Ed, the Unions and a new way in politics?- No chance!

Last May the British electorate sent a clear message to politicians; "We don't much care for or trust any of you. We are fed up with traditional party politics. It's time for something new so we aren't giving any of you a clear majority. Get on and sort it and yourselves out". And so after a brief period of the old leader saying, Africa style, " I haven't really lost" a coalition was born and the country faced an exciting possibility of doing things differently.

Eight months later it looks as if old habits, while altered with some courage by the Conservative and Lib Dem leaders, remain the anchor for some, especially in the defeated Labour party. Despite Gordon's initial state of denial as he sat it out in Downing Street, the one other thing the country had said is "..and we certainly don't want another dose of you and your lot".

Ed Miliband, fresh from not having Christmas with his brother, has heralded 2011 as "The Year of Consequences". Spot on Ed but not for the continued denialist reasons you give. It is the year in which the cuts which he opportunistically opposes while not offering any alternatives start to hurt. The reason there are cuts is not the evil bankers, who actually contribute rather a lot to Britain's economy but the much longer ten years of excessive "Borrow and Spend" under Brown, aided and abetted by his two closest young allies, Eds Balls and Miliband. Miliband's fingerprints are all over the massive increase in government spending and employment and yet, here he is , unrepentant claiming that it is Labour who will best represent the people and be "the people's voice".This from one of the most culpable architects of Labour's third financially disasterous period of power in a row is staggering arrogance and nonsense.

Over in the Union camp,TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has said 2011 is going to be " a horrible year". If it wasn't going to be tough enough anyway as the effects of reduced government profligacy -another term for "cuts"- running ahead of the private sector's ability to take up the strain and start adding jobs to its payrolls, Mr Barber's team seem to be saying they are determined to make it as unpleasant as they can. Mark Serwotka of the -Public and Commercial Services Union says that it is mere coincidence that a number of proposed strikes would happen around Easter and the Royal Wedding. Bob Crowe of the RMT, a clear enthusiast of strikes, says "we can expect to see workers ..out on the picket lines fighting for jobs against savage attacks on pensions and standards of living". The customers are of no consequence. They never are to those who believe only in the supply side of the economy whose unstated doctrine is "You get what we say you can have, at the price and quality we dictate and only if we feel like it . Be grateful". Also not of consequence are the businesses, traders, service providers whose livelihoods and jobs the actions and disruption of these largely public sector based unions threaten.

Just before Christmas David Cameron invited the union leaders to Number 10 for the first time in 25 years. They slunk in and slunk out seemingly determined to maintain grim expressions and say the exercise was a waste of time. Some did not have the interest or courtesy to even turn up. As they walked away in twos and threes they looked more like a bunch of hyenas sloping off disgruntledly as someone had stolen their kill, but determined to get their revenge. Encouraged by memories of the so called Poll Tax( we got that in the end didn't we even though it was called "Council Tax"?)riots their adrenaline comes from dreams of confrontation and brave talks of civil disturbance rather than embracing a concept of new collaborative politics and working on the design for a robust and viable future for UK Plc.

That takes us back to Ed. Which way does he turn if things get ugly? The way it works within the Labour constitution , lacking majority parliamentary and individual membership support ,he is electorally beholden to the unions. The party would be bancrupt without them. If Ed threw them aside in a bid for personal and party independence, Labour could have a whole new appeal and a new future.Is he likely to go for it? Does he, at heart an intellectual London socialist, even see it? Almost certainly "No" in both cases. When it comes to the crunch and if there is civil disobedience where will Ed sit/stand/,march? He has been equivocal about this in the past and seemed not to be able to distinguish between the expected behaviours of a student union leader and someone claiming to be a potential future Prime Minister. In the end he bottled the choice but his union brothers will be pressing him to make one,- the wrong one,- this time. And he thought they wished him well by supporting him in the leadership election.No Ed,- they just thought they had a better chance of controlling you than they did the others. There could be a lot of discomfort coming your way.

The result of the end of year/(un)Happy New Year statements of both Ed and the Unions is therefore that indeed 2011 will be "the year of consequence" although not the ones Ed envisages and "a horrible year" too, though if the Great Disrupted British Public gets fed up with union aggravation, no trains, disrupted planes, public services etc and turns on the unions ,the horribleness could be of a different sort to the one they envisage right now.

Snow Joke- 2 New Items on Snow Dramas

Please see sister blog Airnthere at www.airnthere.blogspot.com for two new items generated by the UK and Europe Christmas snow travel problems. The first covers the question of airline liability:- why should airlines be held responsible by EU governments for problems entirely outside their control? The second queries the concept of British travellers being "stranded" or "stuck" on the European continent.

Heathrow- White but in the brown stuff.

Please see sister blog Airnthere at www.airnthere.blogspot.com for this one about Heathrow's snow problems andthe enquiry into it.

Ed the Understander.

Ed Miliband's statement today to striking students; " I understand your anger at what is happening on tuition fees" is one of those "I feel your pain " statements which always ring rather hollow and especially so when they come from a politician. He also said that he believes that sixth formers should be able to lose valuable teaching hours by being able to join in outside protests during school time. All very well for him who has completed his education and made his way in the world ,albeit entirely in and around politics, but less good for those who may be borderline cases in getting the necessary grades whne they next face the examiners.

The basic statement comes a bit rich from the leader of a Party which is also all for recovering the costs of university education and probably at much the same levels though possibly through an even more punitive lifelong graduate tax which would be far more of a disincentive to many to even go to university.

Maybe the problem is that Ed is,as labelled by David Cameron ,indeed still student politician who just can't resist jumping on any passing noisy bandwagon, particularly a socialist one, and is really just vicariously joining the demo. He has said before that he was minded to join in such events but has so far failed to show up on the day. Urging sixth formers to do so in his place is perhaps the best he can do, but it is a very selfish suggestion. "Over the top you go,- I'm right behind you" and (unsaid)"I'm staying behind you". He has yet to come clean about exactly what and how Labour would do to fund the costs of university education and do it fairly so that the costs are born by its beneficiaries and not spread across the rest of the population who do not go there. Do we sniff something hypocritical and rather cowardly opportunist in all this from nice understanding Brother Ed?

Krafty Kraft Moves UK Brands to Spain

This posting on sister blog Twigaview (www.twigaview.blogspot.com) may be of interest to BA/IBeria merger followers.

Krafty Kraft moves UK Brands

Kraft,promised in their takeover bid for Cadburys that they would respect the company's British core characteristics and keep all its UK factories open. It didn't take long for the first factory to go. Now it appears that a good chunk of UK Plc's tax take is about to disappear as well. Several British brands are being moved to be part of a new Swiss company and in doing so will pay a large chunk of their taxes to Switzerland instead. No doubt they would say that the original promises were made in good faith but unfortunate typos left out the magic words about for how long. Or was there one of those never to be trusted phrases about the forseable future hidden away in their statements?

Students of corporate promises might do well to dig out the statements made about the BA/Iberia merger into Spanish registered IAG-International Airlines Group and ponder on phrases like " British to the core".They might also think a bit more deeply about the the Chairman's statement that one of the reasons for the Spanish registration was useful tax breaks. It looks as if some of the corporate taxes now paid by BA will shortly be following the those of the Krafties in heading offshore,- in this case to Spain.

The Peoples' Ed.

Ed Miliband,the man who only 8 months ago was a close advisor to his spend, spend, spend, spent,predecessor when announcing a two year review of Labour Party policy yesterday declared that it should be "The Peoples' Party".

Could this be a little unwise? Things with "Peoples'" in their title, whether Peoples' Princesses or Peoples' Democratic Republics tend not to have very happy records. In the case of the latter they also usually mean the reverse of what they say.Labour has a particular problem with the title as it really doesn't mean all of the People anyway. Just some of them. It heartily dislikes vast swathes of the electorate especially the non Labour better off including anyone in the 50% tax bracket,- ie the aspirants once they have made it,- Tories in any shape or form but with Etonians first up for the guillotine,expatriates,those who enjoy country sports and large numbers of others who escape urban state dependency. These they see as not People.The New Labour project was all about leading the party away from all these hangups from the past, but Ed with his references to the need to put New Labour behind and about socialism not being a dirty word, appears through the fog to be be encouraging a slide back to the comfort zones of the past.He must know the maths of where that leads but the heart is leading the head.

Is Ed a People anyway? With an actively political family background,a father who like Browns' looms large amongst his influencers and post university career only in politics it's a fair question.Fratricide is rather unusual too.

For Prince Philip in Abu Dhabi-An Answer.

Prince Philip, visiting Abu Dhabi with the Queen yesterday, is reported to have crustily asked a British expatriate "What are you escaping from?" He then went on to be reluctant to shake the hands of others.

The person concerned was either too taken aback or too polite to give a quick and pithy answer, so just to help His Royal Highness could we suggest that the instant list could have included:"High taxes,the inability to save, buy a house and educate my children, and have a substantially better life". Add to that "UK parochialism,politics,militant trade unions, beaurocracy,obsession with health and safety, political correctness,big brother directives of all sorts, restrictions on working hours and ability to make money and oh yes, its class divisons and social snobbery." That's just an off the top of the head start.

One might also uncharitably observe that didn't the Prince leave the land of his birth rather more permanently than most expats and didn't he do well?

BA/Iberia. The Galleon Sails On.

See sister Blog, Airnthere ,at: www.airnthere.blogspot.com for latest thoughts about the proposed merger between BA and Iberia.

Do shareholders and staff really know all they should from the shareholders' magazine Overview which claims to contain "Everything you need to know about the proposed merger" scheduled for January 2011 ,- and is this a good time for it?

Royal Easter Bunnies. Who gets the eggs?

Many column miles are being and will continue to be devoted to the Royal Wedding, now confirmed to be on 29th April 2011. Amidst those cheering and enthusiastic about the prospect of a double Bank Holiday weekend stretching over eleven days are a good number snarling from their sofas about the cost, the Royals and all sorts of social hangups. Others point to the British disease of more and longer complete "works shutdowns" (Parliament probably being the biggest offender). We pretty much write off the second half of December, Easter has already been lengthening into a week, the summer break or at least the period in which anywhere near 100% manning of offices is likely, runs from mid June to early September. Then there's the winter half term.. and so it goes on. Allied to this, industrialists bemoan the loss of more production days. "Where will it end ?" they ask as the gap between European and Asian productivity expands by the day.


Back to this particular hopefully one off occasion, my guess is that at worst the whole event will be cost neutral with some businesses doing very well out of it at least balancing those who lose. The travel and hospitality industry and their suppliers will be particularly jubilant and brewers and wine merchants over the moon. The VAT collectors should be pretty happy too. In mid summer most London hotels and airlines are full anyway, so the incremental gains would have been low. April 29th, just after a very late Easter, should be the beginning of a low demand period stretching into June, so this will allow maximum gain and produce a significant mini boom right at the beginning of the 2011/2012 financial year for the many companies who run from April to March.


Whether the other big beneficiaries will be British and therefore good for the domestic economy or foreign manufacturers of memorablia/souvenir mugs and the like remains to be seen .If UK producers can't even compete in the tat market we really are in trouble.Whatever happens though we will see a large amount of foreign exchange flow in with every Eurostar and flight from America. Thankyou everybody,- we really need it and thankyou to the happy couple for choosing a date which really does give UK Plc the highest potential for gains and the ringing of tills.That should cheer us up a bit. That other couple, Dave and Nick, will be looking forward to it too.

Rememberance Day and Symbols in Afghanistan

TV pictures of Sunday's Rememberance service at Afghanistan's Camp Bastion pose a question.

The need to honour Rememberance Day is clear, but the appearance of crucifixes on these occasions in Afghanistan itself, is a bonus to the Taliban. You can bet that copies will be being passed around amongst them, especially the young and impressionable ,as undeniable evidence of a jihad on the part of the western alliance. Time to delink religious from military affairs? The same though occured recently when standing on the site of the Isandalwana massacre of the British by the Zulus and reading the sad epitaphs "For God and Country". What had God got to do with it? We had turned on our erstwhile allies. There were no religious factors involved.How could we justify what we were doing by claiming it was some kind of crusade? It wasn't and nor is Afghanistan. A war against extremists, yes, but against Islam as a whole no. That has to be completely clear to avoid any possibility, intentional or unintentional, of being accused that it is part of our agenda.

Gordo Condescends to Westminster.

Is this the right verb? A cross between movement down the surface of the earth from North Queensferry to the Palace of Westminster and a downwards move by a great one to more the company of more earthly,- even if upper atmosphere,-ones ? Anyway, it happened last week when our former Great Leader visited a Select Committee to lecture them on aid to the developing world, his current big interest. He had been to Africa recently on an in-depth daytrip to a conference in Kampala and seemingly had time to visit a school where he noticed that the one computer wasn't even linked to the internet. He also took the opportunity to mention that it was common for ex Prime Ministers not to visit MP's alleged principle place of play,- the Commons,- much. Maybe too Commons ? Clearly he has not scanned the benches opposite and caught sight of Messrs Hague and Duncan-Smith who have been happy to swallow their pride and contribute extensively and usefully to the proceedings.
Conscious still of his possible interest to less good elements of mankind, he or his security people have had Google Earth delete his North Queensferry home from their maps. This apparently in the interests of his wellbeing. Could anyone really be bothered to go up there and seek him out,- the easy to spot one in the 24/7 suit? Probably not,but never mind. How many Google scanning hits does North Queensferry get anyway?

Headline News,-Australians Unhappy.

Australian readers, while delighted to hear that Oz had hit the number one BBC and ITV News spots with the Qantas A380 story last week, have been dismayed that it took a negative story to achieve that.

Sorry folks but it's an introduction to the Media, and not only the British ones. They don't do good news. Anything without the words "Shock, Horror, Chaos, Debacle, Scandal" doesn't grab the audience's attention. The British are though probably at the extreme edge of misery spectrum. We really don't do good news. This is the country where "Mustn't grumble" means "I'm feeling really great/am deliriously happy/am superby fit or "Everything's going really well". To get number one news slot here two things must happen simultaneously.First UK Plc is,- most unusually,- not in the poo, or at least not enough in the poo.Second,- you are,- and in a big way.Normally the top British news item, however trivial, will see the rest of the world shuffled down the pack. The Chilean mineworkers rescue broke through not because it was going superbly well but because the media pack was camped around the top of the tiny shaft waiting for that bullet thing to get stuck. Happily they were disappointed so had to run with the very good news story.Don't get carried away though folks. It was a one-off and business is now back to usual. Unless you down under can come up with a big hit like "Uranium Deposits make all Australians Radio Active", it is likely to be a while before you hit the jackpot again.

The Qantas A380 Incident -Australia Hits UK News Number One Slot for first time in living memory?

Congratulations Antipodeans! You've made it after decades of struggling to get a toehold, however small, on the top end of British TV News. You've scored, though only modestly, at least twice in the last couple of years with the bush fires and the recent "Woman Knifes Man" stuff about your previous Prime Minister getting it in the back behind, or even before, the curtains.Ozzie politics were always considered to be "more robust" than ours, but then we quickly trumped this one with our very own "Brother Knifes Brother" story in the Labour Party leadership elections.


Last night, for the first time in living memory ,with the Qantas A380 Singapore story, an Australia related item hit the number one spot on both BBC 1's and ITV1's main evening news bulletins.Grainy pictures of the aircraft flying over Indonesia's neighbouring Batam Island were followed by better ones of the apparently damaged wing leading edge, a pretty decent landing at Singapore, engineers on the ground examining the damaged engine and pretty together and cheerful looking passsngers streaming through the airport arrivals en route to an unexpected fully paid for evening in town. Free counselling or a late meal and a cold Tiger down at the quays? What a choice. Any veteran national servicemen or sailors amongst them looking forward to revisiting their youthful haunts in old Bugis Street were in for a sore disappointment though.


The script made a much bigger meal out of it than the pictures, but that's our media. Australia had successfully beaten the next two world items,"Paedo Nursery School assistant jailed" followed by Obama's bad news day. Thanks to you down under we here were spared another evening of seamingly endless headlines about our wicked coalition government's evil cuts and the forthcoming end of the world as we've known it.

So... well done folks, but don't expect another number one headline slot for a while.

UK Prisons:Lean cuts. Not just porridge.

Amidst all the current flurry of Government spending announcements accompanied by frenzied and often near hysterical speculation about their effects ,the junior minister responsible for prison food,- not a cabinet position but who knows what the future holds?-recently decreed that Her Majesty's honoured guests should be offered a choice of at least five main dishes on their lunch menu.
If as the alarmists predict, we are faced with mass redundancies, loss of housing,deteriorating health care, no school places for our children and a general degradation of living conditions, life in prison must move higher up the list of career options. The only problem is that ,as there is to be a squeeze on the number of places inside, it will be a case of first come first serving and served.

As a spinoff can we expect that in view of inevitable increased food wastage behind the walls,the leftovers will be sent to the struggling old folks home down the road?

Dave, the Banana Skin and the Isolated Leader Syndrome.

For politicians (and others) even at the height of success, the seeds of eventual credibility loss and ultimately failure can be sown in what can appear to be quite minor things. They can deal confidently and competantly with the heavy affairs of state and then comes along a momentary aberration in a situation which must have appeared free of danger and easy to handle. Suddenly the carefully nurtured credibility is blown and there is a head-in hands moment. Gordon Brown experienced it when he stepped back into his car still wearing a live microphone. It was a seminal moment in the May General Election.

The moment isn't ripe for a disaster yet but the amber lights should be flashing for David Cameron all over Downing Street and the Tory HQ at the news that his personal image-making photographer has suddenly been put on the civil service payroll to continue his trade at public expense.Suddenly exposed to view is an unhealthily narcissistic approach by a leader who has said he is committed to cleaning up politics and the public's perception of them via a policy of transparency and honesty.

It is early days for a leader to be losing an understanding about how people in general (Let's avoid the awful patronising term "the public") view such things. It was a very easy banana skin to see, so why did he tread on it so blindly and insensitively? It is the sort of incident which they may brush off and try to quickly forget about(which Brown's wasn't. He must still cringe at the thought of it), but it can easily form the first marker in what could be the beginning of a series which, like blips on a radar screen, eventually join up to form into a calamtous disaste. With each one,relatively small though it may be, mutters grow into murmurs which grow into open hostility and eventually and "Enough- Off with his /her head!" Margaret Thatcher's "We are a grandmother" was a classic. She survived all the ups and downs of the Falklands, the miners strike etc , but this inappropriately regal comment really started the slide into "She must go". Blair built up the same sort of bow wave of resistance and eventually ridicule -anyone's worst enemy- which became "He must go", even though the alternative was not attractive.

There is a banana skin syndrome here,- and David Miliband didn't do well with bananas either. Cameron would get a much better return from a non public funded watcher for yellow fruit on the pavement than having a new civil service photographer on hand to record the damage post facto.

These incidents apart, there must be a question about how the detatchment from normal life affects the leaders' comprehension and thinking . It happens happens once anyone gets the key of Number 10 or any other large residence which brings with it the battalions of security, advisers,and the rest which quickly cut the incumbent off from normal life.It happpens lower down the ranks on the top floors of corporate exceutive suites and in lesser forms all the way down the tree of authority or seniority. At the top end, what happens to someone who can no longer stroll unaccompanied down the road, buy a newspaper, sit in a cafe or ride on a bus or train and in so doing just hear what people are thinking ,saying and doing, what is driving their lives, what they want and what they don't want? Add to this often grovelling deference and the insulation that increasingly starves the victim of basic human understanding. For a new national leader, after only six months of this detatchment not to have thought: "This appointment isn't very sensible" is worrying. Dave needs to find a way to tunnel his way back,- and find some good, down to earth in-touch advisors or the accusation "He just doesn't get it" thrown from the perky new lad on the benches opposite will start to stick. Then the way back will be very difficult indeed.

Afghanistan,- Gorbachev says it like it is.

On the subject of prospects in Afghanistan former Russian leader Gorbachev is bluntly saying it like it is. There is no possibility of a military victory for the US and UK, just as there was none for the Russians before them or the British last time round in the Afghan wars of the 19th century. If anyone could speak from the grave, those on the British retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad over a hundred years ago could have told told us-and our current leaders ,- that for nothing.If anyone missed it, or is rusty on the history and wants a good read , Flashman offers excellent insights. Thanks to not listening to history or taking even a short flight over the spectacular and rugged country to see what it looks like, billions have been spent and hundreds of brave young lives have been wasted. Thousands more young people with their lives ahead of them have been maimed and devastatingly disabled in the quest for a militarily achieved, terrorism, fear and corruption-free democratic state. Visions of a Westminster style parliament in which the Hon Member for Kandahar South will ask questions of the Hon Member for Helmand Central must have flitted before some of our politicians eyes, or we would never have been there. Presumably they still do as we continue to deploy large amounts of money, men and machines on the quest.

In the real world this democratic parliamentary vision simply isn't going to happen. Afghanistan isn't like that. The only thing that unites the multitude of factions in the country is the presence of a foreign force. Even the most benign will be seen as an invader against which all, for their many and hotly expressed disagreements, will join together. We are wasting out time and the sooner we accept this and leave the better for all concerned. In the short term the Afghans will suffer terribly. A period of hardline rule, probably via the Taleban,is almost inevitable during which those who cooperated with the west will at worst be slaughtered and at best be made highly uncomfortable. We will rightly feel guilty , although impotent,because we created this state of affairs.Our credibility as a protector will be-literally-shot and that gives our diplomacy and influence a problem from here on.

The case for occupying the country to rid it of extremist training bases from which graduates will return to menace our streets is weak. They can easily be trained in one of several other countries even if they are wiped out in Afghanistan. Are we going to invade each possibility in an update and contortion of the Vietnam era domino theory? Modern electonics and remote controlled drones can anyway remove training camps, people we don't like and the rest much more cheaply and surgically than can a large army with problematical mobility and always at risk of very effective of low tech attack. These new developments will also do the job at a fraction of the price. The next problem we will have created is what happens when "the enemy" get their hands on even a few of these new weapons, especially if they can launch them in or close to the invaders homes? Whose photographs will they be carrying in their target finding equipment? The chain of events we have unleashed by invading Iraq and Afghanistan looks more dangerous and never ending by the day. How do we put the cork back in the bottle? Can we? Gorbachev's comments make as good a start point as any.

Kirkaldy Man Found,- in Kirkaldy.

In a followup to their "Where is Gordon?" item yesterday ,The Times today,in a short item by Sam Coates, Chief Political Correspondent, promises us that G.Brown MP will be back on the domestic political scene six weeks from now. Meanwhile it confirms what we already knew,- that he has spent most of his time at home working on his book which it seems will be some sort of manual on how he saved the world from economic meltdown when the banks came off the rails a couple of years ago and it will one suspects go on to tell the world how it should proceed from here. Blame for the past will lie with "globalisation",wicked bankers ( acting within government guidelines)and the like. Profligate spending and huge borrowing by national Finance Ministers,Prime Ministers and others of that ilk will presumably either be ignored or said to have nothing to do with the economic rocks onto which, amongst others, the good ship UK, if not already beached like an expensive submarine, was heading.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of the book and whether it is a best seller or a substantial donation to the nation's paper recycling plants, since we,- yes,all of us,- are paying him for the job of MP he is meant to be doing in our behalf but from which he is seemingly absent without leave (or has nice Mr, Bercow given him an "off work" chit?), can we assume he will be repaying the Exchequer for the weeks spent not fulfilling this function?

Parliament- Absenteeism from the workplace.

In the private sector it is usual that repeated or continued absence from his or her place of work results in the employee being given written warnings, possibly attendance counselling and, if there is no improvement,a P45.

For Members of Parliament it is reasonable to assume that the their normal workplace is The House of Commons, failing which the Palace of Westminster complex,and that regular attendance would come with the job.

It is increasingly conspicuous that at least one member,- on full salary,- has appeared in the Commons only twice since the General Election and did not even display the courtesy or interest to turn up yesterday to hear what the new government proposed to do to deal with Labour's pre-May spending habits.

Step forward the member for Kirkaldy, one Mr Gordon Brown. Where is he? What is he doing? Why is unable to find his way to Edinburgh Waverley station or Airport to make the short journey to Westminster? Does he intent to continue to work from home and if so for what adjustment to salary? Or is it P45 time?

Cuts- Snip, Castration or Revitalisation?

Tomorrow the past few months of media speculation frenzy over cuts, cuts, cuts, gives way to speculation as to what it all means. That should give editors an easy ride until they can get into the "How could they do this just before Christmas?" mode. After that they go off into the New Year and can have fun start digging for coalition splits again.

So far, most have missed the big question, partly because the government spinners appear not to have understood it either.This should not all be about less money=less people = less goods and services. It should be about doing more with less and how to do that, an exercise which many private industries and businesses have have been going through frequently for years, while the state sector has sailed on obliviously adding more people and costs whenever it takes on every new task and abandoning none. There was an internal belief that everyone was working flat out and there was no capacity of man or machines to cram more into the day. Random observation would say this is not always or even often so For example waiting lists for hospital scans ran for months while equipment ran 9-5 five days a week leaving huge amounts of unused capacity which could have been shared or contracted out to the private sector. Such flexibility ranged from unusual to unthinkable.

The "cuts" are not simply about taking money and activity out of the public sector. They are about restructuring the British state economy and the way benefits and subsidies are seen. Yes, commuter train fares will go up, but for example why should the economics of ability to work in London but live in the countryside be
distorted by commuters not paying the real price of providing morning and evening trains with low daylong utilisation? They also distort the price of property by taking the pressure off the London market and transfering it out of town. Why should well off people be paid to have children? Why should anyone be paid to have more than say a maximum of four children? Why should well off pensioners have their bus fares paid for? On and on goes the list. Since the arrival of the (largely uncosted) Welfare State in 1948 we have all been seduced and hooked on subsidy. The cost to the Exchequer and ultimately ourselves has been enormous. The money, including the huge North Sea oil windfall could have been spent on the really needy, providing the things to really raise their skills, living standards and lift them out of long term and repetitive poverty, or on massive investment in future infrastructure. The Victorians saw the need and desirability of that , as did some wartime planners looking at postwar needs. What happened? Where did all the money go? Why have we very little, nothing even, to show for it? The reality is that successive governments used it to indulge ourselves and effectively poured most of it down the drain.Kuwait has an oil-based modern infrastructure and a "Future Generations Fund". UK Plc does not.

There are three main areas of public spending:
-The annual ongoing cost of running the government departments, busonesses and state provided services.
-The cost of capital projects which can validly be classified as investments for the future with appropriate benefits and returns.
-The cost of interest on the (rapidly increasing) national debt.

The first and last are of immediate concern. The second requires urgent evaluation of the value of the projects and whether their contracts are tightly specified and have achieved the right quality at the right price. The state sector has a poor reputation as a negotiator,-eg the Nimrod Mk 4 contracts, the new deal for GPs and many others. Are contractors uncynically delivering good value or are we collectively being taken for a ride, particularly by large and near-monopoly suppliers?

Ideally Wednesday's presentation in the Commons by the Prime Minister would first take us through simple good old fashioned graphs and pie charts showing us who spends what on what share of the cake and then where the money goes. Lower level presentations would then do the same, department by department, giving a clear view of what is being done for us, why and at what cost and how it compares to previous years. This should be the same in every year's annual budget. Unfortunately the Commons chamber does not allow for audio-visual presentations and explanations and the format of government statements has changed little over the centuries. There will be a long verbal statement followed by the Opposition's instant assembly of its prefabricated sound bites " Too much" "Too little", "Too fast" ,"Too soon", "Diabolical" "Attack on....""the bankers (not us) caused this" into some semblence of order. After that there will be the big story book with all the detail and anything the government hopes we won't notice until it's so late that they can say that by our silence we accepted it. The book, its lines and between them, all require close reading with a powerful magnifying glass.

Will it all be a recipe for a new, forward looking Britain with good value government spending with it all under control and imparting new sense of challenge and purpose all round ? Or will it be seen, especially by the usually pessimistic media as another shock, horror harbinger of doom and, yes, economic castration of the British people? The genuinely sad story is that the discomfort, difficulty and upheaval all this is now going to cause real people is the accumulation of mismanagement of the economy and government business by its elected representatives for at least the last ten years, and in terms of manpower intensive, expensive and often very slow and inefficient processes a lot longer than that. Complacency,negligence, inadequacy and incompetance are all in the mix.

Mancunian Misery

David Milliband's face during his victorious brother's speech this afternoon simply said : "I feel sick". Sick from every angle. For himself, the party, the country, about the outcome and some of the acts, duplicity even,and behaviours which led to it. Surely the Miliband family dynamics can never be the same again and yet his younger brother was prepared to risk and accept that in order to take the coveted crown? Totally unscrupulous (old politics surely?) or just naive? From the votes of all but the unions in the Labour leadership ballot, David should have been the man on the stage, the man to take Labour on from here and further from its suffocating socialistic past.There was a real opportunity here for the party and the country but essentially old, old Labour looks as if it has blown it. Ed's rhetoric about a new generation taking over, New Labour being dead, looks uncomfortably like a swing not to the future but the emotional comfort zone of the past. It may please a hard core of older party members and traditional union chiefs but it has little to offer the young for whom he claims the new (refurbished/disguised) old is designed and even less to appeal to current Tory voters south of The Wash. Tragic. David's speech yesterday gave a lot of clues as to what his speech today would have said and sounded like and what a refreshing and revitalising power he could have been in British politics. We should all feel sick.

The Brothers and Sisters head on back.

For anyone hoping for wider spinoffs from the coalition era of new harmony, burying of hatchets and an energised forward vision of a new, upbeat, success driven Britain,the annual meeting and snarlfest of the TUC's brothers and sisters in Manchester last week was a predictable disappointment.Rows of unhappy looking people declined the opportunity to embrace the coalition spirit and look for new and more harmonious ways ahead. The tempation to dive back into the cosy heartlands of class warfare and strikes against the horrors of unknown cuts to come was just too great as was the potential fun of causing disruption to goods and services throughout the land."Action" is fun and good for recruitment. Calm waters much less so, especially during the grey dullness of winter.

The delegates did not look like people set to enjoy themselves. Unions do not generally do not exhibit happy and contented people. Unhappy and discontented ones give them their energy,- and membership fees. Many at Manchester will have returned home with a spring in their step and full of enthusiasm for the new rallying calls of "No to Cuts". Not since the heady days of the "No to Poll Tax" have they had such a unifying bogeyman, even if it is as yet undefined. The homeward trains were probably full of people happy to be unhappy who felt they had had a good week.Their fellow passengers may not have been so enthusiastic about the prospect of future journeys being shunted into the sidings with hollow statements of "Of course we regret inconvenience to the public". Still, at least the brothers and sisters are out in the open. There is no doubt where they stand,- and it's not with those whose daily lives they will mess up or whose jobs they will also jeopardise as colateral damage.A consistent result of serious strikes is ultimately less jobs, including in the industries the unions claim to be protecting. That means more hardship and more misery. But then if it creates a downward spiral of misery that's just fine isn't it? Didn't the miners, Fleet Street printers, shipyard and legacy car company workers , just to metion a few, do well?

The Manchester jamboree was just another missed opportunity. Anyone surprised?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year in September? Yes,indeed. The UK's mass return to work on Monday 6th September, was for many the first day of fully manned offices since the summer wind down started with Ascot, Wimbledon and Henley. This week the tanned and refreshed bounded back into their offices full of the ideas,visions,enthusiasms for things new and energetic determination to tackle the old intractables. Long may this state of mind continue against the inevitable ambush of vested interests,finance departments, status and barrier/barricade protectors and naysayers.Our TV sets were filled with the healthy bonzed faces of the top tier of editors and journalists.Even our politicians term started early. Terms are what the New Year is all about. We are all conditioned at an early age to the academic year rather than its calendar cousin which wearily occupies midnight of 31st December/1st January as the last gasp of a binge which started for many as far back as mid December. Forget all the Christmas cracker type good resolutions hastily thought up and pronounced on those two days. The reality of calendar New Year is an adrenaline fuelled fight against near exhaustion through weeks of over eating and over drinking and shock and awe as the reality of the resultant credit card bills, merrily racked up in December heaves into sight.

Accepting then that the first full week of September is the real New Year, what can we expect from all this new energy and excitement? A roller coaster of a year filled with new vision and opportunity arising from a slimming down of state spending and activity or one, as the media would seem to prefer it,full of fear and difficulty? Will "the cuts" be designed around a new structure for doing things better, faster and more efficiently or will be they be a dreary collection of "the pain must be shared" piecemeal moves with no overall purpose other than to reduce the horrendous short term overspending habits of the recent political era? There is a big difference between the two things. The former would lay the basis of a new lower cost, faster moving Britain with burocracy cut away, pointless jobs binned and common sense as the yardstick for a new, slimmer approach to government. The latter would leave the fundamental structural problems of too much government, over regulation and the stifling of initiative in place. The cuts , far from being the menace painted by the rearward facing amongst the unions and others , could be the springboard to new things, new jobs and a much more competitive future for UK Plc.(Health Warning,- The EU doesn't like the idea of one member state being more efficient than its bretheren. Competition amongst members is some kind of taboo).In a few weeks we will know.

Non socialist Britain has long eschewed anything that looked like a national vision or plan as something essentially too centralist and controlling. For that the Harold Wilson/George Brown National Plan of the mid 1960s has much to answer. They were on track in seeing the need for a plan which would fix clear common goals and prevent the actions of one department or group making those required by another totally impossible,- sometimes for ever. The mistake they, being socialists, made was to see the plan as a device for detailed cebntralised control rather than as a broad umbrella freeing up the deployment of initiative, energy and inspiration. It was a dead hand pushing down rather than an open one setting the birds free to fly. Which do we as a country want? Which are we going to get? There is a huge opportunity, -unseen by the unions and quite likely by many in the political parties,- to radically and beneficially restructure the way we do things rather than to simply stop doing them on the one hand or just sail on spending as we are regardless of the unsustainable cost for future generations on the other. Let's hope the opportunity is taken. The alternative looks like a smouldering ruin.

Whatever the outcome,Twigaview and its aviation and transport related cousin Airnthere (http://airnthere.blogspot.com ) will cast a light on some of the realities, possibilities, nonsenses and even lighter moments.
Again, Happy New Year!

The Beginning.............

This is the beginning of a new blog which will flit amongst issues great and miniscule in the UK and around the world. It aims to inform, entertain and sometimes challenge by shining a light into some of the recesseses and realities of domestic and international affairs, issues, events, people, politics and things of passing note. It is intended to be wide and free ranging as you would expect from a Twiga (giraffe)and will not always be respectful though never malicious. Twigas are normally gentle creatures unless provoked ,in which case they tend to kick your engine in with their back legs. Hopefully what is written will be fair and the interpretations of things and events we are those a Twiga would obtain from looking down on them while thoughfully chewing a nice piece of thorn tree.Any offence would be entirely unintentional and the Twiga apologises in advance for any lapses.

For those with an interest in all things to do with transport by land, sea or air , it has a twin under the label Air'N There.