket-case at the moment, heading down below the $2 to £1 mark. Economists tell us that this is because the Americans are living beyond their means and so are relying on the rest of us to support their lifestyle by buying US securities to offset the twin deficits they are running.

My own investments in the US are now 8% off on the year, despite the good underlying performance of the companies making up the portfolio. But good dollar figures don’t matter at all if the value of the gain is more than wiped out by the fall in the dollar. Since the Bush government seems to be incapable of, or unwilling to, take the necessary steps to fix the deficits, the dollar is likely to carry on down. This is causing me to consider disinvesting in the US and cutting my losses.

I am pretty sure America can stand the loss of my support, but surely the big players on the international markets must be considering their positions hard. And if there is a general flight from the dollar, where will the fall end?

So, anyone want my dollars? Offers over 50 pence each considered.

Blunkett and Quinn

2004-12-05T14:04:00.000Z

The papers are once again full of the Blunkett-Quinn affair and the Tories are now baying for his blood: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4069923.stm

It seems to me that one aspect of this case, though mentioned, has been understated and that is the Home Secretary's state of mind. The reactions of both parties demonstrate clearly that this is an affair that has generated huge passions. In these circumstances love and hate merge into a maelstrom of emotion that takes years to calm down. I know from turmoil in my own life in the past that these matters tend to occupy 80% of the mind and that other functions are carried out more or less on autopilot. I also know that judgements that seem objective and sound at the time are subsequently seen to have been severely affected by the chaos within.

To me, the issue is not whether the Home Secretary has abused his power. He may or may not have done so. The greater issue is whether he is mentally competent to carry out his vital duties when he is bound to be in an extremely emotional state. Personally, I don't believe any man could face the personal issues that he is facing without letting his emotions affect his daily conduct. I am therefore in no doubt that he should step down and focus on his personal life. My guess is that it will be at least two years before he has any idea how much of what he thinks today is his head talking, and how much is his heart.

Measuring the Universe.

2004-12-04T20:09:00.000Z

This evening we took a phone call from our friends Rod and Gilla Heath in the south of France. We are flying down to see them next weekend and they called to ask if we could bring an electric blanket with us (King size). They have looked all over the place down there and the French either do not have electric blankets, or they are not available that far south.

The weather there sounds lovely: clear frosty nights and warm days so that you can eat out of doors at lunchtime.

On Saturday night they have arranged for us to spend an evening at the local observatory learning how to measure the universe. The Observatory looks terrific and you can learn about it at http://www.centre-astro.fr/ The evening will be entirely in French which will be an interesting test for Catherine and me.

On Sunday, they have invited six of their new French friends round for lunch. This includes a judge and his wife and the local builder and his wife. None of these people speak English, either.

We are really looking forward to the trip. It will be interesting to hear how ordinary French citizens view the world today. I wonder if the slight national disagreement over Iraq will come up?

Nanny state!

2004-12-04T09:11:00.000Z

Surely the affair of the Home Secretary and Kimberly Quinn proves beyond doubt that we live in a "nanny" state?

Burke's triumph

2004-12-04T08:59:00.000Z

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations set out to find the world's favourite quotation as part of the launch of its latest edition.

The winner was Edmund Burke: "It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph". W B Yeats came second.

You can read the top ten at: http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/quotefrom/100quotes/quotations/?view=uk

Update the Blog!

2004-12-02T09:05:00.000Z

I received an urgent communication this morning from my friend David Friedman in America who had noticed that the Blog was now a record two weeks behind reality. So, here we go!

It has been one heck of a month. I think I ran ten courses in November and travelled between Edinburgh in the North to Jersey in the South. The organisations I worked with in November were:

Abbey
Barings
Ansbacher
Abacus
Scottish Reinsurance
Roche Pharmaceuticals

However, Abbey are by far our biggest client and I ran courses in Jersey, St Albans and Warrington for them. In December, I am flying out to the Isle of Man to run one further course for them.

In the whole of November I cannot have spent more than a couple of consecutive days at home. Catherine, too, has been amazingly busy, running promotions and closing sales. She has landed CIGNA and the Land Registry, which may lead into Government in a big way.

All this activity is raising serious work-life balance issues. We love to be busy, but we clearly need to find ways of scaling this business up without killing ourselves. Tomorrow we interview a young man who we think might be able to take on the training part of what we do, freeing us up to think more and develop the business.

Things are slowing down for Christmas a little now. Next weekend we fly down to the South of France to stay with a couple of friends who have retired over there. We are really looking forward to a couple of days relaxation and good food.

Course over at Ansbacher.

2004-11-16T19:35:00.000Z

I finished the course at Ansbacher today. What a relief, as I am dog-tired. Tomorrow, I shall run the train-the-trainer course and I hope that they will roll out after that.

The course did go really well, though. The reaction sheets are very positive and we got an average reduction in errors of over 60%.

Catherine visited Charles Hoare today and had a very good reception. She believes we will get the business. Abbey has confirmed that they would like me to go to the Isle of Man in mid-December to begin the roll-out over there.

This business is getting away from us! Following a slow start, we are both now working our fingers to the bone and it is clear that we cannot meet the demand we have created without adding extra people - and quickly, at that.

I am really looking forward to flying home on Thursday and spending more time with Catherine. However, the pressure will remain on as we have to drive straight down to Swansea to present to the Land Registry before driving to Winchcombe for our weekend with the Conways. After that, all hell breaks loose! I have to run a course in St Albans while Catherine drives to Edinburgh. I then fly up to join her. We both drive back and then I have to drive up to Warrington to run a course there. I finally get home again late on my birthday.

Still, there is nothing more to do tonight other than to go out for a meal, which I will now do.

Back in Jersey!

2004-11-14T21:25:00.000Z

It is 9:30 on a Sunday night. I am sitting in the foyer of the Pomme d'Or in St Helier after an all-too-short visit home.

Yesterday I flew home at lunchtime but we had to collect Emily from Ely and it was around 3 in the afternoon before we got home. Mum had come to visit and we had a lovely evening. Unfortunately, Emily had decided to spend the evening with her friends at the Bonfire Night celebrations on Cherry Hill in Ely, so I only got to see her for the briefest of times.

Today flew by and, before I knew it, I was on the Aurigny Saab plane on my way back to Jersey. I only just made the flight as Stansted was a heaving zoo. My check-in desk was dealing with the overflow from an Iceland Air plane and when I got to security, the queue was moving at a snail's pace.

Anyway, I did make the plane. Annoyingly, we landed at Guernsey first and sat on the tarmac for twenty minutes while people got off and were replaced by others.

Tomorrow I begin training at Ansbacher. Catherine assures me that this will be fun and that the group is really delightful. I am sure that is right but I would rather be at home.

However, we have worked out that I may be able to get home on Wednesday night rather than having to wait until Thursday lunchtime and that would certainly make life a lot better, as well as providing a much-needed full day in the office before we both set off for Swansea on Friday. Then we have a weekend with the Conways planned in the Cotswolds before Catherine drives north to Edinburgh and I begin training at Abbey in St Albans.

I now plan to spend a few moments reading through the information on tomorrow's group and then turn in.

I'm whacked.

Finished in Guernsey

2004-11-13T10:50:00.000Z

At the airport! Am I looking forward to going home! It has been a long two weeks.

The course at Barings was a fantastic success. Not only did we get the best feedback imaginable, we got error reductions of over 50% across the board. I am looking forward to processing the data through my laptop to see how it all pans out.

Going well at Barings

2004-11-12T10:34:00.000Z

This is an unusual situation. I am sitting in the canteen at Barings in Guernsey in the morning break in my Accuracy course.

It seems to be going very well. We have just completed our look at addresses and telephone conversations and we will go on to Alpha-numerics after the break.

I must say, I am looking forward to getting home tomorrow. This evening will be pleasant with no pressure to prepare for a course tomorrow.

Brilliant result at the Abbey

2004-11-09T16:47:00.001Z

I have just completed my training course at the Abbey Bank in Jersey.

What a result! Ecstatic happy sheets from the participants and a reduction in measured error-rate of over 75% - my best yet.

On to Guernsey!

Brilliant result at the Abbey

2004-11-09T16:47:00.000Z

Unexpected fright

2004-11-07T21:07:00.000Z

This evening, we flew from Guernsey to Jersey.

We had not realised that the plane would be quite so small! It was a Britten-Norman "Trislander" with seats for fifteen people, one pilot and three propellors. Each pair of seats had their own door, so it was like getting into a rather cramped car with seven rows of seats.

The engines were clearly piston- rather than turbo- prop and the thing flew at about 2000 feet. The visibility had closed right in and it was getting dark anyway and the fifteen-minute flight seemed to take forever. Catherine looked as though she would jump out at any moment.

Still, here we are, back at the Pomme d'Or in St Helier.

The Pomme d'Or was the headquarters of the German occupying authority during the war and there are pictures in the lobby of the Swastika flying over the front door, right outside what today is our bedroom. There are also rather uplifting shots of the British liberating forces arriving in 1945, hauling down the Swastika and hauling up the Union Flag.

What amazing things happen in the world that we know nothing of today!

That reminds me that in Guernsey at the Guernsey Museum, we got chatting to a member of staff who spoke the Guernsey Patois. She spoke some for us and it sounded like a rather Chaucerian version of French. I could not make out a single word and a French lady who was present at the same time said that she could only catch the odd word here and there. The Guernsey lady was born in 1939 and was therefore too young for her parents to send her to England when the German threat became imminent. She spent the first five years of her life under German occupation. She was saying that the German soldiers in the island all missed their own children terribly and were surprisingly good to the Guernsey children. She said that she has grown up with no feelings one way or the other towards the Germans based on her experience of them during the war.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

2004-11-07T15:54:00.000Z

I am about one third of the way through this fascinating novel. Written by Tracy Chevalier, it tells the story behind one of Vermeer's famous portraits - Girl with a pearl earring. The account is fictional as we have no knowledge of who the girl was or why Vermeer painted her. At this point, I cannot tell where the narrative is going, but the story is a beautifully crafted account of life in Delft in the 17th century and of the relationship between a master painter and his maid.

Scare

2004-11-05T08:26:00.000Z

Here I am in the Channel Islands, having an apparently successful time.

This morning, I awoke to find a message on my mobile. It was a voice message from Catherine to say that she had collapsed on the floor after twisting her knee badly while packing. She had crawled to the phone and called me, only to get my voice mail. It was 10:30 and I was asleep.

I called her straight back this morning and got our voice mail at home. I immediately started to abandon all our plans for a celebratory weekend in Guernsey and find a flight home. Then I managed to reach her. She is alright this morning, but had a terrible night. Peter (thank goodness) came rushing over when she could not reach me and his sister, who is a nurse, gave telephone advice on how to knock the knee back into position. By about 2 a.m the crisis was over and everyone went home or to bed. And I missed the whole thing.

So, as of this moment, Catherine is still due to arrive here in a few hours.

Initial success in Jersey

2004-11-04T19:22:00.000Z

I am sitting in my hotel room here in Jersey, feeling rather pleased with life.

For the past two days, I have been running Accuracy training at Abacus wealth management here in St Helier. The course has gone remarkably well and the client seems very pleased. We got a substantial reduction in errors and very favourable feedback.

It is Catherine's 40th birthday today and it is a bummer that we cannot be together. However, she is flying out to join me tomorrow in Guernsey where we plan to have a celebratory weekend staying at La Fregate.

I am typing this on a hotel TV-Internet system with a rather naff keyboard as I did not bring my laptop on this trip.

Implications of a Kerry victory for Britain

2004-11-01T20:04:00.000Z

Just over 200 years ago, the minority of Americans who wanted independence from Britain chanted, "no taxation without representation". Today, British soldiers are living, fighting and dying under American overall command, yet we have no democratic say in who should be the Commander-in-Chief.

So what would the implications of a Kerry victory be for Britain? Any ideas?

Greenwich Mean Time

2004-10-31T17:55:00.000Z

I love the move back to winter time. The evenings seem so much cosier and I like the lighter mornings.

I also like the thought that we are back on Greenwich Mean Time and that the whole world takes its time from us. New Yorkers know they are five hours behind us, people in Hong Kong know they are eight hours ahead of us and so on. I wish they hadn't renamed it "universal time" as I prefer "Greenwich", but whatever you call it it is still our time and stems from when we put ourselves at the centre of the world.

Would the world have modernised without Britain?

2004-10-31T11:00:00.000Z

I am just beginning to read Nial Ferguson's fascinating history - Empire: How Britain made the modern world. The question he poses near the beginning is whether the modernisation of the world would have occurred anyway, or whether it fundamentally depended on Great Britain. For example, would someone else have had the Industrial Revolution, the great scientific strides of the Enlightenment, the development of democracy and the Common Law - to name but a few British achievements?

Certainly, the USA, Canada, Australia, India, Asia and Africa would look very different today without Britain. Ferguson's answer is "probably, no". He thinks the world would have remained pre-modern at least until now and probably longer.

Success in the Channel Isles!

2004-09-02T16:09:00.000+01:00

Well, I am in a good mood!

Here I am, sitting in the departure lounge at Guernsey Airport on a glorious afternoon after what can only be described as a triumphant tour of Jersey and Guernsey.

I made three sales presentations yesterday and one today and landed three orders worth around Â£12,000 in total. Just what Catherine and I need to lift our spirits and make us feel good about ourselves and our business.

I shall be catching the flight to London Stansted in an hour or so and am looking forward to being home again.

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Off to the Channel Islands

2004-08-31T11:19:00.000+01:00

I am flying to the Channel Islands this afternoon.

We have a start-up publishing business – Scott Bradbury. I am flying out to Jersey and Guernsey to try to sell the idea of clerical accuracy training to various financial institutions over there.

I am quite excited!

Britain bounces!

2004-08-29T11:05:00.000+01:00

The most unusual item in the news this morning was the revelation that Britain bounces up and down as the tide comes in and out. Actually, this has been known since 1910 but it was news to me.

The weight of the water depresses the Continental Shelf. Plymouth goes up and down by 3 inches whereas London only moves through about an inch.

First post

2004-08-28T10:09:00.000+01:00

This is my general blog for thoughts that cross my mind in the course of a day.